Chapter Twenty-One
A few weeks later, Veda confessed that she wanted to marry Red. But there’s one problem…he wants to get married in a Catholic church and promise to raise our children as Catholics.
Lila raised her eyebrows. Is that what you want?
Veda said, Well…sure…I would do anything to marry Red, but he said that we need to find a church here in La Crosse. I need to start taking some classes and then we can ask for a dispensation.
Lila said, You need to take classes to get married? You must really love him.
Veda blushed. Lila was happy for her, but she couldn’t imagine going to such lengths just to get married. She had begun thinking about dropping out of school when she turned eighteen in July.
Veda’s happiness was soon overshadowed by another family tragedy. Theron and Borgny had missed Lyle’s wedding. With five children it was getting hard for them to travel, but they were also very devoted parents and reluctant to disrupt the family’s routine. Hazel still blamed Theron for the accident with Earl, but John was proud of his oldest son and delighted with his grandchildren. He often dropped by Theron’s house to see them. One day that summer, their youngest child, Norma Jean, came down with a cold. It seemed like nothing out of the ordinary. John thought an orange would help—it had helped when his children were sick—so that day he stopped at the grocer’s and bought one. By the time he arrived that evening, Norma Jean was having difficulty breathing. They decided that John and Theron would take her to the hospital and Borgny would stay home with the other children. They had no idea that she would never return home. By the end of the week, Norma Jean had been diagnosed with polio and placed in an iron lung to help her breathe.
The news spread quickly around the neighborhood. Polio had not been a major problem in La Crosse (not like in New York), but everyone knew that it was highly contagious. It was terrifying. A representative from the city health department appeared at their house and said that she would have to place them all under quarantine.
For how long?
said Borgny.
Until the city has determined that the threat has passed.
The quarantine lasted for six weeks, but there was lingering suspicion for the rest of the year. None of the neighbors wanted to take a chance on exposing their children to polio. Even the rest of the family stayed away. Norma Jean lived for seven heartbreaking months, unable to leave the hospital. Theron and Borgny did the best they could, but it was an impossible situation.
Norma Jean was the first member of the family to be buried in La Crosse. It would have been difficult to bury her in Crawford County in the middle of winter, but Theron and Borgny also demanded that they not be separated from their child, even in death. At the funeral, it was obvious that Borgny had lost weight from the months of worry. Her skin had turned ashy, and her blue eyes had lost their sparkle. Lila felt terrible for her. Oak Grove was nice though. It was more like a park than a cemetery, with a beautiful arch at the entrance, statues of angels, and curving paths lined with trees. It must be gorgeous in the summer. Lila wished that she could walk around, but the burial service was over quickly. It was too cold to linger.
Within a few months, Borgny was pregnant again, but she would never be the same after the loss of Norma Jean. It weighed on the entire family. That year, when Lila’s history teacher held lessons on ancient Greece and Greek mythology, Lila was struck with the realization that Borgny was like Persephone—trapped between the land of the living and the land of the dead. She would live only ten more years. Her doctors ruled that pneumonia was the cause of death, but Lila thought anyone with half a brain could see that the real cause was a broken heart. She was buried in Oak Grove cemetery, right next to her beloved daughter.
Lila should have graduated from high school in 1940, but she had fallen behind. There had been so many struggles; it made it difficult to learn and get her work done. She was not a naturally gifted student like Veda. While her classmates were busy planning their careers and weddings, Lila wondered what her future would be like. She felt little ambition. She wasn’t interested in being a nurse or a teacher or working in a factory. Maybe she would make a good mother, but who would she have children with? Nobody had asked her for a date. She felt like she was on a train just watching the world go by. When she tried to talk about it with Veda, the conversation always ended with, Oh silly, you’ll figure something out.
She assumed that she would get married and have children eventually, but was that enough for her?
Looking around at her family, Lila was not sure what kind of life she wanted to have. Veda had decided to get married instead of becoming a nurse—was that a good decision? She seemed happy. Her mother had never worked outside of the home, but she had become a very harsh and bitter woman. Borgny was happy until Norma Jean got sick and died. Lila reflected that she wasn’t sure if Aunt Hattie was happy or not. She had been married twice and worked outside of the home, even while married to Uncle Frank. Lila was intrigued, but the thought of asking Aunt Hattie for advice gave her a headache.
Notes
Like Veda, my other grandmother (born as Beatrice Englesby) converted to Catholicism so she could marry my grandfather. Both remained Catholics and raised their children in the Church. While conversion (and Protestant-Catholic intermarriage) was a serious concern or even taboo for many Americans in the early- to mid-20th century, Veda and Lila’s parents were not very religious and did not object to the match or to Veda’s conversion.
I remember hearing my mother and her sisters playfully tease one another with the name Norma Jean.
I had no idea that she was a real person who died as a child. Although it must have been painful for Theron to be partially cut off from the Slaback family (after his role in the death of his younger brother, Earl), it may have made him a better parent; he knew the value of life and wanted to do things better than his own parents had. When Theron died in 1994, he was buried next to Borgny at Oak Lawn Cemetery.
Although Lila had white privilege, her gender and working-class background severely limited her career options. Some jobs in La Crosse were open to women (for example, in the Electric Auto Lite factory); however, as far as I can tell, Lila’s mother and sisters (Izro and Veda) never worked for pay outside of the home once they were married.
For more information, see Ann K. Finkbeiner1, Claudia Goldin2, David M. Oshinsky3, and Naomi Schaefer Riley4.
After the Death of a Child: Living with Loss Through the Years (New York: Free Press, 2012).↩︎
Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey Toward Equity (Princeton University Press, 2021).↩︎
’Til Faith Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage Is Transforming America (Oxford University Press, 2013).↩︎