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This chapter is about my high-school sweetheart and first love, Pam Ives... Part I takes place in 1961 at the US Army garrison in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany, where we lived and attended the Army high school on base. Part II starts in 2018 — 57 years later! — in New Mexico and the Bronx.

[Photo gallery]

Germany, Frankfurt High School, and the Teen Club are explained in greater detail in the Frankfurt chapter.
Tom McCaffrey, Joe Martin, and other names in here are characters from Frankfurt High School.

—Frank da Cruz <fdc@columbia.edu>
Most recent update: 5 March 2024 21:05:04

11th grade at Frankfurt High School and Pam Ives 1960-61

1961 yearbook photo

Look: saddle shoes!

In 11th grade I made tons of new friends, started going out on the town and drinking beer (and anything else I could get my hands on - cognac, Schnapps, Jägermeister...), having all kinds of fun. Maybe too much fun because now I recognize that, for the two full years 1961 and 1962 I drank to excess almost every day. At first it was some combination of dulling the stress and oppression of "life with father" and the fact that drinking in Germany was easy, cheap, legal, fun, and everybody else was doing it. Later, back in Virginia, where it was not legal, I still did it. The compulsion faded after I left home.

I often felt that my time in high school in Germany was the best time of my life. It was such an adventure to be in postwar Germany, still pockmarked with the scars of war, still relatively poor, still full of people who had been Nazis, and with Elvis stationed just down the street. And on the base, to be among people of all races, nationalities and social classes after living in racial and economic segregation up until then. And my first love, Pam Ives.

Pam 1961 in FHS gym

Pam 1961

Even in 11th grade I was still shy around girls and had only been on a couple awkward dates. Pam was in 10th grade and a junior varsity cheerleader. We clicked instantly, we were inseparable; we did everything together, she was funny and she was fearless. And (as she says herself) kind of smart-ass. We always enjoyed each other, never argued, no egos, no drama, just romance, affection, and tons of fun. Everything was hilarious to us. We went on long trips in Army buses to away-games in places like Mannheim and Nürnberg (and then didn't bother going to the games), we went up in the Taunus mountains and drank our­selves silly with no idea how we would get back. I would go to basketball games just because she was cheerleading. She came to the radio station with me on Tuesday nights sometimes. I'd meet her in HiCoG every morning, where she lived, to walk to school together.

We wrote notes and slipped them into each other's hall lockers. We went to the Teen Club after school and then again after dinner at home, when it became like a night club: lights low, dancing to the jukebox or a band... and everybody forming little groups for sorties into the neighborhood or downtown — restaurants, bars, Storyville, the Jazzkeller — then coming back to the Teen Club to share our adventures. Typical corny teenage stuff but I was never so happy before or since (until recently).

About the Jazz Keller... Heidi Laird (author of Frankfurt Kitchen) recalls "being able to sit up close to famous Jazz musicians who had just given a concert at the Festhalle and were showing up at the Jazz Keller to unwind and relax in an informal setting among friends. I remember seeing Coleman Hawkins up close, and the Modern Jazz Quartet and Ella Fitzgerald and Jerry Mulligan, all legendary, almost mythical. And there were the Mangelsdorff brothers ... There was a wonderful bass player named Oscar Pettiford who died within a year or two of my meeting him..."

The time we went to Nürnberg we wandered around the city and stumbled onto the Luitpoldhain, which is where big annual Nazi rallies were staged from 1933 to 1938. Spooky!

Pam's Prom book 1961

Prom night April 1961

The Casino Officers Club seen from I.G. Farben

You can see how ridicu­lously happy I was in the pre-Prom photo, in which the other two are our friends Joe Martin and Genell Roberson, and in which Pam is wearing the dress her Mom made for the occasion. Joe had his dad's car that night. The Prom was a very big deal, held not in a crepe-paper-decorated school gym like most proms but in the Officers' Club, the "Casino" part of the I.G. Farben complex and probably a major "venue" for the Nazi elite during the war. It was in the Casino's enormous, elegant ballroom. Honestly I don't remember much about it (was there an orchestra? Was there food?) but Pam and I danced and danced. And then as the Prom wound down we drove to a classy nightclub downtown with a stage show and had fizzy mixed drinks with umbrellas instead of beer steins. We stayed out very late, culminating in a Prom breakfast at 3:00 or 4:00am in the main Snack Bar, which they kept open for us. It was a night like in a 1940s Hollywood movie. Pam is the only one I ever danced with.

