Recipes for Living Marret and Pat Edwards

Marret begins: It must have been about 1918 when my parents came to Iowa from Indiana, where my oldest sister, Wilda, and my older brother Floyd had been born. The family settled on a farm two or three miles northwest of Osceola. My father had a brother who lived here and one year came to help him put in his crops, but the brother was always getting into trouble with the law. Finally, the authorities gave him 24 hours to get out of the county. He went to Billings, Montana where he lived a few years before he died there. My father stayed in Clarke County and rented the farm.

I was born in Dr. Dean's Hospital in Osceola. My recollection of Dr. Dean is going to him for shots - inoculation against scarlet fever, and probably other diseases. I was the only one of seven children not born at home, and we children thought it was probably because, between my older brother, Floyd, and me, my mother lost a child. Our parents didn't want to take another chance. There are only three of us still living: my youngest sister, Helen, lives in West Virginia; my sister, Jean Winter lives in Murray, and I live here in Osceola. Two brothers and a younger sister died within nine months of one another. Floyd, who lived in Osceola, lay down after dinner to take a nap and never woke up. A brother in Illinois, Earl, had cancer and a sister, Mary Jane, in Dubuque died of an aneurism. Wilda probably just wore out. She would have been 90 at her next birthday.

The family lived on a farm southwest of Murray. As we were growing up, Janice's - now Janice Nannen's - family lived a mile from us. It was during the Depression, so we didn't go too far, and neighbors got together often for good times.

I loved farming and didn't ever think of doing anything else. I went to a country school, and Annis Carter, who is Annis (Mrs. Hazel) Jones, was my fifth grade teacher. She just celebrated her hundredth birthday. I graduated from country school and went to high school in Murray for 1 1/2 years. At that time my parents moved to a farm near Earlham, and I didn't go back to school.

We lived there seven years, during which time I met a girl, Esther Spencer, who lived southwest of Winterset. We became acquainted through her aunt who lived on a farm next to us. Esther and I were married in March 1944, and moved to a farm near Peru. She and I had four children - Joyce, Janice, Marvin, and Nancy. In August of 1952, Esther contracted polio and was in an iron lung. She only lived a few days when she passed away. Nancy was just ten months old and Joyce was six years old. I was very fortunate to find a lady to work for me. She had never been married, but had spent all her life taking care of newborn babies. She stayed almost four years at which time the youngest started to school, and from then on we got along on our own.

In 1959, I bought a farm east of Truro and worked at Reeds' Elevator for a little over 13 years. The children all went through college. Joyce, the oldest, attended Northwest Missouri State, where she met her husband, Frank. Joyce is a school teacher. They live in Minneapolis, and she and her husband have three boys - two, Matt and Kevin, are married and Matt and his wife have our second great-grandchild, Owen Marret, who is about 1 ½ years old. Alex, their third boy, is a junior at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. Alex was an exchange student to Budapest in January 2005, taking a math course, preliminary to finishing the course at St. Olaf.

The second child, Janice, also met her husband, Mike, in college. She attended in Carbondale, Illinois. They were married and lived awhile in Des Moines, then New Mexico, and now in California. They have two children, Chris and Cathy. I have a son Marvin in Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated from Northeast Missouri State College. He and his wife had three children, Brad, Jeff, and Jennifer. Brad is married and gave us our first great-grandson, Jackson Keith, born five days earlier than Owen Marret.

Nancy, my youngest daughter, attended school in Iowa City. She and her husband, Joe, live in a suburb of Minneapolis - Farmington, Minnesota. Nancy works for Wells Fargo, and Joe works for the postal department at the airport. They have no children. We see the family quite often. The ones in Minnesota we see probably two or three times a year and the others we see once or twice a year, but we talk on the phone about every week.

