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Today we have a letter from soldier Harry Lowell stationed in Fort Francis E. Warren in Wyoming to Julius and Tillie Zentner in San Francisco. Tillie/Matilda Zentner was Helene’s first cousin and the Zentners were instrumental in bringing Eva and Harry to the U.S. in 1939.
May 26, 1943
Dear aunt Tillie & uncle Julius,
To begin with I want to thank you for the nice card, the excellent candy and your letter.
I have finished my basic training and have been transferred to another company and will get schooling for about eight weeks. I’ll be trained in motor mechanics and operations; I started school Monday morning, and I must say that the army has a very good way of getting the principles of mechanics into one’s head. Although it’s a super-rapid course (the mechanics training has been cut down from 15 weeks to 4 weeks) results have been very good, according to the reports from headquarters.
We get up at 5:30, exercise for an hour, and go to school. (I forgot to mention that we have breakfast before exercise, lest you think they are too hard on us). We stay in school the whole day, save a one-hour lunch period. I must say that for the short time I have attended classes, I know quite a bit about the anatomy of our army trucks. We are going to have a test tomorrow that’ll show whether or not we have digested the material that has been heaped upon us.
I just received a letter from Jules; he seems to be studying pretty hard for his final examinations. I hope he’ll like to work in Sacramento; I am afraid he’ll have to do the work of two men, so it won’t be much of a vacation for him. I received a letter from my landlady the other day; she is expecting her son from Hawaii any day now. She said that she goes to restaurants almost every day because she and her husband work different shifts and because good food is pretty high and scarce. (Is it really that bad in civilian life now/ If it is, I advise everyone to join the Army or Waacs). I’ll be happy to write to them and ask whether they’ll be able to take a gentleman boarder this summer. Unless you have made other arrangements in regards to his boarding, let me know in your next letter whether you want me to find out about it.
By Jules’ letter I see that Lucien is still the banana prince of Third Street.
What kind of packing house are you going to open in San José? I guess you won’t lose much by not sending trucks up the Lake this year.
Every week new rookies flow into the camp and trained men leave for unknown destinations. Whenever I go to town I look around for young men; the only young men are high school boys and the rest of Cheyenne’s population consists of women and ineligible men. I almost got a cramp in my arm saluting all the officers that ran around town last Sunday.
I had K.P. again last week; I washed dishes all day. Because of the soap (G.I. soap) I used, my fingers took on the shape of bananas. It took two hours and a series of vinegar baths to shrink them to their natural size again. (The G.I. soap is said to take the fuzz off a cactus, so you can imagine the potency of it.)
Well, I have to close now as I have a lot of studying to do. (Maybe I can have your business when I come back; I’ll repair your Buick without charge).
Hoping you are in the best of everything, I remain
Yours sincerely,
Harry.P.S. My new address is – Co. F-B228 1st QMTR.
P.P.S. Thank you also for the clipping.
Julius was a widower with children and grandchildren when he married Tillie. He and Tillie had no children. Jules and Lucien were his grandsons. Although Harry worked for Julius’s company for awhile, he was not interested in pursuing it as a career. We learned a bit about the Levy-Zentner company in my February 9 post. Here is an excerpt from Julius Zentner’s obituary that appeared on page 20 of the January 8, 1953 issue of the San Francisco Examiner:
…Mr Zentner, a business leader here for more than half a century, died Tuesday night in his home at 2001 California Street after several years of ill health. He would have been 89 years old next month.
BANK DIRECTOR.
Although retired from direction of his firm, he was at the time of his death a director of the Bank of America, and attended the board’s last meeting here….Mr. Zentner came here from Europe in the early 1880’s. From a commission business that netted him $6 a week, he built an enterprise which now grosses more than $30,000,000 a year.
At the time of the 1906 earthquake, he was the president of J. Zentner & Company, with headquarters at Washington and Front Streets.
FIRMS MERGE.
A short distance away, at Washington and Davis Streets, was the rival firm of A. Levy & Company.Surveying the ruins of their establishments after the quake and fire, Zentner and Levy decided to get together on a new establishment.
The new firm, A. Levy & J. Zentner Company, started out in March of 2907 with twenty-five employees.
Today, the firm has branches in the principal business centers of the West, ships produce throughout the East, and employs between 600 and 700 persons.
A jovial, robust man, Mr. Zentner worked twelve to fourteen hours a day in building the firm.
“NO HOBBY BUT WORK.”
In the 1920’s, he once said:“I have no hobby but my work. I never play golf. Neither does A.P. We don’t fancy such things.”
“A.P.” was the late A.P. Giannini, founder of the Bank of America, and one of Mr. Zentner’s closest friends.
Business associates said Mr. Zentner had what could be called a magic touch in the produce business. He knew when and what to buy. “He could scent the market,” one associate said. “His predictions were uncanny.”…