“Writer pays tribute to the real and ‘adopted’ mothers in his family” from the May 10, 1979 Door County Advocate
Writer pays tribute to the real and ‘adopted’ mothers in his family
By JOHN ENIGL
The other day the music teacher in our school, who is almost ready to retire, says, “My mother wants to put off having an operation so she can go to my spring concert.” My pastor, Rev. Burke, who is just a little older than I am tells me about his spry Irish mother. Bob Harkness, my friend who just retired as vice president of research for Briggs and Stratton, tells me about his recent visit to his mother in California.
This all seems a little strange to me, for these people who are older than me still have a mother to be concerned about, and to be concerned about them. My brother and I lost our mother and father many years ago. Mother died in February of 1957 and Dad in May of the same year.
I have always felt that Mom and Dad were so close to each other that one could not survive without the other. They seldom went visiting and were not “joiners.” They seemed to be quite happy just to be with each other.
Since my mother died when I was in my early 30’s, there were very few Mother’s Day cards I ever sent her — and there were probably fewer than there should have been. I was going out with Mary Ann, who later became my wife, while my folks were still living, and I guess if it hadn’t been for her, I would have usually forgotten to send a card to Mother.
When you lose your mother when you are young, you lose your chance to do anything more to show your love for her. Yes, you could build a fine monument to your mother, as Elvis Presley did. You could say prayers for her as some do. But she would not know about any of these things.
Until just a few years ago, I would dream now and then that my mother was alive, and of what I would do for her. Waking, I would count every act of kindness I had shown to her and every expression of appreciation, and I wished there had been a lot more. I remembered that I had taken Mom to Chicago to see her sister who had just had a stroke, and less than a year later Mom herself was dead. I remembered how pleased Mom had been when I pruned the cherry orchard and repaired the sprayer during summer vacation the year before she died. I remembered how happy she was when I would bring Mary Ann out to see her and spend the afternoon.
I remembered how Mom had to go to the hospital just before her grandson, Davin’s, first birthday. How she loved to see my brother’s boy!
And I remember the phone call we got from Dr. Sheets when Dad and I got home from Davin’s birthday party. Mom had died, despite all his efforts.
So the chance to do anything for Mom ended, and I have only the few things I did to show my love and appreciation for all she did for me to remember.
Fortunately, Mary Ann took a number of colored pictures of my parents, and we treasure those today. Often, we fail to take pictures of parents or children and suddenly it’s too late. I even have a short recording of my mother’s voice. It was a long time before I could listen to it and I wish it were longer, but at least it’s something.
I never got to know my father-in-law, Gust Notz, for he died a few months after his boss, Karl Reynolds, was killed. This meant that when our children were born they only had one grandparent, Grandma Notz.
The mother of nine, four girls and five boys, my mother-in-law was relatively young, about 55, when widowed. But apparently she had such a satisfying marriage that she chose to not marry again, or her children provided the companionship she needed. At any rate, my children never had the experience of having a grandfather.
They certainly got their ample share in a grandmother, though, and Grandma Notz is one of several of the women that has served as a substitute mother for me.
Grandma went through the “hard times” depression era of the 1930’s in raising her children, and went through them with good humor. My wife still thinks radish sandwiches are a treat, and you don’t insult her with hand-me-down clothes. (Our family was glad to get them, too.)
My mother-in-law fascinates me with her stories of growing up near Manitowoc, days when the g------ [Roma] camped on their land, and the Ku Klux Klan came to ask them to join. (I guess they didn’t stress the Anti-Catholic part then.)
Grandmother is proud of the part she played during World War II, managing one of the apartment buildings for shipyard workers in Sturgeon Bay — she still shows the award she got for that.
And Grandma Notz is proud of the sons she sent to fight that war. They were used to hard work on the farm — long, hard hours were not new to them. From little on, they learned to drive anything that had wheels or tracks and an engine. So it was that son Bill got to drive a tank up the boot of Italy to capture Rome, and Louis got to cross the Rhine at Remagen with the first artillery piece. She taught her children to be self-reliant.
Her girls were no exception. One of the first stories my wife told me was of how she drove to the hospital for a serious eye operation alone, fully confident that she could drive her car home again.
I got Grandma Notz to put all her favorite stories down on tape including some of her tricks of the trade in baking that she used when she worked for Maxwelton Braes Resort. That’s so that when her memory fades, her descendants will be able to get a glimpse of what kind of person she was.
When my parents died, several other older people became like parents to me. One who became almost like a father to me was Fred Berger, who, although he never married, has always had a great love for children and his fellow man in general.
Fred was the first person who showed an interest in getting me to go to church. He had grown up with a strong family background himself and realized that the church could be a very important factor in guiding one’s life.
My next door neighbor, Uncle Ed Bavry, also became sort of substitute father. He reminded me in many ways of my mother (his sister), with his gentle, understanding ways.
Uncle Ed married fairly late in life, but the wait was worthwhile, for he married a woman who was perfectly compatible to his nature, my aunt Marian. She has become as close as a mother to both my wife and me. So, at this Mother’s Day time of year, I’d like to throw a little bouquet to her.
