Vernon Christophel

This obituary came from the December 31st edition of the Hamilton Journal News. There are more things about Dad below this obiturary. Please take a look.

The article below is my Mother's. There may be some things that need to be explained before you read it. First the WPA (Works Progress Administration) was a program put together during the depression to put people to work and at the same time make improvements in such things as roads and bridges. It was responsible for building new roads throughout the U.S. Second, my brother Ray was Mom and Dad's oldest son.

Jan 11, 2003

The year was 1932 and my family had just moved into a farm next to his family farm. He was sitting on a fence watching an old sow and her pigs and was talking to my Dad. It was depression time and he was working where ever he could for $1 a day and his dinner. Going wage at the time on the farm in Ohio. He had worked in a dairy but quit just before the depression started. He wanted to go back to school. He and his brother would come to our house in the evenings and play cards with my Dad and on my lucky nights I might get to be the 4th.

Sometime in the summer he got a job with the WPA and worked on the road with a team of horses. He worked there thru the winter and the next year. In sometime 1934 he got a job at Procter & Gamble in the Camay dept. He was still there when we got married in Aug 31, 1935. All this while he was farming and milking cows. At P&G he made $18 per week, 40 hours, that is $.45 per hour. In the winter of '35 the government announced they were going to build a city (Greenhills) and he got a job with a team of horses and a slip scoop. He dug basements for the high price of $5 per hr. The horses were $3 and he got $2. This came to a screeching halt just about the time his first son was born on Aug 7, 1936. The depression was about over but jobs were scarce and we were farming so we got by. He looked for work and heard Champion was hiring so up he went and he got a job on Nov 20, 1936. He retired 37 years later on Feb 1st, 1974.

In the in between years he had 3 more sons and best of all he kept going to school until he got his Chemistry degree. After he retired he built himself a workshop and started building furniture. In 1976 he sold his little farm and everything else and we start being winter Texans. We traveled for 5 years and then bought a lot and a trailer house.

In 1991 he decided we needed more room. So at age 80 he built a 'guest' house on the side of our home. It was hard dirty work because he was loosing his sight. The Texas sun doesn't care if you are 80 or 8 it's hot so we sweated and built. He couldn't see the nail but he knew where it went and it better be right. Ray died in May 1998 and in Nov. 1998 we moved to San Antonio.

He was proud of his boys and taught them many fine lessons. He was a good father, husband, a good son, and a good man. I am proud to have been his wife for 67 years.

Berniece

Mom found this poem before Dad died and she liked it and passed it on to me. I think she would like to share it with everyone because it fits the feelings that Mom and Dad had for each other.

Up above, Mom said that Dad was proud of his sons. And yes he taught each of us a whole lot about a whole lot of things. But I also believe that in some way each of us touched Dad in some special way. Mine was like this. The last time I saw Dad was in February of 2002 and for some reason during that visit he kept reminding me of an incident that happened between us when I was a teenager, not to long before I left home. Thing is I, also, remember it very vividly. We were working out in the barn where he had a general workshop; a place where we could do some metal work or wood working. We were down on our knees, laying up something that was going to welded together and a bug, an ant or some kind of beetle, something, went crawling by. Dad reached out and killed it. I looked up at him and said 'Why did you do that? Maybe he had a family somewhere'. Dad didn't say a thing, he just looked at me. When I was down in San Antonio last February, he mentioned that story several times. He just kept saying, 'What you said that day has stayed with me ever since.' I don't know why that impressed Dad the way it did. But what ever it was, I know it touched a spot in his heart.

One last thought. On Mother's Day, 1998 (May 10) my oldest brother Ray died of cancer. He was one of the two smartest men I have ever known. Ray and Dad didn't always see eye to eye; I suspect it was because deep down inside they were a lot alike. But now the two smartest men I ever knew are together again. And, probably arguing about something. I'm sure there's a lot of 'Now Ray listen to me a minute' and 'Damnit, Daddy...'