Feature Stories

Katie Sherrow

5/2/1921 - 4/18/2025

If Katie Sherrow, a genuine World War II Rosie the Riveter, had lived only 13 more days, she would have been 104 years old. I thought this remarkable woman would make it to at least 110. On her 100th birthday, Ray and I had planned a huge celebration with 120 guests and a performance by our friend Bob, an Elvis tribute artist and his band. Unfortunately, Covid prevented that. Several people have said they would like to read the booklet I wrote about her life for her Centennial Birthday so here it is.  Just click on the cover below to read the story of her adventurous sojourn on Earth.

To read Katie's booklet, please click on the cover.

To Be a Kansan

There was once a magazine in Wichita named Ks! which featured an article each month titled To Be a Kansan. Previous articles had featured Bob Dole and other famous Kansans but I figured I'd send an article even though I wasn't famous. It may have included the worst photo of me ever taken but I had a good excuse because I was smelling dead skunk. Ray and I had returned from as Vegas two days before to discover that a skunk had died somewhere under the front concrete porch and the house reeked of a decomposing skunk who had in his death throes apparently released a full load of skunk odorant. We sprayed the house with cans of air freshener which did nothing to erase, or even mask, the smell. In desperation we bought some very expensive liquid that we soaked into cotton balls and hid behind drapes and furniture that was supposed to magically remove the worst of odors. It didn't touch this odor. It was at that point that the Ks! editor called and said he was sending a photographer to Lawrence to take a photo of me. I told him that wasn't a good idea (and why) but he sent the photographer anyway and I learned it is hard for a photographer to take a photo while holding his nose.

Leo Beuerman story featured in Kansas City STAR Magazine

Survivors share a flood of memories

Marsha Henry Goff

Many of you may not remember this skyline with the mill and the box factory on the south side of the Kaw. Note how high the water is under the arches on the old bridge. I think it rose even higher. I believe our home at 528 Walnut was just a short distance east of where this photo was taken.

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Half of a century is a long time. In 50 years, photographs in scrapbooks fade and crack. But the memories of individuals who experienced the Flood of 1951 are as sharp and intact as photos snapped with today's most sophisticated camera. Their memories recount the stories of ordinary people who rose to the occasion in extraordinary ways: homeowners who rebuilt after losing everything and those who generously gave them shelter and assistance; frightened survivors who were rescued from the Kansas River's rising waters and boatmen who risked their own lives in the evacuation efforts; civilians who worked alongside National Guardsmen filling and stacking sandbags in the futile attempt to hold back the rising river. Everyone who lived through that flood has a story. These are only a few of them.

Fred Johnson kept an uneasy eye on the river Wednesday, July 11. He had a close view of it from his job at the city water plant, Third and Indiana streets. Fred said, "Although I was anxious to evacuate my family from my home at 524 Lincoln St., I couldn't leave work because I was the only employee who could row a boat and operate a crane." While his ability to operate the crane wasn't needed, his rowing skills were important because the area north of the Santa Fe Railroad tracks, normally dry, was flooded and accessible only by boat. "Major Hagar, the water superintendent, told me if I'd stay until the work was done, they'd all help me move my family and belongings."

Meanwhile, Marguerite Johnson, at home with the couple's three children, the youngest only a week old, nervously awaited her husband's return. At 11 p.m., with work completed, Hagar, leading Fred's fellow employees, followed him to his home. "I'll bet we had 10 pickups over there," Fred recalled in wide-eyed wonder. "Still, we got everything out with little time to spare."

The next day, with the dike breached and water pouring into North Lawrence, Fred headed to the potato dock, between Fifth and Sixth streets. The dock was along the Union Pacific tracks, where he had moved his cow and calf to safety. "As I was feeding them, I could see the water from the railroad tracks — it looked like the first wave was 3 or 4 feet high — come all around my house. It got up to the eaves and then I left. I didn't think there would be a house there after the flood."

By the time the flood reached its crest on Friday, July 13, only 14 inches of his home's roof remained above water. Surveying the damage after the waters retreated, Fred noticed that the turbulent waters had behaved in the capricious manner of tornadoes: "I had a well with an electric pump that was bolted down to cement with a sort of doghouse over it to protect it. It washed it all away, but left a coal bucket that had been sitting right beside it. The flood did some odd things." It took Fred working alone seven months to make four rooms of his house habitable for his family. "Then it took me two years to fix the other three rooms. I had other things I had to do."

Tom Burns awoke on the morning of July 12 to Arden Booth's excited voice on KLWN radio urging North Lawrence residents to "Get out, get out, the dike has broken!" Tom turned off the electricity and gas at his home at 321 Lyons St. and headed across the river to his parents' home on rural East 11th Street. Tom got their neighbor, George Sizer, first to take him to higher ground at 11th Street and Haskell Avenue. "When I came back, my mother was standing in the yard with her suitcase. She waded out into the water and jumped in the boat before I even got it stopped."

After seeing his parents to safety, Tom and his friends turned their attention to ferrying livestock to the sale barn on high ground to the west. "We put 14 shoats, one to a gunny sack, and tied them with baling wire with their heads sticking out." However, Tom was unwilling to trust a 500-pound Landrace sow in his boat. "Scrubby Corel, Phil Saunders and I drove her into a shed and shut the door after we put logs and anything else we could find in there for her to stand on. When I went over to feed her the next day, she was standing with her front feet on an old icebox to hold her head out of the water." When Tom next looked in on the sow, the water had receded to a few inches and he went to the barn loft and brought dry bales of straw into the shed. "The third day when I went over, there were 14 of the muddiest piglets you ever saw! And she raised all 14 of them."

Near the flood's peak, Tom attempted to take his boat to Eudora to check on a friend. He was stopped by a Coast Guard official, who questioned his boat's safety and told him that to venture downriver he must have a convoy of two boats with two lifejacketed men per boat. Bill Cox, who would later serve as Lawrence's police chief, earned Tom's gratitude when he declared, "If this man says the boat is safe, it's safe." Tom sans lifejacket proceeded toward Eudora, where he found his friend, Bill Saunders, sweeping water off the wood floors of his 4-year-old home. Saunders remained in his home, sweeping water, for the duration of the flood.

Tom Burns never attempted to count the people he evacuated. "I knew only a few of the people I took in my boat. Other boatmen and I circulated all over North Lawrence as the water rose, picking up people and taking them to Woodlawn School, where another boat would take them across the river." The evacuation effort was perilous because boatmen couldn't see hazards that lurked under the water. As example of those hazards, Tom cited Shave Mumford's Farmall tractor, which had broken down on Locust Street as he tried to drive it to safety. Only 6 inches of its exhaust stack above the water warned boatmen that the tractor was there.

As the waters slowly retreated, Tom operated his boat as a water taxi, transporting people over flooded areas to their homes so they could begin the arduous process of shoveling out mud and ruined possessions. One of those trips was to Tom's own home, still containing more than a foot of water, with Arden Booth as his passenger. "As Arden and I waded around in my house, we came upon one of my daughter's dolls floating in the muddy water. Arden reached down and picked it up. Its head fell off and tears just rolled down his cheeks."

In an interview several years ago, the late Eunice Smith described a flood experience harrowing enough to strike fear in the heart of every parent. Early in the morning on July 12, she was working at Safeway, 945 Mass., when the manager told her that the dike had broken upstream. She immediately headed to her home on Elm Street, where her two sons, ages 4 and 5, were with a baby sitter. Officials wouldn't allow her to drive across the bridge so she parked her car at the south end of the single bridge that then spanned the Kaw River and proceeded on foot to her home. Once there, however, getting her small children back across the bridge ahead of the flood posed a real problem, so she "flagged down a ride with a man driving a truckload of cattle out of North Lawrence."

Asleep at his rural home abutting the river in North Lawrence, Albert Shepard was awakened by an "ear-splitting gobbling" from the turkey farm 100 yards east of his house. He rushed out the door to view thousands of R.C. Jackman's turkeys floating down the river. Jackman, a well-known Lawrence resident with diverse business interests — among them WREN radio, Bowersock Dam, Jenny Wren Flour Mill and apple orchards — stood beside Albert, shrugged his shoulders and said, "There's nothing we can do but let them go." While some turkeys initially made it to the safety of trees along the river, after the flood only 500 turkeys remained from a flock of nearly 10,000.

In spite of Jackman's seemingly philosophical attitude, his grandson, Charles Jackman of rural Baldwin, said, "Losing those turkeys absolutely broke his heart. My grandfather loved those turkeys." Albert, who the previous day had been working for Wakarusa Township in the Lakeview area when it flooded and "relieved some of the pressure on downstream areas," realized there was no hope of saving his home when he saw a "tidal wave" of water coming at it from two directions.

Astride his horse, which swam part of the way, Albert headed for his father's home at 842 Elm St. to wake him and tell him to evacuate. The elder Shepard wasn't worried. "Everything will be all right," he said to his son. But within 20 minutes, water filled Wesley Shepard's driveway and the two men began moving four truckloads of livestock to safety across the river. During the process, the water rose so quickly that it reached the truck's fan belt and the men switched to using a large tractor to do the hauling. Albert said, "I remember that on the next-to-last trip across the bridge, a little cafe under a big tree was still there. On our last trip, both the cafe and tree were gone, washed down the river."

