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.