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.