A Memorial Day past
May 24, 2020

I had in my mind to write this time about Grandma asking me to put flowers on my great grandmother Molly Catron's grave, but suddenly, it struck me that it’s Memorial Day and I have a Memorial Day story, so I will go with that.

With the Covid pandemic affecting our lives so drastically, the activities that we would typically be involved in this weekend are all cancelled.  We “attended” church this morning online and we will put flowers on Molly’s grave in remembrance, but there is none of the downtown Prescott hubbub that is a staple for this weekend.  The traditional Phippen Museum art show and sale that usually fills Prescott’s Courthouse Square: booths teeming with wonderful western art, the Quick Draw contest and auction, and loads of browsers enjoying the socialization and art is cancelled for the first time since it began 45 years ago.  I am sad about that, but at the same time, I am enjoying staying at home to write, so that is what I shall do.

As a point of reference in case anyone is unsure about the lineages discussed here, I offer this:  Beginning with me - Rita (Kelley) Wuehrmann, then my mother - Mary Louise (Catron) Kelley, her mother - Ada Susan Grace (Rhodimer) Catron Smith, her parents - Charles Bradner Rhodimer & Sarah/Sally (Weaver) Rhodimer.

Green Ridge, Missouri . . .

Back to my Memorial Day story.  It was early in our travels around the country searching for our ancestors, long before my blogging days, which leaves me with no way to judge just when it was (just discovered it was 1993), but happenstance found us in Green Ridge, Missouri, on a Memorial Day weekend.

Our habit when doing research in ancestral places is to head for the closest burying ground.  Details are a bit thin here on how much we knew about our Green Ridge folks at that point, but we were aware that my great grandparents, Charles & Sarah Rhodimer, had lived there with their three children.  We were pretty surprised when we arrived at the cemetery to find so many people present and even folks sitting at a table at the entrance.

Green Ridge is a small town, probably less than 500 people now, and who knows how many when Grandma Grace was growing up there.  We quickly discovered that it is chock full of some of the friendliest folks you could ever want to meet.  The people at the table asked us who we sought in the graveyard, and directed us to our family graves straightaway.

We found the graves of my great grandparents, Charles Bradner Rhodimer and Sarah Louisa (Weaver) Rhodimer next to their son, Perry Dale Rhodimer, my great uncle whom I knew and respected; he was known by his middle name, Dale.  We placed flowers for them, which we do on all ancestral graves and photographed their stones.  That's our Sara at her g.g. grandparents' graves.

The next photo shows Grandma at her father's grave.  That would have been prior to the stone being replaced with the marker that memorializes both her parents.  Her mother died in Van Nuys, California, in 1925, and was buried beside Charles in Green Ridge.

 
These are two people with whom I feel very close, although I never met them.  Grandma obviously had great love for her parents.  Whenever she spoke about them, it was with great fondness and sadness - always she would get teary-eyed from missing them whenever she talked about them.

Great grandfather Charles tragically died aged only 33.  His cause of death was tuberculosis.  Cousins - Dale’s children - have told me that ironically, he is buried beside the man from whom he contracted the disease.  Sarah purchased her husband’s grave plot for $10.  His funeral service was conducted by the Modern Woodmen fraternal organization.

There she was at 31: a grieving widow with three children to support.  An aside here: in the 1910 census, we learned that Sally (as she was known) had given birth to six children, but only three survived.  I don’t think Grandma ever talked about that; it’s possible that she didn’t even know, so we have no details about those three other babies.  How tragically life was treating Sally!  I suspect the follow photograph was taken at the time of Charles' funeral, judging by their downcast countenances; the approximate ages appear to be correct.

I have no doubt that her friends and neighbors helped her out in every way they could after her husband’s death.  In fact, serendipitously, we actually heard first-hand about some of that.  As we were looking around for ways to obtain more information, I think we were directed to the minister’s house for possible information.  I disremember his name; however, he kindly suggested that we talk to a lady named Dorothy Belle Hinken, the local historian, so off we went to see her.

There we stood on her doorstep, completely unannounced unknown strangers (perhaps a bit redundant there) from out of town.  When we told Mrs. Hinken about our mission, she invited us right in and asked us to wait until she got a pie out of the oven and she would share what she knew. 

She hopped into our car (try to imagine this happening in Phoenix) to take us to where Charles & Sally’s house had stood.  She also pointed out a house nearby that had been the home of the Tooker family.  Jenny Tooker was a close friend to Grandma.  I remember Grandma talking about her; for some reason, Grandma ended up with a trunk that belonged to Jennie.

