Joy Neal Kidney's Blog, page 11

JAK2 and other monkey wrenches

My Favorite Guy has added a chemotherapy capsule to his daily diet of Parkinson’s meds. A blood cancer, probably inherited, called JAK2. Octogenarianism isn’t what we’d anticipated.

Taken a couple of years ago

Our life together gets a little smaller each week, learning to navigate these new medical places and learning almost a new language. Guy, a Vietnam vet, is still my caretaker, since age-related drawbacks have added to the dailiness of fibromyalgia symptoms, punctuated by diverticulitis. At some point, we may not be able to figure out who is doing the most caretaking, but we’re thankful for caring medical people and friends who keep track of us well.

Probably the hardest part for both of us is dealing with the challenges of exhaustion, some days more than others.

I have so little energy and haven’t been able to keep up with several websites I follow. I know those of you who usually get feedback from me will understand.

My next manuscript was to be finished by now, or nearly so. It looks now like it will be after the first of the year.

But God has given us both eighty years this side of heaven, fifty-eight of them together. We’re aging gratefully.

That Missing Year: 1947

Recently I read Jerry Sittzer’s book A Grace Disguised, about the aftermath–physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually–of suddenly losing three family members.

What agony did Grandma Leora go through, I pondered, after losing three sons and being widowed within a three-year period? Since I was a toddler during that time, I didn’t experience the days of her deepest grief. She cried only once at the cemetery, when we took flowers for Decoration Day when I was a child. Her daughters didn’t gather around her, which would have meant tears for all three. I imagine there were plenty when grandchildren weren’t with them.

There are no family letters after Grandpa Clabe’s death in late 1946, and Grandma hadn’t yet started keeping a diary. She wrote in her memoir, “I have all their letters we received and, to this day in 1980, cannot read their letters. I don’t know if I ever can, as it opens that awful feeling of grief.”

After Junior Wilson was killed in August of 1945, Clabe and Leora’s oldest son Delbert, his wife, and toddler daughter moved in with them at the Perry acreage. Another baby daughter had been born that fall, so the little house was full when Clabe died in October of 1946.

Leora’s mother, Laura Goff, had been living with her youngest son in Omaha since 1935. Leora must have also stayed with them part of the time, giving mother and daughter precious time together in that missing year, 1947.

1947, leaving for Omaha, Leora and son Donald Wilson. She’s wearing a corsage. Might this have been Mother’s Day?

Laura had been through tragedies of her own. As a child, she lost her next three siblings as children, leaving an eight-year emptiness in her life and that of her parents. Did Laura talk about that? Had her family found solace in their faith? 

About losing a teacher friend to drowning? Consoling cousins who lost three children to cholera in one week? 

When the Goffs lived in Minnesota, Laura bought a Bible, which she embraced while three sons served in World War I. She’d also read it twice since she moved to Omaha. Laura probably shared verses with her daughter that brought comfort to them both. 

When the Goffs lived in Guthrie Center during the 1920s, Leora’s closest sister Georgia died, age 28. Two years later, the Goffs lost a daughter-in-law. They were the first two buried in the Goff plot in Guthrie Center. Devastating losses. 

The Goffs lived near the Leora’s family in Dexter when they lost baby twins to whooping cough, and also Leora’s last infant. Laura made burial gowns for them. Her own last baby had died as well, buried at Audubon but also remembered in the Guthrie Center cemetery, where Sherd Goff was buried as well as Leora’s three infants.

Both mother and daughter were widowed, both had lost their homes. Both were born in Guthrie County, grew up there, with cousins still in the area. Both had loved ones buried in Guthrie Center. 

They decided to return to their roots, where Laura had attended the Christian Church and  was already a member of the Rebekahs. Clarence, the youngest Goff, who was a Guthrie Center graduate, worked with a builder in there. This would be their first house someone else had not lived in before, with electricity and running water and a real bathroom.

The Guthrie Center house was well underway when Leora was asked to complete a Request for Disposition of Remains for Lt. Daniel S. Wilson in October 1947. After talking over the decision with her four surviving children, they decided they just couldn’t face another funeral. And what about Dale? He would probably never be found. A month later Leora mailed the notarized form to request his permanent burial in an American Military Cemetery overseas.

In December, Delbert’s wife Evelyn wrote Leora who was still in Omaha, “Spats has gone.” This is the last mention of the Wilsons’ beloved pet.

Leora Wilson and her mother, Laura Goff, taken in Omaha shortly before the moved into their new little home in Guthrie Center.

