428. Beatrice Shelmadine
Mrs. Beatrice Sholley
Mrs. Beatrice Slover Sholley passed away Tuesday evening at Keytesville Rest Home, where she had been a patient.
Mrs. Sholley was born May 9, 1900 in Pottowattamie County, Iowa, the daughter of Leonard L. and Ethel Bailey Shelmadine. She was married November 22, 1919 to Abe Slover and later married Albert Sholley on July 28, 1948. Mrs. Sholley at one time taught in rural schools of Adair County. She was a member of the Macon Methodist Church.
Survivors include two sons, Walter Slover of Macon, Wendell Slover of Peru, Illinois; a brother Ted Shelmadine of rural Macon; four sisters, Mrs. Ellen Perrin of Macon, Mrs. Clara Mettes of Cameron, Mrs. Emma Collins of Wenatchee, Washington, Mrs. Lou Powers of Hammond, Indiana; six grandchildren, several nieces and nephews. She was preceded in death by her parents, one son, husband and two sisters.
Funeral services were held Thursday at Bram Funeral Home at 2:00 p.m.. conducted by Rev. Frederick Lawson, with burial in the LaPlata Cemetery.
LaPlata Home Press
August 4, 1966
434. Clara Shelmadine
December 7, 1993 An autobiography by Clara Miles Between Macon and Atlanta Missouri there was a little town called Axtel. My family lived about a mile north of Axtel near the Wabash railroad, which always seemed so important. To get to our mail box we had to cross the track and walk about a quarter of a mile farther. One of the greates thrills was to wave at the engineers on those great trains. It was March 23, 1910 when I joined the family. There were already 3 big sisters, Eva, Beatrice, and Alice, and a brother, Ted. Another sister less than two years older than me and small for her age, Ellen, was about my size. The four older children were all red heads, various shades, and very attractive. Ellen was blond and I was dark skinned and dark brown haired, often called black. We were called Blackie and Whitey by people together in the baby carriage. Later Emma was born. She was little and had white hair, called cotton by those same people mentioned before. I remember seeing her as a little baby with white curls, asleep on the floor where we had been playing.
Two years later Lou joined the family. She was a pretty little baby with black curly hair. She made such a wonderful impression on this little kid called Clara, that as she grew older I often wished for more little sisters, but she was the last one. She is still living in Indiana. I was 4 years older than Lou. When she was about 2, we were playing peek-a-boo, her in her high chair by the dinning room table and I outside the window. Others of the family were not there at the time, busily occupied elsewhere. I can only imagine what happened as the last thing I remember was playing with her, the next, sitting on a chair by the table with a hurting chin with a bandage wrapped from that chin over the top of my head. I had no idea what had happened to me but later someone told me they found me black in the face, so my feet must have slipped from under me and landed my chin on the outside window ledge, locking my jaws and putting an end to my life, had not my Mother pryed open my jaws with a table knife handle, blew breath down my throat and brought me back to life again. Poor Mamma. That was the first of several accidents that followed.
In the barn lot I fell against a log with a knot on it and tore my knee open. That time I didn't know what happened and lifted the hem of my dress.
I saw that awful gash and that's the last I remember for sometime.
They said I wouldn't walk so they had to carry me to the house.
The next thing I remember was sitting on the ground against something with a pillow under my knee. Several years later having a ride in our doctors buggy as he came to check on my brother who was recuperating from a ruptured appendix, seeing my knee he said, "If that had gone a bit deeper you would have been crippled for life". He was a wonderful doctor. That time my mother had taken care of my wound, no stitches were taken, he probably told her what to do, I really don't know. Soon after that Ellen and I were sitting atop posts of a new fence and hearing a call from the house, somehow I tore open my hand on the barbed wire fence. No one had called us they said, but any way Clara was in trouble again. Laying the skin together after properly bandaging, a piece of metal was placed against the hand to keep it flat open. Again no stitches and I was later told by a doctor that had stitches been taken my hand would have been stiff and I wouldn't be able to write probably, or use it other ways.
End of autobiography. ******************************************************************** Mom passed away April 4, 1997 after struggling with several illnesses since entering the hospital in October of 1995 with anemia from internal bleeding in her colon. After searching for the exact location for more than a week and about a dozen pints of blood to keep up with the flow, a colonectomy was performed leaving the lower or last 12 inches of her colon allowing her normal elimination. There were many trips to the hospital for a broken hip, heart attack, pneumonia, totaling about 6 hospital visits.
It was expected at first Mom would make it back to her apartment where she had moved in 1986 after arriving from Hamilton, MO.
Prior to her death Mom had been receiving medication for high blood pressure when suddenly her heart rate dropped to 29-32 beats per minute on April 3 about 9:00AM. Mom refused to go the hospital to be treated and went into a kind of slumbering conciousness. By 10:00PM she was resting peacefully and receiving high oxygen levels to help her sustain sufficient blood oxygen. She passed away the next morning about 9:30AM April 4. ************************************************************************ Some of the things Mom mentioned to me during her life that let you know more about her.
