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In search of my grandfather's past … and maybe a book deal

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Howard Lager

Questions answered

PhilandJoeonthefarmI just got back from the Brenckle Family Reunion. And oh boy, did I once again hit the motherlode.

So, to answer your question, yes, there’s a significant faction within the family that believes Howard Lager did get away with murder. And there were other concerns, as you can imagine, as well. Particularly with the female members of the family. No one had a definitive answer, though.  A few people thought they heard that Howard had gotten Marion pregnant and that was what the fight on the night of the fire was about.

There was also a rift, apparently, among the Brenckle siblings over the use of these farmed out children. A certain part of the family thought it was unethical and it got pretty heated.

But no one could say anything for certain, and because of that, I’m still wary of pinning criminal labels on anyone — even though you can’t defame the dead.

I shared all the stories I had, and also the research I’d done on the Brenckle family itself. I had copies of Raymond and Myrtle’s marriage license, census records for branches of the Brenckle family and a few odds and ends.

After dinner, we went down to the basement because they had a surprise for me.

“I thought you should have them,” they said as they handed over two envelopes of pictures.

If I was shocked by seeing my grandpa on the front page of the newspaper, these two envelopes shocked me even more.

The picture at the top of the page is Phil (right) and Joe (left) the summer after they came to the farm. This is the youngest I have ever seen either boy. Unless I stumble on a trove of baby pictures by a forgotten Venezia relative, it maybe as young as I get.

I look at their faces and I can see that they are happy. It makes my heart soar. They look like they are having a terrific time. After all they’ve been through, they’re in the summer sunshine, together, with clothes and shoes. Grandpa looks a little silly. I’ve seen my brother make that same face when he’s being goofy and someone’s trying to take his picture.

PhilonthefarmThis next one is just Phil with another one of the farmhands. It might even be Howard Lager. I think it kind of looks like him.

These pictures make me think again — if you’ve got dozens of kids passing through your farm just to do work, why take their picture? Why treat them like members of the family if you were just going to cast them out when the season was over? That wasn’t going to be my grandfather’s and great-uncle’s fate, it seems.

Joe's weddingThis next one cracks me up. Joe, even though he was the baby brother, was the first Venezia boy to get married. In 1932, he married Ruth Broglie. Joe, looking almost like a movie star, is on the left. Phil, on the right, was his best man. Awwwww.

I laugh because my dad looks like that in a tux. He stands the same way, with his hand at his side, fingers curled almost the same way. They look so Godfather. I’m not sure who the little girl or the maid-of-honor are. I’m also shocked to see how much both boys look like their parents. Joe is Francesco with Saverina’s eyes and forehead smoothed over the sharp edges. Phil is his mother, with his father’s thin face pulling what could be too round into a squarish-oval. Two more generations, and my face is what my Grammy always admiringly called “the perfect oval.” I never thought so, but I guess that meant something back in the day. 🙂

I’m full of good food and good memories now. I may not have concrete answers, but I have ideas. And as I think about writing the book, those ideas will surely guide my imagination.

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Thankful for the Carnegie Library — Again

DispatchPhotoLook at this. Just look at it. I’ve had it in my possession for two days now and I can’t stop staring at it.

This is the first time I’ve seen my grandfather this young. And oh, what a picture it is. It was on the front page of the Pittsburgh Dispatch. It was taken the morning after the fire.

You may not be able to see it very well, but that’s Phil on the far left. Joe, Marion Drost and her brothers, are all standing in front of steps that go to the shell of the burned out house. I stare and stare at Grandpa’s face. In spite of the blur, I can see the despair in his eyes. His jaw is clenched.

Of all the material I found over the last 48 hours, this is the most amazing.

I knew the story was front-page, but a photo like that makes it so viscerally real to me. How many times have Jason and I been on the opposite side of the lens? I feel like I can see the scene going on all around the edges of this picture so clearly.

I won’t be able to link the material I found because I copied it all off microfiche and it doesn’t look like any of the other papers were part of the Google News Archive project. I’ll just have to summarize.

Pittsburgh had half a dozen major newspapers that covered the area. How they approached the story depended on their proximity and, to be honest, objectivity. Some, like the Press and the Gazette, were pretty straightforward. The Dispatch, News Chronicle and Sun, along with a few others, were a more lurid in their coverage. And one paper, I forget which one, got so much wrong in the initial report that I was glad the reporter’s name wasn’t memorialized. I’d have been mortified.

But all that helped me get a much clearer picture of what happened that night because certain facts are consistent throughout the reporting.

