94 Years Remembered in 94 Days-Post 53 (My kids, their grandma and Teresa)

Today is Kerri's 43rd birthday.   It is also for our family the first birthday celebration that we will have since Teresa died.    Over the last two years and many before, she would be here or we would be going to the cabin to celebrate both Kerri's and Cameron's birthdays.

Teresa's actual 95th birthday was on Sunday, July 30.   I called Judy in the morning and said that it seemed so weird that we weren't going out to dinner for her birthday.  So we decided to go out to celebrate her life.

My mom and Teresa were instrumental in the raising of both of my kids.   As I have said before, we spent most summers in Douglas when the kids were little.  We would lock up our Mesa house as soon as school was out and go back just before school started.    My kids benefited from all that a small town has to offer for kids in the summer.

They took tennis and swimming lessons.   They participated in the library programs and any other parks and rec programs available.   They swam in the pool in the backyard and then at the pool at the 8th street park.   We spent a lot of time at the cabin.  Usually Teresa would go with us.   My mom didn't really like to spend the night, but she would drive up for the day and eat with us.

When I was working on my Master's Degree, they went to Douglas without me.  I was taking 12 hours and working full time so I needed the time.

Being a single parent, they were always there to help me when I needed assistance of any kind.

My mom was crazy about them, but she was very strict with them.   Teresa was the one they went to when "they wanted something."    And they always got it, I am fairly sure.

Kerri and my mom had a great relationship, but they were so much alike.   Both had to get the last word in!!  I remember one day when my mom was at our house and she and Kerri were arguing about something.   She threw her shoe at Kerri and it made a small dent in the wall.   When I did remodeling, I had the dent kept as a "momento" to remember that.   That same day, Kerri went downstairs and both of them tried to get the last word in.  It was funny to me!!

Both of my kids were great when my mom was sick.   They both made sure that Teresa got back and forth from Douglas during that time.

So happy birthday today, Kerri.   I know both your grandma and Teresa are looking down and are very proud of you.    I know I am!

94 Years Remembered in 94 Days-Post 52 (The Cabin)

When I was in elementary school, we would often go on a picnic to the Chirichuas after church on Sunday.   Often we went with the Hubers and the Bradys.    Sometime during these events, the three families decided to try to find a cabin.   

On Christmas Eve, 1960, George Brady was looking at the Douglas newspaper and saw an ad for a cabin in South Fork that was on the market.    I don't remember how things played out or how long it took, but we got the cabin.    I was in sixth grade that year and I was the oldest of all of kids.   I remember how often we would go to Mass and then head up to the cabin.  It was about an hour away.   

All of the kids had whistles and we were told to only use them if there was an emergency.    We also had an old air horn when it was time to have lunch or dinner.  As soon as we got to the cabin, all of the kids would take off in different directions to their favorite cave, part of the creek or whatever.   Those were the best of times!!!

Through the years, we have enjoyed the cabin so much.    My mom would go with us, but she wasn't particularly fond of spending the night there.    When my kids were little and we spent time in Douglas in the summers, we often went up for a few days.   Teresa always went with us.   She absolutely loved the cabin.

When I went back to live in Douglas in 2010, she no longer wanted to spend the night there.  I think it was too difficult for her to navigate the outhouse in the night.   However, every chance she got, she would go up for the day when I was up there with friends.   There were even times that she and I would just go up for the day.   We would take the pugs, some sandwiches and a couple of beers.     She loved to be there.

In about 2007 or 2008, she said that trying to do the bills, etc., for the cabin was getting to be too much for her.   So we met in Tucson with John Brady and Chris Huber Elzy.   Chris said that their family didn't really want to be a part of the cabin anymore because they never used it.   And she said that they didn't want anything out of it.   So Teresa sold it to John and I for $1.00.   I don't think that I ever paid her!!

I have so many incredible memories of being at the cabin from the time I was in sixth grade until the last time I was there.  I am hoping to get up there over Labor Day weekend as that has been our time to celebrate Kerri's and Cameron's birthdays.

The cabin and the Chirichuas are my "safe" place on this earth and I love the remoteness and the beauty.   I am so grateful that our families bought this cabin and I am so thankful that John and I can continue to use it.     Our parents left us something truly meaningful.

94 Years Remembered in 94 Days-Post 51 (Who Says You Can't Go Home?)

This is a post that I did when I first got to Douglas in 2010.   The title was "Who Says You Can't Go Home!"

