Think About It

"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably why so few engage in it."

                                                                                                - Henry Ford

A while ago I finished reading Thinking for a Living: Creating Ideas That Revitalize Your Business, Career, and Life  by Joey Reiman (Longstreet Publishing, 1998).

In this short and somewhat self-inflating memoir turned futuristic business guide, Reiman tells how he rose through the ranks in advertising, made millions for his clients, then went on to build his own company called BrightHouse, known for its work “in the areas of ideation, purpose-inspired leadership, innovation and marketing.” In other words, the man is, and always has been, big on ideas.

Well, who isn’t? I mean, really, who doesn’t like the idea of coming up with a good idea once in a while? Whether it concerns business or pleasure, whether it’s big or small, a good idea goes a long way in making one’s life a little better. But how do we get them? Do we dare call it a process? Or does it all come down to some sort of spontaneous combustion?

One major premise of the book is that ideas are the currency of the future. Following that thread Reiman gives his take on the concept of creativity and ideas – what it takes to get them and make them happen. He says there are four stages of creativity – what he calls the four I's:

1) Investigation

            “Do your research. Learn as much as you can about what interests you.”

2) Incubation

            "The best way to create a high-quality idea is to create a high quantity of ideas.            And the best way to do this is to think. Thinking takes time, so the longest stage   of the idea process is incubation."

3) Illumination

            "Illuminations are the Aha's! Nothing [else] feels like them, but you can't have a full illumination until you've taken the time to investigate and incubate…that is             why the greatest repository of ideas are graveyards. Here ideas remain buried with       the people who had them but did nothing with them."

4) Illustration

            Take action. Make it happen.

Whatever is involved, big thinking does take time. And if you take the time, the ideas will come.

"Big ideas don't appear, they evolve."

                                                - Joey Reiman

Faith and Follower

Think entrepreneur and what comes to mind – the inspired idea, the thoughtful inventor, the self-started business venture? Maybe if you’re lucky it’s that tickle of electricity that runs through you and says hey, given half a chance my idea could be big – really big. However one defines it, the concept of the entrepreneur has always stood at the core of capitalism.

Indeed, the entrepreneurial spirit has its roots sunk deep in the history of this country. One could easily argue that it is part of our national DNA. After all, what is the Declaration of Independence but a brilliantly conceived business plan for a radical new product, a revolutionary new way of life? Who were men like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin but visionary statesmen and risk-takers of the highest order? Who was Clara Barton but a woman who saw an imperative need for healing after the Civil War and thus founded The American Red Cross?

The list is endless – entrepreneurs big and small, men and women whose ideas and yes, their good fortunes, have shaped our lives, and our history to this day.

The stories and motives behind each successful business venture have been as intricate and varied as the inventions themselves. No doubt the lure of financial gain stands tall in that regard. Such is the enduring lure of capitalism. To ignore the compulsion of greed behind many entrepreneurial tales throughout our history would be naïve, to say the least. But in so many cases there has been another fundamental element to the American success story: the steadfast belief in a Higher Power that tells someone this idea I have, this thing I created – whatever it is – was meant to be. And from my idea many may benefit.

“God has strewn our paths with wonders and we certainly should not go through Life with our eyes shut.”

The man who spoke those words was Alexander Graham Bell. In 1876 he was awarded a patent for his communication device. Today we can access every known bit of information by reaching into our pocket and touching a screen on our phones. Call it evolutionary thinking. Call it a Divine Spark. What cannot be argued is that all ideas do come from somewhere. Just as it was laid out in perhaps the greatest entrepreneurial words ever written:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

FOR SALE BY OWNER – THE MOST EVIL HOUSE IN WISCONSIN

In November darkness comes early to these parts. The days get shorter, the wind bites a little harder, and the first sure sign of winter settles on harvested fields like a white carpet. For people living in the farmlands of central Wisconsin it’s the same every year. It’s nature’s way.

Fifty-five years ago, on a cold November night in 1957, what passed for nature’s way took an incredible twist with the discovery made inside a desolate, two-story house located six miles west of the town of Plainfield, Wisconsin. What local police bumped into – literally – that night defied explanation, and dismissed once and for all the notion that human behavior had its limitations. Along the way it created one of the more unlikely, and enduring, cult figures in the annals of true crime.

Welcome to Ed Gein’s house.

Actually Ed wasn’t quite that gracious when he opened his front door to Don and Georgia Foster on a warm spring afternoon six months prior. In fact he was a little wary when his neighbors drove up and knocked on his weather-beaten front door. Eddie didn’t have many visitors.

But there they were: Don Foster, a Plainfield native and nearby paper mill worker, and his wife Georgia, holding her ten-month-old son in her arms. A few weeks earlier, Don Foster had run into Ed at a nearby crossroads country store where the two got to talking. The Fosters were a growing family and needed a bigger house to live in, maybe some land to farm. Conversely, Ed lived alone in his big house and wasn’t farming his land at all. He had been thinking about getting a smaller place.

Well, maybe they could buy each other’s house. A house swap.

An interesting idea. Why not?

Ed had already seen the inside of the Foster home. More than once he had stopped over and helped babysit their young children. Now it was time for the Fosters to check things out on their end. Like other houses in the hinterlands back in those days, the Gein house didn’t have electricity or a phone line (or running water or indoor plumbing). There was no way for the Fosters to phone ahead and tell him they were coming over. They simply showed up.

As she approached the house that afternoon, young Georgia Foster had no way of knowing she was about to step into a soon-to-be piece of American gothic history – Ed Gein’s kitchen.

