Joy Neal Kidney's Blog, page 32

The Hemphill Place

When I was a child, the Hemphill place was where Uncle John and Aunt Nadine Shepherd lived, and cousins Susan, Kenny, and Jonny. I remember birthday parties there and at least one campout, with a “tent” arranged over the clothesline.

I remember the metal register in the floor where heat came up from the furnace in the basement, and the steep stairs and open balusters to the small bedrooms upstairs. 

The Hempill place SE of Dexter. The porch faced south to the gravel road. The kitchen windows wer behind the tree. Leora’s wash was on the line at left. It was Doris’s 5th birthday, Aug. 30, 1923. She’s the child in the middle, with twins Dale (left) and Darlene.

Remembering rooms in that house helped me while writing about the Wilson family when Clabe took a job with B.C. Hemphill as a tenant farmer in August 1923. My mother Doris turned 5 that month.

The family’s first Christmas at that place, preschooler Doris received a porcelain doll. Her mother (Leora) told her to take the doll to show relatives who were visiting. Doris carried it across the metal grate in the floor, slipped, and the doll’s brittle head broke.

Another time, Doris awakened one night and came partway down the stairs, amazed that her folks were still busy at night. They were in the living room, turning brown eggs in a large incubator. I could see that preschooler peeking through the balusters.

There were a couple of smaller rooms off the kitchen, one a pantry, the other the “bawl room.” A crying child was sent there where coats and boots were kept on one side, wash tubs on the other.

The porch faced the road, with the boys’ room over it. The small window on the right was to the pantry or “bawl room.” (Mr. Hemphill’s horse Nancy took the “Wilson school bus” to town, December 1924, Doris’s first grade year. She rode between Donald and Delbert, who drove.

Upstairs, the girls’ bedroom was the first one on the right, the parents’ straight ahead, and the boys’ room to the front of the house. There was a nook in the hallway where the chamber pot was kept.

Claiborne Junior Wilson, or Junior as they called him, was the first Wilson baby born in Dallas County, in the Hemphill house. 1925. Doris said when she heard her grandmother’s low voice downstairs one morning, she knew they had a new baby.

Aunt Nadine held a bridal shower for me in that house in 1966. She and Uncle John hosted us to supper before Guy left for Vietnam three years later. The house has been torn down, but I still enjoy remembering the good times with the Shepherd family in it, and also my mother’s stories from a century ago.

This is also where Leora talked her husband Clabe into giving her a new “shingle bob” haircut!

 

Super Nova Quilt

Son Dan was given graph paper in first grade at school. He made a design and called it Super Nova.

Having a quilter for a mom has its perks. Dan even chose the fabrics. 62″ X 93″

It won Third Prize at the 1982 Iowa State Fair, so Dan must have been about 8 years old. That makes sense since that trophy “skin” was from Cub Scouts. A map of Narnia is at the head of the bed, and the books under the lamp are the Wrinkle in Time trilogy.

The quilt was part of half a dozen more quilt shows. Dan’s six year-old daughter Kate enjoys having his Super Nova quilt on her bed these days.

Davy Jordan’s One-Seat Buggy Ride with his Granddaughters

David Jordan was one of my kindest-looking ancestors.

During the early 1900s, Grandpap and Grandmother Jordan rode the train from their home near Monteith, Iowa, to Key West, Minnesota, to visit the Goff family one August, bringing a trunk full of nice apples from home. The Goffs lived too far north for apple trees to thrive. It was such a big treat, because they bought apples by the barrel during the Minnesota winters, when they lived there from 1903-1905.

Leora in 1907

Sisters Georgia and Leora Goff, about ages 10 and 13, enjoyed driving the rural roads with Grandpap in a one-seat buggy pulled by a horse. David Jordan was a jovial man and taught them songs, like “Ke-mo,  ki-mo.”  

"There was a frog lived near a pool

      Sing song ketcha ketcha ki-me oh

      He surely was the biggest fool

      Sing song ketcha ketcha ki-me oh

      Ke-mo, ki-mo Del-O-Ware

      Hee-ma ho and in come a salasicker

      Some time Penny went a link tum nip cat sing song

      Ketcha ketcha ki-me oh.”Georgia in 1907

Those Iowa grandparents stayed three or four weeks, so there were several rides with Grandpap. Georgia and Leora took turns driving. One time Georgia had the horse on a trot and Grandpap, with a twinkle in his eyes, said, “Georgia, don’t make the horse go so fast–we will get home too quick.”  