She told me as a little girl that her father had a gift of some sort that let him know and prepare for the death of 2 of his daughters Eva and Alice. Grampa told Mom one of them would not live to be an adult and the other wouldn't live much past getting married. This is more my words than Mom's from my memory. Times were very bad about the time was 10 years old. She had to walk to school in the snow without shoes. I had heard this when I was very small and after getting in my teens I finally found out she wasn't walking the mile and 1/2 with bare feet but had several pairs of socks that were taken off to dry after getting to school.
It was about 10 years of age, 1920, Mom told her mother that there would be a letter in the mail box asking for her to come to town and live with a family while working for them doing housework etc. I think this was the Will family. When the letter was brought to her Mother, her jaw dropped open in surprise at its contents. Mom left the farm never to return and felt it was partly or mostly due to her parents not wanting her to return because it was another mouth to feed. She felt unloved by her parents from that point on.
Mom worked for several families, one of which was the Howell's who owned a dairy east of town about 2 miles. She worked there during high school. She had to walk to town to go to high school every day. One of the families were Miller's who were members of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Church. Mom joined that church at about age 16.
When Grampa died it was like the icing on the cake. He was so attached to the his only boy, Ted, that he left the farm to him. The explanation I received was that Ted was having such a hard time making ends meet and all of the girls had husbands with good jobs. The girls didn't need a share of the inheritance as bad as Ted did. The girls didn't get a dollar. This was one more reason to feel unloved by her parents.
Mom, Clara, left out being married and having a couple of kids in her autobiography. Dad, Nolan, went off to Chicago after dating Mom for some period of time. Now after being divorced for many years she told me she felt Dad wanted to get married real quick when he came back from Chicago on a visit. They got married the day after Christmas 1929. Mom felt he may have been escaping from a gal he got in trouble (pregnant) while living away in Chicago. They lived in a rough neighborhood where gangsters lived and got shot frequently when I was born 11/26/1931. Dad and Mom were boarding a streetcar that was very crowded when a man yanked Mom off backwards while she was very pregnant with me. Dad went after the man in protest and got hit in the face with a pair of brass knuckles breaking Dad's jaw.
Buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, Forrest Park, IL. Grave 5 Lot 363 in part 3 of Greenlawn Section, 12' north of lot 363 marker. Cem. phone 312-442-8500.
My father was a hard worker and was very concerned about being a good provider. He was a member of the Masons and he felt organized religion was wrong by definition. It required money to support the ministers and the church buildings. He felt strongly about God and right and wrong. The bible is studied and memorized by members of the Masons as part of their membership.
Dad worked long hours and was not remembered as an affectionate father. He did surprise me with gifts on several occasions such as a rubber ball attached with a rubber band to a paddle that I never mastered. Another was a double cone shaped piece of wood that was to be spun with a string attached to the ends of 2 sticks. I mastered the last one but still feel my coordination or reflexes must have been poor as I couldn't master the ball and paddle.
Dad was in the CCC in his early years and then went to Chicago to become a refrigeration repairman and pipefitter. Ice cream was not available until that time. The ice cream company he worked for was Meadow Gold and they placed freezers in stores around the city of Chicago at their expense to allow the sale of ice cream for the first time. Prior to this ice cream was made by hand turning a crank using ice and salt to make brine colder than 32 degrees. Ammonia gas was used as the coolant in the compressors and frequently leaked into the store and caused grief. The union in Chicago was a closed shop arrangement meaning the union members had a high salary and was the highest in the nation in the 1950's.
After the start of WW II, our family moved into a trailer after we had been living at 9805 Minick Ave., in Oaklawn, IL. We loaded everything into the trailer and began the first of many moves around the Chicago area. We once took the trailer to MO for a visit. on the way back to Chicago we took my grandfather Shelmadine to Moline, IL to visit his sister Net (Shelmadine) Timm, relatives that lived on a steep hill next to the John Deer estate. The car could hardly make it up the hill with the weight of the trailer.
Dad couldn't get work after a period of time around Chicago so went out Salt Lake where he got spinal meningitis and collapsed in the bath tub. The land lady was very big and strong and got him out of the tub when she heard him fall to keep him from drowning.
Our Dr. told Mom she had to get out there or he would die due to lack of care. She found someone to take care of us and left. Turns out he was in quarantine and she could only sit outside his door. She probably lived in his apartment and looked after him after he came out of the hospital.
Back in Chicago only a couple of days after Mom left a letter arrived from my Aunt Doris March offering to help out taking us kids, if worst came to worst, so she could go to Utah. This woman got Nola and I in a car going thru Macon MO on their way to somewhere. I had to hold Nola on my lap the whole trip.
They dropped us off late one night as a surprise to Vernice. We stayed with her from mid winter till early summer and attended the 7th grade at school in Macon. This was the old high school where Mom attended. Dad got work finally in Washington on the Hanford Project (atomic bomb plant construction). Mom decided we were a family and just went out against Dad's wishes to Washington where he got us an apartment in Yakima 70 miles from his work. He was in a car pool that traveled there every day. The job was highly classified and he had to have a top secret security clearance to work there. The construction crew could only work in so many of the several buildings and on only so many floors of each building to keep them from knowing what they were working on. Each floor had canvas dividing the floor into 4 squares with workers not allowed to move between squares or talk with others from the other parts of the building.
