After I graduated with my long-sought electrical engineering degree (Diplom Ingenieur-Fach) in August 1949, I immediately accepted a position with H.F.C. Müller in Hamburg, a subsidiary of Phillips Electronics. My new job involved selling and servicing X-Ray machines and other medical equipment.
Based in Wolfenbüttel, I constantly traveled by train around a region stretching from the Harz Mountains to the North Sea, calling on dentists, doctors and hospitals. When one of the doctors asked to test our equipment by X-raying my hand, his examination revealed a metal splinter from a Russian shell lodged in one of my fingers. After removing the splinter, he bought our machine.
Though well-paid employment was very hard to come by in postwar Germany, I did not feel fulfilled by my work. It was not just a lack of any natural talent in sales; I simply drew no satisfaction from the job. My hope of finding a different position that involved active, hands-on work that utilized my engineering background was discouraged by the very limited opportunities available at that time. The subtle role that social status played in influencing hiring decisions also aggravated me. I wanted to be judged on my ability, not on whether I came from an aristocratic background.
Even more ominously, the Cold War had intensified in 1948 during a confrontation between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union over access to the western sector of Berlin. While the Western Allies responded to the Russian blockade with an airlift rather than with force, Cold War tensions and the threat of potential military hostilities in Europe persisted into the early 1950s. Listening to the news, the outbreak of war seemed more likely to me than a continuance of the fragile peace.
If a new conflict started, there was little doubt that the government would immediately call me back into service because of my military experience. Communist Russia was still a threat to Germany, but I felt that six years of soldiering, mostly in combat, had fulfilled any duty that I owed to my country. My first responsibility was now to take care of my wife and child.
In the early summer of 1951, the international situation and postwar economic problems seemed to offer little promise of a secure and prosperous future in Germany. I increasingly began to think that I could best protect and provide for my family elsewhere. After anguishing over Germany’s condition and our family’s financial circumstances, Anneliese and I finally reached the very difficult decision to emigrate from our homeland. Our plan was to live and work in another country for a decade or so, until our family’s financial condition had improved, the German economy had fully recovered, and the threat of war had diminished.
Our first choice was to go to Argentina, where many other Germans had emigrated, but I was not able to speak Spanish. Although speaking French better than English at that time, I thought we would have the greatest opportunity to build the life that we wanted in the United States. Commonly viewed as a land of opportunity for immigrants, America was the natural choice. Disappointed to learn that the quota for German immigrants to the United States was already filled, Anneliese and I settled on going to Canada.
After deciding to emigrate to Canada, I continued to work out of Wolfenbüttel for Müller until I received my Canadian visa three months later. In August 1951 we sold our few pieces of furniture, raising just enough cash for me to purchase three ship tickets to Canada. Anneliese and Harald would temporarily remain behind with Anneliese’s father in Hamburg, while I sought employment and a place for us to live.
My education and determination to carve out a better life for my family provided me with skills and motivation. Yet making a fresh start overseas would be a struggle given my lack of money, connections, and limited command of the language. A deep sense of uncertainty pervaded my thoughts as I prepared to set out alone.
The temporary separation from my wife and son in Germany would be difficult enough. Even more painful was the knowledge that we would be leaving behind our families and native land. Though it was not something that factored into our thinking at the time, I recognize now that our plan must have come as a great shock to my close-knit family, particularly my mother. Since almost my entire family resided behind the Iron Curtain, I could not even say goodbye to them in person. They only learned about our decision to leave Germany in a letter.
At the Hamburg train station, I bade farewell to my father-in-law, Anneliese, and my son. Everyone was crying as I boarded the railroad car to start my journey for the trip across France to the port of Calais. When the train reached Lüneburg half an hour later on its first stop, I met my father on the platform and embraced him in another difficult goodbye.
Heavy-hearted, I departed my loved ones, not knowing where I would build a new life for my family or when we would see each other again. Perhaps only six years of war could have hardened me to leave them and my homeland for an unknown future.
During the train trip to the coast of France, I received my first impression of what to expect on the other side of the Atlantic. Conversing in English with an American couple sitting next to me, the question of what I would do if I developed a hole in my socks somehow came up. In response, I told them that I would probably have to mend it myself since I was alone.
