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