Our Last Illinois Flings

Our Last Flings in Illinois                                     September and October 2015

Once we returned from our upper Midwest Tour, our focus was centered on two things:  a Woodall family reunion the second weekend of October and our class reunion the fourth weekend of October.  I’ll regale you with those stories in a couple of pages. 

While we were working on the plans for those two big events, we always found time for more visiting and Sundays at a new church.  September 20^th found us at “The Oaks Community Church” at Oak Run, near the town of Victoria where my aunt and uncle live.  Charlie, Suzanne, Jerry and I met Aunt Marilyn and Uncle Lowell there for a Sunday service.  The pastor there was an old friend of Lowell and Marilyn and we were excited to attend service with this growing congregation.

Look who we saw leaving first service as we came for the second service…our high school Latin teacher Mary Kennelly!!!!  She taught all four us and all of us held her in very high regard.  She was a wonderful teacher and a very dear lady.  You know she had to be good since all four of us praised her Latin classes!

Jerry was really good about lending his skills and expertise to help friends and family with projects while we were in Illinois.  He did everything from mow yards and barnyards to rip down lath and plaster.  He did lots of stuff for his folks, too, but one of the best things he did was finish a project at sister Becky’s house in Canton.  She had re-sided her house and added new porch railings and a ceiling on the back porch.  The young man she hired left the project about 90% done and disappeared!  (Fortunately she hadn’t paid him for the whole job).  Jerry finished it for her, including priming and painting the support beams and finding someone to “break” aluminum for the trim.  It looked great!  Becky and granddaughter Shyla were quite pleased, but Sheldon was not ready to commit to a smile.

Yep, another Lutheran Church!  This is Trinity Lutheran in Canton, IL, and we attended services here on four consecutive Sundays.  I know you must be thinking that we are church-going fools, but our motives were quite selfish.  We met great folks, had yummy treats following the service at the coffee hour (Lutherans do like their coffee), and learned lots about the local community.  This was one of those churches and con-gregations where we felt very much at home and will return to again when we are next in Illinois.  

Like Trinity in Galesburg, this congregation was in the process of calling a new pastor.  The interim pastor was a retired man who had previously served here.  He was a warm, welcoming guy who preached a fabulous sermon each Sunday we were there.  Rosie, his wife, was equally engaging.  What fun!

Harvest began in the middle of September and the fields of corn and soybeans were soon picked.  We were parked on the edge of a bean field and loved watching the progress around Fairview as the crops were brought in.  Having lunch at the Fairview Café became an even bigger event, as farmers came there for the noon day meal (dinner, in Illinois!).  We heard stories of the progress of harvest, the frustrations of breakdowns, and the modest (not quite bragging) about good yields.  (You never ask a farmer how many acres he has or how his corn did this year!)

Yippee!!  Hooray!!  Wahoo!! The second weekend in October arrived and our sweet family arrived…our older daughter, Jill, her husband Bob, and our granddaughter, Lauren, and our younger daughter Joy.  We had all kinds of things planned and I’m just gonna have to bore you with some pictures!

The kids all arrived on Thursday evening so, of course, on Friday we hauled them to farmer friend Alfie Morey’s farm to see corn being harvested.  My photo wasn’t very good, but Bob is in the cab of the combine with Alfie. 

Lauren wasn’t very happy with the combine’s noise and size (it really did look like some sort of dinosaur in the field) but she was quite taken with the ears of corn.  In fact, hand shelling the corn became quite a pass time! 

Friday night, we were at Becky’s house and Lauren and her two second cousins, Shyla and Sheldon, found a video to watch while they munched graham crackers.  It just didn’t get any cuter than this!

The Spoon River Scenic Drive is always held on the first and second weekends in October.  This event was started in 1968 and had become bigger and bigger every year.  (Go here:  http://www.spoonriverdrive.org  if you want to know more about it).  On Saturday, we had to check it out and headed for London Mills.  We saw lots of vendors selling everything from garage sale items to trinkets made in China.  Our goal was to find something delicious for lunch…butterly porkchop sandwiches…yum!

Saturday’s big event was a wiener roast at Jim and Maxine’s farm.  After naps for the little ones, we gathered there and included Charlie and Suzanne and their daughter and son-in-law, Kelly and Matt Bradley, and their two daughters, Lily and Lauren. 

Everyone was still focused on getting that corn shelled…even Joy and Jill!