One minute Barbara Crews' husband, Ray, was standing in the middle of Third and Lyons streets talking to her brother-in-law, Hugh Randall, and the next minute both men had retreated to their respective corner properties and were yelling to each other across the flooded street. Barbara Crews and Blossom Randall are sisters whose parents, A.B. and Sally Ewing, lived on the northwest corner of the intersection. A.B. Ewing was a child in 1903 when a flood devastated North Lawrence, so he purposely built his elegant home at an elevation he believed to be 3 feet above the level of the 1903 flood.Consequently, his daughters thought they would be safe in their parents' house, which was stockpiled with food.

Barbara Crews and her infant son, Chip, crossed Lyons Street to her parents' house in a rowboat escorted by two men walking on either side. Within a couple of hours, however, it became clear that their refuge was an illusion and the Crews family, along with nephew Steve Randall, were evacuated by Gib Francis. "Ray tried to take Chip, but I wouldn't let him have him. Later, I thought if we'd been thrown out of the boat, he would have been much safer in his father's arms. I guess I was just being a mother," Barbara explained. "Each time the boat crossed an intersection, the current spun it around in circles. It was very, very scary!" The Ewings, still confident that their home was high enough to avoid flooding, stayed put. But the river peaked 3.42 feet above the 27-foot level reached in 1903, forcing the couple's evacuation by Navy launch (the water was too swift for a less powerful boat) later that afternoon.

Barbara still marvels at the generosity of a group of Lawrence physicians. While staying with friends across the river, Chip became ill and was treated for strep throat by Dr. Helen Gilles. Barbara said, "Later we received a letter from the doctors in that practice — Dr. Mary Boyden, Dr. Gilles, Dr. Richard Hermes and Dr. Raymond Schwegler — which said they were not charging for any treatment they gave to flood victims. I know one woman who gave birth and wasn't charged." At a time when few people had health insurance, and many had lost everything in the muddy waters, the doctors' benevolence remains a bright spot in Barbara Crews' otherwise dark memories of the flood.

George Francis said his late father Gib Francis, the well-liked businessman and sportsman who rescued the Crews family and so many others, accomplished those rescues in the boat he used for lake fishing. George said, "It really wasn't equipped to deal with swift river currents. And I'll bet he didn't even have on a life jacket!" George likely would have been helping his father in the rescue operation had he not been on duty with his National Guard unit. Guardsman and civilians worked tirelessly, side-by-side, day and night, filling and stacking sandbags in an effort to keep the river from breaking through the dike. To provide illumination for the workers, some portions of the dike were lined with the town's Christmas lights. George, who was stationed northwest of the city at the farthest end of the dike, realized something was amiss when he looked to town and saw no lights along the dike. We still had our generator-driven lights, but the river had broken through the dike east of us, and no one came to tell us," George said. "When we realized it, we just got in our trucks and took off."

Darlene Musick of Eudora said the 1951 flood, which destroyed her home at 801 Lake in North Lawrence, made her vow to "never live where it could flood." Darlene, her mother and siblings drove out by car the night before the dike ruptured, while her father, Harry Workman, walked out leading their cow to Harley Davenport's high ground one block south. It took "some persuasion" the next day for officials to allow
Harry Workman, accompanied by his son-in-law, Dave Farrier, to return by boat to the second-story windows of his home to rescue the cat and retrieve his hunting rifles and shotguns.

The family had moved everything they could carry upstairs, believing the water wouldn't rise so high. They were wrong; water in their home's second story reached a level of 2 feet. After the waters withdrew, the Workmans were left with the daunting task of shoveling out mud that reached to the doorknobs on the first floor. "It was like shoveling glue," Darlene remembered, "and it smelled terrible!" For months, the family lived in a south Lawrence apartment, while Harry and Melva Workman put in a full day at their jobs and spent the rest of their time gutting and rebuilding their ruined home through the aid of a low-interest government disaster loan. Decades later, Darlene asked her mother why they rebuilt: "Why didn't we just leave?" Her mother, Melva Workman replied, "When that's your home and everything you have is invested in it, you don't have a choice. You have to clean it up and rebuild."

Westvaco, now Astaris (but better known as FMC), had been in operation at Ninth and Maple streets for only a month when it was inundated by floodwaters. For Bob Snow, who had quit his job as a Lawrence firefighter to go to work for Westvaco, the situation could hardly be worse: "My job was underwater and so was my home." Snow, an energetic 80-year-old who still rides his bicycle 9 miles each evening, lives in the same home at 876 Oak St. He evacuated his wife, two children and his mother, then went back for his father. Though blind and unable to walk, Snow's father was reluctant to leave his small home just east of his son's. Finally, Snow called Rumsey's Funeral Home — at that time mortuaries provided the city with ambulance service — and asked them to evacuate his father. Snow followed the ambulance in his 1948 International truck and was alarmed when he thought the water crossing Elm at Third would wash the ambulance into the river. It didn't.

The next day, Snow and his friend, Dean Cain, put a boat into the river at the paper company (then at Sixth and New Hampshire streets). Equipped with a 5-horsepower Mercury motor, the two friends and a passenger "wanting a ride across the river" started across the raging torrent to Snow's property. Snow said, "About halfway over, a piece of debris sheared off the propeller pin and I had to row the rest of the way. We held onto the willows at the back of my land and used a piece of welding rod to replace the pin. I don't think our passenger even took a breath until we got going again."

The flood did bring Snow a good surprise. Even though many employees couldn't report to work, Westvaco kept all employees on its payroll. Inside the plant, the damage was substantial and required 50 electricians working around the clock to make repairs. Snow laughed when he recalled an incident during the cleanup when his brother, riding with him, asked Snow to stop his truck and allow him to wash his boots off in a puddle in the road. "He stepped into the puddle and disappeared. Then his hat floated to the top." His brother had stepped into a 10-foot hole that that been washed out by floodwaters. "We were lucky," Snow said with a wry grin, "that we hadn't driven into it." Also ingrained in Snow's memory: "I went into Dean Cain's barn, where I had stacked some hay. Someone had piled their furniture on top of the hay in an effort to save it, but lying on this very fancy sofa was a 400-pound sow. I'll never forget that sight!"

Delores Hubach of McLouth said her family— the Dunns — lost almost everything in the flood except for copies of the Journal-World newspapers from that time. (The paper was then called the Lawrence Daily Journal-World). Although 13-year-old Delores and her younger sister, Janet, helped their mother, Corene, carry possessions upstairs, much remained below because their father was sandbagging on the dike and at the paper company, where he was employed. Delores' father, Paul Dunn, did find time to move the washer, on which he laid the rolled-up living room rug, from the basement to the dining room. But the water rose to the middle of the first-story windows, destroying everything on that floor.

In her haste to evacuate, Corene Dunn forgot her overnight bag, in which she had packed insurance policies, marriage certificate and other treasures. When her husband returned by boat to check the house, he found a mattress floating with the bag still on it. "The special things she had attempted to save were all muddy and wet," Delores said ruefully, "but they were still readable. That was a miracle in itself." She credited her father's co-workers for encouraging him to rebuild his home at 742 North Fifth St. instead of abandoning it.

The north side of the house, "about to cave in," was reinforced with steel rods. The powerful current carved a hole "deep enough for a dump truck" in their driveway and the street in front of it. "We fished in there," she said, "and caught some, too! "There was a lot of help and love from the community at that time," recalled Delores, who suffers no lasting emotional effects from her flood experience. Janet apparently was not so
fortunate: "My sister, to this day, will not go on water, boat or anything like that, she was so traumatized."

High and dry on her farm west of Lawrence (land currently being developed as the Reserve at Alvamar), Christina Goff had no worries about the safety of her own small family as the river that bisected the city rose higher and higher. But she was so concerned about the safety of her mother and sister, Lillian and Jeanetta Fowler, who lived on Grant Street north of the Union Pacific tracks, that she sent her husband, Raymond, to bring them to the farm.
Before the Goffs knew it, their small home sheltered 20 people, their own family of four and an additional 16 family members and friends who fled the floodwaters. "You could hardly walk through the house without stepping on someone sleeping on a pallet on the floor," my mother-in-law remembered, "and we had to eat in shifts." Adding to the problem was the fact that the family's water supply was stored in a small cistern, meaning there was no indoor plumbing.

Writing about others' flood experiences brought my own hazy childhood memories of the 1951 flood into vivid reality. Our home on Walnut Street stood on a long stretch of land that stepped down three levels and ended at the river, which I still tend to call the Kaw. It was a great place to grow up and, while my sisters and I were not allowed to go to the river unattended, when accompanied by our parents, we frequently enjoyed playing and picnicking on the fine white sand that formed the river's banks.

In the five years we lived there prior to the flood, we had never seen the Kaw's savage character. On one of the many rainy days that preceded the flood, I was sprawled on the couch reading the latest Wonder Woman comic when Dad, a city commissioner, answered the phone. As the East Lawrence woman began speaking, he prudently held the phone inches away from his ear, allowing me to hear both sides of their conversation. "Stop the rain," she screamed. "Stop the rain now! It's flooding the alley and killing my chickens!" Never long at a loss for words, my father, Lew Henry, hesitated only seconds before replying, "Madam, if you have that sort of power with the Almighty, I wish you'd exercise it. He's apparently not listening to me."

