For St. Patrick's Day, my dad and his siblings

I did not know I was Irish until I was in college and someone identified my last name. My father was proud of neither his family nor his heritage. Abandoned by their father; neither his mother or her family able to support five more children, he and his siblings had a hardscrabble existence. 

Aunt Laura, the oldest girl, remembered the Akron Children's Home as a nice place, with all the books she could read and her only taste of birthday cake. My dad and my Uncle Bill, the oldest, didn't do well in the Children's Home. My dad turned 17 on August 28th, and by the next weekend was in the army.

Uncle Bill was sent to Orient State School, a mental institution, where he remained until my parents sprung him and took him in in the sixties. He was presumed mentally retarded, a good catch-all for institutionalization. Over his many years at Orient he taught himself to read, and read "to all the boys." When he died his collection of books was enormous. He had every Zane Grey ever published.

The two youngest, Aunt Ruth and Aunt Helen Rita, were eventually taken in by relatives. Aunt Ruth by an aunt, Aunt Helen Rita by her grandmother.  Aunt Ruth was trained to and became a nun, Aunt Laura was trained be a secretary. She met her husband in the course of her job and married. Aunt Helen Rita just eloped one day. All the marriages were long and happy.

Here are pictures  of them I've put together from several sources.

Dad and his little brother, Uncle Bill.

About 1911.

Dad at his wedding, 1942.

Dad and his beret, in the sixties.

Dad in the mid seventies.

Uncle Bill in the fifties. So few pictures of him.

Aunt Laura, aged 16.

The oldest of the three girls.

Aunt Laura in her fifties.

Aunt Laura at 72. 

She was the snappy, fun loving aunt.

My Aunt Ruth, in the sixties.

When her order adopted the less formal habit Aunt Ruth went for it.

She even dyed her hair so her students would not know it was pure white under there.

Aunt Helen Rita, the youngest sister.

She was quiet, demure, meek.

Aunt Helen Rita in her seventies.

The three sisters in the twenties.

Aunt Ruth, left, Aunt Helen Rita center, Aunt Laura right.

Three of the siblings at my sister's wedding, late eighties.

Standing, me (the bridesmaid)

My cousin Pat, who actually is my dad's cousin and another abandoned child of his Irish clan.

Next Aunt Helen Rita, by her daughter Elaine.

Next, Aunt Ruth and Uncle Bill.

Seated, my cousin Marge, Aunt Helen Rita's other daughter,

and her husband Tom.  

There will be pictures

Nothing, but nothing irritates me more than a “bored” child. Had we tried that line on our parents we would have been spading gardens or setting up a croquet game or any of the stuff parents had in reserve. 

I’m good at finding jobs, and these kids have turned out to be quite cheerful job tacklers. No one has tried the bored line, yet.

Way back in early spring the high school sent out a notice of Summa taking applications for summer “interns.”  So you relate to that at once, in our day they were “candy strippers”, and Summa is one of the two major hospital systems in the greater Akron area.

The screening process may have been rigorous back then; it certainly is now. A multi page application, complete with an essay.  Screening meetings, orientation meetings, TB testing, ID badges.  Teenagers with ID badges, for crying out loud.  It’s a new world; I shake my head. It’s the way it is for them. And, it is a hospital.

For the first screening meeting I told Hamilton and Emily they needed tan khaki trousers and nice shirts. That was OK with Hamilton, but Emily is a little too fond of “skinny” jeans and tees.  There was a bit of persuasion required.  Then the directive from Summa, business casual required.  Emily double checked at school to confirm business casual, and she and Hamilton went shopping.

My heart went pitty pat when I dropped them for the screening and my two business casual grand kids walked away.  I cursed forgetting my camera (this before I knew how to take pictures on my phone!).

Today is their first day, noon to four.  Hamilton will be calling out-patients to remind them of appointments; Emily will be filing in “Wound Management.” Driving them to St. Thomas I warned them, “There will be pictures.” Yea, we know, gramma.

