Harry E Landsberg Jr -- Resemblance to man in Photo with Specter

One Sunday, in dad's office, I noticed his resume in an in-box. I looked it over and saw that he had gone to a Polytechnic Institute. He told me he'd never gone to college, but that he had studied art after high school. I assumed then that a Polytechnic Institute was some kind of an art school. Years later my husband corrected me. He told me that M.I.T., for example, was a Polytechnic Institute. 

In the late 1960's, when we lived in Ohio before moving to Miami, Florida, my father was a "sales engineer" for a large corporation. (See link to "TV Guide (lower left)". His occupation is listed as "sales engineer.") Last year I emailed this firm to ask if their sales engineers are indeed engineers. I was told that many, but not all, of their sales engineers are engineers. 

During the years I worked in their offices I noticed that dad frequently received mail addressed as “Harry E. Landsberg, Jr. OR The Engineering Research Institute of Florida”. I asked him about this once and he was hesitant to explain. When I persisted he said he'd created a corporation having to do with pre-fab houses he was building in Homestead, Florida. I do not know if he actually did build homes, but he and mother are on record as having bought and sold various homes in Dade County, Florida.

In my senior year of college I became motivated to do whatever I could to learn more about my family. Among other things, I called the Secretary of State's Office in Florida to ask about this corporation. I was told there was nothing listed under that name. To date I have found nothing in the archives at the Secretary of State's Office with a similar name. It is possible that this "Institute" was registered in another state. 

Part of my snooping at that time revealed that my parents paid a regular monthly payment to something with "Virginia" in the pay-to. The amount was over $700 per month, but I cannot recall if it was $750 or $780. I did not know what this could be. It might have been a mortgage payment. There was another regular monthly payment of $400 -- one I did understand. These and other considerable expenses were somehow supported on a modest apartment manager's salary. As explained below, there might have been military disability pay, and, in the late 70's, there were Social Security payments to supplement this income. 

In 1970 we sold our roomy suburban home and most of our possessions and moved to Miami Beach, FL, where my parents became an apartment management team for a small complex. We had apparently fallen on hard times. My father painted hallways and made repairs for tenants for six months and then we moved to Greater Miami to a larger apartment complex. From that time on, until 1981 when I moved out, I observed that my father was rarely on the premises in his role as apartment manager. He would usually say that he'd been out golfing. He was, in fact, an avid golfer. 

My parents said they moved to Washington D.C. shortly after they were married. They were married in '41 or '42 and, as the story goes, mom was the secretary to the Undersecretary of the Navy -- to the 2nd in command, was my understanding -- and dad was a salesman for a film/theater company based out of Fostoria, Ohio (John B. Rodgers & Co -- also spelled Rogers -- Fostoria is mom's home town). Later, they said, they moved to Hamburg, NY, and then back to Ohio where they settled in the Cleveland area until moving to Miami. 

(According to one of her obituary notices in June of 2002, Mom's sister, Margaret E. Engler, joined the American Red Cross during World War II, and traveled to Europe as a "staff assistant." According to another obit, she married my Uncle Howie (Army Major Howard A. Engler) in Munich, Germany in 1945.) 

Obituary 1: 

http://www.thecourier.com/issues/2002/Jun/obits062402.htm#story4 

Obituary 2, from archive.org 

http://www.advertiser-tribune.com/Text/Obit062402.html 

Screen captures:

Margaret E. Engler - The Advertiser Tribune 

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Dad had various sales jobs in the years between 1950 - 1970, according to information obtained from various siblings' birth certificates, and according to my own memory. On my birth certificate (February 1959) he was listed as self-employed under the name of a company he is on record for having registered about six weeks later, in April. That company was dissolved in December 1961. 

Laura - birth certificate

February 24, 1959. Father: Self-Employed D.B.A., Cle-Land Partition

Anne - birth certificate

May 30, 1957. Father: Salesman, Marquard Sash & Door.

Mark - birth certificate*

September 24, 1952. Father: Salesman, Nairn Congoleum Co.

Mary - birth certificate

December 29, 1950. Father: Salesman, Dumar, Incorp.

