When we first got married, we lived on the corner of Military Road and Chevy Chase Parkway in Northwest DC. Our first next door neighbors were the Treuers. They were an interesting family.

Bob Treuer was considerably older than me. Had he lived longer, he would have turned 100 in January. He was born in Vienna, left Austria with his family in 1938, wound up the the U.S. with degrees from Antioch and Bemidji State University. I don’t know his full work background, but he lived in Bemidji before moving to DC, where he worked with HEW (now HHS). He left HEW in 1979, and shortly after that, they moved back to Minnesota. Bob then became a tree farmer and a writer. I read his book, Tree Farm, years ago.

His wife, Margaret, was much younger, 17 years younger in fact. She was also almost a year younger than me.

Margaret was an Ojibwe Indian from Minnesota. She was a lawyer, and later she became a judge, the first female Native American judge in the U.S. Bob was Jewish. It was an unusual mix. They had two elementary school sons, Tony and David. They also had two younger children, twins, whom I don’t remember. Perhaps they were born later in Bemidji. Bob and Margaret have both passed away. Bob first, in 2016 at 89, and Margaret   in 2020.

The four Treuer children are now in their 50s, and it looks like all have had successful careers. One of the twins is an emergency room physician, the other followed her mother’s career path and became a judge. Tony, now apparently known as Anton, has become an expert on dying Native American languages and has taught at Bemidji State for over 25 years. The other interesting thing about Anton, the 8 year old (or so) that I remember, is that he now has 9 children. The four Teuers together have 25.

David Treuer is also an academic,  teaching since 2010 at the University of Southern California. He has now published seven books, one of which I started to read last night. Published in 2012 by Grove Press, it is called Rez Life, a “blend of memoir and history”, and reads very well.

Anton and David are members of the Ojibwe nation. Whether they also identify aa Jewish or not, I don’t know. But I did see a brief excerpt of a talk by one of them (don’t remember which) discussing his feelings towards Austrians and Germans in light of his father’s experiences.

Two anecdotes. I don’t remember exactly what Bob did at HEW. I think he directed an office and I remember that he thought the function of his office was no longer necessary. So he lobbied to have it closed down. And hecwas successful

As to Margaret I remember something at their house with a number of neighbors present. The two Treuer boys, and a few other kids, were playing and having a good time. One of the neighbors said, “Boy, are they a bunch of wild Indians!” You can imagine that that was just the wrong thing to say in Margaret Treuer’s house. I later wondered if that is when they decided to move back to Minnesota.