Ode to our father ~ Louis Frank Vremsak Jr. (also known as) Edward Voltaire Garren

He was born Louis Vremsak Jr. on April 4th, 1909 in New York NY and passed away as Edward Voltaire Garren on March 6th, 1992 in Arden NC.

Edward Garren, circa 1974 at Cattail Creek NC home

The Birth Certificate, which was all we had for over 100 years.

I did a search on Facebook, and three "Vremsaks" came up. I sent each a FB message, and Nika Vremsak responded to me with an "OMG, we've wondered what happened to your father for almost 100 years!!  Let me put you in touch with my aunt Vladka Vremsak who is the family historian."

 Nika Vremsak

Vladka Vremsak with her Seat Ibiza (a Volkswagen product)

Many of the early photos were sent by cousin Vladka from Slovenia.

These photos are of his parents, and other family members.

If you look at the faces, you can particularly see Louis in my father, my brother, and even my nephew. They are all the "handsome" ones in the family.

Louis Frank Vremsak (grandfather)

Louis Frank Vremsak Jr. (Edward Voltaire Garren) 

taken in the Panama Canal Zone

My mother and I got a different kind of handsome, good looking, but not head turning. The Vremsaks are all head turners.

Edna Verner & Edward Voltaire Garren early 1940's

Edna & Edward late 1940's

My father told us stories of growing up in a very provincial Tampa, Florida in the early 20th century. His mother was a modiste', who made clothes (mostly dresses and ball gowns for Gasparilla and other "society" events) for the wealthy and society women in Tampa.

Marie Bolte

Marie Vremsak

Marie Garren

But by many of their neighbors, they were called "dirty foreigners" and he was constantly harassed and bullied by some of the other boys. One day the three Nuccio brother (former mayor of Tampa Nick Nuccio was one of them) cornered him in a "blind" alley. "We're gonna get you now Garren." Young Edward noticed a loose board on a nearby fence, ripped it off, and in a flash, swung it around, knocking one brother on the end out cold, then equally fast, did a "180" and knocked out the brother on the other end. To the one left standing, he asked, "Next?" The guy begged apology, and promised they would never bother him again, and they did not. 

After that, he was respected, going on to become tennis champion of Tampa, Golden Gloves boxing champion of the Panama Canal Zone (when he was in the army there in the 1930's.

When he came back to Tampa, he had a long career in the newly emerging consumer credit business, working for Commercial Credit which financed automobiles, furniture and major appliances. Later he would move to Dade City Florida, just north of Tampa, and manage a small loan company, American Finance.

He retired at age 62. After our mother retired, they moved to Arden North Carolina (between Asheville & Hendersonville) and for the first time in their lives, were surrounded by Garrens, over 50 in the phone book. Of course, they were not related, but he had connected with one part of the family decades earlier, and they took him in as their own.

Ed Garren lived a blessed life and died in the best of all ways. He had been living with congestive heart failure for about 10 years. His mother had it too, but treatment was much better. He had lost weight, but (as many do just before death) had "perked up" with a spurt of energy. One night, while watching TV, he told Edna, I'm going to the bathroom" and went to that part of their house. About 30 minutes later, she realized he had not returned, and went looking. As she rounded the corner she saw him, on the floor of his bedroom, cold. He had walked up to his dresser, and dropped dead (literally). He had cut his forehead going down (on the dresser) but no blood came out, his heart had stopped. The expression frozen on his face was one of utter shock. We suspect he saw his mother, arms out, waiting for him.

Edna V. and Edward V. Garren 1986 in Arden NC

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When Louis was 3, his mother, a "mail order bride," left his father, whom she had never married, fled to Tampa Florida, met a man named Columbus Garren from Hendersonville NC and took his surname (even though they never married either). Columbus left after 9 months, mostly because Marie (Ed's mother) was what was once called "High Strung" and now is called "High Maintenance."

Marie Bolte 

She told our father that she had left NYC because his father had died of pneumonia, having given his coat to a freezing beggar leaving the opera one night. 

The story was total fiction. Louis (Sr.) didn't die. He moved to Los Angeles in 1920 and I found his grave in Forest Lawn (Glendale) in the Acacia Gardens. He was an engineer, first designing automobiles (in Batavia NY) and then airplanes (Co-Founder of General Western Aero, a company that designed airplanes to carry U.S. Mail).  He was a lifelong member of the Elks Club of Santa Barbara died in 1946. 

 Louis Sr. (white shirt & tie) inspecting a plane he as designing.

