Catherine Ann

Saturday, October 21, 1916.

Casper Flock was concerned. His 21-year old wife Mary had just gone into labor. Together, they had spent the first year-and-a-half of their marriage in a tiny cabin on his father’s property as Casper managed the farm. He had sent word to the main house to send for the doctor, but so far, no one had come. And then there was no more time. Casper delivered his baby daughter, whom he named Anna. Late in the evening, the doctor finally arrived. He was none too sober. He checked over the new mother and infant girl and filled out the necessary information for the birth certificate, checking the box for “male” and writing in “unnamed.” Officially, Anna Catherina Flock was an unnamed, male child.

It didn’t take long for Mary to tire of the heavy German pronunciation of her daughter’s name, “Uh-nah” so she changed it to Catherine Anne. (Years later, this would prove to be a problem) Two years later, little Catherine would be joined by a brother, Phillip and two years after that by her twin sisters Marie and Eleanor. Life in the little cabin was getting crowded. But it was soon to change. In May, 1920, Catherine’s grandfather Herman Flock died and Casper’s stepmother Magdalena evicted the little family. They moved to a farm in Hall’s Valley, near Melvina, where Richard and Ruth were born.

Casper lost that farm to foreclosure. Catherine and her siblings were sent to live with her Willger grandparents in Sparta while Casper and Mary proved up a parcel of cut-over land in Gilman, 100 miles away. Catherine’s grandparents were stern Germans. Catherine started her education in the convent school, where the nuns were just as stern. Naturally left-handed, she soon learned through many cracks of a ruler across her knuckles to write with her right hand. She also learned to watch over her brothers and sisters. On a hot summer’s day, when she was supposed to be babysitting, she wandered off to a grocery store owned by a cousin where she hoped to be treated to an ice cream. Instead, she was sent immediately home. As part of her punishment, that evening, she was forced to stand in the doorway of the dining room to watch her family eat before being sent to bed without a supper.

Once a dwelling had been built on their Gilman property, Casper and Mary sent for their children. The house was little more than a shack, set on rock piers with no foundation or basement, but they were together again. The property was 80 acres. Before a house could be built, before a plow could furrow a field, all the stumps had to be dynamited. Dynamiting the stumps sometimes set the roots ablaze and the smoldering fire would spread from one root system to another, exploding into living flame when close enough to the surface. On some days, wisps of smoke from the burning roots would drift up between the rough floorboards of the house. Twice, forest fires swept the region, but the little shanty was spared by being in the middle of cleared land.

By 1932, Catherine had two more brothers, Theodore and Leo (Pat). In January, on an evening when her parents were out visiting, the gas lantern in the kitchen exploded. Catherine got all seven of her siblings safely out of the house, where they stood barefoot in the snow, watching their home burn to the ground. The family lost everything, including all the canned food meant to see them through the winter that had been stored beneath the beds. When the ashes cooled, Catherine found her piggy bank. The amber glass pig had melted into a solid blob, forever encasing the few copper pennies that had been stored within.

Casper and Mary built a new house. The children helped by wrapping rags around their hands and carried the sharp-edged tiles to the builders. It was in this house that Catherine’s remaining siblings, Agnes, Robert, and Caroline were born. Catherine became a nurse’s aide in the Sparta hospital upon graduation from high school.

It was at the hospital that Catherine would meet the man she would marry, although she was not impressed with him at their first meeting. Clarence Kexel was quarantined in the hospital with the mumps. Before being discharged, he asked Catherine for a date. She refused.

Now Catherine was just a little bit of a party girl. In between Sparta and Fort McCoy was a bar and dance hall. Friday and Saturday nights it was a lively place, frequented by National Guardsmen and members of the Civilian Conservation Corps stationed at Fort McCoy. Catherine and her fellow aides and nurses would make the drive just about every weekend where they would dance the night away — or at least until the last minute before they had to leave to make it back to their dorm before curfew. However, after Clarence was discharged from the hospital, Catherine no longer had any dance partners. Clarence was the camp cook with the CCC and he had made it known that the pretty and petite nurse’s aide was his, and his alone. And no one messed with the camp cook.

Disappointed over this turn of events, Catherine left Sparta for LaCrosse where she worked first as a housemaid for a wealthy family and then as a nurse’s aide at St. Joseph’s Nursing Home. After she and Clarence had become engaged, Catherine moved to Milwaukee, working in another hospital and living with an aunt while Clarence worked in the foundry at J.I. Case in Racine. They were married on June 18, 1938 and spent three months on a hitchhiking honeymoon, staying with relatives and sleeping in barns…and for one night, in the Richland County Jail. Picked up by the sheriff, they had been taken to his home and treated to a delicious supper. As the sheriff had no prisoners in the jail at the time, his wife pushed a couple of cots together in a cell and furnished them with sheets and blankets. Catherine and Clarence spent the night in the unlocked cell and were treated to a hearty breakfast, then sent on their way with a hamper full of sandwiches. After traveling through Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Upper Peninsula, they returned to make their home in Racine.

Catherine’s first child, was stillborn in August, 1939. Her daughter Carole was born in August, 1940. Tom came along in 1942, Ken in 1943, Sue in 1945. Then Catherine had three late miscarriages. Kathy was born in 1953 and Mike in 1956. Mike’s birth was traumatic. Much like her first son, Mike presented with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and at first, he was not breathing. Then Catherine hemorrhaged and her heart stopped. Both were revived, but both developed pneumonia. Catherine was hospitalized for a month; Mike for three. Not long after he came home it became apparent that like Catherine’s brothers Phillip, Theodore, Leo, and Robert, Mike had Fragile X Syndrome.

Throughout her marriage, Catherine worked, on-and-off as a third-shift nurse’s aide at St. Mary’s Hospital. In 1962, after Clarence had his first heart attack, Catherine needed to be home to care for him so she became a day care provider in her home, and later for the children of a college professor. On January 21, 1978, in the midst of a blizzard, Catherine had a heart attack and was transported to St. Luke’s Hospital. Exactly one week later, Clarence had his final heart attack and was being treated just down the hall from Catherine when he passed away.

After recovering from open heart surgery, Catherine took a job as a kindergarten teacher’s aide at Winslow School, a position she held for three years. In 1995, Catherine and Mike moved from Racine to Marshfield to become her daughter Kathy’s next door neighbor where she lived until her passing in 2008 at the age of 91.

Catherine coped with heartache, loss and poverty throughout her life, yet she never lost a spirit of hope and a heart for others. Even into the 1950s, hobos would find their way to her back door for a sandwich and a glass of milk. She always saw the good in others, even when they were taking advantage of her. She had an unconquerable joy of living, and even up to her last days could be heard to say, “God is good.”