Grandpa Axel Niemi was born in Vassan Lanni on the west coast of Finland and he had a brother, Abner Aho, the last name given to him from the farm on which he was born. I don't know where in Finland Mary Lassi came from. She eventually became Mary Niemi and whether it was in Finland I'll never know.
There is probably a lot of history which never will be known. Axel never talked about his parents or family. It wasn't until I was in my teens that I found out that the skinny bent-over man who wheeled his groceries up the street was his brother. He and his wife lived at the corner of South Range Road and Penokee Road in Ironwood and there is nothing but woods there now. I remember this skinny old man atop his house cleaning his chimney, completely black with soot, except for his eyes.
Grandpa Axel immigrated to Canada where he worked in a lumber camp and eventually settled with Mary in a humble house at 211 South Range Road in Ironwood. They had four kids. An unknown who was stillborn, my mom Irene Marie, Frank, Reino (later Ray), and Emil.
I enjoyed Emil's effusive personality. We frequently visited them in Bessemer and were treated to the bubbly personality of Aunt Florence (Margetta). Emil played his accordion and showed us his 8 mm home movies. He was outgoing and happy despite his hunched back and the lift he had to wear on one shoe. He was a polio victim and spent most of his childhood in the hospital at the University of Michigan. Many surgeries corrected severe deformations which made it difficult to breathe or participate in school. He received his primary education in Ann Arbor but he attended Ironwood High School and graduated at age eighteen.
Grandpa noticed that Emil was intelligent so he paid for Emil's tuition at Gogebic Community College which was then on the third floor of Ironwood High School. Emil graduated with a two-year Associate's degree in accounting and spent his working years in the office at the Chrysler dealer in Bessemer. Emil died from complications of pneumonia, a month after my dad in October, 1970.
Ray served in the Air Force during WWII and spent his working years with the Ironwood Daily Globe in the advertising department. I didn't meet his wife Mary until Dad's funeral in 1970 and I was impressed that she really cared about me during my season of grief. Hadn't met her before because of strange family dynamics. They both perished at their cottage on Little Oxbow Lake (circa) 1983. They were asphyxiated by a propane gas from a defective refrigerator.
Frank was my ideal man's man, tough and rawboned. He worked for a while in the iron mines and then he worked for the local Coca-Cola plant. He drove the truck loaded with cases of fine beverage. Road construction, Highway 2 as I remember was his next livelihood. when I was twelve he was staying at the family cottage in Mercer, Wisconsin. One day he came back from work with his pants torn and bloody. A chainsaw raked across his thigh, and he had stitches. It was remarkable to me that he didn't consider it a big deal. He still went to work the next day.
Frank's life hit a rough patch, starting with a divorce. He drank heavily in the unkempt saloons in Hurley. He was a brawler and he spent overnight stints in jail. I thought that Frank was so cool! I wanted to be like him, even smoked his brand, Camel, those short coffin nails with no filter.
Frank eventually straightened out. He got sober and married again (Helen) and was a good father to three step-sons and eventually another baby boy.
He helped me with some projects around the house after my parents were gone and helped ease me through the horrible first week after Dad died.
He was a man with several skills, making their drab house in Hurley into a showplace. He did it all, carpentry, masonry, electrical, plumbing, siding, roofing and he even installed a new furnace. That was the side of Frank that deeply impressed me. He beat the booze and made a new, sober life as a plumber for Schult Mobile Homes in Ironwood. He had ten good, sober years with Helen and the kids until his death at age fifty-five.
Mom was the eldest. In my book I remembered her mercurial disposition and her explosive temper. Eventually we found that her behavior had a physiological cause. When she got the medical care she needed she was a completely different person during the last three months of her life.
Mom kept the house clean and orderly. She got up at 4:30 on Monday to do the washing and also get the fire lit in our coal stove. She handled galvanized steel tubs and worked with a stick-shift wringer washing machine. She cooked on a wood-fired stove, snow for her new steam iron and hung clothes outside so they froze stiff then she hung them in the basement. She died from a stroke at age fifty-one.
That is a summary of what I know about the maternal side of my family.
