After the Golden Anniversary party in 1997 (described here) my mother’s physical condition deteriorated. I worked in at least one visit to Kansas City in the next several months. She was miserable and hated her life. She asked my dad what she could have done to deserve her condition. There was, of course, no answer. My dad communicated with me by telephone and email during this period. He told me that the doctors did not know what she had. They had given her a couple of blood transfusions. On Friday March 6 he called me at the office and told me in a broken voice that she was slipping away. I immediately booked a flight for the next morning.
I flew to KC and rented a car. When I arrived at my dad’s apartment he did not need to tell me that mom had died. It was written all over his face and his feet—he had on one slipper and one dress shoe. He was distraught but not sad. Neither was I. It had been apparent that she was very unhappy, and no relief was in sight. My mother was a doer and a planner. Her disease deprived her of the meaningful part of her life.
My dad and I talked about what needed to be done. He told me that he had an appointment with the funeral director. I agreed to drive him there. He did all the talking; spots at the Catholic cemetery in Lenexa, Resurrection, had already been reserved for both of them.
I think that the wake was held on Monday, and the funeral mass and burial were on Tuesday. I don’t remember whether anyone wrote an obituary to appear in the Kansas City Star or not. There is no obituary available online. II had not thought of this oversight even once in the intervening decades.
Sue caught a plane on Sunday and flew to KC. I picked her up at the airport. We stayed in the spare room in dad’s apartment.
Jamie’s entire family crammed into their van and drove to KC non-stop. I would have gladly paid the airfare. They stayed in a hotel. The younger kids were actually pretty excited about it because the hotel had a swimming pool.
I have no memory of the wake whatever. I am not even sure that there was one.
All that I remember about the burial at the cemetery was that it was cold.
We probably all went out to eat somewhere afterwards, but I don’t remember any details.
My dad told me that the doctors had recommended an autopsy, but he had refused to grant permission. I would have liked to know what my mom had. I inherited half of her genes; I certainly did not want to end up the way that she did. However, I did not argue the point.
On the following day we all went back to New England. Sue and I flew; the Lisellas drove.
1. Fr. Edwin died in 1999. The story of his life can be read here.
Discipline at Rockhurst when I was there was strict. The principal was Fr. Kloster, SJ, who ran a very tight ship in every way. Everything always seemed to run smoothly. The vice-principal was in my recollection was the vice-principal. The path to success for students to avoid contact with any of them: Fr. Bauman, Fr. McGuire, and Brother Winmueller.
With one exception I never heard of anyone skipping school for any reason. Vic Panus once decided to skip. He had his girlfriend call the school and pose as his mother asking to excuse him for illness. The lady in the office agreed that he should not attend if he was ill and then hung up. She then called Vic’s house to verify the situation. Whoops.
The next day Vic was summoned to Fr. McGuire’s office. We did not see him all day. I know no more than this, except for the fact that neither Vic nor anyone else in our class ever tried to skip class. As I said, nearly everyone really wanted to be there, and they avoided anything that would put their enrollment at risk.
At Rockhurst a large area called the lounge was directly beneath the cafeteria and adjoined the gym. It contained dozens of padded benches. On the side opposite the gym was an open-air area in which guys were allowed to smoke. This astounded me at the time, and I would wager that it was eliminated at some point.
Before classes guys congregated in the lounge with their friends and quizzed each other about the day’s lessons. At least that is what the guys that I hung around with often did.
Rockhurst had no recess periods, but the lunch break lasted for one hour and twenty minutes. During these breaks students could study, just mess around, participate in a club activity, or play intramurals. I seldom studied during the lunch break, but I did all of the others.
If you fell for this twice, you really were foolish.
In freshman year I often played chess in the classroom of Mr. Stehno, who supervised the chess club. We played give-away chess as often as we played the regular game. You could play more games in less time.
During my chess-playing period it never occurred to me to read a book on chess, and Mr. Stehno never encouraged the idea. I wonder if any of my opponents did.
I quit when I I could not sleep at night because as soon as I closed my eyes sixty-four red and black squares appeared on the inside of my eyelids. Seriously.
I also was in the Sodality, the precise purpose of which I do not remember. It had some kind of religious orientation. I think that the faculty rep was Mr. Apel,1 but I might be wrong. I vaguely remember that we visited a nursing home or a food kitchen.
I went on a “retreat” for a couple of days. That might have been with the Sodality. The idea was to remain silent for a couple of days, and try to get in touch with … whatever you were looking for. I had always been taught that those who were made to be priests would be called. I figured that if was going to be called, this would be it. I didn’t hear anything.
