For more than 10 years, I researched and wrote the weekly Daily Mining Gazette column, Copper Country’s Past & People. The Copper Country’s past was made by its people. Among the outstanding aspects of these people are their resilience, their strength, and the character, derived from those qualities. I would have to admit that those qualities and character are inherent in my own family. In writing this, I am thinking with awe of my father’s parents.

My grandmother’s name was Nina Maria (De Planta) Jaehnig. She was born in Petoskey, MI. in 1902,and died in 1997, at the age of 95. She was a quiet, dignified woman of small stature but enormous strength.

My grandfather, Irwin Moritz Jaehnig, was born on Sept. 17, 1897, at Franklin Mine, where his father worked.

Irwin and Nina were married on Christmas Day, 1919, in Alexandria, Virginia. He was 22 years old, she was 18. Over the next 19 years together, they knew more than their share of hard times and heartbreak amidst the happiness. There would be no “happy golden years.”

After their wedding, Irwin was employed by a railroad company, before returning to the Copper Country, where he worked for the Franklin, Jr. Mining Company. He later worked for the Houghton County Road Commission, where he was a truck driver. His brother, George, two years older, also was a truck driver for the HCRC.

Irwin and Nina resided in the village of Houghton, at what today is 501 West South Avenue, a modest, 3-bedroom home. It was here they were living during the third week of January, 1938,when the Upper Peninsula was struck by what was called the “storm of the century.” During the 24th and 25th of Jan. some 40 inches of snow fell in under 24 hours, driven by 50 mph winds.

On Jan. 25, Michigan Governor Frank Murphy declared a state of the emergency for the U.P., calling it the worst blizzard to strike the area since the 1890s.

WBCK 95.3 Radio, in Battle Creek reported in Jan. 2022: “Amazingly, only two fatalities were reported from the weather event. One was a plow driver who suffered carbon monoxide poisoning and the other was a lumberjack who froze in his truck.”

The lumberjack did not die in his truck, according to the Daily Mining Gazette. He was found on the road outside Lake Linden by county road crews. The plow driver was my grandfather, Irwin.

My father, Graham, was 12 years old in the early morning hours of Jan. 25, when he was awakened by the telephone. He told me about that conversation.

“Tell you mom your old man isn’t coming home,” was all that was said. Dad said he relayed the message without quite understanding at the moment what it meant. What it meant was his dad, at the age of 40, was dead, and his mom, at 36, was a widow, eight months pregnant, with two children.

Mary Irwine Jaehnig was born on Feb. 15, 1938. She died one week later. She was buried in Irwin’s arms, my dad told me. But these were not the only tragedies to visit 501 W. South Street. Eleven years earlier, on Feb. 16, 1927, Irwin and Nina had a baby boy they named Norman Irwin. Norman lived five days. My dad, Graham, born in Oct. 1926, and Marilyn, born in 1937, survived.

Tragedy followed Nina all of her life. She was a little girl when she witnessed her sister trip and fall into a campfire and burn to death.

Sometime after my grandfather’s death, Grandma sold the house on South Street and purchased what was originally George Shelden’s house at 107 W. Montezuma Avenue. In the late 19th century, the house had been enlarged and converted into a finishing school for girls. Grandma operated it as an apartment building until 1972.

It was rough going for a while. My father said the money he earned from his paper route paid the telephone bill. In high school, he worked on Great Lakes freighters during the summer months to help pay the bills, until he enlisted in the Navy in 1944, at the age of 17.

One of the things Dad carried with him all his life, he told me years later, the recollections of many nights hearing his mother softly crying from her bedroom.

Dad was on a destroyer in the Pacific Theater when his mom informed him in a letter she had remarried. She married a man who rented an apartment from her. He was a bookkeeper with the Upper Peninsula Power Company, and it would be a secure marriage.

I, of course, did not know my grandfather Irwin. I did, however, know some of his brothers: George, who died in 1983; Ben, who passed in 1989; and Walker, who died in 1977. My great uncles shared many happy memories of Irwin with me, and my dad stayed close to George until George died; George and Irwin were not only brothers, they were best friends.

Grandma Nina never discussed her life with me. She never shared any memories, good, bad, or sad. Perhaps they were too entwined. Perhaps she felt I was too young, or maybe the opportunity just never came along. What I learned, I learned from my father and great uncles.

However, the Jaehnigs were not done with the former Jaehnig home at 501 South Avenue, though. My parents purchased the home in the mid-1990s. Mom died in her sleep in the house on Sept. 21, 2002. Two years later, my dad died while still living in the house. Six years later, on Sept. 9, 2010, my eldest brother, Paul, died in the house, making six Jaehnigs to have passed away in the home.