“It was the middle of the day but still it was pretty dark in there,” recalled Georgia, now 85 years old and still living in northern Wisconsin. “There were maybe one or two small windows in the kitchen, but they were covered with ragged old curtains. There was so much stuff lying around you had to be careful where you walked.”

Ever mindful of her manners, she clutched her baby tightly and tried not to notice the dirty frying pans on the stove, the boxes of old magazines, the blackened jars and used soup cans lying in piles all around the room. The Fosters were there only to look at the physical structure of the house, she reminded herself. Did the joints and beams look solid? Were the walls and ceiling in good shape? After all, if they did end up swapping houses, they wanted to be sure they were getting a safe and solid home.

Was Georgia nervous about going out there? “No, not really. Everyone in town knew Eddie was a little different, but we just accepted that. He was harmless.”

Then she added, “It didn’t cross my mind at the time, but I don’t think anyone had ever been out to see his house, certainly not since his mother and brother died.”

If one were to believe in such a thing as a family curse, what happened to the family of George and Augusta Gein might well stand out as exhibit A. In 1914 they left La Crosse, Wisconsin and moved to Plainfield where they found and bought their dream farm, though truth be told, that dream was little more Augusta’s intense desire to live as far away from everyone as possible. To her unbending way of thinking, people were inherently evil – especially women.

 An overbearing, religious zealot who herself had suffered physical abuse as a young girl, she taught her two boys early on that all women, except her, were nothing more than wicked harlots. Even husband George was not spared. Unable to satisfy his wife with anything he did, he fell victim to her ceaseless contempt and ridicule. From there he became a bitter and incurable alcoholic. He died in 1940. Ed’s older brother, Henry, died under mysterious circumstances while fighting a brushfire with Ed in 1944. Then Augusta suffered a stroke, and it fell upon Ed to care for her as best he could, until she died from a second stroke in 1945.

For the next twelve years Ed lived alone in that quiet house, surrounded by bad memories and 196 acres of barren, unused farmland.

According to Georgia Foster, Eddie didn’t seem all that nervous or distracted while he conducted his house tour that day, though he did quickly shut the doors to several rooms without showing what was inside. The Fosters did get a peek into what was his mother’s bedroom downstairs. Curiously, that was the only room in the house that was neat and tidy, if more than a little dusty.

To the local townsfolk Ed had always been a bit of a curiosity, the village clown; but never was he thought to be a threat to harm anyone. Not even after a 15-year-old local boy started a strange rumor by telling people he had been in Ed’s house one day when Ed showed him his collection of shrunken heads. No one believed it was true, of course.  

So, as Georgia was coming down the stairs after seeing what she could of the five rooms on the second floor, she quipped, “Hey Eddie, where do you keep those shrunken heads?”

Normally Eddie would never look anyone in the eye when talking to them, but right as she said this, Georgia remembers, the afternoon sun was coming through a window and lit upon his face in an eerie way. For a brief second or two she saw the strangest red glint in his eye. Like that of a feral dog; an animal gone bad.

“That was the only time I ever got a bad feeling from Eddie,” Georgia would say years later.

The simpleton grin quickly returned to Eddie’s face, however, and he seemed to be playing along with the joke when he said of the shrunken heads. “Oh, they’re down here in the pantry.”

To this day Georgia Foster insists neither she nor her husband ever saw anything in Ed’s house that day that aroused any suspicion. Though, for the record, Ed never did show the Fosters what, if anything, was in that pantry.

The Fosters were in Ed Gein’s house for a half-hour before they said goodbye and drove off. According to Georgia they left still thinking the house swap might work out. Days later it was Eddie who backed out of the proposed deal.

Fast forward six months. At a little before eight o’clock in the evening of November 17, 1957, while people throughout Wisconsin were relaxing after Sunday dinner, Waushara County Sheriff Arthur Schley and Police Captain Lloyd Schoephoerster were driving in the dark of night toward Ed Gein’s house. The two lawmen wanted to talk to Ed about Bernice Worden.  

Mrs. Worden ran the hardware store in Plainfield. Her son had just gone to the police with a strange story about his missing mother, blood stains on the floor, and an unclaimed receipt for a gallon of anti-freeze with Ed Gein’s name on it.

  The lawmen pulled up to the darkened house. Guided only by their flashlights they crunched across the hard snow and circled around the building, looking for a way to get in. They found the door to a connected summer kitchen unlocked. Entering the unheated room they started aiming their flashlights around at the garbage and filth lying all around. That’s when Sheriff Schley took a step back and felt something bump his shoulder.

Turning around, he saw what could only be called sickening and unimaginable by today’s jaded standard, to say nothing of 1957 in the middle of America’s Heartland. There it was in the beam of light: the headless and naked human body that was Bernice Worden hung upside down with the insides taken out. Dressed-out like a trophy deer.

Reportedly, the first words out of Sheriff Schley’s choking mouth were, “My God, there she is.”

 But that was only the beginning. By the time police had cleaned out the house they found no less than ten severed heads – all women – and more, buried amidst the squalor.

“HOUSE OF HORROR STUNS THE NATION” read the headline in LIFE magazine two weeks later. Such was the near-instant notoriety of the case that reporters from Chicago and New York City descended upon Plainfield within twenty-four hours of Gein’s arrest on November 17th. As an incredible tale eventually emerged, one involving grave robbing, murder and collected body parts, a near-steady stream of curious out-of-towners flocked in day and night for weeks afterward just to get a look at what had become overnight the most infamous house in Wisconsin.

A Wisconsin writer named Robert Bloch started reading newspaper accounts of Ed Gein and came up with a clever idea for a novel. Three years later, in 1960, film director Alfred Hitchcock took that same story and forever immortalized Ed Gein in the guise of a character named Norman Bates in one of the most famous and frightening movies ever made – “Psycho.”

