March 2009 Archives

Because I had the early photos of Aunt Ella Clements Luckert, Uncle Rich's first wife, I wanted to include the only photos I have of her sister, Sarah/Sally, Uncle Chet's first wife.  Uncle Chet and Aunt Sally had two children, Kenneth Lee (b. 8 August 1928-d. ) and Darlene LuRee (b. 19 June 1934).  They came up for vacations to stay in the old Niobrara State Park every summer from South Omaha.  They lived just south of the Union Stockyards, second to Chicago's by 1947, largest in the nation from 1955-1971, which helped shape South Omaha and was where Jack/Dad worked when he came down here to play baseball until he was injured at one of the packing houses (Armour, Cudahy, Swift, and Wilson).  When you were at their house, you knew by your nose where the stockyards were when the wind was from the north.  Uncle Chet came up for fishing and hunting trips, too, and, of course, there were special occasions, reunions and such.  Aunt Sally still had family in the area.

Aunt Sally was a notable character in her own right, as piously fundamental as could be, a devout Baptist who appended Biblical quotations to every subject and insured her children could recite large sections of Scripture.  She was little, very erect, easily shocked, kindly enough--at least to me--but had a goiter, which made for noisy breathing problems and at night a distracting unearthly sound even louder than Grandpa Luckert's snoring, which is why everyone tried to go to sleep before either or else spend hours thinking of new ways to blot out the sounds.  She henpecked both Chet and Kenneth, kept a very tidy house, clearly ruled even her daughter.  I just realized that I knew a number of little women like that, especially steel-corseted Grandma Rose Clark, our Sunday School superintendent in my childhood, tiny and powerful, railing against dancing (our dances had intermissions between 11:30 and midnight and then continued for another hour or two into Sunday, gasp!) and other sinful conduct.  She and Aunt Sally could just as well have been related. 

The only pictures I have of Kenneth are those from the Newman Grove reunion a few entries earlier.  He was well-liked, very polite, and quiet, whom Sally nagged into a nervous breakdown in his 20s over a loan he'd made to family, and he spent the rest of his life institutionalized, with Chet occasionally getting him and bringing him up briefly for a few days, a sadness for all of us.  Darlene was a city snob as far as I was concerned, because of Center's village status and the tiny size of my school next to her Omaha South High.  She was also nearly four years older, vain about her looks, spoiled by her dad, but she was stuck with me anyway.  When she brought a girl friend along, life was a matter of enduring, and Mom always insisted on good manners.  Actually, we got along fairly well through books and piano, though I never understood her periodic nervous fits when she would yank out hanks of her hair.  I'll make a brief entry later of her family, but she has also had a sad ending: when they could no longer handle her, her husband and daughter had to institutionalize her, because she has Alzheimer's and would fly into rages, often not knowing them. 

Aunt Lizzie was, always, a marvel of energy.  Uncle Vern had died in 1939, and she'd brought up her daughters (Clark was married in 1935) and run her farm all by herself.  I've always been aware of the strong women on the Peters side.  Aunt Elizabeth Mae Luckert Stocking was a living example of farm woman strength and capabilities to match any man's long before the 1970s Women's Lib.  She not only plowed, sowed, cultivated, reaped her fields but took care of her farm and chores.  She could fix a fence or milk a cow.  And she loved horses beyond reason, filling her house with pictures and brass and china miniatures, all kinds of versions.  She also held most of the family reunions, traveled wherever she wished, rode on trail rides and in parades, could talk to anyone and did, could outtalk anyone and did, could be very sentimentally weepy or tell a dirty joke or blister someone's ears.  You would hear her before she got to you.  She had an incandescent energy and certainly held her own with her brothers.  I've mentioned that we had a special bond through Uncle Vern, and so it's no surprise she was my favorite of Dad's family, and we knew her children's families the best, for three of them lived in the area, and Clark's visited regularly, Alyce's when possible.

Alyce Ella was her youngest (b. 14 September 1923- ), married to Norman Festus Wilson (b. 17 June 1923- ) in 1943, a Bloomfield boy who played baseball--like Dad--so well, he made the minor leagues.  His recent funeral had a baseball theme and included hot dogs and pop and a hearse trip around the Minnesota ball diamond before burial.  They moved a lot, mostly across the South, so Connie Lou was born 12 August 1944 in Oklahoma City, but Mark Norman was born 31 October 1958 in Springfield, Minnesota, where they finally landed.

