The December 1950 newsletter was a rare, full-color edition. Or perhaps we should say “hand-colored” edition because each page was individually painted by Louise Erekson, who was the newsletter editor, reporter and staff artist rolled into one. Both pages sport her signature holly leaves and berries. A Christmas candle and Santa appear on page two.
The news of the moment was the pending visit of stake president John K. Edmunds who was expected to call a new second counselor in the branch presidency replacing H. Ward McCarty who had moved with his family back to Salt Lake.
Brother McCarty was one in a long line of second counselors. Although John Wendt served as first counselor for the entire time that Jim Greer was branch president, it seemed that everyone who was called as second counselor soon moved from the branch.
Perhaps thinking he would have someone permanently in place, he called James H. Greer as second counselor. Ten months later, Jimmie left to serve in the Texas-Louisiana Mission.
Meanwhile, however, Jimmie did double duty, as he was never released from his calling as branch clerk. In fact, he was not released even when he left for the mission field. His mother filled in for him as clerk while he was gone, and he picked up the reins again when he returned.
Louise’s design of Santa next to greetings from the branch presidency was appropriate because Jim Greer loved to play Santa Claus. (More adventures of Santa Claus in the next post.)
Friday, December 25, 2009
Merry Christmas from the Aurora Branch
Sunday, December 20, 2009
A Christmas Parade
Lenore Deans shared this photo with me last summer, and I’ve been saving it for the right season. In 1955 the Aurora Branch participated in a downtown parade organized by Aurora churches to “Put Christ Back into Christmas.”
Riding on the Aurora Branch entry, “Away in a Manger,” the angels holding the banner are Ed Kettley and Ginger Erekson [Hamer]. The other angels are John Resch, Erek Erekson, and Earl “Bucky” Spahr Jr.).
Many churches were invited to enter floats and the Aurora Branch felt they had arrived as a congregation when they were asked to participate.
Branch members spent many hours working on the float because they were eager to make a good impression. This photo shows that it was built at the home of Jim and Myrtle Greer (724 Foran Lane). Grandpa Greer’s hay wagon formed the base. The men added a high wooden platform with steps and the whole thing was covered with the obligatory chicken wire stuffed with Kleenexes. Cardboard letters on both sides spelled out “The cattle were lowing.” The name of the Church was displayed in similar letters on the back of the high platform. No one I’ve asked can remember how the float was pulled—Grandpa Greer’s tractor, a car, or pick-up truck.
Lenore Deans made the cow, donkey and sheep from paper mache over wooden frameworks. When the float was dismantled, she kept the animals and displayed them in her living room at Christmastime for several years.
We believe a photographer from the Aurora Beacon-News took this photo and it probably appeared in the paper, but more research is needed to find the exact date of the parade. We believe, of course, that it took place in December, even though the weather in the photo seems to be quite mild.
If anyone has something to add about the float and the parade and/or corrections to the memories we’ve cobbled together here, please add a comment or email me.
Merry Christmas!
Sunday, November 15, 2009
The Autograph Quilt: Two more friends, Mary Kramer and Ruth Larsen
One last entry about two more of the 24 women whose names are embroidered on the autograph quilt that was presented to Myrtle Greer. Those not mentioned here or in previous posts will be introduced in the general history of the branch in which they played prominent roles. 
Mary Kramer
Mary Kramer and her husband August founded the Kramer and Earle families who figured prominently in the growth of the Aurora and Ottawa branches. They joined the Church in September 1917 after August heard missionaries preaching on a street corner in La Salle, Illinois. He believed what they said was true, and reading the Book of Mormon settled the matter. But then, it appears that August was a person who made up his mind quickly and stuck with his decisions. The first day he saw Mary he knew she was the girl he was going to marry. Married in 1905 when he was 25 and she was 18, they were together 44 years. They brought eight children into the world, four boys and four girls, including the first and the last babies who died in infancy.
In 1930 they were living near Decatur, about 160 miles south of Aurora, where he was a coal miner. They later moved Somonauk, Illinois, a farming community about 15 miles west of Aurora. It was there in her later years that Mary was plagued with health problems related to diabetes. Her daughter Leona Earle would go over to clean the house and care for her. Mary was 62 when she passed away on September 23, 1949. (The date of her death is one of the factors in dating the age of the quilt.)