The Rhodimer home stood near the railroad tracks, which were the reason for Green Ridge’s existence when the line had been extended to there in 1870.  That rail bed is now a popular walking route known as the Katy Trail, a Missouri State Park that is the country’s longest recreational rail trail.  We walked some of the trail when we were there and vowed to return for a longer experience.

As the local historian, Mrs. Hinken was so kind to share with us personal information that we never could have gotten otherwise.  Charles’ & Sally’s house was torn down in the early 1980s; it was a two-story residence, according to Mrs. Hinken, with probably three rooms downstairs and two upstairs.  There was a boardwalk along the north/south street beside the house.  They used to walk along it to the farm at the north end of town to buy strawberries.

Mrs. Hinken remembered that Charles was in poor health, so Sally made cake yeast to sell and marketed it at local stores.  Shoppers always asked for “Mrs. Rhodimer’s yeast”, probably because it was a good product, but just as likely as a way to help Sally and her family.

I don’t know how long into his disease Charles was able to work, but certainly, it would have been difficult for some time before his demise.  He was a shoemaker earlier on - between 1897 and 1903, and was listed as a harness maker at Brim’s in 1910; in October of that year, he was noted in the newspaper as being sick.  I found an obscure notice that he had sold his harness business in 1906, perhaps that is when the tuberculosis made it impossible to keep his business operating.  Who knew there was such a publication as the "National Harness Review", but there he was noted in it.

What did Grandma tell me about her beloved father who died when she was just ten years old?  She told me that he was a saddle & harness maker.  She said that he played the guitar and sang the songs of the prairies that he learned from the cowboys and the westward-moving pioneers who came through their area in covered wagons.  She learned those from him.  Surely there was more, but that is what I remember.

Charles was born in 1878 in New Jersey or New York.  Frustratingly and despite several attempts, I have not been able to obtain his birth certificate; the date is on the cusp of a records transfer from State to archives (the specific month, to be exact), and it’s a case of the other place must have it.

He and Sally were both living in Sedalia when they married there in 1897.  She was just 17 and he 19.  They boarded at a house in Sedalia at 804 E. 3rd St. in Sedalia in 1900 (pictured below) and at two other houses there, before moving to Green Ridge probably shortly after 1903.  It was common for young couples to rent an apartment or room in a boarding house; few bought houses of their own right away.

Less than a year after his death, Sarah sold her Green Ridge house and moved to Colorado Springs “for her health” Grandma noted on a photo of the family just before they moved.  Unfortunately, Sally had also contracted the dread disease; it was thought that mountain air was good for those with lung ailments.  In fact, that is why there were so many tuberculosis sanitariums here in Prescott, also.  I will write more about Sally later.

Following are a few more photographs from our collection.

Ada Susan Grace Rhodimer 

(Grandma loved to play the piano & the guitar), 

Perry Dale Rhodimer, Charles Vessie Rhodimer, 

probably in Green Ridge, Missouri

Charles Vessie Rhodimer, Ada Susan Grace Rhodimer, 

Sarah Louisa (Weaver) Rhodimer, Perry Dale Rhodimer 

in Green Ridge, ready to depart for Colorado Springs

My Grandmother, Ada Susan Grace Rhodimer 

and my great-grandmother, Sarah Louisa (Weaver) Rhodimer

 Charles & Sally's sons: 

Perry Dale Rhodimer & Charles Vessie Rhodimer

 Sally Rhodimer with her sons Charles & Dale

in Colorado Springs

My beautiful and very loved grandmother - 

Ada Susan Grace (Rhodimer) Catron Smith, 

for whom my granddaughter, Trinity Grace, is named

Addendum:  I have just run across some old notes that belong in this post.  In 1930, Grandma had sent flowers to her first grade teacher, Nellie Ireland Reed, in Green Ridge, and asked her to place them on Grandma's parents' graves for Decoration Day (now called Memorial Day).

Mrs. Reed complied with the request and wrote back to Grandma: "I always loved your mother and thought she was one of the bravest little women I ever knew.  She passed three more trials than usually fall to the lot of one person in this world - but she never complained and always had the same cheerful smile.  I was not so well acquainted with your father but he was respected by everyone here and I remember the Woodmen's Lodge felt they had suffered a real loss when he died.  As for you, I shall always remember you as a quiet well behaved little girl".

Did Mrs. Reed's reference to Sally having passed three more trials than most allude to the loss of two babies and her husband?  If so, then Grandma would certainly have known about her infant siblings' deaths.  What a treasure to read the words of someone's personal memories of my great grandparents!

I remember Grandpa
May 19, 2020

So . . . I begin . . . but where to start is the big question.  There are so many thoughts, a multitude of memories whirling around - all wanting to be acknowledged, all wanting to be shared.  I guess that is what comes of procrastinating putting thoughts to paper, or in this case, computer.  Begin at the beginning is the common wisdom; that is what I will try to do.

