Memories Table of Content
A05M01 My Wife
A05M02 Our Children
A05M03 Me
A05M04 A Sad Memory
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My wife was looking for a light weight vacuum. She saw an ad and called the number. The Rep would not answer her questions and I could tell from her responses that he was giving her the hard sell. The conversation ended when she said, 'Well I have a Kirby'. She held the receiver half way between her head and the phone cradle with a funny look on her face. I almost laughed as I asked, 'What happened? She paused for a few seconds and said, 'He hung up.'
On the second day after returning
from our honeymoon as I walked through the kitchen to wash my hands
for lunch, I noticed four sheets of stenographers note book paper on
the table. My wife had been practicing writing her new name. She
wrote her new name once on each side of the line down the middle and
on every line on the page. I could not help to notice how precise her
writing was. Each like character appeared to be the same. So I held
two sheets, one on top of the other against the window. I could not
see any difference between any of the pages, they all matched
perfectly.
Shortly after we moved to Alma, a teacher for whom she
was a volunteer aide, asked her if she would make a poster for an
upcoming school play. Once people had seen her calligraphy they asked
her to make posters for their events. She would make the posters and
ask merchants to place them in their windows and after the event she
would return to remove the posters and many times she would be
surprised to learn that someone else had picked up the poster.
A
while later a new family moved into the neighborhood and held an open
house so they could meet their new neighbors. We were invited and
when we walked into their living room in a picture frame on the wall
was the calligraphy part of one of her posters. Later, after I drove
the baby sitter home, as I walked into our living room my wife's eyes
and met mine, without a word, we both laughed. We now knew what was
happening to the missing posters, people were taking them to put them
in their scrapbooks.
I had to agree with our new neighbor, her
calligraphy was a work of art.
My wife taught first, second, and
fourth grade in the years before we were married and she told me the
following.
She was writing on the chalk board and the class as
usual was making a very small amount of noise, not enough to prevent
any student from hearing what she was saying and suddenly the room
was silent except for her voice and that was quickly followed by
giggling. She turned around to see what was happening. Everything
appeared to be normal, she was puzzled. Then a student pointed to her
left hand and she realize what the students found amusing. She had a
piece of chalk in her left hand, when she wrote on the right side of
the chalk board she used her right hand, when she wrote on the left
side of the chalk board she use her left hand. This was very novel to
them, they were surprised and then they giggled.
This ability had
an up side and a down side. The up side was she could teach left
handed students to write left handed. When the other teacher who
taught another class at the same grade level learned of her
capability she sent her left handed students to her class when it was
time to teach writing.
The down side was that she could skip
school any time she wanted. She only used her right hand for school
work so none of her teachers knew she could write with her left hand
and her left hand writing style was different from her right hand so
she could write a note excusing herself from school and sign her
mother's name and her teachers could not tell that she wrote the
note. She did this most frequently when she stayed up all night
reading and she wanted to go back home so she could sleep.
A side
note to this story is that I was a reader also by this time, we both
read to our children. Sometimes she would say to me, 'We never do
anything together' and I would respond, 'We read different books
together' and she would get mad.
My wife liked to embroider, do needle
point, tie macrame, and crochet. She knew how to knit, but didn't
like to do it so she would crochet blankets for new babies. We moved
to Alma in Jan of '66. The next fall my wife made five washable
Raggedy Ann dolls out of old socks for our church bazaar along with
several other women. The women could tell who made which dolls and
they knew that the first five dolls to be sold were her's. The same
thing happened the next year. They knew the only difference between
the dolls was the faces so the third year they asked her to do the
faces on their dolls and all of the dolls sold very quickly.
I
watched her make the faces, she would hold the doll at eye level,
look at the hair and the color of the hair, the clothes in the same
manner, think for a while, and then begin to sew. Each face had
character and was unique. Little girls would say, 'I want that one
mommy' and they would hug the doll tight. A simple pleasure to
watch.
Sadly, one day she was doing embroidery and phone rang, she
set the hoop down and went to answer the phone, but the hoop went
with her. Neuropathy prevented her from feeling the needle, she had
sewn the embroidery to her fingers. That is when I realized why she
stopped painting with oils. She could not feel the tip of the brush
make contact with the canvas and she could not make the fine detail
as before. She kept her tubes of oil paint in special wood box so she
could use them again, but she never did. She liked to draw with
pencil and charcoal and paint with water colors. Activities she did
for many more years.