Somewhat dismayed by my comment, the American woman informed me that they did not do that in the United States. If a pair of socks developed a hole, Americans would simply throw them away and buy a new pair. I thought that Americans must be rich to live so extravagantly.
Departing from Calais in mid-August, I soon discovered that an empty 1,500-ton freighter bobs like a cork on the ocean. Half seasick, my only hope was for a rapid crossing. However, a hurricane in the middle of the Atlantic forced our captain to sail back toward France until the storm passed. Ultimately, a voyage that should have taken eight days lasted two weeks.
Finally reaching the town of Mont-Joli at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River on Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula on August 27, I disembarked from the ship with two suitcases, a radio, and about ten dollars in my pocket. In order to earn an extra five dollars, I spent a day working on the dock loading pulpwood aboard the freighter for its return trip. Already missing Anneliese and Harald terribly, I would have embarked on the return voyage if it had been possible.
Using a train ticket provided by the Canadian government, I set out on the 350-mile trip down to Montreal. As an electrical engineer, the first thing that drew my attention was that the power and phone lines were strung between poles above ground, instead of being buried as in Europe. There would be many more such differences that I would encounter in the coming months.
After completing my processing as a Canadian immigrant in Montreal, I stored my suitcases in a locker and immediately began to hunt for a job in one of the local factories. With my limited funds I could not even afford to take buses or streetcars and was forced to walk for miles.
At the end of my first day, I was exhausted and my feet ached. Even my mind was fatigued from my immersion in a mixture of French and English. Despite my greater fluency in French, the heavily accented Québecois French made it almost as difficult for me to comprehend as English.
Returning to my room at the hostel that first night, I met the Swedish man with whom I would share a bed and instantly fell asleep. In the middle of the night, I came awake to a hand groping me from across the bed. In a shocked stupor, I stumbled to my feet. Already under strain, I was confronted with a bizarre situation that I had never before faced. In my groggy anger I wanted to punch the guy out, but that meant risking trouble with the police.
Uncertain what to do, I knew that I could not remain in the room. Quickly packing my suitcases, I headed out into the street about three o’clock in the morning. Craving rest, it was the last place I wanted to be. Locating another place to stay after a long hunt through the neighborhood, I fell back asleep asking myself whether I had made an awful mistake in leaving Germany.
Despite my doubts, I renewed my search for work the following morning. While Canadian businesses acknowledged my years of practical experience working as an electrician, they did not recognize any German engineering degree. At the end of the week, I was unable to afford to search further and accepted a more menial job as an electrician at Sorel Industries, Ltd. Located in the Montreal suburb of Longueuil, it is one of the largest heavy equipment manufacturers in eastern Canada.
During the day I would disassemble, clean, and reassemble electrical motors. In the evening, I would return to my new hostel. A couple of weeks after finding a job, I was eating supper in a restaurant near my lodgings. To my amazement, a Canadian soldier sitting beside me picked up where my Swedish roommate had left off. Already very homesick, this episode further magnified my loneliness and unhappiness.
Meanwhile, back in Germany, Anneliese ran short of money but was too proud to ask for financial help. To avoid making such an embarrassing request, she went to a shop where she pawned some of our few remaining valuables. This gave her just enough cash to survive until her departure.
About three weeks after I started work, my prospects greatly improved when Sorel shifted me to much more interesting work as a draftsman. They needed a German-speaking engineer to assist them in exploiting captured schematics of a German design that would be used to build a four-barreled weapons system for the U.S. Navy. Now earning enough money to support myself adequately and rent a one-room apartment in the center of Montreal, I was ready to welcome Anneliese and Harald.
Following three long months of separation, they finally arrived in Canada on the ocean liner Homeline in October 1951, bringing an end to my isolation. With our finances rapidly improving, we quickly moved from our cramped residence in the center of the city into a larger apartment across the St. Lawrence River in Longueuil, closer to my job. On October 9, 1952, our daughter Marion was born. Our family and happiness grew together.
Of course, there were also challenges that we experienced as we made our new lives. As a young German boy who spoke with an accent, Harald probably faced the hardest adjustment. Early on, he got into a couple of fistfights with another kid at school because of his limited English, but it was nothing too serious.
There were also advantages to life in Canada as Anneliese and I discovered when we found that a pound of the animal lard that we liked to use as a spread for bread and for cooking oil was priced at only 15 cents. While we had considered lard to be a luxury item back in Germany, we now enjoyed slathering it on everything we ate, at least until we learned how unhealthy it was.
