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Estella Marie Louise Hüners/Hueners was the second child, and only daughter, born to August Georg Wilhelm and Margarete (Deußer/Deusser) Hüners/Hueners, who were German immigrants living in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and who had every intention of becoming citizens of the U.S. She was baptized here in the Lutheran Church.
When the depression hit, her father, like so many men at that time, found himself out of work. While looking for work in another state, her mother decided she didn't like having no money, and reading of the glowing promises of Hitler in the letters from...
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Estella Marie Louise Hüners/Hueners was the second child, and only daughter, born to August Georg Wilhelm and Margarete (Deußer/Deusser) Hüners/Hueners, who were German immigrants living in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and who had every intention of becoming citizens of the U.S. She was baptized here in the Lutheran Church.
When the depression hit, her father, like so many men at that time, found himself out of work. While looking for work in another state, her mother decided she didn't like having no money, and reading of the glowing promises of Hitler in the letters from her family, she decided to take the children and to go back to Germany in the Fall of 1933, right after Estella's 5th birthday. Of course, Hitler and the Nazis had already taken power in the Spring of that year.
When her father became aware of their move back to Germany, he followed them. That was in the spring of 1934, and on finding his family in Frankfurt a.M., where Estella's mother was born and raised, they moved to Trauen in the Lüneburger Heide in Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony), which was only a few miles from where her father was born and raised, and where he found a job as bookkeeper in the payroll department for the German army at Munster-Lager.
Once settled, Estella remembers her father telling her and her brothers, "While we're here, you kids are going to get some culture, because America has none." So, he made sure the kids attended symphony performances, operas, choral concert, even balls, where Estella learned how to waltz with perfection. Since he had only a bicycle, the customary form of travel then, he took one child at a time on the weekends. The children were expected to read only classical literature at home, of which "Heidi" was Estella's favorite, and the heide (heather) in bloom was her greatest comfort in the hard times.
Of her childhood there, Estella talked about times when groups of soldiers came into their home, demanding things at gunpoint. Such as the fall when they had just put their last jar of the year's canning onto the shelf in the cellar. A group came in and shot up every single jar, not one being left in tact. Because of that, they went very hungry that year, and learned to live off the land. The following years, once food was canned, it was buried in the garden for safe keeping.
Another time, a group came in and demanded they make them a meal. They only had two potatoes which was to be their family's meals for the next few days. The men, of course, weren't hungry (they had their military rations), but she and her mother made potato soup for them, and they ate every bit of it. How could two potatoes make enough soup for a dozen men? The recipe sounded a lot like the stone soup of that fairy tale.
When asked one time if they could hear the shooting when the front was close to their home, she said they could, but what was much worse was when the shooting stopped for the night, and they heard the screaming of the injured men.
Estella talked about the delousing stations (lice, and other vermin, are a natural result of war, as are such diseases as typhoid, cholera, diphtheria, etc.), and how much she hated them, but they had to go two or three times a week. The delousing chemical was put into the water, and they took showers with it.
Then there were the bombing raids, and her mother's close calls with not getting into the shelter in time, and the rapes, and the girls who would sleep with a soldier just to have their candy bar, or the silk stockings they carried on them, which they could trade at the black market, so her family could have something to eat, and going to the store with a large shoe box full of money, hoping it would be enough to buy a loaf of bread.
She told many horrific stories, but then there were the stories that not a syllable could be uttered to describe - only tears pouring down her face.
Her family tried to come back to the U.S. immediately after the war ended, but as they were boarding the ship, they were turned back. It took them 2 1/2 yrs. to figure out how they were going to get out of Germany, and they considered other countries besides the U.S. - Australia and Argentina, among them, but finally they saw an opportunity to come back to the U.S.
Estella, and her next younger brother, Fred, came first, because they still had their U.S. citizenship - they were born here. When they left, they had no idea whether they would see the rest of their family ever again. Estella and Fred arrived at the port of New York Dec. 12, 1947. While waiting for the train to take them to South Dakota, where their sponsor lived, they decided to walk around a little. They discovered an ice cream shop, where they tasted an ice cream cone for the first time. After that, Estella couldn't pass up a Dairy Queen without stopping for an ice cream cone.
In McLaughlin, South Dakota, she helped her sponsor, who were farmers, in the house to work off her passage over here. She also got her first opportunity to learn about God (they closed the church right after she started Sunday School in Germany). Rev. Rudolph Inselmann, who was responsible for getting them here, taught her catechism, and she was confirmed at the age of 19. She took her Christian responsibilities very seriously the rest of her life, making sure their children were properly instructed from preschool on, and always in church and Sunday School
every Sunday morning, and Vacation Bible School during the summers; this included their foster children.
Very soon after her arrival in South Dakota, it was time to harvest the potatoes, which meant everyone who was able was in the field digging them up, and this is where she met Leonard Jacob Hertel, a cousin of her sponsor.
