MAYHEW FAMILY
by Robert, July 2008

Our three sons and I are following in the Mayhew tradition of serving in the military, standing for freedom and championing for the underdog from the pulpit and on the battlefield. A few years ago, as I began to trace Mayhew history and their philosophy, I realized that mine is a carbon copy of all that I read of my ancestors, and it reaffirms my mind-set.

We can actually verify that a Mayhew took part in the Hastings War in 1066, when the Normans, left over from the Roman Empire, eventually sacked England. It was a brutal, unforgiving war, fought with arrows, spears, axes, rods with the chains, and balls with spikes. They gave quarter to nobody. As planned by the aggressors, there were three engagements that happened simultaneously, and whichever side was retreating or weakening, even those who fled, were hunted down and killed. They intended to leave no survivors. I have a tattoo of the family crest, which bears the motto, translated: "Safety in God alone." I guess it was very appropriate for anyone who lived through the Hastings war.

Understandably, we have more specific information from the time of the founding of America, when England from where they came, became New England where they settled. We have a framed drawing which depicts the Mayhew family tree beginning in 1442 and extends to 1855. The tree begins with Thomas Mayhew, Sr., who was born in England in 1593 and died in 1682. He was a merchant by trade, who came to America, arriving in Massachusetts in 1632. In 1641, he purchased and was later appointed as the Governor and Patentee of Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket and Elizabeth Isles. Martha's Vineyard was discovered by explorer Bartholomew Gosnold, who landed on a cape, which he named Cape Cod, because of the abundance of codfish he found there. In sailing south, he landed on a small island which he named Martha's Vineyard in honor of his mother, whose name was Martha.

In 1641, Thomas Sr. sent his son, then 20 years old, with a few families to settle on his new purchase. Thomas Jr. was born in England in 1621, became an Oxford graduate, a scholar of Latin and Greek, familiar with the Hebrew language. Thomas Jr. was a preacher — a missionary to the Native Americans, the Indians. For those who had an interest in Christianity, wanted to learn more and convert, Martha's Vineyard became a retreat. Those who weren't interested, left. Thomas Jr. also established the first school there.

For three generations, this was life at Martha's Vineyard. After the Revolutionary War, the land became a prime piece of real estate and other folks wanted it. By its very nature, missionary work was low- or no-budget. It is impossible to compete with big dollars that want something. There were six or seven wealthy men who bought the whole package. Thomas didn't have much to say about it.

In 1657, in his mid-30s, Thomas planned a short trip to England to report on his work, and his ship was lost at sea. Out of their respect and high regard for the work he had done among them, the chiefs each placed a stone where Thomas had stood, and it became a monument on which the D.A.R. (Daughters of the American Republic) placed a bronze tablet telling of his life and work. Every anniversary of the ship being lost, the Indians would throw a rock at the point where the ship had departed. That tradition held for 250 years.

The work begun by Thomas Jr. was continued through his son Rev. John Mayhew, whose son Experience and grandson Zachariah were great missionaries to the Indians of Martha's Vineyard.

Considering the Mayhew's zeal for liberty, it is not surprising that they would become involved in the slavery issue. In 1854, Allen Mayhew, his wife and two boys moved from Ohio to Nebraska. They farmed the area and had two more sons. Barbara's brother, John Henri Kagi, spent a significant amount of time with his sister and her family throughout 1856. That summer, he met John Brown, the radical abolitionist who led the famous raid at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, thought to be one of the factors leading to the outbreak of the Civil War. He also utilized his sister's farm as a stop on the underground railroad. There is a cabin/church in Nebraska City, Nebraska, near the river. Allen built a tunnel through which blacks could travel, apparently having Huck Finn type rafts to cross the river.

Iowa was a free state so the Missouri-Iowa border was heavily patrolled. It appears the Nebraska side was not as patrolled, so they crossed over there. Exactly how many slaves passed through the Mayhew's homestead is unknown, but Edward Mayhew, son of Allen and Barbara wrote of an instance in 1859, when Kagi brought 14 blacks to the cabin and Barbara fed them. It is interesting that Allen Mayhew was never arrested, never mugged or mobbed. This was unusual at a time when there was such an intense feeling of those who were pro-slavery. Not only would a person who was assisting blacks be at the mercy of authorities, even neighbors or former friends, if they knew someone was helping blacks escape into a free state, would intimidate them, beat them — even to outright hanging. Some white guy, who assisted in the underground railroad was imprisoned, but they never touched Allen or his family. Records indicate that in 1862, Allen left his family and headed west to find gold. He died in Utah.

Of the Experience Mayhew side was Jonathan Mayhew (1720 to 1766), a pastor of the Old West Church in Boston when the Stamp Act was enacted. This was a device requiring the use of stamps and stamped paper for all official documents, commercial writings and various articles, by which the American colonies would be required to pay revenue to England. Jonathan was a whig, the party protective of the liberties of the governed. He reflected the colonists' feeling toward that act in a powerful sermon stating: "The king is as much bound by his oath not to infringe the legal rights of people as the people are bound to yield in subjection to him. From whence it follows that as soon as the prince sets himself above the law, he loses the king in the tyrant. He does, to all intents and purposes, un-king himself." He announced that when a king steps beyond his own laws and turns into a tyrant, the people are duty bound to remove him "We are to submit to authority, but God in no way intended for tyrants to exist." In defense of preaching politics instead of Christ, he quoted from 2 Timothy 3:16: "All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness." He was instrumental in getting within the founding documents the right to revolt.

President John Adams regarded this sermon as the opening salvo of the American Revolution, in which the Mayhews participated, declaring themselves for the cause of liberty. In the War of 1812, Vineyard men were in command of privateers and all the leading ships of the Navy. In the Civil War, the Village furnished 240 soldiers and sailors. Sheldon Mayhew was in the Ohio infantry. In the Spanish-American War, four boys enlisted and in the 1st World War more than filled its quota at every call.

