Ten Generations of the Shaw Family

Part Seven

9. SHERMAN LINN SHAW II ("Sherm"), son of Sherman and Grace Shaw; born 17 May 1912 at home in Lee Center, Lee County, Illinois; died of complications of leukemia on 14 Sept. 1973 during a medical flight from Rochester, Minnesota, to Dixon, Illinois, pronounced dead upon landing; buried in the Shaw family plot in Woodside Cemetery, Lee Center, Illinois. Sherman, my grandfather, was born at home, at the old Shaw place in Lee Center, his parents' youngest child. As noted previously, my great-grandmother Grace was 33 years old when she gave birth to my grandfather, so normally she might have been able to have at least two or three more children, but for whatever reason my grandfather was her last child. His birth was officially reported on 18 May 1912, the day after he was born, and the birth record says "Mrs. N. Sheffler" was the nurse or attendant at his birth, and that his birth was reported by Charles A. Zeigler of Amboy.

Significantly, my grandfather's birth record gives his name as simply "Sherman Linn Shaw," the identical name as his father. Customarily, that would make my grandfather "Sherman Linn Shaw Jr." or "Sherman Linn Shaw II," but he is not so designated on his birth record. In earlier records during his life, my grandfather is usually identified as, and signed his name as, "Sherman L. Shaw Jr.," but later on he and my grandmother preferred the formal style "Sherman L. Shaw II." To his wife and his friends, though, he was "Sherm," while I and my brothers, of course, always called him "Grampa."

About four months later, my great-grandmother Grace acquired a little "Victorian-style" blue-colored baby book for the recording of memories and milestones of a child's early year. Grace didn't make much progress in writing memories of my grandfather's infancy -- in fact, though she wrote my grandfather's date of birth in the book, she didn't even write his name in the book -- but she did record that the physician at the birth was "Dr. Zeigler" and that the nurse in attendance was "Mrs. Nellie Scheffler." She also recorded my grandfather's weight at birth as 9 pounds -- but she added a question mark, showing that some time had passed following the birth before she acquired the baby book, and so she was no longer sure how much he had weighed when he was born. My great-grandmother then proceeded to record my grandfather's weight at one month of age as 10 1/2 pounds, at two months as 12 pounds, at three months as 13 1/2 pounds, and at four months of age as 14 pounds. Besides those entries, the only other thing she wrote in the book is the date my grandfather got his "short clothes" -- 4 July 1912.

My grandfather's name appears in volume two of Frank E. Stevens' 1914 History of Lee County, Illinois, in the biography of my great-grandfather Sherman Linn Shaw, in the paragraph about his wives and children:

"Mr. Shaw has been married twice. On December 22, 1892, at Amboy, he wedded Miss Anna K. Mynard, a daughter of Adam S. and Alvira Mynard. Mrs. Shaw died, leaving two children, Gertrude K. and Russell M., the former now a student in the Francis Shinier School at Mount Carroll, Illinois. On the 21st of June, 1905, Mr. Shaw was again married in Amboy, his second union being with Miss Grace E. Bender, a daughter of Rev. C. and Clarissa Bender. They have two children, Eleanor and Sherman L."

My grandfather was two years old when Stevens' Lee County history was published. His childhood was spent with his parents and siblings on the old Shaw farm, located toward the east end of Lee Center, and he grew up attending Lee Center Congregationalist Church and received his education in the public grade school and high school in Lee Center. His uncles, aunts, and cousins also lived in Lee Center during those years, and, Lee Center being such a small village, he got to see them frequently. His grandmother Rebecca (Linn) Shaw also lived in Lee Center during some of those years, but my grandfather was only five years old when she died in Chicago in 1917, so he didn't have much of a chance to get to know her.

My grandfather Sherman appears along with his siblings and Shaw cousins in this large group photograph with their grandmother Rebecca taken at the old Shaw place in Lee Center in or around 1915. In the center is Mary Rebecca Linn Shaw, about two years before her death. On Mary Rebecca's lap is Phyllis, age 2, daughter of Arthur Monroe Shaw. Standing right in front of Mary Rebecca is my grandfather Sherman, age 3, looking much like my brother Derek did at around that age. Sitting right next to Mary Rebecca is her oldest grandchild, Gertrude, age about 21. The oldest and tallest boy, right behind Mary Rebecca, is Gertrude's younger brother Russell, age about 19 or 20. Aunt Eleanor is the little girl standing right next to Gertrude -- Eleanor would be about 6 years old. Right behind her, and next to Gertrude, is Mary Gwen Shaw, about age 14, daughter of George Harry Thornton Shaw. The dark-haired boy with his hands in his pockets was Mary Gwen's younger brother Clarke Monroe Shaw, age about 12. Standing on the right of the picture are Frank and Helen Leonard, adopted children of Grace Shaw and Charles Taylor Leonard. The remaining children are the three older children of Arthur Monroe Shaw: Frances, age 8, standing between Clarke and Frank; Richard, age 7, seated next to Helen; and Edwina, age 4, standing on the left of the picture.

A little thumbnail-sized photo of Sherman from 1917 was included in a unique "Calendar of Shaw Grandchildren" that someone in the family had prepared as an affectionate gift for Rebecca, that would no doubt also have had the practical use of helping Rebecca remember her grandchildren's names. Since she had 12 grandchildren, each grandchild was assigned to a month, going in order of their births -- thus, Rebecca's first grandchild, Gertrude Katherine Shaw, was January, the first month, while my grandfather Sherman, Rebecca's 11th grandchild, was November, the 11th month. For each grandchild, a rhyming poem was written to go with the photo and calendar page. My grandfather's poem in the grandchildren calendar was:

Now this is little Sherman Linn.
How cute he is, I can't begin
To tell; nor can you see
Because the picture is so wee.
(It's really quite a sight they say,
To see him managing old May).
He raises up his eyes of blue
And takes the heart right out of you.
He's just the dearest little lad
That anybody ever had.

The year of Rebecca's death, of course, was also the year the United States entered World War I, and my grandfather's big brother Russell decided to serve his country by joining the U.S. Navy. Sherman naturally admired his big brother Russ, like little brothers usually do, and that admiration is no doubt reflected in the "Little Sailor Boy" photographs that my great-grandparents had taken of Sherman around that time. Seeing Russ in his Navy sailor's uniform, Sherm must have wanted to be a sailor too, just like his big brother.

Shown at left is a photograph of my mother's "Uncle Russ" -- Russell Mynard Shaw -- taken during World War I. Russell is wearing his U.S. Navy uniform, and the band of his cap shows the name of the cruiser on which he served, the U.S.S. St. Louis (C-20). Next to Russ' photo is a grouping of photographs showing his younger brother Sherman, my grandfather, dressed as a little sailor boy, play clothes that indicate Sherman's admiration for his big brother.

As mentioned above, my grandfather was born and raised on the old Shaw farm in Lee Center. Not surprisingly, he early on conceived a love of animals and an interest in animal husbandry. Some of my family's earliest photographs of my grandfather, dating apparently from about 1915 to 1920, show him with his older sister Eleanor taking turns riding and leading a pony. In one of the photos, a man crouches behind the pony's head to help steady the kindly creature while my grandpa, wearing a joyful grin, sits on the pony's back. The man in the picture may have been my great-grandfather Sherman, or perhaps was a farmhand. In any case, my grandpa's love of animals would endure all his life.

The U.S. Census returns for Lee Center Township, dated 29 June 1920, show my great-grandfather "Sherman L. Shaw," age 55 (sic -- he was 56), farmer, with his wife "Grace E. Shaw," age 41, and his children "Gertrude K. Shaw," age 25 (sic -- she was 26), grade school teacher, "Russel M. Shaw," age 24, a laborer on the home farm, "Eleanor Shaw," age 10, and "Sherman L. Shaw," age 7. Their nearest neighbors were the Scott R. Frost and James H. Riley families, while the Chris A. Ullrich family was also nearby. This was the first time my grandfather appeared in the U.S. Census. It was later that year, on 20 Oct. 1920, that his oldest sister Gertrude died tragically and unexpectedly of meningitis in Evanston, Illinois. She was only 26 years old and had never married. Years later, when my mother was a teenager, many people would comment to her how much she resembled her late aunt Gertrude.

During these years, my grandfather was a student at the public grade school in Lee Center, which was a part of School District 92. He entered the first grade in the fall of 1917, when he was 5 years old, and he graduated from the eighth grade on 31 May 1926. In December of 1925, Sherman had received a "Perfect Attendance Certificate" for the month ending on 30 Nov. 1925. The certificate is signed by his teacher, Miss Sara E. Dishong of Lee Center, and Mr. L. W. Miller, Lee County Superintendent of Schools. Miss Dishong and Mr. Miller also signed his eighth grade diploma. It was during Sherman's grade school years that his big brother Russell took a wife and became a father, making Sherman an uncle. Russell married on 11 Aug. 1921 to BESSIE CAROLINE HEWITT (1899-1944), and their first child, ELIZABETH ANN SHAW, was born 15 Oct. 1922 in Lee Center. Sherman was 10 years old at the time.

Shown here is a detail from the top of the first page of a letter that Sherman wrote to his mother on 15 Nov. 1922, at which time his mother was away from home, presumably visiting family.

Among the relics of my grandfather's childhood is a six-page letter he wrote in cursive to his mother on 15 Nov. 1922, on an occasion when his mother was away from home, presumably visiting family. His mother must have cherished the letter, since we have no other examples of his writing prior to his high school years. Sherman started the letter with a few lines of formal greeting and family information, then devoted the bulk of the letter to making a word-for-word copy of a local newspaper article that related a colorful piece of Lee Center-area lore, which he expected his mother also would find of interest. He concluded the letter with news of a scarlet fever outbreak in Lee Center. Here is a complete transcript of the letter, with spelling and grammatical mistakes:

"Nov 15, 1922.

"Dear Mother:--

"We got your card this morning. Dad and Russ are cleaning the east yard so the can turn the cattle in.

"Do you remember the sign they put on the tree between Lymns [sic - Lymans'] and Taylors?

"Well in the Divon [sic - Dixon] paper it tells something about it. This is what it says

"The following letter from Count Supt of Highways L. B. Neighbours to Prof Harry Hilbish of the Lee Center schools giving the history of the Freighters Tree in the vicinity will be of intrest to all who have noticed the big cottenwood standing in the road. I have wanted this long time to write you a line regarding the Freighters Tree on the Chicago Road about one-half mile northwest of Lee Center

"On account of the unusual history of the tree I have taken steps at several times to preserve its life and publish its biography. I have nailed to it a sign, giving its name name and advertising the anyone interrested iquire its history In order that the last suggestion my not prove futile I would like the children of the vicinity to know, the answer.

"Will you not plese tell them at school thaat early in Lee County history when the Chicago Road was mainly a freighting trail between Chicago and Galena, via Dixon, a teamster one day in breaking at the present site of this big cottonwood, noticed that his ox-gad was getting pretty badly frayed, so he stuck it in the ground at the side of the trail leaving it here as he passed passed on. Now, a cottonwood sprout some times grow under such conditions, and so it was with this one.

"It has lived and thrived in spite of many threats of the road authorities to cut it down, as it stands out quite a ways into the road grade. Now it has grown to be a veary monarch among trees. I think all this decidedly interesting. My informant in the matter was the late Ira W Lewis, well remembered by nearly every Lee County citizen, and whose boyhood was spent near Lee Center

"Let us give this fine tree such treatment that only old age shall lerminate its career.

"THE END.

"We had to come home from school at 3 oclock because Hilbishes have Scarlet fever keep out. and they are going to have a meeting to see if we are going to have school.

"From me"

My grandfather began his four years of high school in the autumn of 1926, attending Lee Center High School all four years. He appears as a team member in two old photographs of the 1929-30 Lee Center High School basketball team, showing he was active in high school sports.

Members of the Lee Center High School 1929-30 basketball team are (left to right) -- back row: Gilbert Conibear, Ernest "Dutch" Freadhoff, Herb Conibear, and Ted Blaser (coach); front row: Sherman Shaw and Rodney Willis.

Members of the Lee Center High School 1929-30 basketball team are (left to right) Sherman Shaw, Gilbert Conibear, Herb Conibear, Ernest "Dutch" Freadhoff, Rodney Willis, and Ted Blaser (coach).

A sports brief in the 17 Oct. 1929 issue of the Ashton Gazette tells of a close-fought basketball match between the Lee Center and Ashton high school teams, in which my grandfather scored the tie-breaking basket in the final minute to win the game for Lee Center.

