- Canada, Newspapers.com™ Obituary Index, 1800s-current -
- Shop now for incredible insights into your wellbeing -
Paul Morsky
Funeral arrangements by
Regina Funeral Home
Paul Morsky of Regina, SK, age 79, passed away peacefully surrounded by his family on December 24, 2003.
Left to cherish Paul’s memory is his loving wife of 55 years, Gloria; son Brian (Pat) and their children Bryce, Blake, Erica and Mark; daughter Deb and her children Larissa, Anna and Taisa; son Wayne (Carole) and their children Graham, Falynn, Rachel, and Jared. Paul will also be deeply missed by his brother Nick (Verna) of Estevan, sister Nell (Maurice) of Winnipeg and their families, as well as many cousins, nieces and nephews, in-laws and his family in Ukraine.
Paul was born on December 6, 1924 in Chernivetski, Ukraine. He immigrated to Canada in 1928 and settled with his parents, Anna and Joseph, in Lac Du Bonnet, Manitoba. At the age of 14, Paul began farming with his father. Shortly after Paul turned 20, he purchased his first crawler tractor and began his land clearing business. In 1948, Paul married Gloria Buhay and their lives were blessed with three children. In 1954, Paul and Gloria moved to Virden, Manitoba, where they ventured into business in the oil patch industry. The family business expanded to include grid road construction. In 1973 in Whitewood Sk., Paul Morsky Ltd. completed the first of many highway contracts. The company Paul founded remains a strong and well-respected family business in the earthmoving industry. In 1982, Paul and Gloria relocated to Regina.
Paul was an active member and strong supporter of the Roadbuilding industry. He served as President of the Roadbuilders & Heavy Construction Assoc. of Sask. in 1984, continuing as President of the Western Canada Roadbuilders and Heavy Construction Assoc. in 1985. Through this industry, Paul developed many friendships.
Paul’s greatest joy in life was his family, especially the time he spent with his grandchildren. Paul could often be found at hockey rinks, soccer pitches, ski hills, dance centres, school gyms or simply at the shop watching or playing with his loving grandchildren. Although Paul will no longer be physically present, his spirit will always remain strong in the memories of his grandchildren.
Paul’s final years were spent as a resident at the Wascana Rehabilitation Centre. His family would like to thank his wonderful caregivers, especially his “best buddy”, Beth Lakeman.
A celebration of Paul’s life will be held on Monday, December 29, 2003 at 2:00 p.m. at Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Parish 5020 Sherwood Drive. Father Paul Dungan presiding.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Paul’s memory to the Wascana Rehabilitation Centre or the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Saskatchewan.
Paul’s pride and respect of his Ukrainian heritage lives on through his family. Rest peacefully Paul – we will miss you immensely. “Vichnaya Pamiat”
Arrangements entrusted to Regina Funeral Home (789-8850).
Roland "Rollie" Paul Klumpp
Funeral arrangements by
Regina Funeral Home
Late of Regina SK passed on Monday, November 3, 2003 at the age of 73. Predeceased by his wife Irene in 1993. Roland’s memory will live on through his family; daughter Roszita (Jim Gillespie) Klumpp; son Marcel (Kim) and their children Lindsay, Jamie and Lea; special friend Cindy; sisters Irma Kuntz, Roswitha Heinrich (Rolf) and their children Melanie and Natalie, all of Germany. Roland will also be remembered by many other family and friends both in Canada and Germany. We wish to acknowledge the love and support we have received from the staff of the Regina Pasqua Hospital and his best friends who were by his side until Rollie’s passing, Joe Meister and John Stinnen (Irna).
Rollie’s life will be celebrated at the Regina Funeral Home, Hwy #1 East on Saturday, November 8, 2003 at 1:00 p.m. A time of fellowship and refreshment will follow. In Lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Rollie’s memory to the Canadian Cancer Society, 1910 McIntyre St., Regina SK, S4P 2R3. Friends and family are invited to sign a book of condolences at www.obituariestoday.com. Arrangements are entrusted to the Regina Funeral Home (Phone 789-8850)
The Life Of Roland Klumppp
I was born on September 23, 1930 in Freiburg, Germany. My parents, Paul Klumpp and Rosa Klumpp decided to name me Roland Paul Klumpp. My middle name was, of course, taken from my Dad.