Pat picks up at this point: I was born in Des Moines, Iowa on Christmas Day 1925 about 5:00 A.M. My brother was 8½years old, and I don't think he ever forgave me for being born on Christmas Day because I was born at home, and he was hustled off in the middle of the night to spend Christmas Eve with neighbors. My parents were a little older than was usual, so they probably spoiled me. Our parents came from south Missouri. They really were hillbillies, and Dad followed an older brother to Des Moines looking for work. In those days wherever one family member located, others tended to follow.

I started school at Brooks Elementary, went to Clarkson Elementary, and when I was in fourth grade my parents moved to the south side of Des Moines, so I went to Park Avenue School, and graduated from Lincoln High School in 1944. Two weeks later, I married my high school sweetheart, Bob Morgan. I was 18 and he was 22. He was the only boyfriend I ever had. My only regret was that being married so early prevented my going to college, but we were married three years before our first child was born, so we had lots of time to grow up together before the family came along.

We had two children. Our oldest son, LeRoy, was teased a lot about his name, but he was named after a special person in my husband's life, his best friend who was a fighter pilot and died in World War II. LeRoy earned his Bachelors degree at Iowa State. He went on an ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corp) scholarship, which required him to spend six years in the Navy. During his time in the Navy, he was in charge of the computer system on the ship. He went twice to Viet Nam, and during his years of service was promoted to Lieutenant, which corresponds to Captain in the Army. All service men received a medal for going to Viet Nam, and he received an additional award for protecting equipment while the ship was under fire. After his resignation from the Navy, he earned his Masters' degree in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University in California.

LeRoy died very suddenly of a heart attack in October 1990. His body wasn't discovered for two days. He and his wife were separated, but not divorced. He had just started a new job about six weeks prior to his death. When he didn't report for work, his new employer called my daughter-in-law, Peggy, and said, "Is your husband in the habit of not showing up for work?" She said, "No. If he didn't come to work, you'd better have someone check on him." A coworker found him dead on his apartment floor. They think he probably died on Sunday, and they found him on Tuesday. He always ran four miles a day and was still in his running clothes. They think he probably ran, then came home intending to shower and get ready for church. Peggy called me immediately. I wasn't home and Marret had to take the call and give me the news. This was a real tragedy to me, one I probably haven't ever completely recovered from.

LeRoy had two children - my grandson Rob and his wife, Rachel, live in Baltimore; and Amanda, the daughter, lives in Washington, D.C. My son's widow, Peggy, and I have a close relationship. She lives in Millersville, near Annapolis, Maryland.

When our children were in their teens, we discovered I wasn't able to have any more, so Bob and I decided to take care of foster children. We dealt with the agency Children and Family Services of Iowa. I didn't have to work outside the home this way, and we thought it would be a good experience. We had lots of children come through our house, some more personable than others. Earl was with us while he went to high school. He was a good kid, but his parents were in jail in Illinois, and he needed a home. We kept in touch, but I know Earl lost track of me when I married Marret. I gave him my name and address but he was in the Navy and I just know that he lost it. Some day I would like to reconnect with him.

We also took care of a little girl, Alice, whose father was in military service and the mother was not a fit mother. She continued to be a problem because she had visitation rights, and maybe she would show up and maybe she wouldn't. I felt so sorry for the little girl because she would sit by the window watching and waiting for her mother, who many times apparently had no intention of coming that day. Eventually, the little girl went to live with her father.

Timothy came to us at Christmas in 1961, when he was nine months old. We had agreed with the agency not to adopt any of the children, but we wanted Timothy and decided to adopt him. All we really knew about him was that his mother was 14 years old and had been in the home for unwed mothers on East 13th Street in Des Moines. Tim was a mixed bag - there were lots of heartaches and lots of joy. He is grown now, married, and living in Fairfield, Iowa. Tim and his wife, Nancy, work at KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken). Tim works full-time, Nancy part time. They have two children, Tim, Junior, who is 18, and April who is 14.