All of this preceded the Revolutionary War and I have a roster of Mayhews who participated. Following, there were Indian uprisings, and because the Vineyard's Indian population was known, the military was uneasy about them. The Mayhews who were there, many of whom had served previously in the Revolutionary War, were experienced in warfare, and adamantly told those folks, "These are peaceful Indians. You come over here and we'll kill you." There was no rebellion, no uprising, no anything, and when the attempt was made to get the Mayhews to fight in the Indian wars and they said, "Absolutely not. If you treat them right, there will be no rebellion or uprising." This is consistent with our siding with the underdog — in this case the Indians, and ending up fighting for other underdogs — the blacks during slavery. Granted that the Mayhew's involvement is not a glamorous, glorious, profitable venture. The rewards are different and I regard than as better than the rewards for the opposite.

My side came up the Thomas branch, which stops with Deacon Nathan Mayhew, who moved off the vineyards to Bangor, Massachusetts. (At that time the northeast territory was Massachusetts, not Maine.) Sheldon Mayhew ended up in Ohio, a Sergeant in the Ohio Infantry, and when the Civil War was over, he and some family members moved to Afton, Iowa. When I eventually came to this part of the country, I began an attempt to find out more about them.

I checked out the Afton area by getting a plat map and looking up the track. I approached a few houses, knocked on doors and asked if they knew the Mayhews, who used to farm in this area a long time ago. No one did so I gave up, but as I was driving back to Afton and so on to Osceola, I saw an old man out in front of his house. I stopped and introduced myself. When I asked if he knew the Mayhews, he said, "Why, sure." And he started naming them off. He recalled that when he was just a little kid, in harvest season one of the Mayhews would host a big neighborhood get-together. They would kill one of the hogs or cows and have a barbecue, and when they got through with that part of it, the other Mayhew would have a big barn dance. He was enjoying his trip down memory lane.

One of Sheldon's boys was Grant, my grandfather, who married Hazel Potts, whose family was from around here. Come to find out, Hazel was jealous of the close knit family, and they moved to Chicago to get away. He became a trolley car operator, and told me that on the side he delivered milk in the big old metal canisters. He had a truck and a milk run — some of it was his. He deposited his milk check one day and the next day the bank closed. The Depression was on. In his last days, he contracted pneumonia. In those pre-antibiotics times, pneumonia was serious and he died.

My dad was born in Afton and may have been about 10 years old, when he and his sister were moved to Chicago. He grew up, enlisted in the Navy, just before WWII. He served in the South Pacific. He came back and met my mom. She had grown up on the family farm in Wisconsin. Their experiences were those of a typical farm family going through the Depression. They bought all the kids shoes once a year. When they got through the winter, if they wanted cooler shoes in the summer, they made their own sandals. Dad didn't feel the Depression like many did. His mom was a nurse, and nurses were always employed. Dad rode a bicycle delivering packages for Western Union throughout Chicago. There are some interesting tales from those times and they mean so much more when the person telling them has been through it, rather than just reading about it in a book,

I joined the Army in 1978. There are lots of things that we hear about and take for granted, but my interest in history and roots leads me to curiosity about beginnings When did we first have an Army? The manned, equipped, full-time Army on this land was the British Army, the Red Coats. They were full-time soldiers, trained, uniformed, paid, fed, quartered. Came the Revolution, and those forces were born out of the militia, which was nothing more than neighbors getting together with their flintlocks. So the Army goes back to post-revolutionary war times, as does the Navy. At that time, attack by a foreign country, primarily England, was a very real possibility, so a Navy could intervene and prevent their arrival on our soil.

Once the Revolutionary War was over and the British were defeated, George Washington stood up an Army, very small but full-time, paid, drilled, and trained. They relied primarily on each state maintaining a militia and the National Guard grew out of the militia. But as we got into more and more wars, there was justification to grow the size of the military. The Reserve corps came into being in 1904, and was actually started by the Medical Corps because they couldn't get enough doctors. They had doctors on standby, and they were the "Reserves." It grew from a small beginning to their being drilled once a month, with a two-week summer camp.

I joined during the cold war, so there wasn't anything going on. I was stationed in Alaska where I was in the Scout Platoon for the battalion. It was an interesting, exciting job. Our potential enemy was Russia separated from Alaska by the Bering Strait, only 50 miles wide. It could easily be crossed on foot over the ice. We did a lot of training in northern Alaska — a lot of training, skiing, and snowshoeing.

Winters were real winters back then and we did our physical training (PT) where we were up early in the morning, did our exercises and ran outdoors. If it was colder than -20°, we would have to come inside to do them but until -20°, we were outside doing PT. The coldest I ever remember it being was Windy Ridge Bombing Range. This was an old WWII range the bombers used to drop their ordnance, practicing hitting the target. We were out there and it was -82° below. That was the temperature, not wind chill.

It was an unusually cold snap that came through and we were out in the field — our last day out there. We were being helicoptered out that day. The Lieutenant called in the wrong coordinates to our group of helicopters, so they came for us miles and miles off course. They were so far away we couldn't hear or see them. They flew around, saw nobody so they went back to base. We called in again and the response was, "We were just out there and didn't see you." So we told them where we were and they came out again to that same wrong place, flew back but radioed on the way saying, "We don't see anybody." The platoon sergeant said to the lieutenant, "Let me check your coordinates." He discovered they were wrong. By the time they got that corrected and were there to pick us up, we were literally walking in circles just to keep our blood going. If we sat down we would have frozen to death.

