I’m trying to get any/all paperwork that might be existing as far as my (deceased) grandfather is concerned.
He worked for a Security Firm from March 1966 through April 1973. It was his last job. He died two years later. The firm was incorporated in May 1973, but closed in 1996.
Is there any way I could get any info on this firm? Specifically any paperwork pertaining to him?
If not, is there any way I could get:
Any employee/pay info on him?
Any records that might indicate exactly when he and my grandmother (legally) separated?
Anything that might help me narrow down the search for his girlfriend, whom, if she is still alive I’d like speak to.
I doubt that you will be able to get any employee/pay information, due to the length of time that has elapsed. This is far beyond the record retention period required by any agency. However, this doesn’t mean that they might not exist. I don’t know how large the company was or how it was managed/owned, but there’s always a possibility that records exist, if even in boxes in the owner’s garage. Try getting in touch with the owner’s family.
Legal separation? Papers were probably filed at the local clerk or register of deeds office, or the equivalent in that jurisdiction.
As far as the girl friend…good luck. Family and friends are probably about it.
The social security administration should have employment/pay records on him, since he’s deceased there’s some way for his heirs to get this information but I don’t know what it is. The IRS according to their website only keeps records for six years, but SS keeps lifetime wage information so you should be able to get how much he made each year. I wouldn’t expect a firm that’s been shut down for 20 years to have any employee records maintained.
The divorce should be in courthouse records of the county (maybe state) where he resided when it happened. A credit report can give you his addresses, they’re not 100% reliable but I know mine has all of my past addresses that I used for paperwork, and might give you the girlfriend’s name as associated with depending on how close on paper they were.
No name or age. I know she lived in Brooklyn, NY; I know the address they shared in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn circa 1972. I know in 1965 she worked for Traveler’s Insurance at the World’s Fair.
What part of SS keeps lifetime wage information?
Also, what would be a good credit report service to use?
All I know about their level of closeness is such that, the reason he got caught is she was calling the house and my aunt picked up the extension, listened in, and told my grandmother. That was in 1967. They had been having the affair since 1965. He seemed to really like her, to the point that he’s adoringly getting her on camera in 1965 at the World’s Fair, even as she’s working. I know she bought him a diamond ring with his initials which he wore. They lived together until 1973. So that’s around at least 8 years of being together. Their relationship could even possibly predate 1965. I also know she sent home gifts from the Fair to my mother and her siblings (although they and my grandmother thought they came from him) and she wanted to come to my aunt’s wedding in 1972 and meet my aunt, but had to come in secretly in the back due to the politics surrounding it. Supposedly, his one condition for coming to the wedding was that she be allowed to come. I know he would pine for her to my mother afterward even in the months leading up to his death, two years after their breakup.
I don’t know anything about what credit report service to use, I just know what’s turned up for addresses in mine. Various people search services use credit reports too, you might just want to try a few of the free trials to see if they turn up anything sensible. Since they lived together it’s possible that her name will turn up as associated with him, and if they owned the property together then Brooklyn county should have her name on the history of the deed. I would probably spend some time trying a few people searches, see if the property turns up anything, and if not see about hiring a PI to look into this, since most of them track people down based on fragmented evidence for a living.
I really think that you should bite the bullet and ask your grandmother a few questions, even if you don’t talk and even if she doesn’t like talking about him (as you mentioned in an earlier thread.) He is your family, you have every right to want to know details about his life, and if she doesn’t want to tell you, then she is the jerk.
My grandmother is crazy, and very very secretive. My family is the epitome of dysfunctional. She also distorts history, and I am 1000% certain I would not get any answer out of her. My family is so fucked up, I nearly had a restraining order filed on me by my aunt (who lives with her and acts as the gatekeeper) for leaving flowers on the doorstep on Mother’s Day. Trust me, if I thought there was even a 10% she’d be able to help, I’d have asked her already.
I only know the facts about his life. Like, as in, I know he was in the Army before WWII and during the War. I know he got shot in the leg by a sniper and spent a year in the Hospital. I know he worked as a Postman and Security Guard until his arrest for stealing money from the mail circa 1966, and then as a Security Guard after; I know he didn’t curse at least in front of his children or have a bad temper; I know he had a stroke in 1973 and died in 1975. I have seen pictures. I do not know much beyond those things. I would like to speak to someone who knew him as a man - not just through the lens of a child as my mother knew him. For example, he might have cursed, but just not in front of his kids. In my mother’s eyes, he was a soft spoken gentleman who never cursed or used foul language of any kind - but he died when she was 21. He stopped living at home when she was 13. You know what I’m saying?
