Mother was born Oct. 17, 1921, which means she would be 103 had she not died in 2015. While rooting around in some old boxes, I discovered some photos of her that I had never seen before.
I love this shot of her wearing a jaunty hat and a saucy smile. It was a tiny print that still had tape around the edges, so it must have been pasted in something.
8 or 9 at house that burned
A note on the back said she was 8 or 9 in this picture in front of her family’s house in Advance that burned. I don’t know any details.
1938 graduation pictures
This sequence was slugged “1938,” so I have to assume this was when she graduated from high school.
A pack of den mothers
Mother was a Pack 8 den mother. She’s in the back row, second from the right.
She the only one with a medal pinned on her. It might have been a Purple Heart for injuries sustained while herding a bunch of Cub Scouts around.
Christmas in the dining room
Mary Steinhoff Xmas
We called this side of the living room the dining room, even though I pretty much sure we never dined there. In fact, we hardly ever lived in the living room except for special occasions.
We were kitchen, basement and porch folks.
A pensive moment
She’s all dressed up, but I don’t know where she was going.
Slipping in a Dad and Mark moment
LV and Mark Steinhoff at Easter
I don’t want to steal Mother’s thunder, but this never-before-remembered shot of Dad and Mark at Easter is going to become one of my favorites.
Lots of Mother links
Mother was the subject of many blog posts.
Here are some links I pulled together for her obituary.
Mark Steinhoff, my youngest brother, is heavy on my mind. He left us on New Year’s Eve two years ago.
His birth certificate said his middle name was Lynn, but it could just as well have been “Quirky” or “Unusual.”
Do you know of anyone else who ties rocking horses to a tree in their front yard? Or attaches his Christmas tree upside down to the ceiling?
I bet there must have been 200 people at his Celebration of Life, and each and every one of them had a Mark story – it might have been about something he did; a kindness he performed; a prank he pulled, or how he touched another human being.
One of my staffers sold Mark a Sailfish sailboat that he hauled from Florida to Kentucky Lake. Later, he gave it to Matt, who hauled it BACK to Florida.
Matt inherited the Spitfire
Matt Steinhoff with Mark Steinhoff’s Spitfire
Mark promised Matt that he’d get the Spitfire some time in the future. Robin made it happen. It’s been refurbed and put back on the road.
He was a pebble tossed in a pond that created ripples that reached out in all directions.
Waking up at 4 in the morning
I rolled over about 4 in the morning thinking about Mark, then a contrasting character popped into my head.
Marion showed up in my office one day. There are some newspaper folks who are great reporters who can Hoover up all kinds of quotes and turn them into “just the facts” journalism, and there are writers who can make their keyboards sing. She was in the latter category.
I loved working with her. We spent almost two weeks on the road doing tourist stories from South Florida up through Louisiana. Cutting through a foggy swamp road late one night, she, like Bobby McGee, “sang up every song that driver knew (and a lot of new ones).
We were investigating one of New Orleans’ above-ground cemeteries when my car was broken into (“You’re lucky you had an alarm that scared off the burglar, usually they hit the car, then go into the cemetery to rob the tourists.”)
We attended a Christmas party in the country’s only continental leprosarium in Carville, LA.. Not everybody can say that. She was also a regular on weekend bike rides with other newspaper people. On a hot day, water frolicking was apt to occur.
“The well is dry”
“I’ve got to come up with a feature this week, and the well is dry,” she lamented.
“Everybody has a story to tell. You just have to find them,” I told her, falling back on one of my favorite clichés. “Grab the phone book and a thumbtack. Open it to a page at random and stab a name. We’re going to find out what that person’s story is.”
We selected Lester R. “Mosley” on Summit Blvd., in West Palm Beach, an address about three blocks from my house. [Last name changed for privacy.]
Mr. “Mosley” lived in an older, one-story home set back on a large, well-kept lawn. When he came to the door, he was dressed in clean, retiree clothes, and, while confused about why we were there, didn’t chase us away.
We talked with him for about 45 minutes and discovered that he was not only NOT like Brother Mark, he provided the exception to the rule that everyone has a story.
Mr. “Mosley” had no interesting tales of work; had no hobbies to speak of; maintained a neat yard, but without passion; didn’t mention any family nor friends.
About the only unusual tidbit he offered up was that he had married his brother’s widow. (I think I remember that correctly.) Beyond volunteering that simple fact, he never told us anything about her, whether she still lived there, had run off with the milkman or had died of boredom.
A Most Peculiar Man
( Not Mr. “Mosley” -He’s a man I shot in New Burlington, OH, for a book c 1971
A few lines from Simon and Garfunkel’s song, A Most Peculiar Man, came to mind.
He was a most peculiar man
He lived all alone within a house
Within a room, within himself
A most peculiar man
Mr. “Mosley” seemed to be content with his rather colorless life, so who are we to judge?
We didn’t do a story on Mr. “Mosley”. Somewhere in my files is an envelope containing a couple dozen frames of Mr. “Mosley”, which have probably faded away as much as he did.
Marion needed to find a Mark, and all I could provide was a Lester.
UPDATES:
A search turned up a brief obit for a man who could have been Mr. “Mosley.” (His middle name was Rembert). He was born in South Carolina in 1910, and died in Palm Beach county in 1979.
Marion left the paper, moved in with her elderly parents, became reclusive, and died at age 51 in 2002.
When Wife Lila came to Cape recently, she tried to convince me to replace the refrigerator when I remodel my kitchen. She’s a big fan of bottom freezers, and I prefer mine to be at eye level. (Her eyes aren’t that far off the ground, so that’s why she likes the bottom freezer.)
When we went to Lowes to look at ice boxes (using that phrase is a good sign that I’m old), we passed an aisle loaded down with Christmas flowers and cacti. The poinsettias were two for three bucks, so we picked up a couple of them and some cacti for friends and relatives.
Mother had always asked, “Who will decorate the graves after I’m gone?” That sent me back to Lowes to pick up some more flowers.
Sunset more colorful than flowers
After dropping off a pot at my Mother and Dad’s stone, I stopped by Lila’s mother, Lucille Perry. The flowers were colorful, but they couldn’t compare with the sunset in the distance. I wish the camera had captured all the colors my eyes saw.
Roy and Elsie in Advance
Mother’s dad and mother had health problems and lived with us from my early grade school days until after I had left for Ohio University. My life was much enriched by getting to know them.
Here’s a little more about Elsie Welch, as described by her friends.
My great-grandparents
Mother’s grandparents, W.M. Adkins and Mary Adkins died long before I was born, but I still have no trouble spotting their grave in the beautiful Pleasant Hill Cemetery in Tillman, near Advance.
A lot of my grandmother’s friends and relatives are scattered in that cemetery.
I wondered if they got stolen
After I had placed the flowers, I wondered if anyone would spot them and carry them off since they were so portable.
As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I said to myself, “I don’t care if someone does. I fulfilled my obligation to Mother, and if her flowers brighten another grave, that’s a good thing.”
I’m getting a fileserver upgrade, so my computer will be dark for a few days, which would be a problem because Mother’s birthday will fall within that period. Fortunately, I can post this under the Birthday Season Exemption.
My family, for better or worse, is made up of packrats who saved stuff that would be considered inconsequential to most folks. While going through an envelope of greeting, birthday, sympathy and get-well cards, I ran across this snippet of a letter I had written to Mother from Ohio University, probably in 1967.
I’m glad she saved it (and that I found it)
I don’t know what triggered me to write it, but I’m glad I did. I didn’t do that enough to people who are important to me.
Maybe I was trying to recover for letting Mother’s Day slip past me the first year at OU. Trust me, that never happened again.
