Hubert J. Eickman

Pine Creek, Wisconsin

The 1950 Census records him as 41 years old and born in Wisconsin, which places his birth around 1908–09. He appears there as head of household at house number 902, occupation "Cooking Instructor", industry "Edison Technical", living with his wife Ruth E. Eickman (41, born Connecticut, working in the bond department of an insurance company) and his mother-in-law Hanna M. Lindberg (77, widowed, born Iowa).¹

The archive names the place. In May 1960 the Sacred Heart parish school of Pine Creek – Dodge, Wisconsin wrote to him as one of its own, asking him to "return for a moment in memory to a far-away home of your youth and to the parish school of Sacred Heart, where, as a child, you had so many 'tomorrows' before you."² One of the two signatures on that appeal is Ursula Eickman Kramer, who carries his surname; the letter does not say how they were related. He sent twenty-five dollars, and the convent wrote again in August to thank him.³

Winona, and fourteen years to chef

He began in the hotel business in 1922, employed by the Arthur L. Roberts Corporation — an owner of twenty-nine hotels — at Winona, Minnesota, "while attending school, as bus boy," and advanced "to chef at various hotels in four different states for fourteen years."⁴⁵

The census and that typescript agree rather than conflict: a boy of thirteen or fourteen bussing tables while at school is exactly what the document describes. Winona sits on the Wisconsin border, a short way from Pine Creek. The Roberts chain was real and substantial, headquartered at the Hotel Arthur in Rochester, Minnesota, with houses in Winona, Rochester, St Paul, Minneapolis, St Cloud, Stillwater, Hastings, Brainerd and Fergus Falls, and further properties in Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Montana and North Dakota. Which Winona hotel he worked in is not established.⁶

Thirty-eight years later he was still describing those kitchens to Seattle colleagues who did not believe him. He "can't make his Western associates at the Edison culinary school believe that when he worked in Eastern states, the breakfast menu offered fish, scrambled eggs and brains, kidney sauté, sweetbreads, pork chops and hot beef broth in place of juice."⁷

His obituary adds that in those Midwest hotels he prepared salads for Presidents Harding and Hoover.⁸ Harding died in August 1923, when Eickman was fifteen and a year into the trade. Not impossible in a Roberts-chain kitchen, but it is a family recollection reaching print seventy years later. Attribute; do not assert.

Seattle

He came to Seattle in the 1930s,⁹ and was living there by 1937, when he and Ruth E. Lindberg took out a marriage licence.¹⁰ His posts, as he listed them himself: assistant chef at Paradise Inn on Mount Rainier, then chef at the Frye Hotel, the New Richmond Hotel and the Claremont Hotel.⁴⁵

One document dates the Frye precisely: a letter of 12 July 1940 is addressed to "Mr. H. Eickman, Chef, Frye Hotel, Seattle, Wash."¹¹ A 1983 tribute adds his own gloss — "In those days it was a very famous hotel."⁹

Paradise Inn was run by the Rainier National Park Company of Tacoma and closed each autumn for more than half the year, so that post was seasonal and he wintered elsewhere.¹²

Then war work: "chef and supervisor at Seattle-Tacoma Shipyards," in charge of food operations, before he entered education.⁴¹³

Unresolved: one typescript says he "served in the Army",⁴ a second says "served in the Navy".⁵ Both are career summaries of the same kind. Neither is corroborated, and twenty-six Seattle Times pages are silent on it. Do not publish a service branch.

Edison, 1943 or 1944

The archive says 1944: Paul Muellet brought him onto the staff of Edison Technical School — a staff that, the 1983 tribute notes, "included 7 European instructors."⁹¹³ He arrived as an additional instructor the year Joe Leidecker replaced Leo Paulsen, one of eight teaching commercial cooking under the War Program Training Services.¹⁴

The Seattle Times says 1943, twice. A photo caption of 19 May 1952 calls him "an instructor at the school the past nine years",¹⁵ and his obituary says he "founded Seattle Central's Food Services Department in 1943 when the institution still was Edison Technical."⁸

Mark the year disputed, leaning 1943. The obituary's "founded" is a compression and should not be published as it stands: Muellet was head of department in December 1952¹⁶ and remained so until his death in September 1956.