She was an excellent cook, her biscuits, pie crust, and pasties were second to none. She got a work permit when in 8th grade and worked for Clarence Tuma when he was in charge of the food commons at CMU. He taught her how to cook and how to organize a kitchen. They developed a very special friendship. Later he opened his own restaurant, 'The Embers' in Mt Pleasant. The food and service was excellent. When ever we came to eat, the hostess or one of the wait staff would tell Clarence, 'Karen is here', and he would come out of the kitchen to our table and talk with her for about 15 minutes. In all of the churches where we were a member, she was soon in charge of the kitchen.
My wife was active in girl scouts for
more than 30 years. I helped her when I could.
When our daughters
were old enough they became girl scouts. Their troop went on a
camping trip to a girl scout camp north of Harrison. Our son and I
stayed in local motel and would visit the camp during the day. The
weather was very good most of the time, but one day it started to
rain in the morning and it rained all day. After breakfast the girls
returned to their tents and looked out at the rain. My wife did the
same for a short time from her cabin. Then she put on her poncho and
went to each tent and told the girls to put on theirs they were going
for a hike, they were not going to sit and watch it rain. They hiked
around the small lake at the camp and when they returned their feet
were wet, but they were giggling and laughing. After lunch she took
them into the meeting room and led them in song. The next day they
returned to their camp activities.
One of the troops in their region
won the award to be the scouts honor guard on Mackinaw Island, but
they did not have enough girls to fill all of the posts so they
invited girls from the other troops in the region to participate.
Our
oldest daughter became the leader of the combined troops and she was
determined that the girl scouts would do a better job than the boy
scouts so the girls would be invited to be the honor guard again in
the future. The other girls agreed and they did a very good job.
It
was a pleasure for me to watch her march the girls to their posts at
and around the fort and I can assure you, the girls never forgot that
experience.
A teacher knew my wife was a volunteer teacher's aide and asked her if she would listen to the poor readers in her class. She said, 'I am afraid that it will be a stigma on them, but I don't know what else to do, I have to many poor readers'. The teacher's fears disappeared about month later, three of the best readers asked her, 'Why can't we read to Mrs. Riker?' So she set up a schedule so every student in her class could read to my wife. It was obvious that reading to her was a privilege not a stigma.
My wife caused more teachers to be fired than the principals and superintendent combined. If a teacher needed help she would help them. If the help they needed was more than she could provide she would tell the principal. One young woman would not or could not accept help. She could not control her class. One day my wife walked into the school building and could hear her screaming at her class. My wife was on the first floor and the teacher was on the third floor at the opposite end of the hall. She walked into the principal's office, her secretary knew better than to try to stop her, she was a very determined person, she sat in a chair and said, 'Get that woman out of that class room, now.' The principal didn't have to say anything her secretary was already calling a sub.
My wife asked me to go shopping with her at a local general store. She was walking in front of me and I could not see what she saw. Her pace quickened as she walked toward a very large young man, his head was above her. She clenched her right hand with her index finger as a pointer and place her index finger in the middle of his chest and pushed. He backed away as she said, 'You must change your behavior. You think you are stealing from the merchant, but you are really stealing from me because the merchant must raise his prices to pay for what you steal and I don't like it.' He was shocked that someone would say anything. He moved away faster, pulled up his sweater, removed the item from under his belt, put it back on the shelf, and ran around the end of the counter out of the store.
I liked many things about my wife, some
minor things like she kept her finger nails short, she seldom wore
make up and when she did she used it sparingly, the same for perfume
and jewelry. Some medium things, she was a good cook, she was quiet,
she liked to read, she would read the newspaper, all of it even the
cross word puzzle even thought she had no intention of solving it.
Then she would tell me what to read in the news paper. I appreciated
that very much, it saved me a lot of time and I was still up to date.
Three big things, she was a very concerned and caring person, and she
put up with me.
Before she met me her best friend kept telling her
how nice I was and she would respond, 'No body could be that nice'.
When she told me this after we were married I said, 'And you had to
marry me to prove it' and she would get mad.