In May 1953, Anneliese and I decided to leave Montreal in pursuit of better career opportunities in the city of Hamilton, Ontario, located 375 miles to the southwest. Almost immediately after our arrival, I accepted an offer from The Steel Company of Canada, which operated the largest steel plant in the country. After working there as a draftsman for a couple of months, the company transferred me to the engineering department and placed me in charge of maintaining an electric arc furnace.
An arc furnace is a brick-lined container with a moveable roof. After loading scrap iron into the container and closing the roof, the operator extends three moving electrodes down through the roof of the container to create an electric arc that melts the scrap iron. Electric furnaces had previously been used to melt scrap steel into iron, but we utilized a recently developed technology that gave an arc furnace the capacity to produce high-quality steel from scrap steel.
While never explicitly requesting a raise, I regularly asked my employers for more responsibilities. As I proved myself, I continued to earn more responsibilities and a higher income. Meanwhile, the experience that I received working with the first arc electric furnace of its type in North America would prove invaluable to my career.
Anneliese and I were ambitious and our life continued to improve in Hamilton. We moved to progressively larger apartments three times and bought our first car. During this time, my English language ability also improved through daily practice.
In November 1954, Anneliese opened her own shop, “Kenilworth Florist,” in the center of the city. She had my support to pursue this long-time dream of hers, though it meant further changes in our lives. Harold (formerly Harald) had already begun grade school, but we had to place Marion at a daycare center run by nuns while Anneliese was at work. On my lunch hour and in my spare time, meanwhile, I played delivery boy for the florist shop. Unfortunately, her business made little profit despite her hard work.
On Christmas Eve 1954, Anneliese was stuck in the shop preparing flower arrangements while I delivered them around town, preventing us from being with our children as usual. Listening to Christmas carols on my car’s radio with the snow falling outside, tears ran down my cheeks as I despaired at the thought of Harold and Marion alone when I had enjoyed such wonderful Christmases as a child. It made me cherish that Christmas Eve even more when we finally were able to celebrate later that night.
In the end, Anneliese decided to close her shop before the following Christmas after giving the business venture her best effort.
In the early 1950s my brother Hans was still living on the farm in Püggen with my mother, my sisters, and Aunt Hedwig, while Otto had married and was living and working on the farm belonging to his wife’s family in nearby Hohengrieben.
The East German government had not yet attempted to seize our family’s farm in Püggen outright, but continued to require ever-higher production quotas from my remaining family members after my father’s decision to remain in the west. Although other farms were also unable to meet their quotas, the Communist authorities continually persecuted my family because of its known hostility to the regime.
Shortly before Christmas in 1951, Otto received an order to go down to the office of Püggen’s mayor. Growing concerned when he failed to return after an hour and a half, my sister Marlene went down to check on him and learned that they were waiting for the arrival of Communist authorities from the city of Salzwedel, about 10 miles away. When the officials appeared shortly afterward, they took Otto away in handcuffs.
In Salzwedel, a judge sentenced my brother to 15 months in prison because our family’s farm had failed to meet its production quota, apparently unaware that my mother now held the title to the farm and that Otto himself was now living in Hohengrieben. The court also informed Otto that the farm would be confiscated as a result of both the failure to meet the quota as well as my father’s illegal departure to the West in 1948.
When people in Püggen learned about Otto’s prison sentence, they were so upset that they cornered the local police detachment in a basement in the village until his release was granted. The East German police soon rearrested Otto, but allowed him out of prison again in the middle of February 1952. He returned to Hohengrieben and had little further involvement with affairs on the farm in Püggen.
At this same time, the government went forward with its confiscation of my family’s bank account and farm, placing it under the supervision of a government Treuhändler (trustee). In addition to claiming furniture from our home, the government also began confiscating horses from the farm to use elsewhere, and starting killing the farm’s cattle for meat, even if a cow was pregnant.
Because my sister Christa was working at a photography shop in Salzwedel, my oldest sister Marlene had the primary responsibility of looking out for my mother and my sister Margarete. Now an employee of the state, Marlene earned hourly wages to work on our farm. Because it was now state property, my family was no longer able to take eggs, milk, or anything else from its production. Though she fed and took care of the remaining animals, all other operations on the farm ceased.