From Leora’s Early Years: Guthrie County Roots

 

A Faulty Gas Gauge and Worn Tires

Clabe and Leora Wilson with their first granddaughter, August 1944, Minburn, Iowa

Doris Neal came back to Iowa to have her first baby in the spring of 1944. The little town of Marfa, Texas, was so crowded that people even lived in the hospital, so when Warren was between classes teaching advanced cadets, he and Doris took the train home. Doris stayed with her folks, Clabe and Leora Wilson, on a farm near Minburn. 

Baby Joy was born two days before D-Day in Dexter, delivered by Dr. Keith Chapler–who’d patched up the brother of Clyde Barrow (of Bonnie and Clyde notoriety) in 1933. After the normal ten days in the hospital for a new mother, they spent the next few weeks on the Minburn farm.

While Warren was in for the baby’s birth, he bought a 1939 Chevy from Russell Horn, the Dexter banker. Warren flew back to the Marfa Air Base with another instructor, leaving the Chevy with his dad to make sure it was ready to travel to Texas.

That August, Warren caught a hop to Iowa between classes, loaded everything into the Chevy (which they dubbed the C-39), and headed for Texas with his little family. The first night they’d stayed at a “not very nice cabin camp” at Ottawa, Kansas, according to Doris, but the next one at Oklahoma City even had a bath. The nicest was at Brady, Texas, new and really swanky, she said, with venetian blinds, a sparkly bath, and was air conditioned!

They arrived in Brady too late to see her brother Junior at the base, so they drove out the next morning. Junior was at athletics and Doris said she could locate him right away. “He was the best built kid of the bunch. He is getting along swell, has a tan a-plenty, and is crazy about flying.” When they got back on the road, they passed the athletic field again and honked. Junior waved.

Lt. Warren and Doris Neal, ready to head to Marfa, Texas, August 1944, in their used car

Junior wrote home that they’d stopped while he was playing a hard game of basketball and he was all sweaty, so he just shook hands with them. Joy looked like Doris, he noted, and even smiled a little for him. And that “fifteen minutes wasn’t very long to get to talk to each other, but that’s the way it goes.”

The right rear tire on the Chevy held up for 750 miles, until they got into Texas. It hadn’t flattened, but Warren noticed that a cut in it was larger and beginning to bulge. Warren changed the tire, hoping the spare would get them on into a town. They stopped for ice cream in a small town about fifty miles down the road. Someone on the street pointed out that a tire was nearly flat, the one he’d just put on, so he whipped around to an oil station. Rubber was needed for the war effort and new tires were just impossible to get. The tread was pretty thin but he had it pumped up and it carried them on to Marfa.

But the gas gauge never did work right. Warren thought he had enough gas to make it home, but ran out two miles from the field about 9:00 at night. He left Doris and the baby in the dark car and hitch-hiked the ten miles to Marfa. It took nearly an hour and a half.

He located fellow instructor who took him for a can of gas and drove him back to the car. Warren was glad they hadn’t run out where it was fifty miles between towns. The gas gauge said “empty” all the way down, so they’d had to guess how much was left.

“That’s better than the Plymouth,” Doris quipped, “driving all the way to Texas on empty–ha.”

 

Memorial Service, Our Tribute of Honor to Flight Officer Claiborne [Junior] Wilson

The funeral for C. Junior Wilson was held at the Workman Funeral Home in Perry, Iowa, August 14, 1945. Here is the eulogy by the pastor, Rev. Dr. J. B. Ackman of the Methodist Church:

Mom (Doris) and Darlene were Junior’s sisters. Once Mom mentioned that Darlene’s son Bob had thumbs like the Wilson brothers. This photo reminded me of that comment.

We are all mourners today, because of a life of practical goodness and the service of a model flight officer in the armed forces of the United State Army Air Service [sic] has so suddenly come to an end. The loving son of Mr. and Mrs. C. D. Wilson, who was highly esteemed by those who knew him best, with his open hand, his frank cordiality, his clear insight, and his resolute will, has passed from our sight but never from our memories. The empty place in the house can only be filled by Him Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and Who said, “I will not leave you comfortless.” We all pray that He may be very near. May God’s comfort and rest be our stay in these days of unexpected sadness and loss. And our deep sympathies go out to the members and friends of the family circle in bereavement.

Claiborne J. Wilson, Jr. [sic] was born July 6th, 1925, at Dexter. He received his early education at the Dexter schools, and later he graduated from the Washington Township High School. After his graduation he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Service. He was inducted into the U.S. Army October 24th, 1943.