The missing year, 1947. Bittersweet. Even living with deep sorrow and unthinkable losses, Leora and her mother were blessed with the comfort of each other’s company in a brand new little home of their own, with space to plant a weeping willow in the back yard, and ferns in a widow box to greet them each morning.

Questions to Ponder: What Leora Never Knew

Whether you read What Leora Never Knew: A Granddaughter’s Quest for Answers alone or as part of a book club, here are some ideas to think about or to discuss with someone:

Questions to Ponder

1. “Village by village the American Graves Registration Command is covering the battle areas of the world to see if it can find any clue that may lead to an isolated grave. . .” wrote Joseph Shomon in his 1947 history, Crosses in the Wind: Graves Registration Service in the Second World War. 

      Were you surprised at how long it took to find where Dan Wilson was lost?

2. Do you think that two of the bomber crew may indeed have been Japanese POWs?

3.  Would you rather that the bomber crew perished right away? 

4. Garrett Middlebrook was a B-25 pilot of the war in New Guinea. In his book, Air Combat at 20 Feet, he wrote, “God help a nation which forgets its war dead.” He also said that “if we do not revere our war dead, we are unworthy of their sacrifice.” 

      Do you agree with him? 

5. Michael Sledge, in his Soldier Dead: How We Recover, Identify, Bury, and Honor Our Military Fallen, said that “our national commemoration, Memorial Day, has been hijacked,” and now is a commercialized event. 

      Most Americans don’t know anyone close to them who was lost in combat, but could we do a better job of remembering our war casualties on Memorial Day? 

6. Have you ever visited a cemetery administered by the American Battle Monuments Commission, here at home or an American cemetery abroad? Do you remember the solemn atmosphere, even if you didn’t know anyone buried there. 

      Sledge said, in Soldier Dead, “Few of those who walk through the rows and rows of white crosses and stars are not viscerally overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of bodies that lie beneath them.” 

7. In The Rifle: Combat Stories from America’s Last WWII Veterans, Told Through an M1 Garand, Andrew Biggio said that “paying respect to veterans and honoring them enriches us as much as it ennobles them.” 

      How might honoring them enrich your own life? 

8. Kenneth Breaux, in his Courtesies of the Heart, said that “men who died so young have little history. We define them all too often by the manner of their death.”

      Do you believe that Dale, Danny, and Junior Wilson will be defined just as World War II casualties? 

9. “Thin places” is a Celtic idea where the veil between this world and the next seems thinner. In Chapter 28, Joy had the feeling that her uncles in heaven took note of what she’d discovered at home in Iowa. Have you ever experienced what you might term a “thin place”?

Mitochondrial DNA

Four generations! Back: Dad’s mother Ruby Neal, her mother-in-law Nellie Neal. On the right is Mom (Doris Neal), then her mother (Leora Wilson) and her mother Laura Goff. (My great grandmothers are next to each other! Front: I’m holding puppy Candy, sis Gloria Neal, cousin Patty Wells (her mother was Dad’s sister). My motherline (also my sister’s) are the three women standing on the right.

The first time I encountered the word mitochondria was in A Wrinkle in Time, the first in a children’s science fiction trilogy by Madeleine L’Engle. Often called the “powerhouses of the cell,” in the book, Charles Wallace’s mitochondria are dying. To save him from a deadly disease, other characters travel inside one of his mitochondria. Talk about introducing kids to biology! 

Deoxyribonucleic acid (abbreviated DNA) is the molecule in a cell that carries genetic information for an organism. Known as a double helix, it’s made of two linked strands that wind around each other, reminding you of a twisted ladder.

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA or mDNA) is the DNA in mitochondria, the “powerhouses” of a cell. With rare exceptions, it’s inherited only from mothers. It can be used to track your ancestry way, way, way back through your mother’s lineage.

The human mitochondrial genome is the entirety of hereditary information contained in human mitochondria. Unlike nuclear DNA, mtDNA does not undergo meiosis and does not participate in genetic recombination events. It remains stable over generations.

Probably an article in Discover magazine was the first time I’d heard about mtDNA. It was the story about a woman who claimed to be the missing Romanov daughter.

The Missing Romanov

Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicated the throne during the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The family was placed under house arrest, then executed them in 1918. Russia’s last imperial dynasty. The Tsar, Empress Alexandria, their four daughters and one son were all believed to have perished.

Two women claimed for decades they were Anastasia, the youngest Romanov daughter. One of them was Anna Anderson who surfaced in Berlin a few years after the execution, vowing that a Bolshevik soldier had helped her survive. 

Anderson’s story was made into a 1956 movie starring Ingrid Bergman. Until her death in 1984, she was considered the missing Tsarina. But when Anderson had surgery in the late 1970s, the hospital kept a tissue sample.