Leonard often sang songs to her, such as "You Are My Sunshine" and "Beautiful, Beautiful Brown Eyes". Many of the young men in the community, and their mothers, tried to win her hand, but Leonard's singing won her over, and they were married June 24, 1948 at the Redeemer Lutheran Church in McLaughlin, with Rev. Inselmann officiating. On June 23, 1949, their first child arrived, who Estella always remembered as their first anniversary gift.
She was extremely homesick for her family, though, and missed the heide so much that her parents sent a sprig of it in a letter one time. In 1955, the last of the family arrived in the U.S., but were still scattered over four states. By 1958, everyone was pretty settled, and her parents settled in a town close by.
In the Fall of 1952, they moved to Minnesota, where Leonard built the family a new home, and in June 1960, they moved to Lead, South Dakota, where they lived over 35 years, and were active members of the community and their church. About 1999, they moved to Brunswick, Nebraska to be closer to their youngest, Jenny, who was still having children, and about 2007, Estella was found to have Alzheimer's. She made one more move, in 2009, when Leonard decided to move to Tucson, Arizona to be closer to another daughter, Renae, and it was here that Estella died in 2012.
Estella was very intelligent, did very well in school, and even got the opportunity to go to high school, which was very rare for a girl in those days in Germany, but she turned it down because she only wanted to be a wife and mother, and she was a born mother. She loved children, and is remembered as being an idyllic mother, singing songs to her kids all the time, reading stories to them, and being there in their many needs. Because she never had the privilege of being a teenager, she thought she would be a terrible mother when her kids reached those years, but in fact, she was very good at nurturing her children even then.
Her lowest points with her children were when their 4th child, Rita Ann, died at two weeks as a result of being born with a hole in the wall of her heart, and their son, Roger, was killed in the Homestake Gold Mine. When their daughter, Julie, died, she could only grasp the reality for a moment, but cried for that moment. The family considered the timing of Julie's death to be a blessing to their mother. She had so much trouble dealing with death, but the deaths of her children were, perhaps, the worst events of her entire life.
In 1953, she decided it was past time to learn English, and starting with a German-English Bible, she was completely self taught. She mastered the new language amazingly fast. Though her German handwriting was so good that she won awards when she was in school, she never quite got the hang of English handwriting, which was always a great embarrassment to her.
About 1973, Leonard and Estella started doing foster care for developmentally disabled and Social Services children, which they did for 25 yrs., and were every bit the parents to them that they were to their own children. Many of those children came back to visit them when they got older, and they received many letters, which included pictures of their families as they got older. The developmentally disabled children were their perpetual babies, whom they dearly loved as their very own.
Estella was also a superb cook, which on the occasion of moving to Lead, found she had to go back to cooking on a wood burning stove. Being the trooper that she was, she relearned the techniques, and turned out some of the best food her family had ever tasted, including homemade bread. She took the family out every summer to pick various berries in the wild, the best and most abundant being chokecherries, but included wild apples, too. Her family had some of the best jelly, syrup, and applebutter year round, and Leonard learned to make the best chokecherry wine. When she was able, she bought milk from a local farmer, and the kids learned how to make butter.
Leonard and Estella always had a vegetable garden and a number of flower beds. Many good foods came out of the vegetable gardens that were enjoyed year round.
Estella learned how to knit when she was six years old, and was responsible for knitting all of her father's and brother's socks. As a mother, she sewed most of the kids' clothes, and knitted and crocheted many sweaters, mittens and slippers for them. Later she sewed quilts, crocheted bedspreads, and stitched afghans for her children and grandchildren. They never lacked for warmth. She even started spinning yarn, starting with the wool straight off the sheep, with which she made an abundance of intricately designed sweaters and socks, many of which she sold.
With every new home Leonard built or remodeled for the family, Estella was working right alongside him, sanding, painting, varnishing, texturing walls and ceilings, etc. She loved to work, a trait ingrained into every German, and rested only with needles in her hands, knitting or crocheting something new.
Estella was also a faithful and loving daughter, caring for her mother for three months after being hit by a car in her late 50s, and later, when her mother developed Alzheimer's, tending to her daily needs until she died, before the disease had a chance to put her into a nursing home. She also sat with her father every day for a week and a half, between his first massive stroke and his death, giving what care she could and talking to him, hoping he might understand some of it.
Estella was a truly amazing woman, given the many extreme hardships she lived through as a child and as a mother, and the extreme success she was at all of life's endeavors that were thrown her way.
Surviving Estella are her husband, Leonard; one son, Jeffery of Tucson; three daughters, Sylvia of Lead, S.D., Renae of Tucson and Jenny of Brunswick, Nebraska; two brothers, Rev. Fred Hueners of Chisago, Minnesota and Karl Hueners of San Francisco, California; 17 grandchildren, 22 great grandchildren, and numerous brothers- and sisters-in-law.
Preceding her in death are her parents, William A. and Margarete Hueners; one son, Roger Leonard in 1977; two daughters, Rita Ann in 1955 and Julie Ann in 2009; and a brother, William O. Hueners in 1998.
Estella - daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, great grandmother and foster mother - is still much loved and will always be in the hearts of those who were closest to her and knew her best, and who will always greatly miss her presence in this world. |