She had one blind spot, she thought all children should be able to be at grade level at the end of the school year and it did not matter what I said or the statistics I showed her, she could not accept the fact that not every child could do so. She also had a pet peeve, when ever she walked into a grade school and saw an unruly child sitting in the hall she would become agitated and she would tell the teacher and the principal, 'A child cannot learn if they are not in the classroom, we must find a better way to make them behave'. And she didn't stop there, she would work with the child when ever she could. She did have some success, but not all.
Because of her sad childhood she seldom smiled or showed emotion, she had a stone face and I would tease her by calling her smiley. I told her several times she was a diamond in the rough because she was gruff and had very high standards. This would put some people off, but only until they knew her. I was continually amazed how quickly grade school children learned how concerned she was about each them. A class room would change the instant she walked in.
She never criticized me or tried to
change me, she never said how she felt about being married to me, but
from my point of view I don't know how I could have found a better
wife.
The only thing I didn't like about her was she smoked. Not
very much, but she tried five times to quit and could not do it. She
rarely smoked around me or the children, she would go out on to the
porch. Lung cancer killed her, but that was not the saddest part, she
developed COPD many years before and she stopped singing because she
could not breathe, her last three years she had to use oxygen. She
would sing when she worked around the house. Her favorite song was
'Down in the lonely Ash grove', I miss hearing her sing.
There is a saying, 'Behind every successful man there is a successful woman', but I can add, 'Behind every successful woman there is a successful man'. She created a home life that allowed me to be successful and I gave her the resources to be successful and she was, she helped many people.
My wife was an exceptional person.
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Our children were water babies and
I am sure how she gave them their baths as babies made a difference.
When they could sit up, she filled a dish pan with warm water and
used a plastic salad bowl as a dipper. She folded a wash cloth and
put them in the tub at the shallow end with their head on the cloth.
She washed their bottoms and the back of their legs first and rinsed
using the bowl. Then she sat them up and washed the rest of their
bodies, all the while she was singing or saying nursery rhymes. Then
she washed the back of their heads and rinsed. Then she would use
soap on the front of their heads and then she would raise one of
their arms up above their heads and then rinsed the front of their
heads and said 'wee' as she did so. When they were old enough to hold
the bowl she let them rinse the front of their head while she said
'wee'. Bath tub toys soon followed. Bath time was fun time.
The
'wee' warned them that the water was coming and they soon learned not
be afraid of water in their face. When they could pour the water to
rinse their heads they learned that they could control when the water
was in their face.
When they could walk we took them to the beach
and allowed them to play in the water and the sand. Followed by swim
lessons, then competitive swimming. They were very good
swimmers.
Michigan is a water state and it is very important that
everyone knows how to swim and not to be afraid of the water, but at
the same time to respect the water and never to forget about
hypothermia.
I had many very happy and satisfying
experiences with my family, but these are the three that keep
returning.
I can't remember how old she was but she was not yet
five. My brother and his wife had come for a visit and we took them
to dinner at the Embers, the best restaurant in Mt Pleasant. She
followed as we were lead to our table, she waited as the waitress
brought a high chair and removed the tray. She climbed up, sat down
and held her hands up so the waitress could slide the tray back into
place and lock it. She said, 'Thank you' and raised her chin so the
waitress could slide the bib under her chin and then bowed her head
so she could tie it.
When our salads were served the waitress
brought her a small treat. She put her hands to the side so the
waitress could put the dish on the tray. Again she said, 'thank you'.
She took small bites and laid the the spoon on her plate while she
chewed. Even at this young age she knew she was some where special
and that we were doing something special and her behavior more than
matched the occasion. She did not spill anything, no food was on her
face, and she talked softly and smiled at anyone who made eye
contact.
My wife had worked with the owner when she was in high
school and when he was told she was in the dinning room he came from
the kitchen to greet her and the rest of us. He talked with our
daughter and left. A woman from a near by table came over and talked
to her, she said, 'Hello, answered her questions and said good bye
when she left. Soon another woman came and the same occurred. Then
all of the waitresses came and talked with her.
When we left she
walked out like a little princes.
The second occurred when the youngest was in grade school. Her class was presenting a short play. One thing I liked about living in a small town was that I could go almost anywhere in about five minutes. My wife was seated before I arrived from work and you should have seen my daughter's face when she saw me, it light up like neon sign. Only one other dad was there and it was one of her friends, both were excited. After giving her a hug, I returned to work.
