Photos from the Fowler Family Reunion

Dear members of the Fowler Extended Family,

Here are some of my best photos, taken at our wonderful Family Reunion in July.  I encourage you to send me your own photos as well!  You can send them to my e-mail address:  epfowler@well.com.

If she agrees, I am hoping also to add some of the terrific photos taken by Corey Fowler, including her wonderful group shots of the large crowd assembled on and around the beautiful porch of the Fowler house.

I hope you enjoy the pictures!

Betsy Fowler

Janet Williams and David Chaussee

The Four 'Contemporaries':  Don Fowler 'Jr.', Karen Penchuk, Mary Katz and Pat Lynch

Don Fowler 'Jr.' and his granddaughter Emilia

Jerry Cofta, Margaret Fowler and Corey Fowler

Karen Penchuk and grandson Jack "over the vent"

Mike Lynch, Jake Lynch and Don Fowler on the porch

John Fowler, our host and emcee, and Margaret Fowler, our hostess with the mostest

Fredde Lynch, barbecuer extraordinaire, hard at work

Ed and John Jr. locked in deadly combat, with Hannah looking on

Jake Lynch in the pantry, with Margaret Fowler

Don Jr, Don Sr, Corey and John Jr.

Elk Point History-Part 5 by Don Fowler

  Rural is rural and open land is farm land, and for the period March to November the enduring conversation in my town always was the weather.  It was the daily talk not only of the farmer, but of the dependent doctor; lawyer and merchant thief [oops!—I mean,] chief.  As a fifteen year old boy, then a clerk in a self-serve grocery, my opening gambit to an entering customer was “ did it rain out your way today?” or “did the hail get any of your corn crop?” or just plain “how is the weather treating you?” or even better,  “it’s a beautiful day.”  Always the weather.  And in my area the weather was variable and hovered near the point of loss and even disaster for the ordinary farmer.   There was the need of rain during the growing season, the need of hot sunshine in August, the need of a sharp frost in October to mature the corn crop, while at the same time there was the fear of drought, the fear of hail, the fear of wind storms and the fear of pests, like locusts or grasshoppers.   As a boy, I remember that the town of Jefferson erected a cross near the town to ward off the plague of locusts.   It was difficult to balance all of the fears and the needs with perfect weather, and even if one could, I would bet that the subject of conversation in Elk Point would have been the weather.

Don Fowler (left) in the Elk Point Council Oak Store, with manager Gene Matson

 

  South Dakota is a state with a large native Indian population and with huge tracts of state land assigned as Federal Indian Reservations.  Yet, in my town, as a young person, I don’t recall seeing or hearing of a single Indian.  None lived in the town, none was in my school, and none apparently visited us.  In later life I wondered about this conundrum which did not penetrate my thinking up to the age of twenty-three when I graduated from the University and when I didn’t have knowledge of an Indian in my graduating class.  A generation or two before my time, our history told us, relations between Indians and the immigrant folks in my town were fearsome, with the possibility of Indian attacks ever present and self protection as well as counter attacks always on the minds of the local people.  I seem to have lived in a quiet, peaceful time when personal safety was assumed and fear of a deadly attack was far removed from our daily thoughts.

  In my youth, religious differences in my town’s population were of little consequence.  All families were either Catholic or Protestant.  We all attended the same school.  No child for religious reasons left the town for an elementary education.   My parents sent us children to the local Baptist Church for Sunday School, since the Church was close to our home, didn’t involve crossing dangerous street intersections and we could attend by walking with the older neighbor children. Later, in about 1925, without special notice, all of us Fowler children switched to the Lutheran Church, the denomination of my mother’s membership.  My Fuester grandmother was of the Roman Catholic faith and I remember her attending the town Catholic Church when she came from Iowa to visit us.  I heard rumors of Catholic prejudices among the predominant Protestant population of my town, and perhaps some discriminatory action on their part was practiced, but the major focus of all concerned was generally on good relations and mutual respect for everyone’s religious beliefs.