“Well, I’ll just be the grandmother who ruined your teenage years, because there will be pictures.”

And Emily, bless her little heart, said “It’s not like ‘this is a picture moment’, and you whip out the camera. You tell a story.  Like that biography you found of your great grandfather and I took it to school for my genealogy project.”

Now, if they just stop saying “like!”

My Aunt Ruth, IHM, was a nurse, and worked at St. Thomas long, long ago, when it was the Catholic hospital.  Emily’s middle name is Ruth.  Aunt Ruth would be proud.

So, our summer is settling out.  Emily has lots of library volunteering and Summa.  Hamilton has being commandeered by his sister, Summa, and McDonalds, to pay his car insurance.  Laura makes bird houses with Uncle Tom and goes to the library.

In July Emily is going to State College, Pennsylvania, to help Linda at a major art show at Penn State.  Hamilton is going to church camp.  Band camp at the end of July, and then school starts in August.  Hard to believe, and there will be pictures.

Stand over there

Turn around and smile.

Sherbondy Hill

My dad and his siblings were orphans, for all practical purposes.  For reasons I can’t know my grandmother married a man fifteen years older than herself, left home and lived with her in-laws while her husband travelled as a railroad man.  In every other year there was another baby, the oldest my father, until in 1915 my grandmother packed up her four children and came home to Ohio from Pennsylvania for the birth of the fifth.

My grandmother sued my grandfather, probably for desertion, and he posted bond in Pennsylvania guaranteeing his appearance in court to answer the charge.  Instead, he “jumped bond,” went west under an assumed name and died of consumption fifteen years later.  Letters from his daughters begging him to return were found in his wallet, revealing his original identity.

Were these not real people the story could be maudlin.   The family lived in the overcrowded childhood home of their mother, with her parents and those of her nine siblings still at home.  In her journal my Aunt Laura mentioned the terrible overcrowding that  sent them living in a succession of houses, moving when the rent came due.  Eventually four of the children were taken to the Children’s Home and from there our Uncle Bill was committed to Orient State School for the Insane.

My dad occasionally lamented the wasted potential of each of his siblings.  The absolute truth concerning my Uncle Bill, but the children, Bill included, played the hand dealt. 

   

Memories of the children’s’ lives during those years are scant.  My dad told one or two stories; Aunt Laura wrote about her brother Johnny as the director of the little band of children, feeding them bread soaked in coffee for their evening meal before bed, their mother absent. 

Aunt Laura set her hand to poetry, and I have a little self-published booklet of poems she dated from 1927 through 1964.  Most are love letters to her husband; she and Uncle Frank indeed were soul mates.

One of Aunt Laura’s poems, Their First Day Late, dated 1928, when she was seventeen, probably draws on a memory of her favorite brother and his favorite sister.

He with his wavy hair of brown,

She with her locks of gold;

They both stand at the schoolhouse door—

Each other’s hands they hold.

Her fresh white apron, her beauty displays,

But her face is bathed in tears.

The little fellow at her side

Cannot dispel her fears.

The big schoolbell had pealed its call,

The echo has died away.

The little maid and her brother

Are late, their first time, today.

They fear to enter the classroom

Where lessons have begun.

And they stand there on the threshold

Wishing the day were done.

Another poem Aunt Laura wrote in 1928 probably more accurately describes the schooling of her brother Johnny, and the uncles of the same age they grew up with.  “Pa” was her maternal grandfather, and a mean drunk from whom the women of the family hid the Four Roses bottle.

School Days

Johnny was a little boy

Who wouldn’t go to school.

He wouldn’t mind the teacher

Nor obey the Golden Rule.

He wanted to play hooky,

Like most the big boys did.

And got a spanking every night

When he was just a kid!

He used to go a-fishing,

Instead of going to school.