The third occurred when our children graduated from college. My wife was stone faced she seldom showed any emotion, but when the oldest received her diploma she was excited and smiled. The two youngest graduated at the same time, two years later, because our son changed schools and majors. When they received their diplomas my wife was very excited and she literally jumped for joy, she jumped up and down the entire time they walked across the stage. That was the most emotion that I had ever seen.
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Three camping trips out more than 30
from age 12 to 18
Our Boy Scout troop went for a three day camp
south of Mason. Our assigned camp site was in a shallow bowl about
100 yds across and about 10 ft deep surrounded by trees with a fire
pit at the bottom of the bowl. The first thing the troop did was to
build a fire when we arrived Thursday night about 8. The forecast was
for clear skies the entire weekend so we did not bring tents, we
planned on sleeping under the stars. After the roasted marsh mellows
were eaten, the troop began to sing and tell stories. About two hours
later I wanted to sleep so instead of making my bed near the fire as
the other would do I went over the top of the bowl and made my bed
underneath a tall Elm tree on the edge a grass field looking to the
north east, the significance of which would become apparent when I
woke up for some reason. The rim of the bowl reduced the noise of the
troop on the other side and I was soon asleep. When I opened my eyes,
I saw a meteor streak across the sky, to be quickly followed by
another and another. I watched until dawn and I would never again see
as many meteors as I saw that night.
Three of my best friends and I went on a camping trip to a small county park near Grayling. We arrived at sundown and found a sandy place to pitch our old umbrella tent which did not have a bottom in it. My best friend did not agree with the rest of us as to where we would put the tent, he wanted to be where the sand was the deepest which was the lowest spot. We wanted to be up higher. After an argument we settled on placing the tent so he could sleep at the lowest spot, the rest of us would be slightly higher. Plus we trenched the three sides of the tent where we would sleep, he didn't. During the night I awoke to rain on my face. The wind had blown our tent down and I was looking up at brilliant lighting storm. The lighting came so frequently I could easily see the water running down our ditches and the lighting strikes were very close, the sound was deafening. My best friend did not wake up, but the other two did and we put the center pole back in place and we stayed dry, but my best friend was in a pool of water and he was wet up to his waist. The storm passed at dawn and we saw four trees split by lighting at the four points of the compass about 20 feet from our tent.
Four of us arrived at the over look of the Lake of the clouds about ten in the morning. We planned on arriving at Lilly pond lake in about four hours. It had rained heavily in the park the week before and we were unaware of a wind storm that came during the night. About 30 minutes into our hike the trees were down, it look like the beginning of a pick up sticks game. We could not walk under them so we climbed up on the trunks and walked as far as we could and then jumped to another trunk. It took us the rest of the day to reach Mirror lake and we were so tired we made our beds in a cabin and ate oat meal that had been left there and went to sleep. It took us ten hours to complete our hike. Our packs were heavy, we had brought enough food for ten days, but it was gone in five. If we had not caught Brook trout and ate frog legs we would have been out food before we left. The park service had cut a path through the trees and we walked out in four hours.
My first trip to Chicago
Every
spring the eighth grade class went on a field trip to visit the Field
Museum of Natural history, the Aquarium, the Planetarium, and the
Museum of Science and Industry. The bus I was on followed the above
sequence. At the last stop I did not spend much time at any exhibit
until I reached the math and physics exhibits. I became so engrossed
with moving objects, pressing buttons, and pulling levers that I
didn't notice that I was alone until the lights began to go off. I
ran to the main lobby and to the main entrance and looked out the
window and my bus was gone.
Before I could push my panic button a
friendly voice said, 'Your bus left without you, follow me'. His
voice and manner were so matter of fact, like it happened every day
and it did, that I relaxed. He took me to his office asked and I
answered, 'What is your name? What is your telephone number? Where do
you live?' He called the bus station then he called my home and told
my mother what had happened and when she could pick me up. He then
called his wife. We walked to the 'El' and walked a short distance to
his home.
His wife had set three places at the table. She was a
good cook and I ate two large bowels of food, I don't remember what
it was, but it was very tasty. She then served cherry pie with ice
cream. When everyone was finished she said the pie was her husband's
favorite and that he wanted another piece would I like another also.
