He was baptised on 11 October 1891 at St. Martin's Catholic Church by Fr. James Stremler. The priest baptised him as John Albert so that he would have a christian middle name, and that is how it is recorded. The origin of the middle name of Ambrose is now unknown. 

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He grew up with his family in Loogootee Indiana. His father died in 1907, and his mother moved that year to Kansas City Missouri. John was fifteen years old. They arrived by train at the Union Depot. They located on the bustlng east side of town. 

With their father deceased, all the children probably had to help provide for the upkeep of the family in one way or another. The city directory for 1908 lists John, with an occupation of "shoe." Perhaps he was a shoe-shine boy; perhaps he even had to drop out of school to work.    

The following year the family is listed as living at another location, and Johns' occupation is listed as a machinist for the Woolf Brothers laundry.

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John married Lillie M. Seeley on 25 September 1913 at St. Aloysius Catholic Church in Kansas City. They moved in to their own apartment and John started his own "jitney" delivery service, delivering train passengers and their baggage from the Union Depot to local hotels. Lillian became pregnant with their first child.

But his younger sister Loretta remembered her mother receiving a desperate phone call from John in the middle of the night one summer's evening. Lillian was terribly sick, and he needed help. Loretta and her mother Margaret got up, dressed quickly, and asked a nurse, Regina, who lived in their building, to go with them as they hurried through the streets orf town to John and Lillian's. Regina realized that Lillian had uremic poisoning (now called kidney failure), and was near death. They called an ambulance at once, but Lillian died before they could even get her to the hospital. Their baby did not survive. Lillian is buried at St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery in Kansas City.

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After Lillian's death, John moved out of their little apartment and back in with his family. He continued to operate his jitney service.

After some length of time, he met Ruth W. Spake, who had moved to Kansas City from Knob Noster Missouri. They became engaged in 1916 and planned to be married. However, John had enlisted in the Missouri National Guard in June of that year, and he was called to active duty in July. The Guard was needed as a reserve unit for the "Punitive Expedition," led by a young general named Pershing against Poncho Via in Mexico. John went south with his unit, and was stationed along the Texas border for a few months. In September the unit was sent home and John was deactivated and placed on reserve status on the 26th. John and Ruth were married 19 October 1916.

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A year later the United States immersed itself in "the War to End All Wars," the World War, as it declared war on Germany. John's unit was called up. John requested a release from Active Duty because of his marriage, and was given an Honorable Discharge with the rank of Private First Class on 30 April 1917.

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John and Ruth moved to Clinton, Missouri, after they were married, but soon returned to Kansas City. And as the World War raged in Europe, Ruth gave birth to their only child: a son whom they named Robert Joseph Arvin, born 23 April 1918. Loretta thought perhaps they gave him the middle name of Joseph becaue of the patron saint of the hospital where he was born--Saint Joseph Hospital in Kansas City. The happy little family went home to their bungelow at 2315 Mrytle. John was now working as an auto mechanic.

But Ruth's health began to deteriorate. She had to undergo an aperation for the removal of a kidney, but even after the operation, her health was generally poor. She was diagnosed with tuberculosis.

On the advice of her doctors, they traveled to places where the air was considered cleaner to give her system a chance to rest and rebuild itself. They took a train trip to Los Angeles for a short time, then returned to Kansas City. Her condition worsened still, so they left little Bobby with John's younger sister Loretta (who was now married and established in Kanas City) and went to Denver Colorado.

Early in 1921 they made still another trip, this time to a santorium in Phoenix. John knew she would have to stay there indefinitely, her condition now quite serious, so he returned to Kansas City to get their son. Adn while he was on this errand, Ruth lost her battle with tuberculosis and passed away in February 1921. 

Her body was returned to Kansas City. Undoubtably because of the expenses they incurred treating her illness and the travel associated with her death, John had used up almost all his resoucres. So Ruth was interred in the same plot where Lillian was buried, in St. Mary's Cemetery.  

John continued to live in Kansas City after Ruth's death, and Loretta simply continued to care for little Bobby at her home. John, now twice a widower, lived by himself and struggled to make a living during the Great Depression of the 1930's. He landed a contract with the Kansas City Journal newspaper to deliver rolls of paper to their pressroom, which was undoubtedly a great accomplishment in those years. In 1937, the City Directory shows him living at a hotel in downtown Kansas City. 

Loretta's husband, Frank Dore Jackson owned a printing company also in downtown Kansas City. With the birth of their own child, a daughter, they decided to purchase their own home. They bought in Kansas City's now rapidly developing south side. The 1937 Directory shows their address as 5430 Forest, and young Robert is listed as a student. In 1941, he is listed as a printer with the Frank Jackson Printing Company.   

John was living at a hotel in downtown Kansas City in 1945 when he suffered a serious heart attack. Loretta remembered rushing her older brother to St. Joseph's hospital for treatment. When he was released she brought him home to stay with her and Frank and their daughter. Robert at this time was serving in the Army Air Corps in World War II.

Loretta was able to convince the Wadsworth Veterans' Administration Domiciliary in nearby Leavenworth Kansas to accept John as a patient. He was admitted about 1946.

John stayed at Wadsworth for several years, his health gradually improving. He was able to work at the Jackson Printing Co., now known as Jack-Bilt Corporation, off and on for short periods of time. He sometimes visited his son, now returned from World War II, married and with a growing family of his own, at their home  located still further south on Kansas City's south border, then at 85th Street.

John's health continued to deteriorate, and he was ultimately readmitted to Veterans' Administration Wadsworth Military Hospital.  Robert would drive to Leavenworth to visit his father from time to time, sometimes taking his own son Robert, Jr. along with him. I  remember taking pleasant drives with my father to Wadsworth as a young boy, sometimes stopping to pick a ear of corn from a field along the highway. John always seemed to be sitting on his bunk in the middle of a large open barricks-like building with many other veterans. They seemed to have no privacy and no possessions other than what they had laying immediately around their metal cots. 

John Arvin died of a second heart attack on 23 October 1955 at Wadsworth. Hs is buried at Calvary Cemetery in Kansas City Missouri alongside his mother and father.