Both of Mary and August were both immigrants from East Prussia. She came with her parents at age 3; he arrived as a young man. His accent was stronger than hers and difficult for a young child (me!) to understand, but there was no mistaking the fervor of his testimony.
Ruth Larsen
Melvin and Ruth Larsen visiting Myrtle and Jim Greer. Jimmie and Louise (and the front of the car) are cut off in this torn photo, taken about 1933.
Ruth Larsen and her husband Melvin frequently attended the Aurora Branch in the 1930s and 1940s, but they were not permanent members because Melvin worked for the railroad and they moved from place to place as his work demanded. To make these constant moves easier, the Larsens lived in a converted passenger train car. No one now alive can remember now whether they also loaded their automobile on the train or whether they drove separately while their “apartment” was moved to its new location, usually between Galesburg and Chicago, Illinois.
Railroads were central to commerce and transportation at that time, and almost everyone then would have known exactly what Melvin did if they heard he welded frogs on the tracks. Today this essential work needs some explanation. Frogs are small metal pieces that bridge the small gaps where long rails intersect, providing a continuous surface for the train wheels at intersections and switches. Even the strongest frogs wear out in less than a year because they bear so much weight under the heavy traffic of passing trains. Depending on the application, there are many kinds of frogs, such as spring frogs that are used where moveable curved rails switch trains from the main track to a siding, so Melvin’s job was highly skilled and quite valuable.
The Larsens were both from large Mormon families in Idaho and they returned to live in Montpelier after Melvin retired. Born in 1897 and 1899, they were almost exactly the same age as Jim and Myrtle Greer and were married the same year, 1916. While Jim and Myrtle waited nine years before their first child came along, Melvin and Ruth waited eleven. Then to their lasting sorrow, their little girl, Melva, was born and died on the same day, July 7, 1927. They had no other children. Their daughter was sealed to them in 1949 when they visited the Salt Lake Temple for the first time. Melvin passed away in 1964 and Ruth in 1969.
Postscript: Reconsidering the date of the quilt
Two of the quilt squares are different from all the others because little red flowers are embroidered next to the names, which are printed in block letters. (That is, these names are not signatures like the others.) It also happens that these squares are for the two women who passed away close to the time period of the quilt—Mary Kramer in 1949 and Cora Hall in 1951. Here's Cora's quilt block again:
Previously I had thought that the quilt must have been done before their passing, but now I’m thinking that these sisters’ names were included in memoriam with the flowers to indicate that they had died. If this is true, the quilt dates from late 1951 to 1952. Because we understand that the quilt was a gift to Myrtle Greer for her service as Relief Society president, finding out her dates of service in that calling will help us reach a final conclusion.
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Autograph Quilt: Alodia Schleifer & a Miraculous Healing
We’ve already met Alodia Howard Schleifer, one of the women who signed the quilt, in connection with her husband Fred’s purchase of a Hudson Terraplane from a car dealership on South LaSalle Street, next door to the Odd Fellows Hall. (See the posting for July 16, 2009.) Since July I have found this photo of the happy couple standing in front of the car in question.
FYI: The crease on the front left fender is a flaw in the photo, not the car.
But the car did not figure in my childhood memories of Alodia Schleifer. Actually, I don’t remember knowing her because she moved to Utah when I was only three or four years old. My memory consists of the oft-repeated story of how she was healed from terrible burns when my grandfather Greer administered to her in the late 1930s.
