Suddenly, in 1937, things turned dramatically downhill for Walter Ruby. According to Stanley, Sidney Kessler squeezed him out of American Spirits.

Then said Stan, “For 5-6 months, he sat home, not sure what to do with himself. He thought about selling soda to drug stores and down in the basement, deciding to make a perfume. Then he invented a pen that included a corkscrew and blade. He found a manufacturer to sell it. I believe it was the Schenley Liquor Company. I saw a check for $50,000 he received for that.”

According to all accounts, Rose was a dynamo who did everything around the house. She was an excellent cook, Stan remembers her matzoh brei, Sandy her brisket with ginger snaps in the sauce. 

She did all the cleaning and sewing. She made all the dresses for the girls and kept a pickle barrel in the back of the house.

She was active until the end of her life in 1947.

For reasons that remain unclear, at the age of 15 or 16, Rose was set up with a boy from a nearby country town named Abraham “Abe” Bloch (1870-1941). The match was a bit surprising because Abe, who at that time was making his living as a roofer, was from a lower social class and not as well educated as Rose.

These photos must have been sent to Helga in late 1945 by one of her cousins in London. They are helpfully dated on the back. 

Gina is shown together with her husband Ernest Scott in November 1945. He was a Jew born as Ernst Schoenwald in Vienna, and had anglicized his name after having fled to England.

Edith was not yet married in October 1945, when her picture was taken. She married Rudolf Krausz six months later. 

Last night, when I showed Joanne yesterday's posting of a photo of Helga about age three, she wanted to have a better idea of the proximity of the park to the Ringel home, and also to the Weißensee cemetery where Hermann would later be laid to rest. 

This map of the town of Weißensee calls out the locations.

Helga lived at the Woelckpromenade address in Weißensee for the first five years of her life, before the family moved to Charlottenburg. 

Here from the scanning project is a second image of Hermann Ringel in some kind of military uniform. It must date from 1914 or 1915, when he was 27 or 28. 

It would be helpful to possibly identify the service branch from the dress uniform. For some reason, I have it in my head that it might have been the Reichsmarine, the predecessor of the Third Reich's Kriegsmarine.

There are many chapters of Helga's life that are covered in the box of photos that I am now organizing, but none is as well photographed as her leisure activities with female and male friends during her early years in New York. At the beach. A ski trip. A Connecticut resort. Even deep sea fishing. 

The photos are fun and I will be posting a selection in the coming days. For now, here are two inscribed photographs from young male admirers from her early years in New York. 

Here are two stunning formal portraits of Elly Wohlgemuth before or during her marriage to Hermann RingelHer. 

She was quite the beauty, certainly a desirable match for the already successful businessman. 

The small lake that gives Weißensee its name, and the bigger park around it, were just a short walk from the Ringel residence on Woelckpromenade. I was there myself in 2018 and can picture the place this picture was made in about 1928.

That is Helga on the right with her two friends and a doll in a pram. The friends are Ingried and another whose name I can't make out on the flip side notation. Would you say Helga is about three or four in the picture?

When the Ruby family relocated to Glen Ellyn in 1964, the three children were old enough that Helga was able to take a job working for a Chicago advertising agency in its local office, fulfilling an ambition she had to return to the work force and contribute to the family finances.