Happy birthday, Dede

Forty-seven years ago yesterday, October 2, 1964, my life changed forever. On that day I became a mother for the first time. My beautiful first daughter, Dolores, entered the world. Everyone was happy.

I brought that new life into the house in the woods on Bay Shore Drive on that beautiful fall day, with my mother to help, and I thought, What do I do now? I knew almost nothing about parenting. Rick knew even less. I asked Mother how to change a diaper. She said she didn’t remember. The small amount of teenage babysitting I had done had been with children, not infants. What a beginning.

I had asked my doctor some basic questions, and he had said to ask my mother. Those were the days when new mothers didn’t have books to consult or classes to help prepare. I didn’t have friends nearby to scare me with their new mother advice. I barely knew how to hold a baby. At the hospital the nurses had shown me how to breastfeed. They also had told me that if I ate vegetables in the cabbage family, it would make the milk taste bad. Really super instructions.

Somehow, Dede, (her nickname then), Rick and I made it as a family. Dede had some interesting times in her first year. She got her first tooth at four months. Sometime later she got her head stuck between the slats of her crib, an old crib with widely spaced slats. Rick was at work, so we were home alone. I held her head and wondered if we would have to stay that way for the rest of the day; it was morning. Miraculously, her head slipped back into the baby side of the crib. We replaced that crib with a better one.

Dede was a beautiful, bright child, interested in everything. She walked at one year and never looked back. When she started walking, she kept going. After her brother John was born, she regarded him as a new toy. When Mary came along, she was competition. Dede was more neutral about the arrivals of Libby and Sarah. School came easy, although she never studied and seldom did her assignments. She wrote perfect tests and said she didn’t need to do all that homework; she knew the material. She showed musical talent, singing around the house as a toddler and later playing piano, trumpet (briefly) and French horn. She didn’t date much as a teenager. She dated more as a student at UW-Eau Claire.

Dede married, gave birth to two wonderful daughters, Katie and Dana, got divorced, and lost daughter Katie to type one diabetes when Katie was sixteen. She gave higher education another try after having given it up sometime before she married Bill. She took up library work.

She still is interested in everything. She has long term friends. She stays connected to her family.

Happy birthday, Dede. I love you.

Happy Birthday

Today is my father's 100th birthday. I hope he is enjoying it in heaven.

My father, Ed Allen Jr., was a creative, entrepreneurial person who was interested in everything, although less so when he was old. He's the man who retired and then went to work every day anyway. He died while getting ready to go to work. He was an enormous influence on my life.

We called him Poppy and then Pop. He loved broadcasting. He built a career in radio in Chicago and was proud to have worked for the NBC network. His Early Bird Show on WMAQ had a great following, and listeners sent him quilt squares which my grandmother assembled. I still have the early bird quilt. He started station WDOR in Sturgeon Bay in 1951. It was an adventure that he loved. He started a radio station in Manitowoc with a radio partner, which they sold.

WDOR was a corporation of local people, and it also was our family enterprise. We did commercials. Mother and I worked in the office. My brothers were regulars on the air as soon as their voices changed. David worked hard on the Saturday morning Countdown program of current popular music. Eddy became an excellent sports announcer. An assortment of local programs were tried, including Santa Claus (local doctor), and Mother's recipe program known for most of the years as Five Minutes With Dolores Allen. I think it is the longest runnning program in Wisconsin radio history. Eddy continues to be the manager.

Pop was the religious leader of the family. We all went to the Episcopal Church, whether we wanted to or not. He grew up going to the Moody Sunday School in Chicago, with perfect attendance. We grew up knowing that we should want to be in church. When he didn't like the sermon, he would ostentatiously clean his fingernails to let the priest know that it was pretty dull. Once he asked the priest how long he prepared for his sermon, and was told it was about ten minutes. He then said that it had sounded like it.

When I was a teenager, he let his opinions about my dates be known. He usually wanted to know who the father of each boy was. He usually read the clock wrong when I returned home from dates. He went to bed early. Once I came in at 10:10 p.m, and he sleepily insisted that it was ten minutes to two a.m. If I lingered in the car in the driveway with a boy at the end of a date, Pop would blink the yard light to let us know that the date was finished. I loved him anyway.

I used to go fishing with him, just to be with him. We would go out in his boat, and he would fish and I would draw pictures of the nearby scenery. When he drafted me to work in the radio station office in summer as a teenager, we would go out in his boat and have lunch.

He was Republican chairman of Door County for several years, member of the Door County Chamber of Commerce, Sturgeon Bay Rotary Club, and occasionally played golf. I remember that he would lie down on the green while the other golfers with him did their putts.

He and Uncle Frank Dorn built the family cottage at Clark's Lake. After that he was always doing some construction on it. He moved the kitchen into a former bedroom. I remember when he put electricity into the cottage. Prior to that we had kerosene lamps and a kerosene stove. Later he and Mother sold that cottage and bought an A-frame at Washington Island.

Life with him was always interesting. He was a great person and a great father. Happy birthday.

Eddy's Birthday

Today is my brother’s 70th birthday. Happy birthday, Eddy.

What is there to say about my big brother? He helped to make me what I am today. For example, he is the loving brother who, in childhood in the 1940s at the cottage, called in to me while I was in the outhouse (lovingly called the Orchid Room), “There’s a spider in your hair!”

Eddy always cared about David and me. He taught us the meaning of the naughty words we shouldn’t know or say. He also told me not to mention this to our parents. When we were new to Sturgeon Bay, I was in 5th grade and he was in 6th grade. He hit me a lot to show his love. I would have gladly sold him to the first bidder then, but everyone can see that I simply didn’t understand him. By the time I was in 6th grade and he had new boxing gloves, we finally had a match and I beat him. He improved after that. In dear old Sturgeon Bay High School, he made sure to make fun of every boyfriend I acquired. The most memorable was Bill Swan, who he called the Great White Bird. It’s obvious that Eddy really cared. He managed to keep his own love life under wraps.

Somehow we all grew up. Eddy miraculously got a college degree. Then he was an officer in Korea during the Vietnam War, which gave him better survival chances than some who went to Vietnam. He came home and gave his life to our radio station, WDOR, and became manager when our father almost retired. That is, Father retired and continued to go to work every day. Eddy was able to manage family issues then and now. We waited a long time, and he finally got married at age 37 (didn’t rush into it) to Mary Lou, who has been a great spouse for him. He became stepdad to John and Liz, and then Danny came along. No, he’s not the dog, he’s Eddy’s and Mary Lou’s son. After Eddy, David and I inherited the Allen stock in the radio station, Eddy continued to steer that ship as President of the corporation and general manager. During lulls, he goes bowling.

Hail to you, Eddy. I expect some good words on my birthday.