In March of 1953, Herr Schmerschneider, the same local Lutheran pastor who had warned that my father would be arrested if he returned to Püggen in 1948, passed along new information. This time, he alerted my mother and sisters that the Communists intended to take Marlene and Christa to a camp on the island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea to perform manual labor as punishment for my father’s illegal departure six years earlier.
Under mounting pressure, my mother and sisters finally made the heartrending decision to leave our old family farm forever and escape to West Germany. It was more than leaving a house and property; it meant accepting the surrender of the family’s legacy, land on which our ancestors had lived for centuries.
In preparation for their departure, my mother and sisters began collecting our personal items, clothing, bedcovers, and other belongings for shipment to my father in West Germany by mail, posting the parcels from different locations to avoid detection. While they were able to mail some of our valuables, they could not risk sending everything by that route.
Among the items not sent were some very valuable old coins that my parents had dug up from our farm’s ornamental garden in the 1920s. Dating from the Thirty Years War of 1618 to 1648, these coins had likely been buried by the earlier residents before they fled into the surrounding woods to escape marauding soldiers.
When I was a student in Wolfenbüttel and my parents had no money, they gave me part of the collection to help me out. Though pawning part of the collection, I returned the remainder to my mother before I left for Canada. As she readied to leave for West Germany, my mother entrusted the entire collection for safekeeping with one of the few neighbors on whom she felt she could rely. Sadly, this neighbor betrayed that trust and sold our family’s treasure.
The increasing use of barbed wire fencing, guard dogs, and minefields along the border had made an unauthorized crossing to the West almost impossible, but at this time there was still an escape route through the divided city of Berlin. Because anyone who tried to depart to the West without official permission faced arrest and imprisonment by the East German secret police, my mother and sisters kept their intentions secret from our neighbors and continued to behave normally until the day they departed.
Leaving everything behind except small suitcases, they began to sneak out of Püggen on Friday, April 3, 1953, just two days before Easter. Agreeing to meet in West Berlin, they split up to avoid drawing the attention of one of the many government informers.
While my mother crossed a field out of our village and caught the train in Beetzendorf, Margarete left from the stop nearest our farm in Siedenlangenbeck, where she joined my mother on board the same train. Meanwhile, Christa remained in Salzwedel after work on Friday and Marlene stayed on the farm to feed the animals.
Telling the Treuhändler that she was leaving Püggen to attend a church confirmation of a relative, and would not be back until the beginning of the week, Marlene said goodbye to Aunt Hedwig. On the morning of Easter Sunday, she walked out the entrance of our farm for the last time with our dog barking behind her. After boarding the train at Siedenlangenbeck, Marlene met up with Christa in Salzwedel.
Upon reaching East Berlin, my mother and Margarete and my older sisters separately caught the subway train that still ran between the Communist-controlled eastern zone and the Allied-controlled western zone. Their joyful reunion at Spandau in West Berlin meant that they were safe and free, though they lacked the money to buy a ticket to West Germany.
Finally, about a month later, they purchased plane tickets to Hannover with funds that I sent them from Canada. When they arrived by train in Lüneburg from Hannover that May, my father was waiting on the platform to embrace them all for the first time in four and a half years.
Learning they had fled, the East German government immediately assumed total control of the property in Püggen. Soon afterward, it demolished all the buildings, except for the Altenteil where my grandparents had lived.
The fate of our home and farm was tragic, but this loss was far outweighed by the sense of euphoria that my mother and sisters felt as a result of their successful escape from Communist control. Though my family never expected to recover our farm following its seizure by the East German authorities, my three sisters eventually won a court battle to regain title to our property following German reunification in 1990.
My family was thrilled when the border dividing Germany suddenly disappeared during the wave of East European revolutions in 1989, but Otto was the happiest one of all. He and his family finally had a chance to live in a free society and travel for the first time in decades. Tragically for him, some members of our family had already passed away before the wall came down. As for most Germans, my family found that the nation’s defeat and division had lasting consequences that proved much greater than the direct impact of the war itself.
By the mid-1950s, Anneliese and I had decided not to return to Germany after growing increasingly comfortable with our new lives in North America, but we still wanted to try to emigrate to the United States as we had always planned to do.
At the American consulate on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, I applied for a visa that would permit me to bring my family to live in the United States as legal aliens. Because of my background and work experience, they issued us a visa to emigrate in less than three months.
