The Italian spices and the smell of argenio spread throughout the air. The intensity rises in the atmosphere with desire to indulge in the homemade buttery bread that was just withdrawn from the coal oven onto the table top. In the background, there is a hint of Apfelstrudel (Apple Strudel). The German dessert and Italian dinner clashes into one another and creates a fulfilling meal that occurs only once a month. A small family gathered around the table, said their prayers, and wallowed in their plates.
After clearing the plates that were placed in front of them by a mother with a colorful apron on, they were then acquainted with another hot food item, which was the German dessert. The family of three then ate the Apfelstrudel within minutes. Each person was satisfied with the meal and the mother gathered all of the plates and began to clean all of the dishes and items she used to make the dinner with. This event was one that only occurred once a month for this family, as mentioned before. The family was very poor living in Germany in the early 1900s.
Poverty was very common in this time frame and is what many, like this family, had to recover from if they had an opportunity to do so. Mildred Schimpf was the child of this poor family and is also the reason I am here today. Mildred has not only been the source of my family values and morals but has created a desire for success within myself to make it out of the circle of poverty that is placed upon my generation today. My great-grandmother Mildred Schimpf was born on July 27th, 1919 and was born in Cologne, Germany. Mildred’s mother, Alessandra, came from Savona, Italy and her father, Adalwin, was from Cologne, Germany.
The two parents met at an event in Switzerland called Montreux Jazz Festival. This vibrant event gathered thousands of people around the world from different ethnicities to meet and listen to the various music genres. The two met by encountering this music festival by themselves and having assigned seats next to one another. They both fell in love with one another by looking into eachothers eyes and introducing themselves, I would imagine. After they met, Alessandra wrote Adalwin everyday after the festival and arranged to move to Germany to begin her relationship with Adalwin.
A couple of months after they met, Alessandra moved to Cologne, Germany by train with very little belongings. The couple were in their 20s and then settled in a very small home because of the little amount of money they had. Alessandra became pregnant with their first child. They named the baby Mildred Zambelli; she was born on July 27th, 1919. After Mildred’s birth, the family struggled to keep food on the table because Adalwin was laid off at a factory he worked at named the BMW Plant Munich. This desperate time for the Zambelli family required change.
The father decided that the family should move to America for a better life and opportunity to work for Chrysler car company. As a family, the Zambelli’s moved to Buffalo, New York by boat. This boat was filled with many other Germans who wanted to also prosper in their lives. I imagine that this journey on the boat wasn’t the safest way to the United States but was the only way the poor could relocate. The move would change the lives of this family forever because when they got there they didn’t have much. The family settled in Buffalo and Adalwin found a job there because of lack of money to move elsewhere, especially after the boat ride.
Buffalo was a place Mildred grew up and called her home. She went through school learning english and speaking german at home. This was a struggle for Mildred but she made it through her school career and graduated high school. Throughout high school Mildred was on the swim team and she excelled in swimming on the varsity team. After school she made it a goal to compete in the Olympics for swimming and she trained every day until she got injured from a leg injury. This injury directed her life in another path, she got a job working for a restaurant near her home in Buffalo and met a guy named Robert Schimpf at the restaurant.
They dated for a year and then decided to tie the knot. I imagine Mildred wanted to leave poverty behind her by finding someone to build her riches with. Mildred married Robert Schimpf a factory worker, and they moved into a small apartment in Buffalo. After several months, the Schimpf’s conceived a baby named Carol Schimpf in 1953 and they remained in Buffalo, NY until 1960. Mildred created a family of her own and lived middle class because of Roberts wages from the factory. This was a change for mildred because of the poverty she experienced in her childhood.
The cold weather and city life pushed the Schimpf family away from Buffalo and migrated to the south. The family moved their belongings to Phoenix, Arizona by car. After many days of sleeping in their car, Robert found an affordable home then settled there. The small home was located in the suburbs and was near Robert’s new factory job. Shorty after the family started their lives in Arizona, Mildred became very sick with bone cancer and had to be hospitalized in a nursing home, in this time Carol and Robert were left to a home by themselves.
I can imagine this was a devastation to both her daughter and husband because she knew she had failed her family. Robert began to get older and soon wasn’t able to take care of their daughter Carol effectively. Carol was an independent kid and took care of herself until she moved out in 1970 to then be married to her husband Ernest Stickles. She met Ernest at a local cafe she worked at after she dropped out of high school. Carol attempted to take care of Mildred but did not succeed because she had a life of her own with her husband. Carol had three kids names Suzanne, Ruth, and Ernest with her husband.
The family stayed in Arizona until Ernest, Carol’s husband, passed away. After this tragedy, Carol had nowhere to go and then moved to Racine, Wisconsin with her best friend from school. With three children, Carol also struggled to keep food in her home. She worked three jobs at a time and went back to school to get her high school diploma. She then had a better job and worked as a cook in the county’s jail. During the time Mildred was hospitalized, she became very fragile and passed away because of improper treatment.
The death occurred soon after her daughter Carol and her children visited her in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1997. However, as time passed on, her kids had children of their own. Her child Ruth had one kid specifically named Savannah Stickles. Savannah grew up to be aware of the cycle placed upon the family and generations to come. She knew that if anything was important, it would be to hold her family close and to never give up with success. Today I, Savannah Stickles, have learned the vicious cycle of poverty and the struggle that my ancestor has faced. With that in mind, I feel that if Mildred had the technology and tools that I have today, she would have succeeded and not failed.
She may have had a longer life if the bone cancer was curable because of the health awareness we have in this generation. I am blessed to be born in such a generation that is not only advanced but continuously growing every day. I have the opportunities that Mildred never had. The opportunity to take my families name out of the category of poverty by being enrolled here at University of Wisconsin- Oshkosh. A first generation student to my family, and making that difference so my future will be successful. Mildred did not fail, she created a two roads for me.
The first road is failure and the second road is the road to success. I choose the road to success and to carry my failures I make in life along with me on this journey. Mildred has not only been the source of my family values and morals but has created a desire for success within myself to make it out of the circle of poverty that is placed upon my generation today. During Mildred’s life she created a legacy by not only allowing failure to create success, but creating a family that holds values as it’s most important aspect of life.