Then there is one of the more garish ironies of the whole affair: Ed Gein, who died in 1984 in the Mendota Mental Health Institute in Madison, lies buried in an unmarked location of the Plainfield cemetery. This after someone had snuck in and stolen his tombstone and attempted to sell it on the internet. Even today the macabre fascination with Eddie won’t go away.

That big story in LIFE magazine included a picture of Georgia Foster and her young son, Howard – two of the only visitors who ever set foot inside Ed’s house. 

“Who knows what all went on in that house?” said Georgia Foster matter-of-factly, fifty-five years after she and her husband considered swapping their house for his. “Nobody knew back then. We were just looking for a bigger house to move into, that’s all. I don’t think about it much anymore, but I guess everything happens for a reason.”

Indeed it does. In the pre-dawn hours of March 28, 1958 – two days before the scheduled estate sale of the Gein farm – the two-story white frame building somehow caught on fire. By the time volunteer firefighters got out there the fire was too far gone. There was nothing they could do, they said, but watch it burn to the ground.

The plot of land was seeded with new trees shortly after that. Today in the woods and fields around Plainfield there is no physical trace of where the house once stood. And that’s just the way people living around there want it. They can only wish the bizarre fascination with Ed Gein would disappear as easily. But where dreams die hard, so do nightmares.   

It’s nature’s way.

-end-

 

The Final Part

The end of a five-month long project to tell a man's life story. Without a doubt the most personally rewarding and satisfying thing that I have ever written. I hope others who may read it think it was a story worth telling.

The slow decline continued into 1976. There were good days where he felt and acted like his old self, usually when getting together with friends and relatives, but those days seemed to be dwindling. After yet another thoracic, or chest, surgery on February 20^th the good days were pretty much gone, reduced now to tolerable days, and even those were outnumbered by downright bad days, days in which it was all he could do to get out of bed and watch TV. Then early in the evening it was back to bed where he would pull the covers up tight around himself, as if trying to hide from it all.

When looked at with an unflinching eye, anyone’s life is bound to have its contradictions; and the idea that others see things in us we cannot see in ourselves is neither new nor unique. That being said, probably the biggest contradiction in C.J.’s life came to greater light when dealing with cancer and his own mortality.

Here was a man skilled at public speaking, a man who loved to converse on so many subjects, a man so outgoing he could tell a joke or funny story as well as anyone; but here also was a man whose innermost thoughts were almost impregnable. Long before he got sick, Carol and the kids could always sense when something was bothering him, but they knew better than to ask what the problem was. Money worries, health issues – Clarence would never say. One way or another he let it be known quite strongly that he didn’t want to talk about it. They were infrequent, but when he was in one of those tight, quiet, locked-down moods everybody kept their distance. Only Carol could get through, on occasion, and even she found it very difficult to do so.

Thus, it really is no surprise that now in the time of his greatest challenge, his greatest need, he was unable, or unwilling, to open up and express his feelings and his fears to anyone. Not even to himself, at least not in his private journals.

That periods of depression and sullen silence would set in at this point is hardly a surprise. Indeed, given the circumstances, who wouldn’t react that way, at least to some degree? Still, the questions remain: Why couldn’t he ever talk about it? Would it have helped ease the pain somehow? Was this all part of the silence-is-strength mindset that men of his generation were brought up in? The fear that any crack in the wall might spring a flood of emotions and sap his strength and purpose altogether? In C.J.’s case there are no sure answers anymore. The terrible, heavy thoughts had to be there – every morning when he woke up and then again every night before he drifted off to sleep. He was sick. In all likelihood, terminally so.  But as for how he was dealing with that fact, only he could say. And he wasn’t talking.

Of course recognizing his withdrawal made it no less frustrating to those closest to him – his wife and children. 

Back on February 18, 1975 Diane wrote him a direct and heartfelt letter of love and concern. In that letter she wrote: “I know there are communication barriers between us at times and I guess it’s hard for me to approach you, especially about the cancer….I want so much to know what’s going on in your thoughts. It will be such a mental relief off your shoulders, and ours too. Even though we carry on ‘business as usual,’ watching TV, laughing, talking as if everything is ok, it’s just an act really….[Your] state of mind is your worst enemy now and you can’t let it control you.”

Clarence did respond to Diane’s letter, but whatever he said is, unfortunately, long gone. The truth is he was putting up a bold front as best he could, as though everything was, more or less, “business as usual.” But, giving credit where it is truly due, he was at the same time carefully preparing for what now seemed to be the inevitable.

He had the foresight to sign a ‘living will,’ which instructed doctors to discontinue further treatment if and when they deemed it no longer viable. Back in the mid-70s that was not as common as it is today. He also began to sit down with Carol and go over in detail all the financial matters that would need tending to in the future.  More than ever, financial security for his family was of utmost concern to Clarence, and he decided that when the time came he wanted his body donated to the Medical College of Wisconsin Department of Anatomy in Madison. He did tell Carol he wasn’t going to waste any money on funeral home expenses, or for that matter, not even on a burial plot or headstone. That money, he figured, would be better spent on insuring his family’s future well-being.

Here the point must be made that other than Clarence himself it was Carol who bore the brunt of the illness. More than anyone else, she lived day in and day out with not only a lifetime of memories but the present reality as well. As she gradually grew stronger in her lead role within the family, she watched as her husband of nearly thirty years grew physically weaker and more dependent – a definite reversal of how things had always been between them. True to her own nature, Carol maintained throughout a quiet and faithful strength that certainly helped sustain everyone during these troubled times.