Aunt Marian was a teacher at Sunny Point school in 1935 when I first met her. My uncle had taught school at Juddville back around the time of World War I. They had similar training, both having attended the Door-Kewaunee Normal school.
I don’t know how they got acquainted but after they did, they found they had similar interests, such as their interest in books. They both liked history, liked people. As town clerk (a job he held for 55 years, until 1975), Uncle Ed had visitors frequently, and after they were married, Aunt Marian would greet them as cheerfully as my uncle.
They raised three children of their own and around the time their children began to leave home, my wife and I got married and started growing a new generation next door.
Having Aunt Marian and Uncle Ed next door was just like having a grandmother and grandfather. 'They still had cattle, while my wife and I carried on the only the orchard business my parents had started. So the children got to see cows and calves while they were growing up.
It seemed, too, that Uncle Ed would somehow need help with some of the farm work, for which he always paid the children, showing them the value of work. I suspect sometimes he may have created work for the kids just so they could earn some money.
And of course, my aunt was always ready with something delicious to eat and drink after the work was done. In a very real sense, the children had the feeling of having a grandmother and grandfather next door.
Uncle Ed is gone now but Aunt Marian still remains as one of our favorite mothers.
In 1959, the summer of which year we were married, Mary Ann and I got well acquainted with another of our favorite mothers, Sarah Daubner.
We had left the orchard in charge of Fred Berger and taken a wedding trip out West. We had planned on having the cherry crop picked by a Reynolds crew as it had been the past few years. In those days, picking was by Mexican-American crews from Texas, for 4 cents a pound. (One of the last years for all hand picking, I might note. Bud Parmentier has a picture of Don Reynolds standing next to a 1959 shaker.)
While going through the mail that had piled up, we came upon a letter to the growers from Don Reynolds (I still have the letter) saying, that, due to various circumstances, Reynolds could advance only 4 cents a pound for cherries. Perhaps they could pay more later, he said.
Four cents a pound! Why, that would leave nothing for our expenses, we immediately realized. The only way we, could make a profit was to buy a truck, get pickers, and pick them ourselves.
I had already spotted a truck I wanted, a ‘48 Ford owned by my old buddy, Johnny Pelke, who had lived next door and had a garage in Kewaunee. And while my folks were still living, Mary Ann had taken her vacation from the Bank of Sturgeon Bay during cherry season so we could pick what was then a very young orchard. We had been able to get several Native American families to help us.
But by 1959 the 13 acres we had in orchard was too big a job for the small crew we were able to assemble. That’s when Sarah Daubner arrived on the scene to help out.
I had known Sarah as Sarah Alears when she was a teacher of mine. Daughter of the man who named Carlsville, she was born and raised a few miles from me. She had come to take Harvey Cornell’s place as our teacher while he was campaigning for county Superintendent of Schools.
Mr. Cornell had well established himself as the leader of the school. A well-known Door County League ball player, he had the respect of all the rough-hewn country-boys, such as the Schopfs, the Staats, the Carmodys and the Enigls.
Sarah, a young girl in those days, expected no less respect from us. She had a winning smile, a calm way of speaking, kindness but firmness. She had no more of a discipline problem than Harvey Cornell.
Almost 25 years later here she was, the mother of seven, wife of one of Door County’s best known personages—fisherman, farmer, shipyard worker and County League ball player, Marvin Daubner. Sarah had heard that the newlyweds were having trouble getting enough pickers for their orchard, and she came over to see us.
“You know, Johnny, we have for years gone around the neighborhood and asked kids to pick cherries for us,” she said. Now our orchard is getting pretty old, and in a few years we’ll probably pull it out.
“Now, these kids we have picking for us are very good pickers and they would like to earn some money. Some of the pickers are my own kids. If you’d like, they can come and pick for you after they’re done at our place.”
You have to be a Door countyite from the pre-shaker days to realize what this meant. You developed your local picking crew over the years, and you never went recruiting from someone else’s crew. You guarded your crew list like gold.
“If you run out of ladders or pails, you can borrow some from us,” Sarah said.
The kind of help Sarah gave us, which prompts me to remember her at this Mother’s Day time of year, is typical of the value she and Marvin placed on people, and the family, over the years. Marvin passed on his interest in baseball, not only to his boys, but to daughter Carol, who coached the Girls Little League team to the point of national competition.
Let’s extend this Mother‘s Day salute to the women of the church, too, some of whom are unmarried.
Who is it that sees that some kind of training in the knowledge of God for children is important? Who often sits in church while the spouse is still in bed, or hunting, or on the golf course? Regardless of the preponderance in the hierarchy of the church of men, women are what keep the church going. The average man would be satisfied that he could worship God under a tree in the woods, or out in the boat, fishing.
There is a lot of controversy in the church today about the ordination of women. Those in my particular denomination are a bit puzzled by this, since we have ordained women since the 1800’s. But women have had an important role in the church’s work for a long time, in other ways. Think of the communities that would not have had a hospital or good school if not for the ones staffed by nuns.