He is independently visible there by January 1949, in a Seattle Post-Intelligencer negative captioned "Culinary students at Edison Technical School, Seattle, January 10, 1949" whose sleeve lists nine men including Jacob Lang and Hubert Eickman — corroborating Anderson's account of the same circle.¹⁷¹⁸

A road not taken. On 25 January 1950 the Hotel and Restaurant Employes and Bartenders International Union wrote to "Mr. Herbert Eickman, 902 West Holiday, Seattle 2," greeting him as "Dear Sir and Brother" — he was a union member — to say they understood he might be interested in the post of chief instructor of kitchen training at the Tacoma Vocational School, and offering to put his name forward.¹⁹ He stayed at Edison.

The teacher

By 1952 his printed title was Instructor in Advanced Cooking, and in October 1954 still "Instructor Culinary Arts."²⁰²¹

In March 1952 the Pacific Northwest Chefs' Association president Hans Kirschner appointed him, with Edmund Kaspar of the Rainier Club and Daniel Beery of The Ranch, to select the association's candidate for the national Debands Award. They campaigned for Paul F. Muellet, and Eickman wrote the circular letters himself.²¹²²²³ The WSCA's own presidents list confirms Kirschner held the chair in 1951–52 — an independent check on a date Anderson never had to hand.

Two months later the campaign succeeded. On 19 May 1952 the Times ran a photograph of Muellet showing "his huge silver cup" to Hubert Joseph Eickman and an Edison student, George Griffith, and described it as "the nation's highest award for furthering the culinary art" — a sterling cup valued at $500, presented by the American Culinary Federation at a "gold service" dinner at the Hotel Pierre, with a congratulatory telegram carrying 321 Washington signatures headed by Gov. Arthur B. Langlie.¹⁵ This is very likely the award the archive knows only as "Debands."

In February 1954 a minister of the First Christian Church wrote to thank him for "the fine training that you are giving him." The student was Darrell Anderson, who had enrolled at Edison in January 1953 under the GI Bill, and who forty years later assembled these booklets.²⁴²⁵¹⁴

He was President of the Pacific Northwest Chefs de Cuisine Association in 1953–54.²⁶

September 1956: the succession, datable at last

Four later accounts say Eickman became Department Head in 1957.²⁷¹³⁹⁵ A fifth says 1956–1960;⁴ a sixth says "about the time of Jake's retirement in 1958."²⁸

The contemporaneous letters settle it, and they beat every later recollection:

• Paul Muellet died in September 1956. A letter of 1 July 1957 refers to "last September."²⁹
• Eickman was appointed Acting Department Head shortly afterwards, taking charge of a department Jess White had been acting head of.³⁰³¹
• The Washington State Restaurant Association wrote to congratulate him on 26 October 1956.³⁰
• A letter of 30 October 1956 states the acting appointment had been made permanent "just last week."³¹

So: acting head from September 1956, confirmed in the week of roughly 22–29 October 1956. The "1957" repeated in every retrospective account is a rounding to the following year, and the archive's own contemporaneous paper corrects it.

In July 1957 he was still "teaching a class in meatcutting and a class in cooking while acting as 'boss' over the rest of the staff."²⁹ In spring 1958 he personally handed Muellet's widow a $200 cheque from the Paul Muellet Foundation,³² and he was one of three of Muellet's old friends chosen to administer the American Culinary Federation's fund for the education of Muellet's young son William.³³

The title, tracked letter by letter

The binder dates his promotions from the letterheads people addressed to him; the Times supplies how the city described him in the same years.

The school's own name and address drift across the same letters — Edison Technical School, Broadway and East Pine; Edison Vocational School, 1615 Broadway; Edison Technical School, 1712 Harvard Street; Edison North; 1625 Broadway; 1718 Broadway; and once, in December 1959, "Broadway Technical School."^37365047 Two principals are named: H. E. Dickerman, photographed with him in 1952,⁵¹ and Floyd Comstock.⁵² The Seattle schools' own staff list for 1 September 1957 confirms Dickerman's initials and puts J. J. White — the "Jess White" of the succession letters — on the same page as director of apprentice training.³⁴