  It is time to relate another family episode.  When we Fowlers changed our allegiance from the Baptist Church to the Lutheran Church it was incumbent on my parents to arrange our baptism.  In the Baptist Church, as you may know, the time of baptism is at the age of reason, not shortly after the time of birth as in most other Protestant churches.  We were thus as young people un-baptized.  Reverend Runsvold of the Lutheran Church came to our home on an appointed day and baptized en masse all six of the then assembled Fowler children.  I always noted baptisms were “cheaper by the dozen.”

  If there were serious differences, or possible harmful discrimination, among the people of the town, it was more likely on economic and social grounds and not on faith differences.  Substantial farmers, merchants and professional persons of the community tended to occupy a common social status. Common laborers and farm helpers seemed to rank a lower status. The levels of those in between were somewhat vague, not easily defined, and seldom concretely noted.  Social relations in our town were fluid, open, and generally a matter of individual choice.  No criminal element formed a section of the community, the city jail was generally vacant, and for the entire county only a small segment of the County Courthouse was needed for the confinement of criminal types.  Poverty was not unknown in the community and there was a so-called “County Poor Farm” on which a few of this category lived and labored to cover their keep.  If any residents of the town could justify a pinnacle position, untouchable by all others, I was not aware of them.  For a very short period, a member of the Dupont Family was a local resident for easy divorce purposes (for which Elk Point was widely known) and rather unobtrusively asserted a special “rich person” status, but that was not a common condition generally indicative of the town.       

  In 1930, the youngest member of the Fowler family and the last of our seven siblings was born.  It was also the time when I had graduated from high school and I wanted to pursue a college education.  No one else in my direct ancestral line had continued his or her education beyond high school.  Why did I wish to do so?  I can’t put my finger on a single incentive, but it seemed at the time a sensible thing to do, even though I was not the shining academic success in high school that the rest of my siblings were, and my resources to accommodate my ambition were non-existent.  My inclination appears to have been to drift along while expending a minimum of effort.  At any rate, within six months of brother John’s birth, I moved to the University of South Dakota to enter on seven years of higher education. I never returned to live in the town. My first hand knowledge of Elk Point came to an end.

       Donald D. Fowler
       December, 2011  

Elk Point History-Part 4 by Don Fowler

  In the early twenties, the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad that ran east, west, north and south through my town, was a busy mode of transportation for both personnel and freight.  My best friend to the age of seven was Ken Strobel, whose father was the Depot Agent for the town.  Mr. Strobel, on occasion, arranged for Ken and me to be photographed in the cabs of train locomotives. It gave us a real grown up feeling.  I lived within a city block of the station and could see and hear the trains as they arrived at the depot or if freight trains just tooted through the town.  It was fascinating for a child to watch as the train’s engine loaded up with coal and water.  Of course at that time steam engines were in vogue and were the real romance of the railroads.  The passenger trains were many going in all directions, and the passengers were usually provided time to leave the train for fifteen minutes or so to visit the Depot Hotel snack bar and to converse with the local personnel who assembled there to obtain the news of the day.  As a young lady my mother joined the group of young folks, especially on Sunday afternoons, to meet the train passengers and to socialize with the town’s young men and women. Many a romance was reported.  In the fall of each year, when the corn and grain were harvested, the grain elevators were busy loading freight trains for shipment of the local grains to other parts of the United States and abroad.  This produce of the farms represented the annual cash income for most of the local farmers and registered the wealth of the community.

The Elk Point Train Station--from an old postcard

    Please pardon another short family interruption.  When I was very young an oft repeated adult question was “Sonny, what do you want to do when you are a grown-up big man?”   My oft repeated answer was  “I want to be a locomotive engineer.”  As a man, no one made me such an offer of employment.  But there is a rewarding sequel to the story.  A boy was born and grew up in South Dakota and settled as a man in Sioux Falls.  He became a locomotive engineer for the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Rail Road, and for a period of time his train hauled the Sioux Falls red granite rock, of which our Courthouse was built [see Part 1 posted below--Ed.), from the banks of the Big Sioux River in Sioux Falls to Sioux City, Iowa to become rip rap that was utilized to stabilize the banks of the meandering but navigable Missouri River.  He was Ken Rothenbuehler, my quiet and unassuming brother-in-law.
 
