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I also got a lengthy response from Grandpa Koftan's youngest sister, Margaret "Babe" Koftan Langhammer, before she composed the booklet of memories handed out at a Koftan reunion. I was going to retype it but decided no, the family deserved to read her easy conversational style as she's remembering.  She is not a good speller.  Always spelled Grandpa's name Lawrence rather than the Laurence he used.  I make the same mistake with Micheal and Lindsay Ellingson's names sometimes.

Our state senator when I was growing up was John Forsyth of Niobrara, powerful enough in the Legislature to keep rebuilding and repaving Highway 14 between Niobrara and Verdigre, his pet project,which kept sliding into the Verdigris Creek and Niobrara River.  Notice whose name heads the list in the form letter.

The head of this deer hung on our front deck.

Above, in his 80s, I think, he pitches softball at a Koftan family reunion.  Jerry Steege, husband of Deloris Koftan Steege, is behind him.   Below is what gave him recognition far beyond Knox County.  As long as I can remember, some kind of card game went on at the station, Center's own little Las Vegas.  Or, I should say, Male Gossip Central, because Dad found out more scandal than Mom did in the courthouse and usually told me what I'd done at a dance in another town I'd gone to.  Grandpa George W. Luckert preferred cribbage while taking care of the pumps, windshields, oil checks, but he and his son also played rummy, pinochle, poker, euchre with anyone willing to lose some coins.  I can remember card games going on in the office part long after hours, the garage and pumps closed.  Later the game moved to the rear of the Quonset shop, the table usually a wooden spool, the kind that held cables. Dad's being busy didn't stop the regular players, the customers, the salesmen, strangers from playing straight through the day, Dad buying a coffee urn to supply the players.  (His son-in-law, Sue's husband, Jim, who took over the welding business, runs the same coffee-fueled game today, replacing urns as they wear out.)  Dad's father and brother were notorious gamblers in earlier years, which might have explained his fondness for gambling.  What it meant to us was that he'd come home with his coverall pockets sagging with coins and dollar bills.  He never lacked for change for his children.  And that's how Jim Javorsky happened by one day and took this prize-winning photo.  Dad was indignant because people wrongfully thought he was looking into Rex Risinger's hand (our neighbor) ) to cheat, which Jim's title certainly suggests, and he always protested that he'd already folded and was merely curious about Rex's hand.  But Dad was duly proud of ending up at Disney World.  (I should add that the area was a card-playing hotbed.  Mom belonged to the Center bridge club; Grandma and Grandpa had a card club hosted by its various farmer members.)

Dad was a very creative welder.  On his own, he made hay cages, big octagonal cages on old car wheels that proved handy to ranchers as far away as the Dakotas and Wyoming for moving haystacks.  The cages opened and could be narrowly collapsed when not in use or being towed.  He invented a snare-proof collapsible boat anchor he had me try to get patented, but someone had beat him to the same design.  He had worked it out on his own, trying various designs and testing them on his boat.  (I've failed to mention that we almost always had a boat, graduating from a wooden one when I was young to fancier plastic speedboats by the time of the girls.  Built his own boat trailer, naturally, and reworked a former family car to have a big, square, open back end with door, the Fish Wagon.)  He was the only welder I knew who would work on automobile gas tanks--that's how good he was--which had a tendency to blow up.  He could duplicate parts farmers mangled and make them all sorts of feeders.  Men simply told him what they needed, and he'd make it.  Here's the boat anchor.  The triangular part was hinged. 

     Mark Donley Feddersen sent me the photo of Dad in front of a feeder he'd welded from the time of a Feddersen family visit, 1963, I think.  Thank you, Mark.  [Good view behind Dad across the street to what had been Mary's Cafe (then Cassie's) and Freddie's Store with the awning, the Crosley brothers'  Center Garage the competition.  Only the garage exists today, the other two buildings razed.]

  

Because Joan Burney mentions how proud Dad was of his first grandchild, Justin John (for Dad) Rohrer, as a last sportsman note a paragraph from Mom's letter to her sister, Audree, for Audree's birthday. Dad had just given Mom a new Word Processor typewriter that gave Mom fits, so I'll simply type it out.

"Jack has been getting quite a kick out of going to grade-school games, first football and now basketball.  Justin plays every time, and it is a thrill for him to see his grandson play.  He always said he hoped he would live long enough to see him play. . . . Sue still bowls on Tues. nights, and he is always interested in that, too.  Of course, he still sponsors a Luckert's bowling team and goes once in a while to watch."  Of course.

