Merle Howland, 1915 - 2013

Aunt Merle passed away last weekend.  It is hard to believe.  She was always there ever since I was old enough to notice.

My family moved to Nashotah (WI) in 1936, a year after I was born.  It was the middle of the Great Depression and we had to live someplace my folks could afford, and that was with Grampa Freihube.  My earliest memories of anyone outside of my immediate family was of the Howlands.  Patsy and Billy were about my age and so at Christmas time, we got to play with them and their amazing presents.  I have great appreciation for their willingness to let us do that.

I remember Aunt Merle as my mother's younger sister, one of many sisters!  There were three aunts in Oconomowoc, two in the Milwaukee area, one in Chicago, and I never could keep track of where the rest were.  There were nine who lived to adulthood and they each had families and when there was a family reunion, there were too many cousins to get to know.  It was quite impressive to be part of such an extended family.  My older brother Jack was great about getting to know all the older cousins but during those prree-school years, I was glad to be in the same town with just the Howlands.  They were nice, easy to know, and I could always walk to their house and find a welcome.

Uncle Bill also had a good-sized family, some of whom lived in our village.  One 4th of July, I saw some kids who were from out of town put firecrackers into the wood railing on the bridge above the railroad tracks.  It caught fire.  Luckily, the Howland clan lived next to the bridge and were having a picnic and the men came up in a hurry to put it out.

Two months after WW II began, we moved to Waukesha to be closer to my dad's work.  The next we heard, Aunt Merle and her family moved in with Grampa Freihube.  They remodeled the house and made it better, though when we visited there it was a little strange.  A water closet was added at the end of the kitchen.  I wish my folks could have done that!  After that nice addition, no one had to go down into the dark, scary basement to go to the bathroom.

That house served the Freihube family from the time of Oscar and Amelia's 1894 marriage in the lovely little Episcopal Church across the road.  From that house as the sisters grew to young womanhood, each one went to school and then to work.  Most frequently, they were housekeepers in the mansions of the wealthy who lived out on Lake Chenequa.  Some like Merle got to work in town at what was once one of the most famous restaurants in the Midwest, the Red Circle Inn.

Each married over time and had families, some as large as their own.  My mother and Merle each had three.  Helen had two.  Louise had one.  Aunty Dot and Uncle Harold did not have any and the youngest, Arlene, died in an auto accident before she and her husband had any children.  The oldest sisters were married not long after the First World War so they had grown children who had already married and had kids our age.

Summer Sunday afternoons during the war years, my dad would get out the car and our family went for a ride, usually to see one or another of our relatives, including the Freihube clan.

Then came junior high, high school, and college and we didn't have the time to do more than see each other once in a great while.  During that time, Aunt Merle and Uncle Bill surprised us by having Tim, their child number three, the very youngest of the direct offspring of the sisters.  Eight years later, Billy, who was serving in the Army, was killed in a jeep accident on base.  Nearly everyone in the clan attended the service for him at the little Episcopal Church across the street.

Patsy and her husband Tony settled in Mukwonago and became part of the weather observer network for WTMJ Radio in Milwaukee.  Aunt Merle and Uncle Bill moved out to the lake near Oconomowoc.  Tim grew up and married.  At one point, my sister Judy and her husband Lynn were in Texas with the Air Force, my brother Jack and his wife Joana were on the east coast with the Coast Guard, and Ann and I were in many different places in Wisconsin as I followed my career.  We were caught up in our own lives, working, raising our own families, and every now and then, touching base with each other.

After Uncle Bill died and Aunt Merle had lived alone by the lake as long as she could, she moved to the Masonic Home in Dousman.  She had always been active as a person with church and family and work.  She entered into the activities at the Home as it developed into a major retirement center.  The last I knew, she was the "paper boy"who delivered the morning paper to many apartments in the complex.  In our own retirement to the South (Louisiana and then to Florida), I had reason to come back to Wisconsin and with the help of my brother-in-law, was able to gather some of our family with Aunt Merle.  Even in her 90's she was sharp and "with it" during those gatherings.  They were way smaller than the reunions the Freihube clan had.  But it was a treat to be together, and with her, especially.

It is hard to think about Aunt Merle without thinking about her in the context of her sisters and all the cousins.  It will be even harder to think about the fact she isn't there any more where she had been all my seventy eight years.