Secret of the wooden cradle

BY  Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune December 31, 2018

Old cemeteries hold tightly to their secrets, yet they tempt us from time to time with unexpected discoveries — immediately touching our hearts and minds with the pains and memories of our humanity.

The echoes of grieving parents still seem to hang in the air as we walk through Jacksonville’s historic cemetery. Here, symbolic cradles mark the loss of babies on the very ground, where, so long ago, funeral tears were shed.

Usually formed from concrete or carved in marble, cradle graves represent the last wish of fathers and mothers who hoped to comfort their babies in their long and lonely sleep.

In Jacksonville, there are two cradles that are very different — one, fashioned from wire, marks the resting place of Johannas Biede, the 2-month-old son of a Jacksonville tinsmith. The other, unidentified until recently, is marked with nothing more than a rectangular framework of rough-hewn wood.

Resting at the top of the hill, in the corner of the Catholic section of the cemetery, this rustic-looking grave is unmarked, and for more than 125 years has been a source of wonder. What child is buried here? The clue came from distant relatives.

Eleven pounds at birth, Bessie Agnes Sprague was born Aug. 12, 1880, to Herbert and Mary Maud Sprague. Fifteen days later, Aug. 27, Bessie died and was buried two days later. A year earlier, Herbert and Mary had already lost a son. Perhaps Bessie was buried with him.

Mary Sprague was 17 years old when daughter Bessie was born, and her husband was 32. She was the oldest daughter of John and Hanoria Cimborsky, the unlikely merger of an Austrian immigrant and an Alabama belle. Herbert was the son of a Massachusetts carpenter.

Cherub in Jacksonville Oregon's Historic Cemetery

Mary was born in 1863, during one of the worst storms ever to hit Jacksonville. Rain poured down for days, muddying creeks and filling gullies in just a few hours. For nearly a week, the town was completely cut off from the outside world. It was a turbulent beginning for what would become a turbulent life.

The couple celebrated the birth of a son barely a year after Bessie died. Named for his father, Herbert Jr. survived to adulthood.

Already there was something going wrong with the marriage. Mary had recently returned from an extended solo stay in San Francisco to find her father dying of liver cancer. Soon afterward, there was a marital separation of some sort, with Herbert heading south to California and Mary Maud and her son relocating to Washington.

In July 1892, Mary was granted an uncontested divorce from Herbert by Seattle’s Superior Court. She married Frank Clancy, who adopted her son. Frank was a prominent member of Seattle’s political and sometimes shady sporting communities. Notorious for his fistfights with enemies, Frank and his brothers operated a number of liquor businesses and owned a group of hotels. Mary managed one of them.

Mary Maud died at age 49 in August 1912. Her son followed a year later, and Frank Clancy died in 1917.

Herbert Sprague settled near Sacramento, California, and was last heard of in 1910, when he was 62 years old and working as a hired hand on a farm south of the city.

The oak and madrone leaves have fallen for yet another year on little Bessie Sprague’s wooden cradle. But at least now we know who and where she is. The baby who never got a chance will never be lonely again.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of “Silent City on the Hill: Jacksonville, Oregon’s Historic Cemetery.” Reach him at newsmiller@live.com or WilliamMMiller.com.

Christmas ‘42

By BILL MILLER

For the Mail Tribune

Christmas was just around the corner and the war news was still not good. The country was entering into its second year of combat and the patriotic folks at home were still proudly struggling with their own war efforts. There were no new cars to buy, no nylon stockings to wear. Tires and gasoline were rationed. Even a morning cup of coffee required a war ration book.

It was one sacrifice after another. When the government banned sliced bread, the Fluhrer Bakery ran newspaper advertisements explaining how to safely slice bread—“Lay the loaf on its side, bottom toward you. Hold it firmly, use a sharp knife, and long, easy strokes.”

Clocks stayed on daylight savings time to save energy, and restaurants began “Meatless Tuesday” so the boys overseas would have enough to eat. Shoes were rationed to one pair each year and Oregon’s weekly liquor allotment was cut from a quart to a pint.

No matter how bad it got, few people complained. After all, what were their troubles compared to those of a tank soldier in the African desert or a Marine on a Pacific island beach?

Five miles north of Medford a new military city had appeared—a training center named Camp White. The camp was about to celebrate it’s first Christmas, and most of the men would spend their holiday alone. That was unacceptable to community leaders who announced their intention to “bring gaiety and good cheer to our adopted sons. Let’s make Christmas a joyous day for every Camp White serviceman.”

Families invited soldiers to Christmas dinner. “Older girls and women, and especially mothers,” were asked to become hostesses at the local USO club. The ladies were assured that these social functions were well “controlled” and that it wasn’t necessary for volunteers to know how to dance.

