He2 Eustace Granger Hester

    Dr. Eustace Granger Hester was the sixth child of Willoughby Griffith Hester He3 and Elena McCGonnell Mc3.

    Eustace Granger Hester
    Picture taken between 1924 and 1927
    Born: 6 Dec 1906 in Hittville 5 miles north of Mt. Olivet, Kentucky
    Married on July 7, 1934,Anna Pope Bland were married in Shelbyville, Ky.
     

    He was 5' 8" or 172.5 cm tall as were his three sons, while his father was 5'10" tall and his mother about 4' 11". 
    She had dark brown hair and brown eyes.
    She had a tendency to gain weight but managed to keep a diet fairly well every 6 months or so and always got back to size.

    Children:

    1. Thomas Eugene Hester, b. Oct. 23, 1937    He1-1
    2. William Griffth Hester, b. Jun. 22, 1940 He1-2
    3. George Nicholas Hester, b. Nov. 28, 1944 He1-3
    4. Jane Ann Hester, b. Aug. 16, 1951 He1-4
    She died Feb. 15, 1970, in Saginaw, Michigan 

    Eustace and Anna Pope lived in a house at about 1600 N. Michigan Ave after first moving to Saginaw about 1935. But they bought the lumber-baron mansion at 2301 N. Michigan that had belonged to the Curtis family for about 40 years sometime before 1940.

    The inventory taken over with this house included a large round table of massive mahogony with 4 extension leaves about 1.9 m in diameter and at least 12 chairs as it was too large for the Curtisses to take to California. Seating 16 people at it would not have been a problem.

    I cannot remember ever seeing the Gulf sign across the street, Uncle Hazard's filling station was on the next corner, Michigan/Davenport, and was a Shell station. But I do remember there was some kind of small building there that might have been a filling station before and was locked up or boarded up. The Linville house was just after that on the right and then there was another house between that and Uncle Hazard's station. The bay window on the side of the house and the porch at the back ring a bell: the picture of Tom and me was taken on that porch. Uncle Garrett, Anna Maud and Bobby all lived upstairs and we had the groundfloor. The top floor was one of those lumber baron ballrooms, but for us a playroom. I cannot remember the house next door having a carport out front, but I do recognize the sombre side of it. A boy about a year younger than Tom and a girl a year older than me lived there. Tom had made good friends with them. One day in July or so '43 or 44 I saw them playing on our swing and teeter-totter in the garden and ran out to play with them. The boy told the girl to hold me in front of the swing while he swang back and forth letting his feet go as close as possible to my head. After going over my head several times he lowered his left foot and hit my right eyebrow. The bandage you see on my right eye brow in the picture in Hittville was photographed a few days after that. While all this was going on, I think Tom was hiding behind the garage watching them. Mom decided to sell the house immediately. Dad was in Illinois in the Army at the time and the three of us had come home to await your birth. I am not sure whether we moved to 803 Congress before you were born or after, I think after. We had not been there very long when Dad came to pick us up and we moved to Granit City Ill. In March or April 45, first to a dreadfully hot upstairs apartment then to a house a little farther from the base. In April 46 we moved back to Congress St. We had also had two different houses in area north of Chicago. So at 5 y 10 mo I had already moved 7 times. I count about 65 times now, so this is about the longest stay now here in Leipzig since Warwick Street, and even there the name of the street was changed, one effortless "change of address" at least.

     

    He was born in Robertson County, Ky., on Dec. 6, 1906, and died in Saginaw, Mich., Sept. 8, 1966, He was a graduate of the University of Ky. and received his M.D. degree from the University of Louisville in 1933. He practiced medicine in Saginaw, Mich., where he did his medical internship at Saginaw General Hospital, after his sister, Mabel and her family, had preceeded him in moving to Saginaw. Besides building his own office building at 2031 North Michigan Avenue he was on the staff of Saginaw General Hospital, St. Luke's Hospital and St. Mary's Hospital.
    On July 7, 1934, Eustace Granger Hester married Anna Pope Bland in Shelbyville, Ky. When his wife first moved to Saginaw they lived on N. Michigan Avenue at about 1232 but moved to a very large lumber baron house at 2103 N. Michigan Avenue previously owned by the Curtis family. His brother, Garrett, and wife, Anna Maud, lived on the first floor with their adopted son, Robert, while the rest of us and Aunt Jane Bland lived on the ground floor. And his sister, Mabel, and husband, Everett Linville, lived directly across the street in another lumber baron house with their daughter, Elena, and husband, Howard Disher Cambell, and their first four children.
    He was called into the U.S.Army in 1943 to serve in the medical corps and was stationed north of Chicago and later in St. Louis, Missouri. First the whole family moved to Highland Park, Illinois, then with his transfer to St. Louis we returned to Saginaw, where George was born in November, 1944. But before this the house in Michigan Avenue was sold because some evil pranks the neighbor children had played and we moved into a smaller 3 bedroom house at 803 Congress Street, where Aunt Jane also lived until 1949 when she moved to Chicago to study music, and we moved to 2525 North Court Street, later called Warwick Street, where our parents had built a ranch style house on a 1.5 acre lot.