We also know that Grandpa enjoyed baseball, and was a lifelong fan of the Chicago White Sox (a tradition that has been continued by his grandson Ethan!). He also enjoyed singing and music, learning how to play the trombone and other brass horns -- in fact, my family still possessed his old aluminum trombone until a few years ago (about 2008-2009), when we sold it to an antique shop in Dixon, Illinois. Besides the trombone, at some point in his childhood or adolescence, he took piano lessons -- among the Shaw family mementos that have been handed down to us are the piano lesson record books of my grandfather and his older sister Eleanor, published by W. F. Strong of Dixon, Illinois. Unfortunately, the record books do not show the year that they took piano lessons, but my grandfather's book says he had 10 lessons with "Miss Oakes" of Lee Center, from Jan. 10 to April 4, learning to play many waltzes and marches. The third lesson, on Jan. 31, has the underlined notation, "Excellent lesson."

My grandfather's high school grade transcript shows that he excelled in the study of ancient and medieval history, but his grades weren't as good in American history and civics. Sherman also earned very good marks in general science, biology and agriculture -- grades that no doubt reflect his having grown up on a farm as well as his love of animals. His lowest marks were in mathematics, physics, third-year English, shorthand, and typing. My grandfather graduated from high school not many days after his 18th birthday, on 29 May 1930, on which date commencement exercises were held at Lee Center Congregational Church. There were a total of nine students in his graduating class. Their class colors were yellow and white, their class flower was the yellow rose, and the class motto was "Love, Labor, and Laugh."

Sherman Linn Shaw II at age 17 or 18, the photograph taken for his senior year in high school. My brother Jason Sherman Olar, his namesake, inherited our grandfather's hair as well as his body build.

The 1930 U.S. Census returns for Lee Center, dated 5 April 1930, provide a glimpse into the Shaw household about two months before my grandfather's high school graduation. By that time, Sherman was the only one of his siblings still living at home. The census that month shows "S. L. Shaw," age 65, farm operator, with his wife "Grace E. Shaw," age 51, and their son "Sherman L. Shaw," age 17, farm laborer. At the time, Sherman's older brother Russell, age 34, was living in Wichita, Kansas, with his wife and three children, while Sherman's older sister Eleanor, age 20, was a stenographer living as a lodger in the home of Anna Klein in Amboy, Illinois, near Lee Center. In 1930, the nearest neighbors of my great-grandparents and grandfather in Lee Center were the Henry Herrick family and the family of George Dunseth and his father-in-law John Ullrich.

Over the next five years following his graduation from high school, my grandfather continued to live with his parents at the old Shaw place in Lee Center, helping his parents work their farm. In early 1933, however, he moved to the Degner place to help work that farm, as we see in the 23 Feb. 1933 edition of the Lee Center News, which says, "Sherman Linn Shaw Jr. is employed on the Raymond Degner farm and is making his home there." A few months later, the 4 May 1933 edition of the Amboy News mentions that my grandfather and his sister and parents attended the wedding of his cousin Helen Leonard to Dee Trimble in Chicago. Besides those notices, we don't know much about those years of my grandfather's life, but one thing we do know is that he played trombone in a band at dances and other social events in Lee County. It was also during those years that my grandfather met his future wife, my grandmother FRANCES MAE MILLER, born 18 Dec. 1917 in Dixon, Lee County, Illinois, died 4 May 1993 in Dixon, daughter of Norman and Bessie Miller. In the first half of the 1930s, the Millers worked a farm out on Route 52 in rural Dixon, several miles to the northwest of Lee Center, and Frances was a student at Dixon High School.

It was probably in 1932 or 1933 that my grandparents met -- in any case, Sherm was seriously courting his future wife by the summer of 1933, as we see from a letter that he wrote to her (apparently the first letter he ever wrote her) on 11 July 1933, which reads as follows:

"July 11, 1933

"Dearest Frances,

"I received your letter Sat. morning, and was, of course, sorry to hear that you were going away. Nevertheless I hope you enjoy your visit.

"You can bet your sweet neck that I'll be there next Sun. nite. How could I help it?

"You will wonder what kind of a letter writer I am. My letters are always brief and to the point, but that does not mean I'm not thinking of you.

"Lots of love

"Sherm"

Unfortunately, the story of how my grandparents first met has not been handed down to us. In the late fall of 1934, my grandfather brought my grandmother with him to a Thanksgiving Day dinner in Milledgeville, Illinois, as we read in the 6 Dec. 1934 edition of the Lee Center News, which says, "Mr. and Mrs. S. L. Shaw and son Sherman Linn, Jr., Mr. and Mrs. Ormond Baylor and Frances Miller of near Dixon were guests Thanksgiving day at the A. W. Nicholas home in Milledgeville."

Several times over the years, my mother told the delightful story that she had heard from her parents of how they came to decide to get married. Here is a transcription of relevant excerpts from my mother's recollections as she related them to me in a taped interview on 11 April 2006:

"I know that your granddad played trombone, and he played in the dance band. I know that mother and Arlene [Bellows] -- it was back in the days when they went to the dance halls. They'd been friends for years. They might have gone together to these dances, and that's probably where she met him. I don't know -- Arlene didn't even know for sure, because I asked her -- or she didn't remember. I mean, sometimes we don't remember some of these details -- memory fades. I did know that they went to the dances, and I remember that after they were married, I'd have to go to sleep on the folding chairs until daddy was done -- and she never got to dance with him, because when they'd have a break there was no music. I do remember [them] lamenting about that. Well, they danced [together] later on, you know, but [not] when they were very young.

"I remember when they used to tell about, he would come to visit on Sundays at the farm, because he liked grandma's fried chicken. This one Sunday, grandpa and grandma were gone, and mom was the only one there, [a] 17-year-old. And he thought, 'Oh boy, he's not going to get his fried chicken dinner.' She said, 'I don't know why not.' She went out, caught a chicken, killed that thing, plucked it, dressed it, fried it for him. [My mother begins to laugh.] He decided, 'I'll keep this one! I'm marrying her!' [My mother laughs even harder as she speaks.] He had fried chicken from her -- he liked fried chicken!

"17-year-old girl! Can you see some of these 17-year-old brats that you see around town today with their iPods and their cigarettes hanging out their mouth, going out and grabbing a chicken, and even knowing which end to cut off? But my mother did -- her mother taught her well."

"I have no idea how they met -- because he was five years older than she was. Nobody seems to know, and I've asked several ones who were that age. There aren't too many around any more, and if they are, some of them, they don't have their memories any more. Those things have been erased."

I don't know how long it was from the time my grandfather reached his conclusion that Frances would make a good wife until the time they married, but evidently a few months went by at least. Frances graduated from Dixon High School on 1 June 1934 at the age of 17, and if my mother's recollections are correct, she was still 17 at the time of the Sunday chicken dinner which she cooked for Sherman, so the dinner must have taken place prior to 18 Dec. 1934. In any event, it was in March 1935 -- a little under a year after Sherman's older sister Eleanor married -- that my grandparents Sherman and Frances decided to elope. Although they successfully concealed their plans to get married from their family and friends, my grandfather couldn't keep all of his plans a secret, for the 21 March 1935 edition of the Lee Center News mentions, "Sherman Linn Shaw plans to leave this week for Wichita, Kans., where he will visit his brother, Russell. He sold his stock and farming equipment to C. E. Braden." Little did the folks in Lee Center know that Sherman would not be traveling alone on his trip to Wichita, and that he and his traveling companion -- my grandmother -- would take a quick trip north to Rockford before turning southwest to Wichita!

And so, the day after that newspaper notice was published, without telling their families, on 22 March 1935 Sherman and Frances ran off to Rockford, Illinois, where they were married at the Second Congregational Church in Rockford by Rev. John Gordon, pastor of that church, with the pastor's wife and a Mrs. T. J. Floden (i.e. Mrs. Lea Floden, wife of Ture J. Floden of 305 Cottage Grove, Rockford) serving as witnesses.

After their marriage, they took their honeymoon trip to Wichita, Kansas, where they stayed with my grandfather's older brother Russ for about 12 days. After arriving in Wichita, they wrote letters to their parents letting them know that they were married, and very quickly the tightly-knit community of Lee Center and its environs also learned of their nuptials. Their marriage was announced on the 28 March 1935 edition of The Amboy News as follows:

"Sherman Linn Shaw Weds Frances Miller of Dixon

"Sherman Linn Shaw, son of Mr. and Mrs. S. L. Shaw of Lee Center, and Frances Miller, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Norman Miller of Dixon, were married last Friday afternoon, March 22, by Dr. John Gordon, pastor of the Second Congregational church of Rockford, in the parsonage in that city. The bride was charming in a grey ensemble. The young couple were unattended. They are graduates of the Lee Center and Dixon high schools respectively, and have many friends who will extend congratulations and best wishes. Their honeymoon will be spent with Mr. and Mrs. Russell Shaw in Wichita, Kansas."

My grandfather's letter to his parents announcing his marriage arrived in Lee Center on Wednesday, 27 March 1935. The next day, my great-grandparents Sherman and Grace, who were quite surprised or even shocked at the elopement, wrote letters in reply, and we still have their letters in our possession. My grandparents returned from their honeymoon on 4 April 1935, as briefly noted in the 11 April 1935 Amboy News, which says, "Mr. and Mrs. Sherman Linn Shaw returned last Wednesday from their wedding trip to Wichita, Kan."

Upon their return from Wichita, my grandparents received several wedding presents -- the items, which my grandmother later listed on an index card, were nice household items, such as a small sugar bowl, a glass creamer, a chrome tray, a Wagner Ware Dutch oven (given by my grandmother's uncle Clark Young and his second wife Leola), and a few pairs of salt and pepper shakers from the collection of my grandfather's mother Grace. A few of their wedding presents are still in the possession of their descendants. They received these gifts at three wedding showers that their loved ones and friends threw for them after they got back from Wichita. The first one was noted in the 18 April 1935 edition of The Amboy News, which says, "Mr. and Mrs. S. L. Shaw, newlyweds, were tendered a charivari and miscellaneous shower last Tuesday night [9 April 1935] at the home of the bride's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Norman Miller on the Chicago road." Their charivari was a way to congratulate them while also good-naturedly ribbing and scolding them for eloping. Then on Thursday, 25 April 1935, several of my grandmother's friends threw her a bridal shower, as reported in The Amboy News under its "Talk of the Town" column, on 2 May 1935, which says, "Thursday evening Rose Murtaugh entertained with a dinner party for Mrs. Sherman Linn Shaw, a recent bride. Those attending were Genevieve Cotter, Mary Meade, Eleanor Scott, Zelda Green; and Ione Tedwall, Helen Feldus and Margaret Minnehan of Dixon. After the dinner a social hour was enjoyed." Finally, on Tuesday, 21 May 1935, the Lee Center community "repaid" my grandparents' having surprised everyone by surprising them in turn with a grand shower and program at Lee Center Congregational Church, as reported in the 30 May 1935 Amboy Times:

"Mr. and Mrs. Sherman Linn Shaw, who were recently married were tendered a surprise miscellaneous shower in the church last Tuesday evening. A program was given, featuring a xylophone solo and the parody of 'O Promise Me,' sung by Mrs. C. E. Braden, both accompanied by Mrs. C. A. Ullrich; a skit, 'Why We Never Married,' Rev. G. A. Cox, daughters Eva and Grace, son Avon, Mrs. Russell Gentry, Elmer Mortenson, Ormond Baylor, Mrs. W. S. Frost; song by Clara Mortenson, accompanied by Mrs. Braden; humorous reading, Mrs. Frost. A large decorated basket was then brought in, containing many useful and beautiful gifts, which were opened by the bride and groom, and duly inspected by the guests. In a few well chosen words, Mr. and Mrs. Shaw thanked the donors and invited them to visit them in their new home. Coffee and doughnuts were served."

After they started their lives together, my grandparents continued to live in Lee Center. We can't be sure where they lived immediately after they got back from Wichita, Kansas, but almost certainly "their new home," mentioned in the above quoted newspaper article about my grandparent's surprise wedding shower published on 30 May 1935, was the Hattie Lippincott house in Lee Center. That is the house where Sherman and Frances lived for about a year-and-a-half after their marriage.

The winter following my grandparents' marriage was one of the harshest, coldest winters in living memory, and the pages of The Amboy News in late 1935 and early 1936 are filled with stories and notices that attest to the ways in which the heavy snow and brutal sub-zero temperatures affected the residents of Lee Center. One of those items appeared on the Lee Center society page of The Amboy News, 20 Feb. 1936, which says:

"Sherman L. Shaw Jr. visited his wife Saturday and Sunday [Feb. 15-16] at the home of her grandfather, Bailiff Frank Young in Dixon, where she has been staying on account of the weather conditions."

