An Islander's Life Story, Along with Interesting Things That Happened To

An Islander’s Life Story, Along with Interesting Things that Happened to Him1 Ylo-Vesse Velvelt, born 1926 On the 26th of August 1926 in the city of Kuressaare, on the island of Saaremaa, Estonia, a boy was born to the family of Aleksander and Maria Velvelt. He was christened Ylo-Vesse. The first name Ylo came about because Father’s good friend, the linguist Johannes Aavik thought that in Estonian the letter Y should be used instead of Ü.2 The child’s middle name was an honour indeed. Vesse had been the leader of the Saaremaa men in the famous St. George’s Eve uprising in 1343.3 I was the second son in the family; my brother Endel was six years older. Born 25 July 1920 in Kuressaare, Endel graduated from Saaremaa Central High School in 1938, and went on to enrol in Tallinn Technical University, where he studied until 1941. My father, Aleksander Velvelt (born 1897) was the son of Jakob and Leena Velvelt; Jakob Velvelt was the game warden at Loona, in the Püha parish of Saaremaa. In 1913, Aleksander graduated from Kuressaare City School, and worked for the rest of his life as a bookkeeper. In 1917, and again from 1919–1921, he was a delegate of the County assembly and the County government, and from 1919–1921, a Kuressaare town councillor. In 1919 he was elected to the Constitutional Committee of the Republic of Estonia. He was the publisher and acting editor of the newspaper Meie Maa and was active in many associations and organizations. My mother Marie (nee Allik) was for most her married life a home- maker. In the 1930s, she was also business manager of the Kuressaare Estonian Society, and supervisor and chief cook of the dining hall there. The most interesting period in my life began when I was six years old. I remember the summer of 1933 very keenly. Kuressaare was a resort town, with a marina that rented out rowing boats and canoes. The square building on the pier, topped by a slender tower, was known to the public as Cod Church. Every spring the city government sought a tenant for Cod Church, who would oversee boat rentals. For this, they organized a public bidding: The person who offered the highest rent over and against the city’s bid would be appointed to run the marina that summer. In 1933 there was no tenant on the horizon. Given this fortunate circumstance, my father asked my brother whether he would be willing to step in and take charge of the boat rentals. He was to turn thirteen in the middle of that summer. Just turned seven, I became the assistant to the ‘captain’ of Cod Church. Among our duties was selling lemonade: when my brother went to replenish the supply, I would stand in for him at the lemonade stand. From morning till night I was at the waterfront. At the beginning of the 210 An Islander’s Life Story summer I could barely swim the dog-paddle, but by the end of the summer I had mastered the crawl. At the end of that summer, we moved from our two-room apartment to the Kuressaare Estonian Society’s [KES] building, which was the hub of the city’s social and cultural life. The KES needed a business manager, and my mother took on the job. There was a cinema and a theatre; choir practices were held there, and there was also a gym, where they organized wrestling and boxing courses and played table-tennis. All of the Republic’s major newspapers and magazines were available to read. I would sit in the actors’ dressing room as they put on their makeup for the next performance, and in the evenings I would watch the bridge players, and so I learned the game, surely the youngest person in Saaremaa who knew how to play it. I never had to buy a ticket to the movies, and saw all the first-runs; among my favourite actors were Robert Taylor, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper and Nelson Eddy. When ‘Tarzan’ was playing, starring Johnny Weissmuller, I started in on the ‘Tarzan’ books, and read my way through all of them, thus perfecting my reading skills. At school I was a restless sort of fellow. With the first four grades of elementary school behind me, I was sent to pro-gymnasium at the Saare- maa Central High School.4 My favourite subject was recess,5 but I also liked physical education, where we could play ball, do straddle jumps over the pommel horse, and tricks on the parallel bars. Our physical education teacher, August Elmik, demanded discipline, and taught us the basic rules of politeness. Several times a year, we had to bring a hat along to physical education class and practice greeting people in the street. Elmik would stand in the middle of the gym; five steps away from him you had to take your hat off and look directly at the person you were greeting. Passing on the right, you took your hat off with your right hand; on the left side, with your left. There were some teachers at the pro-gymnasium with whom I did not get along who teased me and had their own pet students, but there were those whom I highly respected. When Juhan Valgma came from the main- land to teach us Estonian language, we had to write an essay for him on the first day of class, and I got a ‘5’ for that essay. He even thought it was good enough to read out loud to the class. I continued to get good grades for my writing. I had nothing against foreign languages, but the trouble was I had no interest whatsoever in grammar. Once the Latin teacher called me up to the blackboard and asked me to decline the pronoun hic. I knew it only in the singular. Since the boys couldn’t whisper me the answers, the verdict was ‘Sorry, the grade for the semester is still a 2’. As I put the chalk down, I muttered, ‘Sic transit gloria mundi.’ The teacher heard that, and asked me what I had said. I translated: ‘So passes the glory .

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