Musings of an Aging Nobody

Carl E. Christiansen, 94, of Woolford, passed away on Thursday, June 15, 2023 at Mallard Bay Care Center. He was married to the former Florence Rosch. A celebration of life will be held at a later date. (From the Thomas Funeral Home, Cambridge, MD)

 

It’s been two weeks since my dad passed away.  When I was tasked with writing my father’s obituary, I panicked a little.  The three lines of information on the funeral home website were begging for some detail.  But the whole thing sounded depressing to me.  I didn’t feel like writing.  So, I did what I do best, I procrastinated.

But during that period of procrastination, I did something else that we all do these days when we don’t know what to do.

I Googled it.

Yes, I Googled how to write an obituary.

And I came upon “How to Write the Perfect Obituary, According to Professional Writers,” an article by Nicole Spector.  It included lots of helpful information, but the most important point that stood out to me was this:

“…the fact that in the end, we all become stories. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, sure, but also: words to words.”

I liked that.

“…we all become stories.”

My dad had stories. And over the years I tried the best I could to listen to, remember, and document my dad’s words.  Some of those stories I have already shared.

I just needed to write another one.

Right now.

 

I read another article recently that it was on June 17, 1885, one hundred and twenty-eight years ago, the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York harbor from France.  Three hundred and fifty pieces of the statue were packed in two hundred cases. The following year it would be reassembled in its new home on Bedloe’s Island.  In 1892 not far from the shadows of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island was established as America’s immigration processing station, and over the sixty-two years that followed the statue would stand watch over the 12 million immigrants who came to the United States through New York Harbor.

Somewhere on an interior wall hangs the plaque with the now-famous words of American poet Emma Lazarus:

“Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

One of those tired and poor included eighteen-year-old Boletta Sophie Jansen who arrived from Oslo, Norway on a ship named the Kristianiafjord on April 15, 1916.

 

Carl Oscar Christiansen also came from Norway but entered the United States a slightly different way, a little less legally.  He jumped ship in New York, then traveled west to Norwegian communities in Minnesota and North Dakota.  When he returned to the east coast,  somewhere in his travels, he met Sophie.   Carl and Sophie were married in the Norwegian Seaman’s Church my dad thought was in Hoboken or Bayonne, but the only one I could find a record of was in Brooklyn.

Carl and Sophie would eventually move to Oceanport, New Jersey close to a community of other Norwegians with another Norwegian Seaman’s church on Atlantic Avenue in North Long Branch.  They would have four children together: Evelyn, Gerda, Carl, and Theodor.

Carl Edwin Christiansen was born April 11, 1929.

He was raised in the Hillcrest section of Oceanport, New Jersey, a new subdivision where his father bought a few lots and built a couple of houses.

We always joked about Norwegians having hard heads, I don’t know if that was intended to mean “hardheaded” as being stubborn or hardheaded in the literal sense.  It didn’t matter in my dad’s case because he proved to be both. My father told the story of a time when he was very young when his sister Gerda was responsible for watching him and somehow Gerda managed to drop him through the cellar window where he said he landed on his head.

Not only that but in addition to being dropped into the cellar, he said during his lifetime he had been hit by a car, fell out of a tree, fell on his head ice skating, and hit by a baseball bat twice.

And later still that hard head would prove to come in very handy as he developed his Parkinson’s and became prone to falling.

 

Though he grew up in Oceanport, for a brief period, about 3 years, his father moved the family to the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, another Norwegian neighborhood, in the 1930s so he could find work.  During that time, they rented the house in Oceanport.

Returning to Oceanport the family lived in the house his father built on Springfield Avenue.  He told of being raised in the church (that North Long Branch Seaman’s church) and spent Christmases there and remembered how excited he would get when the Oceanport Hook & Ladder fire truck would come by the house on Christmas Day.  He said he would run out of the house and leap the hedge to get the candy from the firemen.  He attended Oceanport’s Wolf Hill School and Red Bank High School.  At the time Oceanport kids could choose between Long Branch High School and Red Bank High School.

One of his buddies growing up in Oceanport was Bobby Rosch.  That turned out to be pretty cool for Carl because Bobby had a little sister named Florence.

Carl was active in Oceanport Boy Scouts as an early member of Troop 58 led by Paul Sommers Sr.  In World War II he was a member of the Crop Corps and participated in the war effort working on a farm growing food for the troops.

He once told me that at one time he was the strongest kid in Oceanport.  I think it was his school bus driver that got him interested in lifting weights.  He could arm wrestle, climb a brass fire pole without using his feet, drive a nail with one swing and in the Boy Scouts, he said they called him “One Chop Moe.”  He couldn’t remember where the nickname Moe came from.

He worked as a pin boy at the bowling alley in Long Branch and at Wood’s Boat Works and then was drafted into the Army.  He enjoyed his time in the Army.

It was while he was in the Army, in 1952, that he married Florence, and they had their first child Patricia (Patty).