He did not go at the President's Call,
Just for himself alone.
He went at the call of democracy
And to protect loved ones at home.

Some of us are Americans by birth; some of us are Americans by adoption. But whichever we are, we say with justifiable pride, “I AM AN AMERICAN”.  And that means something! It meant something to Flight Officer Claiborne Wilson. And it certainly means something to the Wilson family. Five sons in the service and one son-in-law certainly means something to one family circle, and two sons missing in action, Lt. Dale Wilson, in the Pacific Theater of war, and Lt. Daniel Wilson in Austria, in Europe; and the youngest son has made the supreme sacrifice in connection with an accident while the planes were in formation, at Aloe Field, Victoria Texas.

Claiborne Willson [sic] is esteemed because of what he was and stood for and what he achieved in his endeavors. He is spoken of as a man who was interested in the finer things in life. He kept himself clean, was cooperative and companionable. His comrades speak of him as a model soldier. He was an American who believed in the responsibility of privilege. What he asked for himself he was willing to give to others! What he wanted of others he was willing to give himself. His creed was no “Live and let live,” but “Live and help live”, even if this means the giving of your life. He cultivated a high type of team spirit.

Now he has gone from us, but never from our memory. He leaves to mourn his early departure, his father and mother, four brothers: Dale, Daniel, Delbert and Donald, all in the armed services, as well as two sisters: Mrs. Warren D. Neal, living with her parents while her husband is away in the service; and Mrs. Alvin Scar of Earlham, his grandmother Mrs. Laura Goff of Omaha, Neb., as well as many other relatives and a great host of friends.

Some morning I shall rise from sleep,
When all the barracks are still and dark.
I shall steal down and find my ship
By the dim Aloe Fields, and embark,

Nor fear the deserts nor any wind.
I have known fear, but now no more.
The winds shall bear me safe and kind,
To that field we all hope for.

To no strange country shall I come,
But to mine own delightful land,
With Love to bid me welcome home
And Love to lead me by the hand.

Love, you and I shall cling together,
And look long in each other's eyes.
There shall be rose and violet weather
Under the tree of Paradise.

We shall now hear the ticking of the clock,
Nor the swift rustle of Time's wings,
Nor dread the sharp dividing shock
Being come now to immortal things.

They will not end in a thousand years.
Love, we shall be so long together
Without any bombs or fear,
Glad in the rose and violet weather.

With all those wonders to admire,
And the heart's hunger satisfied,
Given at last the heart's desire
We shall forget we ever died.

—-

I don’t know who wrote the “rose and violet weather” poem, but since it names Aloe Fields, Lt. Ralph Woods may have brought it from the chaplain who asked if he’d accompany his friend’s casket to Iowa. The eulogy does capture some of who Junior Wilson was.

Junior was the first in the family buried at the Violet Hill Cemetery in Perry, Iowa. August 14, 1945.

From Leora’s Letters: The Story of Love and Loss for an Iowa Family During World War II.

“What Leora Never Knew” Needs a Subtitle

What Leora Never Knew is the working title for the next book, which includes my research from the 1990s. I wanted to know what happened to Dale, Danny, and Junior Wilson, who were lost during World War II.

I didn’t realize I’d grown up with the shadows of those three brothers, since my mother suffered from depression because of those horrendous losses. I was along when Mom and her sister took Grandma to the cemetery in Perry every Decoration Day to remember them with bouquets of flowers, but we never talked about them or the war.

But when Grandma Leora died, Mom and her sister grieved deeply, not only losing their mother, but also reliving the war. At that time I didn’t even know what New Guinea had to do with the war (one of the brothers was lost off New Guinea), and I couldn’t tell one WWII plane from another. As I began to transcribe the letters, I also requested casualty and combat records, wrote letters to veterans who knew one of the brothers, read history after history of the war. My journey in this role as family historian included ride in a bomber and a trip to France.

Learning to write well enough included attending workshops and conferences, even online ones, becoming a regular contributor to a couple of newspapers (which paid for stamps and SASEs that we needed back then).

On this Purple Heart Day, the manuscript is taking shape, but it still doesn’t have a subtitle.

Thinking about what the cover might look like

If you were to pick up a book called What Leora Never Knew, which subtitle would cause you to look at the back cover or inside, or even buy the book?

The Shadows of Those Three Sons Lost during the War

A Granddaughter’s Quest for Answers

What Happened to Those Three Young Pilots?

The Aftermath of World War II

Any other suggestions???

