AMaZing Mail Department, from yesterday: this object:
(#1) A short snorter whose signers include John K. Zwicky (across the very right edge of George Washington’s face); JKZ, of Coalinga CA, is a familiar — as well as familial — character on this blog
#1 came in surprise e-mail yesterday from James A. Downey, who’s been researching the names on the short snorter and so was led to this blog. So, two things: JKZ and short snorters.
My old friend Ellen Sulkis James, musing on my name, e-mailed today:
I just read about someone else whose last name is Zwicky — think it was someone involved with tennis.
Memories are often fugitive and hazy. Perhaps that’s what’s going on here. My searches for people named Zwicky with a tennis connection pulled up only two, both of them most unlikely to have come to ESJ’s attention: the investment banker Daniel Zwicky, who’s billed as an avid tennis player now and, when young in Switzerland, competed at a national level; and the Molson Coors IT specialist Michelle Zwicky, who was a notable tennis player in college two decades ago.
Brief notes on the two of them, for the Page on this blog on my postings about Zwickys of note.
… as some of the AMZ Fan Club (as Eleanor put it), in, omigod, October 2021, how could I have failed to post about this for almost two years? (note that everyone has a mask, temporarily off for the photo):
(#1) My cousin Eleanor (the youngest of my first-cousin cohort: Eleanor Severin Houck, daughter of Bertha Zwicky Severin); my cousin-in-law Dick Houck; and their son, my first cousin once removed Rich Houck — at Wilson High School in West Lawn PA
They are standing in front of my Distinguished Alumni plaque in the WHS Hall of Academic Fame — from, oh dear, almost 20 years ago; I gave a little talk then at the National Honor Society induction, a talk that included a brief encomium to my dad and how he coped with having such a “different” kid.
HENRY ZWICKY OBITUARY, published by the Greensboro News & Record on May 24, 2023.
Henry as a young man.Henry A[rnold] Zwicky, 82, passed on to his permanent home in heaven on Friday, May 19, 2023.
He is survived by nieces; Cathy (Joseph) Burton, Marian (David) Bookhart, Alison (Mark) Claudy, Virginia (James) Ansell, mother of nieces Jean Zwicky Day, special cousin Debby McGann; and many great nieces and nephews.
Henry is predeceased by his parents, Fred and Lucille Cole Zwicky, brother; Fred Zwicky; sister Eleanor Zwicky Justice.
Henry attended Lindley Junior and Greensboro Senior High School. He graduated from N.C. State University and served as a member of the NCSU Rifle team, concert and marching band. He enjoyed golf, hunting, fishing and photography. He spent over 35 years of his career working as an HVAC engineer at AC Corporation. He also worked for M.L. Eakes Company, the Bahnson Company and completed many major projects for Guilford Mills. Henry was a life time member of ASHRAE [the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers] and [the] N.R.A.
The last of the North Carolina Zwickys (in my family), almost exactly my age but quite different from me; he was a guy guy and something of a loner.
His father Fred was the oldest of the five children of Melchior and Bertha Zwicky, and gave his younger son the middle name of his little brother (12 years younger), my father Arnold.
We’re talking considerable time depths here. Henry’s father was born just after the turn of the 20th century (over 120 years ago), my father (and mother) in the year World War I began (109 years ago), Henry and I in 1940, at the beginning of World War II (82 years ago).
So this truly is a Mary, Queen of Scots, not dead yet, posting.
Notified via Google Alert on Saturday: on the Jenkem Magazine (skateboarding) site, “Allies: Calder Zwicky of MOMA” (with a YouTube video) by Alexis Castro & Ollie Rodgers on 10/2/18. Another chapter in the story of artist Calder Zwicky — previously reported on in this blog back in 2016, so this is an update, but not actually up-to-date (though it gets skateboarding into CZ’s story, which is a good thing).
(#1) Screen shot from the video: CZ talking about a work of his from the Lonely Thrasher series — slang thrasher, roughly ‘excellent skateboarder’, also the name of a skater magazine — showing a cover of this magazine with the skater removed, to yield an image that, CZ argues, is still a skateboarding image, of the huge space and the complex physical structure that offers a challenge to a serious skateboarder; the skater is implicit in the image
Annals of bizarre commerce, in today’s announcement by Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky that she has ordered an (ornamental) deer head with ZWICKY (among other things) emblazoned on it. From Miho Unexpected Things (“Striking and fun italian home decor”), where it’s one of a number of deer heads on offer:
(#1) This particular model is named Zwickypedia; ZWICKY is presumably pronounced en français, like the other words on the head
WTF!? you exclaim / ask. Why ZWICKY?