These safety measures of my grandparents were especially prudent given the fact that my grandmother was then pregnant with her first child, my mother. My grandparents had been married for about a year-and-a-half when they had their daughter DOLORES FRANCES SHAW, who was born 15 Aug. 1936 at Amboy Hospital, in nearby Amboy, Lee County, Illinois. My grandmother gave birth during the hottest summer on record in Illinois (which followed on the heels of one of the worst winters). On the audiotape of my mother's personal memories that I made on 28 Nov. 1998, this is what she said about the ordeal that her mother went through in the final month of her pregnancy:

"August of 1936 was the hottest temperature records ever recorded in history. Years later, I asked my mother how in the world she could ever get through having a baby in the heat of August -- because I [too] had a baby in August. I said, 'There was no air conditioning! How did you do that?' She said, 'Ice cubes and a fan -- and your grandmother was sure that you were going to be an ice cube!' And to this day I like to chew on ice cubes."

My mother's birth was first heralded in The Amboy News, 20 Aug. 1936, page 3, column 4, where the following note appeared in the Lee Center news section: "Mr. and Mrs. Sherman L. Shaw Jr., announce the arrival of a seven pound daughter, Saturday morning at the Amboy hospital." A second announcement was printed on the front page of the 30 Aug. 1936 Amboy News, under the heading "HELLO WORLD!" It read, "Mr. and Mrs. S. L. Shaw Jr. of Lee Center are the parents of a baby daughter born Saturday, Aug. 15 at Amboy hospital." Remarkably, neither announcement included a name for Sherman and Frances' first child. Only in the 3 Sept. 1936 Amboy News, in the Lee Center news section, was it at last announced what they had decided to name their daughter: "Mrs. Sherman L. Shaw Jr. returned home from the Amboy hospital last week with her infant daughter, Dolores Frances." My grandmother's extended stay in the hospital after giving birth is an indication that it had been a difficult delivery and that there probably were post partum complications -- not at all surprising given that it was her first pregnancy and the area was gripped in an unprecedented heat wave.

On the left is a vintage postcard of the old Amboy Public Hospital, where my mother Dolores Frances Shaw was born on 15 Aug. 1936. On the right is a photograph of the old hospital that I took during a visit to Amboy on 29 Aug. 1998. The former hospital was then an apartment building, but has since been torn down.

This is the earliest photograph that we have of my mother, taken when she was about a month old or less.

Shown here are two photographs taken in Lee Center, Illinois, in 1936 apparently in the autumn. These are among the earliest photos we have of my mother. At the left, my mother Dolores shares a baby carriage with her cousin Eddie Baylor, who was only two-and-a-half months older than Dolores. At the right, Dolores and Eddie share a little red wagon while Eddie's older brother Jack prepares to pull them. Although my mother grew up as an only child, she grew up in Lee Center with her male Baylor cousins, with whom she was very close, thinking of them as her own brothers.

This photograph taken in 1937 in Lee Center, Illinois, shows my mother, Dolores Frances Shaw, firstborn and ultimately only surviving child of Sherman Linn Shaw II and Frances Mae (Miller) Shaw. Her parents saved the baby shoes that Dolores is wearing in this picture and later had them bronzed. Her bronzed shoes, as well as three of her infant gowns, are still in the possession of Dolores' family.

A few months after my mother's birth, Sherman and Frances arranged with his parents to rent the old Shaw farm in Lee Center. The 22 Oct. 1936 Amboy News reported that "Mr. and Mrs. Sherman L. Shaw Jr. have moved from the Mrs. Hattie Lippincott house to the S. L. Shaw home, where they have rented the farm for the coming year. Mr. and Mrs. Shaw [i.e. Sherman's parents] will soon move to the George Brewer property on Second street, now occupied by Earl Carlson." My great-grandparents' move to the George Brewer place was completed by early November, as reported in the 12 Nov. 1936 Amboy News, which says, "Mr. and Mrs. S. L. Shaw are now occupying the Brewer residence on Second street, owned by Mrs. C. W. Ross." Sherman and Frances would continue to work the old Shaw farm in Lee Center for the next few years.

Though my mother was born in the summer of 1936, it wasn't until the spring of the following year that my grandparents had her baptised in the Christian faith. In her baby book, my grandmother wrote that Dolores was baptised and formally named on 28 March 1937 at First Presbyterian Church of Dixon by Rev. Herbert Doran. Perhaps my grandparents were then considering membership in the Presbyterian Church in Dixon (although they were then living in Lee Center). On the other hand, the decision to have my mother baptised in the Presbyterian Church was perhaps something of a compromise on the part of my grandparents, since my grandfather Sherman was brought up in the Congregational Church while my grandmother Frances was baptised and raised a Lutheran. Did they come to the mutual decision that, rather than one of them having to give up his or her denominational affiliation, they would try to find a Christian community to which they and the children whom God would give them would all belong? Whatever their reasons for having Dolores baptised by Dixon's Presbyterian pastor, however, my grandparents' actual practice was to attend Lee Center Congregational Church during the years in the 1930s and 1940s when they were living in Lee Center. Later, when they were living in or near Dixon for a few years during the 1940s, they presumably attended First Presbyterian Church. Be that as it may, after moving to Dixon in the latter 1950s, my grandparents did attend First Presbyterian Church in Dixon and maintained their membership there until their deaths.

In this photograph taken in June 1937 in Lee Center, Illinois, my mother, Dolores Frances Shaw, age 10 months, is shown with her parents, Sherman Linn Shaw II and Frances Mae (Miller) Shaw, and her grandparents, Sherman Linn Shaw I and Grace Esther (Bender) Shaw.

As mentioned previously, it was during the 1930s that my great-grandfather Sherman gathered genealogical information about his family which he sent to his cousin Evangeline Linn Halleck (1886-1963), who included that information in her book, Descendants of George Linn (1941). The Shaw branch of the Linns may be found in Halleck's book on pages 142 and 167 -- it is on the latter page where my mother and grandparents are listed. At the time that Halleck's book was published, my mother was about 5 years old. She was my grandparents' first child, and, sadly, would end up being their only child, because my grandmother and grandfather had six other babies who were delivered preterm, either dying through miscarriage or who were stillborn. In the taped interview of my mother from 28 Nov. 1998, she told me:

"I always wanted a brother or sister, since I was the firstborn, but it wasn't meant to be. Later on in life, I learned that my mother lost six pregnancies, and two of them were little boys. But she never talked about it, so I didn't know what had happened. Except she did say, while she was working at the City National Bank, one of her co-workers had to go in and have some surgery done, in order to hold a pregnancy, because she had torn so badly when the first one was born. When the reconstruction was done, she was able to carry to term. And mother thinks that that may have been what happened to her, and the doctor thought so too. She did tell me that. But she never told me about losing any of the babies. I remember some of the times when it happened. But my Aunt Eleanor was the one that told me that two of the babies were boys. So I would have had a brother, and we would have had a Sherman Linn Shaw -- but, not this time. We also were told that the Rh factor may have contributed to the problem that they had, but both of them were Rh+. Dad was an O+ which was a universal donor, and she was AB+, and lo and behold their daughter came up A-. So I shouldn't have been able to have successful pregnancies with five children with a B+ husband, but we did, and no problems. I think the Rhesus monkey got blamed for a lot of stuff he didn't have anything to do with."

It seems that, per the usual practice in those days, the six babies that my grandparents lost were not given funerals. In any event, they were not buried in the Sherman Linn Shaw family plot in Woodside Cemetery, Lee Center, Illinois. It is presumed that their bodies were cremated, which then and now is commonly the disposition of the remains of stillborn or miscarried babies. As my mother indicated, in those days, and even today, miscarriage and stillbirth are usually shrouded in silence -- they're intensely painful events that we just don't talk about. The loss of so many babies undoubtedly touched my grandparents deeply, and inevitably affected the spiritual, psychological, and emotional contours of their family, subtly influencing the kind of upbringing my mother had. My grandmother's interior anguish of losing six babies, maybe unresolved and perhaps not wholly acknowledged, cloaked in the silence of privacy and etiquette, perhaps helps to explain the somewhat strained relationship that my mother and grandmother had -- for my grandmother was not quite at ease around small children, and that in turn is probably one of the main reasons why my mother ended up being much closer to her father than her mother. Being an only child, my mother also often felt lonely -- but that was ameliorated by the fact that her first cousins, the Baylor boys, Jack, Eddie, and Ronnie, also lived in Lee Center. They were her playmates growing up, and she felt very close to them, looking upon them as her own brothers. Indeed, my mother was thankful for all of her Baylor cousins, but was closest to the three eldest boys since they were close to her in age.

My grandfather Sherman is mentioned a president of Lee Center High School Alumni in a notice in the 13 May 1937 Amboy News, page 3, column 3, which says, "Invitations have been issued to the annual Lee Center high school alumni banquet to be held Saturday evening, May 29 in the I. O. O. F. hall. A dance in the school gym will follow the banquet and business session. The officers are Sherman L. Shaw Jr., president; Harold Donnelly, vice president; Dorothy Bohn, secreary-treasurer (sic -- secretary)." A few months later, in the summer of 1937, a fire broke out in Lee Center that threatened the old Shaw place where my grandparents and mother lived. My grandfather Sherman helped the Amboy Fire Department fight the fire, which occurred on Monday, 16 Aug. 1937, the day after my mother's first birthday. The following report about this incident appeared in the 19 Aug. 1937 Amboy News:

Call Amboy Firemen to Lee Center on Monday

Amboy firemen were called to Lee Center at noon Monday to fight a fire which threatened the Sherman Shaw property in the east end of that village. A barn on the old Henry Herrick place, now owned by Mrs. Tom Coryell of Amboy was entirely destroyed and for a time it was feared that the flames would spread to the Shaw property.

The barn which was built of lumber, contained a quantity of dry cobs and the heat from the flames was intense. The value of the building was estimated at $300 and there was no insurance.

Among the various mementos and artifacts that have survived from my grandfather's life during these years are an early driver's license with an expiration date of 1 May 1942 and the title to a 1933 Chevrolet Sedan. The Sedan's title was witnessed by Illinois Secretary of State Edward J. Hughes on 12 May 1936, and indicates that my grandfather "Sherman L Shaw Jr. Lee Center, Illinois" purchased the car for $275 from Nelson Motor Co., Sandwich, Illinois, on 30 Oct. 1937. I can only guess why, of all the automobiles that my grandfather owned during his life, this title was preserved. Was it the first car he ever owned or ever personally bought with his own money, or was it his favorite? It does seem that my grandfather preferred Sedans, judging from the cars that appear in our old family photos from these decades.

Sherman's wife, my grandmother Frances, was mentioned in the local news in the 27 Jan. 1938 issue of The Amboy News, which includes the following brief notice under the column headline of "HOSPITAL NEWS" -- "Mrs. Sherman Shaw, Jr., of Lee Center underwent a minor operation Wednesday morning." In the next issue, dated 3 Feb. 1938, we read, "Mrs. S. L. Shaw, Jr., is in the Amboy hospital where she submitted to a minor operation last week. She is making a satisfactory recovery and will be able to return home soon." The operation evidently was of a delicate nature, since hers is in only one listed in those issues of the newspaper in which the precise nature of the operation is not described. It's quite likely that this was the first of my grandmother's six miscarriages or stillbirths.

My mother said that one of her earliest memories was of being placed on the back of a large draft horse named Silver Mane at the old Shaw farm in Lee Center, Illinois. These three photographs from the late 1930s are in our collection of old Shaw photos and mementos.

Presumably it was while my grandparents were living at and working the old Shaw farm in Lee Center around 1940-41 that my mother had an attack of appendicitis, when she was about 3 years old. There is some uncertainty about the chronology of our Shaw family history on this point, however, because my mother seems to have conflated or confused the time that she had appendicitis with the time that she was quarantined with the measles. In both the 1998 and the 2006 tape-recorded interviews of my mother, she said it was while they were living at and working the Cortright place in or near Dixon that she got appendicitis, and in both interviews she said she was about 3 years old at the time -- but if that is right, then they could not have been living at the Cortright place, because the 1940 U.S. Census and our Shaw family records show that my grandparents and mother were living in Lee Center at the time. On the other hand, they certainly were living at the Cortright place when she got the measles later in the 1940s. In any case, in the 1998 interview, my mother said, "I was about 3 years old and I had an appendicitis attack. I had my appendix removed on Easter Sunday morning by Dr. John Sullivan." She went into greater detail in the 2006 interview:

"I was two years old. I think I was three. I remember grabbing my tummy and said, 'Mommy, my tummy hurts!' and I rolled down the stairs. They took me to Dr. Sullivan, and he was in Amboy, but he was Catholic so he was in Mass, so they took him out to the hospital -- took my appendix out that morning. I don't remember going to the hospital, but I remember grabbing my tummy and going down the stairs."