* Our parents’ credibility suffers in the matter of Mark’s death. For more information, please read: Mark's death

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I asked my father once if he'd ever been in the Army. He told me that he'd wanted to join but they wouldn't accept him because of circulation problems in his legs. He added that they offered to do experimental surgery on him to help correct this problem. He accepted the offer, he said, but the surgery was not a success. I accepted his explanation, and he did have circulation problems.

The day he died I accompanied mother to the funeral home and sat with her while the financial arrangements were made. When she was asked if my father qualified for VA burial benefits, she said yes. My husband recalls me coming home that night and expressing confusion about that. We thought my father had never served in the military. 

Last year I looked up what it takes to qualify for VA burial benefits. My father would have had to complete substantial military service to qualify for VA burial benefits, unless a single failed experimental surgery would have sufficed to qualify him. 

I am estranged from my family and cannot inquire about this, though there is no reason to think I would be told the truth. I do not know which branch of the military he might have served in.

Update November 14, 2002: In the spring of this year I sent in a request for my father's military records. I decided to try Army first, and if that didn't produce results, I would try the others. On October 28, 2002, I received a Certification of Military Service from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, MO. Harry served in the Army for a brief period in 1943 (45 days). 

Certification of Military Service

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My husband suggests that the Army would probably not do experimental surgery on a civilian -- that they would have inducted him first. It is possible that he would have qualified for a percentage of disability for the rest of his life if the surgery failed, as he said, and thus qualified for VA burial benefits.

Dad was 28 years old in 1943, and joined the Army three days before his first or second wedding anniversary. He would have been a salesman in D.C. at that time, according to family lore.

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Update May 12, 2003: On April 24, 2003, I wrote a letter to Lyndal L. Shaneyfelt, to whom the US News & World Report photo was attributed. I enclosed a copy of that picture and a copy of CE 900, with the man in question circled, asking if he could help me identify him. 

He responded that he does not know the individual in the photocopies I sent, but suggested that he may be "the chief surveyor who with his crew determined the distances and angles from the president to the various poimts [sic] such as the triple overpass, the window of the Book Depository, and other locations of interest." 

Shaneyfelt response

Please also see "Lyndal Shaneyfelt answered my letter" originally posted to the JFKResearch Forum:

http://home.earthlink.net/~sammark4/id158.html


It had been suggested to me by more than one researcher that the man in question might be Lyndal L. Shaneyfelt himself. (Tom Purvis at Lancer stated it as a fact that the man was Shaneyfelt. Allan Eagelsham assumed it was Shaneyfelt because a "sniper's nest photo" shirt he wore was similar to the shirt worn by the man who resembles my father. But I found another man in the Specter photo that looked just like Shaneyfelt -- wearing a white shirt.)

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More photographs of Harry

Harry's wallet contents - partial

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When I was a senior in college at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, my parents and others began the process of having me discredited as mentally ill. Because of this, since 1981, I have been motivated to research family matters.

University of Miami transcripts

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Update 5 27 04: I broke a ten year silence and contacted two family members for more information on my parents.

A maternal uncle, Charles Volkmer, said he didn't know who my mother, Donna Landsberg (Donna Jean [Volkmer]Landsberg), did secretarial work for in the Navy in DC in the 1940's. He claimed not to recall where Donna and Harry were married or even if he and his wife Ruth had attended the wedding. He seemed unsurprised by my phone call, and asked me to provide proof that my father was a deep cover spook. 

I contacted my brother, Harry III (Herky), and asked him about various things having to do with our mom and dad. I learned that we have different versions of family lore in a few significant areas.

Herky said when the parents were in DC in the early-mid 1940's, he understood that our dad was an ironworker ("built multi-story buildings… [unintelligible] out on the iron") and that dad had worked in Sandusky, OH, "at Plumbrook which was a big military thing that they were building, and then I think they went to Washington DC and he still did that." 

I was told dad worked for a film/theater company (John B. Rodgers & Co) when he and mom lived in DC. In fact, some of my parents' friends created a scrapbook (in the mid-1970's) of our parents' significant moments together and they included a reference to dad's work with John B. Rodgers & Co.