Girl, in Germany 14 Years, Reunited Here With Father Christmas time always helps me remember the best things about my mother. Mom always insisted on getting a Douglas Fir, her favorite Christmas tree growing up as a little girl in Germany. She taught me to wrap presents, as we sat together on the floor of the back room of our house as I would watch her carefully fold the the paper, tape the packages secure and curl the ribbons with scissors. Christmas was her favorite time of year and so as usual I thought of her during the holidays. When she came to mind this year I happened to search her name on the internet and found a story. A story about her arrival in America I had never heard before. As it happened, on a September morning in 1947 a “diminutive” Johanna Iris Hamrick, a 16 year old girl from Germany dropped her bag and ran across a train station platform in Charleston West Virginia and “leaped” into the awaiting arms of her father. It had been 14 years since she had last seen her father as a two year old, and she would not have recognized him. It was reported by the local newspaper that Johanna wore a plastic red carnation that would match her father’s carnation she had sent him prior to her voyage to the United States so they could know who each other was when she stepped off the train. She had made the weeks long journey from World War II ravaged Leipzig, Germany on board the ship SS Ernie Pyle to New York and then by train on to Charleston, where she was to be reunited with her father and to also to fulfill a “great ambition” to return to the states and study to become a chemist. Her father, Thomas Hamrick, a painter had met my grandmother Frida through correspondence in the late 1920s and eventually brought Frida back to the US, married and had a child, who would be my mom. After a divorce, my grandmother and her two year old daughter returned to Germany, where Johanna would grow up and live in the 1930s and during the war years until her return to the U.S in that September of 1947. Mr. Hamrick, my grandfather (who I had never met) with the help of the Traveller’s Aid Society arranged and sponsored my mom’s trip. My mom, knowing hardly any English, breathless on the train platform and just reunited with her father, was asked by the reporter what she thought of the United States. The story said my mom replied “in good English” that …... “America is wonderful---it’s very nice. I like it very much!” Although growing up I had of course heard the rough outline of my mom’s story of immigrating to this country, I had never known these details of this part of her journey. So it was sort of magical to read this article in 1947 newspaper print for the first time. I felt so lucky, my mom, when just 16 years old made such a daring trip. It made me also think that maybe I could have asked her more questions while she was alive. Maybe I could have asked her about these things as we wrapped Christmas presents on the floor when I was little. But, maybe I’m just grateful to have found this story about her from long ago and can picture my mom carefully pinning her red carnation on her lapel at some point on her journey, so her dad would know her when she arrived at the train station. Yes, I can imagine her carefully pinning her red carnation as carefully as I know she would wrap presents during her favorite time of year.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 06:12:47 +0000
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