I played on some very bad intramural teams with some of my friends. When five-on-five soccer (with much smaller nets and no goalies) was introduced in my senior year, a group of us geeks gave it a try. One time our opponents showed up with only four players. This was the only game that our team won, and I scored all five of our goals. This was the highlight of my intramural career, and I could not name what ranked second.
For some reason our class was spared the typing class. One of the smartest things that I did, not just in the high school years, but in my life was to teach myself how to type. At the time my dad was working on public relations for Maur Hill with Fr. Edwin Watson and Fr. Roger Rumery. Fr. Roger brought me a typing instruction text, and my parents let me have the old Royal portable that had been sitting around the house. I think that this occurred before the start of my sophomore year.
I wanted to learn how to type in order to prepare for debates more efficiently. Debate preparation involves recording and organizes pieces of evidence and the writing of arguments and the first affirmative speech. Typing helped me with all of those, but it also allowed me to do hundreds of things more efficiently, AND it got me much better jobs during my stint in the army. In college I was able to type my own papers efficiently. This became much more important when I was in grad school.
Nearly everyone at Rockhurst went to as many basketball and football games as possible. Attendance was vigorously encouraged by the faculty. We had frequent pep rallies, and the school supplied buses to nearby away games.
If we were on the road for a speech tournament, John Williams would call his younger brother person-to-person. Whoever answered the phone would provide a number at which the brother could allegedly be reached. It was actually a code. The exchange identified whether Rockhurst had won or lost. The last four digits were the score.
The two best athletic performances that I witnessed were both from students in the class of 1965, one year ahead of us. In the 1963 football season, when I was a sophomore, Joe Spinello was among the best very best running backs in the KC area. However, he was much less effective his senior year. I don’t know why.
Ken Mayer was elected to the Rockhurst Hall of Fame in 2009.
Ken Mayer was by far the best basketball player that I saw in a Rockhurst uniform. However, the team my senior year actually did better when Kent Northcraft, the center, turned himself from just a tall guy into a force to be reckoned with. Credit is probably also do to the coaches.
We usually won, but occasionally it was excruciating. I vividly remember a game at Bishop Miege. We were ahead by more than twenty points. Then, all of a sudden we could do nothing right. With a few seconds left the lead was down to only one point. One of our players just hurled the ball in the air as high as he could. It almost hit the ceiling. One of the Miege players caught it and tried a very long shot. Thank goodness it was way short.
1. Fr. John Apel celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination as a priest in 2019. His description of his career is here.
1001 Southwest Blvd. is Holy Name. I think that the Wavada house was where the point of the red arrow is.
I spent less time in my younger years with my dad’s side of the family. My dad’s parents were Henry and Hazel Wavada. Henry was born in 1884 or 1885; Hazel was born on December 1, 1899. In the early fifties they lived in the house at the end of S. Cherokee St. in the Rosedale section of Kansas City, KS, in which my dad and his two brothers grew up. It was only a few blocks away from Holy Name church. The Ursuline nuns who taught there lived right next to the Wavadas. I remember seeing their wash hanging outside. It was the first time that I internalized the fact that nuns were humans.
We went there a few times, and I can sort of visualize it. I think that the house was yellowish at that time, and it had a porch. You had to walk up steps to get to the porch. I don’t remember the inside much because I was fascinated by the yard. In back was a stone wall about two feet high, and beyond that was an honest-to-goodness woods right in Kansas City, KS.
My best guess is that my granddad died in 1961. He was in his late seventies, but I thought that he must be much younger than that. It never occurred to me that he could be as much as fifteen years older than his wife.
It was not this bad.
My memories of Henry are scant. I recall that on the one occasion that he fixed breakfast for me he put way too much pepper on the eggs. I can visualize his face, but I cannot picture him doing anything except sitting in a chair.
My guess is that Henry had two brothers and two sisters. For as long as I knew them Mike, Mary, and Helen lived together in a house in KC KS. My parents made it clear to me that I was not named after this Mike, whom my dad considered a layabout. Maybe that is why they called me Mickey. The other brother Vic lived in Nevada (neh VAY dah), MO. I think that we drove down to visit with him once.
I think that both of my grandparents at one time worked in the meat packing industry. Henry might have been a meat inspector.
My dad told me only three anecdotes about his father. He said that his mother would often need to go the tavern and drag him home for dinner. I never saw him drunk, but he was apparently an alcoholic.
