Dale and Kathryn Chetister

I don't recall that my family was very close to the family of my grandmother Vivian's brother, Great-Uncle Dale and Great-Aunt Kate Chetister. All through my life, I knew them, of course. If I were to see them out and about, I would recognize them. But we didn’t see them very often. They lived in their neighborhood in Rossford, and we lived in ours in Oregon.  (My grandparents Vivian and Ed’s house was three blocks away from ours.)

I don’t ever remember being at Uncle Dale’s house. A year or so before she passed away, my dad and I paid a visit to Aunt Kate at home. She was in her late 80s. I think I drove, but he provided he directions. I did not recognize the outside or inside of the house.

My dad admitted that he did not spend much time with them either, as a child or an adult. When he was a teenager and drove his own automobile, he would lift weights with Uncle Dale, and he went hunting with him a few times. Although Uncle Dale was not a large man (I think of him as being smaller in stature than I), he was a very strong man.

I only once remember meeting one of their three adult children. It was a summer—maybe early autumn—day. I was just coming home from playing or school. I remember that it was a pleasant day. My dad was in the driveway talking to a woman he introduced as his cousin Christine Chetister. As she died in May of 1975, this was mostly likely the summer or fall of 1974. I remember thinking that she was pretty, kind of shy and young. As she was born in 1947, she would have been 26 years old. That was the only time I remember meeting her. I don’t recall having ever met either of her siblings Connie (who has four children) or Alan, who was the youngest. There was another boy named Duane, who they called Sonny. He died in 1948 at age four, long before I was born.

I was more familiar with my grandfather Ed Metzker’s sister’s family. Grandpa had one younger sister—Doris. She married a farmer named John Meier and moved to Bowling Green, Ohio. They had three children—Beverly, Richard and Ronald. I mostly remember that Ron lived was kind of a clown who lived with his parents long after his siblings married and moved out. They had a recreation room with a pool table, and we would play.

I do recall when Uncle Dale and Aunt Kate attended my older brother Jeff’s first wedding in 1983. They were laughing hysterically about their new Buick. It had childproof doors that they had not yet figured out, so Aunt Kate was locked in all the time.

After my grandmother Vivian died in 1976, and my parents divorced and subsequently remarried that same year, my mother still maintained a relationship with my great-grandmother and made sure that my brother, sister and I did, too. (As much as she could, that is. Jeff was 16, driving, and owned a car; I was 13; and Michelle was 11. We were all fairly independent in many ways.) Michelle and I enjoyed visiting with Leta and over the years made many different visits, sometimes with our mother, or on our own, or with our friends. Once I could drive, we went several times a year.

Upon Vivian’s death, whether he was willing or not, Uncle Dale became responsible for Leta. For him, this meant visiting at least twice per week, doing her shopping, taking her to doctor appointments and for other activities, and managing what remained of her finances. (When she went into the nursing home, she was required to forfeit all of her assets, as well as her social security and any pension she may have been receiving. Before she did this, she and my grandmother moved some of her money into an account in my grandmother’s name, so she would still have some ready cash as she needed it.)

As far as I know, Uncle Dale fully accepted his responsibility. I remember that there was some talk about how big of a challenge it was for him to travel from his home in Rossford to the nursing home in Oregon. (The residence was only a couple of miles from my grandparents’ house, making it easier for my grandmother to pop over at a moment’s notice.) However, Uncle Dale retired in 1972, four years before my grandmother’s death, so working every day did not hamper him. Also, as I realized later, Rossford isn’t that far away.

After Leta died in 1985, I don’t remember being in contact with Uncle Dale and Aunt Kate much at all. We had a couple of weddings in my immediate family (both my brother and sister were married in the 1980s that they attended, and of course, my grandfather Ed’s funeral in 1996. My dad and his siblings paid a visit here and there to them that I would hear about in passing. By this time, I was an adult. Although I visited my home community, I no longer lived there. I moved away for college and then graduate school. When Uncle Dale died in 1998, I was living in California, so I wasn’t able to attend the funeral. There was the visit with Aunt Kate a year or so before she died, so I could gather information from her about her own and Uncle Dale’s relationship with Leta. She was nearly 90 at the time, but remembered several things, which are being incorporated into the book. I am glad for that conversation. Since then I have spoken with both of my dad’s surviving cousins—Connie and Alan—who also provided their own stories. All this information, all this family history is being woven into the story of the life of the remarkable woman we all have in common. We are the fortunate ones.