We also had a K of C club and we learned to square dance there and invited the three Catholic schools to participate. When I first met him I was still at Saint Rose as a freshman. He was a senior that year that I was a freshman, and so I went to his class play. I came home and told mom, “I’m setting my cap for him!” That was my mom’s expression but that’s what I told her.

Anyhow, he was dating someone else so I went ahead and dated some other ones too. One time I was being his Good Samaritan and I went to his girlfriend’s house because she had hurt her leg. I went there purposely because I thought Bill would be there! (Laughter) See! It was a bad thing! Then I got there and I visited and thought I better go and as I got out the door Bill came in! So, I got my comeuppance!

One fellow, Bob Hamburger, dated me and my mom did not approve of him at all.

I would meet him sometimes at my girlfriend’s house, but he did himself in. He wrote my mom a nasty letter and mom just left it out on the table and I read it and…Hamburger was hamburger.

But, in the meantime, Bill had danced with me somewhere. Hamburger came up to him and said, “Why did you dance with my girl? That’s my girl!”

Bill told me this later, see? And that just made Bill all the more interested.

Bill graduated and we had the draft then and he had to go into the service. We had dated through my sophomore and junior year and then he went into the service.

So, we made a pledge that we wouldn’t be engaged or be going together. We would write each other letters but I would date and have my senior year and if he got lonely he could dance with somebody at the USO or whatever and we’d see what happened when he got back.

So, I wrote letters – I still have some of them – he wrote letters and I had a good time, and danced with everybody.

But they were all being measured up against him and they didn’t measure up. So, he came home I think about the 18th of December that year, the next year…what year was that? We were married in ’53 so it must have been…I graduated in ’53 and we were married in ’54. Actually, in the summer after I graduated his best friend took me square dancing all the time just to keep me happy.

Then about October I wrote him a letter saying, “I’m waiting on you. There is nobody but you.”

He told me later that just thrilled him to pieces and so when he came home then at Christmas time we were getting ready to go to midnight mass and he gave me my diamond. We were going to get married the next October but we decided we couldn’t wait that long so we got married in August.

So we got married and we agreed that, of course we’re both Catholics, so we agreed that we would do what was allowed to have a family. We could be careful.

Let me tell you, the rhythm method does not work! I hate to tell you! (Laughter)

I am glad I had every single one of mine. They were; nobody was an accident. I had 10.

Martha Jane is in heaven. But anyhow, we decided I would stay home and he would do the working and I tried working but I got pregnant right away because we hadn’t worried about rhythm yet.

I had one girlfriend that said when Mike was born on June 11th, “If I didn’t know better. I’d be counting on my fingers.” Oh, I was so mad at her!

We were married August 26th and there was no hanky panky before that! (Laughter)

I got kinda sick at work a lot which is not nice.

So in March I said, “Bill I don’t know how to cook.” I helped mom, but I didn’t cook myself.

So, I went home and practiced because I said, “When I have a new baby in my arms I won’t be able to hold a baby and look at a cookbook too.” The only babies I had ever been around were Marion’s babies that I had babysat for.

I was working at the Leader Store in the office. During high school I had worked there as a clerk doing retail.

The Leader’s Store, it was one of the nicest stores. It was a department store. Let me see….what was his name? I can’t think of the owner right now but he was a very good man.

You know, I learned to give service. Now when I go in a store I think, jeez! I mean, you gave service to your customers. You helped them and you said, “Do you think this belt would go good with this?” and you didn’t just ring them up.

I had worked in the teen department with all the teen clothes, which was fun, before I went to the office.

So, anyhow I retired from that and stayed home and we had Mike in June, and then come Debbie, let’s see….Mike is 55, graduated in ’53, married in ’54, Mike is 55.

Debbie is born January 19, 1957, so that was like 18 months in between and that wasn’t too bad, but then I never had another period.

In the same year I gave birth to Martha Jane on December 15th, and I was kind of upset when I got pregnant but I thought, well, must be God’s will.

Well, then she was born dead. I was devastated because then I thought because I hadn’t wanted her exactly and the priest said, “No God would never do that. It was the Asian flu that came along.”

I had received the vaccination because I was pregnant, but Bill and Mike and Debbie were all sick as dogs.

I recovered quicker but I know the day she died. She just went in a huge knot. I said to mom, “I think it’s about time to birth this baby because she isn’t moving much,” because she was due then.

Well mom was smarter. She said, “Go take your temperature,” and I had a temperature and she said, “You go to the doctor right away.”

