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.

NEXT: John's Life After Nan - Click here

PREVIOUS: Nan and John: A Marriage, a Birth, and a Death - Click HERE

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31 - Nan and John: A Marriage, a Birth, and a Death

The Happiest Time of Their Lives

The well-dressed, well-coiffed prospectors John Albrecht and Nan Morenus examining some of their mineral finds in their hotel room in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan on their way to Toronto. Prince Albert Daily Herald photo, March 21, 1950, courtesy of Rabeea Shhadeh.

In March of 1950, Nan Dorland and John Albrecht left their cabin on Selwyn Lake, Saskatchewan, passing through Prince Albert on their way to Toronto. Nan was four months pregnant. She was 38 years old.

John later told Bob Lee that they wanted the best doctors for Nan due to the many operations she had had for ulcers, so they went to Toronto for the birth of their child.

Nan and John got married in Toronto on April 29, 1950, their wedding officiated by Rev. J. Norrie Anderson, a United Church minister. The witnesses were the minister's wife Isobel C. Anderson, and LeRoy A. Tobey, John's former prospecting partner with whom he had made the Nisto uranium discovery. [Read the story HERE.]

In the months leading up to the birth of their son, John and Nan stayed at Musselman's Lake, located about 6 kilometres northwest of Stouffville. It is now part of the Greater Toronto area. In the mid-1900s, Musselman's Lake was considered to be the entertainment capital of southern Ontario. Source

A Son

John Ernest Albrecht was born on August 18, 1950 in Brierbush Hospital at Stouffville, Ontario. Brierbush Hospital (1932-1975) was a private nursing hospital that specialized in maternity cases. Source The attending physician was Dr. F. J. (John) Button of Stouffville.

Birth announcement, Stouffville Tribune, August 31, 1950.

Statement of Birth for Nan and John's son. Nan gave her occupation as "writer" and John gave his as "prospector." John signed the statement three days after Nan died, and their son's birth was officially registered on September 7, 1950.

Nan Dies Three Weeks Later

Nan Dorland passed away in Women's College Hospital at Toronto on September 3, 1950 from complications of childbirth. Dr. John Button, the same doctor who had delivered her son, signed her death certificate.

Specifically, Nan died of strangulation of the bowel as a result of obstruction due to adhesions from her previous abdominal surgeries. Nan had had two surgeries (that I know of) for a perforated bowel, once in New York City in 1939 [click HERE for story], and one at Sioux Lookout in 1947 [click HERE for story]. "Bowel obstruction may occur during the fourth or fifth months of pregnancy when the uterus rises into the abdomen but most often occurs in the third trimester or postpartum," explains Diane J. Angelini in the Journal of Midwifery & Women's Health ["Obstetric Triage Revisited: Update on Non-Obstetric Surgical Conditions in Pregnancy," 2004, 48(2).] "When an obstruction occurs, there is significant risk for severe morbidity or mortality for both mother and fetus, and treatment needs to occur as soon as possible. ... Fluid and electrolyte losses can be significant, leading to hypovolemia, renal problems, shock, and death."

Nan's Remains Return to Saskatchewan

After their son was taken to California to live with Nan's parents, John brought her ashes to their home in northern Saskatchewan.

There is a sand esker on Selwyn Lake that was very beautiful, This was their favorite spot and was situated close to their cabin. Here they had spent many evenings together, watching the moon rise slowly over the vastness of the lake, listening to the soft breeze of evening playing among the pines, and here the loon would always call from the bay. And the beautiful life they had shared here at this very spot John had enjoyed the happiest time of his life. It was only fitting that here they should part ... forever. Some years ago I saw a self-timed photo of John standing behind a stone cross laid out on the sand at this beautiful spot - on which he had moments before scattered the cremated remains of his beloved wife. Pain and anguish clearly showed on his face. [Source: Bob Lee, The North Called Softly. Prince Albert, SK: Unpublished, 1977. Bill Smiley Archives, Prince Albert Historical Museum.]

"But John survived that terrible agony and did smile again," Bob Lee continues. "Although he had to force himself to walk the bush prospecting for years afterwards."

NEXT: Nan's Son John Danke - Click HERE

PREVIOUS: Dogsledding Accident - Click HERE

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30 - Nan and John's Dogsledding Accident

"There's Danger in Prospecting"

Modern-day couple in Nunavet hauling provisions by dogsled in springtime. Source

"In the cold, still May air, the barking of sleigh dogs slowly died away as John struggled to catch Nan's caribou parka hood before she slipped beneath the ice into the cold, swirling waters." - Bob Lee's account of a life-or-death incident told to him by John Albrecht. [Source: Lee's unpublished manuscript , "A Day in the Wilderness," 1966. Shared with me by Curtis Lee.]

Beginning in early 1949, Nan Dorland (nee Danke) Morenus and John Albrecht spent a year and a half together in northern Saskatchewan, dividing their time between Selwyn Lake and Stony Rapids. They were prospecting partners on the hunt for uranium.

“There’s danger in prospecting," the unnamed reporter for the Prince Albert Daily Herald had written on March 21, 1950. He went on to relate the story about the close call the couple had experienced the previous spring while mushing their dog team into the heart of Stony Rapids’ treacherous terrain, as told to him by Nan and John.