Review of “Leora’s Letters” by Sally Cronin of Smorgasbord Blog Magazine

←Smorgasbord Book Reviews – #WWII #Family – Leora’s Letters by Joy Neal KidneyPosted o

Delighted to share my review for the poignant family story Leora’s Letters by Joy Neal Kidney.

About the book

The day the second atomic bomb was dropped, Clabe and Leora Wilson’s postman brought a telegram to their acreage near Perry, Iowa. One son was already in the U.S. Navy before Pearl Harbor had been attacked. Four more sons worked with their father, tenant farmers near Minburn until, one by one, all five sons were serving their country in the military. The oldest son re-enlisted in the Navy. The younger three became U.S. Army Air Force pilots.

As the family optimist, Leora wrote hundreds of letters, among all her regular chores, dispensing news and keeping up the morale of the whole family, which included the brothers’ two sisters. Her fondest wishes were to have a home of her own and family nearby. Leora’s Letters is the compelling true account of a woman whose most tender hopes were disrupted by great losses. Yet she lived out four more decades with hope and resilience.

“Joy lets us see her grandmother’s personal family correspondence through letters. It is heart-tugging. Be ready to be moved by this true story.” –Van Harden, WHO-Radio Personality

Joy Neal Kidney, the oldest granddaughter of the book’s heroine, is the keeper of family stories, letters, photos, combat records, casualty reports, and telegrams. Active on her own website, she is also a writer and local historian. Married to a Vietnam Air Force veteran, Joy lives in central Iowa. Her nonfiction has been published in The Des Moines Register, other media, and broadcast over “Our American Stories.” She’s a graduate of the University of Northern Iowa, and her essays have been collected by the Iowa Women’s Archives at the University of Iowa.

My review for the book August 6th 2022

This book is an intimate inclusion in one family’s life and loss during the Second World War. Clabe and Leora work tirelessly on the farm they manage to raise their children and put something by for their dream of owning their own farm. In this rural environment it is natural for young men and women to perhap have their own dreams and even before Pearl Harbour one son has signed up with the Navy. Over the course of the war five sons would enlist to serve their country.

Through the letters written by Leora to her sons, and their often censored letters in return we share life on the home front and also their challenges as they go through training and then deployment. Their only link to home is these letters and others between each other and their sisters, and it is clear that this is a close knit and loving family doing their best through a very difficult time.

One can only imagine the constant worry any parent would have with a child serving on the front line, particularly with incomplete news reports in the media, long after major battles at sea and in the air. But to have five sons in the line of fire in the Pacific and in Europe must have been unbearable.

The letters are beautiful in their simplicity and informality as they would have been between a loving family. There is also some wry humour as the boys encounter the world outside their rural upbringing and undergo their training, as well as a deep love of their parents as they send money home toward their dream of owning their own land.

From the first page we are drawn into this family and feel the hope, love and loss they suffer over the course of the war. Whilst there is sadness, there is also admiration for a brave mother and her sons who believed in doing their duty, and respect for the sacrifice this family made. War should never be glorified, but those who lay their lives on the line for their country should be, especially when young with their whole lives ahead of them.

This period for all of us is now moving from living history as the last of those who can share their stories pass away. It is so important  that major events such as major conflicts are fought by ordinary men and women and their stories deserve to be told and remembered.

The author has done a wonderful job in collating these letters that recreate so vividly this time in world history. By doing so she honours the members of her family, including her own parents who lived, loved and lost so much.

Read the reviews and buy the book: Amazon US – And: Amazon UK

Also by Joy Neal Kidney

Read the reviews and buy the books: Amazon US – And: Amazon UK – More reviews: Goodreads – Website: Joy Neal Kidney – Facebook: Joy Neal Kidney Author – Twitter: @JoyNealKidney – Instagram: Joy Neal Kidney

About Joy Neal Kidney

Joy was born two days before D-Day to an Iowa farmer who became an Army Air Corps pilot, then an instructor–with orders for combat when the war ended–and an Iowa waitress who lost three of her five brothers during that war. She spent her childhood in an Iowa farmhouse with a front porch. Now I live with my husband, a Vietnam veteran, in a suburban house with a front porch.

She’s published two books (“Leora’s Letters: The Story of Love and Loss for an Iowa Family During World War II” and “Leora’s Dexter Stories: The Scarcity Years of the Great Depression.”) Joy is a regular contributor to Our American Stories.