So, they induced the birth and they said, “You better pray it works because if it doesn’t you have to wait and it has to come naturally.”

I thought that was horrible. Joni, she had to do that! One of my sister-in-laws had to do that, had to carry a dead child two months. Anyhow, then she was baptized immediately and I went and talked to – at that time they wouldn’t let me out of the hospital so Bill and my mom were the only ones who saw the baby.

I didn’t even get to see her. We named her Martha Jane after my mother’s aunt and so the funeral home was Cantwell and after I got out I went to Cantwell and I said, “I never saw her. I want you to describe her to me,” because I was worried to death that the child would have been a…okay, a mongoloid.

That is what I was worried about, and he said, “Oh she had the nicest round face and nicest little eyes,” and I thought okay, I’m okay, because I was really worried about that.

So, I put that to rest. It took another 29 years before we could get her grave marker but she finally got one.

So, then we moved. Moving is a bad thing to do. You have babies when you move.

Then we moved, let’s see…no, then I had you after that in ’59, right? That was really great too because I stayed awake to see her because I thought, “Damn! I’m going to see this kid born!” and you were crying over there in that crib, you know. I thought, isn’t that sweet? Little did I know you were going to be a crybaby like me! (Laughs)

So, the doctor was hurrying me because he had a card game to get back to. But that was the first time I stayed awake. The other – women didn’t stay awake then. They didn’t breastfeed because they thought the bottles were better, well, now they know that’s not so.

So then we moved to Bellefontaine, and that’s about an hour south east, because Bill got transferred.

By this time he was in the grocery business and he was transferred to the grocery. We belonged to Saint Patrick’s. Dianne came along…what was it? December 13th of 1960, and I made them – she’s the fastest one – I made them start me ahead of time because I couldn’t stand to think of having another baby on the 15th.

Now I have three people born on the 15th which is a blessing too. I took castor oil and we were decorating a live tree which we had never put up that early, and it was 13 below zero and he had to take me to the hospital then (Laughs), and boy, just in time.
Just like that she was here, an hour and a half from start to finish. That was a record for me. That’s the only one I ever did that way. So, we named her Mary Dianne. Bill wanted Dianne and I wanted Mary and Dianne Mary didn’t sound right because I have Mary’s name in all the names. Hers is Beth Anne, which is after our blessed mother.

Anne was our blessed mother’s mother and let’s see…Debbie is Deborah Marie, so this was Mary Dianne. That was okay because that’s on the birth certificate and on the Baptismal certificate, but we call her Dianne.

So, we had a nice house in Bellefontaine, first we had an apartment and then we went to a two-story. Let’s see, then came Billy. About this time we were starting to take temperatures and practice rhythm.

Well, actually it definitely worked for Christopher, or John, because I was starting through my change and I didn’t realize that. You were supposed to – well, you know? Or do you know about rhythm?

Well, you are supposed to have nothing to do with the person until the temperature has risen and stayed up for three days in a row. So, I wore my flannel gowns and folded diapers while he went to sleep, see? (Laughter)

Well, he was tired because he was in the grocery store business and so, anyhow, a couple times I found out that we would have love and then it would go down and then back up. Oops! It’s the double ovulation.

Then a couple times it just simply didn’t work. When the last ones came along because I would go – yeah, the cycle was thrown off. Billy was born on the 18th of October 1962 and he was named William Luke because he was born on the Feast of Saint Luke and he was a doctor.

Okay, so then, I got him baptized and two years later come along Sharon, right? By this time we lived at a house a block from the church. Is it Sandusky Road? No, now I can’t think of it, but it was a block from Saint Patrick’s Church and it was a one-story house.

There’s a couple interesting things there. So, Sharon was born. That time we got a snow and the neighbors had to keep coming and shoveling me out because I was due.

Sharon was born on Debbie’s birthday, seven years later, and she came home from staying with a lady one day – the day I was supposed to go – she said, “What are you doing here? Why haven’t I got a baby sister yet?” Debbie did! (Laughter)

Anyhow, that’s how that started. When Billy was little and he lived there one of you kids took him for a ride on the back of a bike and he got his foot heel caught in the spokes.

We went to the emergency room and they fixed it all up and they said, “Now you’ve got to soak it in cold water.” He was about two and I put him the swimming pool outside and he didn’t like the cold water so he stuck the other foot in and he wouldn’t put the (Laughter)! Oh, he was ornery.

