Four years ago, on today’s date, a post was published on this blog that was authored by the brothers, Fred and Cal Eggers. They wrote the story on September 14th in honor of their father, who was born on that day. Now, 4 years later, I am going to republish this article because today would be their dad’s 125th birthday. Their article was a very detailed description of the life of Walter Eggers and his wife, Lydia Versemann. After all, the best experts on Walter’s life would be his own sons. I am going to add just a few more images that they did not include.
Fred and Cal’s post told of their parents’ marriage and included their wedding photo, but it did not include any marriage documents. I found 3 of them that I will display. First, here is that couple’s church marriage record from the books of Salem Lutheran Church in Farrar. It was the only wedding that took place at that church in 1933. It also occurred on Easter Sunday, as soon as the Lenten Season came to an end.
Below is the Missouri marriage license for this pair.
Finally, here is a document that looks more like a marriage certificate.
Fred Eggers told me that I might want to focus a bit on his father’s service as a politician. In the attached post, you will find this paragraph.
Walt served as a member of the Perry County Republican Committee for 38 years including 12 as its Chairman. He also served as the Chairman of the 10th Congressional District committee for six years and in 1968 served as a member of the Electoral College and cast the district vote in the election of Richard M. Nixon.
Fred thinks his father may have been the only Perry County resident who ever was an official elector in a Presidential election. In the 1968 election, Missouri had 12 electoral votes, and Walter cast one of those 12 votes, and in this case, he cast one for Richard Nixon. Here are the election results from this state.
The first results shown are the ones for Richard Nixon. The middle results were those for Hubert Humphrey. The 1968 election also had one of the largest number of votes cast for a third party candidate. The last results in the above image were cast for George Wallace. A big issue during that election was civil rights. As you can see in the map below, many of the Southern states gave their electoral votes to Wallace.
If you look in Missouri on the above map, you will see Perry County as the only deep red county In the Mississippi River Valley in our state.
Another thing that Fred and Cal did not include in their story were images of Walt and Lydia’s gravestones. I will picture them here. They are found in the Salem Lutheran Cemetery in Farrar.
So, we, along with Fred and Cal, wish Walter Eggers a Happy 125th Birthday.