Louis in 1940 at age 60, Immigration photo

Grave marker in Acacia Gardens, Forest Lawn Glendale, CA

Like most damaged people, Marie told lies to protect herself, even at the expense of her son. When he was 5, she encouraged him to change his name from Louis Vremsak Jr. to Edward Voltaire Garren. This was not done legally. So in the 1960's we had to go to New York to do a legal name change because Louis Vremsak had never worked a day under Social Security and Edward V. Garren had never been born (no birth certificate).

Marie, or "Mamushka" as we called her, had been reared in Roman Catholic orphanages in Eastern Europe and was routinely beaten by the nuns there, and this left her a very damaged woman. Brother Gene Garren and I have concluded that she probably had (what is now called) Dissociative Identity Disorder, or "Multiple Personalities." Her favorite way of dealing with pain was to beat our father, who was an only child, while telling him that she was his only "blood" and if he betrayed her love he would have no one.

That damage echoed in his psyche for the rest of his life, and Gene and I have concluded that he also had Dissociative Personality Disorder because this internal "switch" would click in him and he would turn into Godzilla (only at home with family). His usual mantras reflecting his internal pain, "I never had a father, if I'd have had a father, I would have obeyed him." "You don't love me because you don't obey me." His mother died when I was 5, and around age 8, he pulled me into the "torment dance" that he and his mother had done their entire lives. In what is a sad and difficult truth, it was the only way he could express intimacy. Tenderness was too frightening for him.

Marie in her later years.  She made the dress without a pattern.  My first thought of this photo is "Dracula's Sister."  She was not a happy person.

On a few rare occasions, usually assisted by alcohol, he would share the tender moments of his life, even cry a little, and talk about the pervasive lonliness that had defined his life, and how his two boys were his only blood family in the world.

But most of my childhood was consumed by his rage, dodging plates of food thrown at me, being put out of the car 200 miles from home and told to walk home (he came back to pick me up, but he did this one a few times closer to home and did not). The twice, sometimes thrice, weekly beatings with a switch or belt, the constant shaming and telling me I was worthless. When I was 5, and expressing young anger at not wanting to do yard work, he picked me up, carried me over to a fire burning in a 50 gallon oil drum, and threatened to drop me in unless I promised I would never get angry at him again. A couple of years later, I went into his bedroom to kiss him goodnight. Before I could, he shoved me back, "Don't give me your Judas kiss. You don't love me, if you did you would obey me."

When I turned 16, he announced that I was too big to use a belt on, so he took to slapping me in the face, hard. On one occasion, he broke my glasses.

Years later, our aunt Velma told me that among the family, the pervasive question was "Why is he so mean to that child?"

After promising me a 4 year college education, he changed his mind after 2, and in a typical moment of rage, ordered me out of the house immediately, with $2.00 and no place to go. Fortunately, I had my Rambler American and friends who would put me up. It was harsh, but his prophetic words, "Some day you'll thank me" clearly articulated a basic truth, it was time for me to make my own life without him.

When I moved to CA in 1983, he and our mother Edna drove my car out for me from Florida. On the beach at La Jolla, with no one else around, he tenderly admitted to me that when I was a boy, his concern that I was "such a sissie" was expressed by "I tried to beat it out of you. I realize now that was not a good thing and I hope you'll forgive me." Of course I said "Yes." The next day when I referenced the conversation, he looked at me with a "different" face and said, "I never said anything like that. You must be imagining it."

I now realize that the complexities my father embodied were my training to become a psychotherapist. 

It finally "hit home" when I went to NC to see him for his 80th birthday. I was 39. The night before I left, the "painful truth" of his perception of me emerged, "You didn't come here for my birthday, that was just a ruse. The real reason you came was so you could turn the knife in me one more time, because subconsciously, all homosexuals hate their fathers." My reply was to tell him that I had spent my entire life trying to tell him I loved him, and for whatever reason, he could not "hear" it. I went to sleep, having a plane to catch in the AM.

The next day, driving me to the airport, in attempting to reconcile, I said, "We had an honest conversation last night, I hope if we have differences in the future we can talk them through honestly." His reply, "No, not at all. Conversations like that make me feel very uncomfortable, I hope we never bring any of it up again." I looked across the front seat at him and it (finally) clicked, I thought, "You poor pathetic little boy, you're 80 years old, you've never let anyone "in," you can't change, and you're going to die this way." In that moment, any resentments evaporated because I had escaped the "curse" and I felt overwhelming sadness and pity that he never would let anyone "in" or be able to expereience emotional intimacy for whatever time he had left to live.

At his funeral in Dade City Florida, I shared that I was his "worst nightmare come to life" (a "queer" son who wanted the whole world to know). I suspect my father struggled with his own homosexual attractions, and possibly experiences in his youth.

