Memories & Discoveries

When I was a little girl, there was a particular couple that became a part of my childhood memories.  They lived just across the section from my home, our house being on the Southeast Quarter of the Section, and their home being in the Southwest Quarter.  The land they farmed belonged to a family named Kennedy, and my father and Lester Kennedy had been best buddies growing up, but the Kennedys had moved to Western Kansas, leaving the farming of their old home to a tenant farmer named Glen DeGarmo and his wife Oma.  The couple were significantly older than my parents, but our families were very close.  In fact, they are the only "babysitters" I remember from my childhood.

Looking West toward Glen & Oma's home, Credit Lyn Fenwick

I have many memories of Glen and Oma--the Thanksgiving our families spent together when a snowstorm blocked the roads and their guests could not reach their farm as planned and my family could not go to my aunt's house for the holiday as intended.  My father used the tractor and feed wagon to get us across the fields to the DeGarmo's house where we pooled what we had to make a Thanksgiving feast.  I also remember the evening Glen scooped up sand from the driveway into a box that he brought into the house so I could continue playing with my toy cars and trucks inside when it became dark outside.  There was also their upstairs mirrored wardrobe that actually held a bed.  Once, when their grandkids visited and the hinged bed had been lowered like a Murphy bed for their guests, we kids discovered that by crawling under the bed we could make faces in the mirror above us.   Another special memory is that my childhood playhouse was a repurposed henhouse moved from the Kennedy place after my father bought that land.  The only bad memory I have of visiting Glen and Oma is of the outhouse.  They had water into the kitchen, but they had no indoor bathroom, and I hatted having to use the outdoor "John."

One Sunday morning when I was ten years old, my father and I went to church alone, my brother being away at college for his first year and my mother staying home for some reason I have forgotten.  As we turned on the county line road, which Glen and Oma would also have driven to go to church, my father commented:  "Glen and Oma are late getting off to church this morning too."  There had been a light sprinkle during the night, and my father had seen that there were no tire tracks which Glen's vehicle should have made by now.  I was sitting in Bible class later that morning  when someone came in to get me, saying,  "Your father asked me to take you home today," and although it was confusing to me, I did as I was told.  In fact, news had reached the church that Glen had died, and my father had left immediately to see how he could help.    

Photo credit:  Lyn Fenwick
Isaac's stone in foreground; DeGarmo stone far right edge of picture

My father ended up buying that land from the Kennedys and he farmed it for the rest of his life.  My last memory of Oma was a visit in Western Kansas, where she had lived after Glen's death.  That visit  must have been not too long before she died in 1970.

Decades later, when I was doing the research for Prairie Bachelor, The Story of a Kansas Homesteader and the Populist Movement, I was researching the settlement of Isaac's estate.  Imagine how surprised I was to discover that Isaac's farm had been purchased by a man named Jacob DeGarmo.  Jacob and his wife Adeline had a large family, and it included a son named Archie Glen DeGarmo, who was born in 1886 before the family had come to the Macksville community.  However, by May 29, 1895, I documented that Glen was 8 years old, living with his family in Albano Township, and he was still there at the turn of the century.  He married Oma in St. John, where her family lived, on January 14, 1914.  In summary, my childhood friend lived in Isaac Werner's home most of his childhood and adolescence.  

Gravestone of Glen & Oma, Photo credit:  Lyn Fenwick

Recently, while doing some research about Neelands Cemetery, where Isaac is buried, I discovered that Glen and Oma are also buried there.  My husband and I made a visit, and I was surprised to discover that Glen and Oma are buried only a few steps away from Isaac.  Somehow, I find that comforting.