The next three seem to be taken at the same time on the west side of our house, judging from clothing clues.  First is L.J. and Fern's family.  L-R:  a very tan Larry Dale,  Audree, Velma, Fern, Laurence.

Next are the grandchildren to that time, minus Dennis Jon.  Front are Linda Jean Koftan and Lindsay Craig Ellingson; second row are Penny Jean Ellingson and David Larry Koftan, and I'm at the rear holding my sister Sue Ellyn on my shoulders.

Then it's all of them, either Mom or I the one to take the photo.  We're both missing.  Back, L-R:  Larry holding Sue, Fern, Betty, Audree, Laurence.  Front, L-R: Penny, Linda, Lindsay.

Finally one from Up West at the Peters homestead.  The photo is dated JAN 57, but I don't remember when Earl and Audree lived there instead of Grandma and Grandpa Koftan.  Lindsay thinks it was the spring of 1955; his turtle hat cued him.  If I had to guess, Micheal Laurence Ellingson is missing because he's with Grandma and Grandpa Koftan down in Arizona, but I don't know.  Anyway, L-R: Dennis Jon, Lindsay Craig, Audree and Earl Ellingson.  Penny Jean Ellingson is standing in front of Velma Luckert at the right.  In the front are my sisters in dresses I bought them, red dotted swiss, Sue Ellyn turned, JaVee Ann holding on to Mom's hand.

 

And I love this picture of Jack (Dad) and Larry in our front living room.  For those of you who don't know us well enough to tell the difference, Dad is the barefoot one.  Dad won the Philco radio-phonograph combination in the corner for a dollar lottery ticket.

In the adult photo, Grandma Fern is in the second row, fourth from the right, next to her best friend, Lillian Braunsroth, also in a dark dress.  Velma, Mom, is in the center of the second row with her dark bangs, fifth to the left from Gram.  At the right end of the second row is Lizzie Clausen, long the camp treasurer to whom I sent my yearly dues on my policies.  Many of the members were also members of Gram's extension group, the Crystal Club, including Lillian and Lizzie.

This is the Nebraska delegation at the San Antonio convention, June 19-25, 1950.  We are all in the standing back row.  Mom is second from the left, often confused with Edith Evans, sixth from the left (seen in subsequent photos because she was the daughter of Alma Snyder, one of our chief state officers).  I am at the right end.  Gram is seventh from the right, in the center behind the State Supreme Oracle Florence Torkelsen with the rose bouquet (whose later memorial will be a few pictures on).

To the left is the Nebraska delegation at breakfast, but I don't see either Mom or Gram.  I am next to the empty chair, very tan from all my walking under the Texan sun.  Following that are a photo of Gram in our hotel room and one with her two best friends there, though I have only Rosewood Bennett at the left identified, with Gram turned toward her.  Both friends were very funny, and we laughed a lot.  I remember that.

 

This one was in Omaha, 1957, Gram at the left end of the front row, the aforementioned Edith Evans, Mom's lookalike, fourth from the right.  I'd guess it to be of the Nebraska deputies.  Grandma's chief rival/enemy selling insurance in northeastern Nebraska was Emma Richling, who lived in Neligh, third from the right in the front row, who actually had written up our family policies long before Grandma was deputized, helped by her daughter, Vera, the tall brunette second from the right in the back.  They appear in other state photos here.

This is a state convention photograph from North Platte, 1958.  Fern is second from the left in the front row, Emma Richling in the center.  Edith Evans is fourth from the left in the rear, Vera Richling third from the right.

The last is the memorial drill for Florence Torkelsen (the State Supreme Oracle in the San Antonio photo) at Los Angeles, 1958, the martini convention.  Fern Koftan is at the left, the front of the row behind the two standing women.  Edith Evans is to her right in the back, and Emma Richling is at the front right.

