Joy Neal Kidney's Blog, page 92

“Meadowlark” by Nicholas Dowd

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Note from Nick: “It was so heartening to see and to think that others will see how that piece penned so long ago became such a perfect fit for Leora’s Letters.”

He lived on 34th Street in Des Moines at the time he wrote “that scrap of poetry,” having rented a house with three of his Drake University friends:

Jim Vandevanter of Panora – now owner of Dowd Drug in Guthrie Center (which was begun by Nick’s grandfather).

Warren Grant of Dexter – whose mother Winifred worked at Drake (whose family went to church in Dexter with Joy’s family). Warren died of cancer a couple of years ago, but had taken over Al Bell‘s school popular school assemblies programs.

Charlie Skeens of Chicago – who “adopted” Iowa and is now deceased.

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Photo of Nick, 2009.

“Meadowlark” was written in the late 60s but its time hadn’t come until Joy and I began to correspond. It was as if it was preserved for a reason through many moves. Des Moines. Nashville. Chicago. Mystic [Connecticut], then back to Nashville.

Washington Township School

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Leora was their mother. My grandmother.

The two youngest Wilsons, Danny and Junior, graduated from this school in 1941 and 1942.

I’ll be donating all the book sales that morning to the restoration project.

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A trip to Perry from rural Dexter, Iowa, where I grew up, usually took us to the corner of Panther Store, then north past Washington Township School. Mom would always reminisce that her two younger brothers had graduated from there.

The Wilson family moved to a farm southwest of Minburn, to be tenent farmers, the spring of 1939.

Danny and Junior finished their freshman and sophomore years at Washington Township School. When they learned that football wasn’t offered, the Dexter coach asked Wilsons if they knew what a good football player Danny was. And offered to have him live with them through the rest of his schooling so he could play football.

Danny Wilson said he wanted to stay with the family–with brothers Delbert, Dale (who graduated from Dexter High School that spring), and Junior.

Dan went to Washington Township two years, played basketball, and helped on the farm, and went hunting in the timber regularly with his dad and brothers.

[image error]1939-1940 Washington Township School Boys’ Basketball Team. Back: Junior Wilson, Leo Glass, Leland Schuhardt, Charles Elliott, Danny Wilson, Coach George Haynes. Front: Jay Ranee, Gene Sutherland, Harry Holling, Dale Brewer, Bob Wicks. (Edmonsons Studio)
[image error]1940-1941 Washington Township School Boys’ Basketball Team: Coach George Haynes behind. Back: Harold Godwin, Paul Daniels, Dan Wilson, Charles Elliott, Keith Sutherland, Harry Jackman. Front: Junior Wilson, Ed Kautzky, Jack Jackman, Paul Diddy, Bob Wicks, Harry Reves.

The 1941 Junior-Senior Banquet was held at Younkers Tea Room in Des Moines. I don’t know whether Danny Wilson went or not, but he was valedictorian of the Class of 1941.

[image error]From Washington Township, Dallas County, Iowa, History 1850-2000

That December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese. Wilsons knew this would change their lives. One brother Donald was still in the Navy, aboard the USS Yorktown. Oldest son Delbert would probably be recalled to the Navy. And Dale had had to register for the draft.

Decades later Mom and I met Leland Lapp, a classmate of Junior’s, at the Perry Cemetery a few years back. We ended up corresponding and he was able to label the basketball picture my grandmother had saved. Ed Kautzky sent me a copy of the later one.

The 1942 Junior-Senior Banquet was held at the school because of gas rationing.

[image error]Washington Township School bus at Wilson’s driveway

My mother Doris, a sister of the Wilson brothers, was working as a waitress at Perry’s McDonald Drug Store. The Class of 1942 held their Senior Banquet in the banquet room in the back of the store. Junior’s classmate, Jack Jackman, didn’t have money or decent clothes and wasn’t going to the banquet, so Junior said he didn’t want to go either. Instead, they showed up at the soda fountain counter at McDonald’s, where Doris was working. She made them the best malts that she could, and she paid for them, too.