And when the days were long and hot,

He played in the swimming pool.

He’d come home late in the evening,

Scared and shivering, too!

Don’t you s’pose that you’d be scared

If “Pa” was up waiting for you?

Although he was spanked most every night,

And “Pa” warned him o’er and o’er,

Johnny scarcely set his feet

Inside a schoolhouse door!

John Lytle, my father, was born in Coalmont, Pennsylvania, in 1907. His mother brought the little family back to Akron, Ohio in 1915.  In 1924, days after his 17^th birthday, he left Akron a member of the United States Army. He spent nine childhood years in Akron, from the age of eight through sixteen.  They were rough and tumble years, deep in adventures with his uncles, his mother’s brothers his own age, and at the same time holding together the little family that was his brother and sisters.

Dad told of sled riding down Sherbondy Hill in the winters. The city was built on four hills, with many lesser hills joining the whole.  Sherbondy Hill, very near his grandparent’s home, leads up to a park today.  At the turn of the century it was paved in cobbles, the better for horses to navigate.  In the winter the snow covered road was impassible, except to sleds. The hill has a grade of almost thirty percent, with several turns.  In telling of their exciting rides down the hill Dad wondered that none of them were killed.  Of course they weren’t.   

Sherbondy Hill

Names happen

When I was ten or eleven, and had a new baby sister named Janice—Janice, Dad said.  “I didn’t name her Janus"—my friend had a new baby sister named Kimberly.  It sounded wrong.  How could a kid go through life named for Kimberly-Clark, the Kleenex company. I come from a family that swapped names around, generation to generation.  

In retrospect, it was the cusp of not your father’s name.  Or mother’s, either.  It happened in my own family, right on the heels of Kimberly.  My Aunt Flo, faced with naming her daughter Ethel, after her mother, or Ethel, after her mother-in-law, named my cousin Barbara.  When my next cousin was born two years later, she named him Kenneth.  Barbie and Ken.

My mother was named Lenore Caroline, matriarchal family names.  Her brother, my Uncle Hank was named Henry Melvin, from his grandfathers on both sides.  His paternal grandfather, Charles Henry Rolf, actually had the same name as a sibling who died as an infant.  Except, the sibling was Henry Charles.  Thrifty people, those German immigrants.

My grandfather expected my mother to be a boy.  No girls had been born in the family for generations.  He was so surprised he dubbed her Nicodemus, and she was called Nikki by everyone except my grandmother.  All my aunts, uncles, cousins called her Nikki or Aunt Nikki.  My dad called her Nikki. 

When I married the naming situation was serious.  My husband was adamant our first child would be a boy, and would be named after him.  Another Junior.  When she surprised him, he named her Joanne (after me) and Elizabeth (after the girlfriend who dumped him after high school).  I was not about to have a big Joanne and a little Joanne in the house, and had no problem with Elizabeth, except for its length, so I told everyone to call her Beth.  It’s worked out well.

My second daughter also acquired a name she wasn’t given.  Her father again intended her to be a boy and be named junior.  Foiled again. I suggested a name to honor her Irish heritage, but quit that idea immediately on learning he would convert it to an ugly nickname.  For a girl, he said, he wanted Michelle. The name du jour in 1967.  Of Beetles renown.   She was Michelle from September, 1967 until July, 1968, when my brother and sister-in-law had a baby, and named her Michelle.

“We can’t have two Michelle’s in the family,” Helyn informed me.  Yours will need a nickname.  I protested ours was named before hers was even conceived.  “But we liked the name first,” she settled.  I’d never liked Michelle; Shelly was fine with me.  In truth, I don’t think my husband called her anything but Shelly.  And, my brother’s Michelle has always been Michelle.  A good name for each of them.