My dad always said he had been lucky in life and in his work.  My mom thought after the army he went back to work at Woods Boat Works for a bit and then to Bendix as a drill press operator working the evening shift.  In his off hours, he had a floor sanding business, a trade he learned from his father.  He became a union carpenter in the early ’60s and then to the job he would retire from at the Wolf Hill School as their custodian extraordinaire. But even after he retired, he wasn’t finished working because when he moved away from Oceanport to Woolford on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, he became a waterman and crabbed commercially for eleven years.

 

It was during the time of shift work at Bendix that he started building his house on Willow Court.  He and Florence along with their now three kids, Patty, Carl (Chrissie), and Curtis were living in the rented two-bedroom bungalow next to the property he would build his house on.  With the assistance of his wife Flo, his father, his brother Ted, and his many friends skilled in various trades, he built the house he would raise his family in for the next 30 years.

Most all those friends like my father, were Oceanport Hook & Ladder volunteer firemen so when the fire whistle blew all the helpers would drop their tools in place and run the block and a half to the firehouse and climb on the waiting fire trucks.

Carl joined the fire company in 1955.  He served in almost all capacities including Chief.  He was also a volunteer member of the Oceanport First Aid Squad and once was on the crew of the ambulance that delivered a baby.  Carl was very active in both organizations until the time he left Oceanport.

He finished building his house and in 1961 his fourth child, Gary was born.

My dad continued his activities with Oceanport Boy Scouting as an adult and in the 1960s started a second Oceanport troop, Troop 178 that was sponsored by the Oceanport Hook & Ladder Fire Company.  In the beginning, Troop 178 was mostly made up of neighborhood kids from Willow Court, Arcana Avenue, and Trinity Place.  In that capacity, he mentored many young kids as they rose through scouts which included camping and many backpacking trips on the Appalachian Trail.

Another great memory of many local kids in Oceanport was that of my father bringing one of the fire trucks down to the Fort Monmouth Marina and lighting up the ice on Oceanport Creek so that whoever wanted to, mostly him though, could ice skate at night.

Boy Scout camping eventually led to family camping as my dad convinced my mother to try it, first in a tent and eventually in camper trailers and truck campers.  That was the way they got to see the country.

My dad would also eventually convince my mother, who can’t swim, to buy a boat, first a little one, then they got bigger and bigger.  Then living full time in Woolford, Maryland on the Eastern Shore, his last boat, called “Pop’s Lady” (my mother’s nickname is Lady) was a thirty-three-foot working crab boat.  He and his first mate (my mother) would drop their three long trot lines baited with bull’s lips every morning and take their catch to the wholesaler.  The first time I introduced my wife to my parents they were sitting under a tree with a big bucket of bull’s lips rebaiting their lines.

As he got older, crabbing commercially became difficult and he sold the boat but continued to do carpentry jobs for the neighbors on Deep Point and their church, the Milton United Methodist Church building their new sign and a free book exchange library that still sits outside the Woolford Store. Skilled in fine woodworking as well, he made furniture too for my mother.

He liked to ride his bike and would frequently make the almost four-mile round trip up to the post office to pick up the mail.  When he started to experience an increased incidence of falling while riding his bike his physician suspected something was wrong and in 2016 Carl was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.  Yet, in spite of his diagnosis, his hardheadedness made it difficult to tell him he couldn’t do what he used to do and so he would insist on climbing ladders, using tools, and fixing things that he shouldn’t.  He liked to show off by doing squats in the doorway while resting his heels on the door sill.

After his ability to maintain balance and walk deteriorated, he spent some time in the hospital and eventually to rehab and long-term care at the Mallard Bay Nursing and Rehab facility in Cambridge.  My mother would visit him there almost every day.

On June 15, after nearly twenty months at the facility, he passed away.

 

The Obituary

Carl Edwin Christiansen, 94, of Woolford, passed away on Thursday, June 15, 2023, at Mallard Bay Nursing and Rehab. He was married to the former Florence Rosch.

Carl was preceded in death by his father Carl Oscar, and his mother Sophie; his sisters Evelyn and Gerda and his brother Theodor; his son Carl Robert; his grandson Donny and his great-grandson Jaden.

Carl is survived by his wife of seventy years, Florence (Flo, Lady), his daughter Patricia (husband John), and his sons Curtis (wife Kim) and Gary (wife Marie), and Carl Robert’s wife Teesha; granddaughters Chelsea, Alexa, Hayley, Savannah, Jenn, and Kelly; grandsons Jason, Johnathon, Reiss, Kyle, and Gavin; great-grandchildren A.J., Devin, Braylen, Jaxson, Emmy, Isla, Elijah, Isiah, Oscar, Anders, Leona, Cameron, Christian, Ethan, and the most recent, Jack.

 

He was lucky in life.

And we were blessed to be able to share a part of that life.

The son of immigrants, the last of his family of first-generation Americans, he now rests in his new home where the tired are also welcomed and he can once again breathe freely.

 

At this time there is not a memorial or celebration of life scheduled.

However, I would encourage you to take Ms. Spector’s advice and if you feel moved, share a story and post it, tag his Facebook page, or forward it to me and I will post it.

And maybe enjoy a Manhattan while you are writing.

 

Postscript:

We would like to thank the staff at the Mallard Bay Nursing and Rehab for their care during Carl’s stay, as well as the many residents who supported my father and became our friends too.