A Prom-related incident resulted in a bump in our relationship (my fault) and before it could be fixed the school year ended and Pam's family rotated back to the States, Pan Am Flight 73, Frankfurt to NYC, July 2, 1961 (just after her 16th birthday). I would have been devastated by this if it were not for the fact that we were being rotated too! A year prematurely, due to a f**kup by my dad. I was devastated anyway; back in Virginia I missed her like crazy. We stayed in touch by mail. A year later she was thinking about college, wanted to major in psychology, wanted to come to the east coast somewhere but said her grades weren't good and probably she would wind up at Iowa State ("Anything! Anyplace! Just to leave home!"), wished we could talk about it and do the things we used to do, and closed by telling me not to do anything crazy like getting married or... Joining the Army! But then her father was transferred to Fort Leavenworth and I left for UVA at the same time, and then the Army, and then my Mom left my Dad and my Dad lost the house — the address Pam was writing to — so we literally lost touch. Forever.  Or so it seemed!

Pam, Part II

Pam 1964

As the years and decades piled up I realized that I had never felt so good with anyone as I had with Pam Ives back in the Army high school in Germany. We were always comfortable and totally open with each other. We had very similar lives and temperaments and backgrounds, we understood each other perfectly. I looked for her over the years, hoping she would show up in the Frankfurt High School reunion lists, but she never did. When the Internet was born I looked there too, every year or so: nothing. When I finally signed up for Ancestry.com in the course of writing this history, I discovered that instead of going to Iowa State, she entered the St. Lukes Hospital School of Nursing in Kansas City, Missouri. This is her picture in the 1964 yearbook ("Luke O Cyte" :-)  

Long story short, in September 2018 I was finally able to track her down. I wrote her a letter, and poof! — after 50-some years (closer to 60 if you must know), we were back touch. She's a retired nurse, was married twice and has four children and four grandchildren and is now single. She's active, in good health, and lives in New Mexico ("the Land of Entrapment", she says, because the cost of living is so low there, nobody could ever afford to move away). She had hard times in her life but she survived. All these years I didn't even know if she was alive or dead.

Four generations: Juliet, Ruth, Pam, Ellie

That month we were talking and emailing full time, early morning to late night. It was the most fun I'd had since I could remember! A little tentative at first because neither of us had any idea of what directions the other had grown in. But each little feeler resulted in another revelation that we were the same... sense of humor, politics, disrespect for authority, likes and dislikes... I hadn't laughed so much in years! Pam's second husband died in 2011; we both confessed to being sad and lonely, and now suddenly we both weren't. We each found ourselves waking up ridiculously early, eager to continue. Then she left on a long-planned trip to Paris with her sister, brother-in-law, and cousin. I told her I hoped that when she comes back there would be lots more weeks like this one, she said "you bet there will be". One thing's sure: we'd never be bored because between us we have 140 years' worth of life to catch up on.

In France September 2018

Pam is a pretty historic person too. She was stationed inside her Mom Ruth while her Dad Charles, a 1st Lieutenant in the 75th Infantry ("Diaper") Division, fought the Battle of Bulge, where he commanded Company G of the 289th Infantry Regiment[18]. So like me, Pam was born into the War. Her earliest memories are of crossing the ocean in the hold of a troop ship in 1947. Until 1949 she lived in the rubble of bomb-flattened Stuttgart, "on the economy" in a requisitioned German apartment because the American bases and housing weren't built yet. She and her brother Warren were raised by a German nanny, Anna Katrin von (something... every American family hired German domestic help during the early occupation) so German was their first language. They moved a thousand times, she has lived almost everwhere, including many places I lived but at different times, like Stuttgart, or (to mention just two of the K's) Kaiserslautern and Kentucky... She has guts too. Just one example: as the first leg of her Paris trip, she hopped in her car and drove 450 miles by herself to meet her daughter Juliet in Colorado.

Pam and me at White Sands November 2018

Three weeks later we had arranged to meet again after 57 years; I flew to Albuquerque November 5th (never thought I'd fly again!) and stayed with her for two solid weeks; we picked up where we left off in 1961 like we were 16 again. Except instead of going to the Teen Club and to bars we drove all over New Mexico photographing New Deal sites... Talk about compatibility! I met Pam's mom Ruth again after all this time. She lives nearby; we saw her a lot and she is awesome. I met some of Pam's friends too and (on the last day) also her sister Penny (last seen in HiCog in 1961) and brother-in-law Tom. We also dropped in on FHSer Sue Topp at her shop in Santa Fe. Besides zooming around all over the state and seeing people, we also ate well, enjoyed some good movies, and talked and talked and talked. We have never stopped talking. And laughing!