Not many Eskimos in Albert Lea.
The second story concerned Henry’s job. He was apparently offered a big promotion at a time during the depression that the family really needed the money. It would require him to move to Albert Lea, MN. He declined the offer immediately because he was “no g.d. Eskimo”.
The last one involved our family’s legendary mechanical prowess. The (coal?) burner in the basement was on the fritz. Henry got a big wrench and went down to fix it. The next hour or so was filled with curses wafting up from the basement. Then there were repeated loud crashes of metal on metal. Henry came upstairs and sat down. The burner was in shambles.
I know almost nothing about the Wavada family tree, but someone in Spokane has researched it. There are two Wavada enclaves that I know of. One is in Wichita, the other in Spokane. They both pronounce the name WAVE-uh-day. I tell people that the name is probably French. My dad told me that the family came to the U.S. from Alsace via Marseilles.
WH I and II fought for the US. WH III (above) fought for white supremacy (and won).
I know even less about Hazel’s family. Her maiden name was Cox. My dad told me that they were Scots-Irish who had been in America for generations. Grandmom informed me that we were related to Wade Hampton I, II, and III. I also heard that we were related to Mad Anthony Wayne, but I am pretty sure that that was a mixup. In any case if I am ever a guest on Finding Your Roots, Henry Louis Gates Jr. will let me know exactly how many slaves they owned. It was a lot!
We did visit some of Hazel’s relatives once in, I think, Lawrence, KS. I spent most of the time playing with their big dog. I remember that one of the daughters, who was a few years older than I was, showed us a painting that she had done. It just looked like globs of paint, but I make no claim to even average artistic judgment.
When Henry died, Hazel moved to an apartment in KC MO. We went to visit her fairly often. She always had hard candy for the kids and offered us a Coke. Our excitement diminished when we found out that “Coke” actually meant 7-Up. To people in KC “coke” is (or at least was) is a generic word for carbonated soft drink.
She somehow got a dachshund named Tippy. His breeding name was Donnys Perry von Kirsch. She eventually gave him to us.
Hazel did not drive. She liked to come visit us. She would usually persuade my dad to “go snooping”, which meant to drive to specific addresses of people whom she knew in order to see what kind of house they lived in.
My dad informed me long after the fact that when Hazel was in her eighties, she disappeared for a while. My cousin Margaret Anne tracked her down. That is all that I know about this incident.
Vic Jr. his wife Theresa (who died in 2017), and two of their kids.
My dad had two brothers. The oldest brother, Vic, and his wife Margaret lived in Trenton, MO. They had four kids, all younger than I am: Charlie, Margaret Anne (Deaver), Vic Jr., and Cathy (Wisor). I probably spent more time with them at their dad’s funeral in 2009 and my dad’s funeral than I did during the twenty-two years that I lived in Kansas City. I did not know Cathy, who is much younger than I am, at all.
The other brother, whose baptismal name was Henry, was also older than my dad. Everyone called him Joe. He was a Benedictine monk, who monastic name was Fr. Vincent. We all called him Father Joe. He died in 1990.
He was a major influence on my life. You can read more about him in this blog entry.
All three brothers matriculated at Maur Hill, a Benedictine high school in Atchison, KS. This is how my dad explained to me how three boys from Rosedale were able to attend a private high school during the depression. Hazel somehow struck an agreement with the Benedictines that, if one of the boys became a Benedictine priest, the monks would educate all three. Vic got as far as selecting a monastic name (Hildebrand, the birth name of Pope Gregory VII, a canonized saint who led the monastic “reform” movement in its seizure of the papacy in the eleventh century). However, Vic somehow got out of this obligation, and Joe was ordained as a Benedictine priest. I don’t know any more details than that.
I had a jacket just like the one that Fr. Edwin is wearing.
My dad worked with Fr. Edwin Watson (who died in 1999) for many years on promotional materials and funding campaigns for Maur Hill. In 2003 Maur Hill merged with Mount St. Scholastica Academy. The new school is called Maur Hill-Mount Academy.
I saw my cousins on very few occasions until I was MUCH older. My dad, who was living in Connecticut by then, and I went to Trenton for my Aunt Margaret’s funeral in 2007 and Uncle Vic’s funeral in 2009. Those occasions have been described here. I got better acquainted with some of them at my dad’s funeral. This blog entry is devoted to that occasion, which took place in suburban Kansas City. Since then I have communicated off and on with Charlie via email.
As far as I know, there has never been a family reunion for the Wavadas or even anything like a party that celebrated anything besides death.