So here are an afternoon's pictures in Center at our house with those five, Velma behind the camera as usual. 

There's Aunt Sally, who pointedly did not like her picture taken.  I enjoy these photos also for what they show of the house where I was born and Center.  For example, in the left photo is Joe Ballard's smelly old blacksmith shop at the left, at the right the town hall (originally a two-story hotel, gutted), a prime social center where we played high school basketball, had class plays and graduation, danced, watched movies (the movies were outside in summers on a screen hung up), held school and church dinners and carnivals.  The photo further shows that Dad had just planted the privet hedge marking the west edge of our long lawn. 

 And there's Aunt Lizzie on our broad front porch, the width of the house, with the neighbor's cedar and box elder (bugs all over) trees, probably the Berans at this time.  That's the sidewalk I went to school on, up the hill unseen here. 

 That's Alyce holding Connie Lou in front of the big living room window I once sat through  while putting on my overshoes.  We had always those metal lawn chairs, a bit bouncy.  We spent a great deal of time on that porch, only a half block from uptown, across the street from Dad's garage and gas station, so we could watch the town action or have neighbors strolling or driving by stop to gossip, besides which that's where I played, especially on rainy days, and we shelled peas and snapped beans and drank Kool Aid or iced tea and caught the cooling breeze in warm weather.  The folks were very popular, so we had lots of chat traffic, Dad happy to tell his stories, Mom enthusiastic over visitors.

That's Darlene LuRee.  We have Connie Lou between us.  Aunt Sally is in the far background in the other lawn chair, Aunt Lizzie by the folks' front bedroom where I was born, Alyce behind me by the front door.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Darlene and I are uncommonly friendly on the front steps.  The lattice work around the bottom of the porch was one of my banes, timely to paint and not keeping out a skunk or other creatures I was delegated to get rid of.  

I usually wore overalls, by the way.  Jeans weren't that common then, for boys.  When I was very, very little, directly west/left of this silver maple tree I loved to climb, especially as it grew much bigger, was a large cottonwood Dad had to cut down.  Both made the front sidewalk heave with their roots.  Between the houses is the row of currant bushes with spicy yellow flowers I relished for the springtime scent coming in my bedroom windows--my bedroom was just beyond the folks'--and sour green berries we called gooseberries that Mom tried to make pies from.  Too sour even with too much sugar.  To the north is part of the ring of hills surrounding the town, where we boys adventured and I collected rocks.  I also found ancient seashells, an unwitting preface to the Mesozoic plesiosaur fossil skeleton discovered just north of town in 2003, part at UNL's Morrill Hall, part at Ashfall Fossil Beds.  

Uncle Rich Luckert briefly ran a gas station at Shenandoah, Iowa, with the help of his father, George.  That's how we have these three photos.  The first is of the station, a Standard Oil, like Dad's earliest one before he became a long-time Texaco dealer.  The white birdlike space in the center is where the photo cracked and peeled away.

The next two are "Near Shenandoah," dated "3/7/26" and have three-year-old Alton featured with his father, Rich.

Rich's second wife, Sylvia Maranville, was born in Shenandoah, Iowa, 26 December 1909; but I no longer know whether he went there because of her or met her after moving there.  I'm lacking vital statistics but presume Phyllis and Stanley were both born there, for I have Stan's birth as 13 May 1931 at Shenandoah. 

A much later photo, too obviously, is of Aunt Sylvia with her two children, Stan and Phyllis.

 And here is a much later picture of Alton with his third wife, Louise, in June, 1997.

And one of his son, Ricky Lee, when he was 10 1/2:

 

Two photos of Ella Blanche Clements Luckert, Uncle Rich's first wife, with their son, Alton (b.12 February 1923 and hence named Alton Lincoln).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aunt Ella died when Alton was two, as her tombstone, in an earlier entry, gives her dates as 1902-1925.  She is buried immediately east of Grandpa and Grandma Luckert, along with Aunt Betty Luckert Vanness and Aunt Betty's third child, Barbara Luree, who drowned when she was nine.  Their tombstones are also in the earlier Bloomfield Cemetery set, but this is the grouping.

