1946/47

 Saturday mornings I'd often leave campus for downtown Milwaukee all by myself. Got so I thoroughly knew my way around downtown and into all the shops and department stores,  Boston Store, Gimbles. Saturday mornings at the college we usually had a simple kind of breakfast, not served formally, foods available for several hours in the residence cafeteria. I would pick up a couple extra sweet rolls, or pieces of fruit to take up to my room. I’d wrap them up and take them with me on my public transportation itinerary stopping first at A-House to visit my sister, Elayne, and share the food or leave it with her. We were so very close as sisters. She hadn’t the great kitchen and dining room I had so I loved to share treats. I didn’t want anyone to accompany me from MMC dorm because they would want to reserve space in a taxi, which would  cost me more. I was familiar with public transportation from last year. I wanted freedom to buzz through the stores and a companion would want to dilly dally. I didn’t mind the walk to the bus stop.  

Working in the dining room for 3 meals a day helps to offset my huge boarding bill. There are a few other possible positions about campus. We cannot  have off campus work. In my Senior year additionally, I took care of the apartment in the Home Ec Department, weekly, cleaning, vacuuming, dusting. I am treasurer of the Home Ec club 46-7.

Sr. Wananda, a little nun with a heavy German accent, supervises the kitchen and dining room helpers. She is always so good to us, her servers, dishwashers, sweepers, table setters and table clearers. She shares treats with us. On December 5's she has us leave empty shoes in the kitchen. On December 6s, St. Nicholas Days we sneak down the back stairway to the kitchen and pick up our shoe filled with goodies. Sometimes she gives me a lemon to rinse my hair. We didn't have 'conditioners'. Lemon was preferred for brown hair. My sister used vinegar.


The east wing of Caroline Hall [residence] 1st floor has our bright dining room with these many long Tudor windows to let in light. There must have been 20 or more dining tables covered with linen tablecloths always set for the next meal of the day. We didn't use paper napkins either. From around 10 each morning or 4 each evening we would have these scrumptious smells throughout the building. We had homemade breads, rolls, cookies, cakes, pies. All were made right here in the kitchen which connected to the dining area. Or we could smell the beef, pork, chicken roasting. We often had a hot casserole for lunch. Across the hall was a cafeteria room used when students groups were small. The laundry facilities were beneath all. At lunch time or dinner we would gather outside the dining room doors.  12 or 6 o'clock we'd enter the room, find a table and stand behind our chair. When all assembled we'd say grace together- 'Bless us oh Lord in these Thy gifts which we are about to receive---' and be seated. There were always late arrivers wandering in. We had our picky eaters. One of them at a table always meant more for the others. 


I will use italics and color when quoting from my letters:

"I walked over to Holtans and we had a great visit. Kids are growing up and cuter every day. Mavis gave me a medium pie plate with apple strudel just out of the oven and a bouquet of yellow mums." Danny was 3 weeks old when we first met.

We had all the track sports which I loved, discus, javelin, field hockey. 

Fall of ’46 Sophomore team includes me and we're pretty good. "We won the tournament 2-0 in a good game." Tournaments are held throughout the year among the 4 class levels. Our gymnasium is just an elevator ride to the basement. So is the swimming pool. We shoot baskets, play a game, set up a volleyball game spontaneously any time at all. Freshman had these very ugly knit, form-fitting yellow gym suits which you would hardly want to be seen in by a teammate  much less any outsider, particularly a male person, even if I weighed 115. Who could have chosen those must have wanted to keep our egos deflated. Tank suits were no better.

I have a tiny, cream colored radio I won. Don’t recall how. Popular songs- The 'Old Lamplighter' and another 'Oh Buttermilk Sky'. I'm not attending the prom this year. Friends and I watch the dancing in our pajamas from the balcony over the gym by squatting or lying on our tummies incognito. Some male dates spot us and wave in friendly discovery. 

There is a special investiture day when we receive our caps and gowns. The archbishop is downstairs that morning. Through the school year  weekly we have an assembly on Wednesday morning. These are  lectures from visiting professors. We are expected to attend wearing our caps and gowns. On November 9th- "We have a college lecture on how a Catholic can choose to believe in evolution as to how the world began using 4 criteria for our decision making." I never, ever had a problem accepting evolution with God as the source of all. And science as the unfolding of human discovery. There is a series at present being shared by theologians in all faiths, called Evolutionary Christianity on my iMac, great on-going conversations from the emerging church..

