Family Archives

November 6, 2015

Rose Mary Seyer 1925 – 2015

Wife Lila posted a sad note to Facebook on October 31: Early this afternoon, a lovely, sweet woman, my Aunt Rose Mary, slipped the bonds of earth into eternal rest.

She and I were close, and I never missed an opportunity to see her and my uncle whenever I was in town. She was kind, gentle and soft spoken. She always had a cup of green tea for me when I visited. We talked about family, of course, but we also talked about quilting and canning… two things she and I both did, until she couldn’t in the last few years.

Funny thing… when I was a child, my mother, Rose Mary’s older sister, would call me ‘Rose Mary’ about half the time, when she was sorting out children’s names as mothers tend to do. I didn’t mind. I will miss her terribly. Going back home won’t ever be the same. .

This photo of Rose Mary and Ray Seyer was taken in 2010 when I recorded Ray talking about growing up in Swampeast Missouri, his World War II navy experiences, ghosts and his feeling that Rush Limbaugh, even as a teenager, was a “horse’s patootie.”

Rose Mary’s obituary

Rose Mary Seyer, 89, of Cape Girardeau died Saturday, Oct. 31, 2015, at Ratliff Care Center.She was born Dec. 9, 1925, in Cape Girardeau to John Jacob and Christine Rosolia Diebold Hoffman.

She and Raymond C. Seyer were married Feb. 26, 1946, at St. Mary Church in Cape Girardeau. Rose Mary was a graduate of St. Mary High School. She was a member of St. Mary Cathedral and St. Mary Ladies Sodality.

Survivors include her husband, Raymond C. Seyer of Cape Girardeau; children, Michael (Brenda) Seyer and Dan (Mary) Seyer of Cape Girardeau, Diane (Ray) Staebel of Liberty Hill, Texas, Janette (Stephen) Bennett of Alexandria, Kentucky, Joyce (Dave) Bruenderman of Cape Girardeau, Linda (Bob) Garner of Jackson, Ralph (Debbie) Seyer of Kirkland, Washington, and Steve Seyer of St. Clair, Missouri; 27 grandchildren; and 42 great-grandchildren.

She was preceded in death by her parents; infant son, Timothy G. Seyer; brothers, Adrian, Jerome, Norman and Charles Hoffman; sisters, Thelma Hoffman and Lucille Perry; and grandchild, Wendy Seyer.

Saying goodbye

St. Mary Cathedral was full of friends and family for Rose Mary’s funeral mass on November 3. The funeral procession on the way to St. Mary Cemetery stretched for blocks.

“Family treasure”

Lila posted to Facebook, “Spent the evening with people who mean the world to me…. my Seyer cousins. My life with them began when I moved to Missouri in 1957. We all are in town together because of the passing of their mother, my aunt Rose Mary. They give a whole new meaning to the term ‘family treasure’. I love these people.”

Photo gallery of Rose Mary’s family

You can tell from the photos on the family refrigerator in the first photo that family was important to Ray and Rose Mary. Here’s a photo gallery of the family gathering Thursday night at Linda and Bob Garner’s home. Good times were remembered and thank-you notes were written. Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery.

November 2, 2015

Turtles: A Shell of a Story

These guys must have come out of the bowels of the attic or they might have been set aside for making rattles. All I know is that there was usually a turtle or two around through most of my childhood.

When I started school, Dad and Mother sold the trailer we used to follow Dad from job site to job site and rented a house at 2531 Bloomfield Road. (It’s not there anymore). The house was surrounded by fields and had a swing-up garage door that never closed too tightly, hence the house frequently hosted mice and bugs. Traps kept the former at bay, and we let a couple of turtles roam the basement for the latter.

When we moved in, there was a washing machine in the basement. Not too much later, the landlord confiscated the washer and left behind an old fashioned ringer washer for Mother. “I cried so much that your dad went out and bought me a new washing machine,” she said a few months back.