Rich then married Sylvia, who became Alton's step mother and had Phyllis (b. 13 January 1928) and Stanley (b. 13 May 1931).  This photo is "Alton & Charley," but I don't know who Charley is.

Here's a fine children's photo, "Phyllis & Alton Luckert."

And a tiny one with Alton behind Stan and Phyllis.

Here are the three with their half brother by Billie, L-R, Alton, Stan, Phyllis, and Rel (Richard Earl, who apparently goes by Dick, but I always knew him as the acronym of his initials).  It's at the family reunion in front of our house in Center.

I said that the earliest or youngest photo I had ever seen of Grandpa George W. Luckert was the Christmas one supplied by Rick Stedtnitz, but that's not true.  I will insert here the dual wedding portraits of George and Anna when I find and scan copies.  In the meantime I have these.  Grandpa was not a very good farmer.  What he's planning with this bull, I can't imagine. 

This is a curiosity of Grandpa and his youngest daughter, Betty, labelled "Dad & Me--1927."  What they are doing boating with an apparent strong wind and where will remain a mystery, though, if I had to guess, I'd say it was a very early photo of Niobrara State Park, the big building the bathhouse I remember where the dressing rooms were (men on the north side, women on the south?), just north of the lagoon.  The Niobrara Island [sic] Park opened in 1910 and became a state park in 1930 (the old park I grew up with, now flooded).

Another photo of George and Betty, but I don't know the other child or where the house is.

Rich simply marked the above photo in the upper left-hand corner.  I take the central figure in the circle of teams as Grandpa, but I don't know the activity or anything about all the men in the background, naturally.  The same house appears in the next photo too.

As Rich wrote on the back of the following photo, apparently taken in 1965, "This is the House that My Brother Chester Winford Luckert was born in known as the Old Chester Norton Place in the Hills 10 miles S-W of Bloomfield Nebraska."  Dad/Jack described living in a dugout, a modified cave, when he was little, so I am missing great gaps.

 This is a good photo of Grandma Luckert, Anna Jones Luckert, the man identified as her father, but I think it's her brother, Walt Jones, with "1918" at its top.  He's too young to be her dad and too good-humored.  Aunt Betty looked very much like her mother.

 

I was born in 1938, so you figure out how old I was when we had this Luckert family reunion at the Joe Bruhns in Newman Grove--somewhere in the first half of the 1940s.  George Washington Luckert (b. 2 February 1873-d. 26 April 1961) married Anna Elizabeth Jones (b. 1 March 1875-d. 27 July 1920).  They had six children.  In order, Elizabeth Mae (b. 3 May 1897-d. 25 March 1977), Evelyn Cathryn (b. 23 May 1899- ), Richard Charles (b. 24 November 1900-d. 26 August 1986), Chester Winford (1 April 1903-d.15 November 1986), John Herbert (6 May 1906-d. 30 January 1994), and Bessie Liberty (b. 4 July 1909-d. 10 April 1976).  As already evident, Elizabeth was Lizzie, Chester was Chet, John was Jack, Bessie was Betty.  Lizzie married Vern Stocking (b. 1915-d. 1939), Evelyn married Joseph Bruhn (d. 1975), and Betty married Arthur F. Vanness (b. 4 May 1913-d. October 1976).  Richard married Ella Clements (b. 1902-d. 1925), Sylvia Maranville (b. 26 December 1909- ), and Gertrude/Billie Schaeffer (b. 22 October 1920- ).  Chet married Sarah/Sally Clements (b. 27 April 1906-d. 3 January 1957) and Angela Raemaker Eyman (b. 11 December 1915-d. 9 October 1975); Jack married Velma Koftan (b. 25 March 1915-d. 25 March 1991).

Yes, Rich and Chet, brothers, married Clements sisters their first times.  As an interesting sidenote, a Wesley V. Clements (1875-1901), son of A.S. and S.A. Clements, is buried in the old Kemma Cemetery, near the Kemma School, as I recall.  In the website for Knox County (Nebraska) Cemeteries, Kemma is said to be specifically a Quaker cemetery.  Kemma was an area west of Morrillville, southeast of Center, and the locale of the other Luckerts, Loal, Oscar, Bertha.

Below, L-R:  Lizzie, Rich, Evelyn, Jack, father George, Betty, Chet.