Mainly study time when not in class

Every Wednesday evening for 6 PM dinner hour we were required to wear a nice dress, dress shoes and nylons. We would eat by candlelight and be served a formal dinner. Around 5:45 PM I would hear the many heels clicking down the hallways and stairways on the way to our evening dinner, mine included. 

One Senior Prefect this semester crawls along halls  after 11 PM looking through cracks under doors for lights on. Any studying we might need must wait until midnight. [You know there are even those types at this Senior Happy Trails Resort who play God]

And this in a letter- "Having the annual retreat. “It’s wonderful, really. It really works. The idea is to spend 3 days completely with God- something it’s hard to do just any old day- even an hour unless we really want something. It’s a fresh up to let me know just who’s running things and where I stand. We can sleep until 8- Mass- Communion- breakfast, conferences- Lunch- Way of the Cross- Conferences- Benediction- Rosary- Dinner- Holy Hour- bed. Maybe I’ll be a nun after 3 days of it. Our Retreat Master tells us how women should lead men and help them to high places and all kinds of stuff.”

Something more I found- Through the years occasionally I have had this dream  of getting stuck in an elevator between floors  at Mount Mary. It’s more than a dream.  I was actually stuck, all alone, in one of the elevators between 2nd and 3rd floors for forty five minutes until a crew of engineers hoisted it up to the 3rd floor and I could step out. I wrote about it in a letter. Still as a dream theme it has meaning.

My transportation to Milwaukee is via the Greyhound bus, plus many transfers through town.  I always need a ride to or from the station in Lake Geneva. Since I don’t always let my folks know ahead that I’ll be coming home on Friday I'd call on the phone when I arrived at the depot. I have needed to wait many Friday evenings for an hour and often more before they have a car and a driver available. Times like that I am so bored and feel abandoned [home is 7 miles away].On returns to College there would be a bunch of guys, perhaps one or two females, that we would pick up from Burlington, WI returning to Marquette. Bus came alive with conversation.  One day while awaiting my pickup a young man doing taxi work in Lake Geneva stood around and helped fill my time. He asked me if I knew Bruce Stewart. He said he had introduced him to a friend [girl]. Wondered how they were doing. [I hoped not very well]. One weekend my Irish Great Aunt visits my mother. She is Grandmother Morris’ sister, a Kirby. Her husband is mayor in White Bear Lake, Minnesota. Our family has a  terrific visit because she is cheerful, charming and filled with Irish wit. Jim shares:
"I'll never forget how charming she was in her dainty manner, and her brogue of excited exclamation: "Sure'n be Jabbers!' I'd estimate she must have been in her seventies at the time." On my return Sunday evening she travels on the bus to Milwaukee with me on my return to visit with the other members of our family before returning to Minnesota. One trip back I smuggled a young kitten, Creeper, onto the bus and into my dorm room. We were able to keep her hidden for a long, long while. 4th floor residents enjoyed my kitty. Eventually even the dorm Dean, Sr. Louis, kept her in her office. After a while I transported her back home with me. She died when mother backed our car over her. 

Probably at least monthly I'd come home for the weekend. The difficult part for me were the Sunday nights returning to college. Several hours before time to leave I would begin my moping around, Gerty Gloom stance. I would feel so awful, so hollow, I'd go through a mini homesickness. Always. I never, ever learned.


On November 11 Elayne went to South Bend with five girls from her dorm to see the Notre Dame vs Northwestern game. 

Our very elderly neighbor to the west, Mr. Swanson, bought a cart for Jimmy at an auction. Our east neighbor,  Etta Seaman  sold her farm to her son and would now spend winters down south in a mobile home. Jim had a mule we called Muley. We also had an old fashioned ‘cutter’ for snow travel. We used it for home decor Christmastimes setting it up in the front of the house.. "One time w/o a car Dad, me, Jim in the sleigh drove Muley to the train siding. Took an hour and a half. Jim tipped us over once. Dad decided next time he’d walk".