My Dad worked as a brick layer by trade. He worked for quite a few years and then he changed his job and worked at the power corporation in my city. My Mom was a housewife and she also worked as a housekeeper for some doctor’s family. My parents put me in the Hanz Jacob Schule at the age of six. My very first teacher was Dr. Ruf. Some things that I remember about my schooling from the age of six, all the way up to fourteen is that I had to walk to school everyday when I went to Hanz Jacob Schule. I also remember all the pain. My school mates and I used to get slapped on our hands with a bamboo stick. If we did something bad, you had to hold your hand out and sometimes you got one, sometimes you got three and sometimes you got five slaps. It all depended on what you did. After a while, we all learned to get smarter. My friends and I would bring salt to school and store it under our school benches. After the teacher was done hitting us we would take it out and rub it over the spot where we had been hit. The salt would make our hands swell up and then the teachers would send us home and we had the rest of the day to do whatever we wanted. I had lots of friends in grade school. We all did. My two best friends were Johnny Stinnen who also lives in Canada, and my other best friend was Joe Meister. He also moved to Canada with Johnny and I. Joe, Johnny and I learned our trade together, and we also immigrated together.
When I was in grade eight, I got a little sister. Her name was Roswitha. She was born at the same time as the second World War. I had another sister but she wasn’t my real sister. What happened was my Mom worked for this doctor’s family and they had a baby but they didn’t want it so my Mom took it and raised her ever since she was a baby and really no one knew that she wasn’t my blood sister. Her name was Irma.
When Roswitha was just born, I had to babysit her a lot because my Dad was still in the war and my Mom had to work downtown a lot. I also liked to play soccer a lot. So I invented a little system to use on the days that I had to babysit and play soccer. I would tie a string to the basket that she was sleeping in and hang the string out of the second floor window of our apartment. That way every time that she cried I would just pull on the string from the ground and it would rock the basket that she was sleeping in. One day, after about an hour of quiet, I decided to see why she wasn’t making any fuss. It turns out that the basket had fallen over and she was trapped underneath with all the blankets and pillows on top of her. She was bright blue in the face when I picked her up and my Mom wasn’t very happy with me when she got home. She actually gave me a lickin’. It was funny at the time but it could’ve been really scary.
When I was nine years old, my Dad went off to war. He came back in 1945 when I had just been drafted to the Junior Hitler Army. I didn’t go though because it was two weeks before the war was over. It was very scary during the war because we had very little to eat. We had to ask farmers for food because there was no food in the city and that was where we were living. When the war first came out I didn’t really understand what it was all about but as I got older I started to realize.
My personal thoughts on the war were that we were pretty much brain washed by the Hitler machine. I ran in the Hitler youth and I had to join. We did all kinds of things in sports and recreation and all kinds of other things as well; marching, you name it and we didn’t know any different. We actually thought it was fun at the time.
Hitler brought a lot of work to poor people so at the time I actually liked him but when he came to Freiburg in 1943, the city where I was born, which consisted of about ninety percent Catholic citizens, we stoned him when he came through and some people got shot over that. That was when we realized that he wasn’t as good as we thought he was.
Anytime there is a war on I don’t think anybody gains by fighting. The only thing they gain is to create war again. Hitler actually put a lot of people to work but he was building towards the war and that’s why he got millions of people back to work.
In 1942 our house was bombed. I was in a show to watch a movie when I heard the silencer came on and everyone had to leave the theater. It was around 8 o’clock at night. I ran out and towards the church, which was the third biggest church in Germany. They had all the windows of the church covered so that all the expensive glass wouldn’t get broken. I was hiding behind the pillars which they put in front of the windows and I stayed there until it was over. It only lasted about seven minutes but a lot of people were killed. I went home and my two sisters and my Mom were in the basement and they were glad when I got there. We had to go to a friend of my Dad’s farm to stay at for a while, just until we could start rebuilding again. We had a small room that we stayed in for almost a year. I had to share it with my Mom, sister and my Aunt, as well. I worked for the farmer with the cows, plowing fields and I also helped with the grapes. That was how I got my mom and my sisters fed because I never got paid with money but with food. The second time we were bombed, our house wasn’t hit and we were very lucky.
My Dad actually joined the army before the war but he got drafted and when you got drafted and you didn’t join you were known as a deserter and you got shot. So my Dad really had no choice.
After the war ended people started to slowly rebuild whatever was burned down or exploded from bombs. Our money also changed in 1947. The money was devalued 10-1 so with the new money you could start to buy things again. With your old money it was worth nothing so we lost quite a bit of money. If you had saved up 10 marks, old money, then you would have 1 mark new money that you could buy things with.
The war ended when I was fourteen and a half and after that I went to look for a job. I was going to go into the electronic business but I couldn’t find a place to learn the trade. My Grandfather was a cabinet maker by trade so I decided that that would be a good place to find work. I went in a trade as a cabinet maker, I learned for three years before I made my journeyman papers and I also went once a week to school for blueprints and figuring materials and that type of stuff that I needed to know to become a good carpenter.