Shortly after receiving permission in the summer of 1956, I resigned my job at The Steel Company of Canada and drove down alone to Cleveland, Ohio. Given my experience, I had five different job offers from construction companies and a steel manufacturer within a week. Many of the positions interested me, but I ultimately accepted a position as an electrical engineer with a large industrial construction firm that offered to double my salary.
After spending three months back in Germany, Anneliese, Harold, and Marion arrived in the United States and moved into the new home I had found for us in Cleveland. We quickly settled into a quiet family life, driving around northern Ohio for sightseeing on weekends. About a year later, on October 22, 1957, our son Norman Ralph was born. Afterward, Anneliese and I joked that our children could form their own United Nations, representing Germany, Canada, and the United States.
In late 1958, I left the job with my first American employer and went to work for another Cleveland firm. At the age of 38, I became the chief electrical engineer at Jones and Laughlin Steel Company. Working with two 200-ton capacity electric arc furnaces, I now began to develop an international reputation for my innovative expertise in maximizing the efficiency of these furnaces in terms of the amount of time and energy used relative to the quantity of steel produced.
Today, the industry uses this type of furnace to produce roughly 50 percent of the steel made in the United States, but it was a cutting edge technology during the late 1950s.
During the ensuing decade, we took the children to visit our family in Germany about once a year. My parents doted on their grandchildren, though my conservatively dressed mother sometimes thought that Marion wore outfits that were “too colorful.” While sometimes missing our families and Germany, we never regretted our decision to build new lives in America.
As immigrants, Anneliese and I constantly sought to blend our German heritage with the American lifestyle. While we spoke German together, we usually tried to speak English with our children. Instilling German values like hard work and punctuality were particularly important to us and probably led Anneliese and I to be more strict than most American parents. To teach responsibility, we assigned all the children regular chores in the house and in the yard. The children knew that when I told them to be home by five o’clock, it meant five o’clock. They also learned to value our time together as a family.
Growing up in Püggen, Sundays had always been a day for family. Anneliese and I tried to make this a family time in Cleveland too. Following church in the morning, she and I took turns preparing something special, typically a traditional German meal. After a nap, we would pack the kids into the car for a Sunday drive into the country or to a local park for a hike and rock-climbing. Some Sundays, we would drive up to Lake Erie for picnics.
Returning home, we would have Abendbrot, a light meal consisting of an open-face sandwich. Like most American families, our Sundays often finished with the family sitting around the television watching shows like Gunsmoke or The FBI. Perhaps our separation from our extended family back in Germany made the bonds among our immediate family tighter.
Twice a year, Cleveland held a festival celebrating German heritage that offered traditional food, music, and dancing. Anneliese and I always loved dancing together, frequently reminiscing about our first meeting in the dance hall in Lüneburg.
About this time, I entered a local hospital after experiencing severe back problems resulting from the war. As I lay in traction to prevent movement, a man with a broken hip was placed on the room’s other bed. Later that night, the other patient asked me for a smoke. When I told him I was unable to move, he tried to get out of bed to retrieve his cigarettes from the drawer in the table next to him. With his broken hip, he collapsed immediately on the floor, unable to move. I pushed the button for a nurse and they lifted him back into bed.
That drama would be repeated three times that night. As a daily smoker of cigarettes, cigars, or a pipe since the invasion of Russia in 1941, this pathetic exhibition seemed like a warning to me. If smoking was so addictive that it could cause that kind of insane behavior, I wanted nothing to do with it. Deciding never to smoke again, I quit for good.
In 1961, at the end of the five-year required waiting period, our family proudly attended a ceremony at which we became citizens of the United States, breaking the last legal connection with our Fatherland. Making up my mind that my family and I would be Americans, I dropped the German part of my identity almost completely. Even the legal spelling of our family’s name was changed from Lübbecke to Lubbeck, though this was partly because I was tired of hearing my name mispronounced as “Lubbeckee,” instead of the proper “Luebbeckeh.”
On January 1, 1964, I went to work for the Union Carbide Corporation after leaving the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company. Rather quickly, I worked my way up to the position of Manager of Arc Furnace Technology in the division which made graphite electrodes for steel-making arc furnaces.
