Eva McCauley Scholl

Eva McCauley Scholl, our maternal great/grandmother, was a legend in our family. From all accounts, she was a feisty, no-nonsense kind of woman.  

Her parents, William McCauley and Minnie Langan have an interesting story.  William lost both his parents when he was 10 in 1872.  He and his two brothers and a sister were living in Racine, Wisconsin where there was an outbreak of smallpox.  No one knows the cause of their deaths which left William and his siblings orphaned at a young age. 
Enter John Langan and Katherine Gleason who adopted the four children and brought them to live on their farm in Peru, Illinois.  Eva’s mother, Minnie was one of John and Katherine’s daughters.  William and Minnie fell in love and were married in 1884 when Minnie was 19.  They had four children, Aunt Coe was the oldest, then Ed, then Eva and finally William Harry. 

Mom is the baby, Kathy the child, behind Kathy is Eva, next to her is Minnie and holding mom is Katherine Gleason Langan

Mom tells stories of how the four kids would be left alone out in their cabin on the prairie while their father took their mother dancing. She loved to dance. He had a Cadillac and off they’d go leaving the kids to fend for themselves.  

During WW1, Eva delivered mail on horseback in rural Nebraska. When she was 35, she met and married our grandfather, Papa Scholl. (He was 32).  She was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse with grades 1-8 at St. Edward’s.  Their three daughters were all born at home between 1925 and 1930. She was 38 when she gave birth to the middle child, our Mom, Mary in 1927, the same year Lindbergh flew the Atlantic and landed in Paris.  The oldest daughter, Cora Catherine (Aunt Kathy Troia) told me she was born blue at her Aunt Coe's house in 1925.  

Eva and her husband, Nick set up household in a small house adjacent to St Rose of Lima church and rectory which was the first on Elm street going from South to North.  If you look at the photo below of the house, you can see the side porch where the sisters tell stories about who got the best bed during the summer.   

 Next to them on the other side was a small house where mom’s great-aunt Eva Langan lived. Eva was the sister of mom’s maternal grandmother, Minnie Langan McCauley.  When William McCauley (Minnie’s husband) died in 1934, Minnie built a house next door to Eva’s where she lived out her final days until she died at age 86 in 1951.  Mom remembers a house where the backyard had peonies and roses growing profusely along with their vegetable garden.  She also remembers taking dinner to both her grandmother and her aunt.  The family had a beloved pet Chow who they called “Dig”—short for Dignity—who possessed a blue tongue.  There was also a canary named Dickie.  Eva loved the bird and tended to him every day.  She was bereft when he died.  So much so that Father Brady, who was at Rose of Lima Church next door offered to conduct a service for him.  They wrapped his body and brought it in a box by wagon to the rectory yard where he was placed in his very own grave with the priest, dressed in his vestments, performing a blessing and laying him to rest.  

Mary, Loretta, Eva, Kathy, Nick

In August 1934, during the Great Depression, work was begun on the Loup Canal, a 35-mile structure built to bring hydroelectricity and irrigation to the area as part of FDR’s New Deal.  Eva fixed meals for laborers who flocked into town at the time. Her enterprise consisted of providing supper at night in addition to providing breakfast and the lunches they took to work with them in buckets which were stored under the stove in the kitchen. They charged .25 for each breakfast and lunch and .50 for supper.  One of the workers was allowed to pitch his tent in their backyard so he could send as much money as possible back to his wife and children.  Eva earned enough money to purchase a washing machine in a month or so. Mom says she and Papa would rise at 3am each morning to prepare the day’s meals. This went on for four or five years. The canal opened in 1937.  After that, Eva turned their home into a conference center for the local Lion’s Club meetings. The group, which was around 25 strong, would meet in her dining room while she prepared their meal behind the kitchen door. She’d feed them in both rooms after the meeting. Their table would bow in the middle when it was pulled out to full length because the leg would go sideways so Eva would crawl underneath the table to prop it up.

She bartered with a local woman who had some students lined up but didn't have anywhere to teach them.  Eva bartered her piano and living room if the woman would teach her girls to play.  So every Saturday, mom and her sisters were relegated to their kitchen and bathroom while the front of the house was turned over to the piano teacher from 9 to 4.  Then a band director came to town.  Mom had a cousin who owned a trumpet that he didn't play so this band director taught her to play the trumpet.  There were other students…two playing clarinets, one trumpet, an alto sax, and drums.  They formed a band that practiced on mom's front porch.  They were practicing South of the Border when the neighbor across the street told Eva that he wished that's where they'd go!! 

My grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer when mom was in high school. Papa and mother bought their car, a Plymouth coupe with a rumble seat. 

 The family took a trip out to Colorado which was the first time my mom met my her father’s German mother, her uncle Frank and Uncle John’s daughter Mary. Eva had talked about the beautiful big river near where she'd grown up and how much she loved it.  When she was diagnosed, one of the stops was to see that river.  When they arrived, it was a mere trickle.  They all got a big laugh over it.*  Today, we know that the disappearance of my grandmother's river was really no laughing matter.  

* From Wikipedia--In western Nebraska, the banks and riverbed of the North Platte provide a green oasis amid an otherwise semi-arid region of North America. Today, by the time the North Platte reaches Paxton, Nebraska it is much smaller due to the extensive water taken from it for irrigation. Historically, the North Platte River was up to a mile wide (1.6 km) in many places, as evinced by the old streambed and historic written records.^{[citation needed]}

They obtained a camera and used it to record photos from the trip.  Mom's favorite photo is one where Eva accidentally took a photo of herself in the process of learning how to use it. She remembers sitting at their table hearing them recite the blessing in German and for the first time hearing her father sing Silent Night in German.  Mom never met her paternal grandfather as he died in 1918. 

They did not do chemo and radiation back then. Mom, pregnant with Mary, missed our dad’s graduation from dental school because was out in Genoa caring for her mother.  Eva was suffering great pain after the breast cancer returned and settled into her bones. The pain was so intense, she was unable to bear the weight of the bed sheet on her legs and had taken to a wheelchair. The next door neighbor, who was the nurse at the Indian school, would administer morphine to Eva to help ease the pain. Mom told me there were times the woman would only use distilled water in the hopes that the placebo effect would help alleviate the suffering.  Mom believes it allowed her mother to relax which did ease her pain.  She was told if she made it for five years she would lick the cancer. It returned almost exactly five years after her initial diagnosis and mastectomy. 

An adrenalectomy was scheduled in an effort to reduce her acute pain.  Mom was unable to stay for the operation as she was approaching her due date with Mary and needed to be in Wisconsin where dad was working for a year with a dentist in Wisconsin Dells.

The procedure gave her a year or more of life where she was able to visit her daughters.  In December of 1956, Mom and Dad were living in Dayton, Ohio with Betsy, Kathy, Mary and Eileen who was the infant. (Four children under the age of 4!) Mom's parents came to visit us in Dayton but mom had the date wrong. They flew in and when she wasn't there to meet them, they took a bus. Mom opened the door and was shocked to see them. Told them they weren't supposed to be there for another week. When her parents arrived and discovered mom wasn't there, they'd taken the bus to their house.  Eva just came in and started helping her out. Mom says she wanted to say they were lucky she even recognized them! 

It was the last time mom saw her alive. She went from there to visit Kathy and her family and contracted mumps and did not survive. Mom got a telegram from Carl saying her mom had died and they were sending her body to Genoa. My grandmother was 69.  My mom was 30.

Nick and Eva's home in Genoa where mom grew up

Notes from a conversation I had with mom:  

"They flew into Cincinnati but I had the dates wrong.  I thought they were coming the next week.  I open the door and ask what they're doing there and my mom says, "Mary, I told you we were coming."  

Mom told her she had it down for the next week and she said you'll see it in the letter.  

I said, "Mom you had four children under the age of 4!  You'd just moved to a new city.  It's no wonder you were a bit unsettled!"  Mom said she was lucky she knew them when she opened the door.  They ended up taking a bus from the airport to get to our house.   They were putting a new dental office on the base so dad was in charge of getting all the equipment and setting up that whole operation so he was consumed with that."  

She said they had a three bedroom apartment; the four of us girls were in one room, she and dad in another and papa and her mom slept in the third bedroom with a double bed.   The probably stayed a week.  

I asked, "Then do you take them to the airport?"  

She laughs, "yes, dad and I took them to the airport.  They didn't have to get in a cab."   

I tell her I can't imagine how it would have felt to not be prepared and she replied that with her mom it didn't matter cause she would have just come in and started cleaning and changing diapers or whatever needed to be done.  