     

The next is grandfather George with his grandsons at the time.  Back Row:  In his uniform Alton (Rich's oldest), Grandpa Luckert, Kenneth (Chet's);  Front Row:  James/Jimmy Vanness (Betty's), Gary (Jack's).

Finally, Back Row:  Evelyn, Chet, Lizzie, Joe Bruhn, Alton, George, Kenneth, Gertrude/Billie, Betty, Rich, Jack holding Judy Bruhn.  Front Row:  Jim, Gary, Kay Vanness, Barbara Kramer (Evelyn and Joe's granddaughter, whom they brought up). 

 

Evelyn/Bubbs Stocking Davids gave me just a few identifications in this group of five photos a long time ago, so I'll have to see if I can guess at any more or someone else can help.

Because Bubbs identified her mother in the following photo and Lizzie is the only one in a dark bathing suit, I'm guessing that's who's at right, next to Alyce, with possibly Dale Alexander standing in the overalls.

 

 

Bubbs said these are Elizabeth Mae/Lizzie and Alyce Stocking (above the exposure blotch)  in the foreground.  The lagoon is why I think this group happened at Niobrara State Park.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

In the only other photo Evelyn/Bubbs could identify anyone, she said the man seated in the center was Harold Alexander, Helen Alexander at the right.  Again, because of the dark bathing suit, I'd guess that's Lizzie. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And I'd certainly guess that to be Evelyn/Bubbs third from the right, by Alyce and Lizzie, with Harold sitting behind her.

Many summers, Grandpa Luckert's half brother by his mother's second marriage to Albert Hermes, Sr., brought his family out to stay at Aunt Lizzie's.  Aunt Lizzie Luckert Stocking had gone back there and had a splendid time, including fond Coney Island memories, though Grandpa probably had her beat with his youthful vaudeville memories of the Hippodrome acts and the performers who stayed at an aunt's rooming house (she gave teenage George tickets).  Because he lived with us and repeated the same stories many times, as a child I grew bored with them and stopped listening instead of writing them down.  I do remember one of the Hippodrome stories involving flooding the arena to stage a mock sea battle.  I also recall his talking about Lillian Russell and some prominent comic duo.

Anyway, [Great] Uncle Al's wife was the very genteel Daisy, his son George/Buddy with his wife Mary.  Although an early photo has George with a Naomi as his wife, I think it might be Sylvia, Uncle Richard Luckert's second wife, holding Phyllis.  I'm sure family will tell me one way or the other.  The photos illustrate well the span of years these enjoyable relatives with those "funny," strong New Jersey accents drove out to rural Nebraska.  (I think of them wistfully whenever I read one of Janet Evanovich's comic Stephanie Plum mystery novels, set in Trenton--not Newark--New Jersey.) 

L-R:  George/Buddy Hermes, woman identified as Naomi, his wife, but the little girl is Phyllis Luckert and the little boy Alton Luckert, Uncle Rich's two oldest children, so I think it might be Rich's second wife, Sylvia.  Then come Daisy and Al Hermes.

L-R:  George/Buddy Hermes, his mother, Daisy, Rich Luckert, unidentified man.

L-R: Velma Luckert, Mary Hermes, wife of George/Buddy Hermes next in line, Mrs. Martin (Mary's mother), Lizzie Stocking, George Luckert, in front of Jack's station in Center.  Apologies for the ink splatters.  Grandpa is well-tanned because he helped Dad at the station, running the gas pump and checking the oil and such when he wasn't playing cribbage.  I don't remember when Dad covered the white wood of the station with this ugly brown brick-patterned tar paper, or I could date it approximately, but I'd guess the Fifties.

 In contrast Uncle Rich Luckert dated this one of Albert Hermes, Jr., in September, 1966. 

I haven't that many photos of Dad's family but more than I thought, and I'll do these first chronologically.

L.-R.:  Charles W. Jones, Hazel Gray, Fannie Jones Lovejoy Gray, Anna Jones Luckert, Bessie Liberty Luckert, Frank Gray, John (Jack) Luckert, Fred Jones, Elsie Luckert, Ernie Eggers, Frank Jones, Walter Jones.  George W. Luckert is listed, but I don't see him.