We had our new Ford in December 1946. I write this- “Gee, but I’m a lucky girl- inside plumbing, furnace heat, sidewalks, new car, sweetest family, two years college education in a wonderful school and a friend like you. [Bruce]”




Since Spring of '47 a group of Mount Mary girls [still not women] frequently would go downtown on Friday evenings to attend a Marquette Mixer. No one knew we were not Marquette coeds. On one of these evenings I met Bob Durocher who was a student in Business Administration. He was a great dancer. From here on I really had fun in college for he was a terrific leader and would sweep me right along. On one Friday in April, '47 we entered the waltz contest. And though we didn’t win it was a great experience.

College Sophomore 1946

The Arches connected the 2 College Buildings

A Sophomore, I am living in residence at Mount Mary College. I have a room on the 4th floor which I share with a roommate. All my housing needs are provided within the college plant, which in the forties consisted of 2 main buildings. The Mount Mary Arches is a walkway separating the resident hall called Caroline Hall from the adjacent college hall, Notre Dame Hall, where all my classes are held, including the chapel on the 2nd floor.  I am free to wander through the college and within the rooms as long as no class is in session. This is my home away from home. Always fun for me to take the elevator to the 4th floor and observe what the art students are up to . The library, too, was a quiet place to study. When not studying I would frequently search the stacks for Children's Literature, so readily available, sit down and enjoy. To move between buildings  on bad weather days, blizzard,  blowing snow, wind, hale, sweeping rain,  I would hunch up, gathering my clothing around me, open the outside door, and bravely make a run across from one building to the other building, yank open the heavy door opposite and welcome the warmth therein.  Or I could choose a warm tunnel beneath the Arches and cross underground. The tunnel was gray cement with large, covered pipes running end to end along the ceiling.

September 18, 1946 is the evening I wrote a letter in my dorm room to Bruce Stewart who had enlisted in the Army Air Force. I felt prohibited from writing a letter to Bruce previously, [Emily Post]. Today much of this faded away from long, long, long ago Victorian days. Both sex and table proprieties. I ask myself if my grandchildren are even aware of life lived by ordinary folks in the years preceding World War II [grandpa and me and families preceding us]. We were told ʻif ever we were to make something of ourselves we must behave properlyʼ [meaning Emily Post manners]. A far cry from the public burps, curses, farts and bodily freedoms and girth and addictions which are common today. Somehow, unbeknownst, we, as a people, in spite of ʻthou doth protest too loudlyʼ are well along in recognizing our animal connection. Good? Bad? Is what it is. Perhaps some balance, some refinement to find some middle ground is wisdom here. Are we more than animals? Now I feel I am free to write because men in service need our letters, especially from girlfriends. Isn't that so? Permission granted. Should this seem incredible to you I checked it out a few days ago with a friend of mine and she said this was definitely so. Her mother would have been very stressed had any one of her 3 daughters been  so feisty. 
Bruce' ID#  changed when he went to Shaw AFB South Carolina. This letter is transcribed from the actual letter I hold in my hand.

I sent my letter off to the 

Hebron address and Mrs. Stewart forwarded it for me. Crossed out Mr. and wrote:

Pvt Bruce Stewart R.A.16032521

Flight 895 SB-23

3543rd BU AAFMTC

San Antonio Texas

Wednesday

Dear Bruce,

I am getting settled at school now. My trunk hasn’t come yet so I still have all that lugging up on the elevator [fourth floor] to do. We have darling rooms. You should see them. Ours is blue. My roommate didn’t come until late yesterday so we don’t have drapes up yet or spreads on the beds. We could stay up last night until 10 o’clock so we stayed up and played bridge and listened to the radio all evening. Just think we can’t leave our rooms after 8:00 on weekday evenings and all lights have to be out at 10:30.On test nights I guess the girls put the lamps in closets and study in there. We have a good time anyway. Seniors are prefects so it makes for fun to sneak along the dark hallway at night and not get caught.

Registration was kind of awful but it’s all over with now. I had a few changes to make with my schedule. I had Chemistry and Food Study today. Wednesday is my full day, but we had Mass at 8:30, breakfast and then required assembly so I didn’t have morning classes. I have Organic Chemistry this year and the book looks pretty much of a mess. Food Study looks like fun. We have to wear white uniforms in foods lab, stockings and all...... Besides these I have Economics, Logic, English Survey, Great Books, Religion and Phys. Ed. So you see I’m going to be busy-- 2 assignments already. My roomy has a peculiarity of calling everyone ‘an old farmer’ at certain times. I could kick her every time she says it to someone. I’ll have to break her of the habit. Some people.

