The 1920's were marked with optimism for the financial future of the individual. The U.S. government eagerly worked with big business to foster a strong Capitalist society, where people were allowed to "get ahead" by buying on credit for the first time. The stock market flourished as people bought up more stock in efforts to get rich quickly based on the returns they saw their friends and neighbors reaping.

Alongside the stock market, average people who couldn't afford clothes, furniture, houses, cars, radios, appliances, and other things were being persuaded to just buy on credit, and pay the store back later.

This trend continued until 1929, with big industry hiring workers and machinery and over-producing goods, expecting that the public would buy it all up. "This increased production gave the companies an aura of fenancial soundness, which encouraged Americans to buy more stock." - Stanley K. Schultz, Professor of History at University of Wisconsin

In March, 1929, the stock market started to see some fluctuations, which straightened out, and then got a bit rocky again in April, straightening out again. "That same year, John Jacob Raskob, who was the Chief Executive of General Motors and head of the Democratic National Committee, published an article entitled "Everybody Ought to be Rich" in the Ladies Home Journal. Raskob suggested that every American could become wealthy by investing $15 a week in common stocks. He failed to realize, however, that the weekly salary of the average American worker was between $17 and $22, but that's not important: the optimism was there." - Stanley K. Schultz, Professor of History at University of Wisconsin

More fluctuations occurred at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in September and again were dismissed. Then, on October 21, 1929, the stock ticker tape fell far behind with the selling of stocks, and a panic ensued where people sold off the stock in massive amounts.
Irving Fisher, a renowned Yale University economist, dismissed this panic, saying that the prices had not yet caught up with their true value. Two days later, Fisher declared, "The nation is marching along a permanently high plateau of prosperity."

The very next day, the stock ticker tape machine fell behind by an hour and a half when panic trading occurred once more, "leaving investors madly scrambling to sell their investments without even knowing the current prices. Panic set in. People gathered outside the exchanges and brokerages, police were dispatched to insure peace. Rumors were flying. By 12:30 pm, the Chicago and Buffalo Exchanges closed down, eleven well-known speculators had already killed themselves and the NYSE closed the visitors gallery on the wild scenes below." - Dustin Woodard for About.com's Mutal Funds Guide. This day is known as Black Thursday.

The leaders of J.P. Morgan, who were also big banking men and who chaired the NYSE, met behind closed doors and then announced to the public and news reporters that there had been a "technical condition" and things were better, now.
An hour later, Richard Whitney, vice-president of the NYSE and also a broker for J.P. Morgan started buying up thousands of shares of stock from big industry companies, and the stock market lottery was off and running again. Nobody had learned a thing.

Over the weekend, people had time to think about all these stock panics. Apparently, the average Joe was not as optimistic as the big banking men were, and when Monday morning arrived, all hell broke loose.
This time, however, the big bankers were not stepping forward to help out. Hard reality had sunk in, finally. That Monday is known as Black Monday.
The following day would be called Black Tuesday, and "was the single most devastating financial day in the history of the New York Stock Exchange. Within the first few hours the stock market was open, prices collapsed and wiped out all the financial gains of the previous year. Since most Americans viewed the stock market as the chief indicator of the health of the American economy, the Great Crash shattered public confidence." - Stanley K. Schultz, Professor of History at University of Wisconsin.

"By the end of November, investors had lost $100 billion in assets in what was later called "The Great Stock Market Crash." In just two months, September and October, the stock market had lost 40 percent of its value. Black Tuesday usually marks the point where the Roaring 20s ended and the Great Depression started. The stock market would continue to fall until bottoming out in July of 1932...The stock market wouldn't recover for another 22 years!" - Dustin Woodard for About.com's Mutal Funds Guide.

