Ken Steinhoff Archives

June 23, 2015June 24, 2015

Mary Welch Steinhoff 1921 – 2015

Mother in her wedding / funeral dress – June 15. 2015

I was in Tulsa recovering from my niece’s wedding when my cell photo rang at 7:10 a.m.

The call was brief and to the point: “This is the Lutheran Home. Your mother died this morning at 7 o’clock. She was fine when we checked on her throughout the night, but she was dead when we went to dress her for breakfast.”

Mary Steinhoff meets Finn 06-16-2015 — Mary meets Finn 06-16-2015

What made the call a particular surprise was that she had rallied in the last month: her appetite had come back, she was gaining weight, her physical therapy was moving along, she was the patient the staff enjoyed hanging out with because she would joke and tease them.

When my sons and grandsons came through town, she regaled them with stories I had never heard before. (Not every mother has stolen a dump truck. Or, specified that a suitor write her letters only in a specific color of ink that wasn’t available locally.) When I spoke to her at 8 p.m. Sunday night to tell her that I was going to be stuck in Tulsa for another day because of car trouble, her voice was strong.

Maybe she had been holding on until she saw her family one last time. She didn’t make it to Tulsa for the wedding, but she DID get to have a Facetime session with the bride and groom right after the ceremony.

I spent the next hour notifying family, close friends and neighbors. I managed to get through the process with only a few tissues – the room must have been dusty – and a few fishbones stuck in my throat.

It’s going to be the little things

It’s going to be the little things that hit me.

On the way back to Cape, we passed through a bunch of towns – Mountain View, Ellsinore, Poplar Bluff – whose names I could remember because Dad had pulled our house trailer with its folding white picket fence to them so we could live near his jobs. I know there are more of them, but it hit me hard that I have nobody left who can fill in the blanks.

Dad died in 1977

I had always wanted to sit down with Dad and a map of the region to have him fill in all the roads, bridges, sewer lines, airfields and dams he had built. Who would expect a man 60 to keel over and be dead while building a sandbox for your kid? That’s another hole in my life.

This afternoon, while editing this piece, the nap magnet snatched me up. While I was setting my alarm for a 22-minute nap, I saw two alarms I can delete. One of them was for 6:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. That was to remind me to turn on the Wheel of Fortune. Once Mother got strong enough mentally and physically that she didn’t need me to be literally holding her hand all the time, she’d say, “Why don’t you take a nap until this is over?” She didn’t have to ask me twice.

I will never watch The Wheel again so long as I live.

The Sunday Night 7:30 call

The other alarm is going to be harder to delete. For most of my adult life, no matter where I was, I called Cape at 7:30 on Sunday evenings to check in. Steinhoffs don’t talk long. Rarely did our conversations stretch more than 10 minutes. Dad was always interested in what stories I was covering and what was going on with my job. It took a long time for me to get past wanting to share those things with him. I still wish I could give him a ring for advice from time to time.

Mother’s conversations would generally be about the weather, what her friends were doing, the price of gas, what was going on with the other family members. She also was a person who didn’t say “Good bye.” When she was done talking, she was done, and you’d be listening to dial tone. It was a trait that was passed on to me. My guys would say, “You’d better say it fast, and you’d better not sound like the call is wrapping up, or the next thing you’ll hear is a click.”

Maybe I’ll leave that one around for awhile. I won’t set it, but it’ll always be there.

Funeral instructions

Several years ago, Mother told Wife Lila what she wanted to happen when she was gone. She wanted no church service, no sad music (specifically banning Amazing Grace, one of my favorites), no big hoopla, she wanted a bunch of balloons released at the graveside, and she wanted to wear her favorite dress.

We’re going to gather at Ford and Sons Funeral Home on Mount Auburn Road from noon to 1 p.m. on Wednesday, June 24. Since nearly all of her peers have already moved on to gossip and quibble from perches on clouds, we don’t expect a lot of people to show up. We’re having an informal service – no ministers, no funeral director, and no set program. We may just sit around sharing memories and stories.

After I posted the news on Facebook Monday, I received an unbelievable flood of comments from many of you who recalled stories I had almost forgotten. I sense that Mary Welch Steinhoff was the mother everybody wished they had. She claimed that she didn’t like perfect strangers coming up to her in stores asking, “Aren’t you Ken’s Mom?” but she really loved the attention.

Formal obit

Here’s the formal information from the obit I wrote:

Mary Lee Welch Steinhoff, 93, of 1618 Kingsway Drive, died Monday, June 22, at the Lutheran Home. She was born Oct. 17, 1921, in Stoddard County, the daughter of Roy and Elsie Adkins Welch.
She and L.V. Steinhoff were married Jan. 7, 1942. He died in 1977. A brother, Kenneth Welch, died in 1935.
She is survived by three sons: Kenneth L. Steinhoff (Lila), West Palm Beach, Fla.; David L. Steinhoff (Diane), Tulsa, OK.; Mark L. Steinhoff (Robin), St. Louis. She had four grandchildren: Matthew (Sarah) and Adam (Carly), Florida; Kimberly Tisdale (Casey), Austin, TX, and Amy Hawkins (Ian), Dallas, TX.
She had four great-grandsons: Malcolm, Graham, Elliot and Finn Steinhoff of Florida, and three great-granddaughters: Brynn, Taylor and Emery Tisdale of Austin, TX.
Mary Steinhoff was a housewife, but she has become well known for the tales told about her in her son’s blog.
Visitation and an informal service will be held from noon until 1 p.m. Wednesday, June 24, at Ford and Sons Funeral Home on Mount Auburn Road. She will be buried in New Lorimier Cemetery next to L.V. Steinhoff.

