I noticed this small card stuck inside my mailbox door toward the end of the year I lived in this apartment in the Longfellow building. When I pried out the card, seeing the old telephone exchange LOgan surprised me. How long had this been in my mailbox?

I kept the card. Although I found it a while ago, for this sf0 task I wanted, in a way, to find them, these people who had lived in my apartment. Who were Arnold Schwam (a.k.a. Shaw) and Lillian Smith?

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(Note: I'm not entirely sure that this works for this task, but I wanted to do it anyway and thought this fit best. This mild obsessiveness might be better suited to another task... so I submitted a new task. Anyway, back to the proof...)

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Using online county records, microfilmed city directories, the Social Security Death Index, and microfilmed newspapers in the public library's local history room, I was able to piece together surface bits of their lives in my apartment.

The earliest I could place them in apt. 701 was 1957, when Lillian Smith lived there. The following year, she married Arnold Schwam on February 6. It was a late first marriage for both: He was 45, she a month shy of 48. Lillian was a local, born in Kansas City and at some point a resident of Hutchinson, Kansas, and Pittsburgh before returning to Kansas City. (I'm not sure if the Pittsburgh mentioned was the one in Kansas or Pennsylvania.) Arnold was born in Vienna, Austria, and apparently spent some time in New York.

Arnold worked as a "mach agt" (machine agent?!) for Kansas City's Jewish Community Center from 1958-64, according to city directories. Lillian "co-owned the Smith Real Estate Co. from 1946 until she retired in 1975," her Kansas City Jewish Chronicle obituary said.

Beginning in the 1964 directory, Arnold and Lillian were listed as Shaw instead of Schwam. Meanwhile, Arnold's brother Oscar was a Swan in Los Angeles.

Mysteriously, the city directories for 1965 through 1968 list Lillian as the retired widow of Arnold--but he outlived his wife, and neither died until the 1990s. He resurfaced in the 1969 city directory, back in apt. 701 with Lillian and still working at the Jewish Community Center, but as a salesman this time.

Arnold and Lillian lived in my apartment until 1979, or maybe 1980, since the dual 1979-80 city directory was the last to include them as residents of the Longfellow. They lived in apt. 701 for at least 22 years! (1957-1979)

Their name card likely predates 1970, when Kansas City stopped using telephone exchange names (like LOgan for 561). Of course, the card still could've been put there after LOgan went out of style, but that remnant was wedged in that little door for me to discover at least another 22 years later, in 2001--and likely even longer than that!

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After the Shaws left the Longfellow, they moved into a newer apartment building next door around the corner on 48th Street. By then, Arnold worked as a teacher.

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Lillian died first, on May 1, 1994, followed by Arnold less than a year later, on March 7, 1995. In death (on paper, at least) she eclipsed her husband, whose obit was perfunctory. They had no children. Lillian's obituary detailed her membership in Temple B'nai Jehudah and involvement in the Jewish community and with arts organizations. This isolated nugget from her obit intrigued me: "She sang on radio programs in Pittsburgh and Chicago." No word on what kind of music.

Arnold's obit reported that he would be buried in Rose Hill Cemetery, but the Shaws don't seem to be there. Since I live relatively close to this Jewish cemetery, I walked over to see if I could stumble across their graves. I was excited to find a cemetery directory, but it listed neither of them under any of their names. Nor are they mentioned in the exhaustive reference tome, Gone But Not Forgotten: A History of the Burials in the Jewish Cemeteries of Kansas City, Missouri. In the end, Arnold and Lillian eluded me.

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If I searched deeper, I would likely be able to find more information about the Shaws, or possibly even someone who knew them. But when I didn't find their graves in Rose Hill, I felt my search was over, even if I still wondered when Arnold left Vienna and why Lillian was listed in the city directories as his widow when he was apparently still alive. I don't know if they were kind, generous or quiet or if they were happily married.

But the typewritten names on a yellowed card briefly inflated from a few moving shadows of their lives--and that's enough for me. I only lived in apt. 701 for a year to their 22, and I have my own obituary to live now.