The New York Times, July 30th, 2006
Valentin Keller enlisted in an all-German unit of the Union Army in Hamilton,
Ohio, in 1862. He was 26, a small, slender man, 5 feet 4 inches tall, who had
just become a naturalized citizen. He listed his occupation as tailor.
A year later, Keller was honorably discharged, sick and broken. He had a lung
ailment and was so crippled from arthritis in his hips that he could barely walk.
His pension record tells of his suffering. “His rheumatism is so that he is
unable to walk without the aid of crutches and then only with great pain,” it
says. His lungs and his joints never got better, and Keller never worked
again.
He died at age 41 of “dropsy,” which probably meant that he had congestive
heart failure, a condition not associated with his time in the Army. His
39-year-old wife, Otilia, died a month before him of what her death certificate
said was “exhaustion.”
People of Valentin Keller’s era, like those before and after them, expected
to develop chronic diseases by their 40’s or 50’s. Keller’s descendants had lung
problems, they had heart problems, they had liver problems. They died in their
50’s or 60’s.
Now, though, life has changed. The family’s baby boomers are reaching middle
age and beyond and are doing fine.
“I feel good,” says Keller’s great-great-great-grandson Craig Keller. At 45,
Mr. Keller says he has no health problems, nor does his 45-year-old wife, Sandy.