My granddaughters have traditional family names.  Shelly used my dad’s sister’s names, Laura and Ruth, for two daughters, and Beth named her daughter Caroline Lenore to honor her grandmother, Nikki.  Her son, France, may still be on the road to his name.  Born William Francis, he got his first name from his father and his second name from the gourmet hot dog establishment in the lobby of the hospital.  In honor of its being open on Christmas Eve, when he was finally born.  We call him Francis, but I’m thinking he’ll grow up to be a mighty tall Frank.

Nikki, standing by her father

Walter Ernst Rolf, Lenore Caroline Rolf, Henry Melvin Rolf, Ethel Lenore Cox Rolf

“Mr. Lytle left the family in 1918”

Mary Emma Hogue Lytle, my grandmother, left her husband and returned to Akron and her family with her children.  Mary told one of her daughters the constant moving was the reason she left George Marion Lytle and took the children back to Akron. To what would be a childhood of neglect and poverty. 

Mary Emma was born in 1889, the oldest of 10 children.  Her last sibling, a brother, was born four short months before my father became George and Mary’s first child.

I believe Mary married George, fourteen years her senior, simply to escape home and the responsibility of tending to so many younger siblings.  There would have been endless loads of clothing to be scrubbed at the board, hung to dry, taken off the line, ironed. All those younger siblings to keep an eye on and keep diapered. The sheer drudgery is depressing to contemplate.

 She was seventeen when they married. Perhaps it was a love match.  I only say that because Mary Emma was from a staunchly Catholic family and upbringing, which shunned family members who strayed from the faith. George Marion’s religious affiliation is safely assumed in knowing he is buried along with his siblings and his parents in a Methodist cemetery.  But I think the most I can give Mary Emma is infatuation, and perhaps a bit of romance in leaving with a mining engineer to live in Pennsylvania.

My grandparents were married in 1906 and, like in the home she left, the babies arrived every other year.  When Mary returned to her parents’ home in 1915, after nine years of marriage, she was pregnant with her fifth and last child.

George Marion travelled because of his job.  But Aunt Laura, the daughter Mary told of leaving because of travel, also has memories of living with her paternal grandparents in Coalmont.  Parents may tell children whatever they wish, but Mary’s story of frequent moves isn’t that plausible.  I can’t see George moving from assignment to assignment trailing a wife and four children when he had a home base in Coalmont, where Aunt Laura said they lived until they moved to Akron. 

The record I was able to get from the Childrens’ Home contained the tantalizing line “Mr. Lytle left the family in 1918.  He did not appear in court in Pennsylvania.”  This is Mary Emma’s statement to the Childrens’ Home about 1921 when she placed her five children in the Childrens’ Home.  In the years after moving back in 1915, there was not enough food or clothing, or adult supervision, according to Aunt Laura.  She says her father did come one time, she thinks to attempt to reunite, but Mary refused.

I pursued ‘He did not appear in court in Pennsylvania.” Huntingdon County, where Coalmont is located, has a wonderful historical society that provided me with some information about that entry. A genealogical researcher located George Marion Lytle in the Plaintiffs Docket for 1921, where he posted a five hundred dollar bond guaranteeing he would be available for extradition to Ohio.  And when they went to pick him up in 1922, George Marion could not be found.

I looked for the entry on the other side of the ledger here in Summit County, where Akron is located, but the Clerk of Courts found nothing.  I assume Mary Emma filed some action against George, probably in domestic court, probably concerning support, that resulted in a judgment for George to be returned to the State of Ohio.  He jumped bail and disappeared.

The last bit of this puzzle also came from the Childrens’ Home.  In their records they had a letter from Peebles County, Colorado, informing them of the death of George M. Lytle.  He died of consumption, and known by a different name, but in his wallet they found letters from his daughters, pleading for his return.  The return address of the envelopes was the Akron Childrens’ Home.

