Good Night, Sweetheart, Good Night: The Love Story of Ray Harrison Lillibridge and Marguerite Jenike Lillibridge

By James Lowell Hall

While growing up in South Dakota, Ray Lillibridge saw Sioux Indian chief Sitting Bull, witnessed the Children’s Blizzard of 1888, and lived through prairie fires, grasshopper infestations, and times of want. But when he moved to Delavan, Illinois, in the early 1900s to live with his uncle, he had no idea that destiny was already guiding him to the love of his life. In a compilation of letters, recollections, and photographs, James Lowell Hall leads others through the love story of Ray Lillibridge and Marguerite Jenike as they courted each other, fell in love, corresponded, and bridged the ten-mile gap between their homes. The book gives a glimpse of life and hardships in America over one hundred years ago, recounting Ray’s internal struggles, Marguerite’s devotion to her faith and family, and the legacy they left behind. Good Night, Sweetheart, Good Night shares the true love story of a young couple at the turn of the twentieth century as they created a life together.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Mar 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483447278

Book preview

GOOD NIGHT,

SWEETHEART,

GOOD NIGHT

The Love Story of Ray Harrison Lillibridge and

Marguerite Jenike Lillibridge

JAMES LOWELL HALL

Copyright © 2016 James Lowell Hall.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means---whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic---without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-4728-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-4727-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016903033

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 03/23/2016

CONTENTS

Introduction

Editor's Note

Chapter 1 Courting, 1913--14

Chapter 2 Marriage

Chapter 3 Multitasking: Growing Up in the Lillibridge House

Chapter 4 Marguerite Jenike Lillibridge: Teacher, Wife, Mother, Matriarch

Appendix 1: Biographies of Family

Appendix 2: Additional Letters, Diary Entries, and Newspaper Clippings

Excerpts from Daughter Ruth (Lillibridge) Hall's Five-Year Diary

Epilogue

About the Author

Image1RayHarrisonMargueriteLillibridge1914.tif

Ray Harrison Lillibridge and Marguerite Jenike Lillibridge

To the memory of two extraordinary people:

Ray Harrison Lillibridge and Marguerite Jenike Lillibridge.

Home ... say that's some charmed word. Through that one syllable thrills untold melody. The sound of well-known footsteps and the voices of undying affection ... Home, upon that word drops the sunshine of beauty and the shadow of tender sorrows, the reflection of 10,000 voices and fond memories.

---Ray Harrison Lillibridge

Image2margueriteteaching1911.jpg

Marguerite Jenike (top row middle) teaching her first class at Griesemer School, 1911

Image3RayHLillibridgestanding.jpg

Ray H. Lillibridge (standing)

Image4goodnightsweetheartgoodnightletter.jpg

Letter that inspired the title Good Night, Sweetheart, Good Night

INTRODUCTION

What follows is a story of two lovers and their legacy of an amazing family. Ray Harrison Lillibridge and Marguerite Jenike met and fell in love in Delavan, Illinois, in the early 1900s. Marguerite taught school outside of Hopedale, ten miles from Delavan. Sometimes those ten miles seemed to be a continent away, with muddy roads and horse-drawn carriages for transportation.

On Fridays, Ray would drive to Hopedale, pick up Marguerite, and bring her back to stay with her parents in Delavan for the weekend. On Sunday evenings, he would take her back to the Detmers' farm, where she paid two dollars a week to board. She only received a salary of forty-five dollars per month. On weekdays, Marguerite would walk or ride a horse the two miles from the Detmers' to her one-room schoolhouse and light a fire of coal in the potbellied stove to warm the school before the children arrived.

The 1913/14 school year was her most rewarding year of teaching. She loved her students, and they loved her. When the weather was good, she loved walking through fields of wildflowers to the school, as evidenced by the following excerpt from one of her letters: Yesterday, we went 'flower hunting' at noon time. The fields and woods and hills look so pretty with spring beauties just covering them. We gathered flowers enough to make the top of the library look like a flower garden.

She loved her little schoolhouse. Ray admitted to being jealous of her school. He called it her old hinky dinky school house. As time went by, this moniker became a term of endearment, and Ray requested a picture of Marguerite and her hinky dinky school house.

Ray had a busy contracting firm in Delavan. He described his work in his letters, including winning the contract to build the Delavan Library. No matter how late he got in after driving Marguerite back to the Detmers' on Sunday night, he got up early the next morning to work.

Sometimes he had to answer questions about how late they had been out. He did this in his own way, only releasing the information he chose and never telling a falsehood. In one letter, he wrote, H. B. seen me tonight and he says, 'Ray you keep you girl up all night last night?' Told him I didn't know what he was talking about. Please explain. And he didn't say a word. You see that's the best way to do it, Marguerite.