My mother turned 3 years of age on 15 Aug. 1939, and if her appendectomy took place on Easter Sunday when she was 3, then it must have happened 24 March 1940, a rare year when Easter fell unusually early. It must have been about two weeks later, then, that my grandparents and mother were enrolled in the U.S. Census. The census returns for Lee Center, dated 9 April 1940, show my grandparents and mother as "Shaw Jr. L. Sherman," age 27, a farmer who was renting the farm he worked, "Shaw M. Frances," age 23, a stenographer working in an office environment, and "Shaw F. Dolores," age 3. During the week prior to their enumeration for the census, Sherman had worked 75 hours and Frances had worked eight hours. Curiously, the record shows only a blank for the number of weeks that my grandfather had worked in 1939, and also a blank for his income for 1939. My grandmother, on the other hand, reportedly worked for five weeks in 1939 and earned $60. Notably, the census says that in 1939 my grandfather had earned or received income of more than $50 from other sources than his farm work -- some of that no doubt would include money from playing the trombone in the dance band. The census record says my grandmother had lived in Dixon in 1935 (but, per the census, reportedly not on a farm, even though she was then living on her parents' farm in rural Dixon), and that the residence of my grandfather and mother in 1940 was the same house where they'd been living in 1935. To be accurate, my mother in 1935 was then still living inside my grandmother, and my grandparents and mother in 1940 were not living in the same place as they had lived in 1935. As mentioned above, in October 1936 they moved from the Hattie Lippincott house to the old Shaw place in Lee Center. The 1940 U.S. Census says my grandfather was renting the old Shaw place for $8 per month. At the time of the 1940 census, my grandparents' nearest neighbors on one side were the James T. Starnes family, and on the other side was Margaret Ullrich, age 79, living alone. Also, as mentioned previously, around this same time, the 5 April 1940 U.S. Census returns for Lee Center show my grandfather's parents as "Shaw L. Sherman," age 76, an insurance agent, and "Shaw E Grace," age 61. That same year, the U.S. Census shows my grandfather's older half-brother Russell, age 44, living with his wife and three children at 2700 Western Ave., Mattoon, Illinois, where Russell was working as an oil broker. The 1940 U.S. Census also shows my grandfather's older sister Eleanor Shaw Baylor, age 29, living in Lee Center with her husband and their three oldest sons.

In the following year, on 12 May 1941, my grandfather's mother Grace suddenly died of a heart attack at the age of 62, at home in Lee Center. It was just a few days before my grandfather's 29th birthday. Grace's obituary, published on 15 May 1941, lists among her survivors "one daughter, Mrs. Eleanor Baylor, one son, Sherman L. Shaw, Jr., of near Dixon, . . ." However, both my grandfather Sherman and his sister Eleanor were living in Lee Center at the time, so it's somewhat puzzling that this obituary characterises the locations of their homes as "near Dixon" rather than, say, "near Amboy." After suffering the grief of his mother's death, it was not many months before my grandfather also lost his father, who died at home in Lee Center on Friday, 9 Jan. 1942. In her unpublished notes on Lee Center history, Aunt Eleanor wrote, ". . . dad, after being sick all fall and winter, died on January 9, 1942." He was laid to rest between his wives in Woodside Cemetery, Lee Center, Illinois, on Sunday, 11 Jan. 1942. My grandfather "Sherman L., Jr., of Lee Center" was listed among the survivors in my great-grandfather's obituary published the day of his death in the Dixon Evening Telegraph.

Judging from the information that I have been able to gather and present above, my grandparents and mother stayed in Lee Center until 1942. Then, probably after my great-grandfather's death that year, they moved to the Cortright place, the farm of Wilbur and Mary Cortright, who were relatives of my grandmother on the Young side. [Mary Cortright's full maiden name was Mary Etta Smith, daughter of Joseph Clarence and Amanda Elizabeth (Young) Smith, whose younger brother was Franklin Lincoln Young, father of Bessie Mae (Young) Miller, mother of my grandmother Frances Mae (Miller) Shaw. The late Queta Kathryn (Cortright) Wainscott, daughter of Wilbur and Mary Cortright, was a dear cousin and friend of my grandmother.] I am uncertain where the Cortright place was located, but the 1940 U.S. Census says Wilbur and Mary were then living on and working a farm in South Dixon Township, Lee Center. Confusingly, though, this census record also says the farm was on Route 4, "Amboy Road." However, Amboy Road is not in South Dixon Township, but rather is in Amboy and Marion Townships. Did the census-taker make a mistake, or were the boundaries of South Dixon Township changed after 1940?

Three stray records from my grandfather's time working the Cortright place have survived. One of them is a "1944 Farm Plan - Illinois" for the War Food Program, dated 10 March 1944. The form says the Cortright place, a 110-acre farm, was owned by Mary E. Cortright and was operated by my grandfather Sherman L. Shaw. The farm is numbered "18-156", and the address is given as "Dixon, Ill. R#4" (which matches the 1940 U.S. Census record, only the form does not identify Route 4 as Amboy Road). Recorded on this form are how many acres had been dedicated to various crops in 1943 and the acreage that Grandpa intended to dedicate in 1944 (his 1943 corn production was 2,500 bushels, and he planned to decrease his acreage for hay and oats and increase his acreage for corn and all other crops). The form also lists the numbers of livestock in 1944 and how many were planned or expected for 1945. In 1943 there were four sows farrowed in the spring and three in the fall, and 200 chickens raised. In 1944 he had 16 head of cattle and calves, 12 milk cows, and 100 laying hens; and expected six sows to be farrowed in the spring and three in the fall, and expected to raise 250 chickens. For 1945, Grandpa expected to have 20 cattle and calves, 12 milk cows, and 150 laying hens. Grandpa also recorded that he limed the fields using 33 tons of agricultural limestone.

The other two records that still survive from the Cortright years are a pair of receipt stubs from E. C. Risley Sand and Gravel, both dated 7 Nov. 1944. Both were signed by Wilbur Cortright, one of them for 10 yards of sand and the other for 10 yards of gravel. I can only wonder why, of all the stray scraps of paper from those years, my Grandpa decided to save those two receipt stubs in his old 1940s scrapbook.

The years spent on the Cortright farm mostly coincided with World War II (1941-1945). My grandfather was never drafted and did not fight overseas during World War II. That was because he was a married father of an only child, a little girl (my mother), and was the primary means of support of his wife and child. Besides that, during the War he employed by the Dixon State Hospital as their own farmer, with the responsibility of working the hospital's farm (perhaps that was before the move to the Cortright place). So, instead of serving overseas, he enlisted in the Illinois Reserve Militia and served his state and country in helping to defend "the Home Front." Here are my mother's memories of her dad's enlistment in the militia, from the audiotape of the interview at her home south of Dixon, Illinois, on 11 April 2006 --

"I remember one time, when we lived on the Cortright farm -- that's when I had the measles and I was quarantined -- your granddad came back in a uniform, and I thought he was going to the Army. But he was in the Illinois Militia, which was the forerunner of the National Guard now. So he didn't have to go, to leave, because he was farming the State Hospital's grounds for them. So he got to stay home."

My family is blessed to have in our keeping some of the records of my grandfather's service in the Illinois Reserve Militia. The service papers indicate that he first enlisted in the militia at Dixon, Illinois, on 11 April 1944, when he was 31 years old. The papers say he had brown hair, blue eyes, a dark complexion, was 5 feet 8 1/2 inches in height, was in "good" physical condition, and had "excellent" character. The following year, on 17 Aug. 1945, Colonel Bradford F. West of the Third Infantry, Illinois Reserve Militia, raised him to the rank of Corporal in Company A of the Third Infantry. His term of service expired on 10 April 1946, when he received an honorable discharge from Colonel West. The following day, my grandfather re-enlisted for another term of service with the Third Infantry, Company A. He completed that term on 10 Feb. 1947, when he was mustered out with his unit and honorably discharged by Colonel West. At the time, according to his discharge papers, he had brown hair, blue eyes, a dark complexion, was 5 feet 6 inches in height (having lost 2 1/2 inches over the preceding three years), was in "good" physical condition, and had "excellent" character.

Following the War's end in 1945, in 1946 my grandparents and mother moved from the Cortright place back to Lee Center, living in the old George Brewer place on Second Street in Lee Center where my great-grandparents Sherman and Grace Shaw had formerly lived. The old Brewer place was (and still is) adjacent to Lee Center Congregational Church and later, in 1948, the church purchased the house to use as a church parsonage, for which reason my grandparents and mother moved from the house in April 1949. The house had formerly had been the home of Othniel M. Clark and his family. Othniel Clark was the father-in-law of my great-grandfather Sherman Linn Shaw's younger brother George Harry Thornton Shaw, who was married at the Clark home. In the audiotape interview that I made of my mother on Saturday night, 28 Nov. 1998, my mother spoke of the years when she and her parents lived in the old Clark/Brewer house in these words: "Then we moved back to Lee Center, and moved into the house that my grandparents Sherman Shaw and Grace Bender Shaw lived in up to the time of their deaths. They remodeled the house there, and I spent the last part of fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade, and seventh grade in Lee Center."

Shown here are two photographs of the home located at Lot 1, Block 5 of the Original Town of Lee Center. On the left is an older photo, while the photo on the right shows the house as it was in 1967. My great-grandparents lived in this house for a few years before their deaths. The 1940 U.S. Census says the house where my great-grandparents lived in that year was the same place where they had lived in 1935, so that means they must have moved from the old Shaw place to this house in 1935. In her notes on Lee Center history, Aunt Eleanor said her parents moved from the old Shaw farm about 1936, which generally agrees with the census information -- though she elsewhere said, apparently incorrectly, that her parents only lived at their new home for a year or two before they died. About four years after they died, in 1946, my mother and her parents moved to this house, where they lived until the spring of 1949 -- they moved because in 1948 the house had been bought by Lee Center Congregational Church with the intention to use it as a parsonage.

It was during these latter years in Lee Center that Grandpa became the manager of the Lee Center girls' softball team. We have a couple clippings from the Dixon Telegraph from late August of 1948, as well as an old brochure, that tell of team's games at the Farm Sports Festival that took place 26-27 Aug. 1948 on the campus of the University of Illinois. One of the clippings features a team photograph, with my grandfather standing the back row on the right edge of the photo. Besides the newspaper clipping of the team photo, Grandpa also obtained a print of the photo from the Telegraph.

The Lee Center girls softball team, 26 Aug. 1948. The photograph was printed in the Dixon Telegraph with this caption: "Lee Center's girls team opened play in the Farm Sports Festival on the U. of Illinois campus by meeting Kane county this morming. Personnel of the team, as caught by The Telegraph camera, is: Front row, (left to right) Norma Jean Heibenthal, Delores Ostewig, Billie Garrison, Eileen Dinges, Barbara Degner (bat-girl), Irene Twardowski, Shirley Pierce, Monica Becker, 'Bus' Wierman, coach. Back row: W. G. Taylor, coach; Capt. Nancy Michael, Norma Jean Wierman, 'Bunny' Semmler, Betty Degner, Eula Spencer, Teresa Blackburn, Helen Staubli, Mgr. S. L. Shaw."

After the Farm Sports Festival, the Telegraph subsequently ran this notice:

"LEE CENTER NOTE -- Prime credit for the Lee Center girls' showing in the Farm Sports Festival last week is being attached to Catcher Billie Garrison. The young backstop starred as the softballers beat Kane county but then bowed to second place Peoria, 6-4. Manager Sherm Shaw reports the club may end its season with a game at the Franklin Grove festival Saturday. Arrangements are not complete at the present time."

Another notable life event from this period of my grandfather's life is that around this time he decided to join Lee Center's local Masonic lodge, something that he (like most Christians who have become Masons) did not find contrary to his membership in Lee Center's Congregational Church or, later, Dixon's First Presbyterian Church. In the past, membership in fraternal, social groups or secret societies such as the Freemasons, the Red Men, the Modern Woodmen, the Knights of Pythias, or the Oddfellows was very common for American men, but not so much any more. Sherm was an active member, even to the point that he later was master of Friendship Lodge A.F. and A.M. in Dixon. Now, my grandmother was not entirely happy with his joining the Masons, due to the oath of secrecy that he had to take regarding Masonic religious ritual and organisation. Prior to his becoming a Mason, Sherm had never kept any secrets from my Grandma, and she couldn't help but be bothered that a significant aspect of his life was now hidden behind a curtain. My mother tolds me that her parents had a very happy marriage, and Grandma only ever had problems with Grandpa regarding two things. One was his Masonic lodge secrecy, and the other was his heavy smoking that soured the air and stained their pillow cases (for Grandma always kept a very tidy and orderly house, as her mother had taught her). But she did not love him the less for it.