George Marion died in 1930, a full fifteen years after the separation from Mary.  I have to assume he continued working; he was working when he died in Colorado.  Over that fifteen years his children grew up.  In extreme poverty.  Who left whom is not relevant.  I don’t know why Mary came home in 1915, but told the authorities in 1918 her husband deserted the family.  The order against him likely concerned support; the legal system was as eager in 1918 to see children supported by parents as they are today. My father didn't speak of the father who abandoned the children.  His three sisters, Aunt Laura, Aunt Ruth and Aunt Helen Rita, loved their father unconditionally to the end, and had no charity toward their mother.  AuntRuth, Sister Mary Pasqueline, said they were nobody’s children and they survived.

Another story from my family tree.

The three children who did marry and have children provided homes they surely wished for in their childhood.

My parents on their wedding day.  Grandma Lytle is beside my father; Grandpa and Grandma Rolf on either side of my mother.  The only pictures of Grandma Lytle are from that day.  She was the only member of my dad's family at the wedding.  My father had left the Catholic Church, my mother was not a Catholic.  Dad's many aunts, uncles and cousins did not attend because of this.

Great technology

I’m working my way through dad’s slides, scanning them.  I’ve accumulated small expertise in scanners  the last couple of years I’ve used them.  No depth of understanding, only a trial and error accumulation of what mouse clicks perform which part of the job.  For manipulating scans I had Photoshop on my last computer, version 2000.  As in eleven years ago.  I gave Picasa a go when I got the new computer, and quickly declared it way over my head.  I ended up with Windows live photo gallery.  The logo looks like an askew marigold. As my mother said about so many things, it’s built for comfort, not for speed.  Even does things my eleven year old Photoshop couldn’t envision.  I like it.

Two hundred of the four hundred odd slides I selected are scanned and edited.  I continue to admire my dad’s camera skills.  He encountered pictures in the army; he spliced together aerial photos to make reconnaissance maps.  This was the 1920’s; I’m sure the maps all were of Georgia.  He acquired cameras I saw him use when I was a child.  There were a couple of large format cameras, some bellows Kodak’s.  A tripod.  Light meters, of course.  In 1953, just before he went on an assignment to England, he bought a Kodak 35mm camera that he used for the next twenty odd years.  He only used color positive film—slides—and his choice was Kodachrome 24 or 48 ASA.  Forty and fifty years later the slides look like the first day out of the box.

I think how impressed my dad would be with the scanner, and even more with the editing tools.  He didn’t leave me any red eye to deal with, but there are many pictures I know he’s pleased I have cropped to feature his subject.  And I’m happy I didn’t give up on the scanner I thought was about ten inches square, but arrived in a small suitcase with the usual absent instruction manual.  I don’t do well with on-line, I need to keep my finger under the line of instruction I am following until it’s in my head.  Oh, well.  I’ve got it down now.

Here is the oldest slide in the box, my sister Janice in 1954.

And here is a slide from 1968, my Aunt Ruth and her Aunt Eva.  Aunt Ruth is dad’s next to youngest sister and Aunt Eva is Eveline Cecelia Hogue, a younger sister of dad’s mother.  I got rid of a lot of the laundry, dad, but I’m not good enough to turn the remaining sheets into something else.

One last confession.  I bought a new camera last year.  It only takes eight pictures, which really irritates me, but I’ve worked around it in the little bit I’ve used the camera since I bought it.  I’m going to Wisconsin next week and want to take the camera so I decided to spring for a bigger memory card than the original equipment.  I found a person at Office Max who knew which card would fit into my little Kodak, and even upgraded myself from the 4GB she recommended to 8GB, only ten dollars more.  “Would you like me to put it in for you?”  “That would be so nice!  Wait a minute, there’s a card in there, though,” as she was sliding the new card into the slot.  “No there’s not.  It’s empty.”  An ahha moment—no wonder the screen says internal memory full after eight pictures.  Can you believe I can actually scan and crop slides.

Few questions answered

The long anticipated transcript of records of the Lytle children arrived yesterday from Children’s Services.  There was not a lot of material, as the records officer had warned me several times in conversation.  Six very short paragraphs (three to six lines each) of information. But interspersing it with what I already know was interesting.

