The Orphan That Danced At the White House

By Jenni Guenther

Based on the true story of one of the first female labor union presidents in Wisconsin. The incredible journey of a first generation American woman from a founding Wisconsin family raising a daughter in the turmoil of the 1960s while trying to find her voice in the civil rights conflict. A Milwaukee mother discovers the pain and joy of helping women rise out of poverty.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781365785887

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The Orphan That Danced At the White House

The Orphan That Danced At The White House

Table of Contents

The Dance2

Politics Of The Typewriter18

Looking Glass Reflection Of The Past And Future31

Pregnancy And Health Insurance In the Workplace50

Social Change Of A Riot And An Invasion72

Hidden Cost Of Free College Tuition84

A Labor Union Materializes Overnight94

Learning To Lead A Labor Union109

The Act 10 Reflection125

Wisconsin Prison Welfare139

The Equity Challenge152

History Puzzle171

Raising A Union President's Daughter177

Consequences Of Change205

Befuddled Desegregation215

The Glass Ceiling230

Riot Anxiety Amid The Last Public Worker Strike238

A Time Of Change257

The Last Trip Home272

Dancing At The White House277

Silent Legacy Of The Typewriter283

The Dance

Whirling around the White House dance floor Glinda could think of nothing except how happy she was in the moment.  The faces of dignities and the President passed by as she waltzed.  All eyes fell on her as the center of attention to celebrate the Wisconsin orphan that overcame the many barriers of polio to dace at the White House.  She was the belle of the ball for a few precious moments to get the wish she wanted most in life fulfilled.  It was a magical night filled with wonder to live the dream of a democracy for an ordinary Wisconsin farm girl to have the honor of the first dance at the White House.  A fresh blanket of snow covering the White House grounds outside the windows glistened in the full moon light.  She was wearing her new ball gown made especially for this very special dance.  Silver beading on the soft blue silk fabric shimmered on the dance floor.  If there was never going to be another tomorrow she had achieved the one thing she wanted most in life to dance at the White House.

The harsh crack of a voice tore apart her dream, Glinda your a crippled polio girl. You ain't never going to dance at the White House.  No one will ever marry you.  No one wants a cripple.  You will never drive a car or be like the rest of us.  You are going to die and be buried in the dirt of Wisconsin like everyone else including the cows.  Your born in this state, your bones stay in this state.  That is the rule.  You can not change the rules.  You are a stupid, foolish girl from a family that does not understand money is everything.  Being rich is the most important thing in life.

Glinda was snapped back into the cruel reality of her ordinary life on a rural Wisconsin farm that was on the other side of the world from the White House.

Her legs strapped into the heavy braces that allowed her to walk were reminders that she could only dream to dance.  The two steps from her grandmother's porch to reach the soft grass below were beyond her ability to walk down alone.  Polio had ravaged her fragile small body.  Her feet were smooth like a baby because she never got to walk around barefooted.  The joints on her hands were swollen and distorted.  Her arms had barely the muscle to lift a glass.  The cool summer breeze on a beautiful day was of no comfort to her.  She had another bad night like hundreds before suffering in constant pain.   She could not leave the porch to play with the other kids running in the field.  Today she did not have the energy to be carried off the porch to walk the few feet to visit her favorite cow in the barn.

She was getting stronger everyday or so her grandmother told her.  She knew her body was still so weak.  In her heart she felt the many medical treatments were not working.  Her lone rag doll tucked softly under her arm that just moment ago had been her dance partner seemed suddenly to have no life as it hung limp in her arms.  She felt tired and felt the pain in her legs like always.  Her eyes told the story of a child to fatigued to even smile.

The magic of her grandmother's porch was the only place she could pretend she could ever be like other kids.  As she watched her friends play she was angry, sad, hopeful and envious all at the same time.  It was hard for a child to workout their feelings of being so different from other children and sick all the time.  The porch had become a prison that her weak legs entrapped her in.  Few of the other children in the area stopped to play with her or even talk to her.  The children that passed by never saying a word was the cruelest part of being the little girl with polio.  She knew other children feared catching polio.  Their parents demonized Glinda and wanted her to be removed from the community to stop the polio outbreaks sweeping across the county.

She would never be like other children.  The experience alone of enduring polio set her apart, made her different and an outcast.