"So you hugged her and papa; you put them on the plane; you wave goodbye and that was the last time.   

She replied, "You know she was doing pretty good.  The surgery had really helped her. She wasn't in a lot of pain  She'd had the adrenalectomy quite some time before that and the pain from the bone cancer almost left.  She had time to be able to go places like this.  I think they'd even been out to California one time before this."  

 Then she goes to some letters she wrote to dad and reads them to me.   They are from 3/21/57 right after her mom died.  She is out in Genoa with all four of us staying with her dad.  My dad drove us out there and interviewed with Hi Brown because he was going to go into practice with him but he didn't have a Nebraska license to practice dentistry so they settled in Tomah.  Papa accompanied mom and the four of us to Wisconsin via train.  Betsy kept pressing the call button and the porter kept coming to the door to find out what they wanted.  Papa loved the trip, he loved trains. 

What remains (In Memory of Dad on what would have been his 89th Birthday)

Dad would’ve been 89 years old today. Instead, his physical remains have been residing on a hill in the cemetery for 23 years. He’s been gone almost a quarter of a century! While his physical remains; (the ashes commemorated on Ash Wednesday) are buried in Tomah, what remains of him is far more potent and alive and tangible then what was put to rest in that cemetery.

What remains is the memory of dad‘s big warm hugs when we came through the door after a long trip.

What remains is remembering his singing voice as he harmonized with happy birthday and the other familiar songs he and mom used to sing for us when we were on long car rides. (They really weren’t long car rides but with 14 people in the car, 30 minutes felt like eight hours.)

What remains is recalling him and I sitting in the living room with Simon and Garfunkel‘s LP record album “Dangling Conversations” playing on the high fidelity stereo system. Back then we couldn’t look up the lyrics and they weren’t included with the record, so dad and I sat there writing down the words as we listened to the songs because we were so enthralled with the poetry of their music. Dad would’ve loved Leonard Cohen.

What remains is the image of him flooding the bottom of our yard so we could ice skate in the winter.

What remains is the memory of him sitting next to my bed after Chelsea was born listening to me spill my guts about all the secrets I carried inside overcome with emotion as I awakened into a presence that we called God.

What remains is remembering carrying Rachel, as a newborn, eight days old, into the house on Highway 16 and handing him his first grandchild as a birthday gift in 1973.

What remains is the image of him lugging buckets of water to the trees he planted so lovingly. (Andy has described his attire while doing so.)

...Snapping his fingers, whistling and smiling when he heard a catchy tune.

...The way he would wrap mom up inside his winter coat when he got home after a long day.

...Standing at the dental chair holding an impression in someone’s mouth waiting for it to set with the backdrop of Tomah’s Main Street (Gasoline Alley) out the window behind him.

Then there are our many philosophical conversations and arguments about a myriad of subjects, most of them pertaining to spiritual and social justice.

After he died, I gathered some of his journals and found myself heartbroken over the way he described how he should feel; the lectures he gave himself about how he should think and feel and be rather then spilling out how he truly felt.

And there are the letters he wrote to his parents and sister pleading with them to explain what he needed to do to mend the rift that had cropped up between them.

He wasn’t an easy man. He was a human being doing his very best to be the person his God wanted him to be. And that’s what he taught all of us in his own unique way.

He was a man with his own share of particular cracks. Cracks that may have looked like flaws to others but allowed the light to get in. They were his and they made him who he was.

What remains is the image of all six of my brothers, his sons, carrying his casket into St. Mary’s Church. Two of those sons have now joined him.

I feel immeasurably fortunate to say he was my father and to know that his blood courses through my veins and is part of my family’s heritage. I was lucky enough to know him physically for 40 years. Since then, I have connected with his memory and his invisible presence.

An invisible river remains. Each and every one of us--those who exist physically on earth and those who do not--feed into this invisible river. It contains our blood, our joys, our tears, our memories, our love. It is our inheritance and our legacy.

I write this memorial as I walk my favorite path, a path he would have loved on what would’ve been his 89th birthday. Pieces of him go with me as memories tucked away in pockets of my mind. There is no possible way to reduce my relationship with my father to some words on the page, yet, I do as a way to honor him and what remains of his presence knowing it’s only the very tip of the hidden treasure.