As for that memoir project Clarence wanted to write, he was able to complete a lengthy synopsis of his journal entries for the years 1950 – 1973. (With this he deliberately stopped short of the time that cancer took hold.) At the conclusion of that family memoir he added this final, prophetic note:

The kids may eventually want to read this and, if so, I hope they get a few laughs reminiscing over the many events. We had a lot of fun as a family and since the fortunes decreed that I was to get kicked out of shape I’m so glad it happened after I retired and we have a reasonable degree of security, come what may.

The final stage began to set in around March of ’76. Confusion seemed to be seeping into his day-to-day living, enough so that at one point he was examined to see if he might have a brain tumor. That test proved to be negative. Finally, in late April, it was clear he needed more assistance than could be provided at home. He was taken to the VA Hospital and assigned a bed in one of their wards.

For several weeks he stayed there comfortably as possible, welcoming visits from old friends and family. Near the end he was given a private room, and then a curious thing happened. While what was left of his physical strength continued to slip away, so, too, did the pain. Maybe it was the medication, maybe the shutting down of his body. Maybe it was something else. Because more and more his thoughts during those last days started going back to simpler times. With a weak but genuine smile he would see visitors and in conversation make reference to past times and places as if they were happening right now: train schedules to Prescott, his dad working the night shift on the bridge, old baseball games and bands he used to listen to in his youth.

He was going back home for one last time.

It was when the cancer basically began shutting down his digestive system that doctors knew there was nothing left to do. Adhering to the agreement of the Living Will, they stopped administering any more cancer-fighting drugs, employing only what they could to help dull the pain. On June 3^rd – Carol’s 54^th birthday – members of the immediate family gathered at his bedside and waited, with an overriding sense of relief, for the end to finally come.

With a last audible breath Clarence John Stolt’s life ended peacefully at 9:04 P.M. on Thursday, June 3, 1976. 

On the outskirts of Prescott just south of town lies Pine Glen Cemetery. Dedicated in 1856, twenty-some years after Philander Prescott first staked his riverfront claim, the grounds have weathered many a harsh season since and held up quite well. In a corner of the cemetery, not far from the bluffs that overlook the fabled Mississippi, sits the STOLT headstone, the final resting place of Francis and Fay and other loved ones.  

From this spot one can look over and see the wide swath of water that carves out the landscape. Where once paddle-wheel steamers and wooden flatboats roamed the water, now it is sleek pleasure boats and the occasional industrial barge lumbering along. The traffic may have changed, but the river has been, and always will be, a constant in these parts.

It was not far from that river that C.J. Stolt was born on a September morning in 1916 and grew to be a man with a caring heart, a good laugh, and a writer’s instinct. That instinct and innate creativity weaved in and out of a life that may have been shortened but was, to all who knew him, certainly well-lived. His was a meaningful part of the whole. Perhaps now some who didn’t know him might agree.

Looking back on it all brings out different things: smiles and recollections, maybe a what-if question or two, and yes, a twinge of longing and sadness for those who knew him and wish he was here to read these words. But in the end this is not a sad story. Quite the contrary. Time, like life itself, moves on. And while the details of his story now come to an end, it is the warm memories that linger, and the rich legacy that stays here with us.

Which brings to mind the poem Clarence wrote when he was 11 years old, the one in which he fancied his young life being like a flowing river:

A river ran on and on

Day and night and night and day.

Going and going and never gone.

Longing to flow to the far away

Staying and staying and never still.

Going but staying, as I would say

River go the sea.

And another river might say

Stay with me,

And the river would answer

I go and I stay.                               

The memoir of Clarence Stolt (cont'd)

I'm still working on the memoir of my father - almost finished now. I'm still learning more and more about him and his life with every new page, and in the process learning more about my own life. That's a pretty neat thing in my book, and perhaps the main reason why I undertook this project in the first place. We all learn from our past.

The high temperature in Milwaukee on January 1, 1974 was -4 degrees. For whatever reason, Clarence often liked to make note of the weather in his journal. This day was cold, but no different from past winter days. The night before he and Carol had once again hosted their New Year’s Eve party, another well-attended, if slightly tamer, affair. Clarence was 57 years old now and adjusting to retired life. Wendy had graduated from UW-Madison and moved out on her own, beginning her career as a social worker at Luther Manor Senior Retirement Community in Wauwatosa. Diane, too, had moved on. She was a flight attendant with Delta Airlines and was stationed out in Boston. Kent still had a ways to go before leaving the nest – he had just turned 13, officially becoming a teenager. The beginning of a new year seemed a good time to take stock of things.

            “I was never much of a sentimental cuss,” Clarence wrote, “but I was pretty darn proud of my entire family. Guess I was always too tied up with the VA and neglected some of the more little intimate thoughts I should have mentioned.”

            The next day he had an appointment at the VA clinic to get a cortisone shot for an ailing knee. Like with everyone, the years had crept up and taken their toll with aggravating little aches and pains. Still, he felt plenty strong enough to get around town or enjoy his hikes in the neighborhood or the nearby park. Now, too, he had the time to resume correspondence with old friends, and “putter around” in the basement with his home movies, stamps and civil war records. At least one project he wanted to start was the writing of a family memoir based on the journals he had kept over the years. It was going to be an active retirement.

                In February C.J., Carol and Kent flew down to Atlanta to attend the wedding of their cousin Gail McDaniell. It was the same festive and happy gathering that it always was when a trip to Georgia was involved. However, on Monday, February 18, while still in Georgia, he had a tough, uncomfortable night trying to sleep. In his journal the next day he noted: “Just didn’t feel right.”

