Untold Childhood Stories Told

My father and his siblings had many stories about their adulthood lives that were told and retold at reunions, weddings, funerals, and holiday gatherings: marriages formed, children born and raised, livings earned, lives lived and ended. These were all adulthood stories. But what about their childhood? What were those stories?

They were the untold stories, the blank chapters in the family history not told to their spouses, not told to their children. That was to change when my brother-in-law, Pat Lynch, encouraged my father and his siblings to share their stories. Now in their 80s they individually sat down, probably at a kitchen table at the end of the day, and carefully put on paper what had happened to them as children. Finally their childhood stories could be included in the family history.

As I am passionate about family history, I took on the job of compiling my father’s and his siblings’ stories, their untold childhood stories. I created a book using an online process called Storyworth. I titled it “Mader Family Stories” with myself as editor.

Here, briefly, is how their childhood unfolded:

My grandfather, Franz Mader, was the oldest of 11 children. He had served in the German military before boarding a ship at the age of 25, arriving on Ellis Island on May 5, 1909. He became a U.S. citizen in 1914 and married my grandmother, Lillian Hagen, in 1915. Six children soon followed: Augie, Paul (my father), George, Frances, John, and Frank.

Like many immigrants of the era between the wars and the depression, Franz held a number of different jobs, but none that helped them climb out of poverty. They rented a house in rural Iowa. While he traveled looking for work, Lillian and the children remained at home, with her barely coping with her circumstances including grinding poverty, no phone, no electricity, no car.

And those circumstances worsened. Franz became seriously ill. Augie, the oldest child, then 12, ran to town to get a doctor. Franz was taken to the hospital for care. The next day when the two older boys were walking to school, the doctor told them what had happened to their father. They ran home to tell their mother the tragic news: their dad had died. Franz, age 44, had died of what we now know as primary peritonitis.

Lillian and her children’s lives would be forever changed: Augie 12, Paul 10, George 8, Frances 6, John 3, and Frankie, only 16 days old. They struggled for about a year and then were separated when the court deemed my grandmother unfit to care for her children. She probably was experiencing untreated postpartum depression. She and baby Frank were sent to the Carroll County Poor Farm. The other children were sent elsewhere: Augie would go to work for a local farmer; my father, Paul, went to Boys Town; George, Frances and John went to St. Anthony’s Orphanage in Sioux City, Iowa.

About 18 months after they were “scattered to the wind” they saw each other as a family in a room at the orphanage for an afternoon. They sat and cried, at first not even recognizing their oldest brother. After that visit, they were never all together at one time until their mother’s funeral in 1964.

Four of the boys received an 8th grade Catholic education, my father a 7th grade education, and the only girl, Frances, received a Catholic high school education.

They all had stories to tell about what happened to them. Their childhood years were very difficult. They experienced cruelty, hunger, parental deprivation. But they also experienced kindness. Maybe that plus their belief in God and their hope for a better life is why they not only survived, they thrived.

As adults, they were hardworking, always putting people before money. They found spouses who became their lifelong best friends, and raised families, passing along their love of God, their ethics. They embraced the gatherings of friends and families and celebrations – maybe because they never celebrated as children. The Maders were known for their hearty laughs, their hard work ethic, and their sharing of time, talents, and treasures.

My book is finally finished and copies are now in the hands of family members. I have accomplished my goal to collect their untold stories, to complete our family history.

Copyright © 2024 by Monica Taylor