Glinda had seen other children die from polio including another little girl that had become her best friend while they were in the hospital together that would forever change her life.  Trapped together in a hospital the two girls had made big plans to see the world and visit all the places they read about in magazines.  One day over lunch her friend got sick and died a few hours later.  The family of her friend lived far away and never came to collect her remains.  She watched from the window of her hospital room as the body of her friend was taken away in a horse drawn wagon to be buried.  This was the harsh reality that people including children died from polio that had become a national epidemic.  Glinda could feel the fear in adults and other children not wanting to get too attached because there was a real chance she would die.

Tucked neatly in the bed for her doll was a list she kept of the people in the county that died or were crippled like her from the polio outbreak.  Glinda had survivors guilt after so many people including children her own age died from polio.  What made her worthy to live while others died haunted her for the rest of her life.

Glinda was absolutely positive she was going to dance at the White House someday for all of the polio victims that did not make it.

She had made a pact with her friend that died that if she survived she  would go to Washington DC to change the world so other children did not die of polio.  Glinda was not sure when or how that would happen but she was certain that was her future.  There was a confidence about Glinda in her difference from other children.  The polio that robbed of her legs had also given her an inner strength and peace.  If she had her way she would be the first female American President and climb the tallest mountain in the world.  These were incredibly big dreams for a little girl with polio in the 1930s living in rural Wisconsin.

Glinda's grandmother, Gertie, indulged her big dreams and encouraged her to read all she could and study.  Gertie sent away for mail order books and a friend that worked for the railroad brought papers from out of town for Glinda to read.

Gertie reminded Glinda often she descended from the real Wisconsin pioneers that settled the state and lived to dream the big dreams. Glinda had heard the tales of her female ancestors many times before.  The stories her grandmother told had become rather boring in Glinda's view.  She wanted to read about life in Washington DC and the theaters in New York.

Watching Glinda on the porch Gertie remembered her own big dreams.  She wanted to live in a big grand house in Milwaukee where the streets were rumored to be paved with silver and gold.  She longed to leave the rural farm life in Wisconsin far behind and dance at the mansions of the states celebrated wealthy families that she had only read about.  She remembered her own grandmother's big dream to own her own land.  Gertie's grandmother could not own land in her time as a woman under the law.

Gertie was among the very lucky women in her farming hamlet to have an education.  Her parents had donated a cow to provide free milk to a private school nearby that boarded wealthy children from Milwaukee.  She had been allowed to sit in the back of the classroom to attend classes at the private school for free.  As a teen she worked as a teaching assistant in a church owned school.  She had married into a fine family that like hers were descendants of the original state pioneers.  Gertie came from what today would be the upper middle class and she married within her own economic and social class as all well bred women of her generation were expected to do.

In a crush of reality Gertie was reminded she was just a simple country grandmother when the rest of her grandchildren arrived for Sunday dinner.  Behind the apron hung neatly over her good dress she had achieved much marching for the right of women to vote.  She had lived in Milwaukee in her moment to be more than a housewife and mother.  She smiled softly at her cat laid out on the rocking chair.  She could see the reflection of her own mother and grandmother sitting in that same chair telling the stories of their big dreams.

Gertie had taken piano and arts lessons in Milwaukee as young girl.  She had a passion for the arts.  Her home was covered in fine lace she loomed herself.  Linens made from flax grown on the farm were neatly pressed for the Sunday meal.  Her gardens were a splendor of colors.  Her clothes had been sewn on her foot pedaled sewing machine that was a rarer luxury.  Gertie's husband bought her the latest and best of every modern convenience including a car that she knew how to drive.  Their home showed their deep commitment and love for each other.  Gertie's husband prospered as a successful farmer.

Gertie would leave a place setting set for Glinda's mother that was too ill again to attend Sunday church service.  Gertie knew her daughter was far sicker than she was letting on.  Her daughter had been bed ridden for weeks.  Gertie had dared to interfere in her daughter's life insisting Glinda stay with her for the summer.

Gertie never doubted for a second that Glinda would survive polio and go on to achieve much more in life than she thought possible.  Glinda was stronger than most adults emotionally.  Gertie feared the real test for Glinda would be loosing her mother.  Gertie could see her daughter was not going to survive.  She feared Glinda was not prepared for her mother's death.