Charles W. Jones is my great grandfather. His sister, Fannie, married to Frank Gray, her second husband, would be a great aunt, as would Frank's sister, Hazel, by marriage.  Walter Jones is Charles' and Fannie's brother.  George W. and Anna Jones Luckert are my grandparents, with their two youngest children, John/Jack and Bessie/Betty, my dad and aunt.  Fred and Frank/Casey Jones were brothers to Anna, thus Dad's uncles, my great uncles.  Elsie Luckert (Moeller) was a half sister to George, one of John C. Luckert's second family.  We had Eggers in Center, but I don't know who Ernie is.  The English Samuel Jones had Charles W. (b.1854-d.1934),  John Andrew (b.1864-d.1933), Neil (b. 1866-d.1931), Fanny (b.1873-d.1933), and Walter (b. 1874-d.1956, unmarried). 

L.-R.-Loal Luckert, Lillian/Lillie Luckert Stein, George Luckert, Bertha Luckert, Daisy Hermes, Julia Dannert Luckert (in front), Alma Luckert (Doerr), Elsie Luckert (Moeller), Herman Dannert, Oscar Luckert.  I assume [Great] Uncle Albert Hermes, Jr., took this blended family photo, because his wife, Daisy, stands immediately behind John C. Luckert's second wife, Julia, seated.  Herman (b.1875-d.1958) is Julia's son by her first marriage, her other son, William Dannert (b. 1879-d.1902), buried in the Bloomfield cemetery's Luckert group. All the Luckerts but George are by her second marriage to John C.  My grandfather George is in the middle of his half brothers and half sisters, left of his stepmother.  Bertha (b. 1886-d,1959) and Oscar (b.1892-d.1961) never married.  Apparently Great Aunt Alma (b.1898-d.1977) and Great Aunt Elsie (b. 1894-d.1981) weren't married at the time of the photo, though Great Aunt Lillie (b.1881-d.1959) was.  Loal (b. 1901) is dead, but I can't find the date.   

As identified by Evelyn/Bubbs Stocking Davids:  Back Row, L-R:  Vern Stocking, Aunt Gladys Stocking holding Arnold Stocking, Bessie/Betty Luckert, Elizabeth/Lizzie Luckert Stocking (dark figure completely in shadow), Cecil Falter, Clark Stocking (with hat), Jack Luckert, Clifford Stocking (with cap), unidentified man; Front Row, L-R:  Alyce Stocking, Lavonne Stocking, Audree Koftan, Hazel Stocking, Owen Colvin, Harvey Colvin, Aunt Joy Colvin [Stocking?].  June 1936.

I don't know what Aunt Audree is doing there unless she was with Mom and Dad, so I assume, since Jack/Dad is in the photo, Mom/Velma is taking the picture.  Lizzie and Betty are Dad's sisters, of course.  Lizzie was married to Vern, and three of their five children are in the group:  Alyce, Hazel, and Clark.  I don't know the other Stockings.  I knew Cecil Falter, that name still common around Creighton, as Colvin is a well-known name in Bloomfield.  (I knew some but none of these.)

Rick Stedtnitz, son of Jimmy and Sally Stocking Stedtnitz (Clark and Dorothy's daughter--I played piano for their 1959 wedding), is in the process of trying to identify his mother's share of old family photos.  Two follow, the first the youngest photo I've ever seen of Grandpa (George W.) Luckert.  I thought I knew the two women in the rear, but the setting is too expensive for any of our Nebraska family gatherings, and so I agree with Rick that it's George W. back East with New Jersey family.  He's in the right center with thick curly hair, mustache, cigar.

 The other one Rick called five Stocking generations, but it is actually five Luckert generations, with Lizzie and Clark Stocking and George W. Luckert behind John C. Luckert's second wife, Julia Witt Dannert Luckert, and Patti Stocking at Lizzie's front door.  From oldest to youngest, obviously it's Julia, George, Lizzie, Clark, Patti. 

 Another generational Luckert photo of three brothers and their sister with their dad, also at Lizzie's front door, is below, L-R, Jack, Chet (in back), George, Lizzie, and Rich.  I don't know why they all have carnations on, but the car has a Minnesota plate.

