Childhood on the Farm
Laura Josephine Ewald was born at home on December 25,1912 in Shellsburg Twp., Benton County, Iowa. Her parents named her ‘Laura’ because she was born on Christmas Day, and Josephine, because “they probably thought the first name is short, so we’ll make the middle name long.”

Her father, William Senft, was a farmer, and her mother, Adeline, of German descent, was born in Illinois. Laura was the “baby” of fifteen children.

She recalled, “My father was a successful farmer. He grew corn, oats and hay. We had 800 acres.”

“I was the baby of 15 children. Listen, we had a house! The house was big, so big that the downstairs consisted of a big bedroom, big sitting room, a huge dining room, and a big kitchen. Off of the kitchen you went up the stairs to the boys’ bedrooms, there were probably four or five. I don’t remember because I was too little to do anything up there. From the living room there were stairs up to the girls’ bedrooms. There were separate stairways up to each one, and you couldn’t go to either without going through the living room.”

“We had no electricity. No running water. We used kerosene lights and gas lamps at night. The gas lamp would really light up our dining room and living room, and you could leave the lamp in the dining room and it would light up the living room as well. At least you wouldn’t fall over anything.”

Laura was raised in Shellsburg, the town where “I got my schooling and we went to church. It’s also where we bought all our groceries.” Laura liked school, and rode a horse and buggy the four miles to get there. She remembers, “I wasn’t the best student.” She enjoyed playing basketball and baseball and being a Campfire Girl. She finished 12 years of school and received her high school diploma. Laura loved talking about her childhood and showed us a darling photo of her 5th grade class with herself in braids and a gingham dress and another photograph of a friend and herself in the park in “party dresses.”

Not long after she was born, three of her brothers shipped off to fight in WW I.

“We had two sailors and one soldier, and my father hated to see them go. Hated to see them go. He was so glad to see them come back. The thing that they brought back, the thing that stayed in their minds, was that the bodies were stacked up like cordwood.”

In good times and bad, the whole family would work the farm together. She treasures a photograph of the farm showing her father and brothers and some farm help preparing to harvest corn. It is a large photo, and there are men standing atop wagons. “I remember this day well. We had six loads of handpicked corn. We had three hired men and my brothers. On the left you can see my little brothers – too little to help out -- and my father.”

“On the right you can see an elevator that was used to raise the corn into the sheds, which were slatted, to dry it out.”

“We hired a man to shell the corn,” she said. “We had a successful farm.”

“I told my sons to keep this picture no matter what; this tells the story more than anything else.”

Memories of Mother
There is a delightful photograph of young Laura, about five years old, sitting on a wooden crate in her family’s farm yard, holding a large black cat like it was a baby doll. Laura returned to this photo several times, remembering the joy of being young and happy, with her beloved pet cat.

“I remember one time I took my cat under the stairway where it was pitch dark. I rubbed his fur the wrong way till there were sparks. I ran and called my mother, “Come look! I shouted, and dragged her under the stairs. She always had time for me. She watched and then said, “Laura, that is the last time you do that. It’s not nice to the cat. I felt real bad.”

“My mother was like an angel to me,” Laura said several times. She pointed to the photo of her mother in her later years, sitting on a park bench. “See the white tip of her shoe? That’s where she dragged her leg. She was crippled in her later years, and used a cane.” Another photo nearby showed her mother at age 19.

“Once, she and Esther and I picked peas to can 15 quarts. We had a cooker, and a hot bath. We didn’t waste anytime cooking them and canning them in jars. We closed them up tight and put them in the basement.”

“Once winter came, my Mother said, why don’t we taste those peas? I went down to bring up a jar and we opened them, but they were spoiled. Not just one jar, not just two, but every single jar we had canned. My mother was devastated. Why, that meant no peas until spring. ‘What did I do wrong?’ she kept saying. ‘What did I do wrong?’”

“She was so upset, and all the peas were spoiled. My sister Esther tried to comfort her and said, ‘Mother, I watched you can those peas like you had canned dozens of time before; you didn’t do a thing differently. We didn’t make any mistakes, we just weren’t meant to have these peas. You didn’t do anything wrong.’ But Mother was still so upset.”

“Finally, Mom said to one of the boys, go dig a hole at the back grove deep enough that no one will find it and no animal will be able to smell it. Call me when it’s done. Mom said, ‘I’m going to have some fun out of this’.”