None of the doctors believed Glinda would ever be healthy enough again to walk without leg braces.  Gertie had tried everything, been to every doctor she could find hoping against hope that Glinda would be able to run again.  She had gotten letters from doctors all over the country encouraging her not to have much hope.  Still she believed in miracles and was convinced polio was not going to rob her granddaughter of a happy future.  Gertie found comfort in the fact that many women in the family had started off in life very sick.  Her understanding of the medical history in her family line would play a big part in Glinda's recovery.  It was her stories of the many female children in the family that were born with chronic health problems that made doctors look further into the puzzling health problems Glinda faced.

After the Sunday evening meal while cleaning the dishes Gertie told Glinda her favorite story of the first women in family that stepped foot in America long before Wisconsin was a state.  The first family of settlers did not come to America for fame or riches.  They came for the religious freedom.  The journey over the sea had not been easy.  They arrived dirty and poor with one lone trunk of goods to start a new life.  Their dream was a simple one to live in peace practicing their faith.

They came all the way to Wisconsin with the hope of youth to find a new and better life.  Gertie reminded Glinda that the earliest female settler in the family was just twenty with two kids when her husband died cutting down a tree.  The young widow, Christine, refused to give up on her husband's dream after their long journey to America.  Alone with winter approaching she used what little savings she had to hire help to work the farm.  Against the odds in 1820 Christine and her children survived.  She never remarried.  Her son grew into handsome man and helped build the township's first church. Christine lived long enough to hold her first granddaughter, an American born citizen.  She died in one of the many fever outbreaks that took many lives of the early settlers at just forty years old after years of suffering with the same health problems Glinda's own mother had.  Christine's great-grandson would be the first buried in the family cemetery plot.  His grandchildren would plant an Oak Tree in his honor that still stands today.  The exact location of the graves of Christine and her husband buried near the official boundaries of the cemetery would be lost to time.

Glinda enjoyed visiting the family cemetery where generations were buried.  She knew favorite pets of the family line had been secretly buried near the family plots.  The seemingly empty space between some trees she knew held remains of a favorite horse that died after reaching the cemetery carrying the body of his owner.  Glinda was in fact related to most to the people in the earliest graves in the town cemetery.  Small Wisconsin towns were like that as they were settled by large extended families.  Glinda's favorite family photo taken around the time of the civil war pictured four generations of her ancestors.  Glinda would remind Gertie she intended to have only daughters because raising sons seemed to be too hard.

The birth of Glinda in the small Wisconsin town of Cambria was greatly celebrated.  Female children that survived the first year in both the maternal and parental lines was rare.  She was born in a town settled by the Welsh kin of her father that had immigrated from Anglesey Wales.  She was named after both of her grandmothers as a Welsh naming custom that originated in Patronymics in post 1837 civil registrations of births as Wales adopted the English standard.  The Welsh of Wisconsin were very strong believers in naming rights to honor the legacy of their ancestry.

Glinda's father was raised in the Presbyterian Church of Wales and immigrated to joined the American Presbyterians that were strongly rooted in Wisconsin.  Both her parents were Presbyterians like generations before. Wales was a non conforming nation.  Her father was raised in the rise of the liberal party in Wales.  Her father had been raised in a balance of non conforming beliefs to be loyal to the monarchy, strongly conservative and very liberal minded on social justice issues.  Glinda was raised in a very unique minority culture in Wisconsin that encouraged the education of women.

Glinda's life as a first born American on her father's side living in rural Wisconsin changed drastically when she became the first child stricken with polio in the farming town.  Her illness shocked rural countryside farmers that had never experienced a child contracting polio.  Even among liberal Welsh communities that embraced modern science her illness defied words.  No one understood how she became inflected with polio.

The young daughter of a gypsy family of traveling farm hands that worked on her parent's farm had polio.  The girls had played together inside Glinda's home.  The other child and Glinda would meet again becoming best friends in the hospital after her family abandoned her friend because they could not afford to care for a daughter with polio.

Glinda spent years needing braces to walk in a world of farmers not equipped to care for a disabled child.  Her father moved the family to a bigger city to be near her mother's family and closer to a hospital.  Glinda was an FDR Polio Child that benefited from the support of the Roosevelt family to address rural America hospital medical care.  She would keep a bust of FDR in her home for the rest of her life as a reminder she was a polio child.

Her parents sold their farm to sharecrop and spent the rest of their lives in poverty to afford her medical care.  They died penniless and did not own even the cows they milked.  She grew up in harsh poverty surrounded by affluent extended family members in nearby communities.

