Where Does A Family Begin?

 MONDAY, AUGUST 18, 2014 AT 10:08 AM

Where does a family begin? Does it begin with our mom and dad or

their mom and dad or theirs?

For that matter, how do you define a family? My children are the

birth children of a man who hasn’t been their family for decades.

We are approaching Labor Day weekend 2014. Twenty years ago our

father died on this weekend. He left twelve of us kids along with our

mother. He also left grandchildren who got to meet him and many

who never knew him except through the stories. He will live on in

memory for a couple more generations and after that, it will be

through the stories passed on. That is what I am attempting to do

here. Pass along the stories for future generations.

The twelve of us had two sets of grandparents. Back when we were

kids, that wasn’t unusual but in today’s age, there are many kids who

have more sets of grandparents than that. Divorce and remarriage

has given families a new structure in many cases.

My father was raised by Gerald Patrick Baggot, Sr and Marguerite

Irene McGowan, affectionately known as Papa and Nonie. They lived

in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin a short distance down I90 from our

home in Tomah. The people who raised my mom were Nicholas

Andrew Scholl and Eva Elizabeth McCauley who raised their three

daughters in Genoa, Nebraska.

Our mom and dad met at Marquette University in Milwaukee,

Wisconsin. Mom, at 87 years old, told me she could still feel the jolt

she felt when she first laid eyes on dad and noticed he was holding a

St. Basil hymnal. He used it for Dental School Choir Mother played

organ in Genoa with it so felt an immediate connection when she

saw him carrying it. She says it was much more meaningful for her

than it was for him.

Mom was dating someone else at the time but she claims he was

just playing the field and as soon as she met dad, she knew he was

THE ONE.

Mom’s parents lived in the tiny little town of Genoa NB. Mom’s

mother was a teacher in St. Edward and met her father there. I wish I

could tell you the story of how they met but mom doesn’t remember

and possibly never knew. My grandmother, Eva’s parents were Mary

Minnie Langan and William McCauley. William’s parents died when

he was 10 and the Langans adopted him and his siblings. I think it’s

amazing that he married his adopted sister. They had four children—

Cora (Aunt Coe), Edmond, Eva (my grandmother) Harry  William.

My grandmother Langan had four siblings: Elizabeth , who married a

man named Riley, Eva, who never married and lived next door to

mom and her family in Genoa William and Harley (?) What she

remembers about her grandfather McCauley is combing his beard.

She also remembers that she never heard her mom cry so hard as

she did when he died. Her grandmother was an interesting woman.

She loved to dance and William would drive her five hours in their

Cadillac so she could do so. That meant leaving Cora alone on the

prairie with her younger siblings for many hours at night. Mom didn’t

think too highly of her grandmother for that reason but said she got

alone fairly well with her although she was not a “soft” person.

When her sister, Elizabeth came to visit, she would stay with Eva

rather than Minnie.

Papa Scholl lived with us on Sorenson’s farm for 9 years after

Grandma Eva died from 1957 to 1966. He was a quiet, perhaps even

morose individual who loved his rose garden, his gladiolas. He

helped mom A LOT . I’ve written a lot about Papa scholl over the

years. He was a large part of my childhood. His was the first death I

experienced personally. He was the sort of quiet man you might be

tempted to overlook. He never said I love you but I always felt loved

by him. He loved potato pancakes. Mom says he would shower and

shaving get all fixed up to come and pick us up at school every day

just to see if he was going on a date. He would sit and rock the

cradle where the baby was and watch us when mom ran her errands.

My most enduring Image of him is out in the garden in his long

sleeves and long pants which I never understood until I started

gardening myself. It keeps the bugs and creepy crawlies away well

he gives you a layer of protection. It also prevents sunburn. I

would’ve loved to have known My grandmother. The only way I

know her is through the stories that are admittedly colored

with nostalgia and sadness. Perhaps that’s how best we all I

remembered. Through the haze of grief and the missing of them that

blurs the unpleasant and accentuates the positive the tender the

glow.

Nicholas Andrew (Papa) Scholl

 

Mom talks about how a “manager” from Standard Oil came into their house to inform Papa that he would be getting a pay cut.  When Papa objected, the man sat back in the chair and propped his feet on the table and said, “I’ve got men lined up who would take the job at the rate of the pay cut.”  Papa took the pay cut.

Mom would ride along with Papa and that’s when he’d tell her stories.  Stories about his father, the opera singer-coal miner with a club foot.  The story goes that when his mother delivered him and the doctor saw his club foot, the baby was laid aside and the doc said to put all attention to saving the mother.  A nurse went over to where the baby lay and attended to his needs.  We wonder if she adopted him?  Was he born to a privileged young girl of high society who would be “ruined” by her pregnancy?  That’s what we imagined.  We imagined the nurse who saw to him in the OR, adopted him and raised him.  Essentially a fantasy.  

