32 - Nan's Son John Danke

"The kindest, most generous person imaginable"

John Danke ca. 2010. He strongly resembled his father John Albrecht. Photo courtesy Rabeeh Shhadeh.

John Ernest Albrecht was born August 18, 1950 in Stouffville, Ontario (near Toronto). His 38-year-old mother Nan died three weeks later from complications of childbirth. [Read previous post HERE.] His father John Albrecht, a 52-year-old trapper and prospector from northern Saskatchewan, decided it would be best to have his son raised by Ernest and Ida Danke, Nan's father and stepmother, in southern California. 

John told Berry Richards in a 1975 interview that his in-laws came up to Toronto from California after Nan's death. "John, do you want to go prospecting and wouldn't the boy hamper you?" John quotes Danke as saying, "How would it be if you let me and my wife raise him?" John agreed, and on September 10, 1950 three-week-old John crossed the Canada-US border at Port Huron, Michigan with his father and his maternal grandparents.

Card Manifest for John Ernest Albrecht, Sept. 10, 1950. They had to present many documents, including papers relating to Nan's first husband, Richard Morenus, who for some reason was cited as deceased. (Morenus living in Michigan at the time.) Source: US National Archives Microfilm Publication M14687-1.

After getting his infant son settled in with Nan's parents in Yorba Linda, California, John Albrecht returned to northern Saskatchewan with Nan's ashes. [Read previous post HERE.] 

Ida Danke with her step-grandson, John, 1951. Courtesy Rabeea Shhadeh.

Ernest and Ida adopted Nan's son, renaming him John Danke. In 1954 they procured "derivative" American citizenship (citizenship granted to foreign-born children adopted by United States citizens) for the boy. 

Albrecht continued his life of trapping and prospecting but visited his son in California every year until John was about 10 years old. "Pretty near every year I went, you know, to California," Albrecht told Berry Richards. "There I stayed from October to March. They had a 35-acre orange grove." 

Nan's blond, blue-eyed boy at about six years old. Photo courtesy Rabeea Shhadeh.

 

John Danke as a teenager. Source: Rabeea Shhadeh.

John Danke attended Vista High School, a public school in Vista, California where he was a member of the swim team and a diver during his junior and senior years. He graduated in 1968. 

John Danke diving in high school. Source

John's real talent was as a pianist and organist. Like many other musicians, he got his start as a teenager in a rock-and-roll band. One of his friends from junior high school, Martin Kelley, posted the following story on the Tributes page of John's obituary:

In 1964 The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and within weeks a couple of friends and I were getting a band together. I found out that John played an amplified accordian (of all things) and that he had a really large amplifier. I convinced my friends that we should let him into the band and then we would get to use his amp! Lo and behold we found out that this guy was a genuine musician! ... You ain't heard nothin' until you've heard John playing the lead guitar riff of The Byrd's 8 Miles High on the accordian!! He was truly a wizard!! ... I was there when his mom (Ida ... God bless her) bought him his first rock and roll organ, taking him from vertical keyboards to horizontal. After that any popular song that had an organ part in it, we played! We were truly blessed to have John in our band and once we got to know him, we embraced him as a beloved and respected friend. ... He played in another band after ours broke up and played weekends in clubs aboard the Marine Corps Base at Camp Pendleton during the dark days of the Vietnam War. - Source

Nan's son John attended Chapman College in Orange County, California where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in music theory and composition. He then embarked on a career as a solo artist and accompanist, performing from Montana to Texas, and even giving a recital at the Rachmaninoff Conservatory in Paris. [Source: Desert Sun, Palm Springs, CA, May 16, 1975.]

John Danke in his early 20s. Animated portrait made using Deep Nostalgia on My Heritage.

When he was 24 years old, John Danke told the Yucca Valley newspaper that he was working to become a full-time performer in as many locations and for as many audiences as possible. "I believe the audience, not oriented in classical music, deserves a good entertaining program of this type of music in order to develop a greater appreciation of the great wealth and beauty this music offers to everyone," he said. [Source: Hi-Desert Star, July 11, 1974.]

John Danke Visits His Father in La Ronge, Saskatchewan

Albrecht's good friend Dr. Klaus Lehnert-Thiel lived in La Ronge, Saskatchewan from 1969 to 1979. He told me that during those years John never traveled to California to visit his son. However, in the mid-1970s John Danke traveled from California to La Ronge with his grandmother, Ida to visit his father. "They stayed a few days and I had them over for dinner at least once," Lehnert-Thiel recalls. "His son was a pianist and John egged him on to play more pieces on my old piano but his son somehow balked. The visit did nothing to strengthen the father-son relationship, at least that I could see." Lehnert-Thiel does not know if the two ever saw each other again after that. [Source: Email to author, Sept. 27, 2017.]

John receiving an award in 1977.

Throughout his career as a concert pianist, John Danke was the recipient of numerous awards in competitions sponsored by such organizations as the Friends of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Orange County Philharmonic Society. He performed and lectured in the United States Festival of Music in New York sponsored by Rutgers University in the spring of 1982. ]Source: Desert Sun, Palm Springs, CA, Dec. 10, 1983.]

 

VIDEO: Robert Wetzel, guitar, and John Danke play Carulli's Grand Duo Op. 96, La Mesa, California, 2002.. Source

John Danke at age 30. Source: Desert Sun, Palm Springs, Feb. 22, 1980.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Danke was living in Palm Desert serving as the pianist and accompanist at the College of the Desert and as the organist at the Palm Desert Christian Science Church. By the late 1980s John was back living with his step-grandmother Ida in Carlsbad, California. Ida Danke passed away in 1987 when John was 37 years old.

Friendship 

John Danke with his Aunt Rosie (Roswitha) in Germany, 2015. Photo courtesy Rabeea Shhadeh.

Rabeea Shhadeh and John Albrecht in Israel, 2015. Photo courtesy Rabeea Shhadeh.

In 1991, John Danke met Rabeea (Robert) Shhadeh in Escondido, California. The two became close friends and traveled extensively together. Rabeea told me in a phone call that John visited Germany every year around Christmas. "He wanted to learn as much as he could about his German family," Rabeea said. In 2015, they went to Germany together to visit John's family and then to Israel where John met some of Rabeea's family.

Danke at the piano. Posted on the Forever Missed Tributes page by Patrick Anderson. Source

John Danke passed away suddenly from heart failure on New Year's Eve 2015, three months after he and Rabeea returned home from Israel. He was 65 years old. John collapsed while practicing on the organ at St. Patrick's Church and was discovered the next morning by church staff. He had devoted his life to music and had performed for over 30 years. It is no surprise, therefore, that when he passed away, the tributes poured in. "John was the kindest, most generous person imaginable," writes Patrick Anderson on the Forever Missed website. "The hole his passing leaves in our lives will be impossible to fill. I don't know what we will do without the music that he brought into our lives." Click here for more tributes.

John was interred at Mission San Luis Rey in Oceanside, California. Georgetta Psaros, a mezzo soprano that John often accompanied, chose the words of Khalil Gibran for his headstone. "That which sings and contemplates in you is now dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space."  

John's headstone.

John's friend Rabeea Shhadeh told me over the phone that John had letters and other documents in his possession relating to his birth parents, John Albrecht and Nan Dorland. These items went to a family member after John's death. To date, however, I have not been able to locate this person to request copies.

AUDIO: Listen to John play HERE.

 

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