Awards: 2021 Great American Storyteller Award by Our American Stories and WHO NEWSRADIO 1040

2021 – First place Our Iowa Stories award named for Joy Neal Kidney

Joy posts regularly on her website, administers several Facebook history pages, and contributes to more.

Thanks very much for dropping in today and I do hope you will be leaving with a book or two… Sally.

Please visit Sally Georgina Cronin’s website.

Book Club Invitation!

This evening! They’ve read all three Leora books and I’m invited to get in on the discussion. Amazed and thankful.

I’m especially grateful because it looks like I must reluctantly turn down out-of-town invitations.

I Almost Missed this Freedom Rock Book “Selfie”

This was posted on July 2021, but I didn’t notice the book in one of the photos. I didn’t even think about taking one there with Leora’s Letters.

From Steve Simpson and Jimmie Kimmel, on Facebook:

“First of all, our apologies to Joy for coming to your book a bit late . . . it was worth the wait! As a complete work, this book deserves National recognition. This book is one story, and many stories all at the same time. Told in the words of its own heroes (you hear their voices in their letters) it totally captures & preserves that moment in American & World history of the early 1940’s ~ from the isolated mid-west farm to the farthest reaches around the globe.

“For all of you Dallas County natives, this is a MUST read ~ we guarantee it will touch a personal spot in your heart. A real treasure! LEORA’S LETTERS by Joy Neal Kidney.

“A story while we were at the rock in Minburn: a young-ish couple stopped and when they noticed the copy of the book I was holding, they wanted to know the story. We barely got three words out before they took over with “Oh, yeah, they made a movie about this, Saving Private Ryan, and these brothers are actually from northern Iowa, and, oh yeah, there’s even a song about this …blah blah blah”. When they FINALLY came up for air (from all of their misinformation), we proceeded to set them straight.

“As we walked away and left them staring at the rock, we were hearing a lot of “WOWS” as they were processing what we had shared . . . I think they were literally making an online purchase of the book by the time we got to our car.

“It was a great moment.”

Many Iowans, when they hear “five brothers,” think of the Sullivan brothers from Waterloo, who were all lost on the same ship in 1942. Books have been written about them and movies made, along with a wing in a museum in Waterloo.

The Wilson brothers weren’t remembered until 2019, when the Dallas County Freedom Rock was dedicated, and five weeks later, Leora’s Letters: The Story of Love and Loss for an Iowa Family During World War II was published.

I’m thankful and humbled by this compelling selfie and note!

More about Iowa’s Freedom Rocks.

Where the Tall Corn Grows by Rick Friday

I could have been born where the sawgrass meets the sky or where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain or even beneath the smoky mountain rain, but I was born in this place where the tall corn grows. A place where city meets country and where the Mississippi and the Missouri divide. A place where humidity can grow as high as the corn and where the landscape weeps at sunset. A place where you can see a Goldfinch sitting on the stem of a Wild Prairie Rose bush flourishing beneath the shade of a mighty Burr Oak tree. A place that was once the home of a people Native Americans called “The Sleepy Ones.”.I was raised in a land where the corn tassels grow well above a young boy’s head and I was taught at an early age to not panic if I was ever lost within a cornfield. My father told me to follow a row and it will lead me to the edge of the field and if I didn’t follow his instructions I could still be there in the fall when he harvested the corn. Many times I traveled blindly through a cornfield to take a shortcut to a friend’s house or to challenge myself for no other reason than to see how long it would take to reach the other side. Sometimes I would run as fast as I could through the rows of corn and whiz by the heavy ears hanging from sturdy stalks like they were dotted lines on a speedy highway. Pollen would fill my eyes and the corn leaves would cut and scratch my face and my forearms, but the discomfort was quickly forgotten when the row came to an end and the world opened back up again..Corn is appreciated by all of our senses, our sight, touch, smell, taste and hearing. Deep dark green in color, the plants can grow as high as twelve feet, making it highly visible and very captivating. The feel of the leaf blades are rough on the topside and soft underneath and the stalk is sturdy and fibrous. During Summer’s humid evenings you can smell the corn sweating all around you. The taste of sweet corn is delightfully delicious. It has been said that on a still night you can actually hear the corn growing and with a gentle breeze a field of corn will speak to you with a thousand voices. I feel fortunate to have been born here where the tall corn grows and I still call this land my home and find its serenity simply A-Maizing!—–

Rick Friday is a farmer (from Union County, Iowa), cartoonist, and writer published worldwide with a weekly and monthly print circulation of 193,000. He’s also a Union County Supervisor, and has a whole passel of grandchildren, a couple of them are shown with him.