When the mass grave of the Romanovs was discovered in the early 1990s, the hospital gave researchers the tissue sample. The mtDNA test proved Anderson was a fraud. She was not a Romanov. Instead, her DNA matched with the Schanzkowska family. Anderson was really Franziska Schanzkowska of Poland.

Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency

Each branch of the military maintains Casualty and Mortuary Affairs Offices. A family member of a missing person may submit DNA for use in comparison for identification purposes if they share a maternal or paternal relationship. Nuclear DNA as well as mtDNA are useful, but it gets trickier.

All persons of the same maternal line have the same mtDNA sequences. All males of the same paternal line have the same Y-STR profiles. And additional profiles from mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters can be used as well. These family reference samples are continually collected by the casualty and mortuary offices.

Dale R. Wilson and the rest of his B-25 crew, lost off New Guinea in 1943, are still missing. DNA samples from the relatives of these airmen could be useful in identifying them, if they are ever discovered.

My Motherline

I’ve been thinking about mtDNA as part of my motherline project, of pondering what we inherit from our ancestors. I’m focusing on those in a direct line of women.

You might consider your own father- or motherline. What did you inherit besides genetics?

“Just about what my mother and sister want in the way of a house,” August 1947

Photo of the new Goff/Wilson home at 505 N. 4th Street in Guthrie Center, The Times, Guthrie Center, March 11, 1948

August 13, 1947

Mr. Oral Bower
203 S. 5th Ave.
Guthrie Center, IowaRe: New home for Mrs. L.A. Goff
      and Leora F. Wilson

Dear Mr. Bower:

You will find a sketch enclosed of just about what my mother and sister want in the way of a house. They would like to have your comments and suggestions on this; and any changes that might be necessary to make to better fit on the lot, etc. They would also appreciate an estimate of the cost for both brick veneer and frame. If agreeable to you and the city, Mrs. Wilson’s two sons will do the electric wiring. They are electricians at Perry, Iowa. We can furnish the Timken Furnace with controls and 275 Gal. oil tank. We would want a local shop to install the furnace, ducts and tank.

The following are some of the things we would like to have in the house.

52-Gal. Electric water heater
8x12 chimney with flue lining.
6’6” high directional-flow warm air registers.
Return air from all rooms except kitchen and bath.
2-warm air outlets with branches in the basement.
Steel beams in basement–no partitions.
4” Rock Wool insulation in attic.
1” Balsom wool in the walls.
Weather stripping and Storm doors and windows
Composition or asbestos shingles.
basement 11 blocks deep. (use 12” wide blocks, if brick veneer)
Sod lawn on North, east and south.
Full basement except under porch and deck.

It would seem that the house should be set low on the East, so that the back of the house on the west will not be too far out of the ground. Possibly the dirt from the excavating could be used to fill in the west part of the lot. Everything including the grading and sodding should be complete. 

From the above, we hope that you will be able to make up some tentative sketches and specifications and estimates. Thank you, 

[signed] C.Z. Goff

Clarence Goff’s sketch

Mrs. Wilson’s sons, Delbert and Donald, did electrical work together for a while after the war.

Wilson’s Wiring, Perry, Iowa, with daughters of Delbert and Evelyn Wilson, Leora Darlene and Donna Gaye, at 505 N. 4th Street in Guthrie Center, about 1948

Clarence Zenas Goff

Clarence Zenas Goff was a younger son of Laura, who was allowed to attend high school in Guthrie Center. He became the valedictorian of the Class of 1923 at age 17. In the letter above he mentions Timken Furnace, which was the company he ran in Omaha for years. In fact, during the Great Depression, when his older brothers (who’d served in WWI) couldn’t pay for their trucks, he gave them jobs.

Laura Goff’s Dexter house had been collateral for those trucks, so that was lost as well. C.Z. was 30 years old when he provided a home in Omaha for his mother, two brothers, and the motherless teenagers of one brother. And when WWII broke out, C.Z. Goff joined the Navy as an officer.

Back to the house plans in 1947. Clarence’s mother and sister also wanted a mailbox opening in the front door. I can still hear the brass flap slap shut and the mail fall onto the floor just inside the door.

Pat Paulsen for President!

Grandma Leora was so disgusted with the candidates running for president in 1968 that she quipped that she just might vote for comedian Pat Paulsen. This 6-minute video shows Paulsen just before election day.

The candidates that year were Hubert Humphrey (D), Richard Nixon (R) and George Wallace (Independent). Leora was a life-long Democrat, influenced by her father, Sherd Goff.

