Donald V. Allgeier (1915-1955)-Part Two

Donald V. Allgeier was a real fan of popular culture. You can tell that by the nearly three dozen letters he wrote to fantasy and science fiction magazines between 1932 and 1952. But there was another great fan of pop culture in his very extended family. Everyone knows his name. I have three of his very finely made books just a few feet from where I sit. He was Russ Cochran.

Donald Allgeier and Russ Cochran were related through their mother's families. I'll start with:

Jeremiah Van Wormer (ca. 1783-1851), who was a soldier in the War of 1812. He married Eunice Parke Wattles (1787-1878). Their son was:

Judge Aaron Van Wormer (1808-1881), a newspaperman and a member of Company A, 10th Missouri Cavalry during the Civil War. (One of the officers in that unit was Lt. Col. Frederick W. Benteen, who was at the Battle of Little Bighorn.) Aaron Van Wormer married Mildred D. Sutherland (1831-1864). Their sons were:

1. Andrew Van Wormer (1855-1940), who married Nancy M. Dixon (1858-1932).

and

2. Joseph Lawrence Van Wormer (1859-1933), who married Alice "Allie" Padon (1864-1927).

Andrew and Nancy M. (Dixon) Van Wormer had a daughter named:

Mary Francis Van Wormer (1891-1973). She married Russell Sage Cochran (1890-1967). They had a son:

Russell Van Cochran, Sr. (1914-1984), who was about the same age as his second cousin, Donald V. Allgeier. Allgeier visited with him in 1929. Russell Van Cochran, Sr., married Dulcie Anona Morrison (1915-1996). Their son was:

Russell Van Cochran, Jr. (1937-2020), physics professor at Drake University, musician, and most importantly for our purposes, fan, collector, and publisher of comic art. You can read more about him in a remembrance called "Russ Cochran: 1937-2020" by Steve Ringgenberg, from March 3, 2020, on the website of The Comics Journal, here. Another very fine and more personal and familial remembrance is in "Remembering Russ" by Michael Cochran, from March 24, 2020, on the website of the West Plains Daily Quill, here.

Joseph Lawrence and Alice "Allie" (Padon) Van Wormer had a daughter named:

Elsie Louise Van Wormer (1894-1973). She married Harry Vinson Allgeier (1888-1974). Their son was:

Donald Vinson Allgeier (1915-1955), who, in his youth, wrote letters to Weird Tales and other fantasy and science fiction magazines, went to war as a young man, and after the war became a college professor. If I have figured all of this right, he and Russ Cochran were second cousins once removed.

It's funny what you find when you start to look.

* * *

The Van Wormer, Cochran, and Allgeier families were a pretty amazing bunch. I would like to mention three more of their members:

First, William Dixon "Billy" Cochran (1913-1984), son of Russell Sage and Mary Francis (Van Wormer) Cochran, was a bit-player in movies. He was in It Had to Happen (1936) with George Raft.

Next, Katherine (Van Wormer) Chauvin, daughter of Andrew and Nancy M. (Dixon) Van Wormer, was a stage actress. She lived in New York and Paris.

And lastly, John Andrew "Jack" Van Wormer (1916-1939), a grandson of Andrew Van Wormer, was an aviator killed in the crash of a stunt plane in Shamrock, Texas, on August 27, 1939. Jetta Carleton's novel The Moonflower Vine (1962) is set in southwestern Missouri. One of the pivotal events in her story is a plane crash in which one of the daughters--the only fully fictional daughter--is killed. Could Jetta Carleton have been inspired by the story of Jack Van Wormer?

All things make circles: In the 1930s, Donald V. Allgeier wrote letters of comment to Weird Tales magazine. Ray Bradbury got his start in Weird Tales and was one of its mainstay authors during the 1940s. Weird Tales was an inspiration to EC Comics, which adapted many of Bradbury's stories in the 1950s. As a kid, Allgeier's cousin, Russ Cochran, was a fan of EC Comics. In the 1960s he came back to fandom. In the 1970s, he began publishing reproductions of EC Comics. An arc from within that circle: In Haunt of Fear #6 (Mar.-Apr. 1951), EC adapted Ray Bradbury's story "The Handler" from Weird Tales, January 1947. The cover art by Johnny Craig reminds me of . . .

This illustration for "The Artificial Honeymoon," the first in a series called "The Adventures of a Professional Corpse" by H. Bedford-Jones, published in Weird Tales in July 1940. The cover artist was Margaret Brundage.

Nineteen forty was the last year in which Donald Allgeier had one of his letters in Weird Tales. More important things were impinging upon him--adulthood, the beginnings of his teaching career, and, in 1941, enlistment in the U.S. Army and the starting of a family with his wedding on Christmas Eve of Martha Elizabeth Reynolds.

To learn more about EC Comics' adaptations of Ray Bradbury's stories, see "EC Comics & Ray Bradbury: There Will Come Soft Rains!" by and on the blog Mars Will Send No More, dated October 16, 2012, here.

Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley