Relatively Amazing: 75th Annual Klingensmith Family Vacation Required 15 Stone Harbor Houses
A multigenerational photo of the entire family.
Members of the Klingensmith family are deeply committed to their annual week vacationing together in Stone Harbor. They’ve been at it for the past 75 years.
This treasured tradition began with a honeymoon.
When Kay Klingensmith, one of Ross and Mary Klingensmith’s nine children, married Bill Hartz in 1947, the Pittsburgh couple honeymooned in Stone Harbor. Upon their return to Stone Harbor the following summer, Kay and Bill Hartz brought Kay’s parents and her younger sister Mercy along to vacation with them.
Year by year, more family members and their families made the trek from the Pittsburgh area to Seven Mile Beach for extended family fun in the sun every first week in August. Her parents and all of her Klingensmith siblings vacationed together in Stone Harbor at various times over the years, says Mercy Staudt. There were plenty of them.
Ross and Mary Klingensmith’s nine children begat 32 offspring, who begat 55 offspring, who begat two offspring so far, Mercy notes after finishing breakfast with her husband Donald Staudt in the house by the bay where they’re staying. Across the way, her son-in-law Chris Davis quietly cleans his freshly caught fish, which to Mercy’s delight, will be served for lunch.
As many as 110 Klingensmith descendants, including the in-laws who are dubbed “the volunteers,” stayed in 15 Stone Harbor houses for this year’s festivities.
A family force plays a large part in lining up and keeping those festivities festive.
“Glenn is the family organizer,” Mercy says of her nephew and godson, Glenn Schneider.
That same Monday morning, Glenn and his wife Janice sit at the kitchen table in the house not far from the beach that they share with other family members for the week.
Their celebration of the Klingen-
smiths’ 75th year vacationing in Stone Harbor is going well, Glenn says. They kept the 89th Street beach – the family’s traditional meeting place since the days when “Grandma and Grandpa” stayed on 89th Street – as their “home base,” explains the cheerful man in the black-and-gold Pittsburgh Pirates T-shirt.
That beach home base was jumping thanks to a family photo shoot on July 31.
With cellphone in hand, Glenn displays group pictures packed with smiling family members of all ages in their anniversary T-shirts, pictures that were taken that day. Stone Harbor Mayor Judy Davies-Dunhour visited the Klingensmiths’ descendants on the beach and is pictured among them wearing a white hat and holding a family T-shirt.
The commemorative “Klingensmith Family – 75 Years in Stone Harbor” T-shirts, in shades of “Carolina blue, royal blue, sapphire blue and navy blue,” are color-coded for each of the four generations present, Glenn notes. “Each generation has its own color.” Their family T-shirt committee designed the shirts and chose the colors.
Family members wrapped up their Sunday photo session on the beach with a happy hour after the lifeguards went off duty. “It was very happy,” Glenn and his spouse Janice agree.
Multiple means of communication keep everyone informed of the group’s gatherings and activities. Glenn pulls out his family Census Sheet 2022, which lists the addresses of the 15 houses where family members are staying on the island, the names of members who are staying in each of those houses, and cellphone numbers for most of them.
“We have a text group,” Glenn says. “And, the third generation has a Facebook chat group exclusively for them,” which is confirmed by younger family member Linda Ashby, who nods from across the room.
Those communication modes come in handy in gathering the group together. As the week progresses, organized gatherings to golf, play kickball, pickleball, volleyball or basketball, will likely occur, depending on the day and the weather.
Without a doubt, there will be the annual “family toast to our uncles at Fred’s Tavern,” Glenn says. The uncles’ afternoon happy hours there were “legendary,” he adds.
Mercy reminisces about the year that the Klingensmith women decided to join the uncles at Fred’s for happy hour. One of the guys was “appalled” by the idea and insisted that the female family members enter through Fred’s backdoor. Her sister Kay, who introduced the family to Stone Harbor, would have none of it, Mercy recalls.
“We’re a family of strong women,” she adds sweetly. “We walked in the front door.”
Then an uncle told the bartender not to serve the women. So, Mercy asked a male onlooker who was amused by the family feud if he would order their drinks, which he did. Eventually, everyone adjusted to the situation, she says.
That was then and this is now!
A couple of new activities will be introduced for this 75th anniversary family vacation.
For the first time, the Klingensmith descendants planned a family dance party at the Women’s Civic Club of Stone Harbor. Their family party planning committee made these arrangements, Glenn notes. This event rose from the fact that the family has grown so large that it’s impossible for members who are planning weddings to invite everyone, he adds.
One of the songs Mercy requested be played at the party was Johnny Mathis’s “Misty.” “That’s our song,” Mercy says as she and her spouse Donald prepare to celebrate their 60th year of marriage in late August. She also requested Kenny Rogers’ “Through the Years.”
The second new activity was a scavenger hunt to locate Stone Harbor sights throughout the week. The object was to find and identify 26 “landmarks” that Glenn and his wife Janice spotted during walks and recorded in cellphone photos that Glenn displays. “We’ve had teams out there already,” notes the family organizer whose enthusiasm is contagious. Eleven teams of up to five people searched for the pictured landmarks in Stone Harbor. When team members find a landmark, all they need do is take a selfie with it, Glenn says, adding, “There will be prizes!”
“People are often surprised by how we manage to get everyone together annually,” Glenn muses. Says Janice, who is an only child: “Initially, it was a bit overwhelming.”
Another of the in-laws, Marty Ashby, who has been a family member for 30 years, agrees. “It’s welcoming!” he says. “It’s welcoming and loving!” Janice adds. To which Marty says in summary, “If you have the willingness to participate, it’s a great experience.”
Marty’s wife Carol Ashby and Janice agree that planning the gathering for the same week each year helps. “This is not a family reunion,” Carol says. “It’s a family vacation.”
Glenn, Janice, Carol and Marty all note how heartening it is that the younger generations prioritize participating in the annual Klingensmith family vacation.
Mentions of Glenn’s and Carol’s grandparents, Mercy’s father and mother Ross and Mary Klingensmith, are made in respectfully tender tones.
“They were such loving parents,” says Mercy, their ninth child. “We didn’t have a lot of money. But my dad was always happy that they could feed us.”
Moreover, “Mom was a gifted seamstress” who made one daughter’s bridal gown, bridesmaid dresses and off-to-college wardrobes, Mercy says. “Mom wallpapered, did plumbing and whatever else needed to be done,” she adds. Her mother also had a knack for soothing babies, Mercy recollects. “I can still see Mom on the beach with one of the babies.”
Not only that … When Mercy was 5 and most of her older siblings left home, her mother and father opened up their home to foster children and cared for them.
“My parents were God-fearing people; they stayed close to God,” Mercy says.
As the Klingensmith family’s 75th year vacationing together in Stone Harbor illustrates, Ross and Mary Klingensmith left behind a deeply rooted family tree with sturdy branches.
