The Kleiber Family Timeline

Category: Cemetery/Funeral

Funerals, Cemetaries, and Graves

  • Michigan Memorial Lots Purchased 1953

    Charles Thomas Kleiber (James Grandpa) purchased 6 lots at Michigan Memorial for $920 plus $10 carrying fee. Charles put $5 down and agreed to pay $15 per month to pay off the balance (no interest so long as the payments were on time).

    At the time, the Kleiber family was living at 1089 Lindberg in Wyandotte Michigan and Michigan Memorial was over 25 years old and located in nearby Flat Rock so it seemed to be a perfect match. Shown in this picture is Peg and Criss looking down at the first person buried in the plots, James Great Grandpa Graf.

  • Remembering “Pappy” Graf 1887 – 1953

    Pappy Graf is James Great Grandfather, Father to his Grandmother Loretta.

    When Joseph George Graf was born on March 18, 1887, in Schönfeld, Lower Austria, Austria, his father, Joseph, was 33 and his mother, Katherine, was 30. He had one son and two daughters with Rose Margaret Huth between 1920 and 1924. He died on January 2, 1953, in Wyandotte, Michigan, at the age of 65, and was buried in Flat Rock, Michigan.

    Pappy was very creative and used to make the childrens gifts by hand. He also created beautiful miniature village displays that were so popular in the neighborhood that the press would come out and photograph them for the newspaper. All of the houses in the display he would make by hand. He would setup this display around Christmas time which created a tradition that lasted for decades in the family of having displays set up at Christmas time.

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  • Tribute to Raymond Kleiber 1924 – 1943

    Raymond died in World War 2 and is James Raymonds’ namesake. Unfortunately we do not have many pictures of Raymond so if anyone has anymore I would love to get them. Most of the stories about Raymond I heard from my Father. My dad used to say that Raymond had the height but not the talent to play professional ball, where as he had the talent but not the height. I have retyped his obituary and included the original clipping which is a little hard to read.

    Private Kleiber, a paratrooper was killed in a plane crash on Leyte while enroute to the United States. The Plane was evacuating wounded men from the Pacific, and Kleiber was being returned home for further hospitalization after having suffered head injuries February 28, when he landed with the 503rd parachute infantry on Corregidor. He had been overseas 18 months and during that time had participated in several major battles from New Guinea to the Philippines.

    Ray was born in Detroit. He was graduated from the Lincoln Park high school with the January 1943 class and worked for the Great Lakes Steel corporation, Ecorse, before entering the army. Besides his parents, he leaves two brothers, Sergeant Charles in Hawaii and Donald at home, and two sisters, Mrs. Dorothy Sokel and Virginia Kleiber, both living with their parents.

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