Yet in spite of that, he struggled to do the right thing, to be fair and as loving as he knew how to be, and generous at times. Part of his mothers rigid European upbringing was to always act honorably and honestly, no matter what, and Gene and I are blessed to have taken that into our being. We both loved him deeply. He tried his best, was very funny and entertaining most of the time, smart, talented and mostly brought joy wherever he went. He was "an original" and we were very blessed to have him as a father.

Gene Garren had a sort of vision of him ascending a staircase with an open door at the top, With each step up, he became younger and stronger. At the top was our aunt Velma Georgia, Edna's older sister. Velma, herself a "pistol" was urging him in her deep north Georgia drawl, "Git on up here Ed Garren, there's a party going on and we're all a waitin for you !!" 

Velma in her yard, Mt. Airy, GA circa 1969.  
She was a walking talking "Family Bible," historian and storyteller.  

My own sense of him was that finally freed from all his fears, he could be the loving man he wanted to be, without his torments that held him prisoner. 

Years later, when Edna came to West Hollywood, our house was across the street from tennis courts. Occasionally in the wee hours of the morning (3 AM etc) I swore I could hear someone playing tennis across the street in the dark. I like to think it was Ed, watching over us, and waiting for his beloved Edna to join him.

The discovery of his father's life and our Slovenian family, as well as actually connecting with them has been a supreme blessing. Gene and I both talk about it a lot. Tearfully we wish it could have happened while he was alive, it might have extinguished his lonely pain inside. So we celebrate the discovery vicariously in his name, celebrating the family he never knew, who have his musical talents (like me, he had a lovely tenor voice, and they are all musicians). The connections run deep. 

They are very smart, "good" people, who care about life, other people, share "progressive" political values, and at least cousin Vladka also has a very heavy right foot when driving. Ed never went anywhere slower than 70 MPH, LOL. (For that matter, neither did Edna).  Riding out to the ski jump area in the NW corner of Slovenia with Vladka was a delightful experience.

These are full definition videos, so I suggest you use the lower right "button" in the video to open them up to "full screen."

Driving west to the Julian Alps in Slovenia. 

 

At Planica Ski Jump area with Vladka

Discovering all of this, and twice visiting the Vremsaks in Slovenia (a magnificent country) have added layers of insights into the journey of immigrants who leave "home" and come to "America." It is not just a physical journey, but a spiritual one as well, leaving "home" to pursue one's dreams, with no guarantee they will be fulfilled.

In one form or another, their dreams are fulfilled, which is the saga of being "American."

Our parents legacy to us was the strength of character to live our dreams, no matter how challenging or difficult. I think that is the legacy of all immigrants, which is why immigration is so essential to the "American Spirit."

I see a lot of people in my work, and all too often, I see single mothers who have chased away, or otherwise cut off all contact with their children's father(s).  This is a really awful thing to do, even if the father is worse than a jerk.  The child needs some sense of their father, who is half of who the child is.  Not allowing sons and daughters to know their fathers and/or their father's family, does significant multi-generational damage that can take a lifetime to repair.  

Fathers are significant and an important part of a child's life.  Every Father's Day that comes around, I think about how the absence of both my grandfathers had such profound impact on our lives.

What I tell these folks when they come to see me (among a lot of stuff) is that "What they didn't tell you is far more important than what you were told or think you know.  Learning the "back story" of our lives can be a powerful tool to develop happiness in this life

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My brother Francis Edward "Gene" Garren adds this:

Adding to what my younger brother said is briefly this. I love my mom and dad. I realize also from my own military experiences in "harms way" that dad also had severe PTSD, from his Service in WW-2 as an Army Air Corps PT boat skipper. Yes Army Air Corps had PT boats for Air Sea Rescue and Anti-Submarine Patrols. He was stationed at Drew Field Florida, today the site of Tampa International Airport. Danger was always around and Dad's boat was once almost destroyed at point blank range by the deck guns of a German U-Boat on a foggy night, when recharging it's batteries on the surface. 

Dad's service record gives him 28 months in a combat zone. Air sea rescue was often very dangerous, often meant body/remains recovery. I was born at Drew Field, and am classified as a "War Baby".

Mom was really the "anchor" of our family and the leveling influence. Her Southern Appalachian foot hills, rural background made her and her sisters all very self reliant. 

Before George was born, I would leave my bed and crawl through the window to the screen poach at night were mom and dad slept and slide down between them to sleep when we lived in Tampa.

I miss mom and dad very much and when it comes my time to cross over the river, I hope it will be mom and dad who come to get me. I don't want to miss being with Aunt Velma, Aunt Louise, and the others at that party my brother was talking about. 😍