Ray grew lonesome for his girl---and Marguerite for her boy---during the week. They would write letters to each other on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, which they received on Wednesdays and Thursdays. They grew attached to these letters. Marguerite sometimes refused to go out, choosing instead to stay home, read Ray's letter, and write a reply. Ray would not go to supper until he had read Marguerite's letter.

The letters capture the times and small-town life in America prior to World War I. Ray described fighting a prairie fire and Marguerite's initiation into the Eastern Star, a Masonic order. He wrote, How do you like being an Eastern Star Marguerite? Expect it was great dope ... and was the goat hungry and hard to ride?

Marguerite described climbing the cob shed with her students and using tree branches to swing down. She wrote of her experience, At last she gained the summit, and during the breathless stillness which followed, she became courageous, gave a mighty plunge, accidentally seizing the right limb, descending to the ground in safety. And the green grass grew around.

Ray grew up in the Dakotas, not far from where Laura Ingalls Wilder lived during the same time. He lived in Plankinton, Dakota Territory, during the Great Die Up, the winter of 1886, when 80 percent of the cattle in the West died during the brutal winter. He was a hundred miles away from the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. As a boy, he saw the great Sioux Indian chief Sitting Bull. He was there in 1888 during the Children's Blizzard. He lived through epic prairie fires, tornadoes, infestations of grasshoppers that blotted out the sky, unending dust storms, droughts, and times of want, when all the family had to eat were tomatoes and cabbage.

Ray moved to Delavan, Illinois, to live with his aunt and uncle at age fifteen. His father had disappeared, and his mother, Allie, did not have the means to care for all of her children. She moved from the Dakotas with her younger children to Delavan, Wisconsin, where she stayed with her parents. Ray and his sister Ella, the two oldest, were sent to live with Allie's sister, Neelie Allen, in Illinois.

Ray had to work for his keep, and thus, his formal schooling ended at age fourteen. Despite this, he had beautiful handwriting, was able to figure all the expenses for his business, and learned to draw architectural plans.

Ray's letters show down-home, folksy wisdom and humor, as in the following excerpt:

But then all's well that ends well, this is a mighty fine old world after all, if you just make yourself think so. Look happy, even if things are going against you, and that will make others happy and pretty soon all will be smiling and then there is no telling what couldn't be done.

Of all the time during the week when I'm alone, this is the nicest, because ... why I can have a talk with my little girl; my sweetheart, which is the next best to being with her. And perhaps she is glad to hear from a certain fellow. At least he has many, many reasons to think so, and to think is to believe. And believing is almost the truth. What she can see to care about him is beyond me. But then there is a lot of miracles and unexplainable things happen in this world, and Ray only hopes and wishes this were one of them.

Do you really truly love Ray? Ray loves Marguerite so it's mutual little pal. It's all right honey. I guess nobody cares, and I guess we don't care if they do. And you can tell me just as many times as you please and more ... that something that you are going to whisper in my ear, Ray never gets tired of hearing it. Wish I was with you so you could right now. Anyway near enough to crowd a cigarette paper if it were in your pocket.

Home ... say that's some charmed word. Through that one syllable thrills untold melody. The sound of well-known footsteps and the voices of undying affection ... Home, upon that word drops the sunshine of beauty and the shadow of tender sorrows, the reflection of 10,000 voices and fond memories.

Honey, I wish you were with me now, this minute, right now. It wouldn't be no bushel of love, but a whole elevator and then some.

Marguerite was moved by Ray's description of home and wrote, That was the sweetest verse about 'home.' I read the letter over and over. Good night Ray, Your Marguerite 'mein lieges kind' (sweet child of mine).

Ray's speech echoed his upbringing in the West; for example, he used the words hoss and pardner. His writing is sprinkled with colloquialisms that add spice to the reading of his letters, as in the following:

Hows [sic] ever little thing been today dear?

Say little pal that was a close shave making that train last night, wasn't it. When we get all in, down and out, and have to hit the road, will [sic] know how to hop them won't we.

Dick made a little better time coming back. He must have been thinking of his oats.

Dick is a good old hoss, even if he was boney.

Tell you pardner, am strong for my Marguerite.

Say honey wish you would take a little time off some time and kind of stick around with me just like a rubber band because I think that would be awful nice.

I am in love ... Marguerite would you believe it, with the nicest, squarest, little girl in the whole world.

Say Marguerite you had ought to see my eye, it's a peach. I am proud of it, can't notice it much when it's open, but when it's closed it looks like I had been kicked by a mule. You know dear that they can kick hard enough to Knock all the Soda out of a Biscuit without breaking the crust.

Spect you think, honey, I am trying to jolly you, kid you along a little. Why be a poor hand at it, don't know what it is. Never tried it on anyone but myself. You see in a roundabout way I am doing that very thing right now. So don't mind if I get to raving once in a while.