The rain continued, more chickens died and the water rose higher. As cautious North Lawrence residents began to evacuate the area, my mother, June Henry, refused to consider the idea. Because Mom has been terrified of water since childhood — the result of the preacher who baptized her in the Cimarron River losing his balance and almost drowning both her and himself — it seems she would have been among the first to leave. She recently answered my question about her reluctance to evacuate by explaining, "I really didn't think it would get that bad."

On the night of July 11, Mom stood at the back door and listened to the angry roar of water and the curious popping and splashing sounds she couldn't identify. "The force of the water is breaking off those big cottonwood trees," Dad said, "that's the pop, the splash is them falling in the river." That convinced her! Mom. Dad, Vicki and I took advantage of Charles and Julie Stough's offer to share their home. Sisters Lesta and Bette stayed with Dr. James Mott, the county's chief health official, and his wife.

We were fortunate that floodwaters never reached our home, and although Dad and a couple of his fellow commissioners had taken the precaution of carrying Mom's new automatic washer out of the basement, scratching it and tearing off a piece of chrome in the process, our basement remained dry while the Stoughs' basement on south Vermont Street eventually held 3 feet of water.

In spite of its proximity to the river, our land was the highest ground in North Lawrence. Floodwaters raced back to the river a half block to the west and a block to the east, cutting deep holes in Walnut Street. The American Red Cross set up a kitchen for cleanup workers on land immediately west of us and animals, both wild and stock, made their way to our dry yard providing one unexpected bonus, according to Dad: "I never grew bigger roses!"

Because of the protection presently offered by reservoirs and levees, Lawrence will be unlikely to ever again experience an inundation as severe as the Flood of 1951. And while the memories of individuals who endured that flood supplied this article with compelling stories of heroism, compassion, humor and dogged determination, everyone wishes the crisis that produced those stories could have been averted. Of all the adjectives — tragic, catastrophic, destructive — that can be used to describe the flood, one that cannot be used, at least in human terms, is deadly. Not a single human life was lost locally in the devastating Flood of 1951.

Countdown to Understanding and Love

     The doctor sat with us in the intensive care waiting room using a magazine article to describe the operation he would perform the next day to remove a massive tumor from my father’s brain. His huge forefinger pointed to a drawing and I remember thinking that his hands were much too large to do such delicate surgery. In fact, his overall appearance gave me the impression of a pro-football player rather than the prominent highly-respected neurosurgeon that he was.
     But his attitude toward his work inspired confidence in his skill. “There’s nothing so difficult about brain surgery,” he said. “Any mechanic who can take an engine apart and put it back together again could do it.”
     My three sisters and I desperately needed reassurance on that Tuesday in early October, 1973. Dad — critically ill, unconscious and partially paralyzed — was in the Intensive Care Unit of a large Topeka, Kansas, hospital. Mom, seriously but not critically ill, was a patient on the same floor of the same hospital. The double calamity had struck us so fast and unexpectedly that we were still reeling from the blow.
     Dad had been admitted to the hospital on the previous Saturday after a brief bout with the flu. The tentative diagnosis was viral encephalitis, but on Monday tests revealed the brain tumor. Mom — also a flu victim — had just been admitted; the horror of Dad’s ailment had so unnerved her in her physically-weakened condition that she was very ill indeed.
     The drive to the hospital on the day of Dad’s surgery was a quiet one. I was lost in thought. It seemed inconceivable to me that Dad should have something wrong with the remarkable brain which had served him so well in his legal and political careers. The malady, I felt, was comparable to an athlete losing his legs or a diva her voice. It’s just not fair, I thought to myself, he’s only 56.
     Two of my sisters met my husband Ray and me in the hospital lobby with good news. Dad was conscious for the first time since his admission to the hospital. The doctor had spoken to him earlier that morning and explained to him the necessity of operating to remove the tumor.
     Although still suffering from partial paralysis, Dad was alert, only occasionally groping for words that eluded him. Each of us spoke with him briefly and only to me did he mention the possibility that he might not recover. “I’m beginning to think this might be it,” he said. “It seems impossible ….”
     And then Mother was wheeled into the room and Dad exerted all his energy toward amusing her and calming her fears. His last words to her were in the form of a tender, private joke — delivered in his best dryly teasing manner.
     The surgery was long — an eternity of waiting outside the operating room. All of us were painfully aware of the doctor’s last remark which warned that seventy percent of all brain tumors are malignant and that if malignant, the chance of recovery is slim because a malignancy elsewhere in the body is almost a certainty. Our 84-year-old grandmother was with us in the waiting room while Mom was forced to remain in her hospital room. Grams was a nurse who had trained in a Victorian hospital and Dad was her only child.
     After three and a half hours, a nurse came out of the operating room and announced, “The doctor sent me to tell you he has reached the tumor and it will be about two more hours before surgery is complete.”
     Exactly two hours later, the doctor emerged, “He’ll be damn lucky if he makes it,” he said and, plainly hating his prognosis, he turned away from us and started walking quickly down the hall. I followed and caught him waiting for the elevator.
     “Doctor, was the tumor malignant?”
     Although obviously exhausted, he appeared to choose his words carefully: “The tumor wasn’t cancerous, but it was malignant in the sense of location.”
     I had to be content with those few words because the elevator door opened and he gratefully stepped inside.
     Dad surprised everyone but his family by making it through the night. By morning he was swallowing, a voluntary action and a good sign according to the doctor, but he had not regained consciousness.
     His breathing was monitored by a respirator — an awesome machine with three blinking lights. We soon learned to appreciate the amber light which showed that Dad was assisting the machine. But after thirty-six hours the green light blinked alone indicating that Dad has ceased breathing; the machine was keeping him alive, although the doctor was quick to assure us that Dad would again breathe unassisted if only he would awaken. The third light was red and warned of trouble with the respirator. I panicked the first time the red light flashed, but later we all learned that a simple tap on the bellows would restart the machine.
     The day following his surgery, we were allowed to see Dad for five minutes every two hours, but by evening all rules were waived and the doctor suggested someone talk to Dad constantly. Hearing, he explained, is one of the last senses to leave and he believed that, although comatose, Dad might be able to hear us. So we talked to Dad about anything and everything, about Mom, naturally, and the family, but also about the weather and current events. I remember telling him with as much excitement as I could force into me voice, “Dad, Spiro Agnew has just resigned!”
     Dad and I had recently read and loved Richard Bach’s book titled Jonathon Livingston Seagull. The book had a lasting impact on Dad and me and we had spent many hours debating its true meaning. Mom and Ray had also read the book, but to their realistic way of thinking, the idea of a seagull having profound thoughts bordered on the ridiculous. During my time in ICU with Dad, I quoted parts from the book over and over, urging him to emulate Jonathon: to not give up, to keep on trying to wake up, to live.
     The doctor said that any person or any word might strike a responsive chord in Dad. Besides our native English, Dad spoke fluent German, French and Italian as well as a smattering of Hebrew and Arabic, while I have only a limited Spanish vocabulary. So I tried all the French and German phrases I knew, reasoning that if English was lost to him, perhaps he would respond to another language.
     “Comment allez-vous?” (How are you?) I asked repeatedly in French. The longest German phrase I knew requests a pencil. I often thought, even as I spoke it that any German-speaking individual who witnessed the scene would have been appalled at me bending over the bed of a critically ill man to badger him for a pencil.
     Humor, we found, has an important part even in the most tragic experiences of life. Great anxiety and deep despair are emotions which can be sustained only for a limited time. Then their spell must be broken by laughter — even if that laughter approaches hysteria.
     One evening, my sisters, a brother-in-law and I escaped the ham salad sandwiches and chili of the hospital cafeteria and set off for a nearby restaurant. When we had driven several blocks, an ambulance, lights flashing, screamed by on its way to the hospital. “Quick, turn around! Follow that ambulance!” ordered my youngest sister. “The way our luck has been running, it’s probably carrying a relative.” We laughed much longer and louder that the grim joke warranted.
     While humor played its part in our experience, prayer played a bigger part. We often visited the hospital chapel to pray for Dad’s recovery. But our prayers were not confined to the chapel. Those of us to whom prayer had become ritual — an adult version of “Now I lay me down to sleep” — learned to commune with God while working with Dad, washing our hands, eating or trying to catch a few minutes rest, proving the truth of Victor Hugo’s words that “there are moments when, whatever be the posture of the body, the soul is on its knees.”
     About halfway through our hospital vigil, I tended to lose track of time. But I have vivid memories of a mixture of unaccustomed sounds, sights, smells and textures: the hiss-gasp of the respirator, the disembodied monotone voice paging doctors over the intercom, white-garbed nurses floating through the halls on ripple-soles, seemingly endless miles of plastic tubing, the slightly acrid odor of antiseptic and harsh soap, the spicy smell of cafeteria chili, the fuzzy nap of the waiting room carpet on which we slept, the hard floor beneath it and, most unfamiliar of all — the feel of Dad’s hand when I held it, baby-soft, relaxed and totally unresponsive.
     Looking back now, I am aware of unusually moving incidents that, at the time, I accepted as routine. I remember our minister fervently praying that Dad would regain consciousness and then — as if helping God along — sharply slapping Dad’s hand, saying, “Wake up! Wake up!”
     Dad’s boyhood friend, now a distinguished state senator, was reluctant to view Dad in his unconscious condition until we told him the doctor said any person’s voice might evoke a response from Dad. Then he approached Dad’s bed, grasped his hand and said, “Lew, I’m thinking of the day you came to my office and said, ‘It’s such a beautiful day, let’s take a short flight.’ And we went up in your plane and flew for hours. It is one of the most cherished experiences of my life.”
     He could not say more because by that time he was crying. Although he managed to compose himself before visiting Mom in her room, he was again overcome by tears when we walked with him to the elevator. Before the closing door blocked our view we noticed his big yellow felt sunflower nametag shaking with the force of his sobs as he stood weeping unashamedly in a circle of frankly curious people.
     One afternoon when Grams and I were with Dad, I looked up and was startled to see a large black lady attired in a wild print muumuu standing in the doorway. Her broad-featured, badly scarred face regarded us impassively, “I came,” she announced in stentorian tones, “to pray for him.”
Afraid she would pray in a much-too-loud voice in ICU, I offered to accompany her to the chapel. “I can pray here,” she said and bowed her head. After a long time, she said, “I’m done” and departed as silently as she prayed. We never learned who she was.
     My sisters and I, exhausted by emotion and lack of sleep, nightly spent alternating two-hour shifts with Dad. But Grams, sitting in a comfortable chair provided by concerned nurses, stayed all night every night, holding Dad’s hand and praying. It was Grams, by her nurse’s training or mother’s instinct, who knew — almost as soon as the doctor — that the only life she had brought forth was ebbing.
     I don’t know if, as often said, that a dying person’s life flashes before their eyes — but I do know that when someone you love is dying pieces of their life flash though your mind. Thoughts of Dad came unbidden to my mind. Dad the daredevil at 50 years of age achieving his goal of riding a Brahma bull on hot summer day in Abilene; Dad the doting grandfather taking our sons on delightful and instructive nature hikes; Dad the protective father driving eleven miles to our home at 2:00 a.m. one night when Ray was away and I thought I heard a prowler; Dad the idealistic attorney, risking a contempt of court citation trying to prove the innocence of a client.
     I relived a long ago scene of Dad weeping about the World War II exploits that won him the Silver Star and Croix de Guerre (the only time I ever saw him cry). And, frightening me with the frequency of the recollection, I remembered Dad relating his extraordinary experience of watching a star shoot Heavenward after the death of his father. My eyes saw my father’s unknowing, unmoving form on the hospital bed, but my heart and mind saw Dad alive and well, loving and loved, intensely proud of his family, curious about everything, living life and loving it.
     Eight days after Dad’s operation, Mom — who had visited Dad twice daily in a wheelchair — underwent bladder surgery. Early that same evening, my father died without ever regaining consciousness. I was with him. My fingers were on his wrist taking his pulse when his heart stopped. I called the nurse. She checked Dad and rushed out of the room to call the doctor. I leaned over Dad and whispered: “I’m going outside, Daddy, to look for a shooting star.”
     I didn’t, of course, because too many things had to be done: I talked to the doctor, helped make necessary arrangements and accepted the condolences of hospital staff, patients and visitors. I also accompanied the nursing supervisor to tell my mother. It was the hardest thing I had ever had to do.
     Later, much later, that evening, when all the calls had been made and Mother was tranquilized into oblivion, Ray and I were on the turnpike driving home. The sky was like a black velvet backdrop studded with rhinestone stars. One star tore loose from its place and streaked across the sky — not falling to Earth and burning out, but seeming to ascend as might a satellite pulling out of earthly orbit.
     I watched the star grow larger through a blur of sudden tears. Then I understood that Dad was embarking on his greatest adventure and I must accept and let him go. Perfect and unlimited at last, he was — like Jonathon Livingston Seagull — ready to fly up and know the meaning of understanding and love.