I continue to reflect back on my time in Douglas and my time with Teresa down there.    As happy as I was to leave in 2015, I still value this experience so much.   I loved the time that Teresa and I had together at this point in our lives.  I loved that she was able to stay at 858 and that she went to so many activities with me and got to know a lot of people that she didn't know.   But more fortunately, a lot of people got to know her who hadn't known her before.

At the end of this post, I said that I believe things happen for a reason.   My time in Douglas was so joyful with Teresa.   For the most part, I loved my job and I loved being able to give back.   There are so many wonderful people in Douglas that I will always care about and value.   But most importantly, the very difficult times I went through prepared me for what I have been able to do over the last six months on the Gilbert Board.     When I left Douglas, that had not been a thought and I had no idea what I had learned over those five years would be so incredibly important at so many levels!!

WOW!!!!!! I can't believe that it is Friday, the end of an amazing week. I started my new job as Superintendent of Douglas Unified School District on Tuesday morning at 7:00 a.m. As is any job in education these days, "I hit the ground running" and never looked back. It has been a week of meeting new people and trying to learn the ins and outs of a new district.

I truly thought when I made this decision to apply for the job in Douglas and leave Gilbert, that the emotional piece for me would be leaving Gilbert El and the wonderful faculty, staff, parents, and children. And it was emotional. What I didn't know was how emotional coming back to Douglas would be. I have truly been amazed by the support of so many people here. I have received emails from former Douglas people living elsewhere letting me know how happy they are that I am the new superintendent. I have been welcomed by the district office personnel and the principals. Next week, teachers will be back and I will be so happy and proud to greet them. They do an incredible job in this district and they have my utmost admiration.

As I have gone around the district and have been introduced to people, I have had so many people tell me how much they liked and admired my mom. This has truly touched me as she has been gone for eight years now.

The pace of life here is so much different. Heavy traffic is no where to be found. The weather has been great--it has rained every day. The district office is 3 1/2 blocks from the house.

Today the district office personnel put on a barbecue lunch (you haven't lived until you have a barbecue in Douglas with all the wonderful Mexican food) for the new people and to say good-bye to a classified person who is retiring and also to the interim superintendent.

I realize that this is only the first week and that there is always a honeymoon period, but I can honestly say that I AM SO GLAD I AM HERE. I hope that I can give something back to this wonderful community where I was raised and contributed so much to who I am today. I truly believe growing up in Douglas had a great impact in so many positive ways. I also believe that growing up here was instrumental in who all of my aunts and uncles who grew here became. They then handed this down to my wonderful cousins.

So here I am, living in the house I grew up and that Teresa was born in. My grandfather bought this house in 1918. That is amazing anywhere, but particularly in Arizona.

I also believe that my years in Gilbert working with dedicated educators has also impacted me in so many ways. Today I was looking for something to put on the Douglas website and I went to the Gilbert website. There was an article on the site about me being named superintendent in Douglas. I was truly touched by this.

I will miss all of the people who have meant so much to me for so long, but know that true friendships will last.

I am glad to be back here in Douglas, Arizona!! And I am proud that I was chosen to be their superintendent. It will be a new and exciting adventure--one that I never in my wildest dreams imagined would happen. I have always believed that everything happens for a reason......... I am feeling very good about this reason being something very important. I hope I am right!!

94 Years Remembered in 94 Days-Post 50 (Funny Post about a trip to the valley from a previous post)

A very funny post from November, 2011.   I still laugh about this trip to this day.    What an adventure!!!

This is a work of fiction based 
on facts that truly happened. 

Names have been changed 
to protect the elderly.

Once upon a time, a long time educator decided to put her hat in as a candidate for the superintendency of a small town along the Arizona/Mexico Border, where she grew up.  This educator, also known as Cheela, applied for this position because her elderly Aunt T. Elizabeth was living in this small border town in the house where she was born in 1922.  Tia was the only one of the seven siblings who grew up in this town who was still alive.  She let all of the family know that she had absolutely NO intention of moving from this house where she was born and from this town that she dearly loves.  In consultation with several of the "cousins," Cheela decided to apply and low and behold, she was named the superintendent in July, 2010.

There have been many stories that have occurred over the course of the time between July, 2010 and November, 2011.  Many of those stories have been unbelievable and would have been thoroughly enjoyed by Cousin Felipe, who died prior to Cheela's term as superintendent.  Unfortunately, because of the nature of the job, Cheela hasn't been able to write about them on this blog.  However, Cheela feels that reality television would not even believe them.  The only consolation for Cheela is the fact that a certain retired CIA agent would have!!