There were guys from our unit and others units that had to be hospitalized. Some had to have fingers, toes, or feet amputated. Gangrene set in and worked down to their feet so they had to be amputated. There were quite a few. I went to visit a friend in the base Hospital a few days later. It certainly wasn't funny but they had a ward of finger amputees, one for toe and feet amputees. My friend had some toes taken off. His bed was farther down the room so I saw the whole row of beds without footboards. The visual stuck in my brain. It was as though they were told to hold their feet in an upright position and somebody walked down with a chain saw and whopped off toes. I will never forget that sight!

I was 18 when I joined the Army, right out of high school. I was sent to Ft. Lewis, Washington in the 9th Infantry Division at the time of Grenada, and we were the Rapid Souest RDF Deployment Force so they stood us to. We were on the tarmac at McCord Air Force Base, ready to load the aircraft on orders. They stood us down saying they had so many people in Grenada just then — the Seals, the Rangers, the Green Berets, that we would end up shooting ourselves, "So you just stand down."

I was alerted again in '91, during the first Gulf War with Kuwait, when Sadam was burning and blowing up oil fields, and we intervened. They were getting all the infantry standing by because they didn't know how long it was going to last. I was standing by with bags packed, and I don't know if the ground war even lasted a week. So I was stood down again.

Presently, I am in an Army job in which I am called a non-deployable asset. There are three non-deployable assets: recruiters, because they feed the force; drill sergeants are non-deployable because they train the force. I am a career counselor, and we aren't deployable because we maintain the force. Since 2002, I am in the full-time active duty Reserves, which is almost the same as being active duty Army.

How I came to be in Osceola, Iowa, having been born in Illinois is interesting and a little spooky. I met and married Coleen whose family was from Seattle, when I was with the 9th Infantry at Ft. Lewis. Our oldest child was born in Seattle, the other four in Texas, where I was in school at West Texas A & M for my Bachelor's degree in biology with a minor in bio­chemistry. With that background I applied for the Osteopathic University in Des Moines. There was another fellow in Des Moines who was also interviewing to attend the school. He had come by train and mentioned he needed a ride back to Osceola to catch Amtrak. Here I was on a shoe­string budget, with just enough gas money to get back to Texas, but with nowhere to stay that night. So I said, "If you can put me up for the night, I'll be glad to drive you to Osceola tomorrow." We agreed. The interviews went well, I dropped him off at Amtrak, looked around and decided this was the perfect place. Des Moines was way too expensive and I knew I wasn't going to raise a family in a big town. I had grown up in a small town — Elgin, Illinois, north of Chicago. In a small town, parents didn't have to worry about the kids. When kids are growing up, kids being kids — I was one, and when I got in trouble, the local police would take me home to my dad, and he would take care of the situation. When the boys were growing up, they still did that here, too, and was accepted. So we came here.

It was so ironic that we ended up in a town a stone's throw away from Afton, which I didn't know about at the time. I knew nothing of the family history. It wasn't until I got here that I started researching. This is also the area where my grandmother Potts came from, so I am home. In such a round-about way — never planned, knew nothing about, but here I am.

Coleen and I have two girls, three boys. The girls were never interested in the military but that was not the case with the boys. That was never pushed. I told the kids, "It is your life. You pick what you want to do. You are in this house and this home and it is my job to train you for 18 years, not 20, not 24, not 26. You graduate from high school, you are 18, you are out." I was and am a firm believer in the eagle-thing. You kick them out of the nest. If you keep them around, you do them a disservice. They don't grow up. The kids understood that it wasn't that I didn't love them or want them around, but the sooner they were out there, the sooner they are on their feet, the better off they would be and that is what happened. The picture was taken at the youngest one's, Matthew (Matt's), graduation from the Marine Corps boot camp in San Diego.

I had helped the family members get tickets for Matt's graduation and paid for the rooms. I told the other two, "I am going to be in my uniform, how about you coming in yours?" They agreed. Matt is now stationed at Camp Fuji, Japan, training base.

The picture is according to their ages. Michael (Mike) is the oldest — he is in the Navy, has actually served his time on an aircraft carrier. He's been to Iraq and is now out of the Navy, employed as a lineman with Par Electric, in Des Moines.

Mitchell joined and is still in the Air Force stationed at Monthan AFB in Tucson, Arizona. He is in avionics, i.e., he works on instrument panels repairs, trouble shoots etc.

In this picture, Michelle is the older of the two girls, Micheala is the younger. The sole grandbaby at this point is Arianna. She just turned three.

This covers from 1066, the Hastings war, through 2008. In 58 years, with one gap, which I must go to England to fill in, we will be a thousand year family.

This July I will have completed 30 years total service time with no plans for stopping until they kick me out. What Mitchell and Matt will do, I don't know. It is their choice.

COLEEN MAYHEW
The Background that Shaped my Life:

I grew up in Seattle, in a single parent household from the time I was five, when my parents were divorced. I knew there were problems, but being three and four years old, I really didn't understand what those problems were. I just knew that my parents weren't like the ones on television — lovey-dovey all the time. I heard Mom and Dad arguing and yelling at each other and I remember wondering, "Is that normal?" So I was kind of aware of all this but I didn't know my parents weren't going to live together anymore because, well, they were my parents. That should have been all I ever had to know.

The legalities were totally opposite of what they are now. It was the early 60s, and kids didn't get to choose with which parent to live. Kids went with Mom and Dad paid child support regardless of circumstances. It was necessary for my mother to work, although my dad did the right thing and paid child support to take care of us. It all just happened to me and didn't really involvve me. Girls are different than boys in a lot of ways. Boys will remember traumatic things that happen to them in their childhood. Girls tend to remember a lot more details, good and bad of their early years. I came from that experience knowing I didn't want to live in a single parent household, and if I married, I wouldn't want my children to have to go through what I went through. A single parent household is unstable. It does crazy things to kids. It is horrible for self-esteem.

