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She was born in 1901 into a family of German-via-Canada
immigrants on a homestead southwest of Sterling near the little
settlement of Le Roy. She was the seventh in a family of eight
daughters and one son. Her father dies when she was 5 years old.
Before his death, he had taught her to play an old organ; he
whistled hymn and she pumped and played.
One the plains
homestead, she would learn to ride horses, herd and mild cows,
hoe and weed, carry water, tend chickens, to cook and bake,
dress chickens, butcher cattle, to sew and darn, to grow a
garden, can vegetables, to tat and crochet and knit, to manage a
household. Prairie life would teach her the truth and the value
of faith in God. Grasshoppers, drought, hail, tornadoes,
piddling prices for wheat, far horizons, family life,
star-filled skies and glorious sunsets will do that.
She would
attend a one-room school for a total of eight years. She was
working at a store in Sterling when she met her future husband,
a Kentucky man who was working with a threshing crew.
Married in
1919, the couple set out on a farm life that take them fro Le
Roy to Sterling to Longmont to Highland Lake (Highlandlake) and
Mead in southwest Weld County.
Wounded and gassed in the battle of Meuse-Argonne in World War
!, her husband would never make much of a living. He would work
for 15 cents an hour during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
She would make do.
She would,
from 1920 to 1946, bear 20 children, 12 boys and 8 girls -
including two sets of twins and a set of triplets.
One boy and one girl would die of childhood diseases; 18
children would grow to adulthood.
She was
generally optimistic, fair, a good manager, slow to anger and
abounding in largely unexpressed love, reticent, resourceful, a
tireless worker. She would teach her children to work, to
contribute to the family, not to sass, to respect their elders,
to tell the truth, to be responsible, to make something of
themselves.
After years of ramshackle
rentals, she would, in 1939, scrimp and save and engineer the
purchase, for back taxes, of a barn-like house in Mead for $600.
She would not get her first indoor bathroom and her first
electric stove until 1954. She would wait a few more years for
her first non-wringer washer.
She would cook and bake and
clean and sew and wash and work and teach her children from dawn
to night. Twice a week, she would bake 10 loaves of bread. One
day, she ironed 69 shirts. She sewed beautifully. She made an
endless number of flour-sack shirts and sheets, darned hundreds
of socks and pairs of jeans, altered countless coats and pants
as clothing was passed from one child to the next.
Every year, she and her
children would can hundreds of quarts and pints of vegetables
and fruit; all the canning was done on a coal stove in the heat
of summer.
Her flower gardens were
beautiful, especially the cosmos.
She taught herself to play the
piano and laughed with her children as she learned. She would,,
in the 1050s, become the organist at Guardian Angel Catholic
Mission Church in Mead.
She cared for - and made her
children care for - the widows and the elderly. After-school
evenings and Saturdays were filled with extra chores - pulling
weeds, mowing lawns, shoveling snow, carrying coal, splitting
wood, cleaning, going to the store - for Mayme Akers, Mary
Johnson, Mrs. Snyder and others.
She would, in the 1950s, feel
some respect from the community and begin to see her children
succeed. Two sons served in World War II, two went to Korea.
There were high school academic and athletic laurels, and
college graduates; two career Marines, an airline stewardess and
teacher, a daughter AT&T executive, bankers, teachers,
professors, businessmen. And lots of marriages with lots of
beautiful grandchildren.
For cash-flow, she became the
assistant at the Mead Post Office. When the Postmaster died, she
was in line to take over. But she was a Democrat and President
Eisenhower chose a Republican. So she went to work in the school
cafeteria.
In 1962, her eldest daughter
and her husband and their eldest daughter were killed in an auto
accident - hit by a drunken driver near Longmont. The daughter
had seven other children, ages 4 to 17.
Ever thinking of family, she
and her husband sold the Mead house, moved to Longmont to a
house bought by two daughters, and took in the seven
grandchildren. Five months later, at the age of 61, her husband
of 43 years died and she found herself a widow raising seven
grandchildren.
The last grandchild would
leave home in about 1980.
She spent her later years
reading, sewing, watching television, and writing letters to
children and grandchildren. Learning to cook for one. Gripes
about home-heating cost would bring her retort: "Whatever the
cost, it was better than chopping wood and carrying coal."
She died on May 10, 1986, at
home, as one son and two daughters held her hands. We remember
the day. The lilacs were in bloom. Laura Celia Dreier Newton
1901-1986, was our mother.
We have surely been blessed in
life.
Marcus E. Newton Return to
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