Twenty

Jennie spread her robe neatly and descended slowly onto the wooden chair in Jesse Auditorium. She hoped the outfit beneath it was not gathering the wrinkles her brother so carefully removed. Around her, alphabetically, were the other female graduates. Several rows behind her were the young men.

There were as yet few people in the auditorium, so from where she was, Jennie could vaguely make out her father, aunt and brothers. Her vision was not the best for such a distance up to the upper balcony where they sat, so she removed her glasses and attempted to clean them with her robe. But, wait…

“Oh, my goodness!”

From Jennie's Yearbook

Miss Alma Steele turned to Jennie to inquire what Jennie’s exclamation concerned.

“I simply cannot, cannot believe it!”

Jennie’s mouth hung open. She removed her spectacles for the second time in as many minutes, forgetting she had already been unsuccessful in cleaning them. She put them partway into her mouth and blew some steam on them, wiped them again, and replaced them on her nose.

“What, Miss Stark?” Miss Steele was barely acquainted with the lady to her right, but had observed her before to be stoic. Certainly, she had never before seen tears.

“My grandfather is here! And my Aunt Lizzie! When…? How?”

Jennie turned back to face forward in her chair as she clutched her hands to her chest. She took another look, upwards and to the left. Yes. They were there, on the other side of her brothers. Aunt Lizzie was her mother’s sister, the keeper of her mother’s memory besides herself and her brothers. Jennie buried her face in her hands and wept.

“Oh, Miss Stark,” Alma whispered, “I assume those are happy tears. But today is our day. Let us enjoy every minute.” Alma raised a shoulder, lowered it, and twisted her mouth into a pucker. She was determined no antics around her distracted from the moment.

The next hour passed as though in a dream where time and events suspend and whirl. Dots formed before her eyes and she was unable to move when the time came. Miss Steele nudged her, then grasped her arm, pulling upward.

Jennie stumbled as she followed a faceless figure before her. Miss Steele, behind her, took Jennie by the elbow to ensure getting to the stage without delay.

One name, then another were called. Slowly. It dawned on her, they were all just first name and last. But she had taken great pains to let the registrar’s office know she had a middle name. And that it was M-A-Y, not M-A-E.

“Miss. Elizabeth. Spears.” Oh, so that is who that person is. I don’t remember her at all and I thought I

From Jennie's Yearbook

knew everyone.

Jennie focused on the steps. This was not the time to stumble.

Jennie drew in her breath, held it, then exhaled. This is it. What she had worked for over the past four, no, eight years at least. No, all of her life, or at least back to when she saw her mother gasp her last.

Straighten your back. Hold up your chin. She could hear Aunt Ella’s voice. How many times over the past several years did she hear that? But yes, Aunt Ella was right. You carry yourself with the proper deportment, and no one will question your worth.

“Miss. Jennie. May. Stark.”

Jennie strode onto the stage and walked seven steps to receive her diploma. She glanced up in the gallery but could not recognize anyone. They were too far away and now, too many others. She could not make out anyone familiar.

But she distinctly heard a shout. “That’s my sister! Jennie! You did it!”

Jennie blinked. Her countenance lifted, her cheeks going pink. That John, never shy about anything.

It was glorious, not mortifying, to hear him yell. She looked upward again and grinned at the blurry masses. She hoped she was looking in the right direction so that her family knew she was smiling at them. Diploma in her left hand, she placed her hand over her heart as she paused at the steps on the other end of the stage. Then, without thinking, she raised a fist in the air and shook it, as if to say See? I told you I would make it!

#

Somehow, the ceremonies ended before she knew it. Jennie stayed near her seat as she and Aunt Ella discussed earlier. “You remain there, Jennie. We will come find you.”

It took perhaps ten minutes for her relatives to wade their way through the crowd as Jennie bounced in place, watching for them. John, then Jay. Father was not with them. But his absence no longer mattered

Unidentified Photo
from Jennie's Album,
Possibly
Aunt Lizzie Gardner

when she gazed upon Mr. James Knox Stark. Aunt Lizzie, too!

“Oh, Grandfather!”

Jennie buried her head in the hunched, aging man’s chest. He hugged her tightly.

“Miss Jennie, all of us are so very proud.” Grandfather Stark held onto Jennie so long that John tapped him on the arm.

“Grandpa! Let me at this old nag of a sister. This magnificent, most wonderful sister!”

Aunt Lizzie Gardner hung back a little. Though she knew the Stark family very well, she was connected only through the marriage of her dearly departed sister to…that man.

It was difficult for Lizzie to recognize even the existence of her brother-in-law Orval Stark. Or was he her former brother-in-law? She was grateful he disappeared from the balcony soon after she was seated on the other end of the row.