As a result of the stock market crash, demand for goods dropped overnight. Within weeks, the layoffs began, as companies could not afford to keep extra workers if there was no demand for their products. "To protect the nation's businesses the U.S. imposed higher trade barriers (Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930). Foreigners stopped buying American products. More jobs were lost, more stores were closed, more banks went under, and more factories closed. Unemployment grew to five million in 1930, and up to thirteen million in 1932. The country spiraled quickly into catastrophe." - Main Causes of the Great Depression, by Paul Alexander Gusmorino III

By 1930, Frank Zawada Sr. had come downstate with the rest of the family, and they were living in Detroit, Michigan. Frank had taken up work in the auto industry as a mechanic.
After the stock market crash, Joe moved back in with his parents. In the 1930 census, Joe is listed as working for a railroad office as a clerk.
In this same household lived most of the Zawada children once again; Clarice was a stenographer, Ann was a typist, and Kay and Helen also lived at home, although it is not stated what, if any job titles they held.
Missing from home at this time were Marian, Jean, Ray, and Frank Jr., who still held his own with his wife and children.

It is not known how well the Zawada family recovered over the next five years, but sometime between 1930 and 1936, the Zawadas began changing their last name.

The story passed down through the family is that Joe had trouble finding work during the Great Depression because of his last name - it was too ethnic sounding, and the U.S. was entrenched in ethnic racism during this time in an effort to re-define itself as American. It sounds ironic, with the U.S. supposedly being the "melting pot" of ethnicities and races, but during the 1920's and 1930's, foreigners were definitely not wanted. This, despite the fact that Joe had been born a U.S. citizen, but the general public did not know or care. His name was too foreign looking and sounding, so he changed his last name to "Wades".

What is interesting is that Joe's brothers and sisters disagreed on the spelling of this new last name. All of Joe's sisters, except for Jean, changed their last name to "Wade". Ray had also changed his last name to "Wade". Frank Sr., Victoria, Frank Jr. and Jean had refused to change their last name at all, and apparently the majority, now named "Wade", was upset with this naming imbalance.

In any case, Helen had met Chuck Carolin, and they got married in 1935, effectively changing her last name again.
Joe too had fallen in love with his next door neighbor, and in August, 1935 he declared that he loved her. His neighbor, Isabel Beatrice Milne, had just lost her mother two months earlier.

Joe at his sister Helen's wedding in 1935. Isabel is with him at his right, with the dark hair.

Joe's other sisters started marrying off, thereby changing their last names again, which left Joe as a "Wades", and Ray and Clarice each as a "Wade".

A year later, in 1936, at the age of 64, Frank Sr. fell seriously ill. He had refused to see a doctor for his illness, so whatever he had turned into pneumonia. Frank Zawada Sr. died as a result of this illness, but he had passed on his family name in a new land, hoping for opportunity for his children. More than that, Frank had been the backbone of the Copper Mining industry for about 28 years, and the copper he helped bring out of the ground was turned into kitchenware and utensils, telephone wire, train motors, steam pumps and engines, musical instruments, ship propellers, telegraph cables, lightning rods, radios, electric drills, lightbulbs and washing machines.
Later on, thanks to the surplus on hand, copper supplied the world for generations to come and enabled the creation of televisions, microwave ovens, coaxial cable, and computers.

However, Frank's important life achievements were to be eclipsed by a family feud over which last name would appear on his gravestone.

Frank's daughters had fought to place "Wade" on his gravestone, despite the fact that he'd never legally changed his last name. His daughters argued that since they'd all changed their last name, that their father should also have that same last name, probably to avoid the public wondering who these Wade daughters really belonged to. It boiled down to a vanity war, basically.

In the end, the girls won, and their father was buried as Frank Wade.

Frank Zawada Sr., 1918

After Frank passed away, Victoria Zawada went to live with her daughter, Clarice.
Clarice worked for Helen's husband Chuck as a delivery person, and he was very generous to his sister- and mother-in-law. He'd given Clarice a car, and after the race riots in Detroit in 1943, Chuck built a house in Livonia, Michigan for Clarice and her mother.

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