Perhaps the most significant memories from these years when my Grandpa Shaw lived in Lee Center have to do with my mother's health. Ever since she was little, my mother's right leg between the ankle and the knee had been very sensitive, such that she didn't want to let her mother touch the leg during bath time, because it would cause intense pain. In both the taped interview of 28 Nov. 1998 and that of 11 April 2006, my mother told the story of her leg trouble and her parents' efforts to get their daughter help. Her 1998 account of her leg trouble was relatively brief, and begins about 1948:

"Then I had the surgery on the tumor in my leg that they finally found at St. Luke's Hospital in Chicago (it's now Rush Presbyterian -- St. Luke's, all combined). Dr. Fred Hart performed the surgery, and found that the tumor was not orthopedic in nature but neurological, and they called in a Dr. Gustafson, who did the surgery the second time to try and remove the tumor -- found they could not, cleaned it up, and did the best I could. I wore a brace for quite a few years. I was told I couldn't rollerskate, and I proved them wrong. However, I did have a bad injury with skating that put an end to that -- in later years, when I went out to the White Pines Roller Rink and sprained my ankle the worst I've ever sprained, while I was in Nurse's Training. And so I decided that they probably knew what they were talking about that I shouldn't be on rollerskates. But I learned to compensate for my handicap -- I proved them wrong."

Mom's 2006 account of her leg trouble, and how her father and mother took her from doctor to doctor, is much more extensive, and full of wonderful details:

"I also remember going to first grade with Mrs. Floto and falling on the ice, and that's why I'm so afraid of ice -- because I fell and I hit my spot on my leg that hurt, the blood spot where the tumor is. And they all thought that that's what caused the tumor. Well, it didn't -- it was just something that was growing. The worst pain! I never let my mom wash that leg -- I would always pull away from her when she going to wash that leg, because it would hurt. She couldn't understand why; she'd get upset with me -- [but] it was growing. . . . [I]t was '47 or '48 when they started to take me around to all these different doctors. . . [T]hey scared me half to death: took me up to St. Anthony's Hospital up in Rockford; I didn't know what nuns were, and these women were swishing around the halls in their black robes and stuff, and I was just a little kid -- I didn't know what, scared me clear out of my wits. They couldn't find anything wrong with me.

"Then they took me to a guy up in Polo -- Grandma and Grandpa Miller took me up there. He was a 'Pow Wow' doctor. He'd hold a light bulb over my leg and rub something on it, and that was supposed to make it better. It didn't. Well, nowadays we'd know that [he was a quack], but at that time, you know -- they were trying to find out what was wrong with me.

"So then, after the War, Dr. Robert LeSage came back -- he opened up his practice here in town, and he'd gone to high school with Mother. So Mother took me to him -- my mom and dad took me to him -- because their son had had polio. He was younger than I am -- he's a dentist in Dixon today. And Dr. Robert said, 'I don't know what's wrong with her.' You see, this thing was so they couldn't tell from the outside -- they just knew that every time they'd touch it that I was in pain. And he said, 'Well, I don't know what's wrong with her, but I'll send you in to the doctor that helped Bobby.' He was an orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Fred Hart on Michigan Avenue. And I don't like to go in those elevators, because they had the elevators in that building, when you started out -- UWAAAH! -- you lost your stomach every time it started up! Oh my! Nowadays, you know, it's just like getting in a conveyer belt and then just [hand motion up]. But then they didn't -- it was an ordeal -- I hated that!

"So he examined me, sent me to this 'well-known' guy [who] had an article printed in the McCall's paper of psychologists. [Note: Dr. Robert J. McCall (1913-1990) was a prominent 20th century psychologist.] He hit me right in that tumor with that hard percussion hammer with the hard end -- you know, the pointy end? -- to prove to my mother that there was nothing wrong with my leg, that it was all an attention-getting [strategy]. Well, needless to say, I was in tears and in pain the rest of the day because of what he did, and it still hurts. [Note: in recalling the pain, Mom began to cry toward the end of this sentence.] How much attention does an only child have to get! That didn't make sense even to me at that age -- I mean, that was stupid! And that's what they felt about him. She showed me that article -- I knew she cut it out, but I don't know whether she ever kept it, because I've not come across it. She said, 'This is the guy that -- ' [laughs like Lou Abbott] [I'd] like to get a hold of him and use a percussion hammer on his head! Knock some sense into him -- or out of him, or whatever.

"He said that there was nothing that they could find. The only thing that they could recommend was that they would do an exploratory operation. So they put me in St. Luke's Hospital -- I was the only kid in that 20-bed ward. And I remember that people in the church down there [Lee Center Congregational Church] got together, and everybody, they made a gift box up for me, and they allowed me to open one package each day that I was there -- you know, the nurses made sure that I did it that way. And I'll never forget that, because Mom and Dad couldn't come but on the weekends. There was just nobody there to come and visit me, and I was too old to be in the ward where the little kids were; they were right next door, I could hear them, but [I] couldn't have any company.

"It was '47 and '48 when this all happened, because in '49 we moved up to [Ogle County]. Fourth and fifth grade, and sixth grade. But anyway, then they did that, and when I came back, that was when we went to see the Sonja Henie Ice Revue -- they had me on crutches. She was a figure skater. We had to go up in the Chicago Stadium and up in the nosebleed seats -- on crutches. I can't even get up two steps today! By myself, let alone on crutches! But when you're little, you do things. So they sent me home, and I can remember we had a terrible ice storm -- that was in January, because I went in on the 27th., the 26th. or the 27th. of December. When they sent me home, we had a terrible ice storm, and the folks had just switched over the furnace from coal to a stoker -- bottom-lighted stoker -- and there was no electricity. Now we're cold! I don't remember how we got warm, but it was cold -- ice was everywhere, everywhere, on everything. But we made it through that.

"And I still was having trouble with my leg. After that surgery I couldn't straighten it out. . . . Every time I tried to straighten it out, I was in even more pain. So it was back to Chicago, and they put me in the hospital again, and put a long cast from the hip to my foot, and it turned up behind my knee, to straighten it out, and they twist/turned a little each day. They straightened it out. Oh, it felt good to have it be able to straighten out! And they cut the cast off -- two days later, it was back to [where I] couldn't straighten it out. So it was back to surgery. But they called in a neurosurgeon this time, because when they got in there they found out it wasn't orthopedic, it was a strawberry birthmark between the nerves, it goes down to outside of the leg and down through the bone to the ankle -- and it had been growing, though when they cut into it they stopped the growth -- that's the nature of those kind of tumors. But somehow or another, in the process, and tissues being what they are, and ligaments and tendons, it left me with that drawing up -- and now I have a drop foot. And I can remember waking up from the surgery and the little nurse standing at the bottom of the bed, and the first thing I told her -- 'I can't feel anything on my big toe.' She said, 'Well, that's alright -- it'll come back.' Well, someday I'll get a chance to say, 'It never did!' [Laughs] That's why I can step on that thing and not realise it -- because I can't pick it up. I can push it down, but I can't pick it up. She said, 'That's alright -- it'll come back.' Well, it didn't.

"I didn't know it at the time, but they were talking about doing another type of surgery, where they would take the nerves and muscles or whatever it is that help you do this, to the side, and put it like this -- you wouldn't be able to turn that foot to the side. And Dad said, 'No.' He said, 'Let it be for awhile. Let's see what happens.' And so they took me home, and like I said, by now I was able to straighten out the leg, so that whatever they did stuck -- straightened that up. What they had planned to do was go in and take all that tumor out of there, but they didn't because of the way it was all intermixed in. That would have left me without any use of it -- they may as well have amputated your leg from the knee down. So, they put me in a little short-leg brace that was -- I think I remember that the folks told me it cost $18.75, which isn't a whole lot of money nowadays, but back then, that was a lot of money to have a brace made. 1949 -- '48-'49. They were made out of spring steel -- it was made with this spring coil, and then it would come up here, and there was a little band that hooked it at the knee. Well, being an active child, like your children are, running and playing, these springs would break. They could have them welded once, then they'd have to get a new one.

"I can remember my first time that I know that God answered my prayer. I was upstairs there in the house by the church in Lee Center, that Grandpa and Grandma Shaw used to live in. I was upstairs, and I had asked God, because I knew that that trip to Chicago and that brace cost more than $18.75. It was such an awful expense to go in and have it fitted, and put on the shoe -- you had to buy a special shoe and other things special. And I said, 'Please God, let me be able to walk so I don't have to use that brace all the time.' And He answered me right away. And Daddy was coming in the front door, and I went to the top of the stars and I said, 'Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, I can walk! My foot works!' I know it was not my doing, and it wasn't anything the doctors did -- it was God answering my prayer as a little kid. He gave me a big hug, of course. He was right when he told the doctors to wait and see what happened. So, that's what happened there -- I didn't have to wear the brace as often, although my foot would get tired. So I would wear it part of the time, but around the house I didn't have to wear it, and I could get around. [I was off the brace by the time I was in high school] except in high school . . . they scheduled all my classes on the ground floor, the first level, so I wouldn't have to climb the stairs, because it was hard for me. But I would play ball, and I would play in the gym class, and they would have one of the girls run for me, because I could hit the ball further than anybody else -- with either hand. I was ambidexterous. So, we used it to our advantage, but back then, you know, you could bend the rules a little, you know, when you're playing work up (?) or whatever. But that's how it -- But I enjoyed playing ball. I played catch with my Dad and stuff. But I was able to get around."

The U.S. Census returns for Pine Creek Township in Ogle County, dated 14 April 1950, list my grandfather and his family as "Shaw Sherman," age 36 (sic - he was 37 and turned 38 the following month), occupation "farm," industry "farming," with his wife "Shaw Frances," age 34 (sic - she was 33), and their daughter "Shaw Delores," age 13. This shows that my grandparents and mother were living on and working the dairy farm in Ogle County west of the town of Oregon that my Grandpa named "The Ayr-Strip Farm." The Ayrshire breed of cow was my grandfather's favorite, which is why he chose that name for his farm (and it seems most fitting that his own Linn ancestry goes back to old Ayrshire in the western Lowlands of Scotland). In the 29 Nov. 1998 audiotaped interview of my mother, she recounted her memories of life on the "Ayr-Strip" at great length. She again recalled those days rather more briefly in the 11 April 2006 audiotaped interview. Here is a transcript of those memories, interspersed with a few of our family's many, many photographs that have come down to us from those halcyon days. First, an introductory excerpt from the 1998 interview:

"After living there in Lee Center until I was 10 years old [sic -- 12 years old], in April of 1949 we moved to a farm that my folks purchased north of Grand Detour, north of the Babson Arabian Horse Farms, and that is where I spent my last of seventh grade and eighth grade -- at Oregon Grade School. And then high school, I went to Dixon High School because my mother worked at the Pontiac garage right across from the high school. And since I lived in a non-high district, they paid my tuition. So I didn't get to go to school and graduate with my classmates from Oregon, which was kind of tough. So I went to quite a few different grade schools. High school was the only one I spent the four years, and I was very grateful."

Then this excerpt from the 2006 interview:

"In 1949 we moved up north of Grand Detour on the farm, and it snowed and I didn't have to go to school. The snow was up to my hips. [I was in the] seventh grade. But April -- can you imagine that? Snow in April! [We had moved in the middle of the school year], in the Spring -- farmers always moved around the first of March or the first of April -- up north of the Babson Horse Farms; where I spent my last years in grade school going to Oregon. The neighbors took us for a ride, and then I went to high school at Dixon High School for four years. . . . I remember that snow. I think that's the last time I ever enjoyed snow -- because I didn't have to go to school. After that snow was always a chore."

On the left, my Grandpa Sherm tends a pair of Ayrshire calves, while in the rightmost photo my Grandpa shows one of his registered Ayrshires, with his farm truck proudly displaying his farm's name.

A few views from The Ayr-Strip, including one of my grandfather's Ayrshire steers, and a wintertime vista -- perhaps taken during one of the brutal winters or snowfalls my mother remembered?

Continuing with the transcription of the 1998 interview:

"The years when I was on the farm there above Grand Detour were some of the best memories I had. I was in 4-H and showed cattle. We had registered Ayrshire dairy cattle, and my dad liked the red and white cows. He used to tell me a poem when I was little by Robert Louis Stevenson. All I can remember are a couple phrases: 'Oh friendly cow, all red and white, I love with all my might, gives me cream to take with apple tarts,' I think. I can't remember just how it goes. I'm sure you could find it in some book of poetry."

Here is the poem to which my mother referred -- it's by Robert Louis Stevenson:

               "The Cow"
          by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

          Published in A Child's Garden of Verses and Underwoods (1906)

          The friendly cow all red and white,
            I love with all my heart:
          She gives me cream with all her might,
            To eat with apple-tart.

          She wanders lowing here and there,
            And yet she cannot stray,
          All in the pleasant open air,
            The pleasant light of day;

          And blow by all the winds that pass
            And wet with all the showers,
          She walks among the meadow grass
            And eats the meadow flowers.