Bob died when he was 46 years old. He had been chronically ill since he was a couple years old. He had pneumonia two winters in a row, in the years before they had antibiotics. This left his bronchial tubes scarred. For years his body could handle the condition with his infection being pumped out about every six months, but finally he hardly had any lungs left and they just gave out. I had a lot of support from my family and I was close to my church - probably closer than I am now. And I've always had a strong faith in God. Tim and I were living alone. He gave me a reason for coming home from work. Taking care of him kept me going, and I was handling things fairly well.

Probably about two or 2 ½ years before Bob died, our older children were in college and we were pinching pennies. I could see the handwriting on the wall that I'd better get back into the employment field. I had begun working part-time in the evening with a lady who said, "You might have a chance to work for my husband." His name was Joel Kliesart, and he was the manager of Farm Bureau Life Insurance Company, so I began working full-time, and it was through Farm Bureau that Marret and I met. At that time, I had been widowed about 1 ½ years.

Marret tells from his perspective: When my first wife died, I said I would not get married until my children had gone through school. Seventeen years later, Pat and I met. A friend in Truro whose wife worked with Pat at the Farm Bureau office, said there was someone I should meet, meaning Pat. However, it was six weeks before I called her. After that many years, during which I had met a few women, going out with Pat was going to be just another night out. She had given her co-worker her phone number so long before; she didn't think I would ever call. Once I decided to go, I didn't hesitate. I called to find out where she lived and went to see her.

Pat said, "I felt about the same way.’What have I got to lose?' When he told me how long he'd been single, I thought, 'Cross this one off. He's going to be a bachelor for the rest of his life."'

That was in 1970. Marret was 50 years old, and I was five years younger. Our first date was hilarious. We had never seen one another. He showed up at my door and I was used to smaller men. Here was this huge, tall person with a big frame. I thought, "Wow! This guy is really tall!" His reaction to me was, "This is the skinniest woman I ever saw." We went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant about a block east of Merle Hay Plaza, and I was so nervous I spilled spaghetti sauce all over the tablecloth. If he had walked out and left me sitting there, I wouldn't have blamed him. However, he suggested a drive-in movie. I didn't know quite what to make of that, but I said okay. We went to the movie, sat, and talked. Even though I didn't know anybody that farmed, had no interest in farming, thought farmers had lots of money because I'd see them coming to town and to the State Fair in big, fancy cars, and I'd see all this fancy equipment out in the fields. In spite of all that, I discovered we had a lot more in common than I expected. We were both widowed, we both had children who graduated from college, so people-wise, we had a lot in common, and I learned about farming after we were married.

When Marret met my high school friends and other people I associated with, he thought they were really strange, but when he became part of the group, they had a lot of intelligent questions to ask him about farming and crops, and they found him quite interesting

After our first date, he brought me home, and I really didn't expect to hear from him again, but the following week, he called. He was going to see his daughter, Joyce, who was teaching at Clinton. He called to ask, "Would you mind if I stopped by on the way home?'' I said that would be fine. We decided we liked each other and started dating. We went out twice a week for a year and in August we were driving down University Avenue, when he suddenly said, "Pat, have you ever thought about getting married again?" I replied, ''No, I really haven't." He said something like, "Are you interested in getting married?" That sort of let me know he wasn't going to waste his time if I wasn't interested in marriage. I asked him point blank, "Are you asking me to marry you?" He said, "Yes," and I said, "All right, I will." This has led to a great life. We've had a wonderful relationship with one another and between our families. Our two families have melded together really well.

I rented my house in Des Moines and moved to the farm. Marret wasn't actively farming at that time. He was working for Reeds and just had cows and some hogs. However, the adjustment wasn't easy for me. For instance, I had never driven on country roads, and the first winter, I had the car in the ditch three times. The third time Marret got a little reluctant to pull me out and the car sat there for three days. That same day we also had trouble with the TV and the deep freeze. When the deep freeze went bad I just knew I'd done something to it. I was already in the dog house. I was so happy when the electrician came and discovered the problem was the cord! We had a lot of funny experiences but I as a pretty quick learner and we came out okay. Postscript: I've never been in the ditch since those three times.