Pam and her Mom Ruth

Pam at WPA site

Pam's apartment

Pam, Tom, Ruth, Penny at El Pinto

Pam came to stay with me in the Bronx for a week in January 2019 and we had tons o' fun. We toured the neighbor­hood, cooked and ate well, listened to music, danced(!), watched movies, slept, all the things of life (retired life, that is)... She met Peter and Amy; Peter cooked chilis relleños for us one night. Then we had a second Bronx rendezvous in March, and I met her son Billy, wife Claudia, and their son Sean. I went to NM again for a couple weeks in April, she came to the Bronx again in September, and again in February. Then the Coronavirus called a halt to everything. Eventually we'll figure out what comes next. I'll say this: finding Pam again feels like coming home after a nearly lifelong exile.

Pam's mother Ruth died at home at age 100 May 5, 2023.

At the Bronx Botanical Garden Jan 2018

In Oval Park March 2019

Dinner March 2019

Van Cortlandt Park

The last photo is of a guy we met on one of our epic walks... the volunteer caretaker of the 1948 Memorial Grove in Van Cortlandt Park, where trees were planted and markers placed for 21 Bronx World War II veterans who never returned. If you enlarge the photo you can see several of the markers.

Early days

Pam's birth notice 1945

Pam meets Dad

Charles, Pam, and Ruth

Stuttgart 1945 (RAF photo)

Family in Stuttgart 1947

Pam in Stuttgart 1947

Stuttgart house in 2021

Pam was born in June 1945 in Rockford, Illinois, while her Dad was fighting in Germany; her Mom Ruth was living with her mother, Olive, in Rockford. Her dad was able to come home on leave for New Years 1945 to meet his 7-month-old daughter for the first time, then he went back to Germany and Ruth and Pam sailed to Bremerhaven in January 3-18, 1947, in the hold of the troopship USAT Bridgeport, arriving in bomb-flattened Stuttgart to settle into a German house requisitioned by the Army on the outskirts of the devastation. The two photos in the house — which was (and is) at Stälinweg 33 — were taken by a neighbor, Ilse Heinhoff, in 1947. As of September 2021, according to Google satellite view, the house is still standing and Pam recognizes it as the same house. Note: Stälin, not Stalin.

Pam's family

Ruth and Charles Ives

Lt. Charles Ives 1945

Man-in-Service flag 1945

Col. Ives 1970

Charles Ives medals

Pam, Warren, Penny

Pam's dad was Charles G. Ives, known as Chad, born in 1923 in Rockford, Illi­nois, son of Navy doctor Captain Warren Chamberlain Ives (1892-1952), who was the son of Dr. Charles Gustin Ives and Helen Chamberlain Ives. According to Chad's 1940 Rockford High School yearbook he studied German, was in the school band, and "After leaving school 'Doc' will attend college, aiming to become a capable physician and surgeon" (like his Dad). He was at the State Uni­vers­ity of Iowa when Pearl Harbor hap­pened and he enlisted in the Army at age 18. Quickly rising to the rank of Corporal, he was sent to (racially integrated[14]) Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning Georgia and commissioned Lieutenant in late 1943, then became a squad leader in the 75th Infantry Division, where he was awarded a Bronze Star[1] and a Purple Heart for his actions at the Battle of the Bulge (click the medals image for details). The Man-in-Service flag shown above hung in the family's window while he was in combat. Meanwhile, his father Warren was a Navy Captain stationed with a hospital unit in the Marshall Islands, working as a surgeon.

When the War ended Chad was appointed Provost Marshal of occupied Stuttgart[6], and at one point he drove Eleanor Roosevelt on her postwar tour through the rubble and DP camps of Frankfurt am Main and Wiesbaden[2,12]. In the late 1940s or early 50s he was one of the guinea pigs at the A-bomb testing sites who stood there and watched the blasts with only sunglasses for protection. He was sent to Korea twice, once during the war there, and to Germany again in 1958-61 (Kaiserslautern and Frankfurt), and to numerous military bases all over the USA throughout his 30-year career, some of them in the deep South in the Jim Crow era, where Pam tells me he made a point of sitting in the back of the bus. His peacetime achievements are listed in his Legion of Merit citation: Batallion Commander, Base Commander, Professor of Military Science... He retired a full Colonel in 1972 and moved to New Mexico for health reasons, where he became active in local affairs, serving as chairman of the Rancho de Placitas Water Board and of the board of El Pueblo Health Clinic in Bernalillo (on which Pam herself serves today). He was a fan of Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Benny Goodman and played the clarinet. He died at his home in Placitas NM in 1997 with his family present.