The good aspect was there was generational stability. Both my father's and mother's parents were very loving grandparents. We saw both on a very regular basis. I had those examples of good relationships. Of course, I wasn't always around, but what they portrayed to their grandchildren, the part they allowed to be viewed on a regular basis, was very stable. I spent a lot of time with them. Once every month, we spent the weekend with my father's mom and stepmother — Grandpa and Grandma Lontz— at the cabin on the river. And we also spent a regular amount of time with my mom's mom and dad, the Thomas grandparents. We lived maybe 1/2 mile from them, so until we entered school, we saw them almost on a daily basis. Mom took us to their house in the morning before she got on the bus to go to work. So I grew up with grandmas and grandpas and aunts and uncles all over the house. That gave me a glimpse of a stable background, and I knew that was what I wanted.

Swimming:

Lots of people in Osceola know me because of my life-guarding at the pool. My swimming days began fairly early in a rather unusual way. I taught myself to swim. I had two near-drowning experiences before I was 10, and even at that age, I didn't like being afraid of anything. Being afraid was like being told "no." I had to find a way to get over that. We lived on Phinney Ridge in Seattle, just a couple miles from Green Lake. The year I turned 14, still in junior high, with Mom working all the time, I started riding my bike to Green Lake and teaching myself to swim. I did that for two years.

On the west side of Green Lake were two floating docks, 50 yards apart. One dock had a low dive and a high dive; the other was just the dock. The1ife guard was out in a boat and allowed us to swim between the docks. I swam back and forth between the docks - until I swam very well. The head life guard also happened to be the swim team coach at Lincoln High school. He stopped me one day and asked where I lived. I told him, and he asked where I would be going to high school. I said, "Lincoln." Had I ever thought about being on the swim team? I said, "No, why?" He said, "You have one of the most beautiful natural front crawl strokes I have seen in a very long time and I would like for you to go out for the swim team." He told me when their try-outs would be and said, "I want you to come to the pool at that time and try out."

I did that and made the team! It was unusual for a freshman to make the varsity team and I wasn't expecting to, but he decided to put me in a few races. In my first three events for each meet, there were four people who swam a total of 200 yards, each swimming 50 yards of their stroke — butterfly, breast stroke, free style and back crawl. That was one of the things I did. Others were the 50 yard free sprint, and the 500 yards free style. Within my first three meets, I won enough points to get my varsity letter. I never placed less than third.

We moved to Osceola at the half-year of 1990. At that time, they offered a half price pass, and the kids and I lived at the pool. Somebody saw me swimming and said, "We need you to be a life guard." I took a life guard swimming class and at 30, I seemed to the kids (and me) to be pretty old. A couple of them said, "She'll never make it." I might have passed anyway, but since they told me that, I obviously had to prove them wrong. I passed with flying colors and became a life guard in 1991. The very next summer I took my life guard instructor course so I could teach life guarding. It was just before August and a bunch of guards were soon leaving to go to college, so the first year we lived here, I worked as a life guard, and have been a life guard at the pool since 1991. Last summer (2008), I was guard at the YMCA in Des Moines.

Attack of stupidity:

I swam my freshman and sophomore years and by then I thought I knew it all, so I dropped out of school and married Steve because everybody told me they didn't like him, and advised me not to marry him. I'm bull headed. Don't tell me I can't do something because I'll find a way to make it happen. An aspect of that stubbornness is, when I've learned my lesson I say, "0.k., That was a mistake. File that under 'don't do it again.'" And I don't plan to.

It wasn't that I didn't love Steve, but he was not mature enough to be away from his family, and his family was jealous of the relationship between the two of us. It came between us, but it was O.K. It was a chapter in my life, it produced my first child, and we love Michelle to death. By the time Michelle was six months old, I was divorced from Steve and he overdosed on drugs.

Enter Robert:

I met Robert while I was pregnant and he stepped into the father-role because he wanted to. He rubbed my tummy, talked to Michelle, and she responded to him. Believe it or not, babies in the womb do respond, and when he laid his ear on my tummy, cupped his hands over his mouth, and whispered (I'll swear on a stack of Bibles as tall as I am) she would kick in response. If she was crying, he could pick her up and she would instantly be calm She knew his voice. So the first chapter, the first marriage,the first child. and it was fine.

I was 19 when I met Robert and had turned 20 when Michelle was born in Seattle on December 9, 1981. This caused Robert to do some serious thinking. He had joined the Army in 1978, but now questioned if military life, in which he would move every three years, was right for a family and opted to get out. His brother had a welding business in the Midland/Odessa area, working on oil rigs. He offered Robert an apprentice job, so Robert left the service in 1982, packed up Michelle and me, all our belongings, and we moved to Texas. His brother hadn't bothered to let us know that six weeks before we left, the oil industry went to pot. They shut down over 300 wells and his brother lost his business. If he had told Robert, "You can still come but I don't have a job for you," Robert probably would have stayed in the service.

Michael Lawrence was born in Odessa. We had actually picked out Michael's name when Michelle was born because we thought she was going to be a boy. Michael Lawrence was due Valentine's Day, but arrived seven weeks early, born in Odessa, Texas on December 13, 1983. Robert looked around and found a job with Hertz Rent-a-Car as a file clerk. Within six months, he had moved from file clerk all the way up to the assistant station manager position, because he was accustomed to the military way of life, which was "find what needs to be done, a way to get things done, and get them done." Robert was always up for a challenge and put 110% into everything, so he excelled very fast. We lived with Robert's parents for awhile until we got our own apartment. We were in Odessa from 1982, through 1986, did our own thing and lived our own lives, but we were close to family and that was fine.

Our third child, Micheala Lorraine, was born May 8, 1985, also in Odessa. By this time Robert was missing the military and decided he wanted to go back to school. He'd gone back into the Army Reserves, but he always wanted to be an officer, so we moved to Amarillo in order for him to attend West Texas State University. He got into the ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Program), did very well with it, and really enjoyed it. About half-way through his schooling, we discovered Mitchell Lee was coming along. He was born September 23, 1986.

