Photos and news from Warren Wissemann
Retired January, 1998 from Marsh & McLennan, Inc., Warren was an insurance brokerage company in New York City where he was a Vice President, and worked for 36 years. After Mepham, Warren attended Hofstra and completed his ROTC obligations with the US Army Signal Corps serving in Korea. In 1964 Warren married Susan Mason. They have a daughter, Meredith, a son, Christopher and two grandsons — Tyler and Kyle — click here for photos. They spend their time going to antiques shows, collecting prints, traveling, researching family genealogy and watching their grandsons as needed.You may contact him at: weaffm@aol.com.
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Warren and Dick Beckmann at Applebee's Restaurant in Bellmore this past spring. |
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New digs in Virginia: The following three pictures show the area where Warren will be building his new home this fall. In the second picture, his house will be constructed between the second and third house from the left. |
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View from Warren's future home in Roanoke, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley. Son Chris seen in foreground. Will there be a bunkhouse for Mepham visitors? |
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Old Merrick December 1937 For more of Warren's photos, go to "Around Town" section. |
Unused Lamp For Sale
To keep you up to date on my computer "woes"
which have been almost nonexistent for the past 6 months, I will
relay the following tale to you. My brother gave me a PC light
for Christmas. The instructions said to place the lamp on top
of the PC and point it down to reduce any glare of background
lights in the monitor window and to light up the key board. This
sounded good because the lights on the cellar workbench behind
me do appear in the monitor window when I am on my PC. Since
our monitor is on a board that fits into a tight slot on my work
station there wasn't enough room over the monitor for the lamp
to fit. I decided to pull the board and PC out a couple of inches
to allow the lamp to fit. WRONG!!! The minute I pulled the shelf
out a couple of inches two tiny plastic supports holding the
shelf slipped out, the shelf collapsed and the monitor fell backwards
onto the concrete floor below. I heard it fall and roll sideways
on the floor. I won't tell you what I said when I realized what
had happened but I was certain the monitor was broken. Instead
I saw that it was still working.
The PC is in our basement and because water comes in from time
to time I placed 2 corrogated boxes behind the station to keep
the numerous computer wires off the floor. Fortunately the boxes
cushioned the impact of the fall but they didn't stop the monitor
from rolling off onto the concrete. The front of the case has
about a dozen "dings" and the screen has a permanent
10% downward slope enough so I now no longer see the glare of
the work bench lights behind me. Unused lamp now for sale.
Our European
Adventure Tour
The Wissemanns, the Beckmans
and the Keils Travel to Germany, Austria and Italy.
On Friday, September 10, 1999, Sue and I left with Joan (Class of '53) and Dick (Class of '54) Beckmann along with Carol and Otto Keil for a twenty-year dream we have all had to tour Germany, Austria and northern Italy. Dick and I have known each other since 7th grade in Merrick Public Grade School, and Joan and I have known each other since Mepham days. Dick and I met Otto and his wife,Carol, when we were in the U S Army Reserves in the early 60s.
The trip started off with me dropping the rear hatch door of our van on Dick's head while he was trying to pack our 12 pieces of luggage, Joan closing the car door on her foot and Carol tripping over her coat at Newark Airport and flopping on her face. We landed in Frankfort the next morning, picked up a seven-passenger Peugot van and drove north to Frankenberg where Otto has an aunt, uncle and several cousins. We stayed there for four days and the highlight was his uncle's house where Otto's mother was born. It has been in the family for over 500 years. Otto's uncle took us on a tour of the house and told that the cellar was the oldest section of the house and was formerly the guard house for the city. The original house burned down in 1450 when a fire destroyed the city while the people were out working in the fields. The cellar was once used as a dungeon to hold prisoners and dates back to the year 1000 AD! In the vaulted ceiling is a small opening where the guards would lower food and water to the prisoners or not lower it depending on their mood.
On the second day we drove just a few miles to the town of Rauschenberg where my great-grandfather emigrated (actually, a draft dogger at age 17) to NYC in 1859 and where his parents emmigrated from, five years later, in 1864. We stopped in at one of the stores asking about Wissemanns and the proprietor said his mother-in-law's name was Wissemann. He called her and she invited us to stop by which we did. I am sure that she was not expecting 6sixpeople. She is a folk artist and decorates Hessian eggs.
After we left Frankenberg we took all the back roads, avoiding the AutoBahn and drove to Kassel, Wurzburg, Rothenberg, Garmisch, Salzburg and Vienna. In Vienna we visited the Opera House and watched the famous Lipponzona (spelling?) horses practice. Also while in Austria we took the "Sound of Music" tour and drove past the Von Trapp home. From there we went to Venice( The Square of St Marcos was knee deep in water.), Verona (sat in the 2000 year old Roman coliseum) and spent two days at Tremezzo in The Grand Hotel over looking Lake Como. We had a fantastic view of the lake while we ate breakfast on a porch under an awning. Later we learned that Sophia Loren has been a guest at this hotel. We drove back thru the Swiss Alps to Meerburg on Lake Constantine where we stayed in a 600 year old hotel visited the Zeplin Museaum. We returned thru Munich and left on October 3 for Newark, New Jersey. Unfortunately, we only had a few hours so could not go into the city for the October Beer Festival.
We can honestly say that we would return to any of the countries and cities we visited. Some of the best parts of our trip: visiting Otto's relatives in Frankenberg and touring the family home, buying wine, cheese and sandwich makings and enjoying impromtu lunches along the side of the road, seeing the Alps and walking on a glacier, the people, and staying at small, out of the way hotels (Most ranged in cost between $75 -$110 a night but not The Grand Hotel in Tremezzo!) . You will notice that I avoided saying meals but they were great. Dick drove the entire trip, Otto was our translater (He speaks fluent German, Dick uses the German he learned in Frau Freulich's class - about 30 words I think) and Joan and Carol planned every detail of our three-week trip and still left room for us to make last minute changes. We bought music tapes in each of the countries we visited and played them during our drives. We laughed our way across the continent. The weather was clear with temperatures in the high 70s and low 80s except for a few cloudy days in the Alps (darn!) and a day or two of sprinkles. The worst part was traveling with twelve pieces of luggage and when Joan and Otto caught a virus and were sick for over a week. How the rest of us escaped it, I don't know.
The best part of the trip was that we did it with our friends!
Some photos of Warren's Grandchildren —
The photo below was taken in 1998 — Susan Wissemann, grandson Tyler and their daughter's 6 month old Arabian colt, Chino.
Below: the older grandson with the blonde hair is Tyler and the smaller grandson is Kyle.
9-3-02