Roll Call Tribute

Sent by son

2019 Muster Roll Call Ervin Otto Veselka, Class of ‘40

On September 8, 2018, Ervin Otto Veselka, 103 and a half years old, Class of ’40, veteran of WW II, finally had enough. For the last decade plus, his son Larry, Larry’s wife Celia, and their son Sam, all in Houston, daily went to see Otto; Elinor, his last child and only daughter, along with her husband Richard, came over regularly from Austin to visit. Otto was never alone, and even in that last year, when he would see his two-year-old great-grandson Max, he was focused on him and beamed his joy. At the end of August, going into September, Elinor was there helping with him, and she saw his frustration and heard him saying, “I will not get out of this bed again.” As one of the oldest living Aggies, it was his right to say when. Within two weeks it was over.

He went to be with his wife of 72 years, a hardcore Aggie mother, Gerry Shelburne Veselka from Port Arthur, who died in 2013. He went to be with their much beloved middle son, Robert Ervin Veselka of Austin, who died in 1994. He went to be with their firstborn son, the first of that generation to follow their dad to Texas A&M, Shelburne (Shelly) Jay Veselka, Class of ’64, Vietnam veteran, who died in 2015. And certainly he went to be with his four brothers, Walter, Frank, Adolf, and Harry.

Their father, Frank Veselka, came to the United States at the end of the 19th century. The rest of Frank’s family had immigrated earlier, settling in the Fayetteville area in central Texas. Frank had to wait until his obligatory service in the Austro-Hungarian army was satisfied. He learned blacksmithing there. Once reunited with his family in Texas, he met and married a German woman, which did not go over well with her family, and the two of them ended up going north to Gary, Indiana and the steel mills for some years before returning to Texas.

Ervin Otto was born in Moulton, Texas, in Lavaca County, in 1915, and there his mother died suddenly when he was seven. The family moved to Kostoryz Acres near Corpus. They were sharecroppers, and very poor, and it was a rough place. He told of having to fight through certain areas walking home from school every day. He didn’t start school until he was nine years old, and he had very little English when he started. The Veselka brothers had to drop out of school for planting time and for the picking and ginning time. Their father was not an easy man to be raised by. He was an alcoholic and not, apparently, a very calm or happy man. The brothers pulled each other through, led by the oldest, Walter, who dropped out of school in the 6th grade so he could do the work at home and his younger brothers could go to school. After Walter grew up and left to marry and find his own home, the brothers left one by one until it came to the last two, Ervin Otto and Harry. They couldn’t both be gone all day; their father just wasn’t in any shape to do the work. Harry said school didn’t matter that much to him. Otto said, “I want something other than this, and the only way I know is to go to school.” Harry said, “You go then.” He did, all the way through and into A&M, where he got a degree in petroleum engineering. His father did not live to see it.

Throughout college, as poor as Walter was on his little farm in Robstown, he sent Ervin some money to help him get through. Ervin Otto, thereafter going by Otto, came out with a commission in the coast artillery and went to Galveston for training. There he met Gerry Shelburne, and they were married. When the war started, they were sent to San Francisco, and then eventually Otto was sent to the Philippines. After the war he stayed in the reserves until in the 60s, but back in Texas and with a family started, he began his career in petroleum engineering through the railroad commission, then Union Producing, and ending with Mitchell Energy.

While in some ways always haunted by the thought that any false step would have him back in that place he had left long ago, Otto never forgot his brothers and what they had done for him. Every vacation time meant that the family drove down to south Texas. First stop, Walter’s; then to Taft to Harry. Walter’s son and Harry’s sons all went to college. They were not all Aggies, not even in Otto’s family. But directly following Otto’s trail that led to Aggieland were the following: Shelly Veselka ’64; Brenda Veselka (Shelly’s widow) ’91; Van Veselka ’66; Gene Veselka (nephew) ’67; Elinor Veselka Crank ’85; Richard Crank (Elinor’s husband) ’86; Amy Veselka Owen (Shelly’s daughter) ’96; Hunter Owen (Amy’s husband) ’96.

At day of Muster this year we, his remaining children and grandchildren, including Larry, our one brother not an Aggie, will upon hearing the name Ervin Otto Veselka, shout loud and clear,
HERE!
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https://www.everhere.com/us/obituary-houston-ervin-otto-veselka-7977436?fb=4

Ervin Otto Veselka

Location : Houston, Texas

Date deceased : Saturday, September 8, 2018

Date of birth : Tuesday, March 2, 1915


Funeral service

September 22nd 2018 4:00 PM to 4:30 PM
Texas Liberty Chapel of Memorial


Burial

September 22nd 2018 4:30 PM to 5:00 PM
Memorial Oaks Cemetery