While Robert was going to school, he said, "Why don't you get your GED (General Equivalency Diploma)?" I'd been out of school for so long, I thought I've probably dumbed up and didn't know anything," to which he said, "Oh, pooh. I don't know why you say you can't when you haven't tried." He had in mind my going to college, and back then a high school diploma was required for college entrance. A GED would suffice. At that time I had four kids and they all went to Mary Miles Day Care. I decided to take some GED classes, which were all self-study. I didn't go full time. I took three classes, 12 semester classes of the basic course. I didn't want to be gone from the kids longer than necessary, so I planned my classes from 8:00 to noon. I passed with flying colors and got my GED. I enrolled in Amarillo Community College and took some classes. I did it because Robert encouraged me to go to school. Why not?

I never did get a degree, but I had college time and it was fun. I can say I did it. I was probably one of the older people who took the GED class. I felt really old doing it when the others were probably 18 or 19. There may have been a couple older people. But I was often a misfit. I didn't even get my drivers' license until I was 21. I didn't need to. I lived in Seattle and their transit system was fabulous. I took the bus everywhere. It wasn't that I didn't take drivers' ed in high school. I did, back then it was free. I could have gotten my license. But I didn't have a car, so why get one? My mom wasn't about to let me use her car and my brother had a job and had bought his own Impala. He for sure wasn't going to let me use his. Why not the transit? It ran until 3:00 in the morning. It was 35¢ to go from one end of Seattle all the way into down town and back. Why did I need anything else?

Matt was born in December 25,1988. Now there were five children: Michelle, Michael, Michaela, Mitchell, and Matt. With the exception of Michaela, the kids are all two years apart. In a situation like that, things are bound to happen. One was when we were on a family picnic at PoloDuro Canyon in Amarillo. We did that quite often because it was a really neat place. We had the kids all loaded in our old 1980 Dodge station wagon. The car overheated, so we pulled into a parking lot behind Walmart and lifted the hood. Everybody got out except Matt who was asleep in his car seat. A couple of the windows were rolled down a little bit for air. The other kids were running around the car and we weren't paying much attention because we were looking under the hood trying to figure out what was wrong with the car.

Mitch was two, an ornery little pooh, who liked to do lots of exploring. We didn't realize he had climbed back into the car. We had our picnic stuff, a paper bag on the floor full of items we had just bought at the store, and sleeping Matt. Pretty soon I said, "Do you smell smoke?" Just then I saw it billowing out of one of the open windows. I said, "Oh my gosh! The car's on fire! Matt's in there!" Robert went around to the driver's side and I went around to the passenger side. Mitch knew he had done something wrong so he locked the doors on the driver's side and ran over to lock the door on the other side because he knew if we got in there, he was going to get a beating. He didn't reach the passenger front door in time. Robert demanded, "Mitch, unlock the door." Mitch just shook his head.

Pretty soon there was so much smoke we couldn't even see them. A friend, Johnny, grabbed hold of the front door on the passenger side and popped it open, then he got all the doors open. Matt was still sleeping, not crying or anything. We yanked out the car seat. The back of the driver's seat was on fire and we couldn't get the flames out.

We discovered that Robert had left his lighter on the front seat and Mitch had picked it up and was playing with it, trying to get it to light. It was close to the paper bag, which was under Matt's seat. When it suddenly lighted, the paper bag caught on fire. We got the fire out, nobody was hurt but it scared us all to death. When it was all over, we were shaking our heads, and Robert held the lighter up to Mitch and said, "Hold this." Mitch said, "Huh-uh! No!" He didn't touch the lighter after that. Lesson learned, a good one. It wasn't the first time I aged over something one of our children did.

For instance, there was a time when I must have been about eight months pregnant with Matthew. We were driving down the highway in our green Toyota station wagon, when Michael got mad about something. He was in his seat belt in the back, and I don't know what the deal was but suddenly he said, "I'm getting out!" He opened his door while we were driving 65 miles an hour down the highway! Toyotas are not that big. I reached around trying to grab Michael. Robert slowed down a bit and was able to reach over and slam Michael's door. He pulled him back in and said, "Don't touch that again!" It was such a shock to my system that it sent me into a little bit of a mini-labor, so I was in the front seat doing breathing exercises. I thought I was going to have the baby right then. We got home, I had to lie down for awhile, but it, too, passed and we returned to normal.

We must have done something right because we think we have five stable, productive kids, all are actively working, two of them are married and have their own homes. They all work and are not dependent on Mom and Dad. Like I believe all kids do, they have explored their world and made mistakes, but they have learned from them. None of them are in jail — not to say they haven't ever been in jail. Two of the boys have, but they learned, and they are not jail birds. I feel like every kid should go through something traumatic at least once to know what not to do again. If they don't make mistakes, how can they know if they are doing things right and how can you know they are dependable? It's kind of like baking bread. If it doesn't fall, at least you know you had enough of everything in the mixture. Hit falls, you say "oops. I didn't do something right. Oh, I forgot — whatever. I won't do that again."

We put a lot of thought into raising the kids. We always tried to make whatever we did a life lesson. We had a couple sayings the kids still preach to us, if you ask them, "Well, Mom and Dad always said (this) or Mom and Dad always (that.)" One of the things we wanted them to learn is that we each are responsible for what we say and what we do. If they say the wrong thing, they will get a negative response, so the lesson: don't say it again. One of our favorites is that for every action there is an equal and/or opposite reaction. My saying, "You look absolutely fabulous today," is going to bring a pleasant response. It is a positive thing. If I say something negative, I can expect a negative response. So one of the main things we wanted them to apply was, think before you speak, considering what kind of reaction you are going to get. Negative remarks will bring negative reactions, equal to or greater than what's been said.