The profession

Two-year term as President of the Pacific Northwest Chefs de Cuisine; then Secretary-Treasurer of the Conference of Western Chefs' Associations — the body Muellet founded with Jack Meyer and Otto Peter Spitzer.⁴²⁷ Chairman of The Chefs' Buffet, with Edward E. Jasper as co-chairman.⁵³ Six years a Director of the National Council on Hotel, Restaurant & Institutional Education.⁴⁵⁴

Charter member of Les Amis d'Escoffier⁴ — and the Times dates the charter. Seattle's chapter received it in December 1964, with Eickman among the founding members alongside Walter Roth, Jack Calvo, Josef Steger, Ernest A. Rustuen, Carl Winter of the Harbor Club and eight others.⁵⁵

His election to the American Academy of Chefs is eight years earlier than the archive knew. In February 1962 the Times reported that AAC membership "will be bestowed on" Ernie Maurer of United Air Lines and Eickman;⁵⁷ by 1968 he is "one of the first state chefs to be admitted to the Academy of Chefs," and the Washington State Chefs Association named him its chef of the month for October 1968.⁴⁶ Regional Director of the American Academy of Chefs, 1970–71, which elected him a Fellow and gave him its Certificate of Honor for "outstanding culinary achievements and services to the profession."⁵⁶

Grand Prize in 1959, with six firsts and six seconds, after four firsts in 1957.⁴ He chaired a committee for the annual Exhibit of Culinary Arts at the Olympic Hotel as early as 1954,⁵⁸ demonstrated fruit canapés at the eighth in 1959 — where Edison's entry took the top prize³⁸ — and by 1968 sat as one of three chefs formally critiquing a new executive chef's seven-course dinner at the Edgewater Inn. On the wines that night: "Wines should be to the meal what a musical background is to a…" On the newcomer: "Well done."⁵⁹

He cooked for the building as well as in it. He and his staff prepared and served the Association of Department Heads' Christmas Buffet more than once — "You and your staff were directly responsible for this overwhelming success"⁶⁰⁶¹ — and the Edison Vocational Faculty Club picnic flyer bills the free dinner as "PREPARED BY BROTHER EICKMAN."⁶² In July 1964 his department fed more than four hundred school secretaries;⁴² in October 1963 he and Vince Galvin ran the Chamber of Commerce's Restaurant Day luncheon, cooked by former Edison students;⁶³ and on the Feast of St Joseph in 1962 he simply supplied bread and fig pastries to a neighbour's altar, and came to dinner.⁶⁴

Leaving, and after

He resigned from Seattle Central Community College effective 15 March 1972. The acting president, Jerry M. Brockey, wrote that the staff would "not regard you as retired — you're very much a part of us," and that hundreds of students remembered his friendly, generous and helpful way of taking in anyone new.⁶⁵

A testimonial dinner followed on 19 May 1972, and the menu carried a dessert named for him: Hubert Gateau d'Amour.⁶⁶ That month Restaurant News and Hotel Magazine put him on its front page holding a service plaque, with Les Scott of the National Restaurant Association and Vince Galvin looking on, noting the free restaurant for convention exhibitors he had established as a student project.⁶⁷⁶⁸

He did not go far. He is Senior Instructor on a September 1977 letter,⁴⁹ and a tribute of 1983 — the last dated document in the dossier — calls him "the father of our association" and records him still attending meetings alongside former students who had become executive chefs, among them Abdul Qureshi.⁹

Ruth, and Lee

He and Ruth E. Lindberg took out a marriage licence in Seattle at the end of September 1937 — "Hubert J. Eickman, 29, Seattle. Ruth E. Lindberg, 28, Seattle" — which is also the earliest hard evidence that he was living in the city.¹⁰

They visited Jacob Lang every Sunday afternoon, right after church.²⁸⁶⁹ By the time Anderson wrote that sketch she had died: Ruth Eldora Eickman died on 15 July 1976, of 2327 Ninth Avenue West on Queen Anne. Her death notice names her father as the Rev. John Emil Lindberg and her mother as Hannah Lindberg — the "Hanna M. Lindberg" of the 1950 census household — with three surviving siblings: Verda Anderson of Salem, Oregon, Esther Fulton of The Dalles, and Paul Lindberg of Texas. She had worked at the United Pacific Insurance Company. The Mass was at St. Anne Church, and she was entombed in Holyrood Mausoleum.⁷⁰