Age and Dementia (they’re not the same thing)

Marsha Henry Goff

We have heard a lot of talk about age and dementia lately. People often refer to age when what they really mean is dementia. Those words refer to two different conditions. Just because your birthdays are rolling around does not mean you will get any of the many types of dementia. In fact, the likelihood is that you will never suffer from dementia.
According to the National Institute of Health, these are the types of dementia:

• Alzheimer’s disease, the most common dementia diagnosis among older adults. It is caused by changes in the brain, including abnormal buildups of proteins known as amyloid plaques and tau tangles.
• Frontotemporal dementia, a rare form of dementia that tends to occur in people younger than 60. It is associated with abnormal amounts or forms of the proteins tau and TDP-43.
• Lewy body dementia, a form of dementia caused by abnormal deposits of the protein alpha-synuclein, called Lewy bodies.
• Vascular dementia, a form of dementia caused by conditions that damage blood vessels in the brain or interrupt the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain.
• Mixed dementia, a combination of two or more types of dementia. For example, through autopsy studies involving older adults who had dementia, researchers have identified that many people had a combination of brain changes associated with different forms of dementia.

As we age, it is easy to worry that something is wrong when we forget a name or a word or do something silly like having our glasses on top of our head and looking all over the house for them. About 20 years ago, I made a four-quart batch of potato soup expecting it to last three meals, but I could not find it after the first meal. Normally, I placed it in the refrigerator but I was distracted when cleaning up and had to throw it out when I found it in the lazy Susan cabinet where I kept my Corning cookware.

And I once wrote in my Jest for Grins humor column that, at the age of 15, I went into the kitchen to get a cookie. I took the gum out of my mouth to eat the cookie, then threw the cookie in the trash can and put the gum back in my mouth. Things like that are funny when you are 15, but seem a bit sinister when you are a senior.

The Population Research Bureau (PRB) is a long-term partner of the US Census Bureau that collects and supplies statistics for research and/or academic purposes on the environment, health and structure of populations. According to its research, the proportion of adults ages 70 and older with dementia declined from 13% in 2011 to 10% in 2019.

Only 3% of adults ages 70 to 74 had dementia in 2019, meaning 97% did not. I have not found statistics for people 75 to 84, but PRB says that 22% of people 85 to 89 have dementia (78% do not) as do 33% of people 90 and older (67% do not). But here is what I wonder: the older one gets, the likelihood is that they are taking prescription medicines. I am not a doctor but I have observed how medication can affect a person’s cognitive skills and many medications caution about driving while taking them. Can some people diagnosed with dementia actually be taking too many medications? A word of caution: If you have questions or concerns about your medications, do not stop taking any medicine without first talking with your doctor.

My friend Jane’s mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and was placed by her doctor on the medication Aricept. When her condition became worse, instead of assuming it was the progression of the disease, Jane took her mother to a geriatrician at KU Medical Center who took her off Aricept and much of the medication she was taking and her cognitive skills improved. Jane’s mother was over-medicated.

My husband seriously reacted to an over-the-counter medication so do not assume that a medication is safe just because it is non-prescription. When Ray’s thought processes became loopy and he became highly agitated, it was scary to both of us, I did not know that a nurse had given him samples of 12-hour Mucinex during our 2014 annual physicals and neither of us had read of the following rare neurological and psychiatric side-effects:  headache, dizziness, tremor, excitability, irritability, tolerance and dependence (with prolonged pseudoephedrine administration), anxiety, restlessness, insomnia, hallucinations (particularly in children), paranoid delusions and sleep disturbance.

See why it was scary? He didn’t have all of those symptoms, but he had enough of them that we knew something was radically wrong. It was Ray who finally realized what was causing the problem. It took several days for the drug to exit his system and he was fortunate that it was only a matter of days because some psychiatric side-effects can be long-term.

Ray’s reaction was apparently to the coating on the pill that made it extended because he was able to take regular Mucinex. His physician said that some people reacted to the coating ingredients as they would to cocaine. An online search does show that someone using cocaine can have similar neurological and psychiatric reactions. I cannot imagine why anyone would deliberately ingest anything that could cause such scary reactions.

Some types of dementia may have some of those symptoms and I wonder if a doctor who was unfamiliar with Ray would have diagnosed him with dementia. That is exactly why I wonder if some of those 85- to 100-year-olds who are in the 22% or 33% of people those ages who are diagnosed with dementia may instead be having reactions to their medication. It is possible. Again, do not stop taking any medications without consulting your doctor.

I am fortunate that my long-lived forebears were excellent aging role models. Read the tombstones in the Henry cemetery plot and the ages are 91, 95, 97, 98, 104 and in the Shellhammer plot, 87, 92, 94, 95 … you get the picture. Not one of them had dementia.
My Grandfather Jake Shellhammer enjoyed grafting different fruits onto the same tree, A school teacher, he taught me cursive writing, making me use a big nail to form the letters so I wouldn’t waste ink. He died the day after his 92nd birthday, but not before he walked many blocks down to the post office of his small Oklahoma town to retrieve his mail and return home where he lay down for a nap before lunch and, as the preacher at his funeral said, “woke up with the angels.”

I had my Grandmother Ruth Henry the longest of all my grandparents. I was 41 when she died a few months before her 92nd birthday. Grams was as tough as nails. I snapped the accompanying picture of her on her 81st birthday as she demonstrated how to use the exercise wheel I had purchased for myself. I recently had a story about her titled “She did it herself” published in Mothers and Daughters, a Chicken Soup for the Soul book. Look for the notice on this page to see how you can win a free book and read about Grams’ “never grow old” exploits.

If you are someone who worries about getting dementia as you and/or a loved one grow older, I hope this article will relieve your mind about that concern. The odds that you will never be diagnosed with dementia are certainly in your favor.