“So we did. We took all those jars of peas and she threw them into the hole one by one, watching them smash and break.”

“She had some fun, but really, it was a hard thing to swallow, all those peas spoiled.”

A little House in the Grove
What did Laura do for fun when she was a child?

“Well, I don’t know about that, but I do know I provided a lot of entertainment for my brothers and sisters,” Laura recalled. “And I think a lot of it was unintentional. But I was the baby of 15 children.”

“As a very young girl, I would make myself a ‘house’ in the grove. I took string and made rooms in my house. I had old, broken-down stuff in there. I’d sweep, and not a twig was in that space. I would then entertain Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Smith.”

“My brothers and sisters would get behind a tree and just wanted to die laughing. After they had entertained themselves long enough, they’d quietly slip away. They were quiet, because if I found out I’d be as mad as a wet hen. Later, when they told me what they’d done, I said, ‘oh you dirty rascals!’”

“When we got there, there was always a choir!”
Laura’s idyllic childhood came to an end in 1918 when her father died.

“My siblings did not want the responsibility of running an 800-acre farm. There was a 160-acre farm across the section (a square mile), kitty wampus to our farm, that was waiting to be rented with everything on it except a good barn, and we had to build a barn. My mother and the older brothers discussed it, and decided that she should buy that 160. No one knew that there would be a Depression that would kill a cow. But we all had a good living there. We were just as close to our hometown of Shellsburg.”

“The house was a much smaller house, but by then it was just my mom, my brother Daniel, my sister Esther and me who lived there.”

“We had a small kitchen with a big range, and a sink attached to the well. We had what’s called a pantry, off of the dining room and we had to take a step up from the kitchen to the dining room, or from the kitchen to the pantry. We all learned to step up. When my little niece Lola May would come out from California and stay with us for five or six weeks, she would sit on the step and sing all her little songs. She was so cute.”

“When the Depression hit in 1929, it was difficult. My mother spent a lot of time with her figures, trying to make everything work. There were two boys at home and we were milking 15 Jersey cows morning and night. There was an area in the barn where we did it. I had five cows that I milked twice a day. We separated the milk from the cream. Our cream was so good and so rich; Jersey cows give good cream. The town of Garrison bought every drop of our cream. That helped us make it through the Depression.”

At harvest time, Laura would also help her brothers harvest the hay and get it into the barn. They would place little Laura on her bobsled, and give the signal for her to move forward when it was time to lift the hay. However, the system would often fail and as a result Laura would end up bouncing high up and come crashing back down on the seat.

“They hitched two horses to the front runners of my bobsled. They had a rope that went from the pitchfork hay to the wagon that had the hay in it. The wagon was at the front of the barn and I was at the back of the barn. They stuck the fork into the hay and my two horses were fastened to the bobsled. We would pull until we got the rope tight. When the rope was tight the hay started to go up. It would catch on an iron rod that went from the front to the back of the barn, and then they could drop it wherever it needed to go in the barn. My bobsled would go this high off the ground, and when it hit the rod my bobsled would come down to the ground real hard, and that was the only thing I didn’t like about it. I finally got used to it,” she said. Later in life, Laura had back problems, and her physical therapist told Laura she had compressed her vertebrae, which was the cause of her lifelong pain. Laura told this story to the therapist who said that the bouncing in the bobsled is what caused her back problems.

Even though the family sometimes struggled, Laura still had many wonderful memories of her childhood.

“My two brothers, my sister and I all sang in the choir at the Methodist Church. We had all four voices,” she said. “All four voices: alto, soprano, tenor and bass. I sang alto, my sister soprano, the boys were tenor and bass. When we got there, there was always a choir! We were the choir. The piano player, oh she could make the piano talk. She could look around at the audience and play. She was something else.”

“We also had a piano, and it was used constantly. I could play every hymn in the book, and I did day after day. Oh, and my sister Dora, she was very good on the piano.”

“In the wintertime, we drove a sled to church. The country roads were a mile long, and then we had to pass over those to the state roads, which were gravel. Until the snow melted and we could pull a drag, we drove our sled to church.”