Her father was blamed by his family for Glinda contracting polio because he hired a traveling poor gypsy family to work on his farm.  He was ordered out of the town by the church elders out of fear other children would contract polio.  He was shunned by even his own family that refused to eat food grown on his farm, visit his home or eat with him.  Polio was feared in farm communities that relied on physical strength to survive.  Her mother's family were better educated and held no ill will against her father.  The liberal Welsh of the time feared illness could wipe out their small communities.

Her parents later could not afford the medical care her mother needed.  By the time Glinda reached her preteen years she had to care for an invalid mother almost entirely bed ridden while her own body weakened by polio left her physically weak.  Her mother died before she started high school.

Still walking with a limp and physically weak Glinda was encouraged to continue her studies after her mother died by Gertie.  Glinda wanted to drop out of school which was the custom for female farm children by the eighth grade at the time but her father would not allow it.  Her father worked himself to death and died of a massive heart attack trying to keep Glinda in school.  He would not accept defeat to move in with Gertie who was more than willing to care for him.  Even doctors that warned him he may not survive a year if he did not slow down could not deter him.

As a widower her father would not leave town to earn the big pay factories in Milwaukee offered.  He simply refused to put Glinda in a state home for crippled children even when his own health began to fail.  Her father felt being together as a family mattered more than material wealth.  This reflected on the fact her father was orphaned a young child.  He was abandoned by his mother.  He was sent to an orphans work farm when she became very ill.  It took him years of back breaking work to save enough money to come to America.

In many ways Glinda's father was a trailblazer in his own right as a single father raising a daughter in rural Wisconsin.  He refused to abandon his children as was the social normal of the times.  He shrugged off women that pursued him for marriage attending church regularly with his children and his wife's family.  He would not allow any women that was not a relative into his house to care for his children.  He insisted Glinda be taught properly to be a lady and be allowed to freely visit her grandmother.  Her father did not allow her to wear pants or work in the fields like a farm hand.  He insisted Glinda do her homework and he came as a proud father to all of her school events.

He ensured Glinda put school first. He did not allow her to do all the cooking and cleaning. He was a World War I veteran that served as a cook and baker.  He cooked, cleaned and did the laundry to reflect upon his upbringing in Wales where men were taught domestic service skills.  He passed up several very good job offers including a professional cooking job to raise his children where they could freely visit their mother's grave.  His Sunday church homemade dishes were very popular and led to many offers of marriage that he refused to accept.

Her father had been taught in a Welsh pauper farm school and later served as a domestic servant.  He had the gentlemen manners developed from working for aristocrats.  He spoke and could write fluently in Welsh and English. He earned his passage to America as a cook and worked for a Milwaukee hotel when he first arrived as an immigrant.  His enduring wish was his children and their children finished school.

Glinda as a young teen wanted the exciting life in the big city her father would not pursue.  She would come to understand that her father's enduring love for her mother meant he was never going to leave their home and move away where he could not visit his wife's grave whenever he wanted to.  This fact she would over the years envy, loath and admire.  She felt as a child she had no say in her own life.  Her father understand this and talked at length with her about real life having tough choices.  He educated her on the many advantages of living in a big city.  He allowed her to read whatever she wanted even if he personally disagreed with the contents of the many books she read.  He wanted her to develop skills to make choices for herself.

Glinda found her father dead in his bed after coming home from school one day.  She and her sibling had to hitch up the horse and buggy to ride miles to their grandmother's house to get help.  The family did not have a telephone.  Her father's death so stunned their little town that all of the businesses closed for his funeral.  A man that stayed on sharecropping when he had the gifts to earn more money to raise his children alone impacted local residents that lived in the shadow of a state prison and orphans home.  Her father was very well respected at a time widowed men sent their children away, married again and put their happiness before their family.

When her father's US Army and Naturalized American Citizen paperwork were found along with his school diplomas after he died the real sacrifice he made for his children became known.  Her father had attended a few years of college in the United Kingdom.  He had job offers to work as a cook after the war in European hotels.  This came as a huge shock to Glinda when she realized her father gave up so much for the love he had for her mother.  Her father came home to America to marry Glinda's mother.