There are interesting tidbits.  Their records indicate that Mr. Lytle left the family in Coalmont, in 1918, and did not appear in court in Pennsylvania.  Interesting.  Children’s Services records indicate that some time after that he was located in Colorado Springs, Colorado and died there of tuberculosis in 1930.  Aunt Laura chronicled the children and their mother were back in Akron in 1915 and her father stopped at the home, probably in 1917 or 1918, asking his wife to be reunited and was turned down.  Perhaps some support action was filed in Pennsylvania, and George stopped in Akron and then kept going west.  Apparently Maime Lytle could keep her family together from 1915 to 1918.

Children’s Services records also show a letter from Peebles County Juvenile Court dated July 19, 1930 noted the passing of Mr. Lytle and indicated letters dated 1924 from his daughters Helen and Ruth were found in his possession.  So, all three daughters wrote to their father.  I cannot locate a Peebles County in Colorado (or even in the United States), so I will see if I can get a copy of that letter.  It would be interesting to know how a Juvenile Court would be involved in the death of a middle aged man.

The transcript says the family came to the attention of the Children’s Home in 1918, as Mrs. Lytle had difficulty in providing for her children alone.  She was not in good health and earned only nine dollars a week when she was able to do housework. She was a diabetic; the disease took her life at age fifty eight. The transcript says there was no documentation for the next several years, and does not say when the children were taken into the home.  Aunt Laura writes she was there at age ten, or 1921.  My newspaper account of Uncle Bill says he went from the Home to Orient at age 12, or 1921, so it seems he was already there, and probably my dad, too.  They could easily have been in and out, being cared for when their mother ran out of funds.   

Then, in March 1924, according to the transcript, the family was involved with Juvenile Court due to hardship and in August, 1924, my dad was placed in Charity Latch School and then readmitted to the Children’s Home several days later.  In September, 1924 he left the Home and joined the United States Army.  That supports the in and out theory, and since dad was 17 on the 28^th of August, 1924, I’m sure he was at the recruiting station shortly thereafter.  Charity Latch School!  I can only wonder.

In November, 1924, Laura and Ruth were returned to the care of their mother.  Aunt Laura was 13, then, and Aunt Ruth 11.  Aunt Laura writes that two weeks after her 14^th birthday, in January of 1925, she and Aunt Ruth were taken on a “picnic” and turned over to the convent school.  She lived there in Cleveland and graduated a two year vocational course while Aunt Ruth went to Cathedral Latin High School for a year before returning to another relative and then going on to a nursing degree.

From remarks of my mother during my childhood I understood my Grandfather Lytle had been in prison for non support of his family.  It does not seem to have been down to that, but it appears some action was afoot, as he did not “appear in Court in Pennsylvania”.  I do not know how long it takes a person to waste away from tuberculosis, but there was a span of fifteen years when he provided no support for his children.  There seems to have been plenty of blame to go around, Maime for leaving because she did not like moving and George not giving a damn when she left with four little children and one on the way, and she only twenty six years old. 

I’ve exhausted most resources I can imagine in unraveling my father’s childhood, and that of his siblings.  I’m still curious about Peebles County and Charity Latch School, both of which names could come right out of a Dicken’s novel.  If Maime did the best she could (and she probably did), Aunt Ruth was the most charitable in saying “Isn’t it tremendous what kids can live through.”  If George did the best he could, who knows.  He certainly kept the love of his daughters.

