Norman Loren Schryer
Married: Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Janice Marilyn Schryer (nèe Eklund)
When I asked Norm about his life, the first thing he said was that he was blessed in wooing and winning the hand of his wife, Janice Eklund. The two began dating their freshman year at the University of Michigan. They got married the day after graduation and as of this writing have been married for 45 years.
Norm once told the family about the happy, monogamous prairie vole and the utterly depraved mountain vole who takes his pleasure where he finds it. When he told the story, Charlotte exclaimed, “That’s just like Tom!” Norm says both brothers inherited this genetic predisposition to monogamy from their father.
That did not, however, prevent Norm from participating in at least one large-scale panty raid at the University of Michigan that the Michigan Daily referred to as “largely fruitless” (no pun intended). Lest we forget, we were all young once.
The Eklunds
Jan’s father was Sven Adolph Eklund (b. 13 Aug 1908 d. Sept 1992). He was a local Ishpeming businessman who owned a laundry specializing in cleaning uniforms for local miners. He was also a city council member and on 16 Aug 1954, he was elected mayor.
Jan’s mother, L. Lorraine Eklund (nèe Collick) was born 17 Jan 1909. Like Sven, she graduated from the University of Michigan. Her degree was in German but she graduated during the war and was unable to find a job. She later taught Latin. Jan’s mother died of a brain tumor in October, 1967, within one year of being diagnosed.
Sven and L. Lorraine had three children. Jan has a brother and sister. Stephen Adolf was born in 1947. He married Susan Mitchell and they have two children: David John born 12 Sept 1978 and Katherine Elizabeth born 7 Oct 1982. They are both married and as of 2010 David has one child, a son. Jan’s sister is Elizabeth, married to Don Le Heup. They have two children, Robert and Debra.
In 1969, Jan was in a terrible car accident while teaching in Ann Arbor. Her skull was fractured, she broke her back, and suffered from temporary memory impairment. She spent six weeks in the hospital and couldn’t work for a year. As a result of the accident, she suffered twice from spinal meningitis until a doctor who was also a Korean War veteran determined that the meningitis was a result of the accident, and, as it happens, similar to war wounds he had seen in Korea. He was able to repair the problem. Her health later in life has been excellent. She had two children and exercises every day for well over an hour. Jan was born with bad eyesight but at age 64, after pronounced declining eye site, had cataract surgery which improved her eye-sight to 20/20.
Jan has attended the New Providence Presbyterian Church since 1977. She has taught bible study to third graders and Vacation Bible School to first and second graders. Jan is also a circle leader for tapestry in women’s bible study and a deacon who serves communion.
Jan is an avid reader and a member of the Friends of the New Providence Library. She would like be remembered for being a good wife, mother and grandmother. Her advice for her grandchildren is to do what you love and love what you’re doing. While Norm has no current plans to retire, Jan considers herself retired now and says it’s the best time of her life.
“Me Cook, Me Cook!”
During World War II, at the age of 2 or 3, Norm awoke bright and early one weekend morning and made his way to the kitchen. While both parents slept, he managed to drag a kitchen chair to the sink which he filled with water. Sensitive to the prized cooking ingredients in the war-rationed kitchen, he promptly located items such as butter, cocoa and coffee and soaked them in the sink. He got out a wooden spoon and stirred the ruined mixture of “ingredients” until he’d finally made enough noise to wake his father. Fran saw what had happened and returned to the bedroom. “Elaine,” he said, “you need to go take care of Norm because if I touch him, I’ll kill him.”
And on to real recipes… Jan and Mike continue to make the hot ketchup recipe that we inherited from one of the millenary workers Emmaline Egan cooked for:
Hot Ketchup
2 cans of tomatoes
4 onions
2 cups celery
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons salt
2 heaping tablespoons dry mustard
2 tablespoons pepper
2/3 cup vinegar
Boil until it thickens
Norm told me that you have no idea how much your parents love you until you have children of your own. One of his favorite stories about his daughter Katrina is about a set of family pets – two “female” gerbils. One day they produced a litter. Mike was upset. “Get daddy gerbil out of the cage, he’ll eat the babies!” he cried. Katrina, looking at the rather ugly newborns said, “Maybe that’s not a bad idea.”
Norm has Bachelor’s, Master’s and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan in mathematics. Since graduation, he has worked for AT&T. His current job title is Director of Broadband Services Research. He had his home, a middle school and a high school on optical fiber links to the Internet in 1993.
The citation for the medal above included the following:
Norm Schryer of AT&T Labs Research has been at the forefront of cable-based broadband telecommunications since 1994. This was long before AT&T or any other company thought to explore the technology in telephony. Schryer talked with customers, cable operators and vendors to gather market, technical and business knowledge. The time he spent and the data he collected paid off when, in 1995, the first broadband cable trial was a complete success.
Norm joined the Labs in 1969 and, according to David G. Belanger, a director in Labs Research, he “led a very successful effort to prove the value of cable as a broadband local access method. On many occasions, he was one of a very small set of dedicated advocates, and was certainly among the most persistent and effective. Given AT&T’s current strategic direction in entering the local marketplace, it would be hard to overestimate the importance of [his work].”
D. P. Duncan, Data Network Service Development vice president, collaborated with Norm for years. He said Norm’s work “demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that broadband cable for Internet access was practical and preferential for AT&T’s strategy to enter these markets … The things that most impressed me about Norm were his exceptional technical insights … his boundless energy, his willingness to go anywhere to talk to whomever he had to to move the ball forward, and his advocacy- and partnership-building skills in bringing various stakeholders together.”