You can’t a real picture of someone from a daughter who worshiped them from the perspective of a child and young adult. And on the other hand, a skewed perspective where he was a demon who had no redeeming qualities by my bitter grandmother who is (by her own admission) still hurt she never got an apology for his affair is not a full portrait either.
I know he paid $35 a week in child support after leaving (with inflation roughly around $1000 a month). My grandmother once told my mother gleefully how the judge said to her “He has to live too, you know” - implying with glee she was taking so much of his income in child support that he was subsisting. So, she’s not really a good source. He drove her into this other woman’s arms.
My grandmother would throw him out of the house his money bought on a regular basis, literally spit in his face and call him a “dago bastard” in front of his children. He could’ve clobbered her. He was 5’11" and over 200lbs with massive hands - he never once hit her. She would go after him with a fork. After he left, she took to throwing my mother and aunt out on a regular basis. My mother was around 13, 14, kicked out and had the door locked on her in the middle of the night in late 1960s era New York City. That’s who my grandmother was. Once, they were coming home in the Tunnel from Manhattan. A single drop of water hit the windshield and she got out of the car and began running. When my uncle would have episodes of the croup, my grandfather - who suffered from hypertension - would be in the hot steam taking care of him. My grandmother would be outside the house walking up and down the block pacing.
Even later in life, she kicked out her boyfriend of over 20 years on Thanksgiving while the guy - who was then around 80 - was dying of COPD and could barely breathe.
I don’t condone infidelity normally. I also don’t think my grandfather was a saint. He was a bad gambler who stole to cover his debts; he was an addict to gambling. He didn’t have any drug or alcohol vices thankfully. But my grandmother was worse, and in her case, I feel she deserved what she got in terms of him cheating.
Ah. Unreliable narrator problem. I just know how many small questions I’ve thought of after my grandmother died that would have been trivially answerable before but are unanswerable now.
I also have a grandfather with an unknown life that I have some (mild) curiosity about. They divorced in 1947, 25 years before I was born. My grandmother hated him, rarely spoke of him, and I’ve never even seen a photo of him. By a weird coincidence, I was checking the on-line obits for my local newspaper at my grandmothers’ request to find the listing for someone else and it happened to be the day they published his obituary, where he had died weeks ago at a nursing home in DC (apparently they chose to list it because he was a vet who had been local long ago.) When I told my grandmother about it, she laughed out loud. The obit mentioned the name of his parents (who of course predeceased him) and his brother (who was still alive) but no mention of his ever having had a daughter and grandson, and no mention if he had ever remarried.
Only recently did I have a moment of curiosity to try to look up his military record–one of the few things that my grandmother had told me about him was that he had been captured at the Battle of the Bulge and there were a few months where she didn’t know if he was alive or dead. Sure enough, I found the record of where he had been kept prisoner, a Stalag IV-D in Torgau, Germany. After my grandmother kicked him to the curb, he apparently went back to a full career in the military (at least part of the time stationed in Hawaii) and is buried in Arlington. Beyond that, I know pretty much no idea of what happened to him between the divorce in 1947 and death in 2003(ish.)
I do know some trivialties from here when we used to talk, but those were different times. She’s only gotten worse with age. That’s fascinating about your grandfather. Sounds similar to my grandmother.
My grandfather was also at the Battle of the Bulge, actually. He was shot two days before the battle ended, as a Staff Sgt. Perhaps they knew each other. My grandparents were married in 1949 and separated in either late 1967 or early 1968. I know they were together as of June 1967 anyway.
My grandmother is the epitome of an unreliable narrator. She told my mother that my grandfather had been a paratrooper at D-Day. False. We later learned he had applied for, and been rejected, for paratrooper school. His unit went in likely later in June 1944. He was still part of the overall D-Day invasion (as in the massive campaign to recapture France) but he was not there on June 6th 1944 landing at any of the beaches.
This is how vindictive she is though:After they had separated, my mother liked to wear his army shirt. He was in his youth a very slight man (5’11 1/2 and only 160 lbs). He was slim enough that his shirt was able to fit around my mother’s very petite frame. Anyway, one day, my grandmother pulled it off her and cut the shirt up the back. His army shirt he had worn and fought in a World War in, and she cut it up the back, rendering it garbage, in mere seconds out of pure spite.