My article about my brother-in-law Steve Julian's posthumous journey into space
recently appeared in Kaw Valley Senior Monthly.  ​

Steve Julian: Posthumous Astronaut
Marsha Henry Goff

When SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket was launched from Kennedy Space Center on May 22, 2012, its Dragon capsule carried supplies for the International Space Station, the first non-government vehicle to dock there. However, for many of the people who crowded Florida’s Jetty Park to watch the night launch, the second stage of the rocket carried a secondary but extremely precious cargo: vials containing the ashes of their loved ones which, with a successful launch, may orbit the earth for several years. One of those vials contained the cremains of  Steven Mark Julian, my brother-in-law.
            On October 4, 1957, a day after his 7th birthday, Steve was bitten by the space bug when Russia launched Sputnik. For the rest of his life, he was fascinated by space and continued to arrange his work schedule so he could watch televised launches long after they became routine for most Americans. Because he was watching the only network to televise live the launch of Challenger on January 28, 1986, he knew about and mourned the tragedy before some media outlets interrupted their scheduled programming with news that the rocket carrying the shuttle had exploded.
            Although his childhood dreams of becoming an astronaut were never realized, Steve’s life was full. During his high school and college years, he worked in a grocery store, advancing after graduation to night manager. He married the love of his life, my sister Vicki, and fathered two sons, Chris and Ryan. Our family was proud of Steve as he became an insurance agent and then a life insurance consultant assisting agents working for a brokerage company. After Steve’s death, his company established a highly coveted award that is given annually in his name.
            When Steve was diagnosed with a rare cancer in 2004, it was not long after extensive surgery before he returned to work and resumed his rigorous exercise schedule. He embraced Relay for Life and proudly walked the survivor’s lap. A medicine held the cancer in check for a year, but failed when the cancer mutated. As Steve and Vicki traveled from Houston to Chicago, chasing an elusive cure, it became obvious to Steve and all of us who loved him that he was in a battle he could not win.
            In palliative care, Steve spoke to Vicki of cremation and she immediately recalled their earlier conversation when the ashes of Gene

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Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, were sent into orbit in 1997. An Internet search located Celestis, the company responsible for launching into space Roddenberry, Timothy Leary and others, ​both famous and not. Vicki promised Steve that he posthumously would become the astronaut he always wished to be.
            After several launch delays resulting in canceled and rescheduled flights and hotel reservations, Vicki, her sons, daughter-in-law and my husband Ray and I flew to Florida for the launch which was expected to occur on May 19. Out on the jetty in the middle of the night, we watched across a wide expanse of ocean for the launch of the rocket which also carried the ashes of L. Gordon Cooper, one of America’s original Mercury 7 astronauts, and James Doohan, better known as Scotty on Star Trek. Excitement grew as we saw the light on the horizon grow brighter, knowing it resulted from the engines firing on the rocket. The countdown reached "Liftoff" but the rocket failed to rise. High pressure in one of the rocket’s engines caused the computer to shut down all engines and abort the launch. 
            Ray and I could not rearrange our schedules for a second launch attempt planned for May 22, but Vicki was determined to witness the fulfillment of her promise to Steve. While I watched the 3:44 a.m. launch on NASA’s website from our home in Lawrence, Vicki and her children were standing on the jetty. As the rocket carrying the ashes of 320 people, representing 18 countries, rose in the dark sky, Vicki, her promise kept, threw up her arm in triumph and shouted a fitting tribute for her native Kansan husband: "Ad astra, Steve!"

NASA photo of Space-X's Falcon 9 launch on June 22, 2012 (click on photo for larger image.)

Note: The second stage of the rocket carrying the ashes of Steve and many other souls orbited the Earth 576 times, about once every 90 minutes, before reentering Earth's atmosphere over the South China Sea at 10:22 p.m. CDT on June 26. Those interested in learning more about space memorials may do so by clicking HERE.
​

The following article appeared in the Fall 2011 issue of Amazing Aging

 The unlikely friendship that helped produce
an Oscar-nominated film
Marsha Henry Goff

Craig Weinaug writes a message to Leo, who is sitting in the wheeled cart from which he operated his watch repair business and sold pencils and other items.

 Charles            The long-ago friendship that developed between Leo Beuerman, a crippled dwarf, and Catherine Weinaug, a KU professor’s wife, was surprising to everyone except Catherine’s son, then a boy but now Douglas County Administrator Craig Weinaug. He says he was never surprised at anything his mother did. She had a strong, energetic faith and never shied away from recruiting others to help her move mountains.
            Leo was born on January 6, 1902. By age 10 he began to lose his hearing and by 28 he was deaf. At maturity, he stood 3 feet 3 inches tall and weighed 60 pounds. He invented devices — including a mini-elevator that helped him up and down the steps at his rural farm house near Lakeview — where he lived with his brother and sister.
            With the help of his nephew, Leo adapted an ancient tractor so he could drive to town and back, carrying the little cart from which he conducted his watch repair business and sold pencils and other items on the sidewalks of downtown Lawrence. Occasionally, he would stay in town all night, sleeping in his cart. One night as he was sleeping, he was pulled from his cart and brutally beaten and robbed. He suffered head cuts and other injuries and was hospitalized.
            When tender-hearted Catherine read of the attack, she sent flowers to Leo at the hospital, but felt she needed to do more. One day, learning he had been dismissed from the hospital, she followed vague directions given to her by a store clerk to find Leo’s home and visit with him. She was appalled that Leo transported himself about the two-room house on a small wheeled platform and slept leaning against a wooden orange crate. She conversed with him by writing notes on the pad he pressed into her hands.
            He was thrilled to have company and asked her, “Will you come again? Will you be my friend?”
            “Our friendship is just beginning,” Catherine answered and meant it. She enlisted help from her husband, Charles, and sons, Carl and Craig, as well as members of a Sunday School class of university students she taught. One Sunday, the Weinaugs took Leo to church where he sat between two students who wrote condensed versions of the pastor’s sermon for Leo. Then he went to the Weinaugs’ home for dinner.
            He had his first tub bath there. Charles lifted Leo into the tub and left him splashing with glee, while Catherine washed and dried his clothes.
           

“They were almost dry before Leo called Charles to help him out of the tub. I was beginning to fear he had drowned!”
            Leo emerged from his long soak with a big smile on his face and, according to Catherine “left enough dirt in the tub to plant flowers.” He ate dinner seated on three encyclopedias. And when he spent the night, sleeping upright while resting his back against an overstuffed chair instead of his orange crate, his earsplitting snores kept the Weinaugs awake and evoked howls from the family’s dog.
            Leo became a frequent visitor at the Weinaug home and one day Catherine mentioned to her neighbor, Russ Mosser, who was part-owner of Centron Films in Lawrence, that Leo’s story might make a good movie. She furnished Mosser with Leo’s autobiography, which she had encouraged him to write, and photos of Leo. Trudy Travis, a gifted writer who recently died at age 90, was assigned to write a script. She followed Leo, watching him struggle with chains to lower and raise his cart onto his tractor and seeing him interact with his customers, most of whom were children.
            “Leo Beuerman,” a 14-minute short documentary, was nominated for an Oscar in 1969. The film is still available on DVD and is often used as a motivational tool by businesses.
            Leo was totally blind during the last years of his life and friends communicated with him by writing on his back. He lived in a nursing home and helped support himself by making leather key chains and bead necklaces which were sold in local stores.
            A bronze plaque, sculpted by artist Jim Patti, sits in the sidewalk at the northeast corner of 8th and Massachusetts where Leo frequently sat in his cart. The wording on the plaque was objected to by some who believed the words represented a negative stereotypical view of handicapped persons. Leo’s friends argued that there was no shame in any form of honest labor and said the words were simply Leo’s way of identifying himself. The plaque features an image of Leo in his cart along with his words reproduced in his own handwriting: Remember me — I‘m the little man gone blind. I used to sell pencils on the street corner.
            Both Leo and Catherine are gone now, but neither will be forgotten by those who knew them and the story of their unlikely friendship. 

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The following article appeared in the Winter 2017 issue of Amazing Aging.

Jack Wright IS The Sage of Emporia
Marsha Henry Goff

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Photo of Jack Wright as "The Sage of Emporia" courtesy of Nick Krug.

