2026 #52Ancestors, Week 3: What This Story Means to Me

Last week, I wrote about my husband's great uncle who had an unusual credit on a 1970s record.  My husband sent the blog post to his uncle, and his uncle asked what else I had found out about that side of the family.  Truth be told, not much, because my husband is usually of very little assistance/evinces very little interest.  However, if someone *does* take interest, I am always happy to do a bit of digging. 

I had done a basic tree for my husband's side of the family where most of my information came from censuses and the occasional obituary.  The 1958 obituary for my husband's great grandmother read simply, "Clara Lantz of 2234 Cortez Street, beloved wife of Theodore; devoted mother of Ben, William, Harry, Doris Levin, Shirley Teich, and the late Aaron; 13 grandchildren. Services Monday, 10 a.m. at chapel, 2235 W. Division Street."  They were all names I recognized, but I felt certain a few were missing.  As I looked back at my tree, I could see that Aaron had died in 1949, but why, if the obituary had recounted one 'late child,' did it not mention Molly, Theodore, or Hyman?

Short answer?  They weren't remembered.  They had passed so long ago that their own brothers, sisters, even their father, had forgotten to include them.  And I think that's why stories are so important to me.  Molly, Theodore, and Hyman lived - however briefly, but if no one speaks or writes about them, they cease to exist.  With that in mind, I'll share my limited knowledge of these three children of Theodore and Clara Lantz.

Molly was their first child. She was born in Russia on February 15th, 1907, and immigrated to the United States with her parents and brother, Benjamin, in 1915.  She lived to see the births of five more siblings.  Theodore and Aaron were born in 1915, William, in 1917, Harry in 1920, and Doris in 1921.  On the 2nd of November, 1923, Molly succumbed to carbon monoxide gas emanating from a faulty heater.  She was 16.

Theodore and Clara's third child, Theodore, was born on April 30th, 1915, and his birth certificate is the only evidence I've found of his existence.  His twin brother, Aaron, was born the following day.  If you look closely at Theodore's birth certificate, though, you can see that someone replaced "number of child of this mother" with a 4 and then indicated only 3 of the 4 are living.  I am left to assume that the certificate was amended to reflect that Aaron survived when Theodore did not.

Finally, Hyman was the baby of the family, born in 1929. I'm sure he was much doted upon.  Unfortunately, he didn't make it to his 3rd birthday. 

These three children lived, but when it came time to list the 'late' children of their mother, they didn't make the cut.  And I'm not being dramatic.  When my husband's uncle passed along the information he had about his father's siblings, there was no mention of Molly, Theodore, or Hyman.  So, what do these stories mean to me?  To me, they are a way of honoring and remembering those who came before, whether they lived for a few hours or 16 years.

2026 #52Ancestors, Week 2: A Record(ing) that Adds Color

This post did not go in the direction I initially intended.  Well, let me revise that statement.  I had intended to write about my husband's great uncle, Harry Leon Lantz, and I did...but not in the way I had planned.  

In his time, Mr. Lantz was a well-regarded cellist, conductor, and music educator.

Here he is at a rehearsal of the Parkside Baroque Players at UW Parkside in Wisconsin.

The Journal Times, Racine, Wisconsin, 22 Sep. 1969

The article above gives his musical history up to 1969. He later became a professor of music at Peabody College of Music in Nashville, Tennessee, (now part of Vanderbilt University).  In 1977, he became an associate professor for cello and the conductor of the Baylor Symphony Orchestra at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. My thought was that he had either released a couple recordings of cello music, or there were recordings of symphonies he had conducted.  My intention was to locate one of them as my "record that adds color."  And here's where things got a bit odd. A quick search did reveal that Harry Lantz  recorded cello music on the RCA Victor and CRI labels, but that search also lead me to this Burt Reynolds record.

How did a search for Harry Lantz bring me here, you ask?  I asked myself the same question, but as I scrolled through the page's information, I discovered a credit for one Harry Lantz on the strings.  I thought to myself, "It must be a different Harry Lantz," as I searched for additional information on this album. The MusicRow website had little to say about it other than that Reynolds came to Nashville in 1973 to create Ask Me What I Am...and that the record was not a success.  Nashville, Tennessee, is precisely where Harry Lantz was in 1973, but I still wasn't 100% convinced I had the right person until,  upon further investigation, I discovered another Peabody College music professor, Samuel Terranova, had also loaned his talents to this record.

I started this post intending to leave the reader with some beautiful cello music. Instead, I will leave you with the link to a long forgotten country album featuring the vocals of Burt Reynolds...and the string contributions of Harry Lantz.