And now to get to the "meat" (or turkey) of this story.  Thanksgiving weekend 2011 was fast approaching.  Cheela and Tia planned to spend the holiday in the valley with family.  Unbeknownst to Cheela, Tia invited two of her elderly friends to ride up to the valley with them.  So Wednesday morning, Cheela loaded her SUV with luggage, tamales, Tia, and the two pugs, Diego and Lucy.  The first stop was at Elena's house. Now Elena is 91 and is legally blind and a bit hard of hearing.  All she had with her was her suitcase and oxygen tank.  They then picked up Nani, who brought her "foo foo" dog along.  It took the pugs a bit of time to get use to the idea that there was actually a "foo foo" dog in the car.  They were not pleased.

The trip to the valley was uneventful.  Nani's daughter was going to pick her up at a shopping center where there was a wine store.  While waiting for the daughter, Cheela went in to the store to see if they had her favorite Irish Ale, which they did.  They also had a wine tasting going on and Cheela suggested to Tia, Elena, and Nani that they might like to go in and taste a bit of wine.  They didn't at that point, although Cheela really wanted to!

Thanksgiving went well and Sunday rolled around and the return trip was planned.  Cheela and the pugs picked up Tia at her daughter's house in the eastern part of the valley.  They then drove to another town and picked up Elena and her suitcase and oxygen.  They then went back to the shopping mall and picked up Nani, the "foo foo" dog, her suitcase and several other items.

On the way back, they listened to football games on XM as Nani was very interested in the outcome of games because she had bet on them.  They stopped for gas midway and Tia and Elena had to use the restroom.  This took quite some time.  Nani stayed in the car with "foo foo" listening to the football games and somehow the car doors were locked.  When Cheela tried to get the keys, the "foo foo" dog tried to bite her.  However, that worked out fine and they proceeded on their trip south.

Arriving in the border town about 4:00, Cheela took Nani home first.  After unloading her several items, she discovered that one box was a case of wine.  It was quite a struggle getting that up the steps to the house.  At one point the "foo foo" dog tried to get out of the house, and when Cheela tried to stop him, he growled and snapped at her.  However, everything was finally in the house and they could proceed to the next drop off.  Now Elena is legally blind and had some difficulty opening her door.  However, Cheela helped her get her one suitcase and oxygen into the house without too much of a problem.

Next stop, Tia's home where she was born...........  She had to be let out in front of the house so that she could disarm the alarm.   Cheela asked Tia to get out of the car quickly so that the pugs couldn't escape and run for a better life.  Tia doesn't hurry, but the pugs didn't escape either!  So around the block they went and opened the garage door.  After all of the luggage, etc. was unloaded and the pugs were safely in the back yard, Cheela put the garage door down.  As she went into the backyard, she noticed that Tia had a broom and a device that elderly people (and prisoners who are picking up trash) use to pick things up.  In addition, Tia was looking for the two garbage cans that weren't on the rack and weren't in the yard.  She has paid a child down the street $5 to put the garbage cans back in the yard after they were emptied by the city.   Unfortunately, both garbage cans were in the alley and completely full.  Cheela went to the alley to put the garbage cans back on the rack.  However, she was only able to pick up one, as the other was too heavy.  

So Cheela went back to the garage and into the backyard, only to find Tia bending over the swimming pool.  This pool is about two feet above ground and two feet below.  Tia had the "pick" trying to get the plug off of the drain as the pool had rain water in it.  Cheela was very concerned that Tia would fall head first into the pool and she wasn't sure how she would explain that to the police and to the family.  So Cheela immediately took the device and removed the drain cover.  Tia then took the broom and tried to sweep the leaves out of the way so that the rain water would go down the drain--not the leaves.  Cheela was not sure what the result of that endeavor was as she went into the house looking for her Irish Ale!

Although this could be considered a work of fiction, IT IS THE HONEST TRUTH!!!!!!!!!!!  How could anyone make something like this up?  Cheela is hoping that there will be some award for this short story, maybe even having it made into a movie or a sitcom!!!

Who would have "thunk" there could be so much adventure like this here on the border??????????

