Paul Peter Bedesem

1900s–1910s

Born 4 February 1900 in Philadelphia to printer Peter Paul Bedesem and Mary McCormick, and grew up on Apsley Street. Graduated from Roman Catholic High School in 1917, and by 1918 was working as chauffeur and bookkeeper for his father's printing company.

1920s

Married Ida Mary Greenwood on 5 May 1924 and managed the Oakdale Composition Company, a linotype typesetting shop, with his father. From 1925 lived at 6724 North 17th Street in Oak Lane, his home for more than fifty years.

1930s–1940s

A leader in his trade: spoke at a national typesetters' convention in Boston in 1930 and was president of the Philadelphia Typesetting Association in 1932. Raised Dolores, Paul, and Bill.

1950s–1960s

Oakdale's building was badly damaged in a six-alarm lumberyard fire on 4 July 1959. Moved the business to West Cambria Street and into salesbooks, as Oakdale Register Co. from 1967. His son Paul died in 1961.

1970s–1980s

Widowed in February 1978; died 7 January 1981 and was buried at Northwood Cemetery.

A Printer's Son

Paul Peter Bedesem was born on February 4, 1900, in Philadelphia, the son of Peter Paul Bedesem and Mary McCormick. His Irish-born mother had been a dressmaker; his father was a printer and linotype operator who had learned to set type by hand as a boy in California. Paul grew up at 132 Apsley Street with his sisters Mildred and Margaret Rosemary and his brother Vincent. Rosemary died of tuberculosis in 1934, when she was only twenty-seven.

He went to Roman Catholic High School from 1913 to 1917. As a teenager he was a keen checkers player, and between May 1915 and February 1916 the Philadelphia Inquirer printed his name six times among the readers who had solved its checkers puzzles. By 1918 he was working for his father's printing company at Germantown and Sedgley Avenues as chauffeur and bookkeeper. His World War I draft card in September 1918 describes him as tall and slender, with brown hair and blue eyes. In 1922 his old classmates elected him secretary of the committee planning their reunion banquet.

Oakdale Composition

On May 5, 1924, Paul married Ida Mary Greenwood, a Temple-trained teacher and prize-winning diver. Their daughter Dolores was born that October, and sons Paul and Bill followed. From 1925 the family lived at 6724 North 17th Street in the Oak Lane section of Philadelphia, which remained Paul's home for more than half a century.

By then Paul and his father were running the Oakdale Composition Company, a linotype shop that set type for other printers. Paul was the manager, and he became a respected figure in the trade-composition business. In October 1930 he traveled to the Hotel Statler in Boston for the convention of the United Typothetae of America, where he spoke at the International Trade Composition Association's session; the program ended with a reception and ball in the Statler Ballroom. In 1932, as president of the Philadelphia Typesetting Association, he opened the association's national midyear convention at the Hotel Walton with a welcoming address, and in 1936 he spoke on credits and collections at an eastern district conference.

There were hard moments too. In December 1947 the house on 17th Street was advertised for a sheriff's sale, apparently over $1,919 still owed on the mortgage, but the family held on to it. His World War II draft registration in 1942 gives him as five foot ten and a half, 170 pounds, with blue eyes and brown hair.

Fire and a New Line of Work

By 1959 Oakdale Composition was on the second floor of the Weitzel Lumberyard's retail building at Germantown and Sedgley Avenues. On the Fourth of July, 1959, a six-alarm fire broke out in the lumberyard and spread to the building, leaving it badly damaged. Paul started over at 2210 West Cambria Street, and by 1963 the business had shifted from linotype work to salesbooks, the printed order pads used in shops. In 1967 he registered it as the Oakdale Register Company, at 2305 West Cambria Street.

The family suffered a hard loss in 1961, when Paul's son Paul, a biologist who had been teaching at San Francisco State, died at only thirty-three.

Later Years

In his seventies Paul stayed close to his daughter's family in Glenside. Dolores's 1972 diary records him and Ida coming for his birthday dinner, for Easter, and for Mother's Day; one day that February he took a granddaughter into town, and in May he rode along with his son-in-law Dick and two granddaughters, one of them Ginny, to meet Ida's plane from Florida. In his basement he screwed jar lids to the ceiling so that jars of nuts, bolts, and screws could be twisted on and off overhead.

Ida died in February 1978. Paul died on January 7, 1981, at eighty, and was buried at Northwood Cemetery in Philadelphia.