We wanted them to have the freedom to make choices. We didn't want to run their lives because we wanted them to be self sufficient financially and emotionally. We wanted them to have a stable enough background to know the negative and the positive things of life. One of them was when the boys said, "I'm going to go drink." We told them, "O.K., but if you are going to go drink, this could happen. So be smart and if you're not, you will have a negative reaction." A couple of them had a negative reaction because they weren't smart. But they learned.

Robert finished school at West Texas State University. Originally he went through the ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) program to be an officer and he was very close to doing that. He was held back, because the ROTC program had a new — female — General. She was the one who approved or disapproved ROTC commissioning. When she got his packet, she said officially he had too many dependents. Robert's Commander in the ROTC said, "He is officer material. He is top of the line. He has already been an NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer). He has already been on the enlisted side. He will be one of the few people who knows what it's like. You need to approve this." But she was newly divorced and mad at men in general. She told the Commander, "Officially he has too many kids, but unofficially, if he gets 'fixed,' I will sign it." Robert and I are alike. Don't tell us we can't do something because we'll find a way. When she told him that, he said, "No! I'm done!"

Needless to say, he wasn't going to get commissioned, so there was no need to be in the ROTC program. He changed his major. He has a bachelor's degree from WT and decided he wanted to be a podiatrist. Sometime during his Army training, he had been in Alaska and did a lot of rock climbing. He had broken the second toe on his right foot many times. The result was that instead of it being skinny like the rest of his toes, that toe was almost as large as his big toe. The kids kept stepping on it and breaking it again and again. He saw a podiatrist about having that fixed and that influenced his decision. Robert is a man of multiple interests, and among them, he has always been interested in the medical field. So when the ROTC thing happened, he dropped out of the program and changed his major to Biology. He has a Bachelor's degree in Biology with a secondary in Chemistry. He graduated in May 1990, applied to attend the University of Osteopathic Medicine in Des Moines, and was accepted.

Introduction to Osceola, Iowa:

Robert and I borrowed his parents' car to drive from Texas to Des Moines, and they kept the kids for about three days. We decided to kill two birds with one stone, and in addition to his entrance interview, we would take a couple days looking for a place to live. A friend of ours from Texas knew a Realtor in Des Moines, and we spent two days with him. We were looking for a three-bedroom place, close to the school, within our budget. Every place we went the people were nice and accommodating until they heard we had five kids. They said, "You can't have a three-bedroom apartment with seven people." "One bedroom for Robert and me, one bedroom for the boys, one bedroom for the girls. Why can't this work?" "Just too many people!" They refused to rent to us. Legally they can't refuse for that reason, but they did.

Another guy, who was also there for an interview, needed a ride to Osceola to catch the train back to Chicago. While I was out with the Realtor looking at apartments, Robert gave him a ride to Osceola. Robert saw an Advertiser, and brought it back with him. We were so discouraged from looking at apartments, that I started looking through the Advertiser and there was an advertisement for a three-bedroom house for $300 a month rent, which was well within our budget. We figured the difference between what we could afford in Des Moines and what we would pay in Osceola would take care of the gas to commute. If we extended one more day, we could look at the house, so we called and set up an appointment for 8:00 in the morning. To be sure we didn't miss the appointment, we drove that night from Des Moines to the truck stop in Osceola, where we were to meet the fellow, Darrell Perry. We understood he always went to that restaurant in the morning for coffee. We planned to sleep in the car.

I suggested to Robert that he go in and tell them about our appointment with a guy who is a regular in their restaurant. "He will be looking for us so if he comes in, just tell him where our car is, and to come tap on the window." For whatever reason, he came to the restaurant at mid­night. He wasn't expecting us to be there, but he went into the restaurant and was told, "The people you are showing the house to are right out there." He came and tapped on the window. We had just gotten to sleep but Darrell woke us and said, "You guys are here and I'm here. Why don't we go look at the house now?" The house, since burned down, was at 802 Roosevelt.

He took us over, showed us the house, and we said, "It needs a little work." He said, "Yes, it does, but if you guys are willing to do some of the work, I'll buy what you need. I don't really need a contract, if you don't. I'm from the old-school, and for me, your word is your contract. If you are good with it, then I'm good with it. We can shake on it and the house is yours to rent as long as you want it." Robert and Darrell shook hands, we gave him the first month's rent and hopped back in our car. We went back to the truck stop and tried to go to sleep, but we were so excited to have found a place, we just said "What the heck," filled our thermos with coffee, and headed back down to Texas.

We had a limited time to relocate, so we packed up the kids, packed up our house in a U-Haul, and got a car-dolly so we could tow one vehicle. We had two old station wagons, the one that caught fire and another one; but we had a friend in desperate need of a vehicle, so at the last minute we sold him one of ours. We decided to keep the car dolly just in case, which turned out to be wise.

Our house was in the U-Haul, the cat was in the station wagon with me and a couple kids. The older kids were riding in the U-Haul with Robert. We started on the trip from Texas and the first time we stopped for gas and turned off the station wagon, it wouldn't start. It was good we had kept the dolly. So here we were with all these little critters at a truck stop, with a car that won't start, and Robert and I were trying to push the car up on the dolly. A couple guys came by and said, "It looks like you guys need some help." So they helped us push the station wagon on the car dolly, but then we realized there would not be enough room for seven people and a cat in the front of the U-Haul. So the cat rode in the station wagon in her little carrier.
We made the rest of the trip from Texas to Osceola with seven people in the front of a U-Haul. Instead of it taking two days to drive it, by taking turns driving, we made it in 20 hours. We did it by Robert driving, two kids between us, and me with the baby on my lap. There was room under the seats for Mitchelle and Mike, who were on the floor with their chests on the floor­board part and their feet fit under the seat just fine. We covered them with blankets and every now and then we'd rotate them. It was an interesting family trip. When we finally got here, they were asking, "Can we get out now?"