First, a key document of the Luckert family history, a copy of the Marriage License of John C. Luckert and Julia Dannert.  ("L'eau Qui Court," French for "running water," was the original name of Knox County and is still the name of the Niobrara cemetery.)   Notable are the birthplaces, Saxony (German province) and Russia, as well as the Miss Dannert when her parents are listed as Witt and I always knew of her as the Widow Dannert; that is, Julia Witt Dannert married John C. Luckert, after he abandoned Cathryn Miller Luckert back East and ended up in Nebraska, after which Cathryn also remarried Albert Hermes, Sr., back in Newark, New Jersey.  The data is confusing, because other sources claim a Pennsylvania birth for John Christopher Luckert and a Passau, Germany, birth for Caroline Juliana Witt Dannert.  The license, with its apparent falsehoods, seems an appropriate start for the family tree complicated by second large families for John C. and Cathryn, leaving George Washington Luckert, from the original marriage, with many half brothers and sisters to sort through, a task I am not up to, having only my own memories.  Maybe it's all about the American Western habit of re-inventing oneself. 

In an entry in the Nebraska 1912 Compendium is a biographical sketch of John Christopher Luckert, which has him born in Pennsylvania but growing up in New York, later being in the Civil War, then in the Army in Wyoming and Arizona before settling in Nebraska, marrying Julia Whitt [sic], having 15 children by her, 11 living, with no mention of New Jersey or his first marriage or Grandpa George at all.  Just to compound the confusion.  This brief biography can be reached through Knox County, Nebraska (I had "Cemeteries" added because that's where I began), the title "Compendium of History, Reminiscence and Biography of Nebraska, 1912."  It has information I never knew, growing up, just bare outlines, proving at once interesting and irritating.  I had heard often enough the story about Grandpa George standing in the field where his father was plowing and ignoring him, stubbornly determined enough that his father, John C., finally stopped and acknowledged him.  And in the following entry is a photo of some of the blended families together, whatever the false Nebraska Compendium biography says.  

I will mention here that, if John Christopher Luckert came from Newark, Essex County, New Jersey, and my grandfather came out here to find his father, he must have had family there originally.  And so I Googled "Luckert, Newark, New Jersey" and had pages popping up, the first for a Dr. Steven Luckert, the curator at the National Holocaust Museum.  Likewise, there is a Hermes Genealogy Forum back there.  And there are the John and Caroline Luckert, "Father" and "Mother,"  buried in the large Luckert section of the Bloomfield cemetery for further mystication. 

By the way, John Christopher's father was Andrew Jackson Luckert, so apparently, given my grandfather's name, George Washington Luckert, born on 22 February 1873, Washington's birthday, the family had a presidential name fetish.  Andrew's wife, Henraetta (not as spelled on the marriage certificate), is apparently buried in the Bloomfield, Nebraska, cemetery, her stone in my entry of 1 December 2008 marked "Died Jan 20 1898, Age 80 Yrs 4 Mos."  But I can't find Julia's grave, though I have family photos of her.  Aspirin, please.

  On a large piece of butcher paper, the kind grocers used with one side waxed, Mom made a penciled sketch of all the branches of the Luckerts' complicated family groupings, obviously aided by Grandpa Luckert and other relatives.  It is self-explanatory and obviously had to be done in sections, so here it is. Right-hand bottom first, the section over it, then the left-hand bottom, the section over it, and finally the upper right-hand corner.

A copy of a 26 April 1886 Deed, "Amasa B. Andrews to East Branch Cemetery Assn," is huge (two scrapbook pages) and hand-written by Great Grandfather Charles W. Jones, as the ending of it attests.

As this group of photos show, the Bishop girls were frequent visitors, as was Mildred Larson.  When I was little, I always thought the fashions funny.  Now they just intrigue me, for farm daughters of the time.  For instance, look at these striped stockings on Wilmae Bishop and Velma.  And the Twenties cloche (bell-shaped hat) was clearly popular.

These are companion photos of Velma Koftan between Dora and Wilmae Bishop (Wilmae has the different hat).  The left is on a school merry-go-round.

       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the back are Dora Bishop, Velma Koftan, and Mildred Larson.  Pauline Bishop and Audree Koftan are in front.

The man identified as Herman (Hump) Rolph was clearly a friend; cousin Evelyn Stocking Davids had to identify him for me.  Too bad the larger photo is stained.  He is to the left, then Mildred Larson, Velma Koftan, Jack Luckert with the worst haircut ever.  Looks like the girls permed his hair and had him part it in the middle.  It's suspiciously like Mom's.  Matching haircuts, oh gee.

