52 Ancestors in 52 Week - Week 51 "NICE"

This is week 51 of the 52 Weeks challenge and the prompt is “nice”.

When I was growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, our family was the recipient of an annual basket of fresh fruit. It arrived every year in time for the holidays. The card was always signed “The Mungers”. In the 40s and 50s fresh fruit in the winter was rare since the transportation and distribution of fresh items had not yet been perfected. I always wondered who the Mungers were and why they sent such a nice gift.

When I began doing genealogy this was one of many apparent mysteries I wanted to answer.

In the 1930s my father and his sister were friends with a young couple named Otto (aka Bud) and Grace (Munger)Dvorak who also lived in Chicago. Otto and Grace had both been born and raised in Iowa before marrying and moving to Chicago where Otto was employed by John Morrell & Co. As graduates of the University of Iowa they were ardent supporters of the football team and often went back for games. My father and his sister Dorothy often went with them. The friendship flourished and grew even stronger when Dorothy married Bob Murray and the young couples began having children.

In 1938 Grace was home in Iowa and 8 ½ months pregnant with her third child.  On 28 Dec 1938, Grace went into labor. Complications of her pregnancy caused Grace to hemorrhage and she died giving birth to a son David.

Grace was survived by her husband Otto, daughter Barbara, sons Dudley and David as well as her parents Grant and Mable Munger and sister Dorothy.

The Mungers never forgot the friendship that was forged by the young people and remembered it every year with the special gift of the fruit basket.