We moved into 802 Roosevelt in May 1990, and later we bought the house on Grand View, where we live now. It has a little more space and no bats. At the house on Roosevelt, I got up in the middle of one night to use the bathroom and didn't turn on the lights. To get to our bedroom we went through a doorway, through a long walk-in closet, and through another doorway to the bathroom. I climbed out of bed, walked into the bathroom, and was coming back through the closet when Robert said "Stop! Don't move!" I asked, "What are you doing?" I turned on the light and he said "Turn that off!" I turned it off and said, "Where are you?" He peeked out from under the covers and said, "I'm right here." He quickly covered his head and I asked, "What's wrong?" He whispered, "There's a bat in the house." My next question, "Why are you all covered up?"

I was trying not to laugh because I love him dearly, and he's a manly man. He's never been afraid of anything in his life so I didn't want to laugh, and I said, "What is really wrong?" He said, "Some people don't like snakes and some people don't like spiders. I don't do bats!" I couldn't help it any longer. I burst out laughing but needless to say, I had to head up the bat-finding mission. Robert armed himself with his thick leather gloves and a hooded sweat shirt that he tied so the bat wouldn't touch his hair, the broom in one hand and a racquet ball racket in the other. I got one of the kids out of bed and had them stand on a chair because we could hear it was stuck in the house. I had them stand up and hold the blanket over the doorway one way, I held it the other an as soon as the bat came jetting back, we caught it in the blanket. I said, "We've caught it!" Robert was getting ready to beat it, and I yelled, "What are you doing?" He said, "I don't do bats. My reply, "I'm going to take it outside and let it loose." "But it will get back in!" I said, "Bats are good! They eat mosquitos and bugs." "Well, okay, fine, but I'm not helping." So the kids and Iwrapped it in the blanket, took it outside, and let it loose. Ever since, if the kids want to tease their father about something, they find a "bat" way. A couple years ago, before they went out Trick or Treating on Hallowe'en, they bought rubber furry bats and said, "Oh, Dad, we've got sorriething for you. Here, catch." Then they ran away fast!

When we married, we decided one of the things we wanted was to have at least one parent available to the kids 24/7. Robert is an old-school-thought kind of guy. For him, it is the man's place to provide for the family, the woman's place is to nurture. That was fine with me. I worked sometimes when the kids were very young, or I did part-time work over the holidays, but as a general rule, I was a stay-at -home Mom. Having five kids spanning from 1981 to '99, I didn't have a lot of time to do anything else.

We decided I wouldn't work until the kids were in school, and we moved to Osceola without knowing what the school system was like. I met some people who were doing home-schooling and since some of my kids weren't old enough for school, and I had spent so much time with the kids anyway, we decided to do that. They helped us arrange a room for their school room, and maintained it. We home-schooled for about three years before they went to public school. we wanted them to have a good base, to be able to read and write before we enrolled them, and they all did. It was a good experience.

We've had some great experiences. Our family is still very close. I think it is a sign we've raised them all right if they come home. Even when they were teen-age boys, still in school, they hugged arid kissed us in public and told us how much they loved us. They still call and come to visit on a regular basis. I figure we must have done okay.

Robert has been in military service since 1978, and continues. He is in Active Guard Reserve instead of the regular Army, processing packets for the Reserves. If they have had college time, they can apply. The packet is an application for either being a Warrant Officer or being Direct Commissioned as an officer. Robert processes the packets. Sometimes, if he is working on packets for units on drill, he has to be gone Saturdays and Sundays. Or if people who want to fill out packets are drilling he will go to keep appointments, but generally he has Saturdays and Sundays off.

One of our hobbies we sometimes enjoy on weekends is motorcycling. Robert had a motorcycle in high school and wanted another one. When we lived in Texas and Robert was going to WT, we were trying to find a way to save money and that mode of transportation sounded good. Somebody had a 650 Night Hawk, so we took our tax return money and bought the Night Hawk, which he rode it back and forth to college, leaving the car for the kids and me. When we moved here, we had a little Ford Fairmont and it did really well for gas but Robert missed the motorcycle, so five years ago he came across another Night Hawk. The first one he sold in Texas, then he came across another here. However, it wasn't comfortable for two people. He used it for riding back and forth to Des Moines.

He wanted something bigger and came upon a Vulcan 88 which is more of a touring style bike. Matthew bought his old 650 Night Hawk and one of his friends decided he wanted Robert's Vulcan. Robert sold it to him because he needed money for some venture he was forever getting himself into. I told him I really missed the motorcycle — we had been without one for a year. He started looking and came across another Vulcan but it is a 1600, an even bigger bike. The complication was, it was in New York.

We borrowed a trailer from a friend, and drove to New York. The motorcycle was in downtown New York. We thought we would be okay, if we got in there and out again before rush hour. We were in New York by 1:00 in the afternoon, saw things, and went, "Wow, that's cool. Bye." We picked up the motorcycle, and turned around to get out of town. Nobody had bothered to tell us their rush hour starts at 2:00 in the afternoon. So here we were with a motorcycle trailer driving among these people in New York who truly are crazy. If there is a space six inches big, they will try to get their 20 foot car into it. It was an experience, but we brought the motorcycle back, and that is what we have now. If we can get on it and go somewhere, we do.