Ed Kautzky, a grade behind Junior, said that Junior could find humor in about anything, but that he did things well. They were all a little envious of his hunting and fishing stories.

Another neighbor, Marjorie (Hill) Joslin remembered the Wilson boys driving by on the tractor without shirts, and how brown they became.

Junior was a good student, too, but when he learned that Dan had to give a speech at commencement, he made sure he wasn’t at the top of his class. The Class of 1942 graduated in gowns for the first time. Leland Lapp said that their class motto was “Tonight we launch. Where shall we land,” which made him uncomfortable, since the war was on.

[image error]From Washington Township, Dallas County, Iowa, History 1850-2000

About the time Junior was graduating, his brother Donald was in desperate combat in the Battle of the Coral Sea (one carrier was lost, Don’s carrier damaged) and the Battle of Midway (his Yorktown was sunk).

Soon Delbert rejoined the Navy. And Dale enlisted in the Army Air Force to become a pilot. The next year, both Danny and Junior joined the Air Corps, as they usually called it. While Clabe and Leora were still at the farm, the first telegram arrived with the news that Dale was Missing in Action off New Guinea.

All five sons were in the service, so Clabe Wilson couldn’t keep up with all the farming by himself. He and Leora found an acreage to buy just south of Perry.

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So, after shopping in Perry, decorating the graves at Violet Hill Cemetery, or both, we’d usually drive south on 16th Street a mile to go by the little house where most of the terrible telegrams came–telling Wilsons of the losses of their three youngest sons, including the two who went to Washington Township School.

Many times, we’d also take a detour on our way home so we could see the old Minburn farm once more–my first home when Mom got out of the hospital after I was born (two days before D-Day). It sits just west of today’s North Raccoon River Wildlife Area.

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It’s also south of the Voas Nature Area. Snyders and Voas were Wilsons’ good neighbors there.

Handsome Washington Township School is being restored, and is used regularly for community events.

How a Meadowlark Poem ended up Introducing “Leora’s Letters”

There’s a poem called “Meadowlark” in the front matter of  Leora’s Letters. The genesis of how it made its way there is a Facebook story.

A few years ago I started the Historic Guthrie County, Iowa Facebook page to be able to share old photos and stories from the late 1800s, which I knew others would enjoy. (Membership on that page has grown to over 1000–people sharing their old photos, clippings, and stories.)

One of the stories I posted was about the Victorian house my Goff great grandparents lived in during the 1920s. Mom remembered so many details about the inside of that house, even though she was a preschooler. About every time we drove to Guthrie Center, we’d wind up the hill to see the once handsome house.

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A lot of people on the Guthrie County page asked questions or made comments about the story. One was by Nicholas Dowd, who had a photo showing the house he grew up in near the one where Goffs had lived.

At some point, nearly two years ago, Nick mentioned that he’d also done a bit of writing, and told how to access it. I commented in my journaling: “Oh my, the lyrical evocative short poetry about Guthrie County, vignettes with compelling details. . . One about John Parrish, caught his personality. . . Nicholas Dowd’s poems, which quiet me, then I need to read it again, usually with a lump in my throat. They have a contentment to them. . . ”

Last fall I’d journaled, “Nicholas Dowd’s poetry – stops you in your busyness. You’re compelled to slow down to even begin to read it. I can almost feel blood pressure drop. I know I will read it twice the first sitting, slowly, with a lump in my throat right away, savoring each line, each vignette, each glimpse of something precious and maybe even holy. . . Hope he publishes them in a book that we can hold and savor.”

When my book was about done (back in September), I wrote him a note, “I’m kinda looking for something evocative for the front of Leora’s Letters: The Story of Love and Loss for an Iowa Family During World War II, which will probably get self-published next month. Finishing up edits and waiting for a cover design. This may as good a time as any to tell you that I’m in an on-line writing group. One expert told how she went back over her journaling once a week, watching for themes. I didn’t realize that I’d journaled about your writing back on February 2018,” and noted some of what I’d written.

I can’t remember whether I mentioned a meadowlark in Leora’s story or not, but Nick found a scribbled, eleven-line poem called “Meadowlark” tucked in a Willa Cather book from college, 50 years earlier. It was almost prophetic. It took my breath away.