He had so many sore throats and felt so bad all the time that he would cry and then he would hold his breath and pass out. Oh my! So, one time when we had Dianne’s tonsils out and his at the same time, and he never did that after that.

Their appetites increased and they never had sore throats, but he was crying in the hospital. At that time they didn’t let the mothers stay there, but I went down just in the foyer. I didn’t go all the way home. They put Billy in bed with Dianne and that was it.

They were in the same room so that worked and that was a good time down in Bellefontaine too. Then came right after Dianne. Billy and Sharon, then Dianne.

Billy and Sharon all took a walk one day when Bill came home from lunch from the grocery and the police called. They were down four blocks at the grocery store and Dianne had her doll carriage with her and they were taking a walk.

And let’s see, you went to Bellefontaine kindergarten didn’t you? You went to Bellefontaine Kindergarten, and was it you that did the crying or was it Debbie? I think it was Debbie because when Sharon cried to go to school I made her take Sharon to school and got her off.

So, anyhow, we go…to Andy. Andy is next, and by this time we moved back from Bellefontaine. We had rented the house out that we had bought, it was our first house, and we had three renters. One was fine two were terrible and now I understand why they didn’t want to rent to somebody with a bunch of kids. It was really just the housekeeping from one person was terrible. They painted the walls and never put a drop cloth and the hardwood floors had paint globs on it. I took the register out and put my hands down like this and brought out that much junk out of the register.

But anyhow, we moved back in there and then Andy came along and Billy had been – oh, he had been so cranky with colic. Well, I saw it coming with Andy and by this time they had a medicine for it! (Laughter) Thank heaven!

So, I tried to go to work at Christmas time. Andy would have been; he was born September 18th in ’65. We had moved back to Lima so I went Montgomery Ward’s which was in the mall at that time. I just worked for Christmas and I decided that wasn’t for me with all these kids at home. It was impossible.

So, when I got pregnant to have Andy – Oh, I forgot! Remember Miss Mary? We had just moved back and Bill had always used his vacation time for the first week I’d be home with a new baby. Well, he had not vacation because he went with a different company. Albers had sent him down there and then at Colonial from South Carolina had bought him out and they wanted him to transfer us to South Carolina and we wouldn’t go. So, he came back then with Kroger, and they opened a new store in Wapak. That’s short for Wapakoneta where Neil Armstrong is from.

Anyhow, and that’s probably also where Bill has his first incident of heart thing. We had a really bad storm on November 2nd and he insisted on going to work. He had a very high work ethic where he went to work come hell or high water.

Anyhow, he went down the highway to Wapak and he helped several cars out. He was the only one in the open store and then he came back and that’s when he had chest pains the first time.

He didn’t get in treatment for it though. I really think shoveling snow, pushing cars out of the ditch. I didn’t realize how bad the inheritance was in that line.

So, okay, so there it was that we were at that house and then he transferred to the Kroger store in the American Mall and Ronnie Klousing who he coached as a kid owned IK Distributors. They were distributors of food to every place around and he came in and Bill was a produce manager and said, “I want you to come work for me,” and he did, and then he spent the next 25 years over there working for him. So, at some point there then, how was it? We moved up on North Main Street didn’t we? In a big two-story house and Andy was born out there on Shawnee Boulevard, and then we moved up to Main Street and sure enough here comes another one. John! (Laughter)

Don’t ever get rid of your cribs and baby clothes! (Laughter) Because then when we had to move to Dover I did. I got rid of all of them and along came Christopher!

So, like I said, when I was walking the halls up at Saint Rita’s with the labor pains and Bill was walking with me one person, smart aleck, walked by and said, “Haven’t you ever heard of the rhythm method?”

We said, “Yeah we have, we are in perfect rhythm!” (Laughter) I’ll never forget that! So, Andy was a sweetie pie and anyhow these kids, the older ones played with them and helped me out.

By this time Bill, who came from a big family of nine, had taught us how to – I didn’t know how to get you kids to work! The first time you kids did dishes – that was in Bellefontaine – he said, “Go ahead and go to the dishes.”

I said Mike and Debbie were going to do dishes. They were four and five years old and he had them up on a chair with an apron around and I felt terrible! And Debbie still tells that she started doing dishes at that age. Her grandkids were helping her this weekend do dishes.

Main Street was really nice. We lived there about five years. The kids went down to Saint Gerard’s school. Billy, he’s the other one I had – no, it was John. I was pregnant for John then. He was the second to last. Then while that happened, remember the little girl down the street that got – what disease was it that she got and all you kids had to go have shots?