On the left, a photographed dated (or developed on) 23 Oct. 1950 shows my mother, her cousin Jack Baylor, and my Grandpa Sherman Shaw showing Ayrshire cattle at what I believe to have been a 4-H event. In the photograph on the right, dated from about 1950, my mother and grandfather show Ayrshire calves in the yard at the Ayr-Strip Farm, rural Oregon, Illinois.

Continuing again with the 1998 interview:

"My mother, who was not really interested in livestock as much my dad and I were, wanted to have some sheep. They went up to Friendship, Wisconsin, and bought seven head of Karakul sheep, which is the Persian lamb coat sheep, the black curly hair -- they kill the little baby lambs while they're still a few days old to make those beautiful coats. But the mature animals have long hair and they have wool that had to be sent to Pendleton, Oregon, to be woven into material. We had some auto robes made, some plaid ones, and we had some material (that might still be in the cedar chest) to make a coat or a jacket from.

"Anyway, these animals were housed in the same yard where the chicken house was. We had a gate we had to go through to go collect the eggs. The buck of this group of animals was a mean buck -- and he would chase me! I went to the henhouse to get a couple of eggs, and I had one in each hand. I was walking towards the gate, and all of a sudden he comes to greet me at my rear! Dad says, 'Dolly, watch out! There comes that buck!" And I do not jump -- I cannot jump -- but I high-jumped the fence. And my Dad said as I landed -- on both feet, and I didn't break the eggs, they were still in my hands! -- he said, 'I want to see you open that gate that fast again!' Never could, never did!

"We also had a big red rooster, and he was as mean as the buck was -- and you know they were the best of friends? That old red rooster would ride on the back of that buck around that yard. They would gang up on me! If it wasn't the buck chasing you when you went to get the eggs it was the rooster chasing you, so we had quite a time with the two of them. They finally killed him and put him in the stewpot, but he lived a good long time."

The story of the buck and mom high-jumping the fence is one of the best-remembered tales in our family lore. My mother recounted it again in the 2006 interview:

"When we lived up there north of the Babson Horse Farm, the chicken house was in this one place where these Karakul sheep, they were out there with them. We had a Rhode Island Red rooster who was mean, oh he was mean! And he and that buck! This one afternoon I went out to get a couple eggs that were in the nest. Dad was standing in the yard. We had this gate that you had to reach over -- it's a little higher than the fence, but you know, you had to reach around and pull the hook up. And the fence was kind of sagging a little bit, but it kept the sheep where they needed to go. And this old buck had a tendency of chasing after people. Well, Dad saw him coming, and he says, 'Watch out, Dolly, here he comes!' And I had an egg in each hand, and I high-jumped that fence! I've never high-jumped anything in my life! Amazing what adrenaline will do to you. And I landed on both feet, and I had the eggs in my hands and I didn't break either one. Never be able to do that again! Dad says, 'I want to see you open that gate that fast again!' Such a time! But that old rooster and that old buck -- the rooster would ride around on his back. He was a mean old thing! He'd come at you with his feet up in the air. You take a board and whack him on the head -- you thought it would have killed him, but it didn't. He'd keep coming!"

On the left, Sherm holds a Karakul lamb in the sheep pen on The Ayr-Strip Farm, about 1950. On the right, a photo dated (or developed) 23 Oct. 1950 shows my grandparents' Karukul sheep. The ram, or buck, of this small herd was notoriously aggressive.

Continuing where we left off with the 1998 interview:

"Then Grandpa and Grandma Miller moved to town, and they gave us two Muscovy hens and a drake, and two Mallard hens and a drake, because Grandma always used to raise duck, and my favorite at Thanksgiving time was always the Mallard duck, because it was all dark meat. I don't know why I like white meat the best, but I liked that duck, and I guess it was a tradition along with the turkey. My Dad always liked the oyster dressing, and I thought, 'Oooh yuck!' But anyway, she would make two kinds of dressing so that I could have the good stuff and dad could eat that . . . oysters?! Yuck! She used to make oyster soup for him too, and I could never understand why. Anyway when we got up there, we were having a dry season, and the little fox came up and they took off the Mallards because they were small and they could carry them away, but the big Muscovies -- they're the size of the Pekin ducks, they're big white ones -- were too heavy, and so they couldn't catch them. You know, they were bigger than the fox. So these two hens had laid all of these eggs. We went out over there and counted them, and there were 31 in one nest and 30 in the other. There were so many eggs that the hens couldn't sit on them all -- they would rotate them underneath them with their bills. My mother was sure that those eggs were going to be rotten. There were just too many. She would mention that to Grandpa, and Grandpa would say, 'No, no, Peg!' (He always called her 'Peg' instead of by her name, which was Frances, because of his sister's name being Margaret, and her nickname was Peg.) 'If they're rotten, the hens will come off the nests by themselves. Just leave 'em be.' 'Well I don't think we're going to have any ducks.' 'Yes, just leave 'em be.' Sure enough they hatched out. We had 60 ducks running around there, all little yellow balls of fur! You couldn't step without watching where you were going.

"So, at the time, when [I was] in high school, we had a Pinochle group that my parents were involved with, with Harlan and Dorothy Fraza [of Swissville, Illinois], the Rutts (Wes and Ruth Rutt -- of Dixon), Harriette and Kelly Woessner (sic - Carl, not Kelly) , John and Elaine Cramer [of Swissville], Bruce and Ellen Wojtas [?] -- and all these people, if we weren't playing cards at some time, we would go square dancing. Well these people would get together, 'Well, Frances, we'll get together and help you. We'll have a duck-plucking party. We'll get them all ready for the freezer.' Well, what these city folks didn't know is the difference between plucking chickens and plucking ducks is quite a procedure. The pin feathers on the ducks don't come out when you scald them. When you scald the chickens, the feathers just, you can just peel them right off, and they're gone, and you're done, and you singe them and you're ready to go. But you have to pluck out the feathers on the ducks one by one. That's why they could use them for pens, for quills, because they're very sturdy. So they didn't get as many ducks plucked as they thought they were going to get. But we had a lot of duck to eat, and it was good. We do have somewhere pictures of these little ducklings in various trails going across the barnyard. It was about the time we lived on the Harrington place, after we moved from Grand Detour and while I was in nurse's training. But that was an interesting part of our history."

In the leftmost photograph, dated 8 Aug. 1949 (the first summer at The Ayr-Strip Farm), Sherman L. Shaw shows an Ayrshire cow. The middle photo is identified simply as "Top Ayrshires." In the photo on the right (developed at Dundee, Illinois), my grandfather shows a registered purebred Ayrshire.

Dolores Shaw shows a calf during a winter at The Ayr-Strip Farm in the early 1950s.

Fond though my mother's memories were of those years on The Ayr-Strip, my grandfather Sherm was unable to make the dairy farm profitable. My mother told me that her father turned to his older half-brother Russ for help, since Russ had made a fair amount of money working in the oil business in Kansas. But Russ did not believe the farm was a wise investment and declined to help keep it afloat. My mother said that in her youth, for many years she blamed her Uncle Russ and thought he was mean for "making" her Dad have to give something he loved so well, which meant they had to sell the farm and move. (As an adult, of course, she understood why Russ made the decision he did.) With the loss of the Ayr-Strip, my grandparents moved to a farm that my mother referred to as "the Harrington place." I have not been able to determine where that farm was, however.

A review of the Dixon city directories from the 1950s shows five entries that mention my family. First, the 1951 Dixon City Directory says: "Shaw Frances (Mrs S L) 1 (H) bkpr Terminal Pontiac res Organ [sic - Oregon] Ill RD 2." At this time my grandmother had a job working as a bookkeeper for a Pontiac dealership in Dixon, which is why she appears in the Dixon directory, but Grandpa worked the Ayr-Strip Farm in Oregon in Ogle County, which is why he is not listed in Dixon's directory. It was during this time that my mother was a student at Dixon High School, graduating with the Class of 1954. Next, the 1955 Dixon City Directory shows: "Shaw Frances (Mrs S L) bkpr City Natl Bk r RD 3." Once again, my grandfather himself does not have his own directory entry, suggesting he was working a farm elsewhere in Ogle or Lee counties -- and I suspect that farm, located on Rural Route 3 in Lee County, was the Harrington place. Two years later, the 1957 Dixon City Directory includes this significant entry: "Shaw Sherman L (Frances) 1 (H) Reynolds Wire Div h 907 W 7th." From this we learn that my grandfather's days as a farmer had come to an end. He and my Grandma had moved to Dixon and were now living at 907 W. Seventh St., and Grandpa had taken a job with the Reynolds Wire Division.

Now, this move to Dixon was while my mother was at Nurse's Training at the Swedish American Hospital in Rockford, having begun her studies there in the fall of 1954. After my mother's graduation from Nurse's Training in 1957 (she obtained her Illinois registered nurse certificate on 30 Dec. 1957), she moved back home and worked for three years as a registered nurse at the Dixon Public Hospital (now Katherine Shaw Bethea Hospital). Meanwhile, my Grandma had taken a job at City National Bank in downtown Dixon. This is reflected by two entries in the 1959 Dixon City Directory: "Shaw Dolores reg nurse Dixon Pub Hosp r RD 1," and "Shaw Frances Mrs emp City Natl Bk In Dixon r RD 1." Curiously, there is no entry for my grandfather that year. Perhaps that is because he had recently begun working as a kennelman for the Dixon Veterinary Hospital, which was located on Rural Route 5 outside of Dixon -- for my grandfather always had a deep love of animals and must have missed the farm life terribly. A farmer from his youth, a farmer at heart, he made sure he could find ways to continue animal husbandry one way or another.

Concerning my mother's three years at Nurse's Training, she shared these memories in the 1998 audiotape interview:

"By the time I graduated from high school, I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, other than I wanted to be on the farm. I thought I wanted a dairy farm. But money was tight and I couldn't afford college, and so I ended up in Nurse's Training -- which I knew I didn't want to do, but there I was: three years in nurse's training. I tried many times to figure out something else I could do or be and didn't know really what. Couldn't join the service because of my leg -- I would never have been able to pass a physical, because I couldn't march. So joining the Navy or the Marines or the Air Corps as a nurse, that was all out. I lamented it to my Dad one time as we were up there, and he said to me one of the most important pieces of advice that I can ever remember having or being given. He told me, 'I don't understand what it is that you want, but,' he said, 'I know you don't like it, being in Nurse's Training. I know that you probably want to do something else. But you started this.' He said, 'You should finish it.' And I looked at him, and I respected my Dad's opinion very much, and I decided, you know, he was right. So I finished it. Because he told me he didn't care whether I nursed a day after I graduated or not, 'but please finish it.' So I did. And I've got that certificate to this day, and I worked for three years after I graduated . . . ."

At left are Frances, Sherman, and Dolores Olar dressed for Easter Sunday services in 1956. At right is my mother's 1957 official Nurse's Training graduation photo from Swedish American Hospital in Rockford, Illinois.

As indicated by the 1959 Dixon City Directory, in the late 1950s my grandparents and mother moved out of Dixon to a new place on Rural Route 1 in northwestern Lee County. It was about that time that my grandfather got involved in breeding, training, showing, and racing registered Shetland ponies and hackneys -- something about which I will have a great deal to say further on. At this same period of time, my mother experienced a religious conversion to a strict Sabbatarian Adventist sect called the Radio Church of God (later called the Worldwide Church of God), of which she became a member in June 1960. Since the nearest Radio Church of God congregation at the time was in Chicago, my mother took a job as an industrial nurse working for E. I. Dupont in Lincolnwood, Illinois. It was through her membership in the Chicago congregation of the Radio Church of God that she met the man she would marry, JOSEPH OLAR, who was almost 33 when they first met in late 1960. My father had never been married, or even engaged, before -- he was a very shy and quiet man, well on his way to becoming a confirmed bachelor, and he then lived in an apartment in Lombard, Illinois. After a courtship of several months in 1962, they decided to marry. Because the Chicago Radio Church of God did not have its own church building (indeed, that sect avoided building permanent church buildings for its congregations because of their belief that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ was likely to take place as early as the 1970s), the wedding ceremony was held 22 Dec. 1962 in the home of the Roenspies family in Lombard, and was presided over by Mr. Dean Blackwell, their pastor. (It was Mr. Roenspies who had encouraged my father and mother to begin courting.)