Two days later, on the 20^th, Clarence, Carol and Kent arrived back home and that’s when he first noticed blood in his urine. On the 21^st he was admitted to the VA hospital. While in the hospital on the 23^rd he wrote: “Feeling OK, but there’s something wrong.” And indeed there was. A malignant tumor was found on one of his kidneys. On the 27^th he was admitted for surgery and the kidney was removed. In the span of ten days everything in his life was turned upside down.

Initial reports after the surgery were good, and doctors spoke guardedly yet optimistically that all cancerous cells had been removed. Such was not the case, however, and on April 24^th Clarence underwent another operation to remove malignant cells growing on the outside of his lungs.

The cancer was spreading.

It would be difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint exactly where C.J. was in terms of his diagnosis and his thoughts on June 16, 1974, but a telling sign might well be the passage he quoted that day in his journal. It came from political journalist Stewart Alsop’s memoir, A Stay of Execution, a detailed, if not gloomy, account of his final battle with leukemia.

“A dying man needs to die,” wrote Alsop, “as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time when it is wrong as well as useless to resist.”

When it comes to cancer there are fine and delicate lines one must walk. The balancing act between optimism, pessimism and reality is a tricky one. Clarence still had fight left in him in June of 1974, and reason for hope. But clearly he knew what was at stake.

From there things only got worse. His chest was still hurting from the April surgery. In July he started suffering severe stomach pains. On August 13^th  he was spitting up bits of blood and having his side incision drained again. His elbow was causing a lot of pain, too. By this time he was taking up to 30 pills and vitamins a day. Then on October 24^, 1974 a Dr. Lawinka from the VA staff laid the cards on the table and told him there may be “bad trouble” ahead. The word ‘cancer’ is never once mentioned in his journals, and was hardly spoken of around the house, but the finality of what he was dealing with was coming more into focus with every passing month.

By the beginning of 1975 Clarence was feeling increasingly anemic and listless. “Just don’t have any zip,” is how he succinctly put it. His red cell blood count was falling. Almost daily trips to the VA clinic meant more x-rays, more prescription refills, even blood transfusions. Radiation and chemotherapy, advanced as they were at the time, were the decided forms of treatment. In between the pain and discomfort the significant dates rolled by. On April 9^th he underwent another chest surgery. In July the problem was his intestines. On the 31^st of that month he had several polyps removed. October 10 marked the thirty-sixth straight weekday he had bussed down to the clinic for treatment.

Somewhere about this time he came home one day and shook his head. “Carol,” he said softly, “I’m not going to make it.”

The good ol' days

Just continuing with another bit of the story:

For Clarence these were truly good times. In June of ‘51 he and Carol bought their first house, a small Cape Cod style advertised as “the perfect starter home,” at 435 S 68^th  Street in West Allis for $12,500. Then on Feb 11, 1952 a second daughter, Diane Margaret, was born, immediately adding more energy to an already active household. Meanwhile, the job kept him on the go, often requiring travel throughout the state in support of veteran’s job training and financial assistance programs. And as if that wasn’t enough, about this time he started what would become a ten-year stretch of taking night classes in the areas of insurance, business law, accounting, public speaking, even a Spanish class, though by his own account that last one didn’t go so well.

            He was now a busy, family man and clearly family life sat well with him from the beginning. In the coming years, as the girls began to grow up, he would be only too happy to take them skating or hiking at nearby Greenfield Park on the weekends. He himself was almost childlike in his enthusiasm for anything having to do with Christmas time.

            And along with a very understanding wife he had his sense of humor. Unfortunately here is where the written record falls short. But anyone who ever knew C.J. remembered how he could laugh – and make others laugh. One quick example was a line he wrote in a letter to his brother-in-law, Hugh McDaniell, in 1959. Recalling Carol’s first attempts at learning how to drive a car he joked about “how nice it was having fresh meat on the table every night.”

            For fun he still had his monthly poker parties with some of the boys from the office. And whenever he got the chance he liked to take in a Packer game at State Fair Park in Milwaukee, or a Badger football game in Madison.

Then there was baseball. When the Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee in 1953 it introduced the city to major league baseball, and vice versa. The Braves became tenants of the newly built County Stadium and C.J. quickly became a frequent visitor. It would prove to be a brief, star-crossed love affair between Milwaukee and the Braves. Within four years of their arrival the Braves put the city on center stage, winning the World Series in ‘57 and almost winning it again in ‘58. Future Hall of Fame players like Warren Spahn, Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews became, in those less cynical times, true sports heroes, men who were looked up to as a matter of civic pride. And County Stadium itself became a sports fan’s paradise, where every home game was an event, a packed house full of boisterous fans. In May of ’54 Time magazine went so far as to call the stadium “an insane asylum with bases.”

But the joy, while intense, didn’t last. By the beginning of the ‘Sixties the fortunes of the team began to fade and the support dwindled. In 1965 the Braves played before smaller and smaller crowds, and it was after that season that the team quietly left town and became the Atlanta Braves. For local sports fans it was a painful divorce. Still, no one who experienced firsthand the heyday of the Milwaukee Braves in the 1950s, and C.J. was in that crowd, would ever forget what it once was like.

How They Met

In looking back at the past one finds answers to the present. Here, for example, is how my mother met my father:

During that fall of ’44 a young woman from Black River Falls, Wisconsin was looking to move on with her life as well. After graduating high school and attending nearby Sparta Business College, Carol Thompson, and her sister Marian both found jobs as civilian secretaries at Camp McCoy, a military training facility in west central Wisconsin. (Camp McCoy also served as a German and Japanese Prisoner of War Camp during the war – in fact, in early 1945 three Japanese prisoners escaped from McCoy and were on the loose in the Wisconsin countryside for two weeks before being recaptured at a golf course near La Crosse.)