            Jack Wright, KU professor emeritus of theatre and film, is one of those rare individuals who began the career he loves at the tender age of five. The child of working parents — his father taught piano lessons, his mother worked in retail — Jack was enrolled in Carl and Betty Curtiss’ School of Elocution and every Saturday he performed on their radio show, “Three Storytellers” where he, billed as Jackie Wright, was the youngest storyteller. He jokes that “I stayed five until I was ten.” The show was eventually syndicated and broadcast nationally.
            The Curtisses and Wright left the radio show to perform on television in a drama about a farm boy, played by Wright, who had polio. The Salk polio vaccine had not been invented and the disease “was a big deal in the 1950s,” explains Wright. The show aired weekly on a Cleveland, Ohio, television station. As a child actor, Wright obtained his equity card at quite a young age. He performed in civic theatres in two Ohio cities, Canton and Massillon, as well as in Canal Fulton Summer Theatre, a famous professional theatre.
            Due to school and his busy acting schedule, he greatly regrets that he did not continue piano lessons with his father. “I actually took about a year of piano with him, but I was on the radio at that time and he was very good, he didn’t push me and Mom didn't push me either, but she was more disappointed than Dad that I didn't take up the piano. My sister did; she’s quite an accomplished pianist. I didn’t stick with it long enough to know whether I was any good or not. My Mom always said that I would regret someday not being able to sit down with friends and play and that’s the single most thing I regret, that I go to a party where there’s a piano and I can’t sit down and play.”
            While a junior in high school, Wright entered a contest sponsored by the Ohio Council of Churches that required students to write original speeches. Wright’s “Puppets for Peace” speech won local, regional and state contests and he was awarded a four-year scholarship to his choice of the Ohio Council of Schools colleges. He selected Otterbein and it was serendipitous that Dr. Charles Dodrill supervised the theatre side of Otterbein’s Speech and Theatre Department because he, having graduated from KU, was later instrumental in encouraging Wright to write to KU for a graduate school fellowship which he was awarded: two years of teaching plus two years of writing his dissertation.
            In addition to his teaching duties at KU, during his tenure there Wright is credited with directing nearly 100 plays, many of which were
          

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musical theatre or Shakespeare productions. He retired from KU in 2010 and relishes the free time he has. “The best thing about retirement is the time you have. I can’t think of anything bad about it. I think what happened was I taught all day and had all those nights in rehearsal so you don't have any time to yourself. And I really missed that time in the evening.”
            He admits he misses contact with students which he says was always a highlight for him. “But,” he adds, “I keep connected as much as I can. I’m on the Friends of the Theatre advisory board, president of Friends of the Theatre and, being president, you sort of stay in touch with the students. So that helps and of course directing William Inge’s Picnic this past September put me in touch again with the current students so that was good. I really enjoyed that. So I keep my fingers in.”
            Indeed he does. Wright fills his free time in many constructive ways, but one of the most challenging and fun uses of his time is performing his one-man show, The Sage of Emporia by Henry C. Haskell, a playwright and long-time editor and columnist for the Kansas City Star. Wright was only 38 when Haskell visited him at KU with the script, saying he wanted KU to produce a play he had written about Emporia editor William Allen White. Wright agreed to read the script and Haskell asked if KU had a good faculty actor. Wright recommended Bill Kuhlke, but when the two men visited Kuhlke, who was very tall, Haskell said he wasn’t the right type, that White was a short man, chunky and chubby.
            Turning to Wright, Haskell asked, “Do you act?” Wright admitted he did, read the script that night and loved it. He agreed to perform the play for then KU Chancellor Budig’s Festival of the Arts. The problem was that the Festival was only three and a half weeks away and the play was two and a half hours long. He credits Judy, his wife of 37 years whom he met at a theatre convention in Chicago, with helping him memorize the lines.
            Opening night was attended by the daughter-in-law of William Allen White, a controversial and outspoken lady from New York, not known for her tact. When she approached Wright after the show, he was nervous, especially when she said she enjoyed the performance, but . . . The but scared Wright, however she simply said that White would never wear a cotton shirt and, when Wright explained that he went through a lot of shirts and cotton shirts were easy to launder, she offered to pay for silk shirts.
            That did not happen and Wright continued to wear cotton shirts; however, he also wore White’s glasses and bow ties and carried his briefcase which she loaned to him. He still uses them in his performances. A plus to today’s performances, he says, is that makeup does not take as long as it did when he was younger and lines had to be drawn on his face.
            The challenge of a one-man show, he says, is that “if you get in trouble, you have to get out of it or it’s a long night.” He tried to avoid memory blocks by scattering what he terms “cheat sheets” around the set, but only used them one night because “the problem is when you are under that pressure and you pick up the cheat sheet, are you at the right one?”
            He finds it better to adlib until his brain “settles down” and “usually I can talk my way out of it. There’s a lot of pressure to do a one-man show, but it’s fun, too. I like the satisfaction that I’ve accomplished something.”
            Wright has performed The Sage of Emporia throughout the United States to rave reviews. Should he bring his show to a theatre near you, regard it as your ticket to an evening of exceptional entertainment.
 
 

Korean War veteran John Studdard revisits Korea
Marsha Henry Goff

John Studdard had to be talked into going back to Korea, but he is so glad he did.

            John Studdard, Lawrence, was a young US Army private of 21 when he arrived in Korea in January, 1953. Stationed at Suwon Air Base, about 30 miles from Seoul, John manned anti-aircraft artillery and also served as clerk and radio operator in weather that was often 30, 40 and 50 degrees below zero. Although the war was still being fought, John, now an ordained RLDS minister, is grateful that he “was not shot at” and that he “never killed anyone.”
            That happy circumstance, he explains, “is because by that time we had air superiority. We dominated the skies.” He modestly describes his role during the Korean War (officially termed a conflict) as support for those combat troops who were being shot at in fierce battles. “For every soldier in combat, there are up to nine or ten people backing him up.”
            When John left Korea in 1954, the war was over and most of South Korea, particularly Seoul, was in shambles. Partly because of that memory, when his friend Jim Bradley told him at an American Legion meeting about the Revisit Korea program, subsidized by the South Korean government for Korean War veterans, John had no interest in returning to Korea. But his wife, Audrey Kamb-Studdard, saw the program as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” and encouraged him to go.
            Since 1975, a grateful Republic of Korea has invited Korean War Veterans from all the Allied countries that participated in the war, along with their family members, to return to the country they saved from communism. The Korea Veterans Association – Seoul has provided free hotel accommodations, meals and bus tours of Seoul, Incheon and the DMZ (demilitarized zone) for thousands of veterans and the family members accompanying them. The South Korean government also pays half the airfare for veterans and 30 percent of airfare costs for accompanying family members or caregivers.
          John and his wife Audrey arrived in Seoul, South Korea on September 13, 2012, the day after his 81st birthday. He was stunned at the beautiful

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city it had become with modern skyscrapers and parks where once had been rubble. The group of 150 veterans and family members were treated to tours, banquets, visits to war memorials, wreath-laying ceremonies and entertainment. Wherever they traveled, the veterans were greeted with Thank You banners in both English and Korean.
            John was especially pleased by a school music program where young children expressed their appreciation to the veterans for giving them the opportunity to grow up in a free and prosperous South Korea. “The Koreans, old and young, are a very grateful people,” he explains, “and General Douglas MacArthur is a hero to them for saving Seoul.”
            Visiting veterans and their families were impressed with their visit to the DMZ. They entered the building where the armistice was signed in July, 1953. One end of the building is in South Korea and the other in North Korea. “We could see the North Korean soldiers peeking in the windows at us from the other side,” Audrey says, “and we had to be very careful with our gestures. I admit I was a bit nervous.”
            The South Korean government staged an impressive 62nd anniversary re-enactment of the Incheon Landing Operation. Over 200 veterans, family members and Korean dignitaries watched from a huge South Korean ship in Incheon harbor as cannon boomed from ships anchored far out to sea, landing craft sailed toward the shore and paratroops dropped from the sky. “I thought it was very authentic” says John, “because they had all the noise, landing craft, jets, paratroops; they must have had close to 1,000 South Korean troops dressed in camouflage and steel helmets. The South Koreans did it up right!”
            On their last night in Korea, the Minister of the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs and the Chairman of the Korean Veterans Association invited the veterans and their families to an elegant thank you banquet. “The banquet, the accommodations, everything about the trip was first-class,” John declares.
            He emphasizes how grateful the Korean people and government are to American and United Nation forces for preserving their freedom and enabling them to build a strong economy. John, too, is grateful that Audrey talked him into returning to Korea to see for himself what a difference the South Korean people have made since he left in 1954. “They have built a beautiful, prosperous country,” he says proudly, “and Seoul is a beautiful, beautiful city. I’m so glad my wife and I took the trip.”
 
Editor’s Note: If you are a Korean Veteran who would like to return to Korea under the Revisit Korea program, please contact your local American Legion or VFW service organization.

Rishi Sharma: Appreciating World War II veterans
and documenting their service
Marsha Henry Goff

            Rishi Sharma is a young man on a mission. The 19-year-old California native formed a non-profit — Heroes of the Second World War — before he graduated from high school and has spent the last ten months traveling throughout the United States interviewing World War II veterans. His quest to interview at least one veteran each day (to date he has interviewed more than 300) is a magnificent obsession and he is passionate about it: “We have a responsibility to document their experiences so that such a devastating war will never happen again and so that those brave men did not die in vain.”
            For those who think his interest in World War II veterans is unusual, he explains: “How can you not be interested in a war that killed 70 million people and the veterans who fought it 75 years ago and literally saved the world? If a Civil War veteran suddenly came back to life from the grave, all the world’s media would be hounding him begging for an interview using the nicest equipment and the fanciest cameras. What boggles my mind is that we have this opportunity with the WWII veterans! We should not wait until there is only one left to acknowledge their sacrifices and to document them.”
            He has put 29,048 miles on his 2014 Honda Civic driving from coast to coast, north to south. His rear window and back side windows are

decorated with perforated window decals stating his mission. He says it was the best money he has spent because it also provides him with privacy while he sleeps in the back seat. He operates on a tight budget and declares, “I’m not going to waste money on nightly room rent. I have three blankets and I am a lot better off than those who slept in foxholes, don’t you think?”
            Sharma has interviewed one Medal of Honor recipient and nine veterans 100 or more years old. When he reads an obituary of a World War II veteran he did not have the chance to interview, he calls the family to express his condolences and his thanks for the veteran’s service. He presents each veteran he interviews with a video of the interview. You may read more about him on his website — http://www.heroesofthesecondworldwar.org/ — and also view many of the veterans he has interviewed. He knows it is unlikely that he will be able to interview every surviving World War II veteran, so he provides a list of questions and encourages visitors to his website to do their own interviews.
            If you are a World War II veteran or know of one who would like to be interviewed, please email Rishi Sharma at [email protected] or call him at 818-510-2892.