Years later a distant relative explained the very unique and distinct culture her father was raised in.  The Welsh were a society steeped in customs that took pride in the love of family.  The culture was rich in arts, music and story telling that stemmed from the strength to endure hardship.  Her father was raised to believe a man disgraced himself to fail to provide for his children.  The Welsh village where her father was raised absolutely did not consume alcohol on Sundays and fathers did not abandon their children to the state care.

Gertie paid for the funerals of Glinda's parents ensuring they would be buried together.  There was not one cent of inheritance left for Glinda or her sibling.  The bank would sell almost all of her parent's things including the blanket from their bed.  Relatives saved what they could and bought other items from the bank sale.  Glinda was allowed to keep very few things including furniture her father built.  She and her sibling would spend years tracking down items from her childhood home to try to buy them.  During a chance visit to a friend's home she found her mother's brooch that had been a gift from Gertie on her wedding day.  It took twenty years before the friend would come to understand the brooch was not her property despite a bill of sale from the bank sale.  Glinda would spend decades searching for her mother's prized china cabinet.  Hidden behind a nicked shelf she could prove the cabinet had belonged to her mother.  A tiny slip of paper was lodged in the nicked wood with her mother's name on it.

The ordeal to see her parent's things sold at a bank sale would forever haunt Glinda.  The items returned from her childhood home through the charity of others she deeply cherished as reminders of the goodwill of people.  When her own children broke items from her childhood home she came to understand the legacy was not in the material things of life.  Her father had taught her that the love of family was the most important thing in life.  The value of the few things her parents at the end were never her real legacy.  Her father's gift of an education was her real inheritance.

Glinda's ordeal to survive polio would shape many of her views on medical care access for the poor.  The experience of being the odd child not very welcome in society wearing leg braces shaped her lifelong commitment of the rights of disabled and affordable housing.  Glinda would spend a lifetime trying to forgive leaders of her church that wanted to minister to her at home instead of building an unseemly handicap ramp at church.  It was Glinda's father that carried her into church and refused to discuss handicap access for his daughter.  Her father also carried her into the schoolhouse and was there to carry her outside for lunch.

She had a lifelong devotion to the Roosevelt family and was an avid reader of the historical records of FDR.  Eleanor Roosevelt would shape many of her views on the rights of women.  More importantly she found acceptance as a post polio survivor adult among the many causes supported by Eleanor.  In her final years there were so few adult post polio survivors none of Glinda's doctors had ever seen a patient experiencing Post Polio Syndrome (PPS).  The lack of medical knowledge on PPS inspired her to allow researchers to access her medical files.

Her experiences as a polio child merged with the social and political views of her family to create a very strong sense of guiding values.  Her maternal family line had many very strong and inspiring female role models that had fought for important social issues like the right of women to vote.  The Edgerton Bible Case that established English as the official language of the Wisconsin state public schools was supported by Gertie and many members of her family that had attended the Edgerton school.  The achievements of her female ancestors she came to understand reflected their true sacrifice at a time when they were expected to remain in the kitchen and were not allowed by law to own property or legally vote.  Glinda did not feel so isolated when she came to understand her female ancestors were often the odd and different ones in the crowd.

Glinda became an orphan after both of her parents passed away before she finished high school.  Her life was turned upside down.  After high school graduation she was left alone in Milwaukee to find her way in life.  This was the custom of those times for young unmarried women without an inheritance, no money and no prospects of marrying into financial security to be dumped into the big cities.

In her rural township she was seen as a polio survivor.  People simply were not sure if female polio survivors would make worthy wives or could have healthy children.  Parents discouraged their sons from dating her.  There was a fear that polio would be passed onto to her children.  Polio challenged rural America with a generation of children not seen as being fit to achieve much in life.  Female childhood polio survivors were seen as a poor marriage match over uncertainty if they could have normal children.  Marriage was about having children in rural Wisconsin.  Female polio children survivors were treated as leapers and most would never marry.

Glinda found herself alone in a big city without so much as a friend to help her find a job.  Her noticeable limp caused by the polio was a horrific barrier to finding a job.  The harsh reality of city life scared her.  It was not the grand adventure of a young woman out in the world that she was told it would be.  She was not allowed to cook in her small rented room.  She experienced the first of many of her bouts of depression living alone.  Cooking had always helped her out of her dark moods.  Her father taught her the simple joy of cooking a meal.  When she cooked she felt the spirit of her father was with her.  Cooking for the rest of life was her stress relief.  She loved being lost in her thoughts cooking.  She could cook for an Army using all the tricks her father taught her.