In May of 1949, Nan and John were on their way to their cabin at the south end of Selwyn Lake near the Saskatchewan-Northwest Territories border. They were anxious to begin a summer of prospecting. The couple took their dogsled out onto the lakes and streams even though ice breakup was nearing. "We were on crusted snow – the most dangerous and hardest to gauge of all ice," Nan explained to the reporter. Without warning, they found themselves, the dogs and the sled slowly sinking through the ice.

They "swam" ashore – by crawling with a swimming motion over the surface of the slushy snow. "We could hear water gurgling underneath," Nan said. But the dogs – and the precious supply sled – were stuck 100 feet from safety. According to the Herald's reporter, John made two trips out over the deep-snow-coated waters to pull the lead dog slowly, inch by inch, to shore.

Bob Lee's Version of the Story

Bob Lee's account of the accident, as told to him by John, provides more detail about the incident. John and Nan had left Stony Rapids three weeks before the accident but had spent those three weeks camping on the shores of Black Lake to hunt caribou and fatten up their team of nine part-wolf, part-husky sled dogs. The dogs would have to fend for themselves over the summer and Nan and John would not be taking their dogs with them on their prospecting excursions. [Sled dogs were often left on islands over the summer months.]

The night before they left for Selwyn Lake, Lee writes, John deliberately camped two miles from the dangerous narrows "so they could be crossed on the early morning frost," hoping that the ice had thickened overnight. The sled dogs were eager to start after gorging themselves on fat, barren-land caribou. As they approached the narrows, "John tried to keep [the dogs] to the obviously safe ice of the north shore," Lee continues. "But, as they ran almost uncontrolled down the dangerous central part he tried to steer them toward a bridge of older ice that looked safer." This is where the dogsled, loaded with groceries, tent, rifle, and all the necessities of life in the bush, broke through the ice.

The Site of the Accident

In order to determine the route taken by Nan and John in the spring of 1948 - and the approximate site of their dogsled accident - I decided to consult with John and Kate Rich, Canadians now living in Western Australia. In 2014, the Riches canoed from Black Lake to Baker Lake, retracing on the first part of their journey the route John and Nan would have taken from Black Lake to their cabin on Selwyn Lake. Source

John Rich was more than happy to help me out. After studying several maps and aerial photos, Rich theorized that John and Nan travelled close to the northwest shore of Black Lake "to avoid any risk of travelling well out on the lake where an accident would be disastrous." He notes that in order to head up the Chipman Portage, they would have had to get past the mouth of the Chipman River "either by skirting it well out on the ice of Black Lake, or by hugging the north shore of Black Lake and risking thin ice." To their peril, Rich concludes, John apparently chose the latter option.

Two maps generated from the National Topographical System, Natural Resources Canada, scale 1:50,000. Markings by John Rich. Nan and John would have camped two miles south of the mouth of the Chipman River in May 1948 in order to access the Chipman Portage. The portage shown by Rich is the approximate current route of the portage. Further to the right is the original, more north-south portage route which was probably the one in use in 1948.

John Albrecht once told his friend Klaus Lehnert-Thiel that in winter he could easily travel from Stony Rapids to his camp at Selwyn Lake in a day. John Rich calculates that it would be about 92 kilometres from Albrecht's cabin to Black Lake, and another 20km from there to Stony Rapids, "so over 100 kilometres in a day quite likely in -30° to -40° temperatures. They were tough guys!"

"Tough Guys"

Given what happened next, they were tough guys indeed! What follows is Bob Lee's account of the dogsledding accident. It may be embellished.

The sleigh, on top of which Nan was sitting ... slowly broke through the thin ice up to the creels (canvas sides) and half floated in the cold water as the nine dogs whined and swam in their harness.

John, after thirty years in the north, realized at once the grave danger of this setting. He knew at once that his dear wife Nan, himself, his dogs, and his complete outfit could easily slip beneath these waters and would probably never be found.

Nan broke through the ice as she jumped from the top of the load. With lightning speed [John] managed to grab the hood of the caribou parka she was wearing and drag her back upon the sleigh which was still stuck where the load had pushed out the creel. He instructed her to crawl, ever... so... lightly from the sleigh in a trough-like depression filled with water on the weak ice to the timbered shore and their only hope of safety.

When Nan was twenty yards from the sleigh, John also started a nerve-wrenching crawl over the soft, rubber ice, but not towards the shore and safety, but towards his beloved [dog team] leader, Jumbo. "Jumbo, come Jumbo," could be heard above the sounds of Nan trying to break off a dry, 40-foot tamarack that stood dead and dark against the forest. Jumbo whined in the harness and fought his way through broken ice towards his master.

John slipped his fingers under Jumbo's collar as soon as his head appeared over the edge of the ice and pulled the leader and himself towards the shore. Nan cried, "Grab this pole!" after John had only gone a few yards. Soon, Nan was pulling John, Jumbo and the other dogs, sleigh and provisions over the soft ice to the comforts of a pail of tea by a riverside fire. Yes, just one day in the wilderness."

Hmmm... I am Nan's biggest fan, but I have trouble believing that, after she fell into the freezing water, she was able to crawl to shore, cut down a tamarack, start a fire, make tea, and pull hundreds of pounds of man, dogs, sled, and provisions to safety with the tamarack pole! I am sure there is some truth to at least part of the story. What do you think?

NEXT: Nan and John: A Marriage, a Birth, and a Death - Click HERE

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