The Life and Times of Mary Hammond Sly

          Mary Hammond Sly, my paternal great-great-grandmother, was born on September 29, 1822, near Buffalo, New York.  Her father, Benoni G. Hammond, a farmer and teacher, ensured that all thirteen of his children — girls as well as boys — received a proper formal education.  Mary Sly graduated from Miss Willard’s Female Seminary in Troy, New York and became a teacher.  She taught in New York state for ten years, earning from eight to fifteen dollars a month, until her marriage.
          She abandoned spinsterhood in 1850 to marry John Sly, a farmer and abolitionist four years her junior, from Erie County, New York.  The Slys farmed in Erie County for five years, then moved to Delaware County, Iowa.  In the spring of 1857, they packed all their belongings and their young children, Cornelia and Philo, into an ox-drawn covered wagon and headed west to Kansas Territory where they sought land and breathing space.
          In later life, Mary Sly — always politically active — became involved with Woman Suffrage and Populism.  But throughout her long life, without neglecting family responsibilities and church and political activities, Mary found time to draw and paint and was diligent in keeping a written record of her thoughts and reactions to the history occurring around her.  The words of Mary Sly, existing today in her letters and journal (the only one to survive my great-aunt’s deliberate fiery destruction), relate her character and give us an accurate history of the time.
          John and Mary Sly, Nemaha County’s second and third settlers, established a home on Turkey Creek, near the present town of Seneca.  During the half-century they lived there, they endured illness, deaths of loved ones, two wars — one close at hand and one distant — and political upheaval.
          Wagon trains usually started the trek westward in the spring to avoid the intense cold and bad weather of fall and winter.  The trip was especially difficult for Mary for a reason apparent in a letter dated November 22, 1857, which she wrote to her sister Elizabeth back East after the Slys were settled in Kansas.  The family would have delayed the journey, she wrote, had she realized she had “started to Boston,” a pioneer’s polite euphemism for pregnancy.
          You asked me to write more particularly concerning our journey. I was brief at that time on purpose, and, now shall be obliged to be, for want of time.  However you shall have a short history of myself and if it goes to Washington through miscarriage so be it.  Well then I did not dream I had “started to Boston” when we made calculations on coming to Kansas or we should not have come this year, but I was three months and over on the route and of course nothing was enjoyed by me.  I felt sometimes as if I was going to my long home.
          Cornelia and Philo were both very sick part of the time.  We camped in our wagon mostly rain or shine, but had some good company the last three weeks.  Were over five weeks coming.  I have not to add that my lot was case in a goodly place and among good Christian people, and although I have suffered for the want of help to do my work, the neighbors have done all in their power.
          An unpleasant initiation to the prairie were cases of malaria (ague) which pioneers often contracted when first out West.  While suffering from malaria, Mary Sly gave birth to her third child, a task by no means easy while in good health.
          We have all every one had the ague and fever and all down at once but Augustus, he waited till John was getting so that he
could  make out to milk if the cow came up of her own accord. My ague came on every other day about 6 o’clock and sometimes I could help about the dinner and again not.  I had the fever enough to burn me up almost.
           Had it broke with calomel and quinine firstly but came down with it twice later and then employed a botanical Physician, who lives four miles from us in Nebraska, he gave 16 pills to be taken in 8 hours and I have not had but one shake since and that was the next day after my little Catharine Elizabeth was born.  A good old lady was obliged to officiate as M.D. as the doctor had just gone, thinking I could wait until in the night.  (I was glad he left though.)  We could not get but two women and neither of them has a child in the world or ever had, others soon came but too late.
          On September 17, 1858, Cornelia, Mary Sly’s oldest child, died of an undetermined ailment.  Her death broke my great-great-grandmother’s heart.
          Little did I think when I wrote you last that I should so soon have to take my pen again to communicate the sad tidings I do at this time. Yes, my dear Sister, your little favorite is no more.  Cornelia, my own sweet darling Cornelia, is I have no doubt praising God in Heaven.  She was taken last Thursday, Sept. 16, and died at sunrise the next morning.
          She went into a fit about two o’clock and never came to, so as to sense anything to all appearances . . . . But Oh Elizabeth, the look, the last sad parting look she gave me, how can I describe it?  I cannot, no I cannot.  When I think of it I can scarcely keep from bursting right out crying.
          Years later, Mary Sly still wrote of Cornelia in her journal, always with pitiful backward glances.  A long poem entitled “Cornelia” — the last stanza of which follows — is especially heartrending.
                   To God I’ll go with every care,
                    And humbly seek in earnest prayer
                    For grace, that we may meet thee there,
                    Cornelia.
Cornelia Maria Sly departed this life September 17, 1858, aged 6 years nearly.  Had Cornelia lived, to-day would have been her 25th birthday.
          Without formal declaration, the American Civil War began well before 1861.  The war was actually being fought in the legislative branch of national government as early as 1858.  One of the main issues at hand was whether Kansas would be a slave or free state.  According to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, introduced by Stephen A. Douglas, the residents of Kansas would determine by popular vote whether Kansas would be a pro- or anti-slavery state.
          However, in late 1857, pro-slavers submitted the Lecompton Constitution to the state legislature, recommending that Kansas be admitted as a slave state, in repudiation of the Kansas-Nebraska Act as well as the Missouri Compromise of 1820.  Acting Kansas Governor Frederick P. Stanton put the Lecompton Constitution to a popular vote and the Constitution was soundly defeated on January 4, 1858.
          In response, Southern extremists in Congress, backed by President Buchanan, passed the English Bill on the 4th day of May, 1858, which stated that if Kansas was voted a free territory, Kansas residents would lose four million acres of public land grants (i.e., the homesteaders in these areas would have to buy their land) and Kansas would not be declared a state until it had a population of over 90,000.
          Understandably, Kansas residents were upset, and Mary Sly exemplifies their feelings in a letter to Elizabeth dated May 8, 1858:
          Everything seems to go off right since the rejection of the Lecompton Constitution, except for the fiendish revenge manifested by Buchanan’s late proclamation to sell all the surveyed lands in the territory.  The people are forming mob laws for their protection — in some places, not here.  James Buchanan, unless he repents, will die an unenviable death, unwept, unmourned, and perhaps unhung.
          By December, 1861, the Civil War on the frontier was booming.  The Kansas pioneers were themselves victims of war, being caught between the anti-slavery Jayhawkers and the pro-slavery forces.  Though on opposite sides, these two groups used the same tactics of terror.  In the following letter, Mary Sly describes a run of bad luck and then becomes philosophical about her troubles.
          . . . Don’t we have the luck?  I do not mind if we can keep our health, and the worse than rebels will leave us alone.  The Jayhawkers are all around and we are expecting trouble from them as we have been threatened.  I have a poor opinion of them, let them be on which side soever.                        
          At this time, settlers in Kansas were fearful of a large scale attack from Missouri, as the pioneers would be defenseless against the ruffians who despised them.  Again in the letter of December 8, 1861, Mary Sly characterizes the settlers’ fears.
We understand that North Missouri is all in rebellion again.  We are afraid that as soon as the river freezes over they will step across into Kansas and make all the destruction possible.  They hold such a deadly hatred to Kansas.
          The huge-scale attack from Missouri did come, but not until 1864, when General Sterling Price and his rebels stabbed into Kansas.  In another letter to Elizabeth, dated October 17, 1864, Mary Sly describes the situation.
          At present the railroads are all in rebel hands in Missouri, or nearly so, Price in connection with others are playing Smash there . . . Every able bodied man is called off after Price.  The present hour for Kansas is a critical one indeed.  Indians on the south and west, and rebels on the east and both trying to do her all the injury they can, still I hope she will escape a general extermination.
          When the Civil War ended, Mary Sly was in her early forties.  Her liberal upbringing, coupled with the physical and economic hardships she endured on the frontier had served to forge her into an iron-hard individualist.  Three decades later, Mary Sly used her journal to report with great candor on the social, political and personal events which affected her life in the 1890s.
          One of the more serious aspects of life on the prairie was illness and its treatment.  Mary Sly reports at length on medical topics, probably due to the fact that four of her eight brothers were doctors, all of whom lost their lives in the Civil War.  Her remaining four brothers were dentists.
          An acquaintance of Mary Sly, Emma Smith Williams, had breast cancer and was desperate to be healed of it.  In April, 1898, Mary Sly wrote in her journal:
          She that was Emma Smith is down from Beaty [Nebraska] to consult the doctors about a cancer on her left breast.
          Evidently, Mrs. Williams’ prognosis was grim, for less than a week later, she desperately turned to a frontier healer, a charlatan of the type that sold alcohol-based cure-alls to those who hoped for better health.  In a journal entry on April 10, 1898, Mary Sly confided her opinion of such “healers.”