Christmas 1942

By Christmas day, service clubs had helped soldiers wrap over 3,000 packages for the folks back home. Postal workers labored in 12-hour shifts to keep the mail flowing.

Medford musicians donated instruments to a servicemen’s makeshift band. Just in time for the holiday, they got everything they needed.

The artillery barrage on the Camp White practice range stopped at exactly five o’clock on Christmas Eve. The guns would be silent through the holiday and resume operations the following day.

Santa Claus was everywhere, but nowhere was the genial fat man more appreciated than in the camp’s hospital. Behind the white wig and whiskers, everyone recognized 1^st Sergeant Henry Putnam, but carried on with make believe surprise and wonder. At the “Kiddies Christmas Party” Santa even brought along one of his reindeer—Susie, a toy-carrying fawn adopted by the engineer’s battalion.

A choir from the local Episcopal Church sang Christmas carols and the band played a few selections on their newly borrowed instruments, while a magician worked his magic.

On Saturday, December 26, 1942, the world went back to wartime normal. Artillery shells whistled northward on the practice range, boots marched over the parade field, and engineers practiced bridge building on the Rogue River. Civilians returned to work and rationing.

Another Christmas would come and go before Americans landed in Europe. For nearly three more years soldiers would die.

On the home front, they would carry on no matter how long it took—one  sacrifice after another. And, if they were very, very lucky, Santa would bring them the gift they all wanted most—Peace on Christmas Day.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,”a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com or WilliamMMiller.com.

Deck the Halls! - but before Halloween?

Deck the halls

By BILL MILLER

For the Mail Tribune

Remember when the Christmas season began the day after Thanksgiving?

I can still see Dad, his tummy full of turkey and stuffing, reaching high into the closet and pulling down boxes of Christmas decorations. For Dad, there was a time for everything, and the time for Christmas was the day after Thanksgiving, and not one day before.

Christmas Joy

Those were the days when it was pretty rare to see even a garland or two in a department store before Turkey Day. Most merchants, like us, had the patience to wait.

In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the urging of retailers, proclaimed that Thanksgiving would be celebrated one week earlier than normal. Traditionally the holiday had always fallen on the last Thursday of November, which meant in 1939 there would only have been 24 shopping days before Christmas.

FDR hoped to spur the economy out of the Great Depression with an extra week of Christmas shopping, but what he actually spurred, was an angry uprising of Americans who didn’t like their traditions fiddled with.

Everyone’s calendar was wrong. Schools had to reschedule holidays and football games. Then there were those who said the President had no legal or moral right to make the change. The mayor of Atlantic City went so far as to sarcastically rename the holiday, “Franksgiving.”

Eventually, a joint resolution in Congress set the 4th Thursday in November as the official Thanksgiving Day.

Christmas Morn

Even so, over the last few decades, we’ve watched Christmas begin to appear earlier and earlier in the year. We used to joke about Christmas decorations in department stores before Thanksgiving. Now, we’re able to pick up a string of colorful Christmas lights days before we can even find a Halloween pumpkin.

Christmas in the Rogue Valley during the 1800s was simple and unpretentious; muddy streets and a few hand written signs in shop windows. There were no twinkling red and green street lights or even a community Christmas tree. It was a time when merchants like A. A. Davis, the “Flour King of the Valley,” delivered a sack of his best flour to every needy family in town.

Schools put on Christmas plays and churches gathered their members together in religious services, but decorations outside of the home were few and far between. The days before Christmas  were a time to stay home, in the warmth and comfort of family and friends.

On Christmas morning, a few simple gifts might be exchanged around a candle-lit tree, and then it was off to church, wearing those special “go to meeting” clothes.

Then, around the beginning of the 20^th Century, things began to change. Electricity came to the Rogue Valley, inspiring a few merchants to place a colored light or two in their window to highlight a new phenomenon – the “Christmas Sale.”

Christmas Shopping

“Santa Claus has unloaded his bag at our store,” said George Webb, owner of an emporium he called, “The Racket Store.” In Ashland, the holiday merchandise was a bit heavier. “What is more appropriate for Christmas than a Piano or an Organ to give your wife or daughter?” asked Howard Coss, of the Coss Piano House.

Tinsel and flashing lights began to appear all over town and each succeeding year brought more lights, more Santas, and more fun. We were well on our way to Christmas in October and enjoying every minute of it.

May this Christmas bring to you and yours the spirit of childhood’s happy laughter.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,”a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com or WilliamMMiller.com.

Christmas 1918

War is Over

Peace on Earth

 

 Merry Christmas!

A visit with Helen Keller

A beautiful and glorious world

The young woman turned her sightless eyes upon the crowded Ashland Armory. In a voice she was never able to hear, she told her audience about her life and gave praise to those who had guided her “out of the darkness — to you who now sit here in the light.”

