“Columns of Eunice Lawson rural writing at its best” from the January 15, 1974 Door County Advocate
Eunice Lawson, the Advocate’s popular East Maplewood correspondent. —Harmann
Columns of Eunice Lawson rural writing at its best
By KETA STEEBS
“I’ll tell you why I buy the Advocate,” said the stranger, a mafia-type with considerably more foliage on his upper lip than glazed skull. “I buy it to read Mrs. Lawson’s column and find out what those blasted birds of hers are doing.”
Throughout the years and long before I worked for the Advocate, similar comments on our East Maplewood correspondent’s unique contributions have fallen on my ears. Mrs. Henry (Eunice) Lawson, for the benefit of new subscribers not familiar with the name, is a former farmwife whose charming essays on wildlife, nature, good neighbors and pets have beguiled readers for more than 50 years.
Now retired and living in an Algoma apartment, Mrs. Lawson no longer writes a regular column. She intends, instead, to write “little stories I’ve kept locked up for years.” These stories will undoubtedly concern her childhood, youthful teaching career, married life on the farm, and neighbors she has known and loved.
Many of us are familiar with their names. We’ve awaited the arrival of Nila and Bob’s two children; held our breath hoping the government wouldn’t crack down on Eunice and Arlene and Nila for using their mailboxes as goodwill receptacles and vicariously enjoyed Mary Birdsall’s shower via Mrs. Lawson’s printed words. We are as knowledgeable with the doings of the “Our Road” gang as with the goings-on in our own neighborhoods; maybe more so, thanks to Mrs. Lawson’s attention to detail.
A prolific writer, the former teacher faithfully adheres to the five W’s of journalism. She doesn’t just tell us who attended what, when and where, she lets us know why and sometimes even how.
The “Our Road” crowd, for example, prefers walking to riding, gets together at least once a week for potluck, and regards one another as “family.” Nila (Mrs. Robert Schley) adopted Eunice Lawson as her second mother at least two decades ago and takes a true daughter’s interest in her welfare.
“She bosses me around, checks up on me everyday and gets mad if I try to overdo,” says Mrs. Lawson appreciatively. “Nyla is some girl.”
So is Joyce Uecker (Nyla’s sister) along with Margaret Kramer, Edna Schmiling, Arlene Stevens, Ethel Mae Uecker, Marion Birdsall and Esther Schley. Not only is Eunice fond of the womenfolk on her mile long road, she likes their husbands too. Since 1962, when Henry Lawson died, the men have made a protective circle around his widow.
They tried to talk me out of moving,” Mrs. Lawson smiles. “They said they’d take care of me as long as I needed them but I knew the time had come to go. I can’t stand being a burden on anyone.”
She admits it took will power. It’s never easy leaving the home you’ve known since your wedding day, especially when it’s a spacious 13-room farmhouse, to move into a four room apartment but Mrs. Lawson says she has no regrets. The move, incidentally, was made easier by the fact her only sister lives just around the corner and St. Agnes of the Lake Episcopal church, the church in which she was baptized, confirmed and married, is handily located less than a block away.
“I’ve come home, you know,” Mrs. Lawson tells me. “This is where I was born, only our family lived on the other side of the river. Dad used to say we lived in “Canada” and the United States was across the bridge.”
“Dad” was William I. Henry, a handsome, mustached man, whose two-masted sailing schooner “Lady Ellen” regularly hauled railroad ties from Algoma to Milwaukee, Marinette and Menominee, Mich., in exchange for groceries.
Affluent enough to afford a hired girl at the going rate of a dollar a week, Capt. Henry is remembered by his daughters as a warm, loving father who, unlike most men of his generation, believed in higher education for women.
So did their mother Laura Jane Henry, a proud vivacious woman, who was firmly convinced her two little girls were the prettiest things alive. Eunice and her sister Ruth Henry Evans ruefully recall the never-to-be-forgotten occasion when Mrs. Henry had a professional photographer take their picture. Displeased with the proofs, she informed the photographer he had not done her daughters justice.
“Look, madam,” he told her. “They aren’t very pretty girls.”
“Mother never forgave him,” Eunice grins. “She had to take one picture, just to fulfill her obligation or something, but she never showed it to anybody.”
Encouraged by her parents to become a teacher, Eunice completed the required one year of training in the now defunct Door-Kewaunee Teachers College (actually known as the “Training School” when Eunice was a student) and got her first baptism under fire at Casco where she taught 50 pupils from grades one through four. Like other grade school teachers of that era, Eunice was also expected to do the janitor work, snow shoveling, etc.
“This is where I got my first taste of Women’s Lib,” she recalls. “I replaced Charles Butler (the same Capt. Butler of World War I whose Armistice Day speeches have impressed area students for the past four years) and knew he had been earning $75 a month. I expected to earn the same but was told in no uncertain terms I shouldn’t go whole hog over salary. Consequently I earned $65 a month for doing the same job Mr. Butler did for $75.”
Altogether, Eunice taught 13 years. Students attending Casco, Forestville, Carlsville and East Maplewood schools during her tenure as teacher must still remember the tall, slim, attractive girl who taught every required subject except art (her bananas looked like cucumbers) and who insisted on learning the rudiments of reading, writing, arithmetic and SPELLING.
“I really spelling,” she says. “We had daily tests or spelling bees and not only did the student have to spell the word correctly, he had to define it.”
While teaching, Eunice inadvertently launched her free lance writing career by having her English students write informative little news items and adding her own thoughts at the bottom of the page.
After becoming Mrs. Henry Lawson in 1923 she combined the duties of farm wife with being a regular contributor to both the Door County Advocate and Algoma Record-Herald. One of her stories, concerning a barn radio which mysteriously switched off and on without the benefit of human hands and which was later learned to have been manipulated by a cow’s swinging tail, made the Associated Press wire service.
Usually, however, she wrote about people. Her birds, the subject so dear to the heart of my bald headed friend, came in for their share of attention as did the weather, her pet dog “Peter” (spoiled rotten, she calls him) and the mundane but heart warming activities integral to rural living.
Readers, however much we miss her, will rejoice to know that although Eunice Lawson has “retired” she remains active in civic and church life.
She belongs to the Order of the Eastern Star, where she was honored as a 50 year member five years ago, the Forestville American Legion Auxiliary, the Salona Woman’s club, and St. Agnes of the Lake Episcopal church. She and Ruth serve as president and vice president respectively of the “Women of St. Agnes Church” and laughingly admit that while they have “both top jobs sewed up” would relinquish them to competition.
What’s more, she intends to write those “little locked up stories.” Maybe she’ll tell us about the time she and her parents and brothers were aboard the Lady Ellen during a violent storm, or what Nyla’s little ones said when they learned she was moving, and how the neighbors all pitched in to make life easier after Henry died.
Whatever she writes, Mrs. Henry Lawson can be sure her stories will find a ready market. As Editor Chan Harris told her not long ago, “You’ll be our correspondent until the day Gabriel blows his clarion.”
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
Articles by Keta Steebs
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