Jonah had a pretty good night and is having a good day. The question is: can his organs like the kidneys sustain all the pressure from his tummy? His tummy is full of clotted blood because bleeding is common on this machine from the blood thinners that they can’t drain out. So far, they are doing well. Jonah is not a candidate for surgery because of the thinners but they would do it of need be. Aaron and I dont want this! So to get a head of him, we have started waking up his lungs in hopes they can prove he can be weened off ecmo and we can get the goopy stuff out of his tummy. Please pray for Jonah’s organs to stay strong under the pressure of his tummy. That his lungs get better and better. That the docs make smart decisions. That our better days are closer rather than far away. Click like or comment yes! #makeJonahglow
I Believe – My Values
Chapter 2 – My Childhood
I was born in 1957 in New Orleans. I will have to ask my mother what hospital…
1st Chapter – My Parents
Rusty and Addis met in New Orleans in 195___(?)
Growing Up in Small Town, USA
I was born in Lapeer, MI to Mike and Patti Schenkel. I lived in the same house until I was 21 in Metamora, Michigan. The house was 2 bedrooms, one bathroom, beautiful yard with trees and and a rock wall. When I was young, my Dad built a pole barn one summer in the backyard. Mom always had flowers that we tried in so many ways to have the rabbits not eat. We would lay in the sun, play in the sprinkler, ride bikes and draw chalk murals on the entire paved driveway at my parents pig roasts.
My Mom is a unique, strong willed, tall, long-haired beauty. She grew up in Detroit and moved to Oxford with Mimi and Papa when she was in school. Mom worked in catering at the Huntsman for many years and spent most of her time being a wonderful, present Mom. She always encouraged creativity, crafts, cooking, baking and being a unique individual. We put glitter and sequins on everything if we could! Dance parties in the kitchen and singing our hearts out to “Now that’s what I call music-Christmas #1′ was always a fabulous tradition.
My Dad is a masculine, strong, hardworking, caring and understanding man. He grew up in Dryden all of his life. Dad worked as a heavy equipment operator for most of his career. That is where I learned to love the smell of a good mechanic garage, wood stove and fresh asphalt. Dad was the one who taught me how to drive, fish, hunt and take care of my car properly. Before I could get my license, I had to change all four tires and change my oil and fluids. I obviously wasn’t too happy to actually do this, but these are all tasks that I now appreciate and cherish learning them with my Dad. We went to NASCAR races together, cheering on Dale Earnhardt, Jr every time, went fishing for blue gill in the winter and summer, and hunted whitetails at the condo.
I had a tight knit group of girlfriends during school. We had surprise birthday parties for each other in middle school, were a sarcastic bunch, loved sleepovers with junk food and spending time together especially after school and in the summer. Lisa Stoutenburg, Kristen Williamson, Ashley Roth, and Ashley Carbone were my main girls. Ashley Carbone lived about a mile away from me. We walked to each others house when we couldn’t drive and we drive around on the back roads together when we could.
I went to Imlay City Schools all of my childhood. My favorite classes were always art and social studies. In elementary school, it smelled like pickles during recess from the Vlasic plant in town. I played basketball every year until senior year when I called it quits. I was the forward/center and honestly not very good. haha! I can laugh about it now but it was frustrating as a kid to always be the backup no matter how much I practiced. It was a great way to keep me in shape though. That was a big plus!
Growing up, I was blessed to be an only child with many close cousins. My mom was one of 9 kids so I was extremely close with my cousins Terha, Nicole and Stephanie. We would always spend the night at each others house and at Mimi and Papa’s house. No matter what happened in our lives, we would always remain so close. I still call Terha my sister. Nicole was and still is obsessed with animals. Stephanie was emotional like myself and loved to be apart of the group. We got a long great for this reason and also because the older girls Terha and Nicole would gang up on us for being the youngest. We all are a year apart over 4 years.
Growing up in a small town is something that I’ll always cherish. I loved being so close to my friends and family, being outside, learning valuable life lessons and actually knowing your neighbor.
June 4, 2015
#TBT- that time I brought Jonah to work and he destroyed the office when everyone was in a meeting. 🙂 Jonah had a great night and day. He had lots of healing rest. ( at least in my mind) We learned that the lungs are slow to heal and Jonah could be on ecmo for a month. That’s okay. Home is where we are together. Question- what show should we absolutely watch to pass time? And don’t forget, #makeJonahglow
My Ancestors
I’ve attached a letter my Uncle Tony wrote about life growing up on the farm in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. (The letter and the article referenced below are included in my Porch Swing Storysite – I just left the images here to remember I have them…) My grandfather, who I called Bobo, took a risk by traveling from “the old country” to the United States when he was young. This was shortly before the start of World War I. The mortality rate of young men from that area of Austria in the war was extremely high. Bobo’s courage to make the journey may be the reason I’m able to write my story. Had he stayed, he may not have survived.