     I could tattletale on his hunting and fishing excesses, his misdemeanors as with the outlawed hand fishing for huge catfish along the river banks, but what's the point when the public adored him and his many stories masterfully told, as with ducks that just insisted on flying in front of his gun, whatever the limit was.  Mom would be so upset with him, she'd threaten to turn him in.  Game wardens tried to catch a human fox, who slyly walked a warden away chatting from a huge pile of ducks and geese Dad had shot, covered with tarps, so many fowl that he gave away all he could to scatter the evidence.  Grandpa Luckert and I occasionally got our deer without firing a shot.  (Does anyone not understand that Dad used our names to apply for deer permits?)  He absolutely loved deer hunting, walking up and down our hills and ravines.  Farmers would tell him where they had pheasants, wild turkeys, deer, and he'd take them along or divvy up the prize.  The Blocks had a trout stream on their farm zealously guarded except for Jack.  Two of his most favorite companions were Santee Sioux, the classy, well-educated Frazier family, especially Oray, "Ray" to us, and from him and his brother, David,  Dad gained a great deal of Native American lore about fishing and hunting.  Usually our regional patrolmen asked to hunt with him, which is why they helped me a couple of times when my car broke down.  "Oh, you're Jack Luckert's boy?  He took me up on the river last fall, and I had the best time shooting geese I ever had!"  I got that a lot.  Uncle Chet Luckert and Uncle Larry Koftan brought friends along, Dad as a Knox County safari guide of sorts, though he didn't much like city people, who tended to booze as if hunting was an occasion to party.  Perhaps because his father and brother were alcoholics, Dad was a teetotaler and extremely proud of resisting when some men held him down and tried to force him to drink alcohol. 

     I resented it, because he preferred his sports to social events with Mom and me, and I definitely grew tired of the dark, greasy meat of ducks and geese before the winter was over, when he'd get up around 4:30 or 5:00 on weekends to go get sandblasted and windburned sitting on a sandbar from sunrise till sunset.  Likewise with fish in the summertime, which I didn't like anyway, certainly not the smelly kind with all those bones.  (Mrs. Beran next door always begged for the fish heads to make soup with.)  But we had little money, and all that hunting and fishing got us free meat, whether I liked the gamy taste of pheasant or stringy rabbit or not.  Venison actually makes me nauseous, no matter how it's disguised.  But hunting and fishing equipment is where all his spare money went, and we were safe for once in buying him a present if it was a new rod and/or reel.  I have a letter specified just to Mom because we were buying him a bow and arrow set he had talked about.  Later after Bloomfield got a new bowling lanes, naturally he filled shelves in our big living room with trophies, individually and for the team he sponsored.  Nothing for Jack Luckert to roll a 300.  He was a supremely gifted natural athlete.

     He was also supremely a baseball player, a pitcher, and that did stick, though he was such a demanding coach to me that I nervously flubbed and then hated the time he took with other boys.  (He had to wait for my tomboy sister, Sue, who played softball, and her sons, Dad happily going to every football game of theirs he could, even if he froze.  I must insert here that, also an avid sports fan, Sue took him to Big Red Cornhusker games, and he would be totally proud of her being Bloomfield High School's official scorer for volleyball and basketball for many years now.)   Anyway, to this day I prefer baseball to other American sports, and some of my happiest times with him were when I got to take him to the College World Series here until he didn't like coping with the crowds and felt TV offered a better view, as it did.  Aside from his playing on Morrillville teams, he came to Omaha to try out for a farm team here and was injured working in the stockyards, which ended his pitching career--but led to his marrying Mom and working for his in-laws, Fern and Laurence Koftan, before becoming a mechanic-welder . He managed the Center town team when I was growing up, Mom acting as the scorekeeper, so we had family togetherness for every game they played, besides which we went to other towns' games, like Bloomfield's.  Much later he would umpire for those games after Center no longer competed, and much, much later he coached sister Sue's softball teams and umpired for softball leagues in his old age.  All that meant that the radio and TV were monopolized by sports, from the Friday night boxing that Grandpa Luckert had to hear  (the Gillette Blue Blades song still rings in my ears)--Grandpa had taught all his sons to box--to the Saturday afternoon Cornhusker football radio broadcasts that conflicted with my Metropolitan Opera to the excess of games at holidays in later TV years.  After Mom died and he lived there alone, in the summer I knew I could walk in and find him in his chair watching a ball game on TV.  The Boston Red Sox were his team, always, and he was buried with a baseball autographed by that team at the time obtained by cousin Penny Mindemann.  (Mine has always been the New York Yankees, maybe because they swept the World Series in my birth year in four straight games or maybe because my superintendent, Robert Pease, also a baseball nut, insisted we listen to the World Series annually in high school assembly, and the Yankees usually won--of course, or there wouldn't be the musical, Damn Yankees.  Or maybe to spite Dad, who hated the Yankees as every Red Sox fan does, and vice versa .  I don't honestly know.)  I do consider his love of baseball one of his greatest gifts to me.  This photo of him in his Morrillville uniform at the Old Brick House sits on my shelf by my desk.