This smaller one has Mildred Larson, Velma Koftan, and Dora Bishop (look at those cloches!) behind Herman (Hump) Rolph.

One expects more like this labelled "Ready to shock [grain]," with Jack/Dad between Dora Bishop and Velma/Mom.

Finally a photo, probably from a Christmas card, years later of Amos and Wilmae Bishop Coleman and their two children, only Dona identified.  I like juxtaposing the young with the adult photos.  Mom got Christmas news every year from Wilmae, who lived in California, right up through her last year, as I recall, because it's an unusual name, though Mom always pronounced it simply "Wilma."

 

I know the coupe in the Old Brick House yard is Jack Luckert's/Dad's because of the following photos, all marked as "Jack's car."  The first is of Velma's/Mom's first school, District 77, 1933-34.  (As mentioned earlier, she had taken Normal Training coursework in high school, for elementary teaching, and graduated from Bloomfield in 1933.)  I know it was Dad's first car, a Ford, I think; he was a devout Ford man.  And it looks very new and shiny here.

L.J./Grandpa Koftan hamming it up in "Jack's car."

 Wilmae Bishop and Velma Koftan by the coupe.

And the coupe in 1936 snow.

Audree, Velma, and Larry Koftan on Peggy Ann at the Old Brick House (Morrillville), with back-porch clutter. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Laurence looking grumpy.  I suspect that's Jack's coupe, for I have other photos of it, including the one below, not a family car.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Same car, with Jack behind it.  I had thought this was Grandpa/Laurence, but it's Dad/Jack.  I'm not sure if it's Fern/Grandma or Velma/Mom on the back porch.

I am sure this view looking northeast is of Jack and Velma plucking and preparing chickens for dinner.  Actually, I shouldn't say that, because I don't know why he's got a burlap (?) bag slung on his back.  The white ball between him and Velma is simply a punched-out spot, three other hand-punch indentations visible.  I think I've mentioned it before; but seeing the chickens reminds me that Mom told a hilarious story how the chickens got drunk once from eating fermented apples and staggered around, falling down, which she would illustrate with drunken clucking, to my great delight.

I'll finish with three snapshots of Fern Effie Adelaide, the working farm wife, but I don't know this dog.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her dark stockings make me think this is the Twenties, her strict Methodist period.  But with a northwestward view and a whitewall-tire sandbox for Larry (?) behind her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mildred and Myrle Larson were sister and brother to Ella, who married Grandpa Koftan's baby brother, Joe/Joseph.  Mildred married Walt Wenke around the same time Mom and Dad and Joe and Ella had their joint weddings, I think, and she and Walt lived in the area of the old George Luckert place in the Morrillville neighborhood.   Mildred is riding the little car--Larry's?--while Myrle watches from the left and Velma and Audree watch from the right.  I can't identify who's in the car or at the far right--not Jack/Dad because whoever it is, is shorter than Velma--but otherwise these are the same four as above, Myrle in the overalls, Velma and Audree in the middle, Mildred still on the toy car.

Laurence is having a tug-of-war with his neighbor across the road, Andrew Schainost.  The two couples were good friends.  Andrew's the old German who kept beer in an open crock with dead flies and scum on top, behind the stove, which so disgusted Mom that she never forgot it.  Sue and I both remember him and his accent.

Behind Audree and Larry are Dora Bishop and Velma, Mom being the taller.  The Bishop girls, pictured in the last entry with Donley Feddersen, were sisters to Lena, who married Jim/Buzz Brown, the large Brown family very close to Laurence and Fern Up West at Mariaville.  (An earlier entry is on Buzz and Lena.)  Mom recalled dances at the Bishops' house, a few miles east of Center, which place Mom pointed out to me, long gone .

At the left in a stocking cap is Deloris "Tiny" Kemnitz, with Laurence, Audree, and Fern standing in front of Larry on Peggy Ann.  I don't know which Kemnitz Deloris belonged to, though it is a common Bloomfield name.  Wally and Betty Kemnitz were good friends of Aunt Betty and Uncle Larry Koftan.

