I will leave the faded photo of the Koftan children below alone, the boys marked clearly enough, L.J. in the upper right corner with his distinctive eye. The girls in front are, left to right, completely faded Babe (Margaret), Bess (Bozena), and Ella.
No one is identified in this photograph but Ella, at the far right.
Here she is with her first husband, Ott Adel, and their three children, Raymond and the twins, Lorraine and Lloyd. The rest of the photos are clearly identified, the last two from our 1948 trip to see her in South Dakota and Uncle Forrest up in Montana, as well as the Black Hills and Yellowstone, as recounted earlier.
As I mentioned in the 1948 trip sequence, she ran a motel with a hugely obese, coarse man, Jack something. I think Raymond, the taller son, was the extra in the Passion Play and the one to get us tickets. Though I have Spearfish on the caption and I know the sons worked there, I think the motel was in Belle Fourche. We kept track of the family through annual Christmas cards from Lorraine, who married a rancher and lived in north central South Dakota. The last address in Mom's address book is Harold & Lorraine Meyer, [deleted], Isabel, S.D. 57633. As I recall, both her brothers were in the Twin Cities.
LATER NOTE: [Great] Aunt Margaret/Babe Langhammer wrote down her "Memories" in 1988 with some extra information I didn't know, so I take the liberty to add that she says, "Ella stayed in South Dakota with Bess [Bozena] and Lee [Chapin] . . . . Ella was twelve years older, and never around, so we were never close at that time." She adds that "Ella married Otto Adel at Witten, South Dakota [a small town northwest of Winner]." Shell-shocked in World War I, Otto farmed but ultimately became helpless and died. Babe actually went up and helped Ella with the three children. Witten was near the Rosebud Indian Reservation. At the time Otto was "in and out of the hospital . . . . Bess [Bozena, their sister] and the kids were living in Witten and Lee [Chapin, Bess's husband] was running a barber shop." "After Ott died, Ella moved up in to the Black Hills. She married twice, but divorced both times. Later she moved to Isabel to be near Lorraine. Lloyd died. On January 1, 1981, we received word that Ella had died. She had a pacemaker, but it didn't work." She's buried at Witten. And I am so grateful Aunt Babe made the effort to leave her "Memories" for the family. The older relatives should always be encouraged to either tape-record or write about their families. (Well, hey, I'm trying.)
Leave a comment