Living alone in Milwaukee was very isolating.  She joined the local Presbyterian church where she would be a member for decades and baptize all of her children.  It was a different church environment than she was use to with a diversity of opinion.  The congregation of her youth was more unified, more certain about their views.  Milwaukee Presbyterians were more willing to explore issues like divorce that absolutely shocked Glinda.  She had never met a divorced person before or explored her own views on acceptance of second marriages.

She longed to return to rural Wisconsin and wanted the simple farm life she had known growing up.  In the 1950s young unmarried woman had little hope of ever saving enough money to buy a farm.  She knew she would face horrific discrimination as a single women in the small rural Wisconsin town where her extended family lived.  The town had strong family values and did not want unmarried young women living alone corrupting the male residents.  Her family had put the situation she faced in very harsh terms that they would not have her prostituting to make a living within their church parish area.  Her family made it very clear they were not going to support her financially to ensure she either got married or found an employment as a domestic servant for room and board.

The hammer fell when her family in no uncertain terms said there was no way they would support her attending college.  Her family was extremely harsh that the rules were cast in stone that she could not return to them if she became an unwed mother, married outside the Christian faith or her race or married a divorced man.  Glinda would always remember the harsh words spoken by the women in her extended family that had the futures of their own children to consider.  At the time she became an orphan she knew then her extended female family members were not going to take on the responsibility of being her mother.  Her female relatives remained emotionally aloof and detached from her.  There would be many times Glinda needed a mother figure when she suffered through hard financial times, sickness and a horrific car accident that almost claimed her life.

Wisconsin as Glinda set off into the world was still a state that deeply valued the fact adultery was made into a felony shortly after the state was  admitted to the union in 1849.  In rural Wisconsin there was a hidden practice that tolerated beating women that slept around outside of marriage.  Men were terminated from jobs, had their farms or homes foreclosed and were economically shunned for adultery.   The divorced were often run out of small towns to maintain the facade of the moral code.  The many older relatives raising their young grandchildren spoke to the dark secret that there were many divorces in Wisconsin.  These practices later led to rural Wisconsin denying domestic violence could be a crime to conceal how many divorces had taken place as a result of abusive relationships.

It was a felony in Wisconsin to serve margarine even in private homes or fail to yield to livestock on the roads.  Business owners that refused to comply with the central standard state time law were fined and sent to jail.  Women that had been arrested fighting for their right to vote wore the social label of being judged as criminal felons for voting decades later.  Gertie had been arrested fighting for the rights of women to vote and was shunned from many social events in town because she was considered a felon.  In the Wisconsin culture it really did not matter if a person was ever formally charged with a crime because communities passed judgment often without evidence.

It was not acceptable that women drove non farm equipment in rural Wisconsin.  Despite state law many women were denied drivers licenses in smaller communities where it was local residents that ran the drivers licenses offices that made up their own rules.  It was very common for home births of female children in rural Wisconsin never to be registered.  Many families believed recording the birth of a daughter was bad luck and the only record of the existence of a female child should be their marriage certificate.  Many marriages of state residents took place in Illinois where marriage certificates were more private than in Wisconsin to conceal prior marriages.  Faked marriages were common as many religions did not allow divorces so couples pretended to be married.

Women did not have an identity of their own in Wisconsin when Glinda was a young gal.  The fact many Wisconsin women contributed to the efforts to fight the world wars was ignored.  There was no recognition of the many women from Wisconsin that worked as pilots, nurses, and on the factory floor in World War II.  There were no written books on the achievements of many women from the state.  Wisconsin was an oral history state passing on the stories of women achievers in secret.

Glinda would later say that her family believed turning her out in Milwaukee where they suspected she would be forced into prostitution would give them an excuse not to have to take her in again.  She was the crippled poor family relation that no one wanted anything to do with.

Glinda's mother had married into the Welsh culture that in Wisconsin lacked social, political and economic resources.  Strongly independent and proud the Welsh did not easily sacrifice their beliefs to be accepted in society.  The Welsh had a hard emotional side where what others thought about them did not matter as much as what their families believed.