Seven years later, on 4 June 1983, he married again at the same church: "Lee Wheeler and Hubert J. Eickman were wed June 4 in St. Anne's Catholic Church. She is retired from Frederick & Nelson." The Times printed both their portraits.⁷¹

That settles it. "Lee" is Leola; Wheeler is the surname of the two stepchildren his obituary names, Roger Wheeler of Seattle and Pamela Oakley of Vashon. The American Academy of Chefs certificate thanking Mrs Lee Eickman for caring for "our colleague"⁷² is a second wife nursing him through the last of his two strokes. Ruth and Lee are not related; they are the first wife and the second.

The end

A stroke in 1971 ended his teaching. On 6 October 1971 the American Academy of Chefs' local chapter gave him a special award at its annual dinner at the Sea-Tac Motor Inn and he could not come: "Eickman is recovering from a serious illness and was not present at the banquet. Gary Sims accepted the award on behalf of Eickman."⁷³ His resignation took effect five months later. He suffered a second stroke afterwards and never played golf again; he recovered enough to play the organ, make holiday ornaments, garden, and take seven cruises with Leola.⁸

He died on Sunday 2 April 1995, aged 86. The Seattle Times ran Carole Beers's obituary three days later under the headline "Hubert Eickman knew his food." It quotes his student Stan Hawley, by then teaching at South Seattle Community College — "He represented the old school, with an understanding of the effort that went into making something work. The new school, the razzle-dazzle, just didn't impress him" — and it quotes Darrell Anderson, who forty years after that first classroom assembled these booklets:

"He never had a harsh word for a student. He was always calm, cool, collected."

Everyone called him "Mr. Eickman."⁸

The obituary also names four men it says he trained: Walter Clark, Victor Rosellini, Bud Horton, and Wil Masset — the last the founder of South Seattle Community College's Food Services Program. If that holds, the line runs Muellet → Eickman → Masset as well as Eickman → Anderson, and two Seattle culinary programmes trace to one classroom. It is the most externally checkable claim in the file.

What is still open

• 1943 or 1944? The archive says Muellet brought him onto the Edison staff in 1944.⁹¹³ Two Times sources say 1943: a May 1952 caption calls him an instructor "the past nine years",¹⁵ and the obituary says he founded the department "in 1943".⁸ Disputed, leaning 1943. Neither figure is contemporaneous with the event.
• "Minnesota native." The obituary says so;⁸ the 1950 census, the Sacred Heart Pine Creek appeal² and the family record all say Wisconsin. The obituary is wrong — a slip from the Winona years. Do not let it reach the public site.
• Army or Navy? Two of his own career summaries disagree.⁴⁵ Twenty-six Seattle Times pages say nothing about military service. Still unresolved.
• The Debands Award — a strong new lead. The ACF cup Muellet received at the Hotel Pierre in May 1952 is almost certainly it.¹⁵ Read the Seattle Times page of 19 May 1952 at full resolution to see whether the award's name is printed, and check,²¹,²²²³ for the letterforms before publishing a spelling.
• Paul Muellet is invisible outside the archive but for one line in the WSCA presidents list (first chapter president, 1949–50) — and now the May 1952 Times photograph, which is the first external, dated record of him found anywhere. His surname is attested in the archive as Muellet, Mueller, Muellett and Mullett.
• The Lindberg thread is now open. Ruth's father was a clergyman, the Rev. John Emil Lindberg, and her three siblings are named with their towns.⁷⁰
• Holyrood Mausoleum holds Ruth. Hubert is very likely there too — ask Associated Catholic Cemeteries for both, and St. Anne Parish for the 1983 marriage and the 1995 funeral.
• Roger Wheeler and Pamela Oakley, his stepchildren, were living in Seattle and on Vashon in 1995. They knew him for the last twelve years of his life and are the closest reachable witnesses in the whole collection.
• Ursula Eickman Kramer — his first cousin, per the genealogical note.
• MOHAI negative PI25840 invites identifications. Box 20 can very likely name the men in that frame.