Aunt Helen Rita

Age 18

Things to follow up

I’ve finished re-typing Aunt Laura’s “Chronicles.”  Phew—13 pages.  It was good for me.  Back in college I studied for exams by typing my notes.  There seems to be a more direct link between my fingers and my brain than my eyes and my brain.  Some odds and ends that I will be researching more as a result of reading her chronicle:

The Lytle children, at least the girls, seem to have bounced from the Children’s Home to their mother and grandmother and back several times.  I’ve asked for the records of the children from Summit County and received a very positive call from a “records liaison.”    She said records of that age are on microfiche, stored in another state, but she has put in the request and they are being searched for.  She told me if the records can be found, I can expect to see the dates the children were in the home, school records, who visited them, that sort of stuff.  I expect to hear on this front in the next three to four weeks.

Aunt Laura makes a statement to the effect the three girls had to leave the Home because my Dad had to leave when he was sixteen and no longer age qualified.  I’d like to understand more of why his leaving caused their leaving.   I hope there's a hint in the Children's Home records.

Because I assumed the girls went to St. Joseph’s in Cleveland, which is run by Immaculate Heart of Mary, Aunt Ruth’s order, I wrote the Cleveland Catholic Diocese requesting available records.  But, have not heard one word.  Aunt Laura’s chronicle covers those school years very well, and she said she and Ruth were placed at the Good Shepherd Convent in Cleveland and finished school there.  So, that is settled.  As a footnote to Aunt Laura’s story of their high school years, I have a note from my cousin Marge, Aunt Helen Rita’s daughter, that says Aunt Gen took Aunt Ruth out of the Children’s Home in her teens to help Aunt Gen with her sons, so Aunt Gen could work.  Aunt Gen repaid Aunt Ruth by subsidizing nursing school for Aunt Ruth.  Aunt Gen is one of my father’s aunts with whom we were not close during my childhood; my dad accounted her one of the several relatives who steered Aunt Ruth firmly toward taking orders.  Dad always felt she deserved a better life; Aunt Ruth always felt she had a wonderful life.

The great-great grandparents of the five Lytle children were born in Ireland.  Aunt Laura places both husband and wife from Cork.  I have some genealogy work that shows John Maley from County Cork, but his wife, Elizabeth Mulholland from Kilrea Parish in Northern Ireland.  Given the geographical distance, the times (the potato famine in full sway) and the poverty of the country, I assumed they had met emigrating, or in this country.  Aunt Laura says Elizabeth Mulholland was an accomplished mid-wife and John Maley is believed to have been a doctor.  I hope to work this out in the favor of my dad, who was labeled a Shanty Irishman by my mother’s grandmother!  Perhaps instead of starving peasants they were young professionals of the age.  I am grateful that so many starving families were able to emigrate from Ireland and all of Europe as the stupidity of many governments caused death and destruction of millions.  But--wouldn't it be fun to know that superiority is as superiority does, grandma Troike!

Aunt Laura wrote over 8,000 words, and I decided not to edit any out.  I’ve always found a lovely Irish lilt to her phrasing.  We corresponded for years; both of us loved to write.  So, I will post her chronicle in several logical sections.  You won’t be disappointed. And no, none of her letters to me remain.  Too soon old, too late wise, as the proverb says.

Kilrea, County Londonderry, Ireland

From Wikipedia

Letter dated November 3, 1980 to Kathleen from Margaret Ruth Lytle/Sister Ruth

My cousin Kathleen found and sent me an essay by Aunt Laura entitled “My Chronicles.”  There are twelve pages to be transcribed; many pages of detail of her childhood and her brothers and sisters.  So, before I post Aunt Laura’s account, here is the brief account Aunt Ruth wrote when Kathleen asked her aunts to give her a description of their childhood.

Aunt Ruth is the next to youngest sister of my father.  Like Aunt Helen Rita, the youngest, Aunt Ruth was kind, gentle, soft-spoken.  Aunt Ruth was a nun, in the Immaculate Heart of Mary order.  I always felt that Aunt Ruth was moderate and gentle through training; Aunt Helen Rita was so by true nature.  Aunt Ruth was witty and funny and had a store of jokes to rival Uncle Bill’s. Aunt Ruth was a nurse and worked for years at St. Thomas Hospital in Akron.  At the end of her career, she taught nursing. 

