Dad's Grandpa was Abraham. The called him "white owl" because he liked that brand of cigar.
He was born in 1864 in Holland, Wisconsin and died in 1957. He lived in Firth, NE and is also buried in the cemetery there.
He had a very small farm in Firth and also ran the Firth Mercantile that was later the location of the Firth Creamery (108 W 3RD St, Firth, NE)
He was heavy set guy. His wife, Elizabeth DeVries, died in 1944 and Dad vaguely remembers seeing her very sick in bed. There were three children. Ann, Marie and Lawrence (Larry). Marie lived in Houston for quite a bit of time (Uncle Paul would visit some when they lived there) and Ann lived in Hickman, NE. Her married name was Heckman.
Dad was named after Dirk Tangeman (the original Dirk) who was born in 1720 in Amsterdam. Abraham's father was also Dirk and was born in 1826 in the Netherlands. This Dirk was married to Anna Monteba and they had 6 children: Della, Jane, Abraham, Sarah, Nellie and Lena. All born in Wisconsin with the exception of Lena who was born in Missouri. Abraham and Elizabeth put in at the Firth cemetery shown above.
Dad's parents are buried in the Beatrice cemetery. They lived in Beatrice from ~'46 to '54 moving into the 1805 Elk St. in 1950. Grandpa worked at
Dempster and made ~$3K / year in 1950. Dempster is still around today and the company was once owned by Warren Buffett.
The Story of Ardeth Wells
Dad always likes telling this story. It starts around 1948 when his Mom told him, an 8 year old boy that his Dad was having an affair with a lady named Ardeth Wells. Dad didn't really know what to make of it. Then, 40 years later, Theresa (his step-Mom) told him his Dad was having an affair with Ardeth Wells! Dad wanted to burst out laughing but kept his composure. He assumed, the claim was likely true coming from two independent sources 40 years apart!
Political Careers
Dad famously ran for the Mayor of Jonesboro sometime around 2010 I think. He didn't do all that well but it was entertaining from our perspective. His signs had kind of a Halloween theme to them and is campaign focused on the city bus issue. Jonesboro, at the time, had established a series of bus routes. Dad felt, rightly so, that this was silly for a town of Jonesboro's size. He spent a day riding the buses and largely determined he was the only person riding them. Leveraging data from his experiment he launched his campaign based on the average bus ridership being less than one!
Mom reminded us that he had a more successful career as a politician. At one point, back in the 70's maybe, he ran for a Justice of the Peace role and won!
The Mazda Miata
As part of Dad's infatuation with silver and gold he weaved a car into the picture in 2008 when he began liquidation of his gold with the hopes of having enough to purchase a new Miata. I helped him sell one of his coins on eBay in January '08 and it netted him ~$1000 towards the car. Bill and I had to talk him out of buying a Toyota Solara convertible and steer him towards the Mazda. In September of 2014, in typical trading fashion he agreed to sell the Miata to Stephanie and I with the condition that we send the agreed price ($5K) not to him but to Bill and Erin.
The Cool Birthday Gift
Probably around 1978 our TRS-80 computer was getting a lot of use. Heck - the local paper even did a write-up on our family as being one of the first in town to have a computer. Dad subscribed to a magazine - BYTE or something like it that often featured games you could type in and save on a cassette type and then load and play. One month, the magazine featured a basketball game and I wanted to play it so I started typing it in. It was a long program for an 8 year-old but I made progress. It must have been close to my birthday when all of this was happening because for my birthday Dad gave me the cassette type with the completed program that he finished for me. I was able to load and play the thing.
Dad got into genealogy a little bit and on occasion would drive around to look at points of interest from a Tangeman family perspective. This usually took him to Beatrice and Firth, NE and Minnesota. He wrote an autobiography which is pretty cool. A few relevant notes I captured (and subsequently researched) from a discussion or two with him are as follows:
Dad was named after Dirk. There are actually three Dirks in our lineage. One born in 1720 in the Netherlands. He also died in the Netherlands. Dirk married Willemijntje Sturms and they had two children (Jan and Cornelia born in 1764 and 1771 respectively). As mentioned, Jan was born in Holland on 1764 and married Neeltje Van Strijen and had 5 children. He passed away on 19 May 1835 in Burgh, Westerschouwen, Zeeland, Netherlands. The 5 children were: Lena, Willem, Dirk (this is the second Dirk), Willemina and Jan. Following the second Dirk, he was born in 1782 and died relatively young at 1825 but had a one child with Dina Pieterse Hogenboom in 1826. Though he never met his son you guessed it... it was the 3rd Dirk! This is the Dirk who had 5 children including Dad's grandfather and my great grandfather Abraham. Dirk III is buried in the Holland cemetery in Nebraska. Dad had the gravestone for Dirk III put in (I think it was Dirk - it was someone). Originally it was an unmarked grave but in a known section of the cemetery. Dirk's known section was the first recorded after a church fire destroyed previous records.
Abraham's other siblings included Dena, Sara, Lena and Nellie. Abraham had three children including my grandfather Lawrence (he went by Larry). Both Jack and I carry on the Lawrence name with our middle names. It makes for a good middle name! Larry's siblings were Marie and Anna. Larry was born August 14, 1908 in Nebraska and died June 3, 1994 in Beatrice, Nebraska. I drove from Atlanta to Nebraska to attend his funeral. I was just wrapping up my Master's degree at the time. I also remember that Georgia Tech had made it to the College World Series going on in Omaha at the same time. It was quite a drive that featured a stop in Jonesboro on the way. I think I had already landed a job and school was wrapping up or else I probably couldn't have made it.
The emptying of the freezer
Visit Mr. Spain....and the tools!
The hundreds of cans of dehydrated food!
The '87 Accord and the '88 Camry
Silver and Gold
Cheap Trick in Atlanta and Don Henley in Virginia Beach
The Physics Test at Georgia Tech
Mullins Mix
When Dad was into motorcycles he was also into keeping them clean. One of his concoctions for doing that was something he termed "Mullins Mix" Best as I recall, he had a friend named Mullins who came up with it. He and Uncle Bob used to reference it a lot. At one point I thought it was a very precise mixture of gasoline, soap, Tide, etc.. but I later learned the base was gasoline and you just mixed in whatever other cleaning agents you had on hand. Once this toxic mixture was made you would slather it on the oily, greasy areas of the bike and let it soak. Then you could repeat and scrub.
Things Dad Said
Heavy means good!
Giving blood is like getting an oil change for your body
You want the money flowing in...not out.
On November 19, 2014 Dad called to say he had been diagnosed with colon cancer.
On January 30, 2015 Dad passed away around 10:30am
Our eulogy to him at his memorial service covered 3 areas where he made an impact on our lives.
1. Giving quality time to us. Initial reference was to the 2015 Super Bowl, a great game between New England and Seattle. (though not as great as the Georgia Tech win over Georgia the prior November) Three "dad" ads appeared. Boiling down to the fact that, as a Dad, if you give quality time to your kids you are doing a good thing. Examples given were the Saturday morning breakfast tradition which we carry on with our kids as well as the regular phone calls Robert made from Georgia Tech to get Math and Physics help.
2. Encouraging and enabling us to see the world... Chevy Chase vacation style with Summer vacations driving around the country.
3. Knowing our Family - trips often involved family and he wanted us to know our extended family. Enables us to maintain good relationships through the years with cousins, Uncles, Aunts, etc...
