FAMILY

The Hallsted family experienced a transition recently, transitioning from one generation to the next.  Robert Harrison Hallsted passed on September 8, 2017 at the very honorable age of 101.  He was the last surviving child of Harry Harrison Hallsted and Marie Tullis Hallsted’s seven children.  He lived in Wilmington, DE and initially I did not intend to attend his funeral.  However, midweek last week cousin Lisa Kuter sent me a text letting me know she had a bed I could use if I wanted to drive over.  I decided quickly to make the 500+ mile drive. 

I did feel an obligation to attend as Uncle Bob made the effort to attend Dad’s funeral in Florida when he died in 2006 and then ensured that a member of his family attended Mom’s funeral a few weeks later.  And it wasn’t because I was particularly close to Uncle Bob.  I only saw him sporadically throughout my life.  He lived in Delaware, I lived in either Ohio or Florida or Alaska or Guam, depending.  In most ways, we had little in common…except for the most important way of all…family.

Nancy, his daughter, made a comment at the funeral that wasn’t particularly insightful, but struck a chord in me that stopped me on a dime.  She said, “What a blessing, to have grown up in this family.”  She was referring to the extended family, not just her immediate family and she was so on target that it took my breath away.

In this time, when we hear so many horror stories regarding families that have lost their way, in so many different ways, the Hallsted Clan is blessed to have been…the Hallsted Clan.  It’s a complex dynamic that has brought us to this final funeral of this final member of the prior generation.  The story starts on March 13, 1913.  That’s the day that Harry Harrison, Grandpa Hallsted to me, married Marie Tullis.  Family lore has it that she was the love of his life.  She was 20 years old when they married.  By the time she was 32 years old, they had six children.  When she died, on June 25, 1925 she had her seventh child who was born on June 23.  She died, when a baseball, hit by her husband, struck her in the head.  Medical staff was able to deliver the child she was carrying and she died two days later.  Her four-year old son, Ralph, died 4 months earlier from typhoid fever.  I always imagined that she was needed in heaven to look after Ralph.

These tragedies kept the momentum of their love moving forward.  Suzanne, the newborn, was taken by the Tullis family to be raised separately from her siblings.  Edna Ruth, the eldest of the seven children, who was 11 at the time of her mother’s death, took over the motherly duties of the family.  Until she married, 10 years later, she was mother, sister, housekeeper to her five siblings.  When she married, Grandpa Hallsted remarried and fathered two additional children into the family.  In 1954 he was killed in an auto accident.

Until last week, when Uncle Bob passed as the last surviving child, never once did I ever hear of any discord in the family; never a fight, never a hard word, no Hatfield/McCoy shenanigans.   It was always a family embraced by the love of Harry and Marie.  From those 9 children, 25 offspring were born.  While in some cases, we don’t know each other well, we still carry the Hallsted blood in our veins, and it is a precious blessing that we are members of this branch of the Hallsted tree.  

I can’t speak to whether or not all Hallsteds have experienced the ‘blessings’ that the Harry Hallsted’s have  experienced, but I do hope that this family trait of which I write carries forward for many generations to come.   

We are a family of great antiquity.  The Hallsted name is descended from the Saxon race.  They settled in England around 400 AD having migrated from the Rhine Valley.  The named evolved as a notable English family name in the county of Essex.  It would be a wonderful heritage to pass forward.