I bet your mom misses you. It seems so funny to see her always in the blue chevy and to know you are not driving it anymore. Ah! that’s life! It goes by our place more since you’re gone.......I met your mother in Brunswick’s one time in Genoa City one time. She said she hadn’t heard from you yet and then asked me if I had. I bet I turned red though I tried not to.

Well soldier how’s the life. I’ll bet you’re having fun. I think it’s just grand for a fellow. [I mean being with other fellows and the experiences connected with it.] Only one thing I’m advisin’ and that is there are girls just as nice up in the midwest states as the cowgirls. Anyway haven’t you heard styles are more feminine this year and your cowgirl still wears pants, Texan, or does she? The girl must now--’wear satin and laces and smell of cologne’. And if any of the girls from Me-hi-co drift across the border don’t let them get into your blood either.

I didn’t mean anything I said in that dizzy old letter about working against you. I’m all with you. Get all you can out of it. Anything you do is experience and that is education. I could begin now to quote from Huxley, Arnold, or Newman’s words and make this a speech. I won’t however cause it takes too long to go over to the library and find the book. [I was supposed to have been listening in English Class last year].

Pweese Brucey can I have a snapshot to pin on my pin-up board or dresser? Do they have pennants in cities there like they do up here. Tell me and then maybe you could get one of them for me, too- small-sized ones I mean. A college girl has to have junk but I don’t mean the snapshot; that’s one of the valuables.

Almost time for dinner and I haven’t touched my assignments. One thing wrong with these places is that a gal has to eat at 6:00 or not at all, right??

 With love,

MaryKay

P.S. Sending this via Hebron. Don’t scream!

Dorm evening fashion

This is a first letter. I would spend many evenings sitting around in my robe, listening to radio, studying, writing letters home and to my serviceman friend.

Plain Bates bedspreads were practical decor

Chenille was in for robes but some chose chenille bedspreads. Bates spreads were collegiate choice as best for lounging around on our beds. Our twin spreads were light blue Bates with a white sailboat motif. The furnishings, bed, dresser, desk, were metal. I wrote to Bruce frequently now, every 2 or 3 days, except winter-spring of 1949 when I was steady dating Bob Durocher from Iron Mountain MI who was enrolled in the College of Business Administration at Marquette, University. Reading these letters today it is as if I am looking into a diary or journal. I have them because Bruce saved my letters, as did his mother after he returned home in 1950. Daughter, Joan, a diary keeper, respectfully valued them through our many family moves, keeping them safely in their original shoebox. I have the collection from 1946 through summer of 1950. These are a resource for dates and what occurred in that period of time. Pray you enjoy. One can easily spot my immaturity yet additionally how much I was expected to conform as a female in society and did-- a profile. 

Hat, scarf, nylons, little heels. Seems I forgot to wear my gloves.

And perhaps further that profile of a young, Catholic female prior to Vatican II with the right to vote yet not so much equality otherwise. I was to  keep to my pedestal, as Jesus Mother Mary, my model, and hers but a flat profile I must emulate, not the substantial woman she truly was.  I am at this Catholic Women's college which in the forties retains some of the finishing school qualities  providing this girl with the kind of formation required to become  the best kind of woman  this religious culture needs her to be. I sopped it up. Called enculturation. My mother tried her best. My hunch what helped create a more real young woman profile for our school were the  'day-hops', many  working to pay their own fees as well as living at home. They rode bus rather than taxi transportation. Later years my youngest cousin, Karen, spent days at Mount Mary. She will share her version if you ask.

Mo,MavisHoltanFamily1946

I wouldn’t be able to find a room in the college dormitory immediately. I did put in a reservation for Sophomore year. Mother and I replied to a notice in the college office. A young family would like to share their home with a student in exchange for a girl’s assistance with the children and  homemaking. I met this family, Maurice [Mo] and Mavis Holtan and their toddlers Lynn and Johnny and an infant, Danny. Mo was 10 years older than his spouse. He ran a foundry in Slaughter, WI outside Milwaukee. They lived in a little home in the suburban area adjacent to Mount Mary. We accepted one another at first sight. They had a small, white framed 2 story bungalow with a picture window in the living room and a lamp set on a table in the middle of that window. After the war this is what people in suburbia uniformly did. Jokes were made about those lamps in windows. The homes had recently been built in this neighborhood. I don’t remember that there was a garage. There was a side door off the kitchen and a 2-track cement driveway so probably was one.