Yes. He knew I was tired and led me to a small bedroom, gave me a
night gown and a wash cloth, told me where the bathroom was and soon
I was sound asleep.
The next morning he drove to the bus station,
bought a ticket and waited until I boarded the bus. He told the
driver not let me off until I reached Lansing and the driver
understood.
On the way home I knew that I would go to college I
didn't know what my major would be, but I wanted to know what the
equations on the math and physics exhibits meant.
After my first trip to Chicago I was
determined to go to college and opened a savings account for any
excess money. I got a work permit and applied for many jobs without
success. One was for setting pins at a bowling alley. The manager
would not hire me because he thought I was to small. But in the last
of December he called me and asked if I still wanted the job. I
started the day after New years. I was only supposed to work from 6
to 9, but as long as no one complained he was willing to violate the
rules and asked me to work until 10 that way I could set pins for two
leagues.
I soon learned why he called, the pay was very low $.45
per hour and the work was hard, but I wanted the money. It took about
a month for my muscles to adapted to the work and I could set pins
with the best of them. Because of the low pay the turn over was very
high, almost every night someone was absent. The older boys would set
three alleys and soon I was doing the same thing. The side benefit
was the bowlers would roll a quarter down the gutters, one for each
team member, since there was five on each alley that was a large
increase in income. Because of the turn over he was soon asking me to
set pins on Saturday and Sunday. Because of the large increase in
work time plus homework, my social life went to zero.
During the summer before tenth grade
our parents bought a small grocery store. We lived in the apartment
above it. Because I could lift a quarter of a beef, my dad wanted me
to become the meat cutter and asked my brother to help my mother at
the check out counter. Because the meat counter was at the back of
the store I didn't know what was happening at the check out counter.
The store opened at 7 and some times we both worked three quarters of
an hour before we walked to school. Office workers came for coffee
and rolls, what I didn't know was school kids were buying candy and
rolls, including three of his friends. The store closed at 7 and then
we ate dinner. After dinner he asked me to come with him to one of
his friend's home. He knocked on the kitchen door and his friend said
come in, he sounded mad. He was opening one cupboard door after
another and each one was empty except for a box of Rice Krispies.
When he opened the refrigerator door it was filled with bottles of
beer, no food. Without hesitation my brother said let's go to our
home. The three of us sat at our kitchen table and played cards for a
while, then my brother asked our mom if she would fix a snack. When
his friend was not looking, he pointed at him and some how our mother
understood what my brother meant. She quickly brought a P&J
sandwich and set in front of him and put a half sandwich in front of
us. She brought all of us a large glass of milk and made another meat
sandwich for his friend. He ate both and the milk before we had
finished our half sandwiches.
Later my brother told me most of the
kids in our neighborhood ate only one meal a day at the school
cafeteria and snacked on what ever they had enough money to buy. Many
of them went to bed hungry. I could not believe it. We were dirt poor
on the farm, but we never went to bed hungry.
Several days later I
learned my brother was slowly convincing his friends to buy spaghetti
'o's, Chile, beef stew, or Spam instead of buying candy and rolls. He
gave them small can openers the salesmen left. Once his friends
learned they felt better they told other kids and my brother gave
them can openers.
Half of my class mates who went to
college went to Michigan. Some said because they had a better
football team. That was about to change. I was spoiled, I got to
watch State go from an unknown to a nationally known football team.
Thanks to the pony backfield and Earl the magician we went to two
Rose Bowels.
State used a 'T' formation at that time. The pony
backfield consisted of Billy, Leroy, and Evans, they were also on the
track team. Earl faked to Billy going up the middle, then to Leroy
around right end, and then to Evans going around left end. Earl stood
and watched the defense tackle Evans. As he hit the ground the head
linesman and the line judge ran toward Evans, and the referee blew
his whistle. There was a noticeable collective 'Oh' from the stands
as Earl handed the ball to the Ref.
There was a receiver in the
end zone and the nearest defender was twenty yards away. That was the
most unforgettable play I ever saw.
On the following play, the
line gave Billy a small crease, the two line backers crashed heads
after he went by and the safeties could not catch him.
