On this historic day of 1776, the Declaration of Independence was formally adopted by Continental Congress. Several million American citizens have, since, enjoyed freedom in the United States of America at the cost of many lives and sacrifices.
One of those who answered the call to war was 95-year-old Leonard Hudson Bertram.
I was named after the guy who discovered Hudson Bay, said Bertram – World War II Seabee veteran, son, brother, husband, father, grandfather, Edison Sault Electric Company retiree, boat nerd and proud Yooper.
Bertram was born at his family’s home on 1019 Young Street, Sault Ste. Marie on April 18, 1927.
“I know the date must be right because my cousin, Dale Bertram, was born the next day on April 19, 1927 in Pontiac,” he said.
Bertram certainly tested the waters here and there. He had his share of adventures and misadventures as a kid.
“I rode my tricycle into our garden, where dad raised honeybees,” he said. “I was attacked by hundreds of bees. My eyes swelled shut and my face swelled up; not a good thing.”
Neighborhood friend, David McDowell, rescued Bertram from the bees. But the youngster was not deterred in the slightest from re-entering the garden.
“I still went and watched dad harvest the honey,” Bertram recalled with yesterday’s clarity. “All of us kids ate honey right out of the combs. The comb, well, that's honey and wax in an inch thick wood frame, where the bees form tiny wax cells and fill them with honey, food for next winter. But alas, humans make the bees dopey with smoke, rob the frames full of honey, take them home to heat until the wax softens, and out runs pure honey.”
Bertram and his siblings would cut wax cells into one inch candy-like squares of sugary golden goo.
“It was good, but awful sweet,” Bertram admitted nine decades later. “Of course, we thought my folks didn't know.”
Bertram’s mother, Amelia Mae Guest, was born and raised in the small farming community of Dafter, Mich.
After high school graduation, she studied at Ferris State University. Guest married Augustus Bertram of Brimley, Mich. on June 9, 1920 in her hometown.
Their eldest child, Howard Clayton, was born on April, 7 1921. He passed away in June of 1992. Next came Yvonne Amelia, born as “Evone” on June, 25 1923, who passed away just three days after her 80th birthday. Eleanor Lucille, who later flipped her name to Lucille Eleanor, was born two years after Yvonne. She only recently passed away on January 21 of this year at Golden Life – Roy Drive in Greenville, Mich.
“Then came the younger boys, James Arnold (1930 to 2006), who later reversed his name so that his initials would be the same as dad’s – A.J; Robert Kenneth (1933 to 1987); and Earl Wayne (1936 to 2005),” Bertram said. “They are all gone now, but there are a lot of memories.”
Mrs. Bertram canned vegetables and jarred fruit to snack on during the Eastern Upper Peninsula's long winter months.
“We all went out into the country and picked blueberries,” Bertram remembered. “Even during the Great Depression, they made sure we always had food on the table.”
Clothes and shoes were handed down the line of siblings from oldest to youngest. They learned to love and share with one another. As a family, they studied the Holy scriptures.
“We went to church school on Wednesday and church on Sunday, as long as mother could control us,” Betram said of his siblings and 10-year-old self.
The boy was considered plenty old enough by early 20th century standards to learn about a good day’s work. In the summers, he would travel to Uncle Roy and Aunt Edith Guest’s farm, where his mother was born and raised.
Bertram fed animals, milked cows, and gathered chicken eggs.
“Oh yes, a chore that takes place quite often – hauling and spreading manure in the fields,” he added. “I harnessed and drove horses, or drove the tractor during the haying season. I helped separate the cream from the milk twice a day and hand operated the cream separator.”
When wash day arrived he and his cousin, “Junior” Glenn Milligan, would haul in water from the well and rain barrel.
“Aunt Edith heated it on the wood stove for washing,” Bertram said. “We played all the usual games, like ‘Kick the Can,’ ‘Hide and Go Seek,’ and ‘Cowboys and Indians’ with rubber guns. We took turns using dad's bicycle when we could get away with it.”
To save on fuel costs, Mr. Bertram would often ride his bicycle to and from work at the US Army Corps of Engineers at the Soo Locks.
For inside entertainment, the Bertram family had a radio and functioning piano.
“Television, CDs, computers, and all those good things were still not here,” Bertram said. “We lived close to nature and made our own fun and games. Kids today just wouldn’t understand, nor appreciate that.”
Nonetheless, Bertram displayed early interests in both electronics and mechanics. Although the junior high student had two sisters, he remembered feeling entirely too bashful to talk to girls at an early age.