More proof and photos in Part 2.

     I grew up an RNA Juvenile--not delinquent but a participant in a youth group largely for the same kind of fraternal meetings, passwords and secret handshakes and the like, with much emphasis given to fancy drill work on the floor between the four stations like compass points.  It is the only life insurance I have, and Grandma bought me my first policy.  Grandma was an RNA leader, Oracle at one time or another, and Mom/Velma also very active.  Mom often sang for programs or was a group song leader.  We met on the second floor of the old Bloomfield fire hall, the two-story brick building west across the alley from the "new" post office.  We went to regional and state conventions, where our drill teams would perform.  I have photos of the adult and juvenile drill teams which I will later append to this entry after I find my identification list. I knew many Bloomfield women because of their being Royal Neighbors, including most of Gram's friends. 

    Fern became very successful in Nebraska and in the South, traveling around, so that it was a good source of income, and she went to all the national conventions.  Shortly before her fatal stroke at 67, she had been to one at Los Angeles in 1958 where she had tasted her first martini, having come that far from the black-stockinged severely puritanical Methodist in the family's first decades.  In an earlier entry were the grey photos we took in 1950 of our trip to the national convention at San Antonio, held in The Plaza Hotel right on the famous River Walk not far from La Villita and an outdoor theater.  (I got such blisters from walking along that scenic way clear down to the Alamo that I could not wear shoes the last few days of our trip.)

In her deputy capacity, she's awarding someone not identified an RNA pin, probably for number of years as a member.  

      The Royal Neighbor magazine had its own obituary for her.  I apologize for Mom's glue job.

Uncle Chet's first wife, Sarah/Sally Clements Luckert, sister to Uncle Rich's first wife, Ella, and     

Darlene LuRee, in front of their South Omaha house, south of the then huge stockyards.

Uncle Joe and Aunt Evelyn Luckert Bruhn with their first grandchild, Barbara Kramer (Walter and Joyce Bruhn Kramer), outside their Newman Grove, NE, farm house.

Phyllis and Stanley Luckert (Rich and

Sylvia ) with Grandfather

George W. Luckert 

outside the West Hotel in Denver.

Uncle Rich Luckert and his son, Alton, by his first wife, Ella (see first photo for note about her sister, Aunt Sally),  

"up near Pikes Peak on the Stage road."

Leah North and Cousin Elizabeth Evelyn "Bubbs" Stocking Davids at one of Velma Luckert's school picnics.  Bubbs is, of course, in the checked dress at the right.

Some family reunion of the George W. Luckert family minus only one, Bessie/Betty Liberty.

L-R:  Chester/Chet, John/Jack, Evelyn, their father George, Elizabeth/Lizzie (she loved to stick her tongue out when she was tickled), and Richard/Rich.  Below is George W. in front of son Rich's Sinclair station in Shenandoah, IA, in the early Twenties.

Besides my 1993 Christmas card photo, I thank Deloris for her family tree, as I thank Janet Presson, Phyllis' daughter-in-law, for the following photo and identifications and the bracketed additions about wives' birthdates.

"Top Row:  Amy & Shelby, Amy Ruth & Ryan, Ashley & Justin, Jennifer & Stephen.  Middle Row:  Johnnie & Janet, Taylor.  Bottom Row:  Si, Morgan, Savanna & Lane.

Johnnie Lee Presson Oct 2 1955; Janet Frances (Ricker) Presson July 28th 1957

Stephen Lewis Hill Aug 20th 1975

   Jennifer Hill Dec 10th [Jennifer Baril Hill, 10 Dec 1975]

   Morgan Hill Nov 8th 1995

   Taylor Hill Aug 13th 2003

Shelby Gene Presson Sept 1 1976

   Amy Presson Sept 8 [Amy Sue Christine Presson, 8 Sept 1974]

   Savanna Marie Presson June 12 1996

  Silas Gene Presson Jan 15th 2003

Ryan Lee Presson Sept 9 1980

   Amy Ruth Presson May 7th [Amy Ruth Collins Presson, 9 May 1984]

   Lane Ryan Presson Nov 14 2002"

And I may as well append two photos I just found, one of Phyllis Koftan Flemming Presson dressed up for some special occasion (high school prom?) and one of her son Gene Presson at 16.