Hello

Busy working at her typewriter at her showroom desk in Webb Motors Ford & Mercury Dealer in Prescott, Arizona, Virginia Balzer was thinking of how different her life was now after moving to the "wild west" from Gardner, Massachusetts a few short months ago.

Suddenly a hand was placed on her desk and a shadow blotted out the light....she looked up into the smiling face of a tall and lean man a little older than her own 25 years... with a shy kind of smile he said "Hello, my name's Frank Spencer, are you Ginnie?"

Friday the 13th, July 1920 in Ashburnham, Massachusetts a girl was the first born child of Joseph & Sarah Balzer. They named her Virginia. Followed over the next two years by Winton (Wink) Balzer, and the youngest Raymond Balzer, they family had a good if somewhat spartan life in the industrial town of Gardner.

Joseph was from Brooklyn, New York and the son of German immigrants that had arrived via Ellis Island in the mid 1890's. The family had spent the summer vacations of his youth at some lakeside camps in the Gardner area......young Joe had fallen in love with the outdoors and quiet surroundings of eastern Massachusetts. Also with a young lass that went by the name of Sarah (or Sadie) Sinclair....

The US Navy and WW I came first, Joseph enlisted and was a Machinists Mate on the Destroyer Tender USS Dixie (AD 1). The Dixie spent most of the war in English and Irish waters and the young machinist took at least 2 cruises as a machinist on American subs in combat patrols......

Joseph and Sarah were married shortly after the war and settled down in Ashburnham, Mass.