Chad Yearbook 1940

Ruth Yearbook 1941

SUI Yearbook 1944

Olive Yearbook 1912

Pam's mother Ruth was born Ruth Ann Lawrence in 1922 in Mendota, Illinois. Ruth's mother was Olive Safford, who was born 22 March 1894 in Rockford to John Darius Safford and Nellie Ann Johns, and died 25 April 1990 in Rockford. Olive married Robert Alexander Lawrence 12 July 1919. In 1930, they lived at 510 Oakley Avenue in Rockford with their children Mary B (born 1921), Ruth Ann, and Roberta O (born 1925). Olive (Pam's granma) died 1990. Ruth was attending West High School in Rockford when she met and dated Charles so they — like Pam and I — were high school sweethearts. Ruth graduated in 1941 and then attended Layton School of Art in Milwaukee. Meanwhile Chad went to the State University of Iowa (SUI) in Iowa City, which he left to join the Army in mid-1942. By then he and Ruth had drifted apart, but once in the Army he came across her photo in his locker, wrote to her, and they wound up marrying in July 1944 at Camp Forrest, Tennessee, where he was stationed. Later that same year he was back at SUI as a staff officer in the ROTC program until shipping out for the war in Germany, and would remain in Germany until 1949. In 1947 Ruth and Pam sailed to Bremerhaven and made their way to Stuttgart somehow to join him. Their second child, Warren, was born there.

From that point on, it was the nomadic existence of a military family. Ruth lived the busy life of an Army officer's wife (Stuttgart Economy Wives Club, Officer's Club, Officers' Wives Club, local charities, U.S. Lady Magazine...) Pam and the other children went to countless schools; there was a stretch when Pam went to six different schools in six years: an elementary school in San Bernardino CA for 6th grade; Kaiserslautern Junior High for 7th, Frankfurt Elementary for 8th, the brand-new Frankfurt Junior High for 9th, Frankfurt High for 10th, and Fort Leavenworth High for 11th grade. When Chad was sent somewhere that was not set up for dependents, Ruth would take the children back to her mother's house in Rockford, as when Chad went to Korea. Pam lived in Germany 1947-1949 and 1958-1961, about five years out of her first 16.

View from Ruth's house

Pam and Ruth in Placitas 2018

Ruth in her studio 1997

Ruth's 100th birthday

Ruth was a very creative person. She drew and painted whatever she saw wherever she lived, from occupied postwar Germany to New Mexico. Since the 1970s her work has been shown and sold in New Mexico art galleries. She's also a patron of local Pueblo artists and made a series of paintings of Pueblo dancers and children[11].  Not to mention that also she was a skilled "modiste" who made Pam's 1961 Prom dress! And her mother Olive's first pants suit when she came to Germany to visit. Until her death in 2023, Ruth still lived in the house that she and Chad bought in Placitas when he retired in 1972, in the foothills of the Sandía mountains, about 20 miles from Pam in Albuquerque. Ruth turned 100 on December 4, 2022; photo at right with her children Penny, Warren, and Pam, with some of her paintings and her collection of pueblo art in the background.

Pam's family tree

Pam's part of the tree puts the other parts to shame, in height if not in breadth; it goes all the way back to 1066... no, make that 540AD! On her father's side...

• Chad's great-great grandfather Levi Chamberlain (1792-1849) founded a whole branch of the family in Hawaii in 1823, when he went there for missionary work. Levi's granddaughter, Helen Stoddard Chamberlain moved to Illinois (year unknown) and married Charles Gustin Ives, Chad's grandfather.
• Chad's 4-great grandfather, Thomas Patton (1725-1812) came to America from County Tyrone Ireland in 1744, marrying Isabella Hayes, and eventually winding up in Pequa, Lancaster County, where they had some children including James Patton, who is the father of Maria Patton, the wife of Levi Chamberlain, which makes Chad at least 1/64 Irish. But James Patton married Martha Parke, whose paternal grandparents also (both) came from Ireland, adding another 1/128th Irish to Chad's heritage, or it would if one of their parents were not from Glasgow, Scotland!
• Sidalia Niswander (1866-1926), is Chad's maternal grandmother. Niswander is a Dutch name, so it seemed that Chad was part Dutch. This is theory was reinforced by the fact that Sedalia's uncle's first name was Jos, which is Dutch or (same thing) Flemish. But it turns out Sedalia is descended from Swiss immigrants named Neuenschwander; the name was "anglicized" in the late 1700 by changing "Neuensch" to "Nis".
• Sedalia Niswander's husband, Chad's maternal grandfather, was Lincoln Shaver (1866-1936). There is a big tree above him in which most branches end before we see country of origin, but at least we know that Shaver is an anglicization of Schaeffer (= Schäffer), going back to Goerg Barthel Schaeffer (1682-1731) and his wife Anna Maria Driefmeijer (1686-1731) who emigrated from Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
• Georg Schaeffer (1714-1796) (son of Georg Barthel Schaeffer and Chad's 5-great grandfather) was commissioned a Lieutenant in the Maryland Militia September 26, 1776, and served in the Continental Army in the German Batallion, which fought nine battles between 1776 and 1779.
• John Ives (1729-1818), another of Chad's 5-great grandfathers, served as a private in the 10th Connecticut Regiment, Continental Army.
• Chad's father, Captain Warren Chamberlain Ives (1892-1952), was a Navy doctor who served in both World Wars.