They include:

  • Howard Lager being on the phone with a woman who was not his wife at about midnight on the night of the fire (he was married at the time, but his wife and child were living elsewhere.)
  • Howard sounding the alarm that roused the house
  • Howard waking Phil first and the two of them fighting the fire in the kitchen together with pitchers.(This fact just wrenched my heart. He must have been terrified. The fact he escaped out the kitchen window made it all the more harrowing.)
  • Howard going back upstairs through the flames to rescue his niece and nephew (Anna Mae and Buddy). He saved them and himself by tossing the kids down to Raymond and then climbing down a porch support.
  • A central furnace had just been installed in the house. Howard recalled the vents on the floor were hot as he passed over them and there was an odor of “varnish” in the air near them.
  • Phil and Joe corroborating Howard’s statement of the night’s events when on the stand during the inquest.

There were also some very interesting revelations:

  • The Brenckles had homemade wine and were drinking it that evening. This was during the height of Prohibition. Homemade wine was allowed, but of course anyone who drank was vilified.Oopsie.
  • There was a fight on the evening before the fire between Myrtle, Howard and Cecilia over a ring. Howard had apparently given it to Cecilia (uh…). Myrtle was flipping out over it. Cecilia returned the ring that evening.
  • No one saw Cecilia after she went upstairs to bed. She never made it out of the house.
  • There was confusion among the fire companies over who covered the fire. The property is between Reserve and Ross. The call to their version of 911 went into the city first. There was a significant delay in getting help out to the house.
  • John Orlowski may have gone back into the house because he wanted to rescue his dog. I can’t even think about how sad that is right now.
  • The Coroner was really, really hard on Raymond Brenckle. He all but accused the Brenckles of letting the kids burn while they worried about their own family.
  • The county’s Juvenile Court System was on trial, too. A number of the papers made some pretty good hay out of renting kids out for farmwork. The county paid about $5 a week for their care. When the trial concluded without an indictment, there were lots of speeches and pronouncements about how the District Attorney and President Judge would keep investigating, demanding answers. Yadda. Yadda. Yadda. I’ve sat now about 60 hours in front of mircrofiche and intranet search. I don’t see a scintilla of follow-up on this case. At least, until the next tragedy.

I’m in Pittsburgh to celebrate Thanksgiving with Mary Ann, Mike and my cousins, so it’s been incredible sharing these revelations with them. And I’m feeling even more thankful that none of us ever had to live through something like this.

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Shocked

FrontPagePPressCaptureI’m still shaking.

I’m shocked. I’m stunned. And I am also now completely obsessed.

One of the last searches I did before bed the other night brought up a strand of information I’d never seen before. I found it using a variation of Phil’s name.

There was a fire. Remember how I’d said the old Brenckle farmhouse burned down? Well, let me tell you, there’s a whole lot more to it than that.

Because it seems during the same year Ottavio was seeking the trust for the siblings, Phil and his brother were embroiled in a scandalous, front-page saga  as Allegheny County investigated the cause of Brenckle farm fire.

Two children, apparently other wards of Allegheny County, died in the blaze. Grandpa and Joe had to take the stand and testify about what happened that night.

“Others who testified yesterday were Philip Venezia [hooray to the reporter who got his name spelled right], another ward of the court wards who made his home with the Brenckles. Philip said that after the fire had started, he saw John, the child whose body afterwards was found in the ruins of the house, with the other children. No one though saw Cecilia at any time.

Philip told how Lager had helped the children from the house. Joseph Venezia, another court ward, also living with the Brenckles, gave about the same testimony as his brother Philip about seeing John after the fire started. The supposition is that John went back into the burning house and could not get out. Lager is being held without bail.”

Cecilia is Cecilia Drost, 13, and John is John Orlowski, 9. Both of them were wards of Allegheny County, just as Phil and Joe were. Lager is Howard Lager, Myrtle’s brother, who apparently lived at the farm, too. From what I gather from other articles, it seems that Howard was suspected of not only starting the fire, but of starting it to cover up the fact he was sexually abusing Cecilia.

Their death was enough to raise serious questions about how the Juvenile Court was overseeing its wards (terminology at the time for foster children). So much so that the Press wrote a strongly-worded editorial condemning them and the practice of “farming out.”

The whole thing leaves me feeling sick. Sick, too, because more than 80 years later, nothing’s changed. Kids still die and get abused by the people the state says should take care of them.

I’ve been on the phone with my parents on and off all day as I uncover a new article. My dad is as shocked as I am.

“Never,” he said. “I never, ever heard about this. Neither did Mary Ann. I called her to ask. This is incredible.”

It seems, from what I found so far, no charges were leveled in the blaze. I haven’t found anything on whether Howard Lager was convicted of sexual assault or similar charges.

Even with the news articles, there are so many unanswered questions. Looks like I have a new mystery.

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