Zacks Ancestor Essay.

Zack had to do an essay on an ancestor for a school project. He chose to do my Grandpa Ralph Stolrow. He had to find out as much information as he could and interview people. Then write an essay on what he learned, Then he had to make an info board for the ancestor essay fair.
Here is Zacks essay...

Ancestor Report:
By
Zack Stopper

Ralph David Stolrow was born on July 7th 1917 in St Paul, Minnesota. As a kid he liked to play hockey and baseball. He lived there till he was 14 years old, his family moved to Los Angeles, California. He attended Belmont High School. He wanted to join the football team but his Mom said it was too dangerous, and that he should stick with hockey. He had one older brother named Walter, his mothers name was Anna Jarosch, his fathers name was Hyrum Harry Stolurow (Prussian, which was later changed to Stolrow) Ralph met his wife Majorie Eleanor Van Pattern, for the first time at a teenage organization called “De Moley“, for the junior Knights of Columbus or so called Masons. They met when the organizations had a young adult dance. They Married May 30th 1939.
They had two children David Ralph Stolrow, born May 21st 1944, and Virginia Stolrow (Kuntuzos) born September 20th 1948. Soon after World War II had come to a start, Ralph had volunteered for the Army Air Corp which later became the Air Force. He left when his son, my grandpa was 3 months old. In World War II they drafted the men by their birth date. Two birthdates were never called, one of them was July 7th . He would never have been drafted, so he finally joined. From China, you would have to go to India by Flying over the “Hump” or the Himalayas. He had to fly over the hump a couple of times. Because of his college degree in accounting, Ralph was made a paymaster and worked behind the front lines. He never fired a shot in battle. When Ralph’s group was to leave India, the men made a pack that the first man to return home would call all of the wives and let them know that their husbands were on their way home. They came home by boat and sailed into Seattle, Washington. Marjorie got the phone call that Ralph was on the next boat, on the day that her sister Katie got married. If the call had come half-hour later, she would have been at the church and would have missed the news. At the wedding, my Grandpa wore a sailor outfit that Ralph had sent home. EVERY boy in our family has worn this Sailor outfit.
Ralph had many jobs here are most of them: CPA, construction, flipping houses. He built a swimming pool with my grandpa, when he was younger and added a bedroom on to their house. He loved the outdoors; he loved to hunt, fish and camp. He taught my grandpa how to do all these things. Ralph loved sports, he especially loved Golf. He was a very good treasure hunter. He went to northern California Sierra Nevada range in the mid-1930’s and he found an abandoned town called Bodie. Bodie in its heyday was known for being a very rough town. Among other things, he found a stain glass window. We later returned that window to the town of Bodie, which in 1972 became a state park. He won “treasure Hunter of the Year” in southern California. Most my Family remembers the same funny story about Ralph. One fall day he was teaching my Aunt Denise to drive a dune buggy of his. She was driving in the backyard and to avoid a fence she hit the pumpkin patch and when they hit a pumpkin it exploded and he had pumpkin guts all over his head and everyone started to laugh, including Ralph.
Ralph was a very good, kind man. He died March 17th 1997. I have enjoyed getting to know about him. I will never forget about him.