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.
Leave a comment