Gertie embraced her Welsh son in law.  She faced locals that saw her son in law as the Welsh gypsy that stole her only daughter.  As more Welsh farmers and professionals came into their rural communities their commitments to their families would come to be admired.  During the post World War II era as divorce became more frequent the Welsh culture stood alone to have total intolerance of divorce.  The Welsh supported more liberal views on the education of women and their rights to own property.

One of the most painful parts of being dumped in Milwaukee for Glinda was her family stopped writing all together leaving her entirely alone with no support to build a new life.

The words of her grandmother, Gertie, would forever inspire Glinda to find a way to be happy no matter what.  Gertie's stories of surviving total crop losses and having to share feed with the farm animals just to eat during the 1920s great depression kept Glinda focused to build a new life for herself.  She always felt she was different.  She was not a big city girl yet she was not really a farm girl either.  She suffered needing ongoing medical care for her polio ravaged legs that she had to figure out how to pay for on her own.  The fact she delayed medical care while she struggled being a single woman alone in a big city later would lead to her requiring more costly health care in a few short years.

Gertie's words that the family had survived tornadoes, blizzards, freezing cold, sweltering heat, famine, the great depression, loss of farm stock and still got out of the bed in the mornings helped Glinda through the bad times to build her own life.  She would never again live on a farm as her life and the world around her was changing.  She would be the first in the line of females in both sides of her family to live permanently in a big city.  Many of her family members would remain too terrified of the big city to ever visit her home.  In her final days like her mother and all the generations of women in her family that came before she found comfort that she would go home again and be buried with her family.

Glinda married another orphan with the same drive, determination and leadership she had from another founding Wisconsin settler family.  Her marriage shines a light on the timeless plight of orphans in our society even today.  She and her future husband were just a few months short of meeting the legal age to marry.  Despite this fact her family was allowed to send her to Milwaukee to live on her own legally she needed family consent to marry.  Her future husband had to be adopted by a judge to allow the couple to have someone to sign to give consent for him to marry.  Her future husband would soon be drafted in the Korean Conflict so the couple did not want to wait to marry.  In Wisconsin like many states in the 1950's young men could be drafted when they were deemed too young to legally marry or buy beer.

Glinda would reflect back on her own wedding day when her daughter, May, got married.  Glinda's marriage had been a cold process of paperwork typed up on a manual typewriter and a few words spoken.  Her family was against her marriage.  They believed she would be better off as a spinster than marrying a man without economic wealth.  The women in her family had aged and their children were moving out of their homes.  Their views changed in the short time Glinda had been away living in Milwaukee.  They wanted her to remain in their homes to cook, clean and care for them.  Her female relatives felt she should want a life to cook and clean to be fed, clothed and housed that offered stability over marrying a man that had no money in his pockets.  They did not understand why Glinda would want to risk a marriage when she could have the certainty of roof over her head living with aging relatives.  Once married it would be strictly forbidden that she return to her female relative homes if she divorced.  She would be haunted for the rest of her life by the expectation that she give up her life to serve her female relatives as a cook and housekeeper simply because she was poor and a childhood survivor of polio.

The dark secret that her husband had been raised in a different Christian faith her female family members protested as if Glinda would live in sin.  As elders of their church they denied Glinda a church wedding.  They feared  children raised in a home where both parents did not subscribe to the same faith would turn out badly.  Mixed faith marriages were not very well tolerated in rural Wisconsin at that time.  One was born, baptized, lived, married and was buried all within the same county was the accepted way of life in small towns.  Attending one church for a lifetime was the only life many knew.  This translated to one married within their own faith.  Glinda was unconvinced her female relatives had a valid objection to bar her mixed faith marriage.

Glinda in a heated argument with her female relatives spoke words unthinkable for the time.  She raised the question she might not have any children and would marry for love.  Her living female relatives were not her blood relation.  They had all married for money into her mother's affluent family.  The Wives, as Glinda called her living female relatives were not the rightful heirs of the family legacy in her view.  Marriage had its limits. Spouses did not become blood relation through a marriage certificate.  Glinda was the first born daughter of many first born daughters.

The morning of the wedding service Glinda's female relatives turned their backs on her refusing to attend the ceremony.  They would not eat breakfast with her claiming that she was ruining her life.  She wore the dress she had made for her high school graduation after her family claimed they could not afford to buy her a proper new wedding suit.  Glinda was livid.  One of the wives of her uncles pushed the envelope to swear if Glinda got married her uncle would never step foot in her house.  It was a nasty comment that concealed a truth