Everybody, cause you kids were all swimming…I know what it was! Was it three-day measles maybe? Yeah, because I had never had them and that’s the one that ruins babies if you’ve never had it. See, nowadays they have vaccines for all this. There’s no more worry about that! So, we took all of them in Dr. Pinkerton’s office and, God love him – we loved him. He was a Pinkerton and they don’t make doctors like that anymore.

He was wonderful, a wonderful man. When they were bugging me about paying he wrote across my chart, “Pay what she can, when she can,” so they quit bugging me.

I paid it! It took me only three years to pay Chris off and I tried to give him back but they wouldn’t take him! (Laughter) Anyhow, so we all went to the doctor’s office and got the shots.

They had to give me gamma globulin at that time; four of them! Oh! You know where! Because otherwise the baby might be wrong, and Billy wouldn’t sit still for it. He crawled under the chair. First he ran down the hall and they got him and he crawled under a chair. Dr. Pinkerton got on his hands and knees and got him under the chair.

Okay, we are going to go to Gomer know because that’s halfway between Lima and Delphos where Bill worked. It was a big two-story house and we just love it. It’s old; its 100 years old and the first five years the repairs we put in were all in the basement of course. Furnace, hot water tank, water softener; we’re out here in the country with a well and we had never lived in the country. It had a boiler and we never had a boiler, so the people up there in Gomer were very nice and they taught me how to do things too, because this was a different situation.

The kids loved it. They could go down the smaller ones, down the back alley to the Elita School but it was – well, it really was the Gomer school. It had been a high school and in ’69 it became part of Elita, so up to the sixth grade was there.

So the kids went there and we had many times we’d go down to plays. Bill would stay home with whoever was the baby and I would go down and see them. Trying to think…we had a lot of good times there, didn’t we? A lot of pictures…that’s where she was married. She wore my wedding gown.


I Meet Bob, Again

Bob’s brother died so we’d go to the funeral home cause he was my classmate. He was one of the seven boys in the class.

Then his next brother died and I didn’t get to the funeral home but I sent a note. I sing in the choir, and Bob’s house was close to the church.

I saw him out there with his golf club so I just stopped in and said, “How are you doing, Bob?”

Tithe next thing he called me for a date and he told me later he’d been going around the block looking at my house getting up enough courage! (Laughter) It was funny. He had never married, though.

He had never married so this was a whole new ballgame. That happened to be the day that my cousin, the sister of the one who’s coming from Florida, came up with my uncle Teddy who was about to die, and I had cooked a great big spaghetti dinner for lunch. They went and they said, “Now you be careful!” He took me to this nice restaurant and I said, “Oh I had a big dinner, all I want is a salad I think,” and he said, “Nothing like a good cheap date!” (Laughter)

We dated for five years, we rode around and had a ball, but sometimes he’d make me so mad and he did not understand about family. He came from a family of eight but he never had them so he never felt like a father. He never knew how you feel about your children, but he learned to love you all but he didn’t have the same feeling. So, we dated because I wanted him to know my kids. He had asked me three or four times and I really shocked him when I said yeah.

Before I said “yes,” though, I broke up with him a couple times.

We had a couple fights. I realized I was comparing him to Bill, and that’s the one thing I realized, first of all there will be nobody to take Bill’s place. His is separate. There is an empty hole there and so you can’t compare somebody to that person.

I was doing that but I didn’t fully realize I was. So then, I took him for what he was which was a good Catholic boy. He knew the same girls that I would have lunch with because we all graduated together. We had common background in the same city, and that was important because you have to talk to somebody. Like, I can talk to Beth about some things, but some things that happened like the tornado that went through in ’50, or how you felt when – well, of course those are the things you couldn’t talk about, was how I felt when – yeah, you could, walking on the moon? When you saw Armstrong walking on the moon.

I didn’t marry him until after Bill had been gone nine years. So, we were married in 2004 on her birthday and that’s when he became; the month before they put him on the oxygen.

I knew he had asthma at first and we just had a ball at first, you know, going around, and then one month before the wedding he had to go on the oxygen, the Advair wasn’t holding.

Still, we had a pretty good year, though the first six months I thought we’d kill each other. Later he told me the same thing. It was a big adjustment because I knew how to run a family and a house (Laughs) and he lived the bachelor’s life.

He didn’t know that when my daughter called and said, “Mom come,” that I was going to drop things and go. I’d have to tell him that before we get married you have to know that I am really involved in my children’s lives.