Charles (Pappy) Wike holding Louise Wike
by Polly Mazariegos nee Wagaman
My Aunt Louise’s middle name was Bertha. As I tried to find out how she got this name for my story, I discovered there were several versions. One version was finally agreed to by my Uncle Harvey Wike and my Uncle Bill Wike. Guess who won? Both, as each had a somewhat different memory, but as they discussed each others memories, both agreed to the following:
There was a well to do matron (old maid back then) who lived in N.Y. When soldiers were coming home from WWII, she would have parties for them. She worked with the U.S.O. At one of these parties, she met my Uncle Frank Wike, Sr. (Yes, the editor of this magazine’s father.) Her name was Bertha. Bertha took an immediate liking to him. She asked for his home address. Of course, Frank gave her the address of the farm in Fredericksburg as his home address. Frank Wike Sr. was seriously injured in the War and went to a hospital to recover from his leg injury, for which he wore a leg brace. After Frank Sr. returned to the farm, Bertha made a trip to the farm to visit Frank Sr. and his family. Nanny (Emma Wike nee Feaster), my grandmother and Frank’s mother, liked Bertha and when Nanny got pregnant with her change of life baby, she named her Louise Bertha, after this lady.
Now onto some more from things Louise and I did as childhood playmates. Nanny and her brother Lester and his wife Ada would almost always bring Louise up to my parents house for Easter. My Mother, Myra Wagaman Riley nee Wike, would make a big Easter dinner. Mom would color eggs for baskets and make a dozen for hiding. I loved hiding eggs. I would hide them close to the ground for the small kids to get and then I’d hide some on top of the wooden posts that separated our land from our neighbors land. The posts were flat and the eggs would not fall off. You had to find them and put them in a basket. I would hide some eggs in the crook of a large pear tree in the back grassy area, some in Mom’s flowers, or rather under the flowers; on top of an outside garage window sill; and be careful where you were walking or we were minus one egg. We usually hid eggs until everyone had a chance to hide and find the eggs. In the end, we were lucky if we found 9 out of 12 eggs. Several months later we would begin to smell where the other eggs were. Ever smell a rotten egg? Yuck! Once you did you would never forget it. The next place you could smell this awful smell would be in a high school chemistry lab. It is sulfur.
When summer came, I always was able to spend two weeks with my Nanny, Pappy and Louise. It was so much fun.
Then came graduation from high school. While other graduates were planning what college to go to, I was planning to go to the farm of Nanny and Pappy and, of course, see Louise.
I remember swinging on a board tied to a big tree by the out house. I remember playing baseball in the field above the main house, as corn was not planted yet. Mainly, we would go down the mountain and pass a lady named Mable Yearger who had long white hair and had a black cauldron cooking road kill or possums. We ran past her place. We thought she was a witch but Mom said she was really a very nice lady.
As this would be my last two weeks of summer vacation I would spend on the farm, we really had to make this one a blast. It was the fastest two weeks I ever had. We laughed a lot, but we always did that when we got together. I remember when we would go to bed at night in a room at the top of the stairs in the big farm house. Nanny would have to yell up the stairs for us to be quiet and go to sleep. Why did her hollering up the stairs make us giggle more? The more noise we made, the more she would holler up at us to go to sleep. We really tried to stifle the giggles, but the harder we tried to stop, suddenly we would look at each other and burst out laughing. We tried pulling the covers over our faces so Nanny could not hear us, but we would still giggle. Finally the ultimatum: Girls, you better be asleep when I come up the stairs or you both are not to old to get a whipping. Louise and I knew we better shut up and go to sleep, so we turned our backs to each other and would finally fall asleep.
As I mentioned before, Louise and I were very close. Some would say we had a psychic bond. This is to be proven after I returned to my home in Gettysburg and left the next year for York, PA, where I would go to further my education at Thompson Institute, a business school. During the week I stayed with an elderly women who provided me with a room for $5.00 per week. To pay this money, I worked part time after business school. The year was 1963.I could not wait to see Louise, so I went home to Gettysburg almost every weekend and would see Louise on Sunday. If I had to work weekends, I would phone home (before ET phoned home). One evening I stayed in York on a Friday night. Mom usually would call me just to see how I was. This time when the phone rang, I knew it was Mom with bad news about Louise.
Sure enough, Mom said Louise was in a bad car accident. She was badly hurt. I immediately left York and headed to Gettysburg. Mom and I would drive to Lebanon, PA, to see Louise.
This particular incident was one of many when Louise was ill. I always knew before Mom would call. This time she was on her first date and they were on the way back to the farm when a 17 year old boy, driving a car through snow on a country road when the road suddenly went from two lanes into one lane. For some reason the snow plow did not finish plowing both lanes. The young man hit the car Louise was in, head on. She was thrown from the car. Her arm was broken in eight places. The car she was in, looked like a convertible, which it was not originally. If Louise had not been stealing a kiss . . .
That first kiss saved her life. I do not know how she got to the hospital because there were only farms all around them with open fields everywhere. She was in horrible pain and they gave her strong pain pills. Eventually, after many surgeries and pins to hold the arm together, it healed, but without full mobility. Now our bond was closer.
I was still going to business school when my sister Shirley entered into the Army. Louise would become a waitress. She still had trouble with her arm and at times worked in Peoples Drug Store counter service, and when this store closed, she went to a nearby restaurant to work.
When Nanny went into the hospital for her many heart problems, Mom and I would always first stop at whatever restaurant Louise was working at, and eat at her station and talk to her. Yes, we were big tippers, also.
As the years flew by, Nanny was in and out of the hospital and eventually death took her. Pappy had died many years before Nanny.
Louise got married and I got married and we began new lives. We did not see each other much, but wrote each other as often as possible. We would send one stick of chewing gum in each letter.
Later, Louise would be in and out of the hospital herself, so every time Mom and I learned she was hospitalized, we went to see her. We would also stop at Ebineezer Cemetery to put flowers on Nanny and Pappy’s grave site. This my Mom and I did always for Easter and any other unscheduled visits.
When Louise was 34 years old, she died of cancer. Do I miss her? You bet I do. I miss all the fun we had together. One way Louise influenced me that she never knew about, was that Louise loved kids. She never had any of her own, but she loved teaching kids Sunday school. Even when she was really sick and dying, from her hospital bed she taught a young girl to be saved. I figured if Louise could teach Sunday school while she was sick, and I love kids, I could teach also. This I did for 22 years. Louise showed me something I never thought I could do.
Do you know a relative whose name no one can agree to how they were named? Think about it.
Published U.S. Legacies April 2005
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