This endeavor led to AT&T becoming a cable company and buying TCI, then MediaOne. MCI fraud helped drive AT&T into the ground and they had to sell the cable business to Comcast at 50c on the dollar. Fraud, even by others, has consequences.
At Grandma’s funeral, Norm gave the eulogy. He talked about our family’s heritage and ended by saying “We are the legacy of all [our ancestor’s] love and teaching, especially Elaine’s.”
Michael (Gunther) Francis Schryer
b. 14 July 1973
I interviewed Mike in July of 2009. Mike legally changed his name from Gunther Francis to Michael Francis as an adult.
Mike told me about growing up with his family in the very conservative town of New Providence, New Jersey. He knew in middle school that he was gay and that was a difficult way to be in that community. He hopes to be a part of the first generation of gay couples to have federally recognized marriages. He believes perhaps this will come about as a result of a Supreme Court ruling or even the work of President Obama. His political beliefs are Democratic with a sprinkling of socialism.
Mike became a Resident Assistant as an undergraduate in college. He told me about one day walking in on a young man with a knife, on drugs, confronting his girlfriend. Mike, dressed only in boxer shorts, worked with another Resident Assistant and wrestled the man to the ground. Mike broke the man’s wrist during the process and has no regrets, simply a well-tuned sense of self-preservation. He made a career out of residence life, moving up the ladder as he took jobs at various colleges and universities.
Mike does not plan to raise children and when asked what advice he might have for his nieces’ and nephews’ children he merely nodded sagely and said he would leave that to their parents.
For years during Grandma and Grandpa Jack’s retirement years in Phoenix, Arizona, Mike visited twice a year.
Asked what the most important things were to him he said that the previous 15 months of his life with loving partner Reggie Parulan were the happiest of his life. Reggie is a middle school teacher from the Philippines. He is currently in the United States to teach science at a disadvantaged school. One of Mike’s life dreams is to retire to a tropical country and he likes the Philippines a great deal. His other interests include badminton, sleep, TV, his computer and baking cookies. Mike makes great cookies, particularly chocolate chip, as I can testify.
Katrina Ann Portelli (nèe Schryer)
b. 27 July 1975
Married 16 Nov 2002
Christopher Joseph Portelli
b. 14 March 1973
Katrina got her Bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice from Arizona State University in Phoenix, Arizona. This was at the same time Grandma and Grandpa Jack were living there. Katrina told me how Grandma got her hooked on soap operas including One Life to Live and General Hospital. Katrina still watches them. She remembers Grandma sitting in the back room, eating frozen candy bars and watching TV. Grandma lived to see Katrina’s first two children, Aidan and Caitlin. Grandma sat and cried when Aidan, as an infant, was brought to her nursing home room.
As her son Aidan learns to ride a bike, Katrina is reminded of Grandpa Jack’s tandem bike that he would tour a short distance from the house with his grandchildren in Hillsdale.
When I asked Katrina what she’d like to share for this family history she wrote a synopsis of where the country is politically and socially. She doubts the popular theory of global warming in which some say that by end of the 21st century the polar ice caps will have melted and most major cities will be under water. She notes that the U.S. has just elected its first African-American president, Barack Obama. Of technology, she mentions the popularity of the iPhone, an Apple company product that is a cell phone and extensive suite of communication, information and recreational applications. She talked about how our country is dependent on oil and that the American auto industry is in very bad shape (less than a year after she wrote this, two of the U.S.’s major automobile manufacturers, GM and Chrysler, declared bankruptcy in the recession that began in 2009 with the collapse of the housing market).
And she wrote that we are in the middle of a second war in Iraq, a country that at this time is the third largest oil producer in the world. The two ahead of it are Saudi Arabia and Iran. This second Iraq War began in 2003 with a U.S.-organized invasion. The terrorist organization known as al-Queda took that opportunity to entrench itself in Iraq and draw supporters from around the globe.
Katrina announced her engagement to Christopher Portelli at the Easter holiday of 2002 at Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Tom’s home. The couple had a large, elegant wedding in November, 2002.
The Portellis
I interviewed Katrina’s husband Christopher Joseph Portelli at Thanksgiving, 2009. He is a manager in partner sales, training and support for Aquant, a French telecommunications company.
Chris has two siblings. His sister is Jessica Lynn (b. 1 Nov 1975 m. 5 March 2003 to Joseph Gavani b. 25 March 1974). Chris’s brother is Edward Scott (b. 2 May 1978 m. 25 July 2003 to Krista Dinisio). His family is Catholic but he is now Presbyterian although not particularly religious.
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CORRECTIONS FROM KATRINA SCHRYER 2/7/2011:
Edward Scott Portelli born Feb. 5, 1978
Krista DiNisio born Feb. 22, 1979
Chris works for Covad Communications, a telecommunications company
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As I write this in February of 2010, Chris and Katrina have three children: Aidan Matthew (b. 19 April 2005), Caitlin Emma (b. 6 Nov 2006) and Gabrielle Elaine (b. 10 Jun 2010). When I interviewed Chris, he said fatherhood is a lot more difficult than he thought it was going to be and patience is truly a virtue. All of their children were born in Atlanta, Georgia.
Chris’s hobbies include triathlons, which he became interested in in 2002. He also played college and high school soccer. His advice to his grandchildren is to trust, but always be cautious.
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