Its amazing what you can find in the course of research. If only I could be this lucky with Grandma Geve's side.
I have mixed feelings about this find, but I figured it was worth sharing and how I got to this point. One one had I'm happy to have found this - which was a wealth of information, but then its sad at the circumstances that gave this to me.
As I was inputting the names and dates into the family tree, I often got sidetracked with Google, trying to find dates for small holes I found. To be honest, I'm not sure why I decided to Google "Vrooman Dopp". Maybe it was because of the odd name that I was hoping I'd come across more information on the Dopp family. I guess it worked. :)
The first thing that I came across was an article {seen left} from the Schenectady Gazette up in New York on 25 February 1961. Click on the article to enlarge it. He isn't directly related to me {being my 1st cousin 2 times removed, aka my great-uncle Vrooman Dopp's son}, but I still felt sad to find out about his death. It makes me wonder what happened in his life that made him so depressed that he felt that was the only way out. Unfortunately these things are going to happen when researching the past.
I read the article, and found out more about him; where he went to school, that he was in the military, and who was living at that moment in time. The Merchant Marines didn't really sound familiar, so I thought I'd take a look and see if I could find some sort of roster or list or anything in relation to John Dopp and the Merchant Marines. To my surprise, I found something!
Someone had taken a yearbook from his graduating class and scanned the book in its entirety and uploaded it to
Archive.org. I was completely surprised that someone decided that this book was important enough to scan and share, and I was thrilled to have found something so interesting and unique. I was even able to find out that his middle initial stood for Hergen.
If you would like to see the book, its available to view
here. There's no registration needed and there are a couple of different options for viewing.
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This was my uncle, who I never met. His suicide was never talked about until recent years, but VERY little. It made me very sad to read about his death, since it gives such a vivid picture of how my grandfather found him, but am glad you posted it because I've never read anything about it. My mother still has his Merchant Marines year books. By all accounts, he was a very nice man who surprised the family by taking his life. I too, wished I knew what in his life would make him do this.
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