The boys followed Robert into the military. Michael went into the Navy, Mitch to the Air Force, and Matthew in the Marine Corps. Michael saw and did a lot of things in the Navy, and Mitchell is still in active duty Air Force, stationed in Davis Montthan in Tucson. Mitch has been deployed to Djaubati in Africa. He was stationed there until January 20, at a base that had all four branches. They had a lot of fun. Each branch had a flag football team and competed. He said unfortunately the Marines took 1st place but the Air Force took 2nd. Matt is in the Marine Corps stationed at Camp Fuji, Japan. His deployment will be up in either March or April 20th. He will have been there a year. His orders for his new duty station were to be two years in Okinawa, but he talked to his boss and said, "I've got to go Stateside. I've got to go home and see my family." They got him a duty station in North Carolina.

He has bought a motorcycle sight unseen. His dad found and test drove it for him. His opinion: "Wow! That's a really cool bike. If you can afford to, you need to buy it so when you come back from Japan you will have it paid for. It will be yours, no payments. Why not?" So Matt is buying this motorcycle and said he wanted to drive it to his new base. He is home to visit us (now) in May, and we took some time off, made the motorcycle trip, and rode with him to his new base. That was a fun trip!

Our first Christmas in Osceola:

Our first Christmas here cemented our relationship to Osceola. It was really interesting because we didn't have any family here, we didn't know anybody in Osceola, and money was very tight because Robert was going to school. We told the kids this will be a really lean Christmas. We would still do the paper chain thing and string popcorn and cranberries. It would be fine.

We don't know who, but somebody knew about us — that we were a family with a bunch of kids, no relatives, and had just moved into town. They turned in our names to an "Adopt a Family for Christmas program." We knew nothing about any of this but one day we had a call from the Community Center. They told us our name had been turned in, and asked what ages, sizes and genders were our kids. I told them, and they said, "Okay, that's all we need." Click.

About a week before Christmas they called and said, "Somebody has adopted you for Christmas. We have some things we would like you to come and pick up." So we took our brown station wagon with the burned back seat and picked up stuff, already wrapped, and it filled the whole back seat. We were so grateful because we weren't going to have anything to give the kids except for what their grandparents had sent. They didn't tell us who had adopted us. They just said somebody had, and that was all we needed to know. Robert and I wanted it to be a surprise for the kids, so we didn't say anything. We covered everything in the back of the station wagon with blankets and pulled the car into the garage.

Robert being an instructor, going to different Reserve units all over the state on their drill weekends to teach classes, meant he was gone the weekend before Christmas. I took the kids to church on a regular basis, so on that Sunday morning the kids and I were getting ready for church. I told them I am going out to warm up the car, "Everybody stay in the house." I came back in to double check. Everybody had their coats on and as I was going back out the door I said, "Stay right here by the back door. I'm going to pull the car out of the garage."

I got in the car but my vision was limited with all that stuff in the back. I looked over my left shoulder, looked in the mirror, and didn't see anybody, so I backed up. All of a sudden I heard a tap on the window and here was Mitchell saying, "Mom, can I get in with you?" There was no room so I said, "Stay right there!" He said, "I'm going back in the house," I said, "Go!" I looked out the back window, and thought I saw him get past. I looked again, backed the car out of the garage very slowly. There was gravel in the garage and water that had run off the roof caused a little dip. We always had to give the car a little more gas to get over the hump.

I gave the car a little extra gas and all of a sudden I heard, "Mom!" What?! I opened my door and here was a leg sticking out from under my car. I said, "Oh, my God! Mitch!" I put the car in drive, and again I heard, "Mom!" I turned the car off and ran to look. Mitch had gone back behind the car at the same time I gave it gas to go over the dip. It knocked him flat on his back and a tire of this 4,000 pound car went up between his legs, up his body, and ended on the gound by his shoulder. The undercarriage of the car caught his knees and jammed one against his chest.

The other kids came out of the house. Mike was running in circles crying, "Oh, my God! She's killed him, she's killed him!" Micheala was trying to calm him and knocked Michael to the ground so he'd quit running around. I told Michelle to call 911, so she ran in the house and called. I tried to get to the jack but couldn't because the car was full, so Micheala ran to a neighbor's house. He came over and jacked up the car so we could get Mitch out. He kept saying, "I'm fine, I'm fine," and wanted to get up. I'd had enough first aid training that I just said, "No!" I spread my coat over him and laid on him to keep him warm. I was afraid I'd broken his back and knew if I moved him it could be disastrous. The ambulance came and the EMTs asked, "Why are you laying on him?" I said, "Because I ran over him with the car." They wouldn't believe me until the neighbor confirmed it. He said, "He hasn't just been knocked down. All we've done is keep him flat and dragged him straight out to the side so he wouldn't be under the car." They still didn't believe the tire ran over him, and wouldn't backboard him until I insisted.

They took him to the hospital in the ambulance. Once they took his clothes off, they saw he had a horrible bruise on his knee cap, and even though he had a coat on, he had scratches up his back where the rocks had dug in. They decided to do x-rays to make sure nothing was broken. Seeing him naked was the first time they believed I had run over him. They said, "This kid should not be alive. He should have massive internal injuries," so they kept him at the hospital for two days, did a complete CAT scan — they did everything. He had no internal injuries, not a single broken bone. All he had were scratches and bruises. They asked, "How do you account for this?" I said, "Well, I was on my way to church so there must have been an angel between him and the car." There is no way to explain why a 4,000 pound car did not crush that kid. We definitely have angels all around these kids. When Mitch is feeling ornery, he'll say, "You know, my mom ran over me. That shows she didn't want me. She tried to kill me with the car, but it didn't work." My only defense is, "That's not true." He grins and says, "I know she really loves me."

Life settled down again, we had Christmas and what a Christmas it was! When we unloaded the car and put the packages under and around our tree, there were five-foot stacks of presents! Each family member had four or five packages to unwrap. There were toys and clothes, besides some things for house! I had always heard about the "heartland," but I hadn't seen the evidence. Here it was and our love for Osceola was born right then.

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Last Revised December 8, 2014