From her diary of November 5, 1968: “Tue. 40 degrees Cloudy Calm

“ELECTION DAY

“Went to City Hall 8:30 A.M. to vote. Voted mostly Dem. some Prohibition & some Rep.

“VOTED”

She also stopped at Clark’s Barber Shop to see Mildred, who had caught her spike heel in the carpet the night before at Lodge, second stair step to the basement and had rolled all the rest of the way. She said she wasn’t hurt too much by it, but the next day her shoulder was black, Leora recorded.

She got groceries at Super Value before walking home. She watched election returns that evening until 1:30 A.M. but results weren’t announced until the next morning. Nixon won.

Loera was a busy woman and didn’t say more about it, but I guess she didn’t vote for Pat Paulsen after all.

—–

(Grandma Leora mentioned that November 7 she’d written me a letter. Guy was based at Mountain Home AFB in Idaho, so Grandma’s letters were so welcome.)

Please vote on Election Day, then pray for our nation!

 

Double Wedding Ring Quilt by Ruby Neal

The iron bed is from the attic of the farmhouse my husband grew up in. Wedding photos of Clabe and Leora Wilson are in oval frames on the corner. Grandma Neal also crocheted the red doily under the ginger jar lamp. I made the small pillow, with GRANDMOTHER crocheting on it.

Grandma Ruby Neal sent this Double Wedding Ring Quilt quilt (77″ X 88″) for our First Anniversary when Guy was stationed at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, where we lived in a trailer court.

Grandma pieced it by hand, which isn’t easy because of the curved pieces and tight junctions. (I got to work on one years later, so I appreciated this one even more.) She and various relatives had hand-quilted it over several weeks. Made in her rural home, Dallas County, Iowa, 1977.

1985 – Part of the Historic Jordan House Quilt Show, West Des Moines, Iowa.

1991 – Stuart Care Center, when several of Grandma’s quilts were featured there.

Grandma Ruby (Blohm) Neal was known for her handwork: quilts, afghans, doilies, cross-stitched aprons, embroidery. Her own story about aprons.

 

Classroom Questions and Activities: Leora’s Letters – with thanks to Elaine Briggs

Yesterday someone ordered 10 copies of Leora’s Letters from Amazon. Another books club? They might find some of Elaine Briggs’s ideas useful! 

Not only has Elaine been an encourager and beta reader for several Leora stories, this retired teacher also came up with classroom topics and activities for Leora’s Letters: The Story of Love and Loss for an Iowa Family During World War II. Here is her list:

Have students choose a brother and complete maps of their various locations stationed during the war. Have students choose a brother and complete a timeline for him, including what training he received and where he was sent for combat.How do the letters let you know farming was very important to the war effort? What was the attitude of the brothers for serving in the war? Give examples. Explain how important letters were to both those who served and those at home. Why do you think censoring of the mail was important? Food was rationed during WW II. Why do you suppose the Wilsons didn’t mention it much? How was life during WW II complicated by having no electricity?

Elaine Briggs is also the author of Joe Dew: A Glorious Life, about her father (whose life was amazing), and also Yes! All Can!: Increase Reading Levels in Weeks, Resolve Conflicts and Build Character, Develop Leadership. Elaine enjoys writing things close to her heart, delights in family activities, and lives a on the farm near Milan, Michigan. She volunteers one-on-one tutoring with EBLI and loves that light-bulb moment when a student “gets” reading.

An Heirloom with a Mystery: The Stuart Spoon

The Stuart Spoon

Inheriting her grandmother’s cherished spoon collection was just the beginning for Caroline Barrett. Little did she know, tucked away among the treasures from charming destinations lay a mystery waiting to be unraveled.

Twenty-five years after her grandmother’s passing, Caroline stumbles upon a spoon from Stuart, Iowa—a place never mentioned in her grandmother’s tales of adventure. Intrigued and determined to unearth the truth, Caroline embarks on a journey that leads her deep into the heart of her grandmother’s past.

As she delves into the history of the mysterious spoon, Caroline uncovers a romance that transcended time and distance—a love story between her grandmother and a man from the distant shores of Nova Scotia. With each revelation, Caroline is drawn deeper into the enchanting narrative, weaving together the threads of her family’s past and present.

Set against the backdrop of two countries and spanning generations, The Stuart Spoon is a captivating tale of love, loss, and the enduring power of family bonds. Join Caroline as she embarks on a quest to unlock the secrets hidden within her grandmother’s spoon collection and discovers a legacy of love that will forever change her life.

