Orphan Till
On a gloomy March day in 1918, six somber, well-dressed children — and the seventh, a newborn, in her father’s arms — gathered at the grave site of the woman who bore them. A black-and-white image captures that family’s devastation at the loss of a wife and mother as the world wrestled with the flu pandemic that ultimately killed as many as 50 million people.
Vada “Vadie” Till Woicinski was laid to rest in what was then a relatively new cemetery with a section for paupers near Dallas’s distinguished Oakland Cemetery. She did not die from the flu, but from pneumonia brought on by an infection that developed after giving birth to the baby in the photo.
Vada was 35 years, 3 months and 15 days old.
That haunting photograph of the family saying goodbye to Vada elicits not only sympathy for her motherless children — who would brush their hair, make their lunch, wipe their tears? — but also for the 34-year-old widower and father left alone to support and nurture his children in her absence. Would the Woicinski siblings survive the loss of Vada? Would her husband?
Vada was born November 22, 1882, in Bexar County to farmer Louis Till and Lauretta “Vadie” Williams. When she was four, Vada suffered the loss of her mother. Louis outlived his daughter by decades, but oddly, Vada identified herself as an orphan in the 1900 census. Then 18, she was living with a couple in Guadalupe County: The 34-year-old Englishman and his 50-year-old wife of four years were otherwise childless.
In September 1902, Vada married Frank Paul Woicinski in Guadalupe County. German-born of Polish ancestry, Frank came to the United States as a child. He grew up and attended school in Houston, where his father worked as a railroad carpenter.
By 1910, Vada and Frank had their family of seven Woicinskis well under way: Charles, 6; Alice “Gene”, 4; and one-year-old Robert were living with their parents in a rented house on Clinton Avenue in Fort Worth. Frank, 26, was working in a meat packing plant; Vada, 28, was at home with the children.
The family re-located to San Antonio in time for Jack’s birth in 1911 and remained for Roy’s arrival in 1913 and Vada Belle’s in 1916. Frank worked that year as a mechanic and a jitney (taxicab) chauffeur. The Woicinskis had been in Dallas for about two months when Hazel Ernestine was born February 21, 1918. Her mother died exactly two weeks later, on March 7.
No doubt Frank worked hard to provide for his brood: He was painting automobiles at Burton Wheeler Auto Works on North Akard in 1918; the following year, he was employed by Franklin Auto Top & Paint Company in East Dallas. The family was not destitute.
What was missing , of course, was a mother to make them a home, something especially urgent for the newest Woicinski, baby #7 Hazel Ernestine, or “Teen.” Bessie and Arthur Nall, a couple who lost a daughter in infancy, adopted the little girl. The 1920 census shows the small family in Haskell, Texas.
After the Nalls divorced, Bessie re-married. Teen’s new stepfather was said to have doted on Teen, just as her adoptive mother “loved and adored her.” Teen died at 94, having been married 59 years to Herman Matyziak. They had five daughters, 16 grandchildren, 23 great- and seven great-great-grandchildren.
The other Woicinski children remained in Dallas immediately after their mother’s death. The oldest, #1 Charles Frank Woicinski, found a job; at 16, he lived at the Salvation Army on North Akard Street and worked as a porter. In 1920, he joined his father in Ardmore, Oklahoma, where Frank had started his own business. An ad Frank ran in the local newspaper shows that he had not abandoned his children.
The five younger Woicinskis found a home with Mattie Spaugh, a 46-year-old widow who ran a “board and care for children” at 1309 Lenway Street in south Dallas. In addition to her daughter, son-in-law and grandson, Mattie housed 19 children, from 14 to two years old. The 1920 census shows her boarders included children of Polish, German, Spanish and Swiss-Norwegian ancestry.
In 1922, Frank returned to Texas, but not to Dallas: He was hired as a painting foreman for The Valentine Company in Wichita Falls. And then, in 1924, an ailing Frank went to his sister Mary Veronica’s home in Houston, where he died at age 40 of rectal cancer. Frank was buried in Forest Park Cemetery, Houston.
Automobile painting was Frank’s legacy to two of his sons. Having picked up the trade from his father in Ardmore, Charles found work in Dallas in 1925 at Murphy Auto Paint on Commerce Street. Three years later, he and his 17-year-old brother, #4 John “Jack” Louis Woicinski, made their way to H.C. Fuller’s Paint Shop in Wichita Falls.
By 1930, Charles had abandoned Texas for Minnesota, where he married Ethel Irene Kari, the daughter of a Finnish immigrant farmer. Theirs was not the long and productive coupling of his baby sister, Teen. Charles died at 29, not yet three years into his marriage; his bride followed two years later, at age 24. They are buried in Elmhurst Cemetery, St. Paul.
By the time he turned 18, brother Jack was a married man living in San Angelo. In 1935, Jack discovered California, and he never left. He continued painting automobiles but found a new wife, Oleta Chappell, whose surname he preferred to his own difficult one; he identified himself as Jack Chappell even on his World War II registration. The couple had one daughter. Jack died at age 54 in 1965, and he is buried in Santa Barbara.