The water from a shower Dad rigged up and the wash water drained into a floor drain, something that worked adequately until one day when it started backing up. Finally, the landlord had to call a plumber. He wasn’t happy to find out that the clog was caused by an errant turtle who had fallen into the uncovered hole. After that, a No Turtle Rule was instituted.

Then, there was Sam and Ella

No pet store or county fair would have been complete without a chance to buy or win one of these small turtles. We didn’t think about the dangers of salmonella back then.

I even had a painted turtle that came from either our Florida trip or the fair.

Bring on the wild art

I always hated it when an editor would say, “Bring me back some wild art.” That meant is was a slow news day and they needed a feature photo that could run CLO (Cutlines Only). I was lousy at shooting those kinds of pictures.

If I had to, though, I’d throw good taste, scruples and pride aside and bring back a cringe-worthy photo like this.

October 28, 2015

A Model Hobby

Dad and I spent many a winter evening building plastic models of ships and planes. Well, to be more accurate, I sat at the table WATCHING Dad build plastic models of ships and planes.

He was a follow-the-directions kind of guy, so he would get frustrated when I skipped around and ended up having to take apart stuff that I had assembled out of order. Before long I would be relegated to applying decals and sorting parts.

One of our largest projects – at least in size – was The U.S.S. United States. It wasn’t the most complicated, but it lit up and it was about two feet long.

A memorial to my Grandfather

Here’s something about the model I never told anyone: when my grandfather, Roy Welch, died when I was 10, I wiped all the dust off the deck and vowed that I would only dust half of it in the future as a way of remembering the passage of time since I had lost him.

When I took it down from the attic to put in a box of stuff going to Annie Laurie’s Antiques, I looked for the dust demarcation, but 30 or 40 years had made it ALL dusty.

Despite that, I still remember my Roi Tan cigar-chomping grandfather. I guess I really didn’t need the U.S.S. United States to do that.

October 20, 2015October 21, 2015

The Last Rose of Summer

I’ve been struggling with what to post about Mother’s Birthday Season when she’s not here to celebrate it. I’ve made a dozen false starts, but none of them worked. Then, two things hit me today.

I got an email from Curator Jessica that read, “We had our first killing frost last night and my poor basil didn’t make it. This afternoon, while I was lamenting my basil, I turned around and saw one of my rosebushes had a bud that seemed to have weathered the frost. I sang the Grateful Dead to it and thought of you.”
I woke up to a flat tire (a nail nailed me). When I got back from having it patched, I opened the car door and was confronted with the rosebush on the light pole in front of the house. I took that as a sign I should visit Mother and Wife Lila’s Mother.

She was referring to Dark Muddy River

Miz Jessica heard Dark Muddy River because I told her I was considering it for a video about people and places along the Mississippi River that are no longer there.

When the last rose of summer pricks my finger
And the hot sun chills me to the bone
When I can’t hear the song for the singer
And I can’t tell my pillow from a stone

I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And sing me a song of my own
I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And sing me a song of my own

When the last bolt of sunshine hits the mountain
And the stars start to splatter in the sky
When the moon splits the southwest horizon
With the scream of an eagle on the fly

I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And listen to the ripples as they moan
I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And sing me a song of my own

Black muddy river
Roll on forever
I don’t care how deep or wide
If you got another side
Roll muddy river
Roll muddy river
Black muddy river roll

When it seems like the night will last forever
And there’s nothing left to do but count the years
When the strings of my heart start to sever
And stones fall from my eyes instead of tears

I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And dream me a dream of my own
I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And sing me a song of my own
And sing me a song of my own

The song

I’ve listened to that song while riding my bike around Lake Okeechobee on nights that are pitch-dark except for bolts of heat lightning cutting across the sky, and I’ve played it while watching the whirlpool swirl around Tower Rock in the Mississippi. It hits me differently every time, particularly in this context. I’m still going to have to come up with a Birthday Season story, but this will have to do as a space filler.

Click on the photo above to hear it on YouTube.