Posted by
William D. Dannenmaier on Saturday, August 29, 2009 8:23:28 AM
Ethel was the champion of the skipping rope brigades in elementary school, wearing out – on a daily basis - the cardboard our mother placed in the bottoms of her shoes to protect her feet. Later, she taught boxing to my brother Joe as the two settled differences on Mom and Dad’s big four poster bed. She was in her fifties when she and husband, John, visited me in my new home in Cumberland Furnace where I was living with my son Bill. When I returned home from work, she came skipping and laughing out to my car saying, “I hope you don’t mind Bill, I’ve re-arranged things a bit.” A bit? Furniture that had been downstairs was now upstairs, my bed was transferred to a different room. Everything was rearranged, down to and including my kitchenware. That was Ethel. But she contracted Alzheimer’s in her eighties and has spent several years in nursing homes, carefully watched over by her daughter, Julie.
Recently, Julie sent an e-mail saying that after an agonizing two weeks she and her husband, Pete, decided to move Ethel from nursing care into hospice care. For those who don’t understand the difference, if she had been in the hospice at the time of a recent incident she would not have been taken to the hospital, but would have been permitted to exit this life and join her beloved husband, John, in the next.
I can tell lots of “Ethel” stories. Ethel ruled Joe and my lives with a firm hand for years, not always with our blessings.
Our parents lost their home to foreclosure in 1936. Fortunately for them, as Dad had no job and they had no money, a home in a University City slum just west of St. Louis was given back to them. They worked for weeks to make it livable. During all of that time, twelve year old Ethel was responsible for caring for nine year old Joe and five year old me. I learned to hate creamed corn: I think it was all she knew how to cook.
As a babysitter, Ethel was a disciplinarian. One of my first deep cuts was when I dived under our parent’s bed to escape her wrath. She managed to clean the blood off the floor and me before they returned. On another occasion, she placed Joe in a chair opposite the back door and me in a chair on the side with orders to “stay.” As I prepared to dash for the door – and freedom – Joe made his dash. A perfect throw of her purse hit Joe in the back of the head and laid him out on the floor. I settled back in my chair. One obeys a big sister.
In University City, on weekends, it was common for Ethel to walk us places. The library was about a mile from the house, church was about a mile and half, the St. Louis Zoo was two miles. We made those trips regularly.
Older, I recall walking to HemanPark, again a couple of miles from home, to play tennis. The watchman came out and asked to see our passes. Ethel said, “I’ve forgotten mine, did you bring yours Bill?” I didn’t know what she was talking about and shook my head. The watchman knew very well we didn’t have passes – we couldn’t afford them, they were fifty cents a year – but told us we could play this time, but not again.
As we grew older and Joe’s romantic life increased, he gave Ethel lipstick stained handkerchiefs, which she would wash in private to keep Joe’s social life from our mother’s attention.
Ethel took five solid classes every year she was in high school plus physical education. She made all “A” grades until her final year when she was given a “B” in physical education. Dad was furious that the grade prevented her from receiving a perfect record, the only one in school history, but the principal would do nothing about it. She received a full four-year academic scholarship to WashingtonUniversity, however Dad would not permit her to accept it, saying she wouldn’t fit in (She had only one dress her senior year. Mom would wash it when she came home from school and hang it in the kitchen where it would dry overnight.) Instead, she attended Harris, a free teachers’ college designed to prepare teachers for the St. Louis Public Schools. There she did very well, joined a sorority and was elected president.
Graduating from Harris, Ethel taught fifth grade in LongfellowSchool. One boy would crawl through the aisles pinching the girls. He was Roman Catholic and the Catholic school was across the street. She talked to his parents about the need for a good religious education and they transferred him. Soon he was back with a note from the priest that he felt his school was inappropriate for the boy. Ethel sent him back with a note saying she couldn’t believe that a Catholic priest would refuse a Catholic education to a Catholic child. She never saw the child again.
Ethel joined the UnitarianChurch, which had an active singles group. There she met John and the two of them demonstrated their thanks to the UnitarianChurch and its singles’ group by changing to the MethodistChurch following their marriage.
St. Louis did not permit married women to teach, so their marriage was concealed from the school officials. By then I was old enough to appreciate the irony of a school system which permitted a woman teacher to live with a man – provided they weren’t married.
The following year Ethel taught in SappingtonCountySchool. The two of them moved to a small cabin. It had a double log wall. In between the two walls it was filled with mud. This cabin had been built when Indian attacks were still possible. If the Indians set fire to the cabin, only the outer wall would burn and the inhabitants would be safe inside because of the mud barrier.
Soon thereafter Ethel and John moved to Minneapolis for John to complete his doctorate in Chemistry. The story I enjoyed was the time that Ethel, well into pregnancy, and a neighbor across the hall in the apartment who was in the same shape were doing their laundry in the basement. One of the two remembered a bottle of Mogen David wine her husband had purchased and went and got it. They agreed it tasted just like grape juice and the two of them drank the bottle. The janitor, a burly Swede, carried each, in turn, up to their rooms and put them in bed. One of Ethel’s friends happily told her that she had telephoned at that time and a man’s voice with a heavy Swedish accent had answered Ethel’s telephone saying, “She no bane come to phone now, she in bed.”
When John completed his doctorate, they moved to Peoria. I was busy working nights and attending college days, so I had much less contact with Ethel. Then I joined the army. Ethel wrote me a letter every day that I was in combat – six months. They were wonderful letters, full of family humor, the kind that I could read to comrades and that we would all enjoy. For example, she told about their dog eating the Christmas tree ornaments off the tree. Another time young Johnny took a full box of graham crackers and made a path through the house. He was happily tramping down his path when Ethel caught him.
She was pregnant at that time and we discussed names, I liked Julia which she accepted. A story in one of her letters related how, about eight months pregnant, Johnny then three, ran down the street with her chasing him. He darted up a small rise to a lawn. Following, she slipped and fell. She wrote, “There I was on my hands and knees swearing up a storm about what I would do to that boy when the mailman walked past.”
Those who haven’t been there don’t know how important such letters were. Letters kept us sane. Incidentally, she kept track of the letters, numbering each one. I received about two for every three she wrote.
Ethel’s life in Peoria went beyond raising children. One year a teacher had to be fired on morality charges at Christmas and the director of the Peoria schools asked Ethel if she would step in. She did. It was a slum school, having many children of black prostitutes. She told me that at the end of the day the little ones, first graders, would line up and kiss her goodbye. She said that one night when John, a very formal person, came home he gave her a kiss on the cheek and she said, “Oh John, how nice. That is the cheek the children kiss.”
Ethel was a great teacher. She remained in teaching until retirement and then BradleyUniversity hired her to supervise and advise student teachers.
Julie and Pete have made a difficult decision in moving Ethel into hospice care, but I am convinced it is the necessary and the right decision and Joe agrees with me. This is very difficult. We all have many friends, but friends move and change: families are forever. Sisters (and brothers) are a part of one’s life. Losing Ethel will be losing a part of me, never to be replaced. But she would not want to continue in the hopeless, always worsening, state she is in. So, goodbye Eth, God love you, if anyone belongs in heaven, you do.