You see, Grandpa James T. Greer was blessed with the gift of healing. In her book The Story of Jim and Myrtle Greer: Family and Church, Grandma Myrtle Greer says this about it: “Jim had to get up many times in the middle of the night and go and administer to somebody, but he never hesitated, and he never complained. He’d come back and sleep what time he could, and then he’d get up at the regular time. He never missed work on account of it. Sometimes they’d ask him to go all the way to Rochelle, Elgin, or even as far as Iowa. There wasn’t much priesthood then, and a lot of times he had to go alone because he couldn’t get nobody to go with him. He administered to a lot of people. He didn’t have much education and wasn’t up like some of them are now, but he sure used what he did have.” (p. 120)
Recounting that terrible night when Alodia Schleifer needed a blessing, Jim said: “Fred Schleifer worked at Lyon Metal in the same department with me, and I introduced him to his [second] wife. She was making jelly, and she had a big stew pan full of jelly. It was just about ready to jell and she poured a little bit out into a glass of cold water to see if it was hard enough to ball up. She spilled some on the floor and she didn’t take the time to wipe it off the floor. When she stepped in this jelly, she hit the stew pan and it turned on her in the face and on her left shoulder. [It burned her so badly that her] head didn’t look like a woman’s head at all. It was almost half as big as a nail keg. Big water blisters with great big bags of water were all over her. She didn’t look human.
“I had a big, old Roadmaster Buick. Myrtle and me started for Kaneville, and a big storm and wind set that big old Buick back and forth. Myrtle said, ‘Let’s don’t go. Let’s turn back.’ I says, ‘No, something’s telling me to go.’ When we got there, I went to the door and old Fred come to the door and he says, ‘How did you ever get here?’ I said, ‘I don’t know but something kept telling me to.’
“I administered to her, and I don’t know how, but I found myself asking for her face not to be scarred. She told me later that she thought of what I said in the prayer. She always wondered why I didn’t mention about her arm and shoulder. I says, ‘Sister Schleifer, ain’t you satisfied?’ I says, ‘There’s not a scar on your face, and your clothes cover the scar on your shoulder.’ She says, ‘Yes, I’m satisfied.’
“I couldn’t doubt in my mind but what there is power in administering to the sick. I’ve never seen anything like it.” (pp. 121-122)
Alodia’s children were still living at Mooseheart and learned about the accident the next time they saw their mother. Georgia agrees with the Greers’ version of the incident.
The Quilt Connection
Alodia and her daughter Georgia H. Lang both signed the quilt, although they must have sent their signatures back from Utah to be included. I have spoken with Georgia and she does not remember ever seeing the quilt. Since her signature shows her married name, it dates the quilt after June 1948. 
More about the Howard/ Schleifer/ Lang Family
Georgia was named for her father, George Howard. He worked in the coalmines in Carbon County, Utah, and was a superintendent when he passed away on March 16, 1936. He did not die in a mine explosion as we had erroneously thought, but caught a “cold,” that turned out to be spinal meningitis. 
Within a year Alodia moved with her children to Moose-heart, a children’s home for orphans of members of the Moose lodge, located north of Aurora, and it wasn’t long until Jim Greer introduced his co-worker Fred to a 49-year-old widow. The family stayed in Illinois until Georgia graduated from high school in 1947 and then Alodia, her son Wallie, and Georgia moved back to Utah. (Her older son, Lynn Howard, married a girl from Kaneville and stayed in Illinois.)
Fred Schleifer went west with them but Utah didn’t exactly suit him. Before long he moved back home where he married “the lady who ran the grocery store.” Meanwhile, Georgia met Ray Lang at the LDS Business College in Salt Lake City and they were married on her nineteenth birthday, June 8, 1948. Alodia passed away on September 13, 1956.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
The Signature Quilt: Cora Hall, "More Than a Friend"
Cora Hall’s long-time friendship with Myrtle Greer is attested in this note she wrote in Myrtle’s autograph book in 1933. 
Although it would be interesting to know more about the “cottage meeting”/birthday party, we can see at least that being a member of the Aurora Branch brought Cora friendship and good times.
She appears in many early photos of the branch, and she is the center of this happy scene in 1932. L to r: Myrtle Greer, Mable Stemple, Cora Hall, Elder S. Lawrence Moss, Elder Walker, [2 unidentified children], Louise Greer, Jimmie Greer.
Cora Hall had lived near Jim and Myrtle Greer in the small farming community of Tadpole, near Cypress, Illinois, in the mid-1920s. Jim often recounted working at the sawmill owned by Cora’s first husband, George Benard, because that was where he worked side-by-side with Oscar Johnson, who was a member of the Mormon Church. Jim watched to see if Johnson lived his religion and was impressed to see that he did.