  In 1889, when South Dakota became a state along with North Dakota, Montana and Washington, rural was rural whether one lived on a farm or in a small village catering to the needs of the farmer.  A farm                  

could be identified by a house, a barn, a granary, a chicken coop and other smaller ancillary buildings, plus always a small grove of trees planted to provide shelter and wood for a variety of needs.  The trees marked the location of a farm home like feathers define a bird.  Similarly, a village in the Middle West was marked by a much larger group of trees, a water tower, the distinctive tops of two or more grain elevators and the steeples of an equal number of churches.  In the wind-swept prairie country, trees are conspicuous by their absence, as they don’t thrive with limited water and perpetual dry and cold or hot winds.  Originally, tall grass covered the land, where the buffalo could roam and multiply.  Cultivated land awaited the immigrant farmer from Europe, who took the land from the American Indian and for a pittance. 

  For everyone in South Dakota, and for many in our country, the 1930’s signified the Great Depression, persistent drought, and devastating dust storms.  To stem the force of the winds and to protect the land from further soil erosion, the New Deal government built a “shelter belt” composed of strategically placed groves of hardy trees extending over much of the prairie lands of the Middle West.  It tended to change for the better the climate of that part of the country, but for how long one cannot predict. 

Reunion Program Update from John

dear all:

time until the reunion is growing short.  judging from e-mails and calls received, enthusiasm and anticipation are building and we are expecting almost 60 attendees from all corners of the usa as well as a contingent from denmark.  margaret and i are traveling to elk point on thursday, june 21, to start on-site preparations, and can be reached there on our land line, (605) 356-2540  or, with less certainty, on our cell phones at (605) 670-3100 (jdf) or (605) 670-9030 (mkf).  in the absence of smart phones, we will be reviewing incoming e-mails from time to time at the library.  important planning and housekeeping items include the following:

1.   please send biographical information as requested some time ago by uncle don.  information on each individual need not be too comprehensive -- a page will do.

2.   we intend to have relatively brief meetings of all hands in the side-yard tent at hours to be established on july 5th and 6th, and maybe on the 4th as well if a "quorum" is present.  please be prepared to introduce yourself at one of these sessions and speak for 3 to 5 minutes on your life and lifestyle, reminiscences concerning your branch of the family, recollections of parents and grandparents, and the names of those family members and others who have had a particularly significant influence on your life. no power point presentations allowed!

"Uncle John" with his parents in May 1967

3.  if possible, we would like to have seven picture display boards set up, one for each of the seven fowler siblings, their spouses and progeny, plus another for pealy and sophie.  these need not be all that elaborate, but if you can bring along a few pictures (without having to check an extra bag on the airplane), please do so.

4.  we may (or may not) have time to arrange for production of commemorative t-shirts.  however, against that possibility, please send numbers and shirt sizes of your respective attendees to my e-mail address as soon as possible.

5.  the intention is to have a continental breakfast available in the tent each morning beginning july 4th, and hopefully "catered" dinners in the tent on the evenings of the 4th, 5th and 6th. we are still expecting a lynch arkansas-style bar-b-q on the evening of july 4th.  lunches would be "on your own", but with possibilites "highlighted" and possibly times suggested for noon orgies at such famous eateries as the milwaukee weiner shop in sioux city or asian buffet at the silk road in vermillion.  for planning purposes, please let us know as soon as possible the number in your party expected to attend the evening dinners.

6.  as previously noted, there is a more-than-adequate fireworks display in the elk point city park at dusk on july 4th.