Holy cow! That’s a lot of posts

I can understand why my readers feel like they know Mother. Here’s a partial list of the posts I’ve done on her. They are arranged by date.

May 21, 2015

Taking a Break

After more than a year of posting seven days a week, you may have noticed that I’ve been slacking off.

This has been a rough winter for Mother: she had her heart shocked back into rhythm in February, her pacemaker was replaced and she’s been sucking down supplemental oxygen to help her breathe (her oxygen saturation is higher than mine, so it must be working). In addition to the miserable weather that kept her trapped in the house, her circle of friends is getting smaller and smaller, which has made her a bit gloomy.

Regaining her strength

Different combinations of Mark, David and I have been keeping her company, but we determined that we didn’t have the expertise to get her back up to speed. She’s moved into the Lutheran Home temporarily so she can get physical therapy and gain some weight back. She’s got plenty of muscles from mowing the lawn, blowing leaves and going up and down the basement steps, but she’s working on learning how to use those muscles more effectively when you’re 93, going on 94.

I like the Lutheran Home

I’ve done quite a few stories over the years about healthcare facilities, including some that are no longer in business in Cape County. Most of the stories, sad to say, were about neglect and abuses.

The first thing I noticed about the Lutheran Home was that it didn’t smell. It’s clean and shiny.

The staff is friendly and caring. I’m usually there from late afternoon, through the evening meal and wind down watching a movie with Mother until she falls asleep, so I’ve had plenty of time over the last couple of months to get to know the folks who work there. They are stretched a little thin, but that’s a management issue, not anything the individual nurses, aides and therapists can control. I’m impressed.

Cards and letters

Road Warriorette Jan put the word out to her wide network of friends that she knew someone who would love to get some cards in the mail. Before long, Mother was getting batches of unique and interesting cards from all over the country. It has certainly given her something to look forward to.

If you’d like to send her a note, here’s her address until she gets back home.

Mary Steinhoff

Lutheran Home Room 217

2825 Bloomfield Road

Cape Girardeau, MO 63703

Back to work

I’m way behind on some projects, but I’ll try to post to this blog a little more regularly. Thanks to you folks who sent me email saying you missed seeing the morning posts.

I also need to thank Marty Riley and Rachael Criddle who have been a tremendous help over the past few months. It’s nice to have folks around who can explain medicines and procedures to you in non-doctorspeak.

April 24, 2015

World Book Day

I was driving down the road this afternoon when someone on the radio mentioned that this was World Book Day. That caused a flashback to some photos of the side-by-side offices Dad and I had in the basement.

This was my desk, which is uncharacteristically neat and clean. I’m normally a stacker. The radio dial is set somewhere to the middle, so I was probably listening to KFVS, which I think was 960. It’s doubtful I could have picked up my favorite stations: WLS out of Chicago, WLN out of New Orleans or KXOK out of St. Louis.

The reference books I still have on my shelf nearly 50 years later are to the left of the radio. The Olivetti portable typewriter followed me to Ohio University and points beyond. I passed it on to Brother Mark at some point, and he still has it.

My darkroom equipment was eventually set up behind me on a table and Dad’s workbench. These photos must have been taken before I bought my enlarger and other stuff.

Shari saving me from Algebra

Maybe I cleaned up my desk because Girlfriend Shari was coming over to try to drill algebra into my skull. If you blow it up big enough, you can see a hand-scrawled note on the wall that says, “When I’m right, nobody remembers; When I’m wrong, nobody forgets.”

Dad’s side of the world

Dad had a real office where he did most of his book work, but he’d also work on things at home. There’s a blueprint on the left side of the desk. That lamp hanging down is still in use, and the fan is still there. The book shelves gradually filled with books, mostly about Scouting, but there are still a lot of Pinewood Derby cars and wooden neckerchief slides gathering dust. There is a stack of aluminum film cans containing our 8mm home movies to the left of the light.

Getting back to World Book Day, I’ve always been surrounded by books and magazines. When we lived in a tiny house trailer that Dad pulled from job to job, there wasn’t a lot of storage space, so my comic book collection was housed in a wooden seat with a hinged lid back in my bedroom. When you are an only child (at the time) and living out in the boonies, your books become your closest companions.

Dad and my grandfather liked murder mysteries

I asked my grandfather, who lived with us, why he liked Earl Stanley Garden and Perry Mason books and not the fishing magazines I subscribed to.

“Because I can read a mystery without wanting to kill someone, but if I read a fishing magazine, I’d want to go fishing,” he answered.

Our family subscribed to The St. Louis Globe-Democrat in the morning and The Southeast Missourian in the afternoon. We must have gotten at least half a dozen magazines. If nothing else was available, I’d read the cereal box.

When I finally got a library card, I checked out as many books as I could carry. I made a tiny mark inside the books when I finished them. A few years back, I prowled the aisles of Cape’s library until I saw some old friends that still had the marks in them. If any of the book police are reading this, I hope they will forgive my youthful transgression.

March 5, 2015

Debaters Not Worth 20¢

I posted pictures of a mad feeding frenzy after the Girardot yearbook had gone to press and the photos in it were made available for purchase. When I was going through a box of prints the other night, I found this one of what I assume to be the Debate Club. It had the price of 20 cents written on the back of it.

Despite the people clamoring for photos in the other post, apparently nobody thought we were worth two thin dimes, so I ended up with it.

I think I have figured out who all the players are. Back row, l to r, Chuck Dockins, Ken Steinhoff, Bill East, Jane McKeown, Mike Seabaugh, Debby Young and Shari Stiver.

Front row, l to r, Pat Sommers, Joni Tickel, Vicky Roth and Sally Wright. Click on the photo to make it larger.