A selection of Dr. Baumbachs literary endeavors is featured on his website given below. The first book of his trilogy, His Fathers Son: Book 1He Wore a Clerical Collar, was published in June of this year. This second book of the trilogy will also carry the date of 2015. It is the fifth book that he has published in the last three years. A 2016 publication date is planned for the final book of the trilogy, His Fathers Son: Book 3He Wears a White Collar. In that forthcoming volume, Julius resumes a contentious disposition regarding the institutional church while achieving amazing financial success as a Swedish masseur. www.bernardbaumbach.com
This trilogy, His Fathers Son, seeks to characterize the colorful life of Julius Ludwig Frederick Becker Jr. through three totally unrelated careers. A fictionalized biography, it begins in Book I: He Wore a Clerical Collar, wherein the reader first meets the man who will become his father. Widowed shortly after migrating to this country, he purchased a grocery store and meat market in Detroit. Young Julius was apprenticed in the market as a butcher. However, she who would become his stepmother; she refused marriage unless the son studied for a professional career. The solution was his entry into the Lutheran ministry. He married while in his first parish. Shortly thereafter, he accepted a call to a church in Wayne County, Michigan. It was there that his ministry was interrupted by a religious dispute. He was defrocked! Subsequently, he suffered exceedingly poor health and had to resign his pastorate. Book 2, His Fathers Son: He Wore a Khaki Collar presents his efforts to rebuild his stamina and support a growing family in Inyo County, California. It was there where (because of the ever-patient guidance of his father-in-law) he began his second career: he would try becoming a farmer/rancher. After a decade of demanding labor and the growing demands of seven children, his health became a disturbing issue once again. However, he hiked from Inyo County to Los Angles County and a TB sanatorium. The professional diagnosis was that he had altitude sickness, not TB. He recovered in the sea-level milieu of the area. Book 3, His Fathers Son: He Wears a White Collar introduces the third career: he became a Swedish masseur. This final book is also dependent upon literary license but gives greater emphasis, however, to the genealogical aspects of his family in addition to glimpses into his white collar practice. Hence, book 3 contains a greater amount of actual history and verifiable biography. Although his life spanned three careers, he exited life as one faithfully committed to his first career: that as an ordained Lutheran minister.
In researching the early life of my maternal grandfather, Julius Ludwig Frederick Becker, Jr., I learned of people and events from the prior generation that I felt had to be incorporated into the book. The story line had to be revised. The result is evident in the books title, His Fathers Son. What I also learned was that my maternal great-grandfather was an influential figure throughout my grandfathers life. It was evident that this biographical endeavor was too much for a single volume; hence, a trilogy. This first volume is subtitled, Part 1 He Wore A Clerical Collar. The second volume (in preparation) is subtitled, Part 2 He Wore A Khaki Collar. It features his life as a rancher in Inyo County, CA, the area of his first parish assignment and the home of the young woman who became his wife. The third volume will be subtitled Part 3 He Wears A White Collar. This volume will review life throughout his third career in Southern California.
THEY ONLY CHANGED HIS NAME is a fictionalized presentation of selected biographical events in the life of Bernard E. Baumbach (1892-1981). It begins with an imaginative characterization of the circumstances that provoked his then unmarried father to emigrate from Germany in 1883 with an older brother. They dreamed of becoming wealthy in the developing oil fields of Northwestern Pennsylvania. When he was seventeen years old, Bernard ventured to Central California with Earl, a double-cousin. They, too, had dreamed of becoming wealthy. For them, it was to be as employees of The Standard Oil Company of California. Their adjustments to their new circumstances were eased because of the help provided by Bernards older brother, Albert, who had made that same trip two years earlier. The story chronicles his life as he matured into manhood which, at first, was a foreign country. He grew up in a richly religious German neighborhood on the outskirts of Oil City, PA. Central California was strange also because there were no wooded hills and rushing rivers. The desert-like weather was yet another contending factor and the culture of California that provoked individuality and independence was daunting. He joined the U.S. Marine Corps on May 22, 1918 and served as a corporal in the Shore Patrol in France for four month prior to the Armistice and for eight months following. Three months later, he married Cordulla Julia Charlotte Becker of Pasadena, CA. He continued with Standard Oil of California until his retirement while garnering an exemplary record for safety as a driller. The centerpiece of the story, however, is that of family: his family on Dutch Hill in the Cornplanter Township in PA; Julias family in Pasadena, CA; and Julias and his family of five children in Anaheim, CA.
This trilogy, His Fathers Son, seeks to characterize the colorful life of Julius Ludwig Frederick Becker Jr. through three totally unrelated careers. A fictionalized biography, it begins in Book I: He Wore a Clerical Collar, wherein the reader first meets the man who will become his father. Widowed shortly after migrating to this country, he purchased a grocery store and meat market in Detroit. Young Julius was apprenticed in the market as a butcher. However, she who would become his stepmother; she refused marriage unless the son studied for a professional career. The solution was his entry into the Lutheran ministry. He married while in his first parish. Shortly thereafter, he accepted a call to a church in Wayne County, Michigan. It was there that his ministry was interrupted by a religious dispute. He was defrocked! Subsequently, he suffered exceedingly poor health and had to resign his pastorate. Book 2, His Fathers Son: He Wore a Khaki Collar presents his efforts to rebuild his stamina and support a growing family in Inyo County, California. It was there where (because of the ever-patient guidance of his father-in-law) he began his second career: he would try becoming a farmer/rancher. After a decade of demanding labor and the growing demands of seven children, his health became a disturbing issue once again. However, he hiked from Inyo County to Los Angles County and a TB sanatorium. The professional diagnosis was that he had altitude sickness, not TB. He recovered in the sea-level milieu of the area. Book 3, His Fathers Son: He Wears a White Collar introduces the third career: he became a Swedish masseur. This final book is also dependent upon literary license but gives greater emphasis, however, to the genealogical aspects of his family in addition to glimpses into his white collar practice. Hence, book 3 contains a greater amount of actual history and verifiable biography. Although his life spanned three careers, he exited life as one faithfully committed to his first career: that as an ordained Lutheran minister.
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