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Elmer and Pearl, 1918 to 2004

Elmer Fredrick Wesemann, George and Mary’s fifth child, was born at 5715 N. 4th Street in Olney on 6 November 1918. He was baptized on 2 May 1920 in a Methodist Episcopal church in Olney by Pastor Edward [F. or T.] Randolph, as the infant son of George W. and Mary M. Wesemann. He finished the eighth grade in 1932. Before the war he worked as a seamless hosiery knitter at the Atex Hosiery Company until 1939, and then as a rug inspector at the Art Loom Rug Mill in Philadelphia until 1941.

On 22 June 1940 Elmer married Pearl Zoe Branchide at Philadelphia. The Rev. Ivan H. Hagedorn, S.T.P., of Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church, married them under a license from the Clerk of the Orphans’ Court. Pearl was born at Samaritan Hospital, Philadelphia, on 3 November 1920, the daughter of William J. Branchide (1875 to 1952), an engineer, and Harriet Adelaide Parrish, born on 24 June 1880. Through her mother’s first marriage, to David James Davis, she had five half-brothers and half-sisters: David Wassell, Thelma Adelaide, Winifred Anne, Gladys Elsie, who died at eighteen in 1933, and Robert George Davis. Her father had a son, Clifford Harold Branchide, by his first wife, Lucinda Myers, and almost certainly two more sons, Walter and William Burton, and a daughter, Verda B. Branchide (1913 to 2004), probably also Lucinda’s: Pearl’s half-brothers and half-sister. The family’s records, and Pearl’s obituary, name three sisters by their married names: Verda Kralish, Thelma Ralston (Thelma Adelaide Davis) and Winifred Sharp (probably Winifred Anne Davis). Pearl’s own family’s story is told in the Branchide Family section.

The family’s church records span three generations: Methodist Episcopal at Elmer’s baptism in 1920, Lutheran at his wedding in 1940, and a Lutheran pastor in the next generation.

Elmer was drafted before Pearl Harbor. He was inducted at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, on 3 July 1941, through Local Board No. 67. His Army specialties were light truck driver and general carpenter. He sailed for the European theater on 6 August 1942, arriving on 18 August, and for Africa on 1 November 1942, arriving on 11 November. A postal card he sent on arrival overseas gives his unit as “Hq Det, 51st Medical Bn, APO 1285”. He served in the campaigns of Algeria and French Morocco, Tunisia, Sicily, Naples-Foggia and Rome-Arno, and earned the Good Conduct Medal, the American Defense Service Medal and the European-African-Middle Eastern campaign ribbons. He sailed for home on 11 March 1945 and landed on 21 March. On 12 May 1945 he was separated at Fort Dix, New Jersey, as a technician fifth grade (T/5) of the 882nd Medical Collecting Company, after three years, ten months and ten days of service. His papers describe him as 5 feet 7½ inches tall, 155 pounds, with brown eyes and brown hair, born at “Onley,” Pennsylvania, almost certainly Olney, and give three dependents and mustering-out pay of $300 in all, travel pay of $2.70, and a total paid out of $183.21. How the 51st Medical Battalion and the 882nd Medical Collecting Company were related is not shown.

A Philadelphia newspaper reported the homecoming, and his mother kept the clipping and wrote on it “My Son … 1945 / Mother”:

“They sat down to Sunday dinners with their mothers and their wives, and began to savor the unaccustomed luxury of civilian life yesterday … Thirty-five Philadelphians were among the 1200 overseas veterans discharged at Dix … T/5 Elmer F. Wesemann, 3946 N. 5th st, got a ‘wonderful reception’ from his wife, Pearl. Only a week ago, she saw him off after a furlough, and he expected to go overseas again. Now his four years of campaigning in North Africa and Italy are all behind him”.

On 22 December 1947 the Veterans Administration certified that Elmer was eligible for a GI Bill loan guaranty. He and Pearl kept their Social Security cards as engraved metal cards. In the 1980s and 1990s they lived on W. Raymond Street in Philadelphia.

Living family members are not shown.

Elmer died suddenly in Philadelphia on 3 December 2002, aged 84. His service was held at St. Paul’s English Lutheran Church, and the viewing at the David G. Richardson Funeral Home on Oxford Avenue. Pearl died on 5 June 2004. Both are buried at Hillside Cemetery and Memorial Gardens, Roslyn, in the same ground as his father.