Ruben J. Ciriacks personal page

1943	1956	1960	1974	1992	1998	2001	2006

My earliest claim to infamy is this June 16th, 1946 article from
The Belton Journal (Texas' Oldest Continually Published Weekly Newspaper, Established 1866)
- 5 months after my third birthday.
Belton is around 40 miles southwest of Waco off I-35. It's 15 miles east of Killeen (news),
which is the main civilian town outside the U. S. Army's Fort Hood, the largest of their bases in the world,
and is about 60 miles due north of Austin, Texas. (November 2009 shooting spree link) RuBen James

1943 ~ (still ticking)

(CoAlumni 2006 Albuquerque reunion)
Webmaster - Milwaukee

Tot Of Three Goes A W O L,
Gets Welcome From Beltonians

BELTON, June 16--A 3-year old tot who went AWOL from his Killeen home Saturday morning and caught an east-bound bus for a sight seeing trip, found Belton a land of ice cream and soda water Saturday afternoon. The lad slept on the knee of a soldier on the bus trip to Belton, awakened at the station here at 12:30 and leisurely got off the bus to look around. The soldier thought the child was with a woman on the bus and forgot the incident until later in the afternoon.
The blue eyed child played around the bus station and attracted no attention until he asked for a candy bar. The ticket man asked him if his mother was willing for him to eat the candy. The boy replied that she was at home asleep. The ticket manager asked where his father was and he said he did not know.
City officials, were notified that a lost child was there and a policeman with a uniform came for him. The child went along, highly pleased at seeing more of the town. At the city hall he took over. He played with office equipment and consumed all the ice cream and soda water the city manager bought him.

The word spread around town that a lost child was there and several women called in wanting to keep him until his people were located.

Apparently he was not too interested in telling where home was, but under questioning said he could see the camp from his home and that his dad was a soldier who had come home on a train.
     He had the time of his life on a car ride with Frank Hamner, city manager, and was not at all concerned about Mr. Hamner's almost frantic efforts to locate his parents. [ Another Frank Hamer, without the 'n', was one of the last of the honest, two fisted lawmen of the old west. He was one of four brothers who served as Texas Rangers. There's a new display at the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame in nearby Waco dedicated to Frank. He's the one who stopped Bonnie & Clyde in 1934. ]
     Finally Mr. Hamner made a door to door inquiry in the business section to see if anyone recognized the lad. The soldier upon whose knee he had slept was in one of the places of business and the holiday began to draw to a close. Killeen officials were contacted and said a child had been reported missing.
     The ride to Killeen in Fire Chief Hamner's red car had lost novelty and excitement and the traveller was asleep on the back seat before they got out of the city limits. His older brother was on hand at the bus station at Killeen to receive the sleeping lad.

BenzDEN is my web nickname and the name of the former site containing my DOS desktop operating system and utilities.
How the Benz was chosen is obvious to family members, but even most of them don't know that the Den comes from a birthday card sent to me by my favorite niece several decades ago.
My great10 grandfather on my mother's side, Jehan (1601~1680c), and his wife Perrine Breault (1611~1686), were among the first settlers of Acadia (the area from Prince Edward Island on the north through Nova Scotia to northern Maine on the south and all parts east thereof) back in 1636. They may have as many as a million descendants alive today in Canada, France, the USA and parts unknown. Jehan and Perrine came from the Martaize region of France. Our Wisconsin branch descends from Georges, one among dozens of great6 grandchildren of Jehan and Perrine who gave rise to the more than 20,000 Theriault, Theriot, Therriault and six dozen other varying surnamed individuals counted just in the USA in the 1990 census.

On my father's side, great grandfather Claus Hinrich came to the USA from the Bremen area of Germany in 1867. Click his image to go to his page.