All his siblings (he was one of 6) are dead sadly, so I can’t even hear stories about him from them. My mother’s eldest sibling (who was born when he was 29) dislikes him, likely because he wasn’t overly supportive of her Lesbianism. So that’s another avenue closed.
I do know this. When he and his siblings sold their father’s last property in 1972, my grandmother demanded from my great uncle (the executor of the estate) that she get my grandfather’s full share. He told her no, he gets half and you get half. This infuriated her, and she waited for payback.
A year later, my great uncle’s mother-in-law died, and my grandmother caused a scene at the wake, screaming at my uncle how “you never cared about any of us” and this and that. Because she wasn’t even the entire cut from a house sale which had nothing to do with her.
This is a woman who…My stepgrandpa was a nice man, and my mother was always polite to him. My grandmother believed my mother being polite had to mean that they were fucking. My mother’s younger brother, in between moves, came to stay with my mother for two weeks while moving. My grandmother said to my mother, “What, are you and him having sex?” That’s where her mind automatically goes.
My grandmother didn’t want my grandfather at my aunt’s wedding in 1972. She said, “Why don’t you have Pat (her boyfriend) walk you down the aisle?” My aunt wanted her father. He hadn’t lived in the home, or been part of the family since 1967, but his presence was wanted. He said he’d come, supposedly, if his girlfriend was able. This infuriated my grandmother. Meanwhile, when the wedding actually happened, my grandmother walked down the aisle ahead of my aunt with her boyfriend. As if they were the ones whose wedding it was.
When my grandfather had his first stroke in 1973, my grandmother told my aunt (who had taken him to live with her) to bring him home to the house they’d bought together. He wasn’t utterly disabled or “fucked up”; he just couldn’t work and had no money. His girlfriend had left because she didn’t want to care of him through his recovery. He told my aunt, “If you go back there, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.” Which she did, and does. My grandmother’s idea of mercy was to stick him in a small extra bedroom which had served as a storage room upstairs. In the house he had bought and redesigned. Meanwhile, on the first floor, she and her boyfriend were shacking up.
It gets even worse. My grandmother forced my uncle, when he got confirmed into the Catholic Church in March 1974, to choose her boyfriend as his sponsor and to take his name as his Confirmation name. This meant he was no longer named after his father. My grandfather was still alive when this happened, living at home. They even went after the ceremony to a club called “Your Father’s Mustache” - and at the time, my grandfather HAD a mustache.
He had a very sad life. He died at 55. He was shot in the leg and spent a year in the hospital. His first wife committed suicide due to post partum psychosis while he was at work just a year after he’d gotten out of the hospital. His family demanded he give up his child with her to his barren sister or any future children would be disinherited, so he did. He lost, in a short span of years, his friends in the war, his wife, and his child.
On a 1974 hospital admission, he stated he had 4 children. He actually had five, counting the child he was made to give away to his sister. In his head, the whole period was so traumatizing, that he felt in his head he only had 4 children. He stated in the hospital that he was in the Army from 1939-1949. He was in the army 1939-1946. The death of his first wife, and loss of his first child happened between 1947 and 1948. So in his head, that never happened. He blocked it out so that he had spent those years in the military. He had no first wife or daughter. Just imagine fucked up he was in his own way just due to all that?
I know of ONE story he told my uncle around 1974 or 1975 about his military service. One day he and his men came to a little stream. They filled their canteens and drank. The water tasted funny. They followed the stream up for a while only to find the source of the odd taste: Upwards the stream was filled with the bodies of dead Germans, their blood running with the water.
This is a man who could’ve become an alcoholic, or a drug addict with the things he saw and had to endure. My father had to endure much less, and became an abusive drug addict. My grandfather never verbally or physically abused his kids. In a way, even though he’s dead, I’ve always viewed my grandfather as a substitute, a hero. My mother put him on a pedestal my whole life.
There is a picture of him. It was taken in 1973 after he had his first stroke, it was taken by pure accident by some amateur teenage photographer - one of those rare fate things. The photo isn’t staged. It’s the only picture of him with any grandchildren; the baby is my older sister. It was always hanging up on the wall wherever we lived. I always thought he looked like Walt Disney in the photo. So imagine as a kid hearing about this gentle, brave guy who looks like Walt Disney, in contrast to your own brutal, crude father.