Gee but I am hungry. Wait a second, dear, until I pull my belt up another notch. There that's better.

So you see Hon I am straiter [sic] than a string around a bundle.

Be good, and if you can't be good ... why just be as good as you can.

The couple's daughter Donna (Lillibridge) Diekhoff describes trying to correct her father when he would say idear in place of idea, but he went on saying idear. It was just the way he spoke. He spoke in an eastern way, like John F. Kennedy, she says. Ray's father, John, grew up in upstate New York.

Marguerite described happenings from school in her letters, as in the following:

Last night, as we were getting ready to come home from school, an old tramp came along. It was just about dusk, and if you never saw two frightened beings, you would of then. We said, good night, and you would have thought it was Disbrow racing, if you'd seen old topsy tearing up the dust.

Road home on horseback alone tonight. And if a horse ever did run spasmodic this one did. It was bound it was going to gallup [sic] and it did, except when I pulled it back. Was some jolted up when I got home. Couldn't speak the English language. It sounded like the imitation of some stutterer. When I got off the saddle, it turned around. Pretty narrow escape. He ... haw ... hawaw.

She also described her joys and worries of teaching.

But there is always hope in youth for advancement and training. Sometimes it is so discouraging when you need to do over it all again. But then, where is a pleasure and satisfaction, later on, in knowing the child grow in mind and morals, and feeling you may have helped some, if only a trifle ... Patience Ray, sometimes, I think I haven't any left, but then from some invisible power, I get a fresh supply.

Sickness and infections were everyday occurrences. At one time, all of Marguerite's students and the Detmers, whose house she boarded in, were all ill. Marguerite described many remedies.

Just prepared a raw onion with vinegar, salt and pepper for myself.

have taken a bottle of pinex ... half full and a large dose of phosphate of soda for rheumatism.

I'm going to take a hot lemonade and a hot foot bath.

Mrs D mixed turpentine and goose grease and applied it to my neck and chest with a woolen cloth. Took also many other remedies, etc.

On March 16, 1914, Ray added an additional page to his letter, as follows:

Mrs Stone died last night at 12 o'clock.

Ethyl Orndorff died tonight about 10 o'clock. She took down with the mumps last Thursday and took more cold yesterday which made it settle in her spine. It doesn't seem right that a young girl should be taken away ... When she would have had the best part of her life to live yet.

Marguerite replied,

That's too bad about Ethel. She was a dear girl, but there is one who always knows best. It teaches us to prepare and be ready for the time when we shall be taken also. Oh, if we could always keep that in mind. I'm sure all would lead different lives. I know I'd be different in a great many ways. The Lord is so good to me, Ray. I forget a time is coming, when I shall be held accountable for what I've done and for a great many things I have not done. He has been so good to me, and I can't fully appreciate it all. The folks are all well, and we don't have to suffer from want, and then, dear, I have you. Surely we ought to be exceedingly thankful.

As time went by, Marguerite told Ray he wrote cold letters: I am wondering Ray if you are sitting in your Morris chair by the fire, resting comfortably, smoking your dreamy old pipe, and reading. Or if you are sparing just one moment, to think of a girl, who loves you.

Ray responded with poetry, as follows:

While you think of me in sorrow

as I wait the long tomorrow

That I must pass till you come back again

for all my hopes are wreath around you

Since the day my heart first found you

all the time will be dark and grey

Till you come back again.

Sweetheart trust you don't have to warm this letter, if you could read my thoughts you never would have to.

Marguerite wrote back,

Of all my scholars, Ray, there is one I can't help liking the best. Ray he is the dearest boy to me. I know it's not customary to spoil them, but I must, just a trifle, dear. He's well worth it. Sometimes I'm even tempted to kiss him. May I Ray? Thank you. I knew you would not object. I'd love to now, right away, but he is not here, so I'm going to save it until his class recites. Shall I tell you who he is? I'll suppose you are a trifle interested so I'll tell all if you promise never to tell. Really you won't? Cross your heart? All right. It's the boy that whispered something in my ear once (for the first time) that I can never forget. It was I love you, and then he kissed her on her hair, a soft light caress. But I'll not forget dear. Do you know now? Tell him dear from me I love you.

Ray replied,

Talk about being pleased, when I went to the post office tonight, is no name for it. And when Ray read your letter Marguerite, the room wasn't hardly large enough to hold him. As it was he danced a jig around the table. And he gave that fellow your message right away. And if you could have seen him that moment and watch [sic] the smile come over his face and seeing [sic] how happy he looked. Perhaps you to [sic] would've felt the same way. That was sure some letter (teacher)!