Jack’s older brother, #3 Robert Bryan Woicinski, also distanced himself from his given surname, using his middle name instead. Born in Houston in 1908, he apparently spent all his adult life there. At 21, he was boarding with the J. Berry Rice family on Beauchamp Street in the Heights, working as a mail clerk for an oil specialty company. At 23, he married Alice Louise Sakwitz. Bob continued to work in businesses ancillary to the oil industry. The couple, married 55 years, had one son and four grandchildren. Bob died one day after his 79th birthday. Like his father, he is buried in Forest Park Cemetery.
According to a Till-Woicinski descendant, Bob Bryan spent years trying to locate all his siblings. Focused on finding work and starting their own families, the older Woicinskis may have lost track of their younger brothers and sisters. The descendant suggests Bob grew closer to his older sister, #2 Alice Grace “Gene” Woicinski, as a partner in his search.
The oldest of the Woicinski girls, Gene married a Dallas barber in 1924; by 1928, the marriage was over, and Gene went to work as a manicurist and a beauty salon operator. In 1930, she was a cashier at Glick Beauty Shop on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Gene was destined for a bigger life. By 1942, she had made her way to San Antonio where, at 36, she married Charles Baumberger, Jr., the divorced 53-year-old president and chairman of the board of San Antonio Portland Cement Company.
A lifelong resident of San Antonio, Charles inherited the business from his father, a Swiss immigrant who started at the cement company as a bookkeeper. At 20, Charles lived in his parents’ home at West Lynnwood and San Pedro with five servants, including a chauffeur. When he died in 1968, an auction house that sold the antiques and European paintings inside noted in their brochure that no one had lived in the house for almost 30 years.
Charles and Gene opted to live instead at 5254 Blanco Road, a rural address north of the city. When Charles died at age 79, he left Gene well provided for, but he designated that the bulk of his estate would fund the education of young Texans in the arts and sciences through the Baumberger Endowment.
Gene had been a widow four years when, in 1972, she died of breast cancer at age 66. The property on Blanco Road became the San Antonio Metropolitan Ministry, dedicated to helping the homeless. She and Charles are buried at Mission Burial Park South, San Antonio.
#6 Vada Belle Woicinski, one of the younger Woicinski children, may have been one to stray off her siblings’ radar. At three, she was with her brothers and sisters in Dallas, but at 15, she was living with “full-time farmer and part-time preacher” Robert Williams and his wife Annie in San Angelo. The couple had eight children and one adopted daughter, according to a newspaper article written about Robert just before his 96th birthday.
In an impressive show of brotherly love, Bob Bryan arranged in 1973 for his little sister’s original birth certificate, which omitted her first name, to be amended to include her full name:
Vada Belle made San Angelo her long-time home when she married Martin Lewis Barefield in about 1933. An electrician, Martin served in the Navy during World War II. The couple had two sons. They were living in Kerrville when Martin died in 2009. Vada Belle lived to see 95 in 2011.
As with Vada Belle, the Woicinskis may have misplaced #5 Roy Lee Woicinski. In Dallas in 1920, he had made his way by 1930 to the home of Guadalupe County farmer/rancher Harry Verrinder. The Englishman had a habit of hospitality: In 1900, Harry and wife Rhoda had given Roy’s mother, Vada, a place to stay. Roy, officially a lodger at 16, attended school in Seguin.
In October 1940, Roy was working at the Midway Service Station in New Braunfels when he registered for the World War II draft. His registration shows that, at 27, he was a slight man, 5'5" and 120 pounds. He joined the Army in March 1943 and ended service in November 1945.
At 35, Roy married 21-year-old Alice Hoffman Johnson, who brought two daughters and one son to their marriage. The daughters, Mary and Lula, adopted the Woicinski name. Roy and Alice added three daughters of their own: Their names — Florence Gene, Vaida, and Roberta Lee — touchingly allude to Roy’s siblings.
In 1968, Roy was working at Kelly Air Force Base as a heavy machine driver. At 10 minutes after midnight November 30, he was stabbed to death on a San Antonio street. The weapon penetrated his right pulmonary artery. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Robert B. Green Hospital. Roy was 55 years old. He is buried in Mission Burial Park South.
A violent end also took one of Roy’s daughters. Lula Woicinski White was one of 36 people killed November 5, 2017 when a gunman opened fire at the Sutherland Springs First Baptist Church. The killer, Devin Patrick Kelley, was the husband of Lula’s granddaughter.
Lula’s death came almost a full century after Vada Till died giving life to a child who would see 94 years and enjoy a long marriage filled with an abundance of children and grandchildren. In the end, all the Woicinskis found someone to love; they all found a home somewhere.
On that March day in 1918, when the sorrowful siblings put on their finest to bury their mother, all of life lay ahead.
Note: There is no marker on Vada Woicinski’s grave.