          Ruth [Mary Sly’s daughter] went with Emma Smith to Kansas City to see Carson the Magnetic Healer, but to no purpose.  He is a humbug.  Emma went home Thursday.  I think the cancer incurable.
          Shortly thereafter, Mrs. Williams, still seeking a cure, sought help from a cancer specialist.  A July 23, 1898 entry states:
          Ruth has just gone to the depot with Emma Williams who has been three months to Wichita doctoring for cancer with Dr. M. S. Rochelle, specialist.
          At some point in her treatment, Mrs. Williams had what was then considered very radical and experimental surgery, a mastectomy.  Science marches on in the Nineteenth Century, as noted on February 21, 1899.
          Mrs. Emma Williams called as she is moving to Oklahoma.  She showed me where her cancer was taken off, the left breast all gone.
          Perhaps the pioneers’ greatest fear was that of an epidemic, as doctors were scarce and inoculations were rare or for some diseases uninvented.  An epidemic of typhoid, smallpox, or diphtheria could strike with devastating results.  In her journal, Mary chronicles one of the local smallpox scares.
          Feb. 21, 1899.  Smallpox in town.  Dr. Troughton’s son.
          Feb. 22, 1899.  Dr. Troughton’s house is quarantined and he is like a caged lyon [sic].  Geo Williams’ folks have left their fine house for a time until the smallpox question is better understood.
          Feb. 24, 1899.  The authorities have built a Pest House and last night removed young Troughton to it.
          Feb. 26, 1899.  Conference [Methodist Church] is moved from Seneca on account of smallpox.
          March 1, 1899.  J. B. [Moriarty, husband of Mary Sly’s daughter Ruth] has just drove up with his new mule team.  Their children vaccinated.
          March 3, 1899.  Young Troughton is still a smallpox patient.  He is the only one that has it in town as yet.
          March 4, 1899.  Hear nothing from the “pest” House, nor of any additional cases.  Hope no more have it.  Old Mrs. Hale is
quarantined.
          March 17, 1899.  Mrs. Troughton’s sister in the Pest House, down with smallpox.
          The entry on March 17th was the last one pertaining to the smallpox scare.  Fortunately, the disease was confined to only a few people, including the local doctor’s son and sister-in-law.
The women’s liberation movement is not a recent one.  Mary Sly, in her seventh decade, was extremely involved in the movement and her relatives knew it.  On April 11, 1894, she noted in her journal that her brother had sent her an item of mutual interest.
W. W. Hammond sent me a Boston paper in which is a fragment of the welcoming speech to the Equal Suffrage Convention held in Boston last week.  I am glad to learn he favors Woman Suffrage.
          Mary Sly’s thorough involvement in the Suffrage movement occasionally caused friction with others who were less enthusiastic about it.  Once such case occurred after Mary recorded that a church member came to her door on October 31, 1894,
          soliciting a chicken pie towards feeding the people on election day,
          Nov. 6th.
Before the election, however, a conflict developed between the preacher of the church and Mrs. Sly, about which she says:
          If our preacher is too conscientious to vote for Woman Suffrage, the
          church may furnish its own chicken pie.
          In the 1890s, the United States suffered one of its worst depressions ever.  It seemed that nothing could bring the country out of this intolerable slump.  Vagabonds were omnipresent, especially in the Midwest, as Mary Sly testifies on May 26, 1894:
          Seneca is down on the tramps.
          Again, on July 13, 1895, she writes:
Just fed another tramp.  The country is full of them.  Grover [Cleveland] will get to his end after a while.
And a year later, she is still beset by beggars:
          Decoration Day.  A tramp to feed calls.
          In a time of such poverty, one often becomes quite disillusioned with the whole political system, and Mrs. Sly is no exception.  Her disgust is apparent in a November 3, 1894 entry:
Tonight a Democrat speaks at the Hall and the Suffragists at the Court House.  They are all such liars I do not want to go.
          The disillusionment of many agrarians like Mary Sly led to the formation of a strong new party, the Populists.  Those in the Populist Party felt that the depression of the 1890s was due to the fact that the gold standard kept money in the hands of few, and when the gold supply became ever scarcer in the United States, these “goldbugs” would prosper while others starved.
          Leading the Populists was a Nebraska gentleman named William Jennings Bryan who said at a speech in Chicago in 1896:
          There are two ideas in government.  There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below.  The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up through every class and rest upon us.
          Thus, the Populists wanted a silver and gold standard to place more money in the hands of the less prosperous, namely the farmers.
          On November 6, 1896, the Populists’ presidential candidate, W. J. Bryan (a Democrat), squared off against the Republican “goldbug” William McKinley.  As did many other farmers, the Slys threw their support to Bryan.  The Populists’ dreams were not to be fulfilled in 1896, however, because as Mary reports in her journal on November 11,
          Election has resulted in the defeat of Bryan the Free Coinage Candidate, of both gold and silver at 16 to 1, that is 16 oz of
silver = in value 1 oz of gold.  McKinley carried 23 states, Bryan 21.  Delaware and Kentucky doubtful yet.
          Mary Sly’s hopes for free coinage did not end with McKinley’s election, because in January of 1897, she writes:
          The year comes in “like a lamb.”  I hope it may prove a peaceful and happy year to us nationally.  McKinley will soon occupy the presidential chair and if Congress will give the people more money, there will no doubt be greater prosperity.
          Without doubt, McKinley’s victory over Bryan upset Mrs. Sly a great deal for she notes on March 4, 1897 that:
          Wm McKinley inaugurated to-day.  A dull, gloomy day in keeping with the times.
          In the late Nineteenth Century, as now, officials in the church felt no trepidation about expressing their political ideas from the pulpit.  In 1897, a visiting official from the Methodist Church gave a lecture which greatly angered Mary.
          McKabe lectured here the 13th.  He is a “gold bug.”  I have no use for such bishops!
          Meanwhile, Bryan, the free coinage advocate, was still very popular, as Mary tells us on October 4, 1897:
          Received and answered Brother William’s invitation to come and hear Bryan speak in Kansas City.  Our health will not permit us to go.
          She adds on October 7th that,
          Bryan’s speech was successful.  15,000 paid $.25.
Mr. Bryan was obviously to remain in the limelight.
          In late January, 1898, the U.S. warship Maine was sent to Havana, Cuba, to protect U.S. interests.  Only two weeks later, on February 15, 1898, the ship blew up under mysterious circumstances, resulting in the deaths of over 250 American sailors.  Mary Sly noted the major event and the controversy surrounding it on March 14th.
          War is the leading topic.  The blowing up of the Maine is still unsettled.
          Decades later, a textbook, The American Century, revealed the true motivations for the declaration of war against Spain.  “On March 25, a close political advisor in New York cabled McKinley: ‘Big corporations here now believe we will have war.  Believe all would welcome it as a relief to suspense.’”
          In early April of 1898, President McKinley succumbed to such pressure with a war message.  Meanwhile, in Seneca, Kansas, Mary Sly responds with suspicion about the political motivations of the President, as evidenced by her April 12th journal entry:
McKinley’s war message handed to Congress.  Another subterfuge to screen “Gold Bugs.”
          About a week later, we were at war with Spain to protect corporate interests.  Mary Sly followed the news of the war with a surprising interest for one so far removed from the conflict.  In her journal she notes the most significant details of the Spanish-American War.
          April 21.  No war yet.  Spain rejects all propositions and our fleet is now for Cuban waters.
          April 23.  I hear the Nashville has captured a Spanish merchantman with supplies.  The First Skirmish.    
          April 30.  Dewey met and conquered the Spanish Fleet off Manila.
          Now the war is in full swing.  The U.S. achieves victory after victory in this “splendid little war,” and the U.S. military is seeking more and more soldiers.  The war finally touches Seneca, Kansas, as Mary tells in the May 3, 1898 entry in her journal:
          Recruiting officer is to be here in Seneca tomorrow.  The war is in full blast.
          The war continued, but Mary Sly never failed to see through the ploys of pomp and patriotism offered by the establishment, as her June 4, 1898 journal entry shows:
          “Dewey Day.”  I suppose all have tried to feel patriotic.  I feel more like weeping than rejoicing.  The brave and great are being
sacrificed to the merciless demands of greed and tyranny.
          About three months later, the war was over and the soldiers were coming home.  Mary was so relieved by their return that she enjoyed a good night’s sleep.
          September 14.  The soldier boys came in on the 10:00 train last night.  They were given a loud reception but I slept through it all.
          Mary Hammond Sly died on July 14, 1907, after a long eventful life.  Although she died long before my birth, she speaks to me through her writings that were faithfully preserved by Ruth Sly Moriarty, my great-grandmother, and Ruth Moriarty Henry, my grandmother.
          Among these writings in my possession is Mary Sly’s last note, the barely legible scrawl of a woman almost blind:              

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This oil painting was done by Mary Hammond Sly. In the right hand corner is her name and the date it was painted: 1870. The Civil War had been over for five years and I believe this may have been her home on Turkey Creek in Nemaha County, Kansas. I bought this painting at my grandmother Ruth Moriarty Henry's auction in 1978 for $70, a price that stunned me and my husband Ray who offered to hold his hand over my mouth if I would hold his hand down, a reference to the many bids he had won in an attempt to raise the bids, not actually buy the items.