All but two lines, which Nick agreed to rewrite. It had never been edited, never published before.

The meadowlark has been a kind of emblem of the Wilson WWII story ever since Mom told me about the last time Danny Wilson was home. He’d recently earned his pilots wings and got a furlough to visit family at the place near Minburn where Wilsons were tenant farmers. With all four brothers in the service, Danny’s sisters were the only family members able to get to their parents’ place to see Danny.

[image error]Sisters Darlene Scar and Doris Neal with Danny Wilson, holding Darlene’s son, Richard.  Leora’s Letters, page 215.

While the family took pictures in the driveway, a meadowlark whistled. Mom said that Danny remarked that it was his favorite bird. Both Danny and Junior mention meadowlarks in their letters home.

Mom gave me a bisque meadowlark, which eventually fell and broke. (I’ve never been able to find one like it.) Aunt Darlene bought fabric for cushions with the handsome bird on it, and of course we all had Marjolein Bastin’s “Nature’s Sketchbook” meadowlark note cards.

Nicholas Dowd grew up in Guthrie Center, where Grandma Leora lived for decades. She would have known Nick’s parents, and likely knew who Nick and his siblings were.

[image error]Nicholas Dowd

It’s such a blessing to have his meadowlark verse introduce Leora’s Letters, and also to know that her story is the introduction of his beautiful “Meadowlark” poem.

 

Freedom Rock Collision

About 6:00 a.m. before I was to do my very first radio interview that morning, a friend alerted me to a notice that two hours earlier the new Dallas County Freedom Rock and been run into so hard that it was toppled!

[image error]Photo: Jim Caufield, The Perry News.

Yes, the Freedom Rock that the five Wilson brothers are featured on.

The head of the Freedom Rock committee was out of state last December 7, but the Dallas County Sheriff gave him a call at 5:00 that morning to let him know. Larry was understandably also worried about the surroundings he’d so carefully shepherded most of last year–the flag pole, sidewalks, storyboard, etc. But he announced that the Wilson brothers were unharmed!

I was concerned about the iconic rock with my uncles painted on it, but even more concerned about the person who walloped it. Turns out the young man from Perry was okay.

There were soon plans to restore the Freedom Rock.

[image error]Photo: Jim Caufield, The Perry News.

A crane has since uprighted the scuffed up boulder. It needs touching up, at least, maybe more.

 

Here’s the latest about the young man arrested for OWI which caused the incident.

Stay tuned.

The only good things about this is that it keeps the Wilson family of Dallas County in the news. Their sacrifice during World War II is not forgotten.

[image error]Donald, Delbert, Dale, Danny, and Junior Wilson. Borne by an American Bald Eagle, sheltered by the American flag. 

 

 

Rice Pudding and Coffee with my Motherline

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Leora Wilson was my grandmother. The Santa is the only one of her Christmas ornaments to survive. In her later years, she decorated a Norfolk Island pine a little as her Christmas tree.

She crocheted the antimacassar. The Home Sweet Home design is only one of several she liked to make.

The spoon was also Leora’s. She bought a set of the Gorham Invitation silverplate when my mother Doris did, after the war and when Doris could finally afford it.

The Noritake china also carries a family story. My mother helped her grandmother, Laura Goff, choose the dishes in the bargain basement of Omaha’s Brandeis department store in 1939.

I just love heirlooms with stories, especially those that link me to my motherline. All four of us–Laura Goff, Leora Wilson, Mom (Doris Neal), and I–are the oldest daughters in our families.

My husband loves rice pudding. These days I make him the Crockpot version:

Crockpot Rice Pudding

6 cups cooked white rice

1 cup raisins (or craisins)

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 14-ounce cans sweetened condensed milk

3 12-ounce cans evaporated milk

I use my large oval Crockpot to make this, first combining the liquids in it, then adding the rice and raisins. Cover and cook on low 3-4 hours. I keep a small shaker with a cinnamon and sugar mix, about half of each, to sprinkle atop each serving. Good warm or cold.