7.  we also plan to set up a series of possible tours which interested parties may join on the 4th 5th and 6th.  these include the national music museum in vermillion (a must for those who have never been there); the ponca, nebraska overlook from which you can see across the missouri river to elk point, vermillion and jefferson and also visit a lewis and clark museum there (a taxpayer boondoggle?); the chaussee centennial farm;  the restored orpheum theater and the pristine and historic woodbury county courthouse (excellent example of sullivan's prairie architecture) in sioux city; various major new buildings on the usd campus in vermillion plus the dakota dome athletic facility; gavins point dam on the missouri river above yankton; st. paul's church with, among others, the beautiful kalstad stained glass window; a huge, old dairy barn on the lyle johnson farm;  the winery in vermillion; "spirit mound", a stand-alone hill which lewis and clark felt was worth  a half day's walk from the missouri river for the extraordinary view of the surrounding country and substantial buffalo herds (and up which you can hike, but without the prospect of seeing any buffalo); etc.  Obviously, some of these tours can be combined.

8.   there are enough tennis players among the attendees to provide robust competition, so please bring equipment if not too inconvenient.  both golf and swimming are readily available and we have several extra sets of golf clubs available in elk point

9.  there will, of course, be a cribbage tournament.

10.  there are a number of artists in the family and we are hoping for some form of exhibition and discussion.  obviously, any such exhibition will have to display photographs of paintings, sculptures, furniture and other art forms.   the artists among you are requested to bring along photos of representative examples of your work.

11.  we still have time to include your ideas for additional activities, competitions, discussion topics (other than politics or religion, of course!), tours, etc.

12.   many of you have volunteered to be of assistance with regard to on-site planning and execution of the various components of the reunion and, rest assured, we will be taking advantage of your offers.  if any of you want to work on particular activities (we are hoping to minimize the dishwashing detail), please advise soonest.

looking forward to seeing you soon

love,  "uncle john"

    

Elk Point History-Part 3 by Don Fowler

  As a young boy, I heard of the “opera house.”  I say “heard,” since I don’t recall seeing an opera or even a play in the opera house.  It was the largest building on Main Street and was used from its inception

for many activities, plays, concerts, basketball, and commercial businesses on the ground floor.  Mr. Ven had a distilled water operation with sales county wide and somebody bought and sold chickens in a small store.  Next door, on one side, was Wilmarth’s Barber Shop, which had a fascinating line-up of mirrors advertising the products of other stores on Main Street.  The Shop also had facilities for casual visitors to our town to take baths or showers. As a boy, I would “stroll-in” to watch the barbers shave their customers, some of whom had their own distinctively decorated shaving soap cups permanently on a shelf.  At that time, I believe the cost for a shave was twenty-five cents.   On the other side, was the Union County Bank of which Mr. William Schatzel was President and Mr. George Kimmel was a long time major officer.  As time went by opera houses in small towns went out of style and utility and the space was converted to other uses or allowed to deteriorate, the latter being the case in Elk Point.   The last use I can remember was as a basketball court for the adult town team.

  The annual Chautauqua, in part, took over for the Opera House.  It was organized and directed by people in some way associated with the Chautauqua Association of Lake Chautauqua in upstate New York, a unique institution, founded in the late eighteen-hundreds and continuing with strength and verve to this day.  At an appointed time each summer, a large tent was erected in a vacant space of the town, and the Chautauqua week long ecumenical and entertainment program would begin.  One day of the week the program belonged to each pastor of a local church.  Besides his special church sermon, music, plays, etc. were performed under his general direction.  The High School glee club performed as did political parties and candidates, local lawyers, school teachers, and personnel imported and sponsored by the Chautauqua Association.  The Chautauqua week provided a cultural setting for the community and put the prevailing ideas of the world before the local populace.  One year, one play, captured my attention and participation.  It was called, the Pied Piper of Hamlin and I was two characters in one, child and mouse, in the play. Obviously, the part did not require a special ability.