Marguerite said,

I don't think anyone can come up to my man. But, dear, I told you that so often you are tired of hearing it. Only every time it becomes more emphatic. Oh, Ray, if anyone deserves the best in life, and to be happy, it is you Ray. You are always so unselfish and thoughtful to others. It has always been so. Honey, I wish I was only, just a little worthy of a fellow like you.

The following pages reprint the letters of Marguerite and Ray, from a time when courting was an art. One can see their hopes and dreams while watching them grow closer over the course of the year. Following two years of courtship, they were married about one hundred years ago as of this writing, on June 9, 1915. On June 21, 1915, they moved into a house Ray built for his bride. They raised seven children and, over thirty-five years of marriage, lived in the same home. Over all that time, it has been said that they never once argued.

Subsequent chapters will cover Marguerite's description of their courting and marriage; their daughter Ruth Hall's recollections of what it was like growing up in the Lillibridge home and how seven children lived in the home and lived through World War II and the Great Depression; and Marguerite Lillibridge's hundred years of wisdom.

Appendixes include short biographies of the children and other family members for reference to help readers keep all the characters of this family drama straight. Newspaper accounts, subsequent letters, and diary entries are included to fill out the story. Finally, an epilogue appears at the end.

I did much of the planning and editing of this book in the Lillibridges' house, the California bungalow Ray built for his sweetheart a hundred years ago. My wife, Jane, claims to have heard footsteps and smelled brief wafts of tobacco smoke passing while in the back bedroom, which was Ray's. Sometimes when I sleep in his back bedroom, just before dawn, I have dreams of Ray and Marguerite---dreams that stay vivid even after I wake.

As I sit in the home's den, on Ray's Morris chair, I can feel his presence to this day. In my mind, I hear Marguerite say to Ray, as she wrote in one of her letters, I can imagine you sitting in your easy chair leaning back half dosing, smoking your pipe, and probably reading a magazine. I'm hoping your mind wandered a little from the story. No doubt Ray's mind wandered frequently to Marguerite while he sat in this chair.

As you read these letters of love and the oral history Marguerite recorded, you will grow to know these extraordinary people and learn what small-town life was like a hundred years ago. I suspect your mind will wander back many times to these sweethearts after reading their tale.

Marguerite loved and respected her Ray, and Ray adored his Marguerite.

Good night, sweethearts. Good night!

James L. Hall

June 9, 2015

EDITOR'S NOTE

I have kept the letters' punctuation and spelling as they appear in the originals. For example, Ray addressed Marguerite by writing Marguerite dear, followed by a period, and Marguerite addressed Ray by writing Dear Ray, followed by a comma. I included these openings as they appear in the original handwritten letters. Ray's use of pardner and other colloquialisms remains, and the language adds spice to our understanding of this amazing man.

CHAPTER 1

COURTING, 1913--14

Raymore, Missouri

Sunday

August 10, 1913

Marguerite dear.

How are you pardner? Gee but it seems a long, long time since I have seen you honey. One day just is like a year but then one half of the time is over now and if nothing unexpected happens am sure everything will be all right so I can be back home Thursday. Have been wondering ever day what my little girl has been doing? Nothing so awful bad I know.

Got here okay Thursday afternoon and started on the house about 4 o'clock. Tomorrow I am going to start framing the rafters so you see in a couple more days it will look very much like a house.

Say Marguerite, have you got time to stop a minute because I have a little story to tell you it won't take very long dear because you know just what it is. Only it seems like years since I have told you. Was working on the house last Friday afternoon when one of the neighbors had one of the biggest fires I ever seen. It didn't burn his house or farm, but it took several haystacks and about 200 acres of pasture sleek and clean. We all stopped work and fought fire with wet sacks etc. It sure was hot work for a while. At the present time I am siting [sic] on the porch with a board on my knees writing or trying to, a letter to the dearest little girl in the whole world.

Harold and I have slept outside ever night. It's the only time you can cool out down here. We'll see you soon honey.

believe me as ever yours,

R.H.L.

Delavan, Illinois

September 2, 1913

Marguerite dear.

How are you honey ... how's my girl? That's what I've been wondering all evening, feeling kind of lonesome. Say you have just a little lonesome also? Anyhow dear because this is been [sic] one of the longest evenings Ray has ever put in, and all long, long, while. Hardly know what to do with myself. Seems like something is missing. Can you guess what it is? If you can't, why don't believe I'll tell you ... so there. Gee, but I was glad to see you last night kid. Only it was kind of at a distance. Anyhow it was better than not at all.

How do you like being an Eastern Star¹ Marguerite? Expect it was great dope ... and was the goat hungry and hard to ride? ... but that wouldn't make any difference with you dear because you can get by any place.

Went to the picture show tonight. The rest of the time have been spent on my front porch trying to cool off. Say but it's been hot today. Hot is no name for it. But then I know my little girl is tired tonight too after her long walk and being up