Pam's mother's side goes all the way back to the Norman Conquest (1066 and all that), starting with Normans Sir Hugh de Ville and Lord Robert de Hatton, speakers of the Norman language who founded a dynasty of Lords and Sir Knights in Hatton, Warwickshire, near Coventry, that lasted until at least 1260, at which point the tree branches off via Beatrix de Hatton and the Hatton Lords go off in another direction. Never fear, Beatrix's son-in-law was Sir Peter Pierce Thornton, (a.k.a. Peter Thorton-Le-Moors) First Baron of Cantilupe. Other highlights include:

• Three more generation of Sir Knights after Sir Peter (1340-1471).
• The Brandlings of Newcastle, comprising several generations of Sirs, Lords, members of parliament, as well as Sherrifs and Mayors of Newcastle from 1497 until about 1700, including one Henry Brandling (1515-1578, Pam's 12-great grandfather), who is said to be Princess Diana's 12-great grandfather.
• The Bucktons of Yorkshire, culminating in Ursula Lady Buckton (1526-1593, the wife of said Henry Brandling) and her daughter Ursula of Newcastle, who married William of Ford, and whose brother was Richard Lord of Buckton.
• Elizabeth Jane Carr (1570-1594), daughter of Ursula of Newcastle, who was related to the Catherine Carr family, the only wife of King Henry VIII who was not put to death by him.
• A large number of Puritans who arrived at the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630s including including William Towne (1598-1773) and his wife Joanna Blessing (1593-1682), three of whose daughters were accused of witchcraft in Salem: Rebecca Towne Nurse and Mary Towne Estey (both were hanged), and Sarah Towne Cloyes (or Cloyce), who was indicted and imprisoned but not tried or executed. At the time of the trials their ages were 44, 58, and 71. Their names and stories are still well-known today, told in countless books and portrayed in Arthur Miller's play The Crucible and the PBS series Three Sovereigns for Sarah.
• John Hall (1723-1777), officer in the Continental Army, killed in 1777 at the Battle of Hubbardton VT; he is Ruth's 5-great grandfather and Pam's 6-great.
• Jesse McCrary Dickey (1841-1914) served in the Missouri State Militia, 51st Regiment, Company D, in the Civil War, 1861-1865.
• Philip Shaver (1829-1904) came to Iowa in 1844 with his parents. In 1850 he drove an oxcart to California in the gold rush — a journey of five months — retuning to Iowa in 1853 with enough money to buy a cattle farm. He served in the US Army several times, including during the Civil War in F Troop, 1st Iowa Cavalry, enlisting as a Private in 1861 and commissioned as Captain later that year.
• Ruth's great-grandparents on the all-maternal line are Richard Johns (1828-1911) and Jane Ann Hocken (1830-1912), both from Polperro, Cornwall.

After another trip to New Mexico in June, 2019, I dug deeper into Ruth's side of the tree and found that she (and therefore Pam) is a direct descendent of Charlemagne, and of the English kings from William the Conqueror to Edward III and their queens, and of a Spanish king, of several French kings, of Henry "Hotspur" Percy (from Shakespeare's Henry IV), of the Viking conquerors of Normandy and Russia, of Queen Anna of Kiev and of Saint Anna of Sweden, of Yaroslav the Wise and of his father Vladimir the Great of Kiev, and on and on; see this page for highlights.

Many more branches remain to be explored. I have further detail about Pam's ancestry in THIS PAGE, which needs to merged with this one.