For three years Carol and Marian had been commuting the 27 miles from Black River Falls to Camp McCoy every workday, and they considered themselves lucky to do so. For two small town gals born and raised on a farm, working on an army base in the midst of the war effort was like a door opening out to the rest of the world. It didn’t take them long to start wondering what else might be out there.  So on October 23, 1944 they boarded a train in Black River Halls and moved down to Milwaukee. Having never before been in a city the size of Milwaukee, having no contacts or job leads, not even a place to stay, it was a gutsy move.

Indeed, arriving in a city full of rumbling streetcars, anxious war news and standing lines for rationed nylons was quite the eye-opener. But energy, determination and good fortune won out, and within a few days the girls had found an affordable apartment. However, the difference between making it in the big city and going back home defeated depended on their finding a job. Here fortune smiled again as their previous Civil Service training and experience at Camp McCoy fit in well with the needs of the Veterans Administration. They were hired on as clerk-stenographers. Carol gladly accepted her assignment - secretarial duty reporting to one Clarence Stolt in the Vocational Rehabilitation Department.

On August 15, 1945 radios and news services flashed the much anticipated word that Japan had surrendered. In what came to be known as Victory Over Japan Day, or V-J Day, factories and offices everywhere simply shut down. In downtown Milwaukee, as in major cities across the country, everyone stopped what they were doing and poured out into the streets on that summer day for a celebration the likes of which had not been seen before, and likely never will be again. Confetti and paper flew out of office windows. Cars and trolleys were nowhere to be found because every avenue was packed full of people dancing, strangers kissing, everyone walking around with smiles on their faces. World War II was finally over.

It is no exaggeration to say the war had, in one way or another, affected the life of every single American. Now, more than three-and-a-half years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the victory announcement let loose a torrent of pride, joy and relief. Little doubt that same euphoria extended to every desk and every office in the VA building at 342 North Water Street in Milwaukee.

Office romance was not all that uncommon or frowned upon in those days, as long as it didn’t interfere with getting the job done. Clarence and Carol had been working side by side for a while in a professional manner, but inevitably they started taking notice of one another. More and more she came to admire his intellect and sense of humor. He admired her shy ways and warm smile. “Very nice!” he wrote of her for the first time in the August 30^th entry of his daily journal, this after an office party of the same day – in all likelihood a formal celebration of V-J day.  One day soon after that he slipped a note into the ‘incoming’ basket on her desk - would she like to go out to dinner with him?

Memorial Day Message

Like most people I spent a leisurely holiday weekend - yard work, cooking out, attending a high school graduation - all very relaxing and enjoyable.

In doing research on my father's biography I recently came across a speech he wrote and delivered at Riverside Cemetary in Black River Falls, WI on May 30, 1961 to commemorate the ultimate sacrifice given by a few local soldiers. Fifty-one years later the words bear repeating.

An excerpt:

America is great because of the sacrifices these martyred dead have made on the altar of battle. America is great because we - the living - know well and know deeply our obligation to our dead. These boys sacrificed their hopes, their dreams, their aspirations for the good of America. We must do as much in our daily life…to bury intolerance, to bury pride, to bury ignorance, to bury hate.  We must bury these emotions of war, so that the feeling and force of peace can flower. Just as the poppies grow on Flanders field, so, too, can an era of peace and prosperity and happiness grow on the buried passions of dissension.

And now, 93 years after our first Memorial Day, we are holding services here as they are being held all over the world. For our American soldiers have transformed little plots of ground in all corners of this globe into America. Where they fought and bled and died, there is America.

The battlefields resound like a ghostly cannonade: St. Lo…Omaha Beach…Iwo Jima…Okinawa…Manila…Bloody Ridge…Chateau-Thierry.

Some other places bear no names, but only latitude and longitude. Such a remote spot in India has a final thought for us this morning. In this distant place is an Allied cemetery, where lie the bodies of many of our American soldiers who fought in India and Burma during World War II. Over the portals of this sacred grove are written these words: “TELL THEM THAT WE GAVE OUR TODAYS FOR THEIR TOMORROWS.”

This is the spirit of America speaking. This is the greatness of our Nation. Soldiers like your Mitchell Red Cloud, your Frank Miles, your Tommy Hagen, your William Moore gave their todays for our tomorrows. Just as our Lord gave the life of His son for us.

Very well said, I think.

Moving On With the Story

Still enjoying my biography project re: my father's life. I'm learning more about him, and trying, in my mind at least, to connect any dots I can between my life and his. Perhaps that is the essence of what a good biography should do.

Another excerpt:

"As he grew older and his thoughts turned toward choosing a career, the lure of words and writing started taking hold. After graduating from Prescott High Class of ’34 he was able to look beyond the bluffs of Prescott for his next step. At a time when college education was more privilege than expectation, Clarence was fortunate to attend the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis where he chose to study journalism.

During the years 1937 and 1938, as part of his course work, he wrote and submitted articles to Hunting & Fishing magazine, and newspapers such as The Milwaukee Journal, The Milwaukee Sentinel and The St. Paul Daily News. As a college senior in 1938 he wrote a comprehensive 83-page analysis of the history and practices of The Washington D.C. Herald Times, a major publication in its day. Just how sincerely he took on this project is evidenced by a thank you note he sent to the newspaper which The Herald Times subsequently published in their editorial pages under a heading of Happy To Help:

May I take this opportunity to thank several members of the Herald Times staff for the fine cooperation and willing help they have given me in regard to a newspaper study course I have just completed.