Exactly like the Holtan home w/o cul de sac-- Little Boxes

My bedroom was the downstairs den, never needing to close the door. Mo and Mavis bedroom was above the den. Often when Mo would return home late I would hear these loud thumping noises above me. I would wonder why he was so restless. As time passed I began to clue in to there being another activity in that bedroom. Too many movies, I suppose. I would live as one of the family, like their grown daughter, with all the family privileges. I helped with the meals just as I would at home. Cleanup we worked together. Mavis was a good cook, Norwegian tastes. She took sole care of Danny as a nursling. Only once I babysat him when they visited friends for an evening and he so missed his mother. Cried a long time. I would walk a distance to school. I don’t think I went home weekends. The family was so very nice to me as I to them. I often shared stories of my relationships with my own family, mother and dad, Elayne, Billy, Jimmy.

Friday nights I had looked forward to attending a movie. During early Spring it would be getting  dark when I left and very dark on return. I remember it being 3 blocks to Center Street where the bus ran. I’d get skittish and run most of the way to the house. 

Cornel Wilde and Gene Tierney

One special movie Leave Her To Heaven Cornell Wilde reminded me of Bruce. I recall, especially, the scene in this movie when Gene Tierney throws herself down the long stairway. Some other films were Best Years of Our Lives, Duel in the Sun, The Yearling, The Razor’s Edge, Till the Clouds Roll By, Road to Utopia, Blue Skies. There were possibly 10 Fridays I needed to fill in. 

Latter in Spring the Holton family suggested I invite Jimmy, now 10 years old,  for a visit and we would attend the Shriner’s Circus, tickets and all on the house. Mo was a Shriner. This was his response, I think, from my forever bragging about my kin. 

Jim took the Greyhound from Lake Geneva into Milwaukee. He stayed overnight, perhaps 2 nights. I do not recall. For sure we would have had a great chicken dinner always including Mavis’ great rectangular yummy baking powder biscuits and plenty of gravy. This visit has always been memorable for Jim and for me. And those biscuits. Never in all my attempts was I able to reproduce them.

Younger brother, Jimmy, in 1946

       Yes, some of my happiest memories are of the excitement of a trip up to see you all - to have big sisters & brother who are in college in a big city.  And who could ever forget the occasion of you having me come up for the Shrine Circus at the Milwaukee Auditorium with the Holton family and you - I was in 5th grade and gave a complete report to the 4th & 5th grades on what I saw, not however including the wiping up of delicious chicken gravy from my Sunday dinner plate at the Holtons - nothing quite that personal". 

North Woods Vacation with the Holtan Family

The family yearly vacationed in the Wisconsin North Woods. As the school year ended in ’46 they invited me along. I realize now what a good deal it was for the little family-- built in baby sitter and all that. Nevertheless this was a treat and a new experience for me. ‘Up North’ as Wisconsin folks say is far north where the landscape is all pines and many small lakes abounding with cottages owned and rentals for summer vacations. This is a delightful memory. One evening we attended a movie, just Mo and me. My hunch is they wanted to reward me with an activity without little children. I do not recall the film only that I encountered a first experience. On our drive back to the cottage Mo asked me how I enjoyed the film. I expressed a lot of joy-- oh, it was so beautiful. Mo shared that yes it was emotional, a tear jerker perhaps, but beyond that it was shallow, had no depth, saccharine, was not in any way great. I had my first adult critique of a movie and would go on in the future to pay more attention to a story’s substance. Would include Soap Opera's, of course. Thank you, Mo. After this movie I thought I began to intuit some uneasiness with Mavis. I sensed she would tell her hubby he was paying me too much attention. At the close of the vacation they drove me to my home in Hebron, met my mother, dad and family. Another time I saw them afterwards was a night I stayed over after a Marquette Mixer when my date dropped me off at their home. We'd had early curfews in the dorm. I'd be invited to dinner at times. 

When the Sophomore year commenced I would become a resident student.