    Dr. Eustace Hester was president of the Saginaw chapter of the Civitan Auxilliary in 1965 and Treasurer of the Saginaw County Medical Society from about 1949 until his death. His interest in genealogy brought the author in contact with (He3-9-1) Clinton Monroe Hester, and so expedited the completion of this work.
    Eustace was 5' 8" (172 cm) tall, dark blond but with a touch of red in his beard, blue/grey eyes, at birth a bit cross-eyed, which was operationally corrected. This event convinced him of the importance of medicine. 
    The name "Eustace Granger" was not a family name but taken from a popular novel that everyone was reading about the time of his birth, and so he christened. The teasing did, at least, strengthen his ambition. His elder brothers used to tease him by calling him "Useless" instead of Eustace, so he was determined to prove otherwise. The Hester Farm was about 5 miles north of Mt. Olivet, Kentucky, and he had to ride a horse to get to school everyday. He had to work to pay his keep and tuition at undergraduate college delivery newspapers and any other job he could find. During the summer vacations he got a job in road construction putting the large rocks into a rock crusher that made gravel out of the rocks taken out in road excavations. Later after getting his B.S. degree and admission to medical school he worked as a coach for the debating team.
    By nature he was more talkative than many people and always enjoyed a good debate. When he failed to get us boys to go along with the reading and speaking exercises he thought were so important for child development he devised the scheme of starting a debate whenever we wanted anything, pointing out any disadvantages or dangers etc. of everything we wanted. If there was nothing wrong with the idea, an argument against it had to be invented anyway. Tom and George were a bit frustrated by this and too easily silenced, but I saw through it rather early on and always took up the gauntlet. The longer the debate the more he enjoyed it, although he never broke a smile. 


    Anna Pope and Eustace Hester in Hittville about 1936

    Anna Pope, Eustace, William and Thomas Hester in front of the Hester house in Hittville, Ky. 1944
     

    Eustace Granger Hester and Anna Pope Bland had 4 Children:

    1. Thomas Eugene Hester, b. Oct. 23, 1937    He1.1
    2. William Griffth Hester, b. Jun. 22, 1940    He1.2
    3. George Nicholas Hester, b. Nov. 28, 1944    He1.3
    4. Jane Ann Hester, b. Aug. 16, 1951 He1.4

    5.  

       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       

      Eustace was 5' 8" or 173 cm tall, as are his three sons. 
      He had rather large hands with long fingers and his shoe size was 9EEE or unusually broad feet with very high arches. Both are traits more or less shared by his sons. His left foot was also about a size shorter than his right one, so he often had his shoes specially made, as shoe factories did not cater to the small market of such unusually broad shoe sizes in the first half of the 20th century like it does now. 

      Being also overweight he had problems finding suits that would fit and usually had them tailor made, which also allowed him to get just the colors he liked to wear: either as steel blue to gray color or a brownish beige, which he felt best suited his dark blond hair, light complexion and blue grey eyes. I cannot remember him ever having a dark suit or overcoat.  His son, George, with the same color eyes and hair also prefers these colors though with a stronger emphasis on the brownish beige.

      His father was 5' 10", rather brawny, with dark red hair, while his mother was only about 5' tall, quite slender and more blond. So the broad, high arched feet would seem to be more from his father's side, the blond hair has to come from both sides, as does his height.

      Since three of my children are light blond, two dark blond to brown and one dark brown, while my light brown hair turned nearly black by the time I was 20. But even then a close look at my hair revealed two color rather evenly mixed: about 60 % fine dark blond - obviously my father's - and 40 % dark brown to black - obviously my mother's. It is clear that the darker color in Robert and katherine is from my mother since their is blond and the blond strain  in Nicholas, Maximilian and Nathaniel is partly from my father's mother. Judith's mother is dark brown so she may have it from her mother alone and carry either my mother's or father's color as second factor. Both Katherine and Judith carry an X chromosome from my mother.

      Both parents were blood group A+, as am I.

      My father was operated on to correct being cross-eyed, as was Judith. Katherine seems to have a minor degree of this which showed in Mark but was naturally corrected.
       

      Since I started developing bronchial asthma at 56 due to a deficiency of fatty acids found in primrose seed oil, I wonder if my father's smokers cough was not from the same cause, and whether the tuberculosis his mother's father was diagnosed for might not be due in part to the same thing.