I found there were some great qualities about rural life. In the city there is a basic distrust of people. I found the opposite to be true in the country. I had some problems with the man at the gas station, Bill Green. He just fluffed me off when I went in for service until finally if a tire needed to be fixed, or something of that nature, I had Marret ask him. In the end, we became good friends with Bill and his wife.

We lived on the farm from the time we were married in 1971 until 1977 when we moved into the town of Truro. We lived there until 1992. We bought another farm in 1990. It was all crop land, and we rented the house and the land, but that situation didn't work out, so in 1992, we moved back to the farm. We lived there until 1999, when we sold the farm to Krause who owns many Kum and Go stations and 35 or 40 farms around Truro and Osceola with about 1,000 head of cows. He gave us a good price and was a wonderful person to deal with. He treated us very well. We told him we didn't want to move to town just yet, so he agreed that we could stay there for four years rent free.

Marret said, "After I quit working for Reeds, I went into a business of my own selling and repairing metal grain bins. It was a good business. I had 10 or 12 guys working for me, and we put up a lot of bins mostly in Clarke County, from the first of July until after harvest was over in the fall. For years I had a grain dealer’s license with which I bought grain off the farm and delivered it to processing plants. I never gave much thought to retiring, but maybe I officially retired in 1993 when my daughter, Nancy, bought me a set of golf clubs. I never did use them much.

"We moved to Osceola in September 2002. We considered Winterset but we have some ties to Osceola. My sister, Jean Winter, lives in Murray, and my sister-in-law, Alice, Floyd's widow, lives in Osceola. Pat's family is all gone. Her only blood relatives are her children and four nieces and nephews, out of six. Two of her brother's children died of cancer within a year of one another - Patty, when she was 57, and Dale, when he was 54.

"The last day of October 2002, I had a couple heart valves repaired. I got along really well and now just go back once a year for a check up. (Pat says, "The cardiologist calls him a poster boy.") Now I spend my time doing yard and garden work. I tend my flowers. I do our bookkeeping in which I keep track of all our expenditures. I am a very particular fellow about where stuff is and where it goes. I go out for coffee every morning with Larry and Clifford Jones, Don Cole, Don Reasoner, Merle Klein, and others. I go to the hospital to visit people. In the past year I have quit driving as much as I used to. There were two fellows who were brothers that I've visited in Winterset. One died this past summer just short of 104 years of age. Whether he should have or not, he drove his car until a year or so before he died. I visit Leonard Camp and Lee Parker, who have been friends for years. Lee Parker was best man at our wedding. I am not much of a joiner, but I'm a 50-year Mason. My membership is at St. Charles.

"I don't do much reading except the paper, and I watch a lot of sports on TV - baseball and basketball, particularly college basketball. I don't get as excited about football as Pat does. I really got interested when the kids were in school, because they were all active in sports. Marvin played football, and the girls were in about everything - basketball, softball, and track. When Nancy was in college, she played on the Iowa City basketball team before it was very popular for people to watch."

Pat concludes: "I can find ways to spend my time, perhaps, a little easier than Marret. I love to read - I can't get enough reading. At the present time I seem to be focusing on historical novels. I especially enjoy Beverly Lewis' writing about the Amish. I enjoy novels based on Bible stories. I have a hard time getting through biographies, but I loved Hillary Clinton's book. I don't use the library very much. I buy a few books and pass them around to friends, who also loan theirs to me.

"I have been an Eastern Star member for more than 30 years. I am a dual member of Osceola and New Virginia Chapters. I also belong to Book Lovers Club, the Osceola Women's Club, Query Club, and I have just become the Friday Pink Lady at the Clarke County Hospital. Then there is a smaller group of Red Hat ladies, which is purely social. We meet for coffee on Thursday mornings. I enjoy them all. Marret and I have a good life!"