His brothers and sisters helped him to perfect innate musical talents.
“All my older siblings had been in singing groups in school,” Bertram said. “I followed in their footsteps. When I was five or six, I played the violin. I had taken piano lessons along the way too. Whenever company came from out of town, mother would ask me to play a tune on the violin; Lucille claimed it was half hers. I became so bashful.”
Bertram remembered Sault Area High School music teacher Earl Thomas fondly.
“He had a marching band, swing band, dance band, senior 12th grade choir – a 125 voice acapella choir with no accompanying music – and tenth-grade chorus,” said Bertram, who as a sophomore was selected to sing in senior choir. “I was the first tenor, the high one, and did a good job… if I do say so myself.”
But it was 1943 and German forces had just surrendered in Stalingrad to mark the country’s first major defeat.
Bertram took a job working on a Great Lakes passenger liner. “It had a big paddle wheel on each side of the boat.”
The ship was one in a fleet of about five sidewheel steamers that ran along the waters of Detroit, Buffalo, Mackinac Island, Sault Ste. Marie, Chicago and Cleveland.
He eventually found his way to the waters of the North Atlantic with the merchant marine.
“We hauled carbon black, air mats and barrels of aviation fuel over to the Isle of Wight or Southampton Wales, and then on to Cherbourg, France,” Bertram said. “We sailed over to France at night, while depth charges were being dropped around us to try and get German submarines or scare them off.”
The men often heard shots of gunfire from deep within the French hills.
“Then, back to Cardiff, Wales, England, past the ‘White Cliffs of Dover’ to load up ballasts, heavy enough to keep the ship upright,” said Bertram.
On one occasion, out in the middle of the icy Atlantic, the vessel began leaking hydraulic fluid from its rudder system.
“We couldn't steer the ship, except by hand,” said Bertram. “Six of us, trying to hold the ship in the storm didn't work. The convoy we were sailing with couldn't wait for us, so we were left to fend for ourselves. They put the engine at full speed astern. While backing up, the wind blew us around like a weather vane.”
The ship drifted off course, while its men worked desperately to regain power over the control system.
“We turned around again, without capsizing,” Bertram said.
Fortunately, the crew made it to “safety” in New York harbor.
“The US torpedo launching planes threatened to sink us until we got a message through, explaining that we had lost the convoy and, therefore, we didn't know what the code for the day was,” said Bertram. “So, they escorted us into the quarantine area. We proved who we were and that we were allowed to enter the New York harbor and dock. Good bye, ship.”
Goodbye was right for Bertram, who was then a 17-year-old young man.
“This was no place for me,” he decided. “What a dummy.”
Bertram retreated back to the Sault, but it no longer looked the same.
“All my buddies who hadn’t enlisted were drafted into the army,” he said.
“Now, wait just a minute. They are going to come after me too; and I don't want to be in the army and go into swamps with snakes, etc. I'll join the Navy instead. If anything happens… clean graves; no snakes.”
As timing had it, the US Navy just so happened to be looking for people in construction.
“Dummy again,” said Bertram about joining the US Naval Construction Battalions A.K.A. CB or Seabees.
He trained in construction and heavy equipment in Rhode Island and Port Hueneme of Ventura, CA.
“We shipped out for the South Pacific,” said Bertram.
A series of seasick days consuming “greasy pork chops” passed by. The trip was not one to write home about until they reached their first destination.
“We dropped anchor at Diamond Head, Hawaii,” said Bertram.
Duty under the hot sun shaded by palm trees was short lived.
“We hoisted anchor and, once again, headed further into the South Pacific,” he said. “We, eventually, came upon a small coral reef with a small opening for us to enter. We anchored in Bikini Atoll.”
The Seabees unloaded onto a small landing craft, traveling ten miles along the reef to the place they would sleep, eat and work for an indefinite period of time. It was not that bad for such a bloody war.
“The bow was on the beach and open, so we could walk on and off the ship to shore,” Bertram said. “That's how the tanks were loaded and unloaded.”
The crew built tidal wave measuring towers and photographic towers for atomic bomb exercises “using captured Japanese warships in the Bikini harbor.”
It was the summer of 1946.
The men received word that nuclear bomb testing would soon begin, and they were at the heart of it.
“We were still there working when the bomb was supposed to be dropped,” said Bertram, recalling true terror clearer than any prior memory shared.
Fortunately, testing had been postponed.
“We finally finished and were sent back to San Francisco,” Bertram sighed in relief.
