Fern E. A. Peters Koftan in Her RNA Years Part I

After Grandma and Grandpa Koftan retired from traveling around with Larry and Betty, Laurence/L.J. working for his son, they settled in Center behind us on a rear, northern lot. Both remained active, Grandpa picking up odd jobs, especially helping on farms, and Grandma Fern, social as ever, becoming a Royal Neighbors of America deputy (insurance salesman) for that old fraternal insurance organization headquartered in Rock Island, Illinois. Women have always run it and been the officers and deputies until the feminist movement produced the civil rights effect so that men are now both officers and salesmen.

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.)

Here is our hotel bill, included for its astonishing fee of $7.00 a day, double occupancy. It was a posh place too, as my postcards and later photos will show. Its logo and the prominent "Completely and Continually Air-Conditioned," clearly a selling point in 1950 that later became standard, were on the envelopes too..

We were the only three-generation trio there, I thInk, and so got our little niche of publicity.

We also participated in the elaborate demonstrations by the states, though I can't tell you where to find Grandma and Mom in the Nebraska delegation picture. I'm at the front along the stair rail. And the Colorado delegation photo is here because I was the rear of their mule because of my size, for which the Colorado women doted on me. As my letters to Dad (Jigger was my dog at the time I was 12) show, with Mom's confirmation above, I was busier than either of them. And I had forgotten I was Oracle (top office) of the Bloomfield RNA Juveniles then, a plus for us.

Deputy Fern's RNA stationery was a particular blue, announcing her position. In illustration, first, an envelope and then a rhymed letter from her couched in the Edgar Guest style she got from her father which has become part of the family tradition, passing through Velma, Larry to his daughter, Linda, and son, David, and Audree to Audree's granddaughters, Linda Mindemann Bartleson and Jill Ellingson Kruse in their Christmas letters now. Noticeably, the heading is from her days in the South, but she writes from Center, and I am at Minot, ND, where JaVee wrote me in the earlier entry. (I shall have to look up Mom's poem and Audree's poem to me sometime.) Linda Koftan did the family a great favor in collecting all of Grandma Fern's poems she had access to and having them printed in vanity book style. Of course, she didn't have this one. (And I write poetry, yes, but not this kind, the college English teacher kind, usually blank verse with much word play because Shakespeare and Joyce are my culture heroes of our language. I add that merely to explain why I'm not included in the family list.)