I am a senior in journalism at the University of Minnesota, and as one of our requirements we must analyze and study some metropolitan newspaper situation. I selected the Herald Times and received an abundance of material from your various departments. Special thanks are due Mr. Titus of the promotion department.

May I also congratulate you on the fine job of publishing you are doing. Thanking you again, I am,

Clarence J. Stolt.

A few other notes of interest concerning his years as a Golden Gopher of Minnesota: alumni records confirm that C.J. played saxophone as a member of the University Marching Band in 1934 and ’35, possibly in 1936 as well. What a thrill it must have been performing on the field in front of thousands of fans in Memorial Stadium on those crisp autumn Saturday afternoons. And oh yes, a quick look at the NCAA record books shows that the school’s football team during that time happened to be the best in the nation. Minnesota was crowned National Champion in 1934, ’35 and ’36.

Also, attending several of C.J,’s political science courses was a notably bright classmate by the name of Hubert Humphrey, the man who would go on to become a Senator, Vice President and, in 1968, very nearly President of the United States.

The only other thing known about Clarence’s time at the University of Minnesota was that he graduated in 1938 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism."

Oh, how I wish I had more information about what his college years were really like. Something tells me he had a lot of fun back then. Just like I did.

A Life Story Begins

Here is the beginning of my father's biography:

Clarence John Stolt’s life began at 10:15 AM on Wednesday, September 20, 1916. He was born at home in the small, riverfront town of Prescott, Wisconsin, located in the western part of the state on the border with Minnesota. The town’s roots go back to the 1830s when a fur trapper and Indian translator by the name of Philander Prescott decided to build a trading post at the junction of the St. Croix and Mississippi Rivers. Riverboat pilots going up and down the two rivers began calling it “Prescott’s Landing,” and from there a town came to be.  Those waterways, peaceful yet dangerous, were the lifeblood of the growing settlement, with logging, commerce and steamboat travel making it a convenient stopover for many a prospector and frontiersman. Life along the river in those times was not for the faint of heart.

Years later Francis and Fay Stolt came to live in Prescott where they raised three children. Francis was born in Sweden in 1877 and emigrated from that country to America in 1889. He served in the Armed Forces during the Spanish-American war. His wife, Fay Tyler, was born in Bay City, Wisconsin in 1886. Her family lineage could be traced back to John Tyler, the 10^th President of the United States.

Their wedding portrait from 1905 shows them not with the hard and stern faces so often seen in people of that time period, but rather the grace and confidence of a distinctly handsome couple. Dressed in black suit and white bow tie, he stands tall and looks every bit the strong, sturdy immigrant type, but with a dash of new world sophistication. Seated in front of him, the bride shows the calm demeanor of a pretty and proper lady in white.

Official documents list Francis’ occupation as a Stationary Engineer, meaning he manned the railroad bridge that spanned the rivers and connected the line between Wisconsin and Minnesota. Fay’s occupation was that of housewife. They proudly had two daughters, Gwendolyn, born in 1906, and Eileen, born in 1908, before that early autumn morning in 1916 when Fay, at age 30, gave birth to a son and named him Clarence.

Just as one can see those strong, wide waters of the Mississippi forever rolling along in the summer sun, it is easy to imagine how safe and carefree it must have been growing up in a place like Prescott in those days. There was fishing and pheasant hunting with his father, hiking and exploring with his friends below the bluffs carved out by the river. In the winter there was skating, sledding and skiing. In spring and summer it was baseball, football and bike riding. Certainly for a young boy, life in Prescott must have seemed well insulated from the turmoil of the rest of the world. Even in the midst of the Great Depression life in Prescott went on.

By 1932 Clarence, or C.J., as he preferred to be called, was sixteen years old and a busy sophomore in high school. He played on the Prescott baseball and basketball teams, played saxophone in the school band. In 1934, in addition to those activities, he got up on stage to perform the title role of Rodney Rochester, vagabond turned star football player in the Senior Class Play, “The College Hobo.” The play, described in a program as a four-act comedy-drama, was published in 1930 but is today so obscure as to make it virtually impossible to find any plot synopsis or summary. Suffice it to say that C.J. and Rodney Rochester probably saved the day somehow.

In between all that school participation he did find time to have other fun: an occasional game of poker with his buddies, “messing around” with the girls, and now and then sneaking in a drink of wine or something a little harder with the guys. In other words, high school kids weren’t all that different back in those days.

Writing A Personal Biography

This is the introduction to a current project of mine: researching and writing the story of my father's life.

My father was 59 years old when he died from cancer. That seemed pretty old to me back in 1976 when I was just a teenager. But now that I’ve since crossed over the 50 mark (and then some) myself, well, it doesn’t seem so old at all. In fact, now it hardly seems fair that his life was cut short the way it was. Funny how time plays tricks like that.

It’s strange, too, how easily the details of one’s life can fade and fade until finally they disappear from memory altogether. In the case of my father I’ve seen those images and memories fade quite a bit already. I don’t want them to disappear for good. Then there is the fact that I never had the chance to sit down and talk with him about his life, his lessons learned, his memories kept, and the worries he had through it all.  And it makes me wonder what I might have learned about my own life from such a conversation? For these reasons I find myself wanting to be re-introduced to the man who once loomed so large over a young boy’s world. For these reasons I decided to dig a little deeper into the past.

Oh I remember him fondly and know enough to say with confidence what kind of man he was. No mystery there. But what about the countless little facts and personal circumstances that once made up much of his life? Sad to say, some of those bits and pieces are gone now, ‘lost to history,’ as they say. (That’s not to say he didn’t leave any record behind. Some surviving journals and family narratives were an invaluable source for much of what you are about to read.)