I’ve also attached an article out of the newspaper, the Potwin Ledger I presume, about Bobo. It sounds like I wasn’t the only one who thought he was a great guy.
My favorite memory of Bobo, was joining him for lunch in Bobo’s shack, a three-room house Mom and Dad built for him behind Dad’s appliance store in Potwin. He would make me “zoup” (that’s Austrian for soup) and would break open a can of Vienna sausages. I would have been four or five at the time.
When I had grandchildren, I encouraged them to call me Bobo, in honor of the young man who had the courage to travel to a new country to provide opportunities for all of us.
Test Edit
Test Edit 4
Writing Songs
A Gift for Father’s Day
When I was a sophomore or so at KU, Father’s Day was rolling around and I realized I hadn’t gotten Dad a gift. I thought back on all of the things I’d gotten for him in the past, and decided I’d write a song about it. (“And I tried…Shirts and socks and underwear, cologne and clip on ties, billfolds and pajamas, dress shirts and Levi’s, boxer shorts and bathing suits I tried along the way, but I am at a loss again for a gift this Father’s Day.”)
I sang it for Dad on Father’s Day at Bob and Marilyn’s house in Topeka and Dad really enjoyed it. (In a real compliment to a song, I heard Bob signing it to himself later that day…)
Then, I basically forgot about the song for about 30 years. For whatever reason, it came to mind when I was 58 and living in Kansas City. I was sitting on the ottoman, playing the guitar and it came back to me. I sang it to the grand kids later that day, and it was an instant hit.
“Shirts and Socks and Underwear” has become a staple whenever we’re all together and the guitar is out. The little ones love dancing to it and yelling “underwear?!” during the chorus. James has learned all the words.
I think Dad is smiling as he watches all this…
“Too Far Away”
Jayme and I dated quite a bit the first summer of my work in Oklahoma City. Peat Marwick would let you bank overtime as extra vacation if you used it in the summer, so I had a total of five weeks vacation that summer. Myron Klaassen’s dad had some rentals that needed to be fixed up, so I would work on those or my dad’s rentals with Jim Ledgerwood during the day, and hang out with Jayme, the guys, or both in the evenings.
As the fall came, I headed back to Oklahoma City and Jayme, back to K-State. It was difficult dating from six hours away. We used the Greg Mertes idea of calling at 11 p.m. when the rates dropped. We would meet back at Potwin/Towanda on weekends when we could. As busy season hit in January, I had to work the weekends and late at night, so the opportunities to visit or chat went down.
I wrote “Too Far Away” one evening, lamenting the distance. (“Let’s make a run for it, if they find us we will say, we were too far away…”)
“It’s All Been Done Before”
I was in college at KU, and had recently seen The Deer Hunter, a movie about the Vietnam War. I don’t remember what was going on geopolitically at the time, but I remember thinking that if a few things happened, I could end up, like my brothers, wondering if I would be going to war. I thought that, while I wouldn’t be too excited about it, there’s no reason for a lot of sympathy or drama—it’s all been done before. (“And I know it ain’t the first time, that a man has gone to fight, Lord knows this ain’t the first war. And I will kill my fellow man for a cause I think is right, like it’s all been done before.”)
“An Answer for Today”
Within a few months after I’d learned to play, I realized that most of the good songs are written in the same four or five chords. This gave me the courage to take a shot at it. “An Answer for Today” was a sixteen-year-old’s shot at saving the world, one song at a time. It’s about a young father who hears his children sleeping in the next room, but realizes the world is messed up and he needs to do something about it. (“So he gets the urge to write a song, of peace and love and life, and leaves it with a farewell note for his children and his wife. He says he’ll try to be back soon…”)
I played it for my guitar teacher, Terry Unrein, who was student teaching at Remington that year. He said it had a Christian message, and that the central character basically took the same approach that Jesus did, going to where the people were. (“Playing in the nightclubs and the bars…”)
My Dad
Dad was raised one of 13(?) kids in Poplar Bluff, Missouri.