This is Velma Koftan with Janet Mills, daughter of Eads and Lois Mills, among Laurence and Fern's best friends after Leonard and Lillian Braunsroth.  Eads and Lois moved a lot, at one time living northwest of Center, but always belonged to Grandma and Grandpa Koftan's card club with Hank/Henry and Clara Bruegman, Henry and Edna Peters, and others.  Janet had two brothers, Elmo, in Mom's Bloomfield 1933 class, and Clark, who kept tongues wagging all his Rhett Butler life, with a beautiful daughter out of wedlock, a Texan bride with a Southern drawl and Hispanic roots, various visionary schemes and sweethearts. 

I distinctly remember Christmas cards over the years from Janet and Ward Reynoldson in Osceloa, Iowa, and knew they were both lawyers, so I checked on the Internet and watched a 90-minute interview this morning, "Leadership with Humor," from 16 November 2004 of W. Ward Reynoldson, who was on Iowa's State Supreme Court 1971-1987, Chief Justice of it 1978-1987.  The wonder of the Internet.  Originally from a farm in the Albion-St. Edward, Nebraska, area, having gone to a two-room rural school through the tenth grade, and then paying $3.00 weekly for room and board to finish high school while working, Ward met Janet at Wayne State, where they debated together (the same college Donley Feddersen first went to and, for briefer times, Velma/Mom and JaVee; I took my senior year and master's work there).  Graduating from high school at 16, Janet finished a year ahead of him and taught so that her debate teams competed with his when he practice taught at Hahn High, the campus prep school.  They married when he enlisted in 1944, and he first saw their daughter Vickie at Christmas in 1945 at Eads and Lois'.  Janet was with him only in Washington, D.C., where she became fascinated with politics and law and later encouraged him in law, so he used his GI Bill to go to Iowa U.--his parents had moved to Iowa--and got his law degree in 1948.  They settled in Osceola and, in Ward's first year of practice, had son Robert/Bob, with him in the televised 2004 interview.  Much later, having taught speech and debate and having brought up their two children, Janet went to Drake and got her law degree in 1964, commuting from Osceola.  At Drake she was editor of the law review, an outstanding student, who earned a Certificate of Merit from the bar association in 1965.  She joined Ward's practice, and their son and son-in-law became lawyers, as other family members did later.  I was engrossed because there was a slide program about Janet herself working at the law firm after Ward became Chief Justice, and I was struck by how much she looked like both parents and was tiny like her mother.  Mom would've been thrilled.  (After Janet died, Ward remarried and has, of course, been long retired now.)

Justice Reynoldson mentioned in his interview that "Jan was a little thing."  How little can be judged by these photos, Velma/Mom holding her and Janet with her mother, Lois.  The last picture is her high school graduation photo, I suspect.

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recently third cousin Mark Donley Feddersen saw sister JaVee's obituary in the Brockhaus Funeral Home (Creighton, Nebraska) listing and got in touch with sister Sue through Brockhaus, since Greg Brockhaus certainly knew Sue, who has worked at the hospital in Creighton for over 25 years, another instance of small-town closeness, as when Kay Vanness Sanger in California found Mom and Dad through writing to the Knox County Courthouse to see if anyone knew Jack or Velma Luckert, the courthouse where Mom had worked for many years in a village where everyone in and out of the courthouse knows family trees branch by branch.  (By now I think most of Knox County has intermarried so that most people are shirt-tail relations.)  Anyway, he and I share his dad's name for a middle name, though Mom shortcut it for me with her teacher's belief in short names easier for children to spell.

I have some early photos of the second surviving son of John and Nellie Peters Feddersen.  Here is Donley at the Old Brick House between Dora Bishop and Mildred Larson.

Below, L-R, Mildred Larson, Donley Feddersen, Velma Koftan, Dora Bishop, Jack Luckert.  Then one of Donley and Jack/Dad.

Clearly he's mugging for the camera, coming out of [Great] Uncle [Dr.] Glenn Peters'' house in Randolph, [Great] Aunt Paula behind him in the doorway.

 

The following two companion photos, not in good shape, are of Donley and Don Sexton at Wayne State College (formerly Teachers College), Wayne, Nebraska.  I think these might be the same summer I have several photos of Mom and her friends at summer school there, 1935 or 1936, but I'm not sure.                                                                                                       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, finally, one from 1938 with his parents, John and Nellie, in Fern's garden area north of the house at the Bloomfield farm, a companion to a more populated one earlier including me as a baby.