My mother's parents were admittedly unsettled by their daughter's new religious beliefs, especially because the Radio Church of God departed from ancient, historic Christian teaching by insisting that Christians should gather for worship on the Jewish Sabbath (Saturday) rather than on the Christian Lord's Day (Sunday). This sect also did not believe in celebrating birthdays. Seeking to base itself solely on the Bible, this sect rejected traditional Christian holy days and festivals, and instead celebrated the Jewish festivals and holy days mentioned in the Old and New Testaments. These beliefs and practices were perhaps the most difficult for my grandparents to understand (and it was especially hard on my grandmother), because it meant that their daughter, their only child, would no longer be celebrating Christmas with them, nor celebrate her birthday nor the birthdays of any children she might have. Nevertheless, they tried their best to be understanding, patient, and tolerant. My mother said that they had hoped she would have a traditional wedding at First Presbyterian Church -- and one of the things that most disappointed my Grandpa is that the Radio Church of God's wedding service did not include a special moment found in traditional Presbyterian weddings that recognised that marriage unites not just a man and a woman, but also their families: the moment when the minister asks, "And who gives this woman away?", to which the bride's father (or brother, etc.) would answer, "I do." Grandpa had so looked forward to the time when he could proudly give his daughter in marriage to the man she loved. He had to content himself with merely escorting my mother up to the minister and then silently relinquishing her to be married to my father.

My parents' nuptials were announced in the Dixon Evening Telegraph on Saturday, 29 Dec. 1962, page 5, as follows:

"Miss Shaw Is Bride of Joseph Olar

"Mr. and Mrs. Sherman L. Shaw, Rt. 1, Dixon, announce the marriage of their daughter, Dolores Frances, to Joseph Olar, Lombard, son of Alex Olar and the late Mrs. Olar, Berkeley. The couple exchanged vows in an evening wedding performed last Saturday in Lombard, where they are residing. A reception to honor the newlyweds, is being arranged by Mr. and Mrs. Shaw and will be held in their home from 2 to 5 p.m. Jan. 6."

Shown here are three photographs from my parents' wedding on 22 Dec. 1962 at the home of the Roenspies family in Lombard, Illinois. On the left, Sherman Shaw leads his daughter Dolores in as the organist plays a wedding march. In the middle photo are my just-married parents, now Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Olar. The third photo shows my paternal grandfather Alex Olar, then my maternal grandparents Frances and Sherman Shaw, and finally my maternal great-grandfather Norman C. Miller, father of my grandmother Frances.

Because my parents had chosen to have a simple and inexpensive wedding in a private home in Lombard (which was, in any case, all they could afford), most of my mother's relatives and friends from Lee and Ogle Counties were unable to attend the wedding, nor could they hold a proper wedding reception. Therefore my mother's parents planned and held a very special, formal wedding reception for them in Dixon, Illinois, on 6 Jan. 1963.

These two photographs, showing my parents Joseph and Dolores (Shaw) Olar on the left, and Dolores' parents Sherman and Frances Shaw on the right, are from the 6 Jan. 1963 reception that my grandparents held to celebrate their daughter's wedding.

Now that my grandparents Sherm and Frances had a son-in-law, they did not even have to wait a whole year before they got to meet their first grandchild. My oldest brother ETHAN JOSEPH OLAR was born at home in Elmhurst, Illinois, on Thanksgiving Day, 28 Nov. 1963. Ethan got to meet his Grandpa Olar almost immediately. The following week, my parents drove to Dixon with their new baby so he could meet his "Grampa and Gramma" Shaw and his great-grandfather Norman C. Miller. When Sherm first met Ethan, he greeted him with the words, "Hi, Baldy!" That became Sherm's nickname for Ethan. Thus began a family tradition -- each time Grampa Shaw met a new grandson, he bestowed upon him a nickname, spontaneously chosen on the spot.

In the year after Ethan's birth, my father took a job with the Great Peoria Sanitary District in Peoria, renting a home on Springfield Road in East Peoria. But we grandsons came along about every two years or so. Sherm's and Frances' second grandchild, JASON SHERMAN OLAR, was born 11 Aug. 1965 at Proctor Hospital in Peoria, Illinois -- and no doubt Grandpa was very pleased that Jason's middle name was give in his honor. Knowing that Jason had been born premature and was smaller than Ethan had been, Grandpa greeted him with, "Hello, Spud!" It was about two and half years later that I came along, born 6 Feb. 1968 also at Proctor Hospital -- Grampa greeted me with, "Hey there, Corky!" Like Jason, I too was given a middle name in honor of my grandfather -- I was given his middle name "Linn," from the old Lowland Scots family to which his grandmother Rebecca (Linn) Shaw had belonged.

When I was just a year old, we moved from East Peoria to a house in Pekin. The last grandchild that Sherm got to meet was my younger brother DEREK ANDREW OLAR, born 5 Nov. 1970 at Pekin Memorial Hospital. When Grandpa first met him, he noticed how strong a grip Derek had, so he greeted him with the words, "Hi Toughy!" After Derek, Sherm and Frances had one more grandchild, my youngest brother CALEB ALDEN OLAR, born 28 July 1974 at Pekin Memorial Hospital. But that was almost a year after Grandpa's death, so Caleb didn't get a chance to receive a special nickname from his grandfather. Maybe in Heaven . . . .

Our Grandpa and Grandma Shaw enjoyed grandparenthood immensely. Their joy was not as full as it might have been, however, on account of the religious convictions of their daughter and son-in-law which I mentioned above, that led them to abandon the celebration of Christmas. Quite undertstandably, this was not at all easy for our grandparents to come to terms with. While their friends and relatives got to enjoy and spoil their grandkids on or near Christmas, and received Christmas cards from them, each December our grandparents were deprived of that joy that they'd been looking forward to for so many years. There were a few times that I know we visited them around or after Christmas, but usually we did not. To make up for their loss of Christmas, we made Thanksgiving Day our special family holiday, or would get together with our grandparents on Mother's Day. We boys always looked forward eagerly to seeing Grandpa and Grandma on Thanksgiving, and enjoying Grandma's cooking -- and our grandparents would give us gifts at that time or on other special occasions.

At left, Sherm meets his first grandchild, Ethan Joseph Olar, in early December 1963, and at right, our Grandma also gets her first chance to hold Ethan.

The summer after Ethan was born, Grampa Shaw took him out for a ride on the track at the Shaw place a few miles north of Dixon. In the photograph at the right, probably taken in 1966, Grampa Shaw gives Ethan a ride on one of his ponies -- Ethan's first time on the back of a pony.

In the color photograph on the left, taken in late 1965 either in Thanksgiving or around Christmas, Grampa Shaw holds his two grandsons Ethan and Jason ("Spud"), with our father Joseph. In the photo on the right, apparently taken in 1966, we see Grampa Shaw with Ethan, wearing a Chicago Cubs cap, and Jason, wearing a Chicago White Sox cap. Grampa was a devoted White Sox fan -- and now, despite the Cubs cap in this photo, Ethan is keeping up his grandfather's White Sox tradition.

And now there are three! On the left, in a photograph from March 1968, Sherm has a lapful of grandsons -- Jason, Jared ("Corky"), and Ethan -- with their father Joseph. On the right, a photograph taken the same day, of Grampa and Gramma Shaw with Jared.

A pair of photographs taken in the Summer of 1968, showing Sherm with his three grandsons, Jared, Jason, and Ethan, in the sulky with their Grampa, along with their parents Joseph and Dolores (Shaw) Olar. Notice that in the black-and-white photo, our Papa has his hands full trying to keep Jason and Ethan still long enough so our Gramma can take the picture.

These two photographs were taken on Mother's Day 1972 at our house, 1819 Columbus Drive, Pekin, Illinois. I remember this visit, and how nice it was that Grampa and Gramma had come to see us for a change, instead of us visiting them in Dixon. I vaguely remember the camera with its timer on the tripod in our living room. Mom and Dad got us boys all dressed up so we could take a family photo of all eight of us together -- not an easy task when dealing with four young Olar boys! From left to right, Derek, Dad, Ethan, Gramma, Grampa, Jared, Mom, and Jason. The second photo on the right was taken by Gramma outside our house just before she and Grampa left to return to Dixon. I was obviously unhappy or in a bad mood about something, but I no longer remember why I was wearing such a grumpy face.

Grampa Shaw, with his poodle Lori and his four grandsons during a visit to Dixon in 1973: from left to right, Jason, Ethan, Derek, and Jared. This may have been the last time we boys got to see our Grampa.

Though I have only a little boy's memories of my Grandpa Shaw, even five decades later those memories still remain strong, and ever precious to me. When I think back on Grandpa, one of the main things that come to my memory is that he owned, bred, raised, and raced ponies. As mentioned above, with Grandpa's transition from "dairy farmer" to "retired dairy farmer" complete in the latter 1950s, in the late 1950s Grandpa and Grandma decided to start their own Shetland pony outfit on a few acres in northwestern Lee County, located at the southeast corner of U.S. Highway 52 and Rural Route 1 (now called Penrose Road), about four miles north of Dixon. Grandpa and Grandma first built a house directly at the corner of U.S. 52 and Route 1, and then built an adjacent pony stable using wood from old pallets as the lumber. As my mother indicated in the 1998 audiotaped interview, my grandparents were avid card-players -- and therefore in the room of that house where they played cards with friends, the floor's decor was a playing card motif -- my brother Ethan tells me that he and our mother once visited this house some years before her death in 2007, and found that the playing-card floor decor was still there! In the latter half of the 1960s, however, my grandparents sold that house and built a larger home further back from the road, on the southeast of their pony stable. My older brothers Ethan and Jason remember both of those houses, but as far as my own memories can reach, the only "Grandpa's House" I ever knew was that second house.

The home of my Grandpa and Grandma Shaw on Route 1 a few miles north of Dixon, Illinois, where they lived in the latter 1960s and early 1970s.

Now, at some point about the early and mid-1960s, my grandparents owned an Irish Setter (named Brutie). My brother Ethan remembers that dog, and that on one visit to Grampa and Gramma's house, he found that the Irish Setter was gone for some reason. After that, they acquired two friendly and loyal dogs: a black poodle named Lori and a Brittany spaniel named Lin. I remember both of their dogs clearly, and remember asking Gramma if Lin was named after Grampa like I had been (she explained that the names were close but spelled a little differently). However, what I did not know at the time, since I was so young, is that my grandparents had named their pony outfit after their dogs: Lori-Lin Shetlands.

This 1969 photograph shows my grandparents' two dogs, Lori (the poodle) and Lin (the Brittany spaniel), in the living room of their home on Route 1 north of Dixon, Illinois.

Over the next decade or so, Sherm and Frances raised and showed quite a few registered ponies and hackneys across the Midwest. My grandparents getting involved in amateur Shetland pony showing was simply a natural continuation of their having grown up on farms. As some of his boyhood photos make clear, Sherm had a lifelong closeness to horses and ponies and the other animals of the farm. We have a large number of photographs from the "Lori-Lin Shetlands" years. We also still have several of the trophies that our grandfather received for his ponies or his harness racing. Below are just a selection of those photos -- you can find even more by following the above "Lori-Lin Shetlands" link. We also have one precious Super 8 film of my grandfather at the Belvidere Pony Show, at Belvidere, Illinois, east of Rockford, during the latter 1960s or early 1970s.

At left, Sherman L. Shaw inspects a foal outside his house north of Dixon in 1960. That may be one of the earliest of the photographs of his involvement in pony showing. The middle and right photo were taken outside his barn -- I'm not sure which pony that is, but I think it might be Larigo's Radiant Rhythm, a prize-winning gelding who was foaled in 1966, started as a yearling by Dave Thorngren of Milledgeville, Illinois, and then trained (or "broke") to roadster by Sherm after he acquired Rhythm from Dave.

In the photograph at the left is my grandmother with Gigalo, an under roadster shown at St. Charles, Illinois, in June 1968. At the right, my grandfather is shown driving Larigo's Radiant Rhythm in a professional photograph taken by Jack Holvoet of Exquisite Equine Portraits, Fort Madison, Iowa.

In the center photograph are several of the trophies that my grandparents won showing and racing ponies. In the photographs on the left and the right are four silver cups won by my grandparents at Pony Shows: 1) the Pony Roadster cup from the Sixth Annual Horse and Pony Show in 1969, Sugar Grove American Legion Post 1271, sponsored by John Almburg; 2) (backmost cup) Class 4 Roadster - 14th in Class, 1969 Kankakee Show Open; 3) (front) the 1968 David Berry Weisiger Memorial Cup replica, won at the National Shetland Congress during the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines -- the first time my grandparents had shown a pony at the Congress; and 4) the Model Stallion cup from the Seventh Annual Horse and Pony Show in 1970, sponsored by the Sugar Grove Legion.

Sherman and Frances Shaw are awarded the David Berry Weisiger Memorial Cup at the 1968 National Shetland Congress in Des Moines, Iowa. The actual trophy cup was a ceremonial award -- my grandparents afterwards were given a smaller replica of the cup.

In this photograph, Grandpa Shaw trains his award-winning 50-inch hackney stallion named Dun-Haven Cordova King, but whom I and my brothers remember simply as "King."