Under “uniformed conditions,” the men were honorably discharged from military service and free to go home.
“It was scary, but it all was back then,” he said. “Nobody knew what to expect.”
Bertram did his best to reintegrate into normalcy back home, finishing high school and gathering with friends.
He and a group of guys formed their own cleaning company to make some extra cash. In their free time, they would watch movies, ride motorcycles or hangout at Karmalcorn Dairy Bar.
“This was always a good place to stop for a Coke, coffee, hamburger, donut, or whatever,” said Bertram. “I knew some girls who worked there, like my cousin, Carol Belanger.
There was also an intriguing dark blonde waitress, always finding an excuse to chat. Her name was Marcella Jean Andrews, and she would become Bertram’s first wife. Together, they had two children. Baby Terry was diagnosed with Spina bifida, causing impaired spinal cord development. He lived to be six-months-old.
A healthy baby girl named Linda was delivered months later on Dec. 14, 1950.
“She brightened our lives, but something else was wrong,” Bertram said. “We were too young or whatever. We were reaching for straws that weren't there. Who knows? But it wasn't working out. Rather than living like that, we divorced.”
Instead of shifting the child between two homes, Bertram allowed her step-father custody.
Thus, Linda Bertram became Linda Provenzano in a home with both a mother and father. Later in life, Bertram reconnected with his child.
“I flew to San Bernardino to meet Linda,” said Bertram of reuniting with his “long-lost daughter.”
He later met grandson, Jason Carrillo, and granddaughter, Heather Olsen. Each had children of their own by that time.
“All of a sudden, I’m a father, grandfather and great-grandfather to a whole new family,” Bertram smiled.
Flipping through the pages of a well-organized photo album, Bertram’s life played out in a 52-year-long love story.
While living with his youngest sister and working for Gibson Refrigerator Co. near Grand Rapids, he heard about a girl who also happened to be from Sault Ste. Marie. Her name was Marion Louise Dale. She was new to the area, independently working and renting an apartment nearby.
“I asked her if she had seen the town yet, and she lied and said ‘No,” so we were off and running,” Bertram said. “Her boss's wife had taken Marion around.”
He could not recall if it had been a week or ten days, but very soon after meeting Ms. Dale, he knew he had found the love of his life.
“I told Lucille that I had asked Marion to marry me and she said, ‘Yes,” Bertram gleemed. “Lucille thought we were crazy.”
The new couple was certainly crazy about each other, not to mention inseparable.
“We were married, back in the Sault on March, 21 1953 and happily married to the end,” Bertram said. “During our stay in Greenville, we bought a piece of land. We built a very small house to live in, while we worked on our regular house.”
Mr. and Mrs. Bertram had three children together: Steven Dale, Tracy Leonard, and Susan Louise.
Away in a peaceful country setting stands the wooden dream house Bertram had designed and built for his family, complete with a two-car garage on several acres of luscious land. It is the house they raised their family in.
Bertram eventually got a job at Edison Sault Electric Company, where he worked for 35 years. His wife stayed home with the children, prior to working as the Sault Area Public High School librarian for several years.
Their children each graduated from the local high school, having participated in multiple extracurricular activities and honor society.
“Susan was in the senior choir and the two boys were in ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps), a military thing,” Bertram explained. “I think they were all in a band at one time or another. Tracy was the class president the year he graduated. He went on to an engineering university and moved to Sacramento, CA.”
He is married with children and a family of his own.
“Steve went on to Ferris State University for automotive, diesel, heavy equipment and so on,” said Bertram of his eldest son, who later joined the Army.
He is also married with children and a family of his own.
“Susan is a retired RN,” Bertram said.
She is happily married to Don Autore and resides in the area to this day.
“A lot of good stuff went on in Marion's and my life,” said Bertram. “We were married from March 1953 until April 2005.”
The last few years were hardest on everyone, when Mrs. Bertram began losing memory.
“There is something people associated with Alzhiemer’s seem to agree on,” Bertram said. “The person who was ill with the disease has died twice. Once, when they no longer know who their caretaker is; and again when life stops. For us, it was about four years or more.”
Nonetheless, the Bertram’s reaped all the benefits of family, friendship and vacations together... madly in love to the end.
Some call such a romance “meant to be” or “written in the stars.” Whatever phrase is preferred, Leonard and Marion Bertram’s love has left a timeless impression, spanning into the third generation and so on until they meet again.
Bertram celebrated birthday #95 in the Sault this past April with Steve, Tracy and Susan by his side.
