JACK HEILMAN

I also have a half sister from my father's first marriage. Her mother died tragically. Readers who lived in those days will remember wringer washing machines. My father was gone on a day she was doing the washing and her braid got caught in the wringer. On later models, there was a safety release button, but there was none on their machine and it broke her neck. That was how my father found her when he returned home. She left the widowed husband and little child.

My father lived in Centerville and met my mother, Ramona Parr, from Weldon when she went there to teach school. They became acquainted when she taught his daughter and they were married. I was born in Centerville. Dad owned two 80-acre farms, but as was the case with many, he lost them in the Depression. They moved to Weldon and he began putting his finances back in order picking corn for my uncles. He was picking 100 bushels a day and scooping them off. That is a lot of corn for hand picking and it nearly ruined his health. Life was rough going in those days and memories lingered a long time. Years later when Lela and I talked about buying a farm, Dad persuaded us against it, to keep us from going through what he did when he
lost his land. We did eventually buy one but told him about it later. We can't learn from our parents' mistakes. That doesn't penetrate. We all have to make our own and learn from them.

I went through school at Weldon in the days when we still had a high school, and I graduated from Weldon High School in 1944. I was 18 in December of that year and enlisted in the Navy. To put this in historical perspective, 1945 was the year when President Roosevelt died and the year WWII officially ended, leaving the world to deal with the aftermath. I was sent to Great Lakes, where the sun came up in the west every morning. I was there 12 weeks and just as I was ready to come home on leave, I had scarlet fever. I've told people I was in the service and was shot 18 times. My shots were penicillin.

When I was well enough, I was sent home on leave, and was here for a tragic event. Grandad lived with us, as was common at that time. Children took their elderly parents into their homes instead of putting them in a facility where somebody else took care of them. There were some good features of doing it that way, and some difficult. Many of the elderly developed dementia, which at that time was called "hardening of the arteries." This happened to Grandad. On a Sunday morning one spring, he wanted to go to town, so Dad took him. He owned a business - the Parr Creamery on the east side of the square, where he bought cream and eggs. About noon we could see smoke and somebody called to say Grandad's shop was on fire. We didn't know he was in it. Next door to his place of business was a butcher shop, and the fire became so hot it was impossible to identify what they pulled out.

I was sent to get him. Spring rains and travel on roads before there was gravel, caused deep ruts. I was driving a Model A Ford, and on those the throttle was on the steering wheel. It could be pulled down, and the driver could get behind the car and push. The ruts were so deep the car couldn't get out of them, and that is the way I made it up the hills. By the time I got to town all that was left of Grandad was the trunk of his body. His arms, legs, and head were gone. They performed an autopsy but were unable to determine exactly what happened. Kerosene was involved. Either he used it to light the fire in the stove, or he knocked the stove over. Before they could put the fire out, it had burned the whole east side of the square to the alley.

I went back to Great Lakes and they put me on a troop train bound for Biloxi, Mississippi. I was to attend radio school to learn Morse Code - dots and dashes - used by railroads but also for communication in the military. They used flags - semaphores - based on the same principle to signal between ships. I flunked out of that school, so they put me on a boat going to Algiers, which I thought meant we were headed for Africa, but actually we went down around the Florida Keys and up the St. Johns River just across from New Orleans. I became a striker, SKD, store­keeper dispersing payroll. Before I was through, I had become a 3rd class SKD.

I was in the service 19 months, was discharged, and came back home. I don't feel very good about my service time. You can tell me I did what I was asked to do but I didn't really help anybody. Fact is, I fell into a terrible habit while I was in radio school. Trying to learn the Code, realizing that I was flunking the course, put lots of pressure on me, and when a friend said I should take up smoking to help me relax, I did that. I became a heavy smoker. I was 18 when I started and smoked for 53 years until one time when I had the flu. I had such a bad coughing spell I couldn't get my breath. I told Lela, "I've got to get to the hospital or I'm not going to make it." The next morning Dr. Lower said, "You have a choice. You will give up smoking or you will die." I knew which I preferred, and within a week, I quit. That was eight years ago.

After my discharge, I returned home, and farmed with my father for a short while. I met Lela Babberl on a blind date and we began going together. She had lived all her life in Osceola, got her schooling here, and worked in various places in town. We were married in 1948. Her story is in the 5th edition of Recipes for Living, in which she told about the various places we lived - the first six months in the house my parents vacated when they moved to a farm near Osceola. Then we moved to the Lloyd Hidy farm, for one year rented a farm owned by Harley and Helen Hale, near Hopeville; for five years we rented from Dr. Kierulf, a dentist in Osceola; then from Robert and Joann McCann: and for 25 years from Ben Miller.

