Clarence Sylvester

My father, Clarence Kexel would have been 111 years old today. No, he didn’t leave me a magic ring.

Tuesday, October 19, 1909

In the tiny, unincorporated village of Soperton, Wisconsin (a “suburb” of Wabeno), John and Emma Kexel welcomed the arrival of their seventh child, a son, whom they named Clarence Sylvester. The family was not rich, but neither were they impoverished. John and Emma owned their own home on a half-acre lot…plenty of room for a garden, ducks, and chickens. John worked in town at the Connor Company Lumber mill. His eldest son Ferdinand also worked for the Connor company, but at the logging camp. Fishing, hunting, and running trap lines in the surrounding Nicolet National Forest augmented the family table and finances.

Clarence was a bright boy, doing well in school and especially at mathematics. He was also expected to assist in maintaining the family homestead with chores and with money from his jobs. Shortly after his tenth birthday, his mother woke him at 4:00 AM. Clarence caught a ride with the driver of the milk wagon to the lumber camp. As a cook’s helper, it was his job to stir up the fire in the huge iron stoves, light the lanterns, haul in the milk, start the coffee, and start cracking eggs…lots and lots of eggs. It was also his job to pull the sheet off the copper kettle of the previous day’s pancake batter, which would be used as the starter for the day’s pancakes, and skim off any insects or rodents that had found their way into the pot. As soon as the kitchen was warm, he would be joined by the cook who fried up mounds of potatoes left from the previous evening, rashers of bacon, scrambled eggs, and stacks of pancakes.

At first light, the breakfast bell was rung, and the loggers, all 60 of them filed silently into the mess hall and their assigned seats. No talking was the rule – break it, and you didn’t eat. Clarence’s job was to keep the trays of hot food, pitchers of coffee and milk coming. After the men had cleared their plates and filed silently out, Clarence collected the dirty cups, plates, and tableware and began the chore of washing up the tin utensils, which also had to be thoroughly dried to prevent rust. Then he had to place each table setting back at the correct seat at the long tables. Each man knew his own cup and plate and getting the placement wrong would earn Clarence a box on the ears from the cook. By 8:30, the kitchen would be in order with preparations for the noon meal ready to go. Clarence just had time for the half-hour walk back into town to be on time for school at 9:00.

Monday, through Friday, this was his routine. On Friday mornings, he would be paid – the princely sum of $1.00. Fifty cents of this would go into a savings account at the bank. Twenty-five cents went to his parents for room and board, Ten cents was for his tithe at church. The remaining fifteen cents was his to spend as he pleased. Clarence was not only bright, he was frugal. His lumber camp earnings along with the bounty he received from the pelts garnered by his traplines slowly added up. By the time he graduated from high school, he had $1,000.00 in savings. His goal was a university education, and four years of tuition, books, room and board at Madison would require $2,000.00. Unfortunately, his older brother Ted also had college ambitions and $1,000.00. Their father John decreed that Clarence’s savings would go to pay for Ted’s college education.

Disappointed, Clarence attempted to join his younger brothers Francis and Vincent in joining the Army, but was rejected due to his less than perfect vision. It was 1936 and the Great Depression was in full swing. Jobs were hard to find. Clarence found employment with the Civilian Conservation Corps, where, due to his lumber camp experience, he was made one of the camp cooks. It was also while in the CCC that he would meet the woman he would marry. Quarantined in the Sparta Hospital with a case of the mumps, Clarence spied the petite nurse’s aide, Catherine Flock on his first day and was instantly smitten. She, of course, would have nothing to do with him until her Aunt Clara intervened. Their courtship lasted two years and crossed three counties. They were married June 18, 1938. Laid off from his job in the foundry at J.I.Case just two days after their marriage, Clarence and Catherine spent the summer on a hitchhiking honeymoon traveling from Racine to Sparta and LaCrosse, to St. Paul, to Gilman, to Wabeno, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, to Door County and back to Racine, where Clarence found a job driving city bus with the Racine Motorcoach Company.

Just over a year later, August 1939, Clarence was eagerly anticipating the birth of their first child, He had borrowed a co-worker’s Buick to transport his laboring wife to the hospital. Unfortunately, the child, a boy who was to have been named Carl, never drew breath. Clarence was so upset when he left the hospital, he crashed his friend’s car. A year after that, their daughter Carole. In 1942, their son Tom was born, followed fourteen months later by Ken. Sue was born in 1945. Clarence’s 4F rating combined with his employment in a reserve industry (one deemed essential to the war effort) kept him out of the military during WWII. In the years between 1945 and 1953, he and Catherine lost three babies. In 1953, Kathy was born. In 1956, Mike, who was born with a genetic condition now called Fragile X Syndrome arrived, completing the family.

Although Clarence, an extrovert, loved his job, bus driving was not a lucrative career, especially for a man with six children, one of whom was disabled. He tried a number of side jobs, from delivering sandwiches to taverns, upholstery, and selling shoes from a catalogue. Clarence was never very successful in any of those ventures. In 1961, at the age of 52, he had his first heart attack, ending his bus driving career and plunging the family into poverty. From then on, until he finally qualified for disability benefits in 1974, he held a series of jobs, each of which ended with a subsequent heart attack. Clarence’s final heart attack occurred on January 28, 1978. He was just 68 years old.