As soon as
we knew we were going to the Rose bowel we made plans. When the uncle
of one my of best friends learned that State was going to the Rose
bowel he called and told my friend that he could stay at his house.
My friend asked if he could bring three more. He turned to his wife
and asked, she said if they are willing to sleep on the couch and
floor. We would have slept any where. The uncle was a captain for Pan
Am and he would be leaving the day after Christmas and would not
return until the fourth of Jan. It was the longest of his scheduled
flights and his wife didn't like being alone that long.
Two of my
best friends car pooled with me from Lansing. After my last exam on
the last day of exam week I went outside and sat on a bench. It was
cold, but I was dressed for it. As I sat there waiting for my friends
to join me a German girl sat down beside me and began to tell me her
sad story. Sad it was, every thing that could have gone wrong did.
I
had never seen her before so I asked how she knew we were going to
drive to LA and how did she know where to find me. She replied, 'It
is a very long story and I would rather not repeat it'. So I never
knew.
The day after Christmas five of us left for LA. We drove non
stop. She did not say very much, but during almost every conversation
she would ask what do you mean or say I do not understand. That is
when I became aware of how many idioms and slang terms we use in our
language and how sloppy we were in using our language. In addition it
became obvious to me that our language was not precise. Many
statements have double meanings.
Both trips were fantastic, but
the first trip caused me to think about language for the first time.
So, not only was the trip enjoyable, but I began to think about
something that I had never considered before.
While I was in Mt Pleasant I went to
sample a fresh blend of gasoline to make sure it turned out as
planned. On the way I caught up with a pumper heading in the same
direction. He told me about his family problems. He stopped talking
when he reached his destination. I waited until he turned off one
pump and closed one value and open another and started another pump.
Then I asked him to complete his story.
After which I made a
suggestion and told him he would have to work at it and if it did not
work to talk with me again and I would suggest something
different.
Because he worked a swing shift I did not see him again
until he went on afternoons. He could not thank me enough for what I
had done. I kept trying to remind him that all I did was to make a
suggestion, he did the work, give yourself at least some of the
credit, but he would not accept what I said. He continued to give me
more credit than I deserved. This same pattern was to continues as I
helped people solve their problems. Like most people I like to
receive credit for what I have done, but I become very uneasy when
people give me to much credit.
Now comes one of the three regrets
I have. A regret is a mistake that can not be corrected, it can not
even be healed.
I was running a distillation so my back was to the
men who were talking. Most of the time my slow thinking protects me
from making the following mistake. I did not recognize the voices and
I blurted out 'That is the most stupid statement that I have ever
heard'. When I turned and saw the hurt look on the pumpers face I was
greatly disturbed. For him my criticism was probably the most severe
he had ever received because it came from someone who had helped
him.
Some time later I awoke during the night
to my inner voice
scolding me, you make many mistakes why can't you tolerate the
mistakes of others. I hope you realize that this statement is a
variation of the Golden Rule.
Messages such as this one haunt me
because I cannot determine if my brain created the message or where
they came from.
This mistake caused me to try to change my mode of
operation. It took many months before I could do it with any degree
of consistency. I was determined to gather as much information as I
could before I spoke, I was determined to listen.
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My Wife
2 August 1935 - 17 May 2009
My wife was a feisty, very
determined, very very stubborn woman. Karen was stone faced, she
rarely showed any emotion. She was the middle girl of three. She was
always the biggest child in her class. Until seventh grade, she was a
head taller than the rest of her classmates and at least half again
heavier. Her childhood was less than ideal and that is a gross
understatement.
Her father played a significant
role in her less than ideal childhood. He was lecherous, very
lecherous. He fathered a child with the wife of his son from a
previous marriage while his son was over seas during the second world
war. That act broke up two marriages and left great animosity among
the family members. How many illegitimate children he fathered is
unknown.
Both parents were alcoholics which
left little money for food or other necessities. They lost their home
and their furniture. After her parents divorced, her father did not
give them any support money.
She could not or would not recall
much about her childhood. But one story she did tell indicated that
the sisters were abused by their father and his friends. Her father
would take the sisters to his fishing camp along with some of his
friends.
During one trip Karen stood in
front of her sisters and told her father if he and his friends didn't
leave them alone she would tell the police. She never told any more
about what happened and the story never changed when she retold it.