94 Years Remembered in 94 Days-Post 49 (Thornton Wilder/Douglas)

This is a very interesting article.  My cousin, Ted, sent it to me. I actually remember Thornton Wilder living in Douglas when I was a kid.   It was a true celebrity!  My friend, Elise and her friend, Nancy, actually dressed up one day and went to visit him.  I need to ask her again about that.   His apartment was about four blocks from our house in Douglas.  I also know many of the names in this article.   Nan Ames was the wife of one of my mom's great friends, Harry Ames.  They were on the City Council together and I remember their conversations.    Nan was also an amazing PE teacher at DHS and I remember her very fondly.

The playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder won three Pulitzer Prizes, the admiration of his peers and success at the box office and bookstore. Ever accessible, he gave lectures, responded to queries about his plays and even acted in them. But eventually he tired of strangers asking him what the ladders in Our Town symbolized or what metaphor readers should take from The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Wilder had been so famous for so long that, nearing 65, he felt worn down. He wanted a break, he told the Associated Press in March 1962, so that he could "refresh the wells by getting away from it all in some quiet place."

Wilder's travels over the years had taken him to spas, aboard cruise liners and to world capitals, where he mingled with the intelligentsia. This time, though, he sought an unpretentious town in which to settle for a while, envisioning, he told the AP, "a little white frame house with a rickety front porch where I can laze away in the shade in a straight-backed wooden rocking chair." It would be a place where he could belly up to a local bar and hear real people talk about day-to-day trivialities. Most of all, he wanted a place where he could read and write at his own pace. He hoped, his nephew Tappan Wilder says, for "solitude without loneliness."


Shortly after noon on May 20, 1962, Wilder backed his five-year-old blue Thunderbird convertible out of the driveway of his Connecticut home and lighted out for the Great Southwest. After ten days on the road and almost 2,500 miles, the Thunderbird broke down on U.S. Highway 80, just east of Douglas, Arizona, a town of some 12,000 on the Mexican border about 120 miles southeast of Tucson. Douglas lay on the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert, and summer temperatures there routinely exceeded 100 degrees, broken only by occasional thunderstorms.


Wilder checked into the Hotel Gadsden, where rooms cost from $5 to $12 a night. Named for the United States diplomat who, in 1853, negotiated with Mexico for the land Douglas sits on, the Gadsden has an ornate, high ceiling with a stained-glass skylight. Its staircase is of Italian marble. Its restaurant offered a fried cornmeal breakfast with butter and syrup for 55 cents and a lunch of calves' brains, green chili and scrambled eggs with mashed potatoes for $1.25.


The Phelps Dodge copper smelter just west of town dominated the landscape—and the local economy. Established at the beginning of the 20th century by mining executive James Douglas, the town was laid out in a grid with streets wide enough for a 20-mule team to make a U-turn. It mixed an Anglo upper and merchant class with a strong, union-oriented Mexican-American working class; schools were loosely segregated.


Wilder informed his sister Isabel, who was handling his business affairs back East, that he found his fellow Gadsden bar patrons that first night an amiable lot. No one asked him about ambiguity in the poems of T. S. Eliot or nonlinearity in the fiction of John Dos Passos. He extended his stay for another day, then a week, followed by a month, finally staying more than two months at the Gadsden.


"Arizona is beautiful," he wrote to his friends writer-director Garson Kanin and his wife, actress Ruth Gordon, "oh, overwhelmingly beautiful." Wilder wrote frequently to friends and family, ruminating on literature, theater and his solitary life. He started a ritual of sunset drives into the nearby Sonoran Desert, and when he drove farther in search of good food—to Bisbee, Tombstone or Sierra Vista—he marveled at the "grandeur of the ride, an hour into the Book of Genesis." He introduced himself by his middle name, Niven, and people called him "Doc" or "Professor," perhaps because of the many questions he asked.


In early August, Wilder rented a small three-room furnished flat on the top floor of a two-story apartment house at the southwest corner of 12th Street and D Avenue. It had everything he needed: two single beds—one for himself, the other for his papers—a divan, an overstuffed chair, four gas burners atop a stove he was afraid to ignite, an unsteady card table on which to work and Art Nouveau lamps.