[ 2009 update: My mother, pregnant with my twin sisters who were born 80 days later in Riverside, California, slept through it all. Our family had just traveled cross country from Georgia to Texas, staying at various motels along the way - at the age of 3 1/2, Killeen was just another of those stops to me -- almost all of my first 3 years of life were spent traveling through the south from one army town to another while my mother tried to keep up with my father as he trained and trained and trained for WWII duty - (the army may have been 'training' quite a few family men to keep them and the bad publicity associated with their deaths away from the fighting) --- I doubt if I ever knew where I lived until we finally settled in Riverside, California from July 1946 to July 1950.
In Killeen, we lived in a small shack of a house kitty-corner from the fire station (and municipal building). According to my oldest brother (the one referenced in the last paragraph who remembers it, too), our mother had apparently been taking a nap while all this was happening - us 4 boys tiring her out very quickly each day, no doubt.
Next door to our side yard (away from the main street with the municipal building) were the rear doors of the various shops comprising a mini-mall. I remember the front area, where the bus stopped, had a wooden plank sidewalk and that one of the shops contained barbers, one of whom would tease me while shaking a straght razor toward me when I got too close to peek inside the rear door to see what was happening.

I remember getting on the bus with other passengers without anyone asking whether I was with the soldier in front or the woman behind me - everyone trusted each other more in those days. I very faintly remember the bus station and ride with Mr. Hamner but do remember the city office with an almost 3 foot high wooden, gated, L-shaped balustrade that kept visitors outside the open area full of desks and files - all very dark, wooden and very impressive to my first witnessing of such.
The office was probably more impressive because of the ice cream, soda and who knows what other sweets were provided to me as inducements to get me to tell them where I lived - those worried, anxious folks not realizing that I wasn't anywhere long enough to know where I lived at that stage of my life. The life of constant traveling during my first 3 years was an adventure that pretty much made me fearless of strangers and new situations that survives as a greater part of my character to this day. ]

Another article is notable for the way the last name is spelled. It comes from the November 24-30, 1993 issue of our weekly Milwaukee Times newspaper. It also indicates somewhat obliquely that this great nation of ours has been ignoring children for too many decades. We've been especially negligent about how families raise children and about how the rest of us (DO NOT) support those families.

Activists blast mayor's crime plan
Cirriacks: 'More tough and no love'

MILWAUKEE-The Mayor's plan to fight crime doesn't do enough to address the root causes of it, two community activists said Friday.
"I do agree with ... that we have to get tough on crime. If someone commits the crime, they got to do the time," Milwaukee Black Community Union organizer Bernell Ross said. "But if we're not going to address the problems ... that's creating this criminal activity and all we want to do is build prisons, then all we... going to warehouse more and more people in our community."
Ross made his remarks after a press conference by Mayor John Norquist at the Center Street Library, 2727 W. Fond Du Lac Ave.
"Economic development, problems with our educational system, lack of empowerment in our political system, the mayor does not want to address those issues," Ross said.

During the press conference, Norquist said he would veto a portion of the budget which will not allow any police officers to be hired unless the city gets federal funding.
"I think that's outrageous, I think that's illogical. We need more police on the streets of Milwaukee, not less," Norquist said.
Norquist also called for a one year jail sentence for anyone who carries a loaded, uncased gun and for a lO-year sentence for anyone who shoots at another person. Currently, carrying a loaded weapon is a misdemeanor with no real penalties, Norquist said.
He said more prison space will be needed, and called upon

Gov. Tommy Thompson and the legislature to provide it.
"New prison space is something that is a worthwhile investment," Norquist said.
"This is more tough and no love," Ben Cirriacks of Becoming Empowered Neighbors said. "We still haven't seen ... haven't seen any love as a reaction to the problem of kids growing up with no sense of empowerment until they have a gun in their hands."
"We're not going to the beginning of the funnel where all these kids are starting at an early age and not learning respect for each other, not getting into any type of community situation where they have adult role models where they can learn and gain a sense of self empowerment and self affirmation," Cirriacks said.

Ben'sPage links recipes

Website link/location/URL: http://Ben.Ciriacks.com or http://www.jamrent.com/ben/index.html