At Union Carbide, I also started to travel all over the country and the world, consulting with large and small steel companies and foundries about setting up new electric arc furnaces and optimizing their manufacturing process. Even though operating or monitoring an electric arc furnace was much safer than many of my earlier jobs, adjusting a furnace could still be dangerous.
As I was operating one of our client’s large furnaces, I entered the control cubicle to adjust the manufacturing process. Inside the cramped control space, I had to maneuver my body among the uninsulated copper bars running down along the sides of the cubicle.
When my elbow accidentally touched one of these bars carrying 380 volts, the shock nearly knocked me unconscious, leaving me barely able to remain on my feet. Though managing to avoid a fall against the side of the cubicle that could easily have electrocuted me, the experience reminded me that I could never allow myself to become complacent about the hazards of my work.
With a growing reputation as an expert in the field, there were increasing demands on my time. I joined half a dozen professional societies in my field and wrote several articles in industry magazines as well as a book on the arc melting process. Giving about 500 presentations on the technical process of melting steel in electric arc furnaces to groups ranging in size from 15 to 300 people, I learned over the years that it was critical to speak very deliberately when explaining complex aspects of my work.
While my work-related travel schedule disrupted our calm family life to some extent, I still managed to be home almost every weekend. On my trips to Europe, South America, and South Africa, Anneliese occasionally traveled with me for a vacation.
By 1968, Harold, my oldest son, was already in college at Purdue University studying electrical engineering, while Marion was in high school and Ralph was in middle school. At this time, we purchased eight acres of wooded land close to the town of Medina, outside Cleveland. Because our home in Seven Hills sold quickly and it was impossible to rent an apartment for just a few months, Anneliese proposed that we camp on our property during the summer of 1969 while our new home was under construction.
Every morning, I would bathe in an improvised shower, dress for work in our tent, and walk out of the woods to my car parked on the street in front of our property. It was not particularly comfortable, but it was an interesting six-month adventure. Finally, we moved into our new home, scenically set in the middle of the woods. We enjoyed our refuge from the hustle of city life.
Though I regularly attended a Lutheran Church before and after emigrating, as an engineer I had sometimes struggled with the lack of adequate scientific evidence to support what I read in the Bible. Only in the late 1960s did I fully embrace my Christian faith and find an inner spiritual peace.
In 1974, this faith was tested when we received traumatic news. After Anneliese began experiencing pain, doctors diagnosed her with breast cancer. Over the course of the 14 years that followed, Anneliese endured numerous and frequent surgical operations as well as chemotherapy and radiation treatments. The cancer went into remission, but always returned.
Despite her constant suffering, she remained cheerful and refused to reveal any indication of her pain to others. Her profound faith in God gave her the fortitude and strength to live a full life, in spite of her illness. My faith helped me to support her through the grueling struggle while my love for her only deepened.
Although Anneliese and I had originally planned to buy our retirement home in the warmer climate of South Carolina, the stunning mountain vistas in North Carolina, plus the ubiquitous insects in South Carolina, convinced us to change our mind. At the end of April 1983, Anneliese and I moved into our new home on the side of Sunset Mountain in Asheville, North Carolina. Because of my accumulated vacation time, I continued to receive my regular salary from Union Carbide until the end of the year.
Immediately following my official retirement on January 1, 1984, I formed the William Lubbeck Company, Inc., acting as a consultant to the steel and foundry industry. Working part-time, I continued to visit some of the customers with whom I had developed a good relationship.
During the preceding years, Harold graduated from Purdue as an electrical engineer and began work with a power company in Akron, Ohio. Marion obtained an art degree from Oxford University in Oxford, Ohio, while Ralph earned an industrial engineering degree at Southern Illinois University.
They all married and had children who became an endless source of joy for Anneliese and me. After long years of battling cancer, Anneliese’s health was declining, but she once more collected her strength for a journey back to Medina, Ohio in the late summer of 1988, determined not to miss the baptism of our youngest grandchild.
On December 2, 1988, the love of my life and my wife of 43 years passed away. Though we had known that the day would come, it was still a terrible loss for me and our family. Living with all of those loving memories is sometimes nearly unbearable and I miss her every day.
A wonderful wife and loving mother, I know her soul rests easy in Heaven, free of the physical torment of cancer. When God calls me home, I will be buried next to her in the cemetery in Wendisch-Evern, close to Lüneburg where we first met.