A Joe Kenney photo

My Thoughts

The only thing better than an heirloom is one with a story. And this story of a souvenir spoon from the 1920s, passed down to a granddaughter, comes with a mystery! What a delight to follow along with search for clues, with the results at once exhilarating and poignant. Half of the mystery is set in the small town of Stuart, Iowa, right along White Pole Road, where many of my own grandparents’ stories are set, also during the 1920s. Just delightful!

The author has been back to Stuart not long ago to talk about her compelling story.

The Author

The author at historic Hotel Stuart, along White Pole Road, Stuart, Iowa

Carrie Landgraf is a fresh voice in the world of authors, fueled by a deep passion for storytelling and a love for the written word. Residing in the heart of the Midwest alongside her husband Brian, Carrie finds inspiration in the simple joys of everyday life.

As the proud parent of three married children, Carrie’s world revolves around the bonds of family and the values of faith. Embracing her newest role as a Nonna, she cherishes every moment spent with her beloved granddaughter, finding endless joy in her laughter and innocence.

. . . With a heart as warm as her prose and a spirit as bright as her imagination, Carrie Landgraf invites readers to join her on a journey of  love, laughter, and the beauty of life’s simple pleasures.

Typing letters home under mosquito netting in a tent in New Guinea

17-Mile Field, Port Moresby, New Guinea

The day of their first mission, October 21, 1943, Dale Wilson wrote home, “We have to clear off a patch of ground and erect our tent or, as some are doing, building a shack out of swiped lumber or lumber acquired by producing a little liquor at the right place–usually at the saw mill. We are figuring on using some shale or gravel as the floor for our tent. Yesterday I cleared off a place on a little knoll which had an area a little larger than the tent on top. The water can run away from it in all directions. I picked the spot after Lt. Stack (Bombardier-Navigator) suggested we build down in a ditch just because it was flat. I dug nice drainage ditches and built up our foundation with clay. It is going to be a good place to live after we get the tent put up and fix ourselves a few little conveniences.”

Dale Wilson is standing in the back. John Stack is standing, right. Behind is a B-25G Mitchell medium bomber.

The same day, the bomber’s navigator, John “Junie” Stack wrote home that they were building a place to live out of what lumber we can buy or steal. . . .If you don’t want to build one and screen it in, you can sleep in a tent and give your blood to the mosquitoes, so Wieland [pilot], Wilson [copilot], Flaczinksi (“Irish”) [I’m not familiar with this name] and myself have started one.”

Officers’ tents at 17-Mile Field, Port Moresby, New Guinea. Photo courtesy of Curtis E. Swan.

The next day, Lt. Stack added, “Finished it will be a wooden, screened-in house with a tent for a roof, if you can picture that. Material is awfully hard to get, and right now we’re trying to drive a bargain to get six hundred feet of flooring for four quarts of gin. It should work out, as the Aussies have all the lumber and we have all the liquor. Right now we have the foundation nearly done on the side of a hill. It should be pretty nice when finished. Better anyway than giving you blood to the mosquitoes rather than to the Red Cross!”

Dale mentioned the mosquitoes as well. More about 17-Mile Field. Each man had a canvas cot with a mosquito net.

“Dale, like all of us, lived on a mountainside in a 16’X16’ tent,” veteran Lew Pavel wrote decades later. Four to six officers lived each tent, which had a dirt floor and one small light bulb. A light bulb! Each man had a canvas cot with a mosquito net.

Dale Wilson also told about their primitive living primitive. They cleared off a knoll a little larger than the tent, dug drainage ditches so water could run off in all directions, and built up a clay foundation. “The sweat runs off you like water,” he wrote. “I actually sweat out more liquid than I can drink. We even urinate very little. I am thirsty all the time and drink water continually.”

Stack mentioned a typewriter in one letter. “The typewriter is needed, so will sign off for now.” Typewriters during the 1940s were not light weight. It’s hard to imagine, but Dale Wilson also typed letters–sitting on a cot in his tent and under mosquito netting.

This crew was lost November 27, 1943, hit by AA fire, just off Boram/Wewak, New Guinea. It was Dale Wilson’s 13th mission, Junie Stack’s seventh mission, Ted Sharpton’s one and only mission.

Information about John R. Stack is from Reading Between the Lines: Getting to Know Uncle Junie Through the Letters He Left Behind by Mary and Jim Ragsdale. Jim Ragsdale, a reporter for the Saint Paul Pioneer Press and later for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, began the manuscript before his death in 2014. His widow and the niece of Junie Stack later finished the book, which was published only for family. Mary is looking into offering it more widely as an ebook. 

See also: Leora’s Letters: The Story of Love and Loss for an Iowa Family During World War II. And What Leora Never Knew: A Granddaughter’s Quest for Answers.