Remembering the past
By MARCELLA BRUCE
Contributing writer
Monday, May 31, we recognized Memorial Day along with millions more Americans. Not only our military personnel whose lives have been lost because of war, but we also remembered the lives of beloved family and friends who've gone before us.
Then, on Saturday past, June 5, our 40th U.S. president Ronald Reagan died at 93, almost a decade after he courageously spoke a moving farewell to fellow citizens because of the onslaught of Alzeimers.
Another memorable day followed on June 6 marking the 60th anniversary of D-Day when brave men landed on the beaches of Normandy. Some 9,000 remain in the cemetery.
******
A good many of you "old-timers" remember "Chet" and Rose Ashcraft from whom my husband and I bought the Hillsboro Star-Journal. That was the summer of 1954, soon 50 years, ago The Ashcrafts had bought the Hillsboro Star in October of 1931 from John McCuish, briefly a Kansas Lt. Governor. In 1953 they formed a partnership with the Tal Hieberts who had bought the Hillsboro Journal from the Mennonite Publishing House. The two papers merged to become the present Hillsboro Star-Journal.
I'm still in the process of going over old correspondence and this past week found a letter from Joyce Book, an Ashcraft daughter. She wrote that her father had written a family history, which included his experiences in the newspaper business. Some excerpts follow: "I started in the newspaper business as the ink roller on a Washington Hand Press in 1905 at The Aline Chronoscope in Oklahoma. For several years, I made a fire in the shop each morning during the winter, swept out the shop, set some type by hand and was what is called The Printer's Devil. I went to the shop after school and worked until 6 in the evening and all day Saturday for the whole sum of fifty-cents a week.
"I went to Pratt County High School during the fall of and spring of 1909 and 1910 and worked on the Pratt Daily News for Harlot Brown. I entered Protection High School in the fall of 1910 and graduated in the spring of 19l4. During these high school years I worked on the Protection Post until the fall Of 1919, when we moved to Marion where I worked on the Marion Record, then owned by Ex-Governor E.W. Hoch and his son Wallis."
Then the Ashcrafts left the newspaper business and purchased a small grocery store at Aulne. They operated it for about three years, but all the while he helped a day or two each week at the Marion Review doing linotype work.
Chet and Rose loved their time in Hillsboro although they had no Mennonite background in this predominantly Mennonite community. I found this brief life history interesting and hope others find it so.
******
It's getting close to the observance of Fathers' Day and believe me I had a great one, and if my dear mother were alive, she would join in a great Amen!
I have numerous letters he wrote me as well as some of his off-beat poetry. In one, during World War II when I was with "Bud" in Mobile, Ala., where he was stationed at a small Navy base, Daddy sent me a letter written militarily. It ordered me to report to him at Clovis, N.M., in the eighth month of my pregnancy. Naturally I and Bud agreed that he was right and also knew that he wanted to deliver our firstborn, the Skipper who now is breaking 62 in Pratt come September. Skipper was also his and mother's first and only grandson.
Wonderful too is the fact that he also delivered our daughter Marcia four years later.
He wanted to live long enough to take Skipper with him deer hunting, but it was not to be. My wonderful father died at 63 in 1950. But what a lot of super memories I have and cherish.
Just as wonderful is the love and caring our two kids have for their dad, who died five years ago.
*****
An interesting quote on "Memory": "Why must we have enough memory to recall to the tiniest detail what has happened to us, and not have enough to remember how many times we have told it to the same person."
See what I mean!