“When the snow melted, we took our chances with the buggy. We had a two-seater buggy. When the snow was soft, we got upset. The seat went back and we landed in the snow banks. We were right in front of our closest neighbors, and they were out in the yard, and they saw it. Jess was quite a kidder and he started to clap. He said, ‘I never saw a better show in all my life.’ Then of course he came down to help us. The reason it upset, of course, is that the wheels did not stay on the hard surface and fell into the gap.”

“We always got to church somehow or another.”

“When the snow would go, we would drive the car, a Ford Model T. It had side flaps.”

Later, Laura worked at the telephone company before marrying Kenneth Register.

Brothers and Sisters
“We were ‘too close’,” said Laura of her 14 brothers and sisters. She had a warm memory of each one, though all had departed this earth, as well as their spouses.

These are her words and memories:

Amelia – “I have a picture of Amelia, my oldest sister. She was the first one born.”

Benjamin – “Ben was also born on Christmas Day. Ben could sing. He could sing “Asleep in the Deep” with a beautiful bass voice; it would just growl. He served in World War I. He was a soldier. He was the oldest, and later married and brought into the world a cute boy and a girl. He was a lot older, and gone before I was old enough to know him, but he never bothered me.”

Ruben – “Ruben was a sailor in the First World War. He married Helen Bixby when he came back, and they had two girls.”

Cora and Dora – “They were twins, but looked as different as night and day. “Cora moved to Minnesota and had three girls. But in the 30’s she died of pernicious anemia, and left three little girls. My sister and I drove up and packed their stuff and brought them down and took care of them until their father got his right mind back.

“Dora moved to Mt Vernon, Iowa and worked at Grinnell College. She met a professor, Prof. Leo Phearman, and she became his wife. They moved to California. Dora was a great piano player, and a wonderful seamstress. She could make crochet and do anything with her hands. She would go up there to Minnesota every year and make those girls their school clothes for the next year. She could sew anything.”

Walter – “Walter was a good farmer. He never married and didn’t have any children. He lived in Iowa and stayed within driving distance of Esther and Dan and I, and my mother, who was at home.”

Helda – Due to time constraints, it was not possible to obtain specific memories of each sibling, although Laura assured that she had cherished memories of each and every one, and called out their names with relative ease. “I do know I provided a lot of entertainment for my brothers and sisters, and I think a lot of it was unintentional. But I was the baby of 15.”

Alonzo – “Alonzo moved to Jessup, Iowa where he had his own farm. He was a farmer and married a woman from there. Her name was Florence and we called him ‘Shorty’.”

Daniel – “Daniel stayed with Esther and me until the 1940’s, then he went on his own. By then we were disintegrated and I was working at the telephone office. Dan married Hazel Jack in Venton, Iowa and they ran a big grocery store, but they didn’t have any children.”

Edison – “Ed went to Cole College, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. When he finished he married a lady and she wanted to move to California, so that’s what they did and it was ok. I can’t blame him; it’s more comfortable there.”

Louis – “He was the father of little Lola Mae. He moved to California as well.”

Esther – “She was a good cook and housekeeper. She worked for one of the nicest families in Venton. She was a good cook, and they felt they had a jewel. They were a prominent family-- wealthy people. She worked for the Hoyt Ellis family who owned part of a canning factory. Esther never married. She was one of those saints. I never saw or heard her get mad. She had a beautiful soprano voice, and sang in the church choir.”

Dorothy -- Laura clearly remembered each and every one of her siblings, and had warm, loving memories of each one, but there was not enough time to obtain specific memories of everybody. More than anything else about her childhood, Laura adored growing up in her large family.

Howard – “He was next to me (in birth order). He stayed with Dan, Esther and me for a long time. Later he worked for a dry cleaning business in Venton, Iowa where we all were living. He married a woman named Rose, and they had the darndest, cutest kids you’d ever want to see. Howard was closer to me, because we really grew up together.”

“I have buried every one of these people. No one is alive but me. So if I said it all right or wrong, no one can say. I was the baby; I didn’t know what the others knew. I was a little kid, and I couldn’t have cared less what my brother was or wasn’t at that time. It all has to come back now, and I don’t think I made any dire mistakes,” she said.

