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And
She Married a Doughboy by David A. Matchick
Life
Devoted to Listening Yields Book About Family History
By Esther Talbot Fenning
St. Charles County Post
David
A. Matchick listened to the stories his grandmother told him.
He listened at the kitchen table when his mother gave his
grandmother a home perm. He listened as he and his grandmother
played cards. He listened from the backseat when his mother
drove his grandmother to the doctor.
Matchick
spent time chatting with her after he walked her dog. Later,
when she was in a nursing home, they carried on their chats
about family history. Anna Wilhelmina Bittner Ziegler died
in 1987. Years later,_ Matchick decided to share her stories
in a book. The idea came to him in the middle of the night,
he said, during a difficult time in his life.
"As
much as she'd been through in her life, she was a happy. smiling
person who faced her problems head on, with no bitterness,"
he said. "It took me all those years after she died to
realize what she meant to me."
Matchick,
41, is a postal worker whose mail route is in St. Peters.
After four years of research into the family tree. another
year of snatching time out of the night to write and being
buoyed by someone on his mail route, Matchick mailed the completed
manuscript - again and again and again. After countless rejection
letters, Matchick found a publisher.
The
book, titled "And She Married A Doughboy," was recently
published by PubishAmerica, a division of Erica House in Maryland.
The 115-page novella is scheduled to hit the bookstores in
February and is expected to be distributed nationwide.
Matchick
was delighted to learn that the publisher accepted his cover
design - a montage of family artifacts photographed by Matchick's
brother Greg Matchick. Pictured is a photograph of Matchick's
grandfather in his World War I uniform. The picture is set
in a hand-carved wooden frame made by his great-grandfather.
The montage includes Matchick's great-grandfather's pocket
watch and a love poem from his grandfather to his grandmother.
He used a tablecloth crocheted by his mother, Dawn Ziegler
Matchick, as a backdrop.
Matchick's
story takes Anna Ziegler from her birth in St. Louis in 1902
to her death. She was born to a well-to-do family that owned
a meat market in north St. Louis. She was orphaned by 1916
and lived with sisters and brothers until she married Louis
Ziegler. The book takes the family through the Depression
and its effect on St. Louisans. It tells the personal tale
of a family shooting.
It
seems that, in 1912, one of Anna's brothers shot their father
as he interfered in a quarrel with another brother. The brother
who did the shooting was imprisoned in Jefferson City and
drowned after he escaped: Matchick said his research included
newspaper articles about event.
"As
I got deeper into the research, I realized there was more
to the family stories than what she knew," he said. "I
discovered that there were some questions about schizophrenia
in the brother who did the shooting, and I learned that after
he drowned, his body surfaced in St. Charles."
Matchick
became serious about sending queries to publishing companies
after Rich Brooks encouraged him. Brooks is the director of
the St. Peters Cultural Arts Center formerly on Mexico Road--one
of the stops on Matchick's mail route. "Rich told me
honestly that he didn't expect it to hold his interest because
it was about someone's family, but he really liked it and
thought it had a market" Matchick said.
Matchick
said he got a reply from PublishAmerica in exactly 30 days.
He described his feelings as "unreal" when he learned
the book would be published. "I remember asking them
if they were sure and if they read the whole thing,"
he recalled.
Matchick
grew up in the Mehlville area of St Louis. His father was
in the accounting field, and
his mother worked in business department of Famous. In addition
to Matchick: a brother Greg, an older sister died 10 years
ago from cancer at the age of 45.
Matchick
dropped out of the University of Missouri and got married.
He worked in the accounting field for seven years before he
took a job with the Postal Service. He and his wife Nancy,
live in Harvester with their daughters, Chelsea, 12 and Olivia,
10.
As
a member of Jehovah witnesses, he spends time preaching from
door to door. Matchick that other than a high school comp
course, he has had no formal training in writing. Furthermore,
he said, he is not a writer. He was motivated to write a book
in an effort to share the story of a strong 20th-century woman
who influenced the life of a family in a positive way. "
I don't feel that I've done anything extraordinary,"
he said. "I'd like this book to be one that everyone
can relate to, and that will make people aware of the impact
someone close to them makes on them throughout their lives."
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