The "Pop" Star and the Music Professor

2012 marks the centennial of the death of Hyman Chapman, an older half-brother of my great-grandfather Nathan. Their nephew Himie Voxman's life span filled almost this entire 100-year period.

Samuel Hyman Chapman was born Shmuel Khayim Tsipanyuk in the early 1860s in Rozhev, Ukraine, a Jewish agricultural colony between Kiev and Zhitomir. Granddaughter Sue Dreier was told he attended the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, but a likely passenger record shows he sailed into New York in January 1882.

Either way, Hyman was the first of dozens of Tsipanyuks who relocated from Rozhev to the Midwest, especially Chicago, over the next 30 years. All of them followed his example and became "Chapman." If you are Jewish, a Chicagoan and a Chapman, we're probably related.

Hyman's marriage to Esther Ginsberg in Des Moines on August 7, 1882, constituted the oldest record  in Iowa of my known relatives.

In 1884, Hyman and Esther moved to Centerville, a coal-mining town in south central Iowa. Joining them there were Hyman's oldest brother Abraham in 1887, Nathan in 1891 and their younger sister Mollie Voxman in 1906. Also arriving in 1891 was Esther's half-sister Lizzie. Hyman's half-brother married Esther's half-sister in 1892, and they would become my great-grandparents.

"Hy" Chapman grew from a tool manufacturer to the biggest soda bottler in Southeast Iowa. In Iowa, we say "pop" instead of "soda." "Chapman Pop" had a line of 35 products according to a researcher commissioned by his grandson, Lawrence "Punky" Chapman.

Len Rosenbaum, a nephew of Hyman's son-in-law Sam, said Hyman started up by purchasing bottling equipment by mail order in 1885. Len's other claim, that Hyman was one of the first bottlers in the country, would be difficult to verify, as the bottling of soda water in America began around 1800. Nevertheless, an antiques web site sold off a Chapman Pop bottle earlier this month.

Hyman Chapman died of kidney failure January 12, 1912. Early that Sunday, mourners accompanied the body on a special train to Des Moines for burial at Glendale Cemetery. My paternal grandparents, Max Feinberg and Mae Chapman, first met at that funeral.

The following September 17, Molly Voxman gave birth to a boy whom she and Morris would name after her brother, Hyman Chapman.

At first, Himie Voxman played and taught the clarinet to pay tuition at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. His first degree was in chemical engineering, inspired perhaps by Hyman Chapman's son Lazarus Chapman, who ran a metals company in Chicago.

Himie's graduate study of music psychology took him in a different direction, and from 1954 to 1980 he was Director of the University of Iowa School of Music.  Outside of Iowa, he was most famous for the exercises he composed for wind instruments. I you'd like to buy them, you can easily find them online.

I discovered the Voxman branch of the family from the obituaries of Abraham and Hyman Chapman. When I first called Himie in 1996, his wife Lois had died just six weeks earlier. Over the next 15 years, I may have been the only cousin in touch with him, and I believe he enjoyed the chance to share family stories with me.

I visited him four times, twice in his house near the top of a hill east of the Voxman Music Building and twice at the Oaknoll Retirement Residence.  On those last two visits he could not remember what he just asked me, but he could still play the clarinet. Last September, a few days after his 99th birthday, he let me record a short music video.

Just as Hy Chapman's death was front page news in Centerville, Himie's death on November 21, 2011, was a major story in Iowa and in the wind instrument world.

From my 2009 visit with Himie Voxman, who never needed a cane.