Elmer Sylvester Houck ( June 20, 1886 - January 25, 1970)

Bruce Westerdahl’s Grandfather

For most of his life, Grandpa Houck was a baker, and for many years he was in charge of Massmer’s Bakery in Hanover, Pennsylvania. He worked over the bakery store in a room filled with rising bread dough in long large troughs.

Grandpa was an avid fresh water fisherman, and he and Grandma would  bottom fish in a nearby lake or creek using a mixture of corn, bread and a stinky cheese like Limburger.  They  would sit all day and watch four rods resting on forked sticks stuck in the ground. Typically, they caught bullheads or suckers, and the biggest fish they ever caught was a sucker that filled their bathtub! 

Like the Pennsylvania German he was, Grandpa loved his beer, and he drank a whole quart every night of his life . . . until the price went up during WWII. That’s when Grandpa told the distributor what he could do with his beer, and he never touched it the rest of his life.

Grandpa had asthma, probably the result of breathing flour dust in the bakery for many years. Despite difficulty breathing, he smoked cigarettes that he rolled himself with Prince Albert tobacco. An atomizer was always nearby and he used it often.  

Grandpa loved to watch professional wrestling on television, and he would argue passionately that everything about it was authentic.

In 1903, Grandpa Houck married Elsie Pearl Clopper, a descendant of Cornelius Jansen Clopper who came to America around 1652. When she died at age 27, Grandpa married Effie Shuey who was previously married to Bernard Wildasin and had a son named Laverne.

Grandpa’s Mother was Mary Alice Eyster, a descendant of Johan Jacob Eyster who immigrated to America in the early 1700s. Johan’s  son, Christian, fought in the Revolutionary War, and it was Christian who enabled Elizabeth, Grandpa’s daughter and Bruce’s Mother, to join the Daughters of the American Revolution when she was 100 years old.