He honors his father and grandmother with a fund to support mental health.
Rudolf Vetter (1875-1940)
Anna Marie Fischer Vetter (1845-Unknown)
The fund was founded by Durwell Fischer Vetter (1909-1987)
Rudolf Albert Vetter was born April 13, 1875, in Oberkirch, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, to Anna Marie Fischer and Karl Vetter. He immigrated to America in 1892 aboard the SS Aller from Bremen, Germany, and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1895.
Rudolf married Lena Genevieve Prescott on June 18, 1905, in Franklin, New Hampshire. They had three children, Miriam, Durwell, and Carl. The family moved often: Miriam was born in Rhode Island in 1906, Durwell was born in 1909 in North Andover, Massachusetts, and Carl in Idaho in 1914.
By 1920, the Vetter family was living in Rochester, Minnesota, where Durwell played second violin in the Rochester High School orchestra. He married Elizabeth Clarenbach in 1939, and they moved back to the city of his birth, North Andover. He and Elizabeth had two daughters, Susan and Marjorie.
Durwell worked as a buyer for Mariner & Company, a Boston firm that made derby hats and wool clothing. On November 12, 1940, he was entering a hotel in downtown Boston to meet his father when he learned Rudolf had either fallen or jumped from a 10th-floor window. Rudolf, who was 65, died later that day at a Boston hospital. Police said a sealed envelope addressed to Durwell was found in his room.
Durwell established a fund at The New York Community Trust in memory of his father Rudolf and grandmother Anna Marie. The fund ensures that their names are associated with nonprofits working to improve mental health, including through suicide prevention and crisis intervention.
Durwell died September 16, 1987, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was 78.