Elk Point Main Street--South Side

  The Public School also took over, in part, for the Opera House.  Although the High School became the locale for basketball, its gym had a low ceiling and confining space that severely limited the sport and the attendance.  Miss D. May Miller, the voice of all music in my school and the fount of all culture for the town, led her glee clubs, instrumental players, and all other musical performers in most programs of the small town.  She was the popular center of our musical stage and she lived to one hundred and four to prove her endurance.  The auditorium of the High School, with its limited facilities, became the necessary center for almost all dramatic programs in the town.  When I was in the fifth grade, as a frightened child, I spoke my first oration, entitled “Fourteen Ninety Two,” from the stage of the Auditorium.  Plays, operettas, orchestral and band programs, debates, political oratory and the School Superintendent’s directives and instructions to all students were held or delivered from the auditorium platform before a relatively small audience (capacity probably less than one hundred).  These were the substitute accommodations until many years later when a Town Auditorium was built on the Main Street. 

  In the 1920’s two weekly newspapers thrived in Elk Point and two Sioux City daily newspapers were read by most of the local population.  When I traveled the rural mail route with my Dad, I noticed that about an equal number of each of the local papers, the Leader Courier and the Union County Herald, were subscribed to by the patrons, and similarly the Sioux City Tribune and the Sioux City Journal. I believe the Tribune was a morning paper and the Journal an evening paper. Each of the papers, local and big city, had a political bias, the Courier and the Tribune being on the Democratic side and the Herald and the Journal on the Republican side. I watched Mr. Knutson in the office of the Courier set the print type by individual letter and by hand for the paper.  The Herald office was more convenient for me, so normally on my way to the post office or the Bauer butcher shop, I stopped in to witness the composition of the type for the next edition of the Herald. I have a very clear recollection of the thrill of seeing the installation of the first linotype in the Herald Office, an automatic machine taking the place of the time consuming hand assembly of print. It had to be in the mid twenties.  Being the County Seat town, the local papers were provided the authority to print all of the authorized public announcements, which filled several pages of each paper.   Although the daily papers had an Iowa publication, they dominated in Elk Point: very few local people subscribed to the daily Sioux Falls Argus Leader.  The difference in distance between twenty and forty-five miles seems then to have been the discriminating factor.  I doubt that such a small difference is important to the subscribers of today.

Elk Point History, Part 2 - by Don Fowler

  At one time, say before “prohibition” and before the 1920’s, Elk Point had a number of saloons that did little to add to that refinement.  The Troskeys and the Kellys, among others, owned and operated such saloons, yet seemed to retain respectable local family and individual reputations.  Their children were my classmates in the Elk Point Public School and some were in my Sunday School, first in the later defunct Baptist Church and then in the Augsburg Lutheran Church.   It was natural that the general and grocery stores remained open to almost midnight on Wednesday and Saturday nights to permit shopping by the farm families in the area, and incidentally to permit the farmer to meet with friends and drink his fill at one of the several saloons in the town.  At that time, horse drawn vehicles were the most common mode of transport, so it was late indeed when the farmer who lived five miles north or east or south of town arrived home, frequently with spouse and children in tow.  I recall the parked wagons and buggies, with impatient horses, tied to the hitching posts on all the side streets, unpaved and frequently muddy, just off Main Street.  During prohibition, businesses were changed from saloons to pool halls or restaurants or drinking and card playing establishments, where only “near beer” or its equivalent could be bought and consumed. My Uncle Bert Fowler owned such a pool hall in which he also operated his barber shop.  My dad enjoyed playing rummy in Troskey’s renamed saloon where the long highly polished bar was retained, along with the glistening giant mirror on the wall and the copper spittoons placed strategically along the length of the bar, that now was largely unused.  As a boy, I accompanied my dad to the “card playing” and enjoyed the yet unduplicated special hamburgers skillfully prepared by the rehabilitated bartender.  Otherwise I was frightfully bored by the experience.