He spoke of his parents coming over from Germany.  They were close to where the war prisoners were kept.  They got to NY and met up with relatives who had come over before and settled in Western NY.  They didn’t find what they were hoping for there so, his mom and dad ended up in the Western part of Nebraska where his father worked for a large rancher.  Their son, Papa Scholl, mom’s father then found a job on a big farm near St Ed’s where he met Uncle Chris which is how he eventually met her mom, Eva. Papa eventually started working in town delivering oil because he didn’t know farming like the others did.  

After his wife, Eva, died, he came to Tomah to live with mom and dad.  He had a small bedroom on the second floor in-between two large bedrooms on the front side of the two story house.

We loved our Papa. He was a quiet man. Hard of hearing from injuries sustained during his time in the service. His territory was our vegetable garden and his beloved rose and gladiola gardens outside our home. He was a quiet, thoughtful, observant and loving presence in our home. He was there every day to pick us up from school. He sat at our breakfast table every morning pouring a bit of his coffee into the saucer to cool it off before pouring it back into the cup and sipping it. He let my little brothers run their toy cars along his back and shoulders for hours as he sat in our living room. He shaved with his electric razor every day and got all dressed up to pick us up from school. He wore his long sleeved shirts and pants even in the high heat of summer to work in the garden. He rocked the bassinets for mom when the babies were fussing. His army green Plymouth sedan with the push button starter was a fixture in our driveway. He was part of the fabric of our lives.

The elderly man, my grandfather, stood there, slightly stooped over, dressed in his greatcoat, hat in hand, eyes on the floor in a gesture of deference. 

The woman, my mom, hugely pregnant, sat on the bed. Her posture was a mirror image of his. 

The emotion in the room was so large I could feel it from just outside the door where I stood watching this tableau. 

“Is this what you really want, Mary?” He asked. 

Did my mom nod? Did she speak words of defeated agreement? I cannot remember exact words but I can recall her defeated resignation to the decision that was clearly my father’s.  And I can recall her failure to meet his eyes.  She was looking off to the side or down to the floor.

"Yes, Papa, it has to be. You have to leave. We don’t have room for you anymore.” 

Mom and Dad were pregnant with their 11th child. Mom was due in a few weeks. The bedrooms were full, they needed the room and Dad had asked papa or should I say, told papa, he’d have to move into the nursing home located in the basement of the local hospital. 

My sisters and I, who were old enough to get a sense of what was happening were devastated, confused and heartbroken.  To think of him moving out was incomprehensible. It simply didn’t compute. 

I have no memory of him actually moving his things out of our home. I do remember visiting him in his new room at the Nursing Home and being horrified at the shiny, highly polished deeply red floors and the dark atmosphere of his room. Here was a man who thrived on daylight and fresh air and growing plants tucked away in a cave of a room where none of these existed. 

A few days later, I was sitting in my classroom making sure my books and papers were sitting on my desk in an identical pattern to the one my current heartthrob had on his desk. My large crush had to have been highly visible to everyone who knew how to look but I thought I was keeping it secret. 

The school secretary came to the door and my teacher called my name and asked me to go to the office. I met my older sister in the hall and we both looked at each other in curiosity. When we got to the principal’s office, she told us our grandfather had died. He had not been in the nursing home for a month. His birthday was approaching and we were planning a party for him at the house. Now he was gone. My 12 year old heart was unable to fathom the enormity of this news and the enormity of his absence. I went back to my classroom in a daze. Upon entering, I found everyone saying a prayer for the soul of my grandfather. I lifted the lid of my desk and hid my face behind it. 

This may have been my first introduction to what became a trend for me. The emotions and feelings in the air around our home on the day my grandfather questioned my mother and in the subsequent days of his absence from the home and then his death were so huge and so raw, I retreated into a world where I distanced myself from the pain by erecting layer upon layer of padding until I could observe what was happening without feeling it. 

Marguerite Irene McGowan-Baggot (Nonie)

 Marguerite Irene McGowan/Baggot is in my heart and memory as Nonie Baggot, part of the couple, Nonie and Papa who lived 45 minutes from us in Wisconsin Dells, WI.  

I remember Nonie greeting us with a big hug and hearty laugh.  She kind of reminds me of Aunt Bee from Andy Griffith.  She used to light vigil lights and put them in her bathtub as a prayer during storms outside and physical tempests within the family.  

One of the interesting things about her for me is her three sisters and one brother.  Nonie and Papa lived at 810 Cedar Street, across from the public library when we were growing up.  We would LOVE to visit the library when we’d visit.  

Their house was two stories with a front and back porch.  There was an alley running next to it where we’d pull up in the Country Squire station wagon when we arrived for a visit.  

