This picture contains my grandmother, Nancy, the infant in the front row. Dorothy, her mother, is holding her. Sylvester Jr. is kneeling on the right with his father, Sylvester Sr. standing behind. John Zeller, Nancy’s great grandfather, is in the hat in the back.
I have noticed that my mother’s side of the family has accomplished the American dream of creating success through hard work and education. In the early 1900’s my third great grandfather, John Zeller, worked as a driver of a grocery wagon. His family rented a house and the children were forced to work. Their situation was an improvement from the previous generation,
who had worked farm laborers, but it was still far from wealthy. After he retired, John moved into a residence by Little Sisters of the Poor – a Catholic home that cares for impoverished elderly. John celebrated his ninetieth birthday while living in the shelter.
My family was so poor during the Depression that they ate bean sandwiches most days. John’s son, Sylvester Sr, provided for the family by working in a factory. The family moved quite often during this time. If they did not have the rent money, they left. Even with the frequent moving, the children continued to attend school. My great grandfather, Sylvester Jr., attended school until the sixth grade. In that short amount of time, he attended fourteen different schools. Not every time that he changed schools was because of the family moving though. In one story he was accused of having crumbs on his desk, so he became angry and left. During the 1940’s, the family bought a house in the country and Sylvester Sr. became a truck driver. As a truck driver he made more than the median income at the time. In 1939, Sylvester Jr., stated working as a packer in a furniture factory. He worked in that factory from age fourteen until it closed when he was fifty-five. The only span of time he did not work there was during the war when he was drafted.
When Sylvester Jr., often called Syl, and his wife, Dorothy, they found success through hard work and shared that with their children. Sometime early in my grandmother’s childhood, Syl somehow found a way to buy a farm close to an hour drive from 
the family home. Each week, the family lived in Evansville, a city of 128,000, then drove to the farm on Friday night so that Syl and eventually his sons could work on the farm. The family used the farm to supplement what they would eat. Growing up, my grandmother never went to the grocery to buy meat. They would raise somewhere between 150 and 250 chicks each year at the farm, along with pigs and cows. At Thanksgiving, Syl and his brothers would slaughter cows and sometimes pigs for the family to eat over the next year. Over the years, he acquired more land and rights, including oil and natural gas rights to his property and the nearby river. In 1978, he sold his 93 acres, but kept the rights to oil and gas.
Syl and Dorothy made sure that all of their children received an education. One of their children, Mike, was the first in family history to attend college. I continue this tradition by going to the University of Alabama. As they aged, Syl and Dorothy’s children have found success as entrepreneurs because of the work ethic that Syl and Dorothy taught them. Though hard work is important, the most important value that Syl and Dorothy attempted to teach their descendants was to be grateful. They had a special perspective when it came to being thankful because of their tough experiences during the Depression. My great grandfather has always been a role model to me by showing me that hard work creates success.