Week 10: "The Bachelor Uncle" #52Ancestors

My favorite “bachelor uncle” is my own uncle, Charles Peter Maier. Or, “Uncle Charlie,” as we kids all called him. Through my research, I learned that Charlie was the fourth Charles Peter Maier in the family. My great-grandfather was the first Charles Peter and his first son was named after him. However, this Charles Peter died in 1892 of diphtheria at the age of 20 months. I didn’t even discover this baby’s existence until last year when I was going research at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. I was reviewing the digital files from Holy Sepulchre Cemetery (East Orange, NJ) for all of the Maiers buried there when I came across his burial card. I’d been to that cemetery a couple of years earlier but didn’t see headstone for this little baby. The more I thought about it, I’d not seen the headstone for his father either! The burial card explains that they were buried in the same plot. I am not sure why there is no headstone, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that my great-grandfather was likely living with a woman who was not my great-grandmother when he died (yikes, yet another mystery to unravel).

After this little baby died, my great grand-parents did what many people did back in the day, which was to give their next son the exact same name. Since I have seen this kind of thing before, it didn’t surprise me. But that’s how my uncle was the fourth Charles Peter Maier, although not Charles Peter Maier, IV.

Uncle Charlie was born 1926 in Newark, New Jersey, three years younger than my mom. Charlie graduated from Seton Hall Prep in 1944, having played varsity football and baseball his senior year.[1] He enlisted in the US Navy after high school and served aboard the USS Oregon City. The Oregon City was a heavy cruiser, launched into service in 1945. She was only in service for less than two years and never saw action during the war, instead sailing to Guantanamo Bay several times.[2] I always thought Charlie served in the Pacific since many of his war-time pictures showed him on an island with palm trees. It wasn’t until I searched on Ancestry.com and found he was really in Guantanamo Bay. As you can see from the photo below, he was one handsome sailor!

I don’t know what Uncle Charlie did right after the war, but he ultimately enrolled in Immaculate Conception Seminary and was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1954. The seminary was and is part of Seton Hall University (my alma mater).

By 1964, Charlie was the curate at St. Patrick’s Church in Elizabeth, New Jersey, a beautiful “Gothic Revival” church built in 1858. Because he lived close to our family, especially his mother, I well remember Sunday dinners at my Nana’s house with her wonderful food (she was a great cook) and our funny uncle to play with. He was soft-hearted and always had a big smile. He played the guitar and the organ and, while I don’t remember any of the songs he played, I remember how lovely it was to hear. I also have a memory of the sweet-smelling tobacco from his pipe.

Uncle Charlie was also that brave bachelor uncle who didn’t mind taking care of his nieces and nephews. My grandmother would pack up lunch (always tuna sandwiches, green grapes and pink lemonade) we’d pile into the back seat of his black sedan and head to the shore. Charlie thought it was super fun to show us how he could drive the car with only his knees and we were duly impressed. Another vivid memory I have of our lunch on the beach was the sand that always found its way into our sandwiches. I can almost feel the grit in my teeth now.

Charlie was also an outdoorsy kind of guy. He took up skiing early on when you simply buckled your skis to whatever boots you were wearing. He always seemed to be going on some big adventure somewhere. Sadly, he left us far too soon. He died in Vermont on August 21, 1964, when the glider he was piloting crashed in a field near Montpelier. Our family was shaken to its core by his death. My grandmother never got over it; every year on the anniversary of his death, she would go to morning mass and then spend the rest of the day at home with the shades drawn, crying. One of us grandkids would be assigned to spend the day with her and I remember how inconsolable she was. As a mother myself, I can’t say I blame her reaction.

I am happy to share the story of this “bachelor uncle”; I remember him so fondly and with much love.

[1]“The Tower, 1944,” Seton Hall Prep, p. 36; digital image, “U.S., School Yearbooks, 1880-2012,” Ancestry (https://ancestry.com: accessed 5 March 2018), image 40.

[2]“USS Oregon City,” Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org), rev. 22:57, 17 July 2018.