A pair of photographs from the July 1971 Heart of Illinois Fair in Peoria, where my grandfather Sherman Shaw drove King. Notice that my grandfather is wearing the same jacket and cap as can be seen in the Belvidere Pony Show Super 8 film. My mother had a framed copy of the black-and-white professional Holvoet portrait displayed in her sewing room for many years. King is the only one of my Grandpa's ponies that I knew by name -- and to a 4- or 5-year-old boy that 50-inch stallion seemed large indeed! I remember one time when I was in the stable with Grandpa, and King bared his teeth at me. I was afraid he might bite me, but Grandpa reassured me that King wasn't mean at all.

At left, a pony named "Danny" being shown outside the Shaw stables north of Dixon in the latter 1960s. In the center is a photograph of my grandparents' painting of Danny -- the frame has a brass nameplate that reads "Terry - Jean's Danny," and the artist, Norvella Black, signed her name in the bottom right corner. The rightmost photograph, from the early 1970s, shows the painting of Danny on display at my grandparents' home at the southeast corner of the intersection U.S. Highway 52 and Route 1 (now called Penrose Road) north of Dixon. The painting of Danny was something I always remembered seeing at my grandparents' house. After 1972 my grandmother continued to display it, and after her death my mother in her turn displayed it. The painting is now in the possession of my brother Ethan.

These three photographs developed in July 1972 show Grandpa and Grandma Shaw with King outside their home north of Dixon, along with their gig. King is harnessed to a 1910-era gig, probably to take part in a special parade that day.

Even with grandfather's focus on his Shetland pony activities during the 1960s, he still remained active in 4-H, as shown by this July 1965 Dixon Telegraph article about a horsemanship class that my grandfather taught to youth in 4-H.

The photograph on the left comes from my grandfather's boyhood in Lee Center, showing him with his childhood chum James "Bud" Vivian. On the right, Bud and Sherm reunite for a 1973 Memorial Day picnic at the home of Cecil Emmons in Franklin Grove, Illinois -- one of the last times my Grandpa was photographed.

In what was probably his final pony show, Sherman L. Shaw drives King once again at the Kane County Fair Grounds in St. Charles, Illinois, on 23 June 1973, while Frances M. Shaw and others look on. After Sherman's death, King went to the Lowrys, the family of my mother's first cousin Judy (Miller) Lowry -- but of course King died long ago.

I think this may have been the very last photograph of my Grandpa. It was taken 6 July 1973 at Wilbur Manes' home in Dixon, Illinois, just 20 days before he was admitted to Rockford Memorial Hospital -- the beginning of the end for him. Shown from left to right are Esther Conibear, my grandfather Sherman Shaw, Grace Pfoutz, my grandmother Frances Shaw, and Aunt Eleanor (Shaw) Baylor, Grandpa's sister. Notice that my Grandpa is wearing the same shirt and tie as he wore on Memorial Day over a month before.

It was in 1967 -- shortly before I was born -- that Sherm developed lymphocytic leukemia, which was almost certainly caused by his heavy cigarette smoking. His medical records show that he was first treated for leukemia in January of 1968, in the month before my birth. Despite this serious illness, for much of the time over the next few years he was still able to maintain the daily care and training of his ponies, his dogs, and the animals at Dixon Veterinary Hospital. By 1973, however, the passing weeks and months saw the further progression of his leukemia. Photographs that year from a Memorial Day picnic and an early July visit with family and friends betray little sign that his body was weakening -- though a comparison of photographs from the early 1960s with those from the early 1970s reveal that his body had suffered a premature aging through his 50s.

Probably my grandfather's last pony show drive was on 23 June 1973 at the Kane County Fair Grounds in St. Charles, Illinois. A color photograph of that drive shows Sherman in the sulky, driving "King" once again, with my grandmother and others watching the race behind the fence. This will always be one of my favorite photos of Grandpa, because for many years throughout my childhood and youth my mother had it displayed in a large frame as part of a collage of photos of her father -- and so it became for me something of an icon of my grandfather, doing what he loved best and that was so natural to him, and serving to remind us, his grandsons, of who he was.

The day came at last, though, when Sherm's sickness began to overpower him. A Rockford Clinic medical bill shows that he had six appointments there from 18 June to 13 July 1973. The news at that last clinic appointment may have been quite grave, because he was admitted to Rockford Memorial Hospital on 26 July 1973, where he underwent treatment for a month. Then on 25 Aug. 1973 he was transferred to St. Mary's Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota, for special treatment at the famed Mayo Clinic. But despite the efforts of the physicians at the Mayo Clinic, Sherm's leukemia did not respond well to treatment, and by early September 1973, his family and friends were informed that his condition was dire and that he would not have long to live. On 10 Sept. 1973, my grandmother's cousin Jack Young wrote the following letter to my grandmother, addressed to the De Lano Motel, Room 206, 1131 S.W. Second St., Rochester, Minnesota, and postmarked 11 Sept. 1973:

"Dear Peg,

"Mom, Aunt Irene and Gramma Culp were up for dinner yesterday and naturally you and Sherm were salient points in our discussions. Leola told Ethel and I privately that you had told her in a phone conversation that Sherman wasn't responding to treatment as well as you had hoped for, and that you weren't sure what the future held in that regard.

"Ethel and I have some understanding of your situation and regret very deeply that circumstances have placed you in this grievous predicament. Nothing we can say or do will relieve Sherm of his tragic illness; but we are hopeful that the knowledge that a great number of people are sincerely concerned for you will help to some degree to relieve your mental torment.

"And we do think of you, Peg, and remember you and Sherm in our prayers."

"God bless you and give you strength."

"Love,"

"Jack, for Ethel too."

He was discharged from Mayo Clinic and taken aboard a medical flight from Minnesota to Dixon so he could spend his final days with his loved ones at home, but he passed away mid-flight and was formally pronounced dead upon landing at 3:10 p.m. at Dixon Airport (although his death notice and obituary incorrectly report that he had died in Rochester). His death certificate states that the immediate cause of death was "perforated viscera," from which he had suffered for one week, as a consequence of "chronic lymphotic (sic -- lymphocytic) leukemia," from which he had suffered for five years. The official Physician's Statement of Death was filled out and signed by Dr. Robert LeSage -- one of the same physicians who had treated my mother's leg tumor over 20 years earlier. The medical records from Grandpa's illness which my grandmother saved show that his month-long stay at Rockford Memorial Hospital incurred a total bill of $2,013.48, while his 20 days of treatment at the Mayo Clinic incurred a bill of $1,928.64. Almost all of Grandpa's medical bills were covered by various insurance policies or credits.

My grandfather's death was announced in the Dixon Evening Telegraph as follows:

"Sherman L. Shaw

"DIXON -- Sherman L. Shaw, 61, RR 1, director of the Mid-West Shetland Pony Roadster Club, died Friday in Rochester, Minn., following a long illness.

"Survivors include his widow, Frances; a daughter, Mrs. Joseph Delores (sic) Olor (sic); four grandsons, and a sister, Mrs. O. S. Baylor, Lee Center.

"Services will be at 10 a.m. Monday in the Preston Funeral Home. Burial will be in the Woodside Cemetery, Lee Center. Friends may call from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. Sunday."

His full obituary was then published in the Dixon Evening Telegraph as follows:

"Sherman L. Shaw

"Sherman L. Shaw, 61, Rt. 1, Dixon, died Friday afternoon in Rochester, Minn., following a long illness.

"He was born May 17, 1912 in Lee Center, the son of Sherman L. and Grace Bender Shaw, and married the former Frances Miller in Rockford, March 22, 1935.

"He is survived by his widow, a daughter, Mrs. Joseph (Delores) (sic) Olor (sic), and four grandsons, all of Pekin, and a sister, Mrs. O. S. Baylor, Lee Center.

"He was a member of the First Presbyterian Church, and was a past master of Friendship Lodge AF and AM, Dixon. He was also a past 4-H Club leader, and was a member and director of the Midwest Shetland Pony Roadster Club.

"Funeral services will be conducted at 10 a.m. Monday in the Preston Funeral Home with Dr. Malcolm D. Ludy, pastor of the church, officiating. Burial will be in Woodside Cemetery, Lee Center. Friends may call from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. Sunday."

"Visitation is planned for after noon Sunday in the funeral home, where the family will be from 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m."

Sherman was laid to rest in a plot a row over from his parents in Lee Center, not terribly far from his childhood home -- gathered unto his fathers, mothers, and kin, so very many of whom are also buried at Woodside. The passing of my grandfather touched a multitude of his relatives and friends, and his funeral memory book testifies to the great outpouring of condolences that my grandmother received in the days immediately following his death. Several pages of the memory book are filled with the names of those who came to the visitation and funeral and those who bought flowers. (One of those in the long train of people who came to the visitation and funeral was Sherm's old Lee Center basketball teammate Herb Conibear.) Among his relatives and friends who bought flowers or brought food to the post-funeral reception were my grandfather's co-workers at the Dixon Veterinary Hospital. A letter written to my grandmother, dated 18 Sept. 1973 and signed by 11 members of the veterinary hospital staff, says:

"Dear Frances,

"Enclosed is a small token of our affection and appreciation for having known and worked with Sherm. Not only will he be sorely missed by all of us, but also by many of his friends and our clients who trusted the care of their pets to him.

"His humor, kindness, and wit were his trademark, as well as his loyal friendship."

Of the many letters of condolence that my grandmother received, I thought this note from his co-workers serves as a good representative sample, especially because of its description of my Grandpa's personality. It matches my own hazy chilhood memories of him, and agrees with how my mother described her dad to us, his grandsons. It is, however, notable that my grandfather's obituary does not mentioned his part-time employment at the veterinary hospital. That is because his main "job" in the last years of his life really was his Shetland pony breeding, finishing, showing, and racing. And so, besides that note from the veterinary hospital staff, soon after his death the newsletter of the Midwest Shetland Pony Roadster Club printed the following heartfelt and touching tribute to my grandfather:

SHERMAN SHAW "drives on"

When days of jogging come to park
And wheels of life no longer spin,
Your loving memory will light the dark
When stable colors fade and dim.
We only hope that we can convey
Your same warm smile, your winning way . . .

It is our memorial trophy.

My Granddpa and Grandma Shaw are here shown in the living room of their house at the southeast corner of U.S. Highway 52 and Route 1, rural Dixon, with Lin, their Irish red and white setter. My grandfather displays three of his pony trophies. This same photograph, from my vast collection of Shaw family photos, was submitted to a Shetland pony journal to be used as the illustration for that journal's special tribute to my Grandpa following his death, quoted above.

In a letter she wrote to one of her Miller cousins on 14 April 1982, our Grandma recalled, ". . . My first husband, Sherman, and I were horse lovers. We changed to ponies in the last 10 years of his life and raised and showed Shetlands and a Hackney Roadster pony. Horses were really his love."

A photograph of my grandparents' newly laid gravestone at Woodside Cemetery, Lee Center, Illinois. My grandmother took this photograph probably about a year after my grandfather's death. She survived him by almost 20 years, and her remains lie with his -- until Judgment Day and the Restitution of All Things.

For myself, I no longer have any clear memories of my grandfather's death. I still have a somewhat vague memory of a few moments of the funeral service -- mostly I remember being at a loss, as a little boy, to understand my feelings (this being my first experience of death) -- but I do not remember the graveside service at all. Being only 5 1/2 years old at the time, I had no understanding of death and was capable of only a little boy's glowing impression of his Grampa. I no longer recall being told of his death and don't remember if I cried when I heard the news -- and I'm pretty sure I didn't even know he had such a serious illness, indeed that he had been sick for the entire time I knew him. I only knew him as a happy, smiling, laughing guy who liked to play with my brothers and me and tease us, and give us harness pony rides in the sulky with him. As far as I and my brothers were concerned, he was simply "Grampa" -- the quintessential Grandpa. I wish I could have known him longer and acquired a better knowledge of him, yet I'm grateful for the brief time I had him as the only grandfather I ever knew, and for the stories my mother and grandmother and other relatives told about him, along with the many facts and documents I've been able to compile which has enabled me to write his biography. It is my hope and desire that we will meet again in the world to come.

The only child of my grandparents who survived to full-term was:

     10.  DOLORES FRANCES SHAW, born 15 Aug. 1936 in Amboy, Ill.

For a detailed biography of Sherman's daughter Dolores, see Stories and Memories from My Mother, Dolores Olar.

----------

Genealogy Trails -- Lee County, Illinois
Lee County Historical Society
The Shaw DNA Project
Clan Shaw Official Homepage

Return to Shaw Genealogy
Return to Ten Generations of the Shaw Family (Part One)
Return to Ten Generations of the Shaw Family (Part Two)
Return to Ten Generations of the Shaw Family (Part Three)
Return to Ten Generations of the Shaw Family (Part Four)
Return to Ten Generations of the Shaw Family (Part Five)
Return to Ten Generations of the Shaw Family (Part Six)

Return to Website Index