Such a great picture of Maxine, Jerry’s mom!

Lauren, Lily and Little Lauren were delighted to pose for me…even though that wierner roast fire was pretty engaging.

The highlight of the evening (s’mores excepted!) was a hayrack ride to the back pasture.  Bob had brought his drone and got some great shots during the entire weekend.  If you are interested, you could see a really classy video of this event on YouTube (look for Illinois Hayride). 

Jim and Maxine, at 88 and 87½ were right in the thick of things and made this a very special evening for everyone.

Sunday morning we met at Lakeland Park in Canton to feed the ducks, enjoy the sunshine and let the kids run around.  It was a beautiful morning!

Jerry and I and our two lovely daughters.

Lauren with her Yurkovich cousins, Shyla and Sheldon.

Monday morning, before the kids flew out of Peoria, we gathered at Mom and Dads for a final round of photos.  What a good looking bunch of people!

Great Grandma Maxine had some funny-looking pumpkins on her front porch which Lauren and I needed to check out.  Do you see the little toy at Lauren’s feet?  It was a little toy dog on a string that belonged to Jerry at one point…and she was absolutely intrigued with it!  Yep, the simple toys are the best.

One more trip to the little Fairview Park with the drone.  Bob caught a fun shot of Joy!

It was a wonderful four days with our family!  We don’t get to be together often and it was very heart-warming to be reminded how much we enjoy each other’s company.

On to the next big event…our class reunion!  Have you celebrated the 50^th anniversary of your graduation from high school?  On that day wayyyyyy back in 1965 I could not even imagine the year 2015 let alone what I would be doing 50 years hence.  Well, let me tell you, life has been amazing on so many levels!

My very best friend all through school was Ardith (Owens Platt), sitting on my left in the photo.  We lived about 3 miles from each other, north of London Mills.  Ardith and I had lunch with a K-12 friend who couldn’t make it to our weekend festivities, Kathleen Stiarwalt.  Why had we waited so long to get together?  We told stories and laughed until the tears rolled down our faces.  Doesn’t get any better.

Ardith, Jerry, another good buddy from high school, Bill Parli, and I made up the 50^th reunion planning committee.  We could not have had a better, more enjoyable bunch to work with!  The “protocol” for a Valley High School 50^th class reunion was to host a gathering on Friday night for anyone who graduated from VHS…1947 to 2015!  We spread the word far and wide…well, at least in Fulton County…and had a great turnout!  I wish I could share photos of that evening with you, but I was too busy talking to so many people. 

You see the three people in the photo above?  I went to school for 12 years with these 3…Aura Ulm, Dottie Hahn Trainor, and Andy Foshay.  Oh, the stories I could tell!  Andy reminded me about a Volkswagen going through the Spoon River floodwaters one night after Robed Choir practice….

The two people at left were our Valedictorian and Salutatorian…the tallest and possibly the shortest people in our class!  John was probably only hundredths of a grade point behind Susan when the tally was made.  I spent 12 years chasing John, grade point wise!  Jerry and I had visited Susan and her family in Tacoma, WA, in 2013, when we cruised Puget Sound.

Saturday night, our class gathered at Big Racks (referring to deer horns, of course) to have a more formal celebration.  There were 70 of us in our senior yearbook and 68 of us listed in the commencement program.  Seven of our classmates were deceased, leaving 61 potential attendees.  We had 38, plus spouses, about 60 in all. 

We had a great photographer who took formal and random shots which certainly added to the fun.  We attempted to re-create senior yearbook photos, such as Latin club (remember the shot of us with our Latin teacher, Mary Kennelly, earlier?).  What a hoot!!!

Some of the folks in attendance I had not seen in 50 years, and yet picked up the conversation as comfortably as if I had just stepped off the school bus with them.  The five of us at the right spent a lot of time together in high school.  In fact, Jonie Hartstirn Anderson, sitting to my right was very instrumental in my meeting Jerry.  These are very special women to me and it was fabulous to be with them all together again.

Well, there you have it.  We spent Sunday evening, October 25, with Jim, Maxine, Charlie, Suzanne and Don, having a yummy supper and playing pitch.  The next morning we pulled up the jacks and left Fairview.  Our next destination was Cat Spring, Texas, where our longtime friends Lewis and Bonnie Smith had bought their reitirement (coming in 2016) property.

More stories to come!!