The only other story she told about
the fishing camp trips was that she learned to fish and she liked to
fish, but she never fished again. She would dig her own worms, bait
her own hook and she would sit with her legs hanging over the edge of
a small bridge across a small stream and she would catch, clean, and
cook pan fish. Again this story never changed when she retold it.
She never told me how she did it,
but one time she found her father playing poker with the sheriff in
the county jail after the friend of the court told her mother that
they could not find him in order to make him pay child support. From
that day forward, she had little respect for our legal system and the
way our courts handled children. She also became a 'black and white'
person, for her there was right and wrong, no in between, no gray
area.
Her father would take the sisters
with him on his accounting trips. He did books for businesses along
the old US 27 bus route from Mt Pleasant to St Ignace. He would
register as 'Mr and Mrs and family' at the local hotel and put the
sisters in one room and he and a woman (a different one in each town)
in another room.
The women he chose were not very
sophisticated and many times they would enter the hall half dressed
when he went to check on the sisters. The sisters didn't understand
what they saw at the time, but they did later.
It was during these trips that
Karen learn to love the Straits of Mackinaw. When her father got off
the ferry to go to St Ignace she would stay on the ferry and ride
back and forth between St Ignace and Mackinaw City the rest of the
day until he came and made her get off the boat. When he stopped in
Mackinaw City and didn't go to St Ignace, she would persuade him to
buy her a ticket and she would go ride the ferry by herself.
Many times the only meal of the day
was onion soup. The sisters slept on the office floor where her
mother was a bookkeeper. Later, a small family owned restaurant gave
them one meal a day. Later still, the sisters were sent, most of the
time separately to live with relatives. They had a very large
extended family and still do. For a brief time they were in an
orphanage which was followed by foster care. Again they were
separated and for many years they never saw one another.
When Karen was old enough to baby
sit, she did so and put her money in a savings account, it was not
safe to keep it at home. It took many years for her to save two
hundred dollars. Then her father talked her into lending him her
money at interest, a loan he never repaid. She would never have
anything to do with him after that, but it changed Karen. She would
never lend money to anyone and she became very frugal. After we were
married, I quickly learned that if we were saving money to buy
something it had to stay in our checking account because if she put
it in our savings account it would never be withdrawn.
When she was fourteen, Karen
learned her legal name was Carolyn, not Karen. That was when she had
to have a certified birth certificate to obtain a work permit. She
worked in the kitchen at the Central Michigan College cafeteria under
Clarence Tuma who was then in charge, a man she greatly admired. He
later opened his own restaurant The Embers. In later years when we
ate there Clarence would come to our table and the two would update
each other on themselves and their families.
Clarence was an excellent cook and
he taught Karen how to cook and how to run a kitchen. Karen became an
excellent cook and her biscuits and pie crust ranked right up there
with the best. I never ate any that were better.
In churches where she was a member,
she often worked in the kitchen . She would become very upset when
the other people working in kitchen with her did not do it like
Clarence had taught her. There was only one way to do things in the
kitchen, the way Clarence taught her to do it.
Karen was not an exceptional
student, but she was good enough to be accepted at Alma College and
she developed very strong ties to the college. She used the money she
had saved and then worked two jobs while going to college. She also
borrowed money and many people gave her money so she could go to
college. She was determined to graduate and she did. When we moved to
Alma, she felt right at home. We took full advantage of the Alma
College offerings.
After graduation she taught first
and second grade in two different schools in the Grand Rapids area.
We will never know if she would have been successful because we were
married before she was tenured and she quit teaching.
She had a problem with teaching
because she thought every child should be able to understand what she
taught and she spent to much time trying to achieve that goal to the
point of exhaustion. She taught in a low income area and over a third
of the students were not ready for school when they entered
kindergarten, but the school system accepted them. That upset Karen.
She became very upset when she had to hold some back, which she had
to do because they were not ready for the next grade. Their previous
teacher had passed them, knowing they were not ready for next the
grade. That upset her even more.
She was going to go back to
teaching after our children were in school, but when she did the
calculations on what it would cost compared to how much she would
earn, her net income came to $.50 an hour and she never taught again
except when our local school system needed a sub. Instead she began
to help other teachers and students, she would listen to children
read and correct them, help them write stories, help them draw, and
she would read stories to them.