It was here that he established a routine of reading and writing. His agenda included Lope de Vega, Finnegans Wake and refreshing his Greek. He'd set his work aside around noon and stroll to the post office for his mail. Lunch was usually a sandwich of his own making, followed by more work. He'd take an occasional jaunt into Agua Prieta, the Mexican city adjoining Douglas, or explore other nearby towns. Dinner would usually find him at the Gadsden, the Palm Grove or the Pioneer Café. He'd end most evenings chatting in a bar. "My plan is working splendidly," he wrote to Isabel. Back in Connecticut, his sister told callers he was somewhere in the Southwest recovering from exhaustion.
A typical Wilder report: "Midnight: Went up to Top Hat to close the bar...new bowling alley restaurant and bar has stolen business from all over town." At the end of one letter, he wrote, "Now I must get this to the P.O and then go to the Gadsden Bar and get a hair of the dog that bit me last night." Sometimes, when Douglas bartenders announced last call, Wilder and his drinking buddies would cross the border a mile to the south to continue their drinking in Mexico.


Wilder came to douglas with no grand work in mind, theatrical or literary. Yet slowly, an idea began taking shape, one more suited for the page than the stage—a murder mystery, one that began in a mining town and, like its author, traveled far and wide.


In the winter of 1963 he felt confident enough to divulge his book's beginnings to intimates back East. He described his manuscript, eventually titled The Eighth Day, "as though Little Women was being mulled over by Dostoyevsky." Soon he hit his stride: "Every new day is so exciting because I have no idea beforehand what will come out of the fountain-pen," he wrote (and underlined) to his sister. It opens in early 20th-century "Coaltown," Illinois, and spans continents, generations and philosophies. A convicted murderer escapes from custody and, as a fugitive, develops a new personality. After 15 years writing exclusively for the stage, Thornton Wilder was once again writing a novel.


At least once a month he would drive to Tucson, where, as "T. Niven Wilder," he used the University of Arizona library, bought the New Yorker ("It continues its decline," he wrote home) and visited Ash Alley 241, a folk music club. He enjoyed the long drives not merely for the change of pace, but also because, lacking a radio in his apartment, he could listen to the news as he drove. During the Cuban missile crisis that October, he drove 50 miles to dine at the Wagon Wheel in Tombstone in part, he acknowledged to a friend, because "I wanted to hear what the air could tell me of Cuba and the United Nations." For Christmas he gave himself a record player from Sears and bought recordings of Mozart string quartets.


The citizens of Douglas thought Wilder a most amiable odd duck, recalls Nan Ames, whose husband owned the Round-Up, a bar the writer visited regularly. People nodded to him on the street, and he nodded back. On occasion he'd drop by the telephone company to make a long-distance call—he had no phone at his apartment—and provoked some suspicion on the part of the local operator, who detected an odd accent in the voice of this man who invariably and unaccountably wore a coat and tie.


Wilder would have an occasional drink with Louie, the town engineer, Pete from the Highway Patrol or Eddie, the Federal Aviation Administration man at the local airport. Among his acquaintances he counted Rosie, the Gadsden elevator operator, and Gladys, the cook at the Palm Grove. He wrote home that Thelma's daughter Peggy, who had gotten fired from a bar, married a fellow named Jerry. He learned that Smitty, a bartender at the Gadsden, was hospitalized with stomach ulcers and that Smitty's wife spent "a good deal of time on a high stool at Dawson's." He referred to his nighttime coterie as "the Little Group of Serious Drinkers."


He was more observant than judgmental. "Peggy was fired, I guess," he wrote of the merry-go-round among tavern employees. "And is replaced by Haydee—there's this floating population of waitresses—bar attendants— each several times divorced; each with several children...our geishas." The bar crowd's intrigues sufficed. "I've met no 'cultivated' folk," he wrote a friend a year after moving to Douglas, "and I have not missed them."


Wilder accepted an invitation to dinner at the home of Jim Keegan, the town's surgeon, and his wife, Gwen. While she prepared spaghetti in the kitchen, Wilder peppered the doctor about his profession. "He brought a bottle of wine," Gwen recalled recently. "I loved his laugh. He was a very curious guy—easy to talk to, full of knowledge and life. He was very vibrant."


The relentlessly curious Wilder listened to his Douglas acquaintances talk about how to make soap and which drinks go with kippered herring. He asked a lot of questions, and many of the answers found their way into The Eighth Day. "He wanted to know how one would set up a boardinghouse," Nan Ames recalls. "He was not as down-to-earth as most people in the world. He was learning to be casual. Ask questions—that's what he did best."