Helen Keller

Helen Keller, renowned as the woman who miraculously overcame the loss of senses taken from her when she was but 19 months old, stood beside her beloved teacher, Ann Sullivan Macy. It was a chilly March evening in 1914.

“I am not dumb!” 33-year-old Helen shouted. Attacking the word that others called her deafness — a word she had learned over 25 years before, while touching fingers with Mrs. Macy to read and spell words.

“My world,” Helen said, “is full of touch and sensations, devoid of physical color and sound; yet, without color and sound it breathes and throbs with life.”

Never had more people been in the armory. More than 400 men, women and children sat in admiring silence.

Admission cost 50 cents for adults and 25 cents for children. “We could have filled the house at a dollar a ticket,” said Ida Gard, president of the Sunshine Committee that had arranged Keller’s visit. “But people cannot afford to bring their children at that price, and it is important that every school child see Helen Keller. Her achievements will be an inspiration to them.”

The once in a lifetime event had opened with songs sung by the local high school’s male and female quartets, and was followed by Mrs. Macy, who told of training Helen in her infancy, and how later, she had helped Helen receive a Bachelor of Arts degree from Radcliffe College — the first deaf and blind person to do so.

Helen’s audience wasn’t prepared for the sound of her voice — what one reporter called “the mechanical enunciation, the utter absence of expression.” “Her voice,” he said, “is low and lacks tone, due to the fact that she learned to speak by feeling the lips of others, and naturally employs only the muscles of cheeks, lips and tongue in shaping and pronouncing her words.”

But soon her audience was charmed and spellbound by her perpetual smile and how she answered all their questions — each conveyed to her by the touch of moving fingers and sometimes lips.

“I am happy and contented almost all the time,” Helen said. “My only unhappiness is in knowing that others are less fortunate than myself.”

Helen Keller

As she talked, she one-by-one picked the flowers off the pansy plant presented to her as a gift. “What dainty flowers,” she said, prompting a reporter to write, “one could almost see with her sightless eyes the beauty she saw.”

“How grand your Oregon mountains must be,” she said with that radiant smile. “The fir trees were covered with snow as we came over the pass. What a beautiful place Oregon must be. How bright the sun shines.”

Perhaps the Ashland Tidings editor summed up Helen Keller’s appearance best.

“Deaf and sightless, yet with a mind stored with knowledge and a soul radiant with the touch of divine glory, she has been chosen to teach us how little we value our blessing and how little effort we make to develop them for the world’s good. Miss Keller says the world is beautiful and life glorious. What a lesson!”

Helen Keller

Mary Louise Webster - Last member of the WASP to die in the line of duty

With barely two weeks before the WASP program would end, 37 women had officially lost their lives

Cessna AT-17 Bobcat – “The Bamboo Bomber”

in service to the Air Corp and their country. No one would have expected another woman to fall.

Mary Webster (44-W-8) and a two-man crew were flying into a cold front with intermittent snow and rain and temperatures dropping. Their UC-78 Bobcat was taking them on a cross-country training flight to Chicago from Frederick Army Airfield in southwestern Oklahoma. With only 11 days remaining until WASP deactivation, it should have seemed ridiculous to continue training; yet, there she was, flying between Tulsa and Claremore, Oklahoma.

WASP Mary Louise Webster

Mary was the seventh of eight children and the second daughter. Her father, William Webster, was born in Canada and immigrated to the United States in 1895. He settled southeast of Seattle in Ellensburg, Washington, where he met and married Mary Pott.

Mary graduated from the Holy Names Academy, a private Catholic all-girls high school in Seattle. After graduation, she studied for two years at the Seattle Business College and earned her diploma. Although believing business was her best career choice, Mary had always dreamed of flying, and when Central Washington State College announced a Civilian Pilot Training course in May 1940, Mary leaped at the chance. In, she was accepted into the WASP training program.

After graduation from Avenger Field on October 18, 1944, and following her 10-day furlough, Mary reported to Frederick Army Airbase to begin her advanced training. A month later she was riding in the Bobcat with Lieutenant George Crowe at the controls. Also with them was 22-year-old Sergeant Melvin Clark, a married Oklahoma native who had been assigned to

WASP Mary Louise Webster

Frederick when the base opened in September 1942.

An hour out from Frederick on December 9, 1944, the UC-78 was flying at 9,000 feet above the clouds, when Crowe noticed ice forming on the wings. He radioed the air controller and received permission to descend, hoping warmer air would keep more ice from forming. Now, deep in the clouds, the aircraft began to fall and Crowe lost control. The UC-78 fell straight down and crashed, killing everyone aboard.

WASP and former classmate Nettie Winfield (44-W-8), who had come to Frederick Field with Mary, was Mary’s escort back to Ellensburg for burial in Holy Cross Cemetery

Mary Louise Webster - (30 June 1919 – 9 December 1944)

#RIP

WASP Mary Louise Webster