When this job was over, Dad was on the road again looking for another job. The 3 of us lived in Chelan Falls WA in a rented cottage, no insulation or plastered walls till mid winter. I attended 8th grade from the beginning of the year till just before Christmas when we traveled to Bremerton, WA looking for work in the ship yards with no luck. We traveled to Pheonix AZ and lived with Francis and Eva Jacobs, some long time friends from Chicago.
The 4 room apartment was very crowded and after no luck finding a job, Mom rented an apartment near Indian School in Pheonix where I attended Franklin school to finish the 8th grade. I arrived only months before the test on the Arizona Constitution which was required for me to graduate. It was waved with the understanding I not go to high school in AZ.
We returned to MO by bus to Flagstaff where blasting caused an unexpected landslide blocking the mountain road delaying us for several hours. We got the train the next day back to Macon where we rented an apartment from Mrs. Binder who lived on a road leading SW out of town. I carried the newspaper for several weeks just as the war was coming to a close and carried the special edition on VJ day when the Japanese surrendered and read all about atomic bombs not knowing I would later haul them around while a radio operator on a crew of an Air Force C-124 cargo plane.
Mom and Dad had a bitter struggle over where to live and Dad couldn't get a very good job as a refrigeration repairman in Macon where they didn't break down very often. I was the reason I think as I had been in 9 schools since leaving Ok Lawn, IL. I was
pretty messed psychologically from getting beat up by the class bulley in each school. I couldn't keep from crying when picked on and embarrased myself in front of my classmates. It was the same all the way thru highschool.
Dad finally left, probably against Mom's wishes to work in Chicago where his union membership guarrenteed him a high salary. Mom refused to leave Macon. He would come home every month and spend a long weekend before going back.
Dad and Mom got a divorce in 1947 after the woman he was living with called at 3:00AM drunk and told Mom she was pregnant. I heard the phone and the next day saw Mom hit dad's hand in anger as he was pulling on her apron string knot to untie it. He had tears in his eyes and Nola and I knew something serious had happened. I was seen by those in town as an unfortunate child being from a broken home. Dad wasn't very affectionate and I don't remember getting hugs or sitting on his lap and we hadn't seen much of him as he worked so much late at night. I knew he loved me from his letters and Mom didn't make any bad remarks about him to destroy our relationship. I wrote letters regularly at Mom's insistance and visited him and his second wife, Mary, a couple of times in Chicago before graduating from high school. Dad sent child support faithfully. He would send us funny papers (cartoons) rolled up from the Chicago papers rather regularly. As an adult I continued to stay close to him and write regularly. After getting married, I attended the Univ. of MO and he sent money at the beginning of each semester to help make ends meet.
This was well beyond what was expected and a demonstration of his love.
Dad sent letters to Mom which were informational in nature but said more about his feelings than they did inside I think. During the last years of Dad's life, Mom sent letters to him too at a P.O. Box several miles from his home. Mom made it clear to me they never were intimate after the divorce.
In 1975 or so when Mom lived in Hamilton, Mo, she ended up with a house and mortgage she couldn't pay monthly with her limited income.
Dad would come back to Hamilton and even stayed at Mom's without Mary knowing the details (I think) and did repairs around the house as needed at least once a year. Mom and Dad still loved each other but Mom wouldn't allow him to cheat on his second wife no matter what. I had the feeling there may have been some tender moments between them but very mild. Dad paid off the mortgage and told Mom this house was to be hers untill it was sold and if anything was left after she died then the remaining money was to be passed on to Nola and me as our inheritance from him. He also mentioned that he could not control how his estate would be divided and he could not leave anything in his will to Mom or us without a big upset to Mary. Mary did not know anything about Dad's finances as he kept savings accounts several places according to the information passed to me by Mom. Nola and I waved our legal rights of inheritance when we attended his funeral. I often wondered what Mary thought about our willingness to sign that document. Mary must have moved very quickly to have that ready for our signatures with only a couple of days to prepare.
Dad felt his primary function was to be a good provider to his family.
435. Emma Shelmadine
Emma Shelmadine Collins, 77, of Wenatchee, WA formerly of rural Macon, MO, died Wednesday morning, Oct 18, 1989 at her home.
Funeral services and burial will be in Wenatchee, WA.
She was born north of Macon in the Axtell neighborhood, the daughter of Leonard and Ethel Shelmadine. She married Harold "Bill" Collins in the Macon area. He prededed her in death.
Surviving are two sons, Bob Collins and Dan Collins, both of the state of WA; three sisters, Clara Miles of NY, Ellen Perrin of TX and Lou Bragg of Gary, IN; and several nieces and nephews, including Walter Slover of Macon.
Preceding her in death were her parents, husband, one brother, Ted Shelmadine, and one sister, Beatrice Sloveer Sholley.
She attended Oak Grove School near her childhood home. She moved to WA in the 1930's.
442. Darwin D Shelmadine
Provided by Shelly Shelmadine of Alliance, NE
447. Fay Timm
Still alive in 1991 at age 83.