As for one of my memories, I can still hear him in the basement of our home at night, clattering away on his trusty old Remington typewriter, the keys firing off so rapidly it sounded like a tiny motor going through its paces down there. I didn’t know what he was writing or who he was writing to, but he certainly was writing. And so it is with that enduring sound in my mind that I now quietly tap on my computer keyboard what I have come to know to be the life story of my father, Clarence Stolt.

The Man Behind the Pages

My own book review of Max Perkins: Editor of Genius by A. Scott Berg

It was, for many, the absolute glory days of American letters. A time when names like Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Wolfe were accorded the fame and following of the biggest rock stars of today. The driving force behind these authors was a quiet, unassuming New Englander by the name of Max Perkins. Perkins was the man behind the scenes, or pages, if you will; the editor who helped discover, inspire and guide some of the most notable stories and storytellers of any age. And yet Perkins himself shunned the spotlight.

            But in this inspiring biography author A. Scott Berg points the spotlight squarely where it ought to be. Deftly incorporating facts and timelines with personal letters between Perkins and his authors, Berg gives great insight not only into the minds of these writers but also to the collaborative creative effort needed to create enduring works of art.

            Of F. Scott Fitgerald Perkins said : “Scott was especially sensitive to criticism. He could accept it, but as his editor you had to be sure of everything you suggested.”

And of Hemingway’s tendency to overcorrect his own writing: “Before an author destroys the natural qualities of his writing - that’s when an editor has to step in. But not a moment sooner.”

For any fan of writing and literary history like that, this story should be at the top of your reading list.

A Good Historical Account of Leadership

I just finished reading a good Civil War history: Bloody Crimes by historian James Swanson.
Most everyone knows what happened to Abraham Lincoln at the end of the Civil War: Ford's Theatre, John Wilkes Booth, instant immortality. The same cannot be said of his counterpart, Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Whereas every conceivable detail of Lincoln's life is well known by now, Davis' life and death has always stood in the shadows of history.

In this intriguing and easy-reading narrative Swanson brings the parallels of both men to light. With Lincoln the focus is on the 1,600 mile funeral ride from Washington D.C. to Springfield, IL. The raw emotion of the trip are there to be seen and felt - from the anguished people standing along the railroad tracks as the train passes by at night to what emblamers had to do to keep the body presentable during the nearly two-week long procession.

Davis' story at the end of the war becomes part manhunt, part odyssey through a war-torn south, following him on his ultimate journey from reviled rebel to respected leader of The Lost Cause. All this makes for a compelling study of two born leaders, and a fine read for any Civil War enthusiast.

So what DO guys talk about?

I recently came across what I thought was an insightful quote from sports journalist S.L. Price concerning the 'language' of us older men:

"When a woman asks a man - back from golf, the bar, a game - what he and his buddies talked about for the last four hours,the mumbled reply of "Nothing" isn't designed to drive her insane. It was, indeed, four hours of "nothing" which, for guys, is...everything."

I'm not saying everyone can understand that. But I sure do.

Of Chance or Destiny

“Character is destiny.”

Heraclitus  (544 BC – 483BC)          Greek philosopher

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”

                                    William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)   English dramatist

“A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.”

                                    Jean de La Fontaine (1621 – 1695)    French poet

“Anatomy is destiny.”

                                    Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939)            Austrian psychologist

“Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

                                    Steve Jobs (1955 – 2011)                    American businessman

                                   

-          -     -

                        Five quotes. Five notable voices from the past. All ruminating on the same word - destiny. What is it? Where does it come from? And perhaps most importantly – if indeed there is such a thing, where might it be taking each and every one of us? Pretty hefty thoughts behind such a simple-looking word.

                        Webster’s Dictionary defines destiny as “a predetermined course of events often held to be an irresistible power or agency.” Makes sense, I guess (though I’m not real keen on the word ‘agency’ in there). It’s one of those words that seem to defy a simple, declared definition. To some the concept of destiny may mean little or nothing at all. To others it may mean everything. So how does one definition or theory fit all?

            To a philosopher like Heraclitus it's clear that a person’s strength of character - or lack thereof- of is the determining factor in what will ultimately befall him. In Freud’s psychoanalytical world it all comes down to genetics and whether one is born a man or woman. Shakespeare said that destiny is not so much heaven-sent as it is earth-bound by what we ourselves choose to do. Steve Jobs took a more pragmatic approach, saying that destiny is more or less a tool we can use to discern and dig deeper within ourselves for answers. And then de La Fontaine said that whatever it is, our fate or destiny may lie in places not at all expected.

 Is all this the stuff of dreams and idle thought, nothing more? Or is it somehow real? Is the course of our lives already predetermined? Or are we, in essence, rolling dice every morning when we get up out of bed? Maybe part of the problem is that destiny is too often equated only with great deeds or accomplishments. But if one person has a destiny, doesn't everyone?

Those answers can only be found deep within one’s own beliefs, faith and hunches, with maybe a little sweat and good luck mixed in for good measure. Be it great or not so great, I like to believe there is a destiny for all of us. It’s found somewhere in the life we live every day.

But if you’re looking for answers to the future – good luck. Inevitably there are times in anyone’s life when a sneak preview of coming attractions would be nice. Then again, maybe not. We best keep Hollywood endings reserved for Hollywood.  I know at one time in my younger life I dreamed of creating an actual Hollywood story. This right here is probably as close as I’ll ever get to that one.

Bottom line - who the hell knows?

And if you’d like you can quote me on that.