Walter Mohr

Click HERE to view Walter Mohr's story about Silent Night

Miriam Marsh Hull - known to us as Goggy, was the only grandparent we remember. Sometime during the ‘50s, she went off to a reunion of her elementary school, The Thomas Mann School in NYC. It was there that she reconnected with Walter Mohr, and he became the only grandfather we ever knew. They got married in our living room in Scarsdale which we all thought was very cool. Walter was a wise, intellectual, and he had a special knack of making the person he was with feel just as wise and important. He was related to Joseph Mohr who wrote “Silent Night” and he recollected about this connection in a newspaper article.

The Only Grandfather We Knew

Born on Avenue A in Manhattan when that area of the lower east side was heavily German, Mohr moved uptown to Washington Heights as a young man. He stayed in New York for quite a while, and among other jobs, he was market manager for Rupert Breweries.

But his major calling was the educational field. For years he was the proctor at Columbia University and also served as assistant secretary of the institution. He married and raised a family, but was left widowed. Fortunately for our family, he met our grandmother, Miriam, at the Thomas Mann elementary school reunion. Subsequently they married, and he became the only grandfather we knew- and a wonderful one at that. WE have fond memories of visiting them on Morningside Drive while he was at Columbia, and later in Sanbornville, NH where they built a house near Lake Winnipesaukee.