Cora herself had joined the Mormon Church about seven years earlier, in 1919, possibly because of the influence of the Johnson family or maybe as a result of contact with the missionaries who came through the area each summer doing what was called “country tracting.”
In 1927 George Benard was tragically killed in an explosion at his sawmill, leaving Cora with four small children and no insurance on his life or the mill. Within a year or so, Cora married Charlie Hall who lived in the area, but the marriage did not last. By 1930 she had moved to Anna, Illinois, as a personal companion and housekeeper to an elderly woman. Her children stayed in Cypress with their grandparents, Logan and Marietta Benard, who raised them.
By October 1931 Cora was in Aurora. Eventually she found work as a cook and housekeeper for the Hollister family who lived at 564 Garfield Avenue. When first hired, she earned a dollar a day plus room and board. The Hollisters had a summer home in Wisconsin and, when they went there for two weeks every summer, Cora went along to take care of them. 
An active member of the Aurora Branch, Cora Hall attended regularly, paid her tithing, and, although much of the work was done by missionaries in those days, she fulfilled callings in the Sunday School and Mutual. Of course Cora Hall was among those friends who signed Myrtle’s quilt in 1948-49.
A couple of years later, the Aurora Branch newsletter noted that Cora Hall was ill and would love to receive cards and letters. Her son, who lived in Aurora, cared for her for a time, and then she went to live with a daughter in Batavia. She died of cancer in November 1951.
Monday, October 12, 2009
The Signature Quilt: Friends and Neighbors
Myrtle Greer, shown here in the late 1940s about the time she received the signature quilt, was involved with neighbors as well as church members. Mary Donnell and Ada Dolittle were two neighbors who signed the quilt in addition to Patsy Ward (already mentioned) who lived across the street. We know little about Mary and Ada, but hope to learn more as resources become available.
We know more about Mae Lenox who lived in a tiny house next door to the Greer’s little house on North Harrison Avenue. She was almost 20 years older than Myrtle, making her 71 in 1949. Her husband Fred had been a streetcar operator, and they lived a simple life. They moved to Harrison in the 1930s. At one time, when they lived on Woodlawn Avenue, Mae had taken in boarders to make ends meet. She had been married before and had one son, Edward, born about 1898, but he was grown and moved away.
Two of the 24 women who signed the quilt were Louise Greer’s art teachers, Bessie M. Erway and Nina Head.
In 1937 when Louise was about 13, Jim and Myrtle Greer arranged for her to take oil painting lessons from Mrs. Erway, a talented artist from Red Cloud, Nebraska. From Fitly Framed Together, Louise reminisces about this experience: “I would go to her house on Montgomery road every Saturday afternoon. Most of my old pictures are ones that I did when she was teaching me.
“Because of the Depression, Mrs. Erway could not make a living selling her paintings, and she worked for years for a company in Chicago making fur coats, sewing the pelts together by hand. It was such hard work that it ruined her hands and caused them to shake most of the time. When she wanted to show me a painting technique, she had to steady one hand with the other.
“I enjoyed Mrs. Erway. She would take me into Chicago to deliver the fur coats. We would ride on the “L” [elevated train] to places like Chinatown. Then we would eat somewhere and buy a treat. It was usually coconut cream pie. One time I didn’t go with her, and she brought me home a coconut cream pie!"
Louise, who is known for her watercolor roses, tells how she learned to paint them: “I don’t remember when I started taking art lessons from Miss Nina Head. She taught art at Aurora College and supplemented her income by giving art lessons. She had turned her dining room into a studio. She would set easels up in there and, when the lessons were over, the students helped put the easels back in a closet. There would be four or five people in a class.
“I paid for the art lessons by helping clean her house. One of her legs was stiff from having had polio as a child, and she had a hard time walking. She would make a little lunch while I mopped the kitchen floor and vacuumed and did other things to help her….
“She used to paint roses on stationery to earn money on the side, and she taught me how to paint them. All these years I have painted roses." (This rose was painted by Nina Head.)
