Of my four great-grandmothers, I only ever met one of them. Great-grandmother Sylvia died in 1943, before my dad was even born. He thought of his grandpa Bert’s second wife Edith, whom Bert married when my dad was only a year old, as his grandma. Edith passed away in 1963, so I didn’t know her either. Great-grandmother Alta (whom everyone called by her middle name Gladys) died just twenty days before I was born, so though there are pictures of me with her husband Vergil when I was a baby, I never met her either. Great-Grandmother Cora (whom everyone called Anna, a nickname version of her middle name Annis) died in 1951, before my mom was even born. She thought of her grandpa Bert’s second wife Irene, whom Bert married when my mom was only two years old, as her grandma. Irene passed away before I was two years old, and I don’t think I met her. (But Irene was her middle name, of course.) And yes, both my parents had a Grandpa Bert. Dad's was Albert Eugene, and Mom's was John Albertus.

 

Great-grandmother Lois was born in 1898, my youngest great-grandparent. She died in 1995, a few months before I was married. Lois’ mother, Margerett (who, according to the pattern you can surely see forming, went by “Rose”, a diminution of her middle name Rosallia), died just fifteen days after her baby was born. Lois was raised by her Aunt Ettie and Uncle Lorenzo – “Aunt Ettie” (Olive Esther) was Lois’ father’s eldest sister. According to Fayne Harter, who was Lois’ brother Herbert’s daughter and wrote an extensive family history published in 1969, “They raised her as one of their own family. Lois has always been a hard worker. She attended the farmer’s market in Fort Wayne for many years. She is still quite active, but confined near her home much of the time as her husband has been an invalid for almost twenty years. He used to chop wood while on his knees, but finally he was confined to a wheelchair. He always has a bright smile and a cheery face for the visitor. It is believed he has multiple sclerosis; his sons Marshall and John do not remember him ever standing.” For Marshall and John, who were born in 1925 and 1926 respectively, to never remember their father standing, Ray would have been “an invalid” much longer than twenty years. When he registered for the military draft in 1917, the same year he was married, he was farming for his father and made no mention of any disability. When he registered again for the draft in 1942, it was recorded that his “right leg is paralyzed”. In every photograph I have ever found of Ray, he is seated in a wheelchair. Ray moved to the Farris Nursing Home in Columbia City in September 1971 and died in 1972.

 

Marshall wrote in his memoir in January 1999, “I vowed early in life that I would never go through life being poor or raise a family that I couldn’t provide for. I recall when I was in the seventh grade, I was a little taller than my classmates. We had a junior high school basketball team. I was pretty good but couldn’t play because we couldn’t afford the $3.21, the cost of a pair of gym shoes, socks, jersey, trunks and jock strap. We were very poor and enjoyed very few things that other kids took for granted. The years 1938-1943 we worked very hard on the farm. Wednesday nights we attended free movies at Huntertown. Sundays, church at Wesley Chapel, a small Methodist church. The rest of the time we worked. Several summers, Vernon, John and I spent our summer on hands and knees pulling weeds from peppermint. I remember how happy the folks were when they sold the peppermint oil for $800.” As much as Marshall loved his father, his words in this and other passages in his memoir give credence to how very difficult – even for those times – their family life had been.

 

Lois was fifteen days old when her mother died, as I mentioned before. She was nineteen years old when she was married to Ray (John Raymond). She was twenty-two when her adopted father, her uncle Simon Lorenzo (see, he went by his middle name, too) passed away. She was only twenty-three years old when her biological father died. She was forty-eight when the woman she thought of as her mother, her Aunt Ettie, passed away. She was seventy-four when her husband died, and she outlived three of her eight children. Lois died at the age of ninety-six years in 1995. She spent the first quarter of her life in the care of an aunt, because her father thought himself incompetent to raise a daughter (though he did raise his son, six years old when the mother died). She spent the middle half of her life in caring for a disabled husband and essentially running a farm and raising eight children on her own. And she spent the last quarter of her life sunk in Alzheimer’s disease and its associated dementia.

 

Dad has often told about helping on his grandma’s farm when he was young. He would drive a tractor (or a combine, or any other manner of farm machinery) literally all day for months at a time. He said “Lunchtime was always long in coming. But when I’d come to the end of a row and make the turn, and I could see Grandma down at the other end in her truck with a jar of cold lemonade and a Braunschweiger sandwich, my mouth would start to water. [long pause] I hate Braunschweiger.” I know I met my dad’s grandma Lois several times between my birth in 1973 and her death in 1995, but only one visit stands out: I was a teenager and with my siblings, mother and grandmother (Lois’ daughter Vivian), we went to visit Lois in her house. Her dementia was already far advanced. She did not know who any of us were, except her daughter Vivian, and spent most of our visit rummaging through a button box which held a lot of random stuff, and either mumbling unintelligibly or shouting at us (to be heard, not to be mean - she had lost most of her hearing by that time). My grandma Vivian, at that time at the onset of the Parkinson’s disease that eventually killed her, spent most of the visit trying to find her mother’s hearing aids. Lois was still living on her own; this was probably around 1989 or 1990. Later she moved to what was then called the Byron Health Center and is now termed the Byron Wellness Community, which comprises three wings: assisted living, memory care and skilled nursing. I assume she was housed in the memory care wing, but I don’t know for certain.

 

Between the publication of the Harter history in 1969 and the onset of her memory issues, Lois wrote down many things in the margins and endpapers of her copy of the book – as if she knew one day her faculties would fail her. Here are just a few samples that she dated March 1975:

 

“This bookcase I bought at Goodwill for $5 during the war. Lorene wants it.”

 

“This old clock I bought off Art Bear, one Saturday night on market. It was 75 years old when I bought it. I gave $5 for it. Art Bear bought old clocks and repaired them. I got it in February 1946. This Arthur Bear was Alf Bear’s brother. It has run perfect. I’ve never had to have anything done to it.”

 

“The old big rocker Paul Troub gave me in 1931. I don’t know how old it was then.”

 

“The willow rocker, Vernon and I were to Grabill to public sale and the people that had it said he bought it for his wife when they were married. They had celebrated their 50 years. That was bought back in 1955. I bought it for $2.”

 

“The blue vases were Grandma Swaidner’s. She bought them when she was just a little girl at the old white fruit house in Fort Wayne. The original price tag is still on one of them. She gave 35 cents apiece, that was in 1870. I’ve asked about them of antique dealers, they never saw any like them.”

 

And I am left to wonder whether Lois’ granddaughter Lorene ever got her bookcase. One day I will ask her.