Nonie’s sister Onie, yes it rhymed, her real name was Leona McGowan Field, lived with her family at the opposite end of Cedar Street near what we referred to as the ravine.  Another sister, Martina McGowan Wagner lived down the alley.  The front of their house was on the Main Street of the Dells.  The fourth sister, Helen McGowan Conway lived in Lyndon Station, a short drive away.  I learned from my aunt Mary Claire, Dad’s sister that the four of them lived in the house where Nonie and Papa lived before they were married.  The girls were close and their children, our cousins were tight since they all lived in such close proximity to each other, going to the same schools and knowing the same people and terrain as they did.  I always sort of envied that.  They had a brother, John Will who lived on the family farm.  

Leona, Martina
Helen, John Will, Marguerite

McGowan Siblings - 

Martina Wagner, Marguerite Baggot, John Will, Leona Field and Helen Conway

I loved Nonie and Papa’s house; especially the front porch and open staircase that led to the bedrooms on the second floor.  We have several pictures of us as small children dressing up for Christmas playing with our toys on those stairs.  I remember sleeping in the giant double bed with my sisters that overlooked the front of the house and feeling oh so grand to be there.  

As I recall, Nonie was a background figure, tending to the various tasks involved with our visiting clan.  We loved playing with our cousins who lived next door.  When all of us got together, the noise and chaos was intense.  I remember one of the things Nonie always said was that the noise didn’t bother her a bit unless someone was crying.  

“God takes care of His own,” was one of her favorite sayings.  She could make a delectable banana cake with thick frosting and bittersweet chocolate drizzled across the top.  It was always what I asked for on my birthday when I was given a choice.  There is a story that one year, someone was bringing the cake over from next door and dropped it on the sidewalk.  All they did was scoop it up and back onto the plate, scrapped one layer of the frosting off the top,  redrizzled the chocolate and no one was the wiser.  

Nonie’s dining room was where we celebrated Thanksgiving.  One large table for the grown-ups and a smaller one on the side for the kids.  One of the things that was her trademark was her stuffing since she put raisins in it.  Reviews were mixed on that but it was her signature dish.  

I don’t think I ever saw her visibly upset or angry although there were times she may have exhibited some excitement in trying to get everyone fed and accommodated when we all came piling through her door.  

There was one time when we were at the Pioneer Village with several cars parked in the parking lot on a high, steep hill overlooking the busy highway out front.  Someone got into the car, I think one of the kids, and took it out of park causing the car to start moving toward the embankment and a deadly plunge to the highway below..  Nonie was doing her best to hold onto the car while calling for help.  I can still see her desperately trying to hold the car in place.  It is comical now, as the car did not take the dive, but at the time, laughter was NOT appropriate.  

Memories from my siblings:

Mary Allen—"She had a squirrel named Nikki That she fed every day.  She had Twinkies in her cookie jar all the time!!

I remember her calling out for her squirrel.  "Here Nicky nicky here nicky nicky" and the squirrel would come out of the tree and eat from her hand.   We would go to the library and get books.  We would go through the shops and sometimes they would take us to places.  Going to the pioneer village was fun also.

Teresa--I remember her banana cake her house coats, and how afraid I was to go upstairs in her house. And, and yes I know this is gonna sound ridiculous, but I remember the flab on her upper arms that would wave back-and-forth When she wore short sleeves and every time I see my upper arms wave, I think "oh my, I look like Nonie!" 😬😬😬

Jerry--The banana cake had a bitter chocolate drizzle over the frosting.  

Andy--She was always in that tiny kitchen. She gave good hugs. 

Eileen--She always wore a hairnet like mom. For sure the banana cake and chocolate drizzled over it. I laughed hysterically at Raids comment about her arms as I too have "Nonie" arms.  I also was scared of the upstairs, especially the room she kept locked that had Fr Joe stuff from Africa. 

I had a scary experience at her house when I stayed over night upstairs the summer I worked at Fields Steak n Stein. I ended up coming downstairs to sleep in the couch I was so freaked

I yelled and yelled for Nonie but she couldn't hear me as her hearing aid was turned off!!!!!

I think I had a panic attack as I was so scared I couldn't even yell at first. Someone was in my room by my bed and it was an evil spirit I am convinced.  Seriously, I was unable to yell at first as I was so scared.

Betsy—I have fond memories of Nonie.  She could make you laugh at the ridiculous situations.  I don't think she was as clueless as you would think,  I just think from my perspective she was clever at defusing a tense situation.

I never thought I was not welcome with Nonie.  Loved the way she could wrap you in a hug and Dad inherited that hug.

I think she was opinionated but in the Catholic way she was a passive aggressive and only let loose when pushed.  

I realize that at the time of my memories she was healthy, financially comfortable, and family around her.  At that time in her life Dad was not openly telling his life story.  

Martina McGowan, Leo James Baggot(?), John Will McGowan, Anna Baggot

Marguerite and Gerald

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.