Friday, October 9, 2009
The Signature Quilt: Lizzie Sutton
Continuing the mini-biographies of the women who signed the quilt, here are some things we know about Lizzie Sutton, sister of Mae McHugh, who grew up in Tunnel Hill, living just over the hill from the Lowery family. Myrtle recalled: “There was just one house east of us and then the next house was in another district. Three girls lived in this house, Gracie, Mae, and Lizzie Alexander and they went to school when we did.” (Myrtle and Grace were the same age.)
To get to the schoolhouse, they had to cross the creek that ran through the Lowery farm. As Myrtle remembered it: “At the bottom of the hill was a big crick. When it rained a lot, the crick would get up and we’d have to walk across on a foot log. You see, they put a tree across the crick and then they put a thing along to hold to, and you would walk across on that, and the water just a rolling down below, just roaring. It’s a wonder we hadn’t fallen down in it. Sometimes my dad would bring a horse down for us to ride across.” Shared memories like that foster life-long friendships.
Lizzie Alexander grew up and married Rex Sutton, a Tunnel Hill boy, in 1923. He had been raised by his grandparents William and Rhoda Webb Sutton. Sometime during the Depression, like many other people from southern Illinois, they moved north to get work. It was logical that they would move to Aurora where they had several friends, including Jim and Myrtle Greer. Rex found work on the assembly line at Barber-Greene, a company that manufactured heavy machinery. In their later years Rex and Lizzie lived in a small house on Walnut Avenue. They did not have children.
In this photo, Lizzie and Rex Sutton are standing by Myrtle’s weeping willow tree in the front yard. The occasion is Jim and Myrtle’s 50th wedding anniversary, July 1966.
Although she was always known by her nickname, Lizzie signed "Lizabeth Sutton" on the quilt. This leaves us to wonder if her name was really "Elizabeth A." as shown on the census and other records, or this shortened, friendlier form.
P.S. To set the record straight, I don’t use the quilt on my bed as pictured in the previous post. I store this treasure as carefully as a person can store a quilt in a home. My mother gave it to me in August 2006.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
The Blue and White Signature Quilt
According to Louise Erekson, this quilt was given to her mother, Myrtle Greer, by the Relief Society in appreciation for her having served as Relief Society president. Embroidered on the squares are the names of 24 women who were members or former members of the Aurora Branch and/or friends and neighbors of Myrtle Greer.
When was it made? The current best guess is between June 1948 and December 1951. June 1948 because that’s when Georgia Howard married Raymond Lang, and her married name is included. And 1951 because Cora Hall passed away that year, and we believe would not have been included after she died. Living in Aurora was not, however, a requirement. Several women named on the quilt had moved away. We assume that someone wrote and asked them to send their signatures.
Who are these women? Mini-biographies to come! As a preview, here are their names, beginning in the top left corner:
Row 1: Nancy McCarty, Shirley Phillips, Patsy Ward, Mae McHugh
Row 2: Cora Hall, Anne Cannon, Irma Wienecke, Mable Wendt
Row 3: Bessie Erway, Lizbeth Sutton, Mary Kramer, Alodia H. Schleifer
Row 4: Evelyn Kettley, Clara McElone, Georgia H. Lang, Mary Donnell
Row 5: Nina Head, Mable C. Stemple, Gladys Sullivan, Ruth Larsen
Row 6: Ada Dolittle, Ardis McCarty, Louise Erekson, Mae Lenox
Row One
1. Nancy McCarty, daughter of Ward and Ardis Young McCarty who moved to Aurora from Utah in the 1940s. Her father was the manager of the Montgomery Ward store on Broadway and served as second counselor in the branch.
2. Shirley Phillips and her husband Walt moved to Aurora from Shelley, Idaho, in the spring of 1946 to have an eye specialist in Chicago operate on their 4-year-old daughter, Mauna. She had been born with glaucoma and was already blind in one eye. They parked their large 35-foot travel trailer near Bob and Louise’s trailer on their lots on Hoyt Avenue. Walt and Shirley returned to Idaho in October 1947. (She probably sent her signature for the quilt.)