For all the goodwill and friendly respect Douglas offered, Wilder began to detect an undercurrent "bubbling with hatred." At a bar one night, a rancher pounded the table with his fist and declared: "Mrs. Roosevelt did more harm to the world than ten Hitlers." A woman who worked at the telephone office asked another townsperson, "Who is that Mr. Wilder, is he a Communist?" Just after the assassination of President Kennedy, a fellow at the Gadsden bar said, "Well, he had it coming to him, didn't he?"


After a year and a half, Wilder left Douglas, Arizona, on November 27, 1963, never to return. He traveled to Washington, D.C. to receive the Medal of Freedom from President Lyndon Johnson, then to Cambridge, Massachusetts, for his brother Amos' retirement from the Harvard Divinity School faculty. The Eighth Day, after considerable expansion and revision, was published in 1967. By far Wilder's longest and most ambitious book, it became a best seller and won the National Book Award. Tappan Wilder, the author's nephew and literary executor, says "he went to Douglas, Arizona, as a playwright and came home a novelist."


Who among us doesn't seek a hideaway, a place without distractions, a neutral space in which to do whatever it is that nurtures us—solitude without loneliness? Thornton Wilder regained his literary voice in remote Arizona, and for him his temporary hometown's name became synonymous with rejuvenation. More than five years after departing the Arizona desert he wrote a friend: "Ever since I keep hunting for another 'Douglas.' "

94 Years Remembered in 94 Days-Post 48 (Pictures from BIsbee Cemetery)

On what is our great grandma Roughan's 165th birthday, I wanted to write a little bit about her.  I already have shared some things.   I do not remember her as she died in March after I was born in 1949.    She died just a few weeks after our grandfather, E. A. Scott died.  Teresa told me that many people thought that our grandfather was her son, not her son-in-law because she was so fond of him.

Grandma Roughan was 96 years old when she died.  From what I have heard, she was sharp until the very end.   

I know that she had several episodes where they didn't think she would pull through, and as soon as she was given the last rights, she would perk up again.

She immigrated from County Mayo in Ireland and I often think how hard that must have been as she did not read or write.  When they left their families to come to the U.S., the truly left everything behind.

A story that I always remember hearing was about the Christmas of 1949.    Teresa said it was a sad Christmas because it was their first without her dad and grandma.

Grandma Roughan lived with her daughter, Annie, those last years a few blocks from our house.   Annie didn't approve of drinking and grandma Roughan liked a good cocktail.   Our grandfather always made sure she had something to drink.  Well the story went that every afternoon around 5,   grandma Roughan would have a coke with ice in it.

Our uncle Bill was home from  college in Tempe and he apparently had some dandruff.   Grandma Scott told him to wash his hair with Listerine as that was supposed to help.  So he got the bottle of Listerine that had come from Grandma Roughan's bathroom and used it on his hair.

Turns out it wasn't Listerine at all.  IT WAS WHISKEY!!  So her afternoon coke, was a cocktail.    Teresa always said that story made their Christmas so much easier because they all had a good laugh. They felt that our grandpa always made sure the Listerine bottle was full!!

94 Years Remembered in 94 Days-Post 47 (Article from Douglas Paper on Iron Eagle Dance)

No date on this newspaper article.

Iron Eagle Dance

Will Take Place

Tonight in Gym

Highlighting the week's activities is the dance tonight in the Douglas high school gym, sponsored by the ladies auxiliary to the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen.   Help defend your country by attending for the Brotherhood of Railway trainmen is sponsoring a nation wide move to buy a bomber, called the Iron Eagle, to be presented to the Hon. Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 26.

Special entertainment will include a patriotic program and singing ot the national anthem by Ben Flores; the presentation of the flag by Uncle Sam and Betsy Ross; trumpet solo, "God Bless America," by Jack Deeming, Jr. and the grand march to be led by Mr. and Mrs. E. A. Scott and Mr. and Mrs George B.  Pray.    The floor show, to be presented at 11, will include tap numbers by the Schwantes twins and J.C. Johnson.

The local auxiliary promises a good time to all loyal Americans.   Service men in Douglas will be admitted free.

Obviously, because of the reference to Roosevelt and defending our country, this must have occurred either just prior or during World War II.

Like so many other things that have triggered memories for me, this did when it mentioned the Railroad auxiliary.   I remember very well how involved our grandmother was in this auxiliary.  I remember getting to attend Christmas parties and various social events.  There was a group of ladies who were all wives of trainmen that I will always remember fondly. They were our grandmother's contemporaries, but I remember them well.