She made the change to teaching in the early 1970’s, and approached me at a family gathering.  Dress policies were changing, nuns were appearing in less restrictive habits and even in regular street clothing.  Aunt Ruth was about to exchange her veil for a less restrictive headdress that would, oh horror, reveal her hair to be white.  She wondered if I could explain how to go about dyeing hair, as she thought she could better keep order among students if she looked younger.  I don’t remember if she dyed or not—I always remember her hair as white as Uncle Bill’s.

Aunt Ruth drove, and was responsible for taking other order members to appointments, shopping, and so forth.  She worked her driving responsibilities so that she could spend time with family.  When Aunt Ruth “retired” to her mother house in Monroe, Michigan, she drove back to Northeastern Ohio to visit family, and my mother often drove to Monroe with Aunt Helen Rita, Aunt Laura or Uncle Bill to visit her.

There was an annual rummage sale in Monroe, and Jan and I often sent woven rugs and other stock for the sale.  On a visit we asked Mother Superior if the nuns had enjoyed any of the contents of our boxes and Mother Superior said, “Oh, we can’t afford to buy any of it!”  We were shocked.  The next annual box contained the instruction that nothing went to the rummage sale until every nun had taken everything she wanted.  Then when we visited around the rooms with Aunt Ruth we found rugs on the floors and thanks for the warm feet in the morning.  I’m sorry; no one should have to deal with cold linoleum!

My best and final Aunt Ruth, and then on to her narrative. She died as unexpectedly as mom; went to bed with a cold and just gone.  We went to Monroe for her funeral and the nuns were so happy; Aunt Ruth’s funeral mass would be conducted by a visiting priest, his visit coinciding.  We visited with one of Aunt Ruth’s especial friends, too ill to leave her room. She said she had prayed for three days to die next so she could be buried for eternity beside Ruth.  But, Sister Ann had passed just that morning.  When we went to the cemetery I felt I was at Arlington.  Rows and rows and rows.  There was majesty in the beauty of a cemetery of rows and rows of lives of service.

Letter dated November 3, 1980 to Kathleen-Margaret Ruth Lytle/Sister Ruth-memories….

You probably have heard your mother remember that not much about our childhood was really happy!

Mom used to take us to the Perkins Woods quite often on Sundays.  We had picnic dinners and our chief amusement consisted of rolling down the hills or using the swings and sliding boards.  Often we visited the zoo (at Perkins Woods.)  The foxes’ dens smelt so terrible, we were glad to get away from them.

Even though we were “everybody’s kids,” I felt I belonged to no one.  Our relatives tried to do a good job of making us “hate” our parents.  They said our Dad “was no darn good” and Mom “could care less.”  (I know now that our Dad was dying with tuberculosis, and he probably didn’t want to contaminate us, so he just left home and went to Colorado Springs…where the weather was better for him.  (He died before I got to know him.)

We lived with Grandma (Hogue) for a while, but when things got too difficult for her (18 people living there) we moved out.  We lived so many places I can’t keep track of them.  (I only know Mom moved just about every time the rent was due.)

We were put in the Children’s Home because she couldn’t take care of us.  (I think we were being put up for adoption, but Grandma took us back with her.)

Shortly after we left the Children’s Home, Grandma told us we were going to visit in Cleveland.  She and Aunt Eva took Laura, Helen Rita and me to the Convent Orphanage.  (That was the best thing that ever happened to us, but at the time we detested their deception.)

However, we survived, hale and hearty, and lived to tell the tale.  Isn’t it tremendous what kids can live through.

At Jan's wedding in 1984

In the back line, me, our cousin (2nd) Pat from Texas, Aunt Helen Rita, her daughter Elaine, Aunt Ruth, Uncle Bill

Seated front, Aunt Helen Rita's daughter Marge and her husband Tom