I decided to take my cabinet making business to Canada when I was twenty and I arrived there when I was twenty one. I decided to go to Canada because my two friends John and Joe were actually going to go to Australia but we found out that you had to be twenty one to go and we didn’t want to wait an extra six months longer. We heard on the radio that we could immigrate to Canada. We put our application in and in three weeks we were gone. I actually only planned on leaving Germany for two to three years to see something in a different country but it turned out that it didn’t work out that way.
Joe was a cabinet maker just like I was and we built a piece of furniture together and Johnny was a drag land operator and he did ceratin things that he had to do to be able to get to Canada. We all were accepted though.
I was told in Germany that the Canadian government had lots of work. They also told me that I should go to Moose Jaw. When I got there I was surprised at how extremely small it was. In 1951 Moose Jaw wasn’t a very big place. I then got transferred to Assiniboia and I worked on a railroad there for two hours and then I quit. I walked from Assiniboia to Moose Jaw and I found a job there through another German guy. In Prelate they were building a convent and that’s where I worked until the convent was finished and then I continued to go from one farm to another, building little stools and little tables all by hand, no machinery, just to make a living. Then I finally got a job in Bienfait to build a school for another contractor and when the school was finished it burned down and then we had another job to rebuild it and from there I went to Regina. I worked for Robert Simpsons company in their cabinet shop for twenty years and then I decided that, that was enough and I would start my own company. That was how "Klumpp & Son Cabinets Ltd.," started as well.
I was glad when we left but I was also sad to leave my mom, dad, my sisters and I also had a girlfriend that I had to leave behind. We thought we were going to be back in a couple of years anyways. The saddest part about leaving was that my mom was almost blind. She didn’t see me when I left and it was very hard. But we knew we had to go anyways.
I was definitely glad that I moved to Canada. A year after I got here I met Irene MaryAnne Strinja. I proposed to her in 1954. We got together really quickly. I was only with Irene for six months and then we decided that we wanted to be together so we got married. I met her at a dance hall. The wedding was really nice as well.
I was twenty five when I heard that I was going to be a father and I was really excited. We had a beautiful baby girl, Roszita Irene Klumpp. A year after that Irene had another baby, this time a boy, Marcel Paul Klumpp. Having kids was easier than I expected. We had two pretty good kids that were really involved. Marcel could never sit still and Roszita was wild but they were both pretty good.
I really wanted Marcel to play soccer but he preferred hockey so I let him play both which was all right with me. My Dad lived in Germany his whole life and he came over to visit and he really liked watching Marcel play hockey. Roszita really liked dune buggies, she was actually quite the wild type and in a lot of cases she acted more like a boy than a girl. One time Marcel and Roszita were out at Boggie Creek, and Roszita had an Odyssey dune buggy. Marcel and Roszita went out there separately and all of a sudden one guy said to Marcel, "Look at that crazy guy over there running up and down those hills on his Odyssey," and Marcel said, "That’s not a guy, that’s my sister!"
When I used to practice soccer at one of the soccer fields in Regina, Pasqua Park, they had snow fences out and we used to start early practice in the Spring. I played in goal and we didn’t have any nets so I took Marcel, he was wearing one of those harness things, and I hung him onto the fence behind the goal and we kicked the soccer balls. He was like the target! But I was so good that the ball never hit him once.
I really enjoyed getting to watch my children grow up. Marcel was quite a wild teenager but when he met Kim he really settled down. He knew that he had to leave all of his teenager stuff behind him and really become a man and that was what he did.
After Kim and Marcel got married and I heard that I was going to be having a grandchild I was really excited. Really, when Lindsay was born, I was in North Battleford, building a Royal Bank and Marcel wasn’t with us because he obviously had to stay with Kim. He phoned me in North Battleford when Lindsay was born and we all quit working, it was eight guys and one woman, and we started to celebrate.
When I heard that I was going to have a second grandchild I was just as happy. When Jamie was born, she and Lindsay used to come over and spend the night with Irene and I. We used to say that Jamie was Irene’s baby and Jamie would cling to her and Lindsay was my baby and she would cling to me. But then when Lea was born we loved her just as much and we loved all three grand children the same.
Irene died in 1992 because of heart problems. She was a good hardworking woman. She loved flowers and gardening. She had a lot of jobs that helped us to get started when we first got married. I miss her very much and I also know that she loved her kids and her grand kids very much.
After that when I was sixty I decided that retirement was the best option for me. I sold my shares to Marcel and I know that he will take very good care of it and the business. Nine years after that I moved from my home on 9th Avenue North to a cabin out at Buena Vista Beach. I’ve been living there for three years now and I am really enjoying myself and all of my free time.
I think that I have definitely lived a good and prosperous life and I am glad that I got to share some of my memories with you.
