We are meeting Joyce in her house on the city’s East between Westport Road and Robsion Park. Joyce is prepared. She has searched for pictures and has laid them out, is nicely dressed, and offers us cookies. Also her dog Gypsy is part of the meeting. She faces the visitors with skepticism, barks, and barks again. Her fixed, light blue eyes make her look dangerous in contrast to her rounded, well-fed body. (Gypsy is half Australian sheepdog, half Beagle.)
Joyce loves going on long journeys. She has seen much of the world. She has travelled to all states of the Union except to these three: Minnesota, North Dakota, and Iowa. She has visited China and Africa, and Europe, several times. She has always been interested in her European roots, she says, more than her parents or relatives. In High School, therefore, she had chosen German as her foreign language. Having traveled and faced other cultures in the last decades has further deepened her interest.
Joyce’s mother, Ruth Gettler (1913 - 2003), was of German descent, her father, Eugene John Zehnder (1914 - 1991), of Swiss descent. His grandfather Joseph Andreas Zehnder (1834 - 1903) had arrived in Louisville from Einsiedeln around 1860 where he married Anna Maria Schoenbaechler from Willerzell in 1861. John Joseph (1877 - 1940), Joseph Andreas’ son, father of Eugene John as well as Joyce’s grandfather, had married Anna Maria Eberle (1885 - 1977), she too, a native of Einsiedeln. After the early death of her father, she had come with her mother as a small child to Louisville. Thus, Joyce has no fewer than three direct ties to Einsiedeln.
In Louisville, the Zehnders found success as dairy farmers. Her grandmother, Joyce observes, used to travel the city streets in elegant coaches. But in the fall of 1929 the Great Depression hit, also swallowing the Zehnder’s farm. Her grandfather then opened a poultry shop at Frankfort Avenue in Crescent Hill. That was the closest she had come to rural life, Joyce remarks, a retired social worker and today a volunteer at urban institutions.
Joyce is an educated woman. One senses her wide horizon when talking with her. She is, for example, interested in the ancient high cultures. Rome fascinates her. In September she will join a traveling group to Greece and Turkey. She would also like to visit Egypt. It seems that she is less interested in painstakingly sorting out genealogical details than in placing herself in space and time. For her, the Swiss and German origin is but one stone in a larger mosaic.
There were emigrants who were troubled abroad by homesickness and others who simply looked ahead. The Zehnders belonged to the latter. Ties to the old homeland, Joyce observes, soon became dormant. All available energy was directed towards building a new existence, and towards becoming American. About her own growing up in Crescent Hill, Joyce states: “We led a normal American middle class life.”
Next year, Joyce observes her 75th birthday. For the occasion, she will make herself the gift of a journey to Australia. Not long ago she has started to play the piano. At the moment she practices songs of Elvis Presley. But on the side she will most likely not abandon pursuing this or that family connection. When we are leaving, Gypsy lies content on her back waiting for Joyce to fondle her belly.