3. Patsy Ward was the daughter of Ilda Fuller who lived across the street from the Greers on Harrison Avenue. Pat later married and had three sons. Her husband passed away after 50 years of marriage. Remarried now, Pat and her husband divide their time between her home in Indiana and his in Georgia. Pat Ward Smith is the sister of Jack and Gladys Sullivan.
4. Mae McHugh was the sister of Lizzie Sutton, who was Myrtle Greer’s childhood friend. They went to school together in Tunnel Hill, Illinois. Mae was not a member of the branch.
If you know when the quilt was made or can share any information about it, please let us know.
Thanks for your patience
The past two months have been quite overwhelming for me with family, travel, and work. I appreciate those of you who have kept faithfully checking for new postings. Since gathering the history of the Aurora Branch really is my number one project right now, I hope to get back to regular updates on this blog. Keep checking!
Also, please send me scans of photos which I can share on the blog. I'd appreciate receiving the names and addresses of former members of the Aurora Branch so I can ask them to share their memories with all of us.
Thanks again.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Two-and-a-half-minute Talks
Once upon a time Sunday School was a stand-alone meeting with its own opening exercises. Actually, the truth is that Sunday School was the meeting of choice for many members, and lest they should miss partaking of the sacrament (because they did not attend the sacrament meeting that was held on Sunday evenings), the sacrament was administered and passed both morning and evening.
Of course many members today won’t remember any of this because the consolidated meeting schedule (the three-hour-block of meetings instituted in 1980) spelled the demise of the Sunday School opening exercises. Too bad, because with opening exercises went a unique Mormon icon—the two-and-a-half minute talk.
You read that right. Not three minutes, not five minutes, but two-and-a-half minutes. Why this prescribed length? Well, remember that Sunday School talks were the Lord’s own training ground for public speaking, and all members of the branch were given their turn, child, new convert, and life-long member alike. Who could be intimidated by speaking such a short time, and to such a small audience?
And, on the rare occasions when the two speakers actually managed to speak for 2½ minutes each, the talks neatly added up to five minutes, just the right amount of time for a few brief thoughts before the practice hymn and dismissal to class. (The practice hymn is another casualty of the consolidated schedule.) The exact time was rarely achieved, however. The speakers either sat down after thirty seconds or rambled on for fifteen minutes, and it didn’t matter anyway.
Beginning in September 1949, the assignments for 2½ minute talks were published in the Aurora Branch newsletter. It would be interesting to know if the people were asked ahead of time, or if they learned about the assignment when they read the newsletter—echoes of mission calls issued from the pulpit at General Conference.
Here are some of the assignments as published. It appears that a male and a female member were assigned each time, but otherwise there were no age and experience requirements. 
The McCarty family had moved from Utah to Aurora where H. Ward McCarty was the manager of the Montgomery Ward store in downtown Aurora and second counselor in the branch. Nancy was his teenage daughter. Jackie Owens was a non-member friend and neighbor of the Greer family. Ginger (that’s me) was not quite six years old. Cora Hall was a woman who had joined the Church in Southern Illinois, and of course, James T. Greer was branch president. (September 4 was stake conference in Chicago.)
In the above list from December 1950, Craig Tatton, Vera Ruth and Jimmy Resch were children under 10. Mary Jane Greer was almost 14, and the others were adults.
In the next extant copy of the newsletter, July 1951, we already see familiar names. At least seven are repeats. Oh, the blessings and bothers of a tiny branch. (Sister Murri was a missionary working in the Branch at that time.)
Since I was thinking about Sunday School, I asked my father to help me remember how the program went each week. Here’s what he came up with, and I’ll take his word for it as he was the Sunday School superintendent for more years than anyone can imagine.
Greeting and announcements
Opening Hymn
Opening Prayer
(No official Branch business was conducted in Sunday School)
Sacrament Hymn
Sacrament Gem
Administration of the Sacrament
Two 2½ minute talks
Practice Hymn
Separation for Classes
Reassembly and reminder of announcements
Closing Hymn
Closing Prayer
Did you catch that “Sacrament Gem”? Yet another tradition lost to the consolidated schedule, but more about that another time.