I think I was not one to question, as a child.  My Grandpa, Clyde Leroy Catron, lived with us, passing away at our house when I was seven years old; he & Grandma had divorced.  My memories of the night he died are few but stark.  I know we children were sent across the street to stay at the home of our friends, the Congers.  Perhaps not the most obedient of children, or maybe just more curious or concerned about what had caused us to be sent away, I returned home and looked into the front room through the screen door.

There I saw my mother lying facedown on the couch sobbing.  And that is about the sum total of what I remember - nothing before or after - although my older brother Frank shared something about the momentous event much later.  Grandpa sent him to the store to buy cigarettes, he said (at least that's what I think he said; keep in mind these are my memories, not necessarily facts), and when he returned, Grandpa was dead.  He was 54 years old.

I think Mom looked so much like him.

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I remember Grandpa but not any interactions at all, although I am certain there must have been many.  I think he lived with us for only a couple of years, perhaps less, and probably because he became ill.  His cause of death was interstitial nephritis - kidney inflammation.

I know that he smoked cigarettes, and I remember his floor stand ashtray.  His bedroom was in the add-on room at the back of the kitchen, where he had a trundle bed.  The trundle pushed underneath during the day to become a couch.  The house's second bathroom was off his room.

He was a nice, quiet man - not particularly tall - with male pattern baldness.  I remember that his legs and feet were swollen, a result of his disease, no doubt.

Did he talk to me, the second oldest child?  Did he tell me stories or sit me on his lap?  Did he play with me or take me for walks?  Of these questions, I have no answers nor did I ever ask Mom about him, a lapse I deeply regret.  Surely she would have loved to tell me about him.

My advice to all: Take the time now to ask, ask and ask some more; listen to the answers and ask more questions, and write down the answers.  I wish I had done so much more of that.

We do know that Grandpa was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 1899, to an unusual family, but more about that at another time.

Years ago, Chris & I went there looking for where Grandpa grew up.  We had a photo of him sitting on a rock wall in front of a house and a picture of the house to guide us.  That's my Grandma's handwriting at the bottom of the picture.  She - Grace (Rhodimer) Catron Smith - made a major effort in her later life to identify photos she had to pass on to us.

We had the address because it showed on the house, but didn't know what street it was on, so we began driving back and forth in that number block of the old part of town, a section now referred to as Old Colorado City.  Just a few drives up and down and there it was: the exact house!

We were pretty excited as we took some photos, and even more so when we knocked on the door and were cordially greeted by the lone resident - an elderly lady by the name of Thelma Long.  Mrs. Long invited us in to tour the house when we told her my Grandpa had grown up there.

Grandpa & Grandma seem to have relocated to the Los Angeles area very shortly before their marriage there in 1921.  I am unsure of which part of the family moved there first, but around the same time, Grandpa's mother Molly with his sister Flossie was in Los Angeles.  Molly and Grandpa's father, James, had divorced in 1913.

Curiously, Grandpa & Grandma moved many times during their marriage, both during their time in California and when they lived in Prescott; I have no idea why.  At one time, they lived at 1018 E. 33rd St. in Los Angeles, a 1905 house that has been torn down and replaced by an apartment building.  I was lucky enough to find a photo of that one.

They had other abodes in the short time they were there, including I believe in the Porter Hotel until they moved to Prescott in about 1923. (Edit: I have just found in Grandma's writing that they moved to Prescott in 1926.)

Grandpa variously worked as an elevator operator, hotel clerk and a vulcanizer, which was a procedure that had to do with preparing automobile tires and evidently worked at the Valley Tire Shop and the Tire Hospital in San Fernando.

Although I know of other jobs he held in Prescott, Grandpa also worked in Grandma's brother's tire shop.  Dale Rhodimer's business, pictured below, was on the east side of South Montezuma, the second lot south of Willis.  When I moved to the area in 1976, it was still a tire store. Now it is the collectibles section of the Salvation Army store.

I have morphed from memories into research, which is not exactly what I meant to do.  Obviously, I can't use this medium to chronicle our entire family history.  All that information is contained in our Reunion charts with the source material filling an entire closet.  There are electronic copies of all of it; it is my hope that it will be retained for future generations.  We have invested a huge amount of our lives into amassing it, but it will fall to those who follow us to decide if it is worth keeping and to pass it on.

My darling daughter Sara had the idea that comments could be included on the blog itself and possibly turn into sharing thoughts among us, with conversation and discussion.  What a nice idea to bring us all together!  I love that and hope we go that direction.