From my 6/28/22 posting “Zwicknames”:
some of us Zwickfolk probably have a Slavic ancestry, way back when, so there’s a kind of poetic symmetry in a migration of Swiss people, among them a notable Zwicky [Johann Heinrich Zwicky, known as Henry] east to [the Odesa area] in 1822, to establish vineyards there (in [what is now] Ukraine). Some stuck it out there, but others fled north to what is now Belarus. [see my 5/22/19 posting “Tsviki from Belarus”] In the mid-20th century, the [Shabo] Zwickys fled back west on a tortuous route, eventually re-establishing themselves in Switzerland (one — Oskar Zwicky, born 9/23/30 — is, astonishingly, still alive and giving interviews; posting to come). And then more recently, many of the Tsvikis from Belarus also fled west, some to Switzerland, some to the United States (including the Miami area and NYC).
(#1) Oskar Zwicky, looking very Swiss, in an engaging 2022 interview, in Oberterzen, Canton Glarus (photo: swissinfo.ch)
This is the fulfillment of that promise: a posting about Oskar Z, born in Shabo, near Odesa in what is now Ukraine, now living back in Canton Glarus, in Switzerland’s northeastern alpine region.
A follow-up promised back in December. From my 12/7/22 posting “Coalinga Zwicky goes to war”:
in the mildly lubricious Our Armed Forces at Play genre, Army Air Force Lt. John K. Zwicky (hereafter JKZ) of Coalinga CA, sunbathing with two buddies in the Aleutian Islands in 1944:
(#1) Snapshot from the National Archives (in College Park MD), supplied by researcher Aubrey Morrison, who’s been tracking down JKZI can report that after the war, JKZ went right back to Coalinga and stayed there, with his wife and three kids (a girl and two boys), working in the local oilfields and living a very long life (into his 100s).
But Coalinga rang a little bell in my head, well, because of the oddness of the name but also, I eventually realized, because it was where photographer Jill Ann Zwicky, the subject of my 7/29/22 posting “The life she lived”, grew up: a place in the middle of the Central Valley, in between US Route 101 and I-5, out in the middle of nowhere (to my mind), but a place she remembered with tremendous affection.
Yes, Jill was JKZ’s daughter.
Well, then I have a lot to say about JKZ and Coalinga and the Swiss diaspora in the US, and Aubrey is still unearthing more stuff.
Just a tease — it’s been another awful day, with very little time in it for blogging — for a Zwicky family posting on Pearl Harbor Day (side note: best wishes to my cousin Lynda Zwicky Hood, born 12/7/41!). Arriving in my mailbox by happy coincidence this morning: in the mildly lubricious Our Armed Forces at Play genre, Army Air Force Lt. John K. Zwicky (hereafter JKZ) of Coalinga CA, sunbathing with two buddies in the Aleutian Islands in 1944:
This is a remarkable snapshot from the National Archives (in College Park MD), made in some haste by researcher Aubrey Morrison, who’s been tracking down JKZ (the photo reproduced here with his permission). I can report that after the war, JKZ went right back to Coalinga and stayed there, with his wife and three kids (a girl and two boys), working in the local oilfields and living a very long life (into his 100s).
But Coalinga rang a little bell in my head, well, because of the oddness of the name but also, I eventually realized, because it was where photographer Jill Ann Zwicky, the subject of my 7/29/22 posting “The life she lived”, grew up: a place in the middle of the Central Valley, in between US Route 101 and I-5, out in the middle of nowhere (to my mind), but a place she remembered with tremendous affection.
Yes, Jill was JKZ’s daughter.
Well, then I have a lot to say about JKZ and Coalinga and the Swiss diaspora in the US, and Aubrey is still unearthing more stuff.
This posting is just today’s proof that I am Not Dead Yet. Stay tuned.
Return with me now to the middle of June, when I was impelled into the world of Zwicky logos, including not only ones for prominent Swiss commercial enterprises in grain, sewing thread, and real estate (the grain company is where it all started on 6/14), but also for beer (in Colorado), hair styling (also in Colorado), car repair (in Canton Aargau in Switzerland), and astronomical surveys (in California).
The original impulse came from Kyle Wohlmut, posting on Facebook on 6/14 “at Zwicky Areal”, with this photo taken from his commuter train:
(#1) KW > AZ (about the gnome in the logo): I don’t think that’s a very good likeness…
The logo in question:
(#2) The gnome is indeed not a good likeness of me
There ensued a confusion that turned out to have to do with the word Areal, but eventually it was established that the gnomic logo in #1 and #2 is for the Zwicky grain company (Schweizerische Schälmühle E. Zwicky AG), headquartered in a corner of Canton Thurgau; while the Zwicky sewing-thread company (now merged into the German company A&E Gütermann) and the real-estate company (Zwicky & Co AG, headquartered in the Zürich suburb of Wallisellen) base their logos on the Donald Brun silk-cat poster of the 1950s (which I’ve posted about repeatedly).
But Kyle’s note sent me on a search for Zwicky logos, which took me immediately to the 4 Noses Brewing Company in Broomfield CO, makers of Zwicky P (a Pilsner-style lager) and on to all the rest.
![]("https://i0.wp.com/arnoldzwicky.s3.amazonaws.com/HenryZwicky.jpeg?w=250)