Mothers, and women, in general, seem to have a better sense of what is right and what is wrong, of what is fair and what is not fair, what is honest and what is dishonest, than men. Do you want proof? Look at your arrest list, either in the Door County Advocate or Milwaukee Journal. Whoever heard of a maximum security prison for women?
This brings me to the point of the mother I really want to honor in this Mother’s Day season of the year, and she’s typical of many. She’s my wife, Mary Ann.
We were both in our 30’s when we were married. When we first met I was impressed by the good-naturedness of her family members, and their concern for each other. And, of course, Mary Ann had an engaging personality and was a good-looker besides, as she still is.
So, in June 1959, I deprived the Bank of Sturgeon Bay of one of their most valued employees, one who had worked there 12 years.
There was a time when the doctor said we probably couldn’t have any children, but in 1961 John arrived, just a week before cherry season. I had been working at a television shop in town when I got a call from Mary Ann that she was driving herself to the hospital. She told me to stop after work.
A few hours later, John arrived. A little more than a week later, he was lying in a crib under a cherry tree, maybe the open air gave him a healthy start, because he won the State A.A.U. judo tournament for his division a couple of years ago.
The next year, Mary Ann went through the cherry season pregnant, delivering Bill two weeks after the season ended. She handled all the book work and helped me load the boxes on the truck as usual.
Jimmy was born in 1963 just as President Kennedy was being laid to rest, and the eternal flame was being lit.
Jimmy was a name we could easily agree upon, since that was the name of one of Mary Ann’s brothers who had died as a child, also it was the name of a close friend of mine, Jim Langemak.
When the grass was ready to be cut for the first time the next spring, Jimmy died. It was one or those viruses doctors don’t understand even today.
One of the saddest things to happen to a mother (or father) is the loss of a young child. When a person dies in his 70’s, 80’s, or 90’s he has tasted of life. Even those who die much younger have experienced the best, and maybe not much of the worst, of what life has to offer. But who ever knows what a child might have been, or done?
Rev. Goehring helped a lot by comforting us, and Father Savaard did his best to console us. Gerald Carmody, our good neighbor, took off a day from work to attend Jimmy’s funeral. We’ll never forget that.
But after it was all over and I was back at school Mary Ann did something I have hardly ever seen her do. She cried.
Mary Ann had gone through the same experience as her mother when Jimmy Notz died back in 1935.
About the same time as we lost Jimmy, Mary Ann found out she was pregnant with David. He was born in January of 1965.
David got the same loving care from Mother as the older boys, but somehow, maybe because he didn’t have a brother to pair up with, he’s become my shadow.
He’s always working on some invention out in my shop, and he shares the rummage sale craze that I suppose we inherited from my great-grandfather, horse-trader Franz Enigl.
Mother first had a daughter in 1966, and this time I cried. There’s something different about being the father of a daughter. Connie, at 13, is taller than her mother and combines a lot of the features of her mother, and the Bavry’s, her great-grandparents. Somehow is something special to a mother, too.
Richard arrived at the most critical period in the cherry season of 1967. Mother had worked all day in the orchard, besides keeping the records for 25 or 30 pickers. She had helped me load three tons of cherries on the truck.
About 10:30 that night Mary Ann told me she thought it was about time to go to the hospital. Richard arrived even before Dr. Hobson did.
Before the end of the season, Mother was back in the orchard, ready to figure out the checks for the end of the year.
Mother’s most recent child, Jeffrey, arrived at a convenient time in the year, March, 1969.
As Jeffery’s hair began to develop we noticed something unusual: it was coming out blond, despite his brown-haired father and mother.
Mother hadn’t run out of hair coloring, however, Uncle Ed reminded me that Grandmother Enigl had been a blond long before I was born.
That completed the family of six for Mary Ann (at least to the present.) Mother has changed plenty of diapers in those 17 years of raising children (and I’ve changed a few, too.)
Along the way, Mother has always taught the children the importance and rewards of work. As soon as they were able to pick cherries, they have had a chance to earn money. And she hasn’t insisted that money be spent for things parents ordinarily would have to provide anyway. She’s helped them find out for themselves that money sometimes is foolishly spent, by letting them decide how to spend it.
Even if it meant picking up the older boys from work at an inconvenient hour, she has seen to it that that didn’t keep them from taking a job. Our daughter has a Journal route that runs seven days a week, and requires early rising on Sunday. The three older boys had to do all the inside work on the addition to our house, including the electrical work, so they’ve learned about a variety of kinds of work.
Above all, Mother stresses setting a good example. I have never heard her curse. She doesn’t smoke and drinks very little. She stresses honesty.
I could go on in detail about the mother in our family, during this Mother’s Day season of the year, but I don’t think she’d like that. She does these things, as all mothers do, because of some inner guiding force.
The world would be lost without that force, and the mothers to use it.
Three “mothers” in the life of John Enigl. At left [above] John is shown with children Connie and Richard and their mother, Mary Ann, and aunt Marian Bavry. Right [below], “Grandma” Notz.
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
Articles by John Enigl
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