  Let me take a second to add that Edward Troskey and I, as recent high school graduates, dated two of the public school teachers who roomed in the George Kimmel Home, where we played bridge and generally speaking became better acquainted, but not for a permanent relationship. 

  Elk Point suffered a lack of community amenities.  There was, for example no tennis court in the entire town.  Not that people did not know who were the popular women and men stars, but no one seemed to miss playing tennis.  I never did learn the sport.  The town was without a swimming pool.  For one short period there was a swimming hole in the low part of the City Park, but it was not a popular swimming location.  The Big Sioux River, the Missouri River and the Brule Creek were available for swimmers, but my father declared all of the three “off limits.”  Guess what!  I never did become a swimmer.  A public library was not in existence.  There was a small room with some books in the Elk Point High School, but I don’t believe one could charge-out a book and take it home. There were very few books in my home, and for the town as a whole, this was a common situation. I was not encouraged to become an avid reader of American and English literature. There was a baseball park with a small grand stand, but the infield was a mass of weeds most of the time and the outfield was always loaded with sand burrs, a hazard to say the least. The pitcher’s mound could stand a more professional design and the home-plate area as well.  Nevertheless, the town team and we kids did play baseball, probably the most loved sport in the town.  No, there was no golf course in my young boy days.  A little later a few holes were laid out in the City park with sand greens and rough fairways, rather short even for amateurs. People tried to believe that golf was a local sport, but that assertion was subject to reasonable challenge. Golf as a personal sport had to await a later period of my life and at a more remote location. The same was true for golf as a town sport. The small towns surrounding ours were not likely to boast of better accommodations for their citizens.

  Just a word about the baseball field.  Long after I left Elk Point, a man by the name of Larsen, the son of a girl who graduated with me from high school, volunteered to give the ball park a new professional personality.  Over the years, he and his sons spruced up the field until today it duplicates the Yankee Stadium field in New York City. Needless to say, the town is proud to welcome all baseball teams from far and near to play the great American game right here, fifteen hundred miles west of New York. 

Buildings on Main Street, Elk Point, early in the 20th Century

  When I was in my preteens, the town could boast of three or four general department stores in relatively large buildings, a movie house showing silent pictures, two hardware stores, two lumber-yards, three pharmacies, three hotels, three restaurants, two livery stables, four churches, a public elementary and high school, three or four medical doctors, an equal number or more lawyers, a busy railway depot with an American Express station, a post office with five rural mail carriers, four large grain elevators, three or more saloons, a pool hall or two, a blacksmith shop, a harness shop, two shoe repair establishments,  and whatever else it takes to make a town. Most of the residents did all their buying and selling in the town, and the farmers, most settled on 160 acre farms or larger, came into the town to sell their produce and to buy their food, equipment and supplies.  In my teens, in came the automobile, en masse.  It slowly changed the nature of the town.  The larger city, just twenty miles away, enticed the residents to spend their money where there were more choices and sharper competition.  The roads were paved, the quality of the motor car was improved, and the need for so many services in my town was greatly reduced.  Businesses began to disappear and fewer and fewer business people were employed.  The farmers’ wagons and horses were no longer parked on the side streets.  Small new cars took their places, model T Fords, Chevrolets, Plymouths, Dodges, and many more models no longer produced. The farmers bought trucks and tractors and ultimately everyone would sport a “pickup.”  Now no doctor lives in the town. A clinic takes over for the bevy of local doctors and visiting doctors to perform the needed medical services.  A single grocery store substitutes for the grocery departments of the four general stores.  The courthouse and its inmates remain.     

  Just one moment, please, for an interesting family intrusion and a curious coincidence.  A young boy who went by the neighborhood name of Petie, lived around the corner from my home in Alexandria, Virginia.  As a boy, he delivered the Alexandria Gazette to my home.   I doubt that as a boy he was aware that in these United States there was a place called Elk Point, South Dakota. Now, for many years, “Doctor” Peter Murray is the Managing Administrative Nurse of the Elk Point Health Clinic and is favorably known to all the people of that gradually expanding community.