It pained Karen to watch a left
handed student write backwards and upside down. She could teach a
left hander to write left handed because she was ambidextrous.
Sometimes she would forget when she was writing on the blackboard and
would write first with one hand and then the other and her students
would say, 'OH', disrupting the class.
She especially enjoyed singing with
her students. She had a good voice and taught them many songs. Later,
she did the same for her Girls Scouts. One of her favorites was 'The
Ash Grove'. She would sing it at almost any time for no reason at all
while she was doing something around the house.
During the last ten years her COPD
slowly got worse, her breathing became labored and she stopped
singing, I missed hearing her sing.
She had a beautiful hand and her
calligraphy was excellent. She liked to draw and to paint, especially
trees. She liked all types of needle work and to macrame. She made
many dolls, she loved to put faces on dolls, it was almost a passion.
She crocheted many blankets for children, most still have them. She
did all these things until the neuropathy in her hands slowly caused
her to give them up. She had constant pain in her hands and feet even
though she could not feel anything touching them, the result of high
blood sugar.
One day while hanging our laundry
to dry she noticed that every time she raised her hands above her
shoulders they would go numb, but she refused to see her doctor to
find out what could be done.
I told her she had to do something
when she went to set down her embroidery hoop to answer the door and
it went with her. She had sown it to her fingers and never felt it.
She had carpel tunnel and thoracic outlet surgery in the hope of
preventing the nerves going to her hands from being pinched, but she
never regained her previous dexterity and she slowly stopped doing
some of her favorite activities. So she increased the amount of time
she spent on Girl Scouts, an activity she did for 33 years, on
helping students, and on reading, she loved to read.
Karen had white coat syndrome, her
blood pressure would go up forty points simply by walking into any
medical facility. She didn't like going to her doctor, even less into
a hospital and even less into a nursing home. She would rarely visit
a friend in a nursing home and when she did, someone had to go along.
She told me many times she didn't want to die in a hospital and she
didn't want to go into a nursing home even to recuperate.
School and church were the two
stabilizing institutions during her childhood. She supported both
with intensity and at the same time she was very critical of both
when they did not provide the support to others as she had received.
She would tell those involved in no uncertain terms that they were
not meeting her standards and she would work to get them to improve.
She often pondered why she had
received so much help and her sisters didn't, but she could not
answer her own question. Many people helped Karen and she helped many
people. She didn't help others to repay a debt, it was her way of
life. The people who helped her, taught her the most important things
in life: sharing, caring, and concern and that is the way she lived.
My long time friend married one of
Karen's extended family. He lived in Lansing and I would visit him
when I went to visit my dad. At the time, I lived in Mt Pleasant and
Karen lived in Grand Rapids and we met in Lansing. We started dating
in September of 60 and were married the following June. During that
time I would write a letter one week and she would write a letter the
next week because neither of us liked phone conversations. During
that period in time both of us wrote more letters than we did the
rest of our lives.
Fortunately the computer was
invented and I like email. I began to write much more, but Karen
couldn't learn and didn't like to use the computer and seldom wrote.
I didn't marry her because she was
beautiful or for her money, it was because I quickly learned that she
was a sharing, caring, and concerned person. Her sharing, caring, and
concern vastly outweighed her faults and as a testament to that fact
I can count the bad days on one hand and have fingers left over.
Thank you Karen.
Below is the poem K ask we use on her memorial card, it was one of her favorites.
I, Am With You Always!
To those I love and those who love me
When I am gone, release me, let me go.
I have so many things to see and do.
You mustn't tie yourself to me with
tears.
Be happy that we had so many years.
I gave you my love, you can only guess,
How much you gave to me in happiness.
I thank you for the love you each have
shown,
But now it's time I traveled on alone.
So grieve a while for me if grieve you
must,
Then let your grief be comforted by
trust.
It's only for a while that we must
part,
So bless the memories within your
heart.
I won't be far away, for life goes on,
So if you need me, call me and I will
come,
Though you can't see or touch me, I'll
be near.
And if you listen with your heart,
you'll hear
all of my love around you soft and
clear.
And then, when you must come this way
alone,
I'll greet you with a smile and
'Welcome home'.
~author unknown~
She requested some dandelions on the
card above the poem, she loved dandelions.
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