Poplar Bluff was a small town in the “boot heel” (southeast corner) of Missouri. His dad (my Bobo), John, brought his young wife to America from Austria, just before World War I took the lives of most of the young men of that area. If it weren’t for that decision, and Bobo’s bravery, I might not be here today.
Dad’s mom passed away within a few months of having her last child. The older sisters took active roles in taking care of the younger ones. Bobo was an enterprising man, and ran a welding shop in addition to running the farm. Dad and his twin brother Rudy were among the younger ones; I believe they had nine older siblings. Bobo’s work ethic and many talents allowed their family to be relatively well-to-do. There was a car that the kids could pile into to go to school. They usually had a little cash due to Bobo’s welding. But they all worked hard. There were chores before and after school, and summer days were sometimes sun up to sun down. They farmed, gardened, and butchered for their meals. Trips to town were for Sunday church.
I’m not sure what Dad did right out of high school, but before long, he and Rudy (they didn’t separate twins) were sent to World War II. Dad and Rudy served in the European theater, and dad was injured toward the end of the war. Both dad and Rudy headed to California shortly after the war to find their fortunes. Dad worked at an aircraft plant.
Shortly after, Dad’s older brother Dan moved to Whitewater, Kansas, to open a car dealership. Dad moved to Kansas also, to Potwin, eight miles away, and opened a gas station.
The kids had grown, and Bobo no longer needed to work long days farming, so he moved to Potwin to live with Al. According to Dad’s stories, which I believe, they hand dug the foundation to the filling station in Potwin, and people helped them lay the bricks. With Dad repairing cars and Bobo, in his Austrian accent asking the locals, “How’s your has?” (that’s Austrian for “how’s your gas?”), and not much overhead, they did well. Before long, Dad was selling appliances out of the filling station. Not long after that, they needed to build on.
Potwin, Kansas, after the war was a growing place, and everyone needed appliances. You may not have thought you needed a refrigerator until your neighbor got one. Radios were a staple, and televisions were arriving—first black and white, then color. And always bigger. Fortunately for Dad, they broke down a lot, and Lew Whiteside knew how to fix them. Lew would show up at your house with a specially-designed box of vacuum tubes and other parts, and before he left, you could watch your programs again.
As the Vickers refinery grew, Potwin needed more housing. The city built a road for “the new addition”, and Dad started building houses. He sold most of them but kept a few to rent.
He fell in love with Beth Elkins. Beth’s husband, Raymond, had died of a stroke. leaving her with two young boys. Dad adopted Bob and Bill, had a daughter Kathie, and a few years later, me.
Dad didn’t sit still much. The government needed Post Offices to better handle the mail. Dad built Post Offices in Potwin, Whitewater, and Towanda and rented them to the government. He built or bought 10-15 rental houses and maintained them. He ran a growing business and was active in the community. He made a lot of friends. He and mom traveled the world with General Electric because of all the ranges and room air conditioners he was selling.
Dad wasn’t your typical small-town business man. Potwin was 15 miles away from El Dorado, a town of around 15,000, and 40 miles away from Wichita, a city of 250,000, the largest in Kansas. Dad did his best to get folks from these bigger towns to travel to Potwin to get their appliances. As I understood from him, my siblings, and Dad’s fellow GE dealer friends, Dad would buy train car loads of appliances if he could get a good enough deal.
He was clever with his advertisements: “Al Potwin from Resnik, Kansas” and “The Little Bitty Man with the Big Deals.” He was a character when you would go see him in the store. It was an adventure. He would go through your wife’s purse. He would ask the well being of your “hoodly doodly.” He always made you feel special, and believe that you got a great deal. There really wasn’t any reason to buy appliances from anyone else. You would spend time with a great guy with a sharp sense of humor who would get you a good deal, and Lew would come to your house and fix it if it quit working.
Dad would set you up on payments, Mom would mail you a bill each month. There were “counter checks” out front in case you forgot your checkbook. And oh yeah, you need a toaster.
Dad had a lot of energy, and a huge love for people. He was extremely generous.
In one of Jayme’s favorite stories, we were at Mom and Dad’s house and the doorbell rang late one night. A young mother was there to tell Dad her husband had left her, she was headed to Oklahoma to be with family, she would have to move out of the rental house, and she couldn’t make the rent payment. Dad’s reaction was to give her the cash he had in his pocket for gas money, and grab several items out of the refrigerator to give to her kids who were waiting in the car. Others would have been angry that they didn’t get the rent. Dad emptied the fridge. I saw similar instances, too numerous to count. He was a great guy and I miss him dearly.
High School Years
Election
Mom teacher
basketball
band
