THE IRON WORKS LETTER OPENER
“I didn’t know him but I’ve heard a few things.”
I have a copper letter opener from my dad’s grandfather’s company.
Hassler Iron Wks. Inc.
55-57 Mill St., Brooklyn, N.Y.
Phone Cumberland 7840
This was Richard Hassler, my great-grandfather. I didn’t know him but I’ve heard a few things. “He had a little money.” “He owned a semi-pro basketball team.” “He liked to gamble.” “He lost it all in the stock market.” Sounds like my kind of guy.
According to my dad, the shop closed in the late 1930s and the family moved from Brooklyn to Mississippi. The United States was preparing for war in Europe, and my great-grandfather, along with my grandfather, was employed by the U.S. government in the Emergency Shipbuilding Program. Dad says they worked on Higgins boats, the landing craft you think of when you think of D-Day and Normandy and Omaha Beach.
I work as a crane operator in New York City, all five boroughs, and once in a while I’ll find myself in the old Brooklyn neighborhoods of Red Hook or Gowanus. When I take a walk at lunch I always look up at the fire escapes and down at the sidewalk cellar doors for my last name. It’s still there.
—John Hassler
John,
My great grandparents were Frederick and Anna, grandmother was Marie Hassler, Richard's sister born in 1900.
She married tugboatman James G. Wheeler, raised 4 kids and had 26 grandchildren.
The entire family was Brooklyn based until the 60's when the eventual spread happened... with few remaining there.
Was aware of closure of the iron works business. Told by my grandmother it never really recovered from WWI's anti german bias. Had no idea of the Mississippi migration. Would love to hear more.
Thanks, Frank McNally