Ben made an impression on me. He was the most honest man I ever knew. He paid what he owed to the penny, and expected the same from everyone he dealt with. It is unheard of now, but we had only an oral contract with him. That was all that was needed. I'll never forget one thing Ben said. He often stopped to visit for a few minutes, and one day I asked, "Ben, am I doing it right?" He answered, "If it works out right, you're lucky. If it's the wrong thing, you're a d------ fool." That was the only advice he gave me. In 1966, largely through a government program called the Federal Land Bank, we bought a farm about five miles south of Osceola, on highway 69. We added to our original purchase by buying "the Lavendar place" owned by Ben Miller's sister.

A transition was beginning to take place. We small operation farmers had to concede farms would no longer provide for a family, and boys who loved the land and wanted to make a career of farming, had to change plans. Lela told it like this: "It is interesting that in spite of a whole new economy, the price of corn is not a whole lot different than when we were starting out. In those days we could get by with a small amount of machinery; in fact, a tractor and a few other pieces of equipment would suffice. This was partly because farmers worked together. Everybody in the neighborhood pitched in when someone threshed or baled hay."

But as time when on, a small farm would not support our family no matter how hard we worked. And we did work hard. Lela was accustomed to that. She had begun working in a restaurant with her mother when she was 14, before child labor laws ruled out the possibility, and she continued throughout her life. Her part in the farm operation was planting and tending large gardens, canning and freezing the produce, raising and selling chickens and eggs, milking cows and selling milk and cream. All of us trying our best wasn't enough.

From 1949 to 1955, we had three children - John, Bill, and Mark. Of course, they were always important to both of us, and as they grew, they helped a lot with the farm work. Lela gave details of their lives in her story, which I will not repeat. The point I want to make is how the changing economy at that time, changed everyone's lives. When Mark started to school, Lela began working at Snowdon's lingerie factory in Osceola. The company was based in Chicago and the local person in charge was David Kaminsky. She worked for him for 19 years, when for various reasons, the plant was phased out. At that time, Avice Lynn and Lela went into business as an outlet store, selling factory seconds, discontinued garments, and all left-over fabrics, laces, etc. They named the company LARK, for Lela, Avice, and Ruth Kaminsky - Ruth being a silent partner. Kenny Lynn and I became part of the operation, helping with the lifting, carrying, cutting material, etc.

For the sake of history, I mention their first store was in the old Methodist Church, which was on the corner of Main and Cass Streets, replaced in 1967. Probably what had been the pastor's office became Lela's office. From time to time she mentioned that when she went in to work, she thought of people who were reluctant to give up the old church, and wondered if they would have felt the same if they had to clean up after the pigeons before they could go to a service. She did that morning after morning.

As the business grew, its nature and locations changed. The final place of business was on the north edge of Osceola, just off highway 69. (At the present time the building is occupied by Christ'sway Church at 201 Leann Drive.) But as the business grew, it became more and more stressful, complicated by Avice falling victim to strokes until she was no longer able to participate. Lela and our son Mark, who had begun working with us in the early 90s, continued until the final blow. They filled a large order for a Chicago company that failed to pay for it, and Lark closed in 1997.

I continued farming and Lela went back to restaurant work several days a week. This was the way our lives went on. We did some traveling and some collecting, but in 2001 Lela developed a problem, for which she had lung surgery. Doctors were frank about it, but as soon as she was home from the hospital, she got on the computer and found out for herself about lung cancer. She came out of the room and told me, "I have four years." She told the high percentage of people who died of lung cancer, and sure enough, on May 27, 2005 Lela died.

Lela had always been a good, kind, and loving person, faithful in church attendance. In the last four years, she became more involved than she had been. She attended a weekly Bible Study in Des Moines. She changed her membership to John's church, which was Christ'sway, and was baptized by immersion, which gave her more assurance than she previously had. All of us who knew Lela, knew her sincerity and would not have considered this necessary for her reward, but it gave her peace and that was important.

I don't need to go into detail about what it means to lose a spouse. This happens to many people and I don't know whether it is harder for men or women to be widowed. I continue to live in our house, and get along with the help of my children. It was a long time before I could get through 4:30 in the afternoon, when Lela usually came home. I wish she had taught me more about cooking because she had mastered the art. But all of us can look back and wish we had done a little differently, or taken time for certain things that didn't seem important at the moment. We have to keep looking at what is instead of what might have been.

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Last Revised November 3, 2013