Norman Graham 'Norm' Wolfe

Norman Graham Wolfe was Chuck’s great-uncle by marriage on the maternal Wildermuth-Davis side — the husband of Betty Jean Davis Wolfe, who was Dorothy Marie Davis Wildermuth’s younger sister.

The biographical record

From his Marietta Times obituary, 21 February 2015 and Betty’s own Marietta Times obituary, 16 September 2015:

• Born 15 July 1926 in Marietta, Washington County, Ohio — the son of Homer O. Wolfe and Margaret Graham Wolfe, with the middle name Graham carried from his mother. Robert Earl Wildermuth’s hometown; two years after Robert Earl himself was born there in 1924.
• Brother: Homer O. Wolfe Jr. — named for their father; died 2014, the year before Norm.
• Marietta High School quarterback and football team captain his senior year, and a lifelong Ohio State football fan. Met Betty Jean Davis in study hall at MHS; she was the head majorette of the high school band.
• Married Betty in 1945, before shipping out with the Army to Germany during World War II.
• Attended Marietta College after returning from the war.
• Per Dorothy Davis Wildermuth’s page, Dorothy and Robert Earl’s wedding Easter Sunday 20 April 1946 came roughly four months after Betty and Norm’s — the two Davis sisters got married within months of each other in the same Marietta community.
• Deacon at the Sixth Street Church of Christ for many years — the same Sixth Street neighborhood church that gave the Will and Peggy Eesley family their 651 address. Norm’s quietly-faithful working-life weekday-and-Sunday rhythm ran along Sixth Street as much as it ran along Hillcrest.
• Three daughters, with full middle names from Betty’s obituary:
  • Victoria Ann Schwartz (married Geoffrey Schwartz), Topton, North Carolina
  • Norma Jean Grundset (married Kenneth Grundset), Largo, Florida — named with her mother Betty Jean’s middle name
  • Peggy Sue Wolfe, St. Petersburg, Florida
• One granddaughter: Emily Marie Schwartz Crouch (married Zachary Crouch), Louisville, Kentucky. One great-granddaughter: Charlotte Victoria Crouch (age 2 in January 2015, b. c. 2012–2013).
• Predeceased by his grandson Geoffrey B. Schwartz II in 2009 — named for his father Geoff Schwartz Sr.
• Moved to Largo, Florida c. 2013, near daughters Norma and Peggy. Lived there only two years. Died 9 January 2015, age 88.
• Buried at East Lawn Memorial Cemetery, Reno, Washington County, Ohio — the same Marietta-area cemetery where Earl Adam Wildermuth is buried.

2015 — a heavy year for the family

Three deaths in 2015 closed the older generation of Chuck’s family within months of each other: Norm Wolfe on 9 January 2015, his wife Betty Wolfe on 18 July 2015 (six months and nine days later), and Chuck’s father Charlie Eesley on 26 November 2015. All three within eleven months. The cluster is among the heavier patches of family loss in the archive.

108 Hillcrest Drive — the table Chuck grew up at

Per Chuck’s memory: Uncle Norm and Aunt Betty Wolfe lived at 108 Hillcrest Drive in Marietta, and they hosted the Eesley family for many dinners across the years — Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas were often spent at their house. The Hillcrest house was one of the two anchors of holiday family life in Chuck’s childhood, alongside Grandma Peggy’s 424 N 7th Street house.

The dinner-table layer of family memory across decades — three holidays a year compounding into thirty years’ worth of holiday gatherings — is the way Aunt Betty and Uncle Norm carried the extended family. They raised three daughters of their own (Victoria Ann, Norma Jean, Peggy Sue) before retiring to Florida late in life, but their Marietta years had always had room at the table for nieces and nephews and great-nieces and great-nephews; their Hillcrest household ran on the same warm-host instinct Betty’s own obituary names: “She was an excellent cook and baker who loved to have people come for a meal. Everything was delicious.”

When Chuck was home sick from school

Chuck also remembers: when he was sick and had to stay home from school as a kid, he was often either at the Wolfes’ house at 108 Hillcrest or at Faye Angel’s house (his godmother). The Wolfes were one of the two sick-day caregivers of his Marietta childhood — the kind of extended-family arrangement small towns and large families ran on through the 1980s and 1990s before institutional daycare became the default.

That Aunt Betty Davis Wolfe, Dorothy Davis’s younger sister, was caring for her great-niece’s son — Dorothy’s grandson’s son — through his sick days at her Hillcrest house is the kind of three-generation family-care arrangement the archive’s 413 Harmar Street and Highland Ridge places imply but don’t otherwise show.

The family’s framing of who Norm was

His own obituary — in unusually direct family writing — says:

“Much could be written here about Norm but he would not want that. He let the way he lived his life speak for itself. He was soft spoken and didn’t ‘put on airs.’ He was a wonderful husband and father — kind, patient, and always ended every family visit and phone call with ‘I love you.’ If asked, those who knew him well would say the following about Norm: he was an honest man of strong character; people considered his word and handshake as good as a signed piece of paper; a man devoted to his Lord and family; loyal to his many friends; and he had a kind word for most anyone he met. He was a man of strong faith… His was indeed a life well lived.”

The closing line is the family’s own summary — “His was indeed a life well lived.”

Sources: Dale Eesley / FamilySearch — Norman Graham Wolfe (LTF6-K38); Marietta Times obituary, 21 February 2015; Betty Jean Wolfe’s obituary, Marietta Times, 16 September 2015.