Laura displayed a good photo of herself and all her siblings together again in their later years. They stayed close to one another throughout their adult lives, often visiting across the United States. Many of her siblings came and stayed with her in Arizona, and there are photos of her siblings and their spouses at parties and gatherings. She also filled pages of her beloved scrapbooks with school photos of her nieces and nephews, carefully inserting them next to photos of her own sons at similar ages, so her boys would be able to feel they were part of a large family.

Marriage, Widowhood
One day while visiting at a friend’s house in Waterloo, Iowa, Laura met a fellow named Kenneth Register. Kenneth would court her and later they married and had two beautiful boys together. Kenneth had four brothers, and Laura had a photo of the “five boys born to Mr. and Mrs. Tom Register” with their wives, which included Kenneth and her.

But Laura’s happiness was not to last.

“We had been married for 13 years. One day, he was crossing the street in Venton from one side to the other and he collapsed in the middle of it. Traffic stopped, and someone picked him up.”

He was taken to a chiropractor’s office across the way.

“The chiropractor laid him down and felt up and down his spine. He put his hand under his head and raised it up and said, ‘Ken, you have to go see your medical doctor’. He knew.”

Kenneth died a month later. It was cancer. Laura was stoic, but this tragedy weighed heavily upon her.

The Arizona Years
In August of 1965, Laura’s best friend in Waterloo, Iowa introduced her to her brother-in-law, “Sandy” Sandstoe. He was a widower, and had been married to her best friend’s sister. The two hit it off, and they married shortly thereafter, and stayed married for 26 years.

They spent 21 years in Apache Junction, Arizona living in a trailer home in the desert.

They had wonderful times there punctuated by trips around the desert, spending time with the close friends they made there, as well as visits from their families.

The large desert painting hanging over Laura’s sofa came from an artist in Arizona. Sandy purchased it, and she has had it ever since. Laura lingered over the photos in the album from those years, and recalled the day Sandy died with deep sadness and regret.

Positive Attitude
Laura told of the first day she came to assisted living in Novi.

“I came in here, and they were singing in the lobby. You know me, I sang along to all the songs. I said, if this is what the place is going to be like, I’m going to like it here. Only I didn’t stay well.”

She was glad to be in Michigan in order to be closer to her son Dean and his wife Linda.

Laura’s apartment was orderly and clean. She told us that she took a walk every single day (three times a day) around the complex until she got too weak. She seemed to enjoy her photograph albums, and kept them close. She especially loved the photos of “My Dean” and “My little David” at various ages, from early childhood in Halloween costumes to “My Dean” in front of a swimming pool, (“He would jump off the lifeguard’s shoulders into the water”), through their high school photos with their shaggy sideburns, and on to adulthood, including photos of their families and babies as well.

She liked the photos of her brothers and sisters and their offspring. She painstakingly collected family photos, and showed them proudly. Her sons, their families, her grandchildren, a baby photo of her first-born grandson, now a 3rd-year college student, and another grandson, now in his first year.

She expressed so much love for each one, and was so proud of all.

She was delighted to have the video her grandson sent her from Colorado and asked for help in arranging a way for her to view it. A video player was brought to the next meeting, and Laura was delighted. It was a pleasure to watch the joy dance on her face as she drank in the images of people she loved dearly, her face just inches from the screen. She loved seeing her grandson and his wife, the gorgeous scenery around their home, the majestic vistas of Denver, and the “basement band” jamming.

She got a little teary watching her great grandson DJ receive his high school diploma. She was bursting with pride, watching the commencement ceremony with her sweet face just inches from the screen.

“I am so proud of him,” she said again and again. “He is such a polite boy. He said ‘thank you.’ I didn’t raise him, I know, but he was raised right and I am so proud. So proud.”

Final Earthly Days
“If I can’t do it right, I don’t want to do it at all.”

This was Laura’s attitude about this final chapter of her life on this earth.

She made the choice to enlist Hospice in her struggle, and she felt completely at peace with that decision.

“That’s why I’m in Hospice,” she said. “I’m going to do it my way. I’m ready for it. I’m waiting patiently. You have to understand.”

But being Laura, she wanted to make sure that everyone she loved was in accordance with her ideas.

“I talked to my sons. They’re important to me, too. I had to convince them, but I think they understand.”

“I’m ready to say a few things, and to bring it to an end,” Laura said with sincerity and quiet conviction.


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For information on Memoir Makers, call (248) 967-8361 or e-mail vna@vna.org.