Linda Gartz
After my mom’s death from peritoneal cancer in 1994, my brothers and I scoured our former home, separating trash from treasure. In the attic we discovered a trove of family history: World War II letters, letters between my parents, family passports, postcards, diaries, diplomas, scores of photos, and nearly 100 letters from the old country (today, Romania).
As we searched further, we found both my parents’ diaries, Mom’s starting in 1927 and spanning almost sixty years. Dad also kept diaries, first as a young man and again as a young father, far from home. For thirteen years, he and Mom wrote letters to each other, sharing their loneliness, work, and Mom’s stress, running our sprawling rooming house.
Mom had typed and saved detailed notes for psychiatrists about her mentally ill mother and the heartache and chaos Grandma K created in our home, during the fifteen years she lived with us.
We separated our finds into twenty-five bankers’ boxes and stored them in my garage. When I finally started reading, I was hooked. Whisked back in time across decades, I was determined to write a book, searching for and eventually finding focus in the heinous redlining policies that had segregated our West Side community, the rapid racial change Mom had documented, and their thirty years as landlords as our beloved neighborhood was devastated by two riots.
I realized that if I didn’t find a home for these treasures, this unique first-person history would be lost forever. In 2010, I emailed the Newberry Library’s Midwest Manuscripts Collection. Director Martha Briggs responded immediately to set up a meeting.
I watched her page through some sample diaries and the detailed spreadsheets my brothers and I had created of the archive contents. She looked up and said, “We want it all.”
I was thrilled! This venerable Chicago research library would house the Gartz Family papers along with those of famous luminaries like columnist, Mike Royko. I kept the archives at home to continue research for my book, over time, adding my own papers and photos.
Finally, on May 24, 2021, I made the transfer official, filling a van with the boxes and delivering them to Alison Hinderliter, the new director of the Newberry’s Midwest Manuscripts.
It’s been an incredible journey from first discovery to donation. I can rest easy, knowing that this vast trove of our family’s history will contribute to scholarship and research for decades, hopefully centuries, to come. It pays to keep such storied stuff.