For years, Lizzie harbored resentment. It took every bit of self-control to do what her mother, Jennie’s grandmother Gardner, suggested a month earlier she do: bury her anger. Start afresh.

So, two months earlier, Miss Lizzie Gardner had paid a call to the Stark farm. She dressed in her Sunday best though it was a Friday. “Lord,” she prayed, “please let me be humble and attend only to the business at hand.”

Lizzie knocked and waited.

In terms of financial success, Miss Lizzie’s father, Thomas Gardner, and J.K. Stark were peers. Their farms were near each other, and though J.K. owned a little more land, by outward standards, they stood as equals. Both families attended the modest country Methodist church, and the daughters and one son of the Stark family (David Stark, not Orval who quit going after his wife’ death) politely nodded at the daughters and one son of the Gardner clan.

But there were subtle differences in the families. The Starks, though born in America, kept many of their German customs and ways—at least, Mrs. Stark did. She always seemed kind and generous in her charitable endeavors, but Lizzie had a difficult time getting past Mrs. Stark’s eastern hill country Maryland dialect which was tinged with a lot of German expressions.

Lizzie’s mother, however, brought her daughter up short.

Thomas and Emaline
Denning Gardner, c. 1866* 

“Lizzie, do not forget that my father—your grandfather Denning—was an illiterate coal miner all his life before he finally retired to the farm. Your grandfather Gardner was a coal miner, too. As a young man. But your grandfather Gardner moved west and found workable farmland in Iowa, then we all moved to Missouri. The Starks just had the foresight to settle here a decade or two earlier. Your grandfathers had deeply-ingrained Welsh accents, though both worked hard to lose them. Do you think Welsh coal miners are any better than German-Irish farmers?”

Lizzie kept her mother’s speech in mind as she knocked on the Stark’s farmhouse door. Miss Ella Stark answered, and the two maiden aunts—one Gardner, one Stark—went about planning their niece’s graduation party. They decided Ella should go a few days prior to the ceremony to attend to Jennie. Their niece would not be very surprised. What Jennie would not expect, however, was not only her Aunt Lizzie, but her grandfather Stark.

Aunt Lizzie Gardner and Aunt Ella Stark clapped their hands and giggled and hugged. Ella said she would sort out her father’s journey, and Lizzie suggested she travel with Mr. Stark. They could catch a train to Moberly with a connection to Columbia on the day of graduation.

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1913 Yearbook

“Oh, but if the trains run late, or you miss your connection, then what?”

“The good Lord will see to it that we do not miss our Jennie’s graduation ceremony. Of that, I am certain.”

After the graduation ceremony, the extended family proceeded outside to a large blue and white striped tent on the quadrangle. There, the graduates of the College of Arts and Science met with their professors and administrators.

Several women served a light lunch buffet-style. John—whom the aunts and Grandfather Stark called “Johnny”—offered to secure a large table with plenty of seating for them all.

“Aunt Lizzie, the handkerchief you gave me is greatly utilitarian today,” Jennie sniffled, dabbing her eyes as the ladies made their way down the endless line of dishes, pointing to this or that as the ladies in starched white aprons spooned out the food.

Aunt Ella whipped out another hankie. “You can use this one next.”

“Oh, I hope to compose myself before it is needed, Aunt Ella! But I thank you. I might be mistaken!”

Jennie thought it slightly odd that her father was nowhere she could detect, and even stranger no one mentioned his absence. But then, her father had, for many years, come and gone without excuse or reason.

Jennie made sure to sit next to her grandfather Stark. He had, after all, been more of a father to her than her own. It was to him she often turned for consolation and advice. There was something in his being which imparted a kindly wisdom that many sought. But, mainly, he was her grandfather she could just sit in the same room with and be supremely happy.

“Grandfather! I cannot believe you came!”

“Yes, well, Miss Jennie, I was torn. I very much wanted to be here, of course, but your grandmother does not like to travel. Except, perhaps, to church.”

Those overhearing the conversation chuckled and nodded.

“But your Aunt Ella made arrangements for your Uncle Dave to come stay with her while I was gone.”

“Just when did you get here?”

“As it turned out, we caught the train yesterday. Your brother Jay found a room for us at the Athens Hotel.

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It is quite near your house, as it turns out. And did you know he rode his horse from Marion to our farm to let us know about it? And then, I understand, caught a train to Columbia without you being the wiser.”

Jennie turned to her brother. “Oh, Jay, you sly devil—I mean, absolute angel! No wonder you were a day late coming home!”

As one who rarely opened his mouth except when he was debating on the high school team, Jay simply grinned.

Aunt Lizzie clasped her hands in front of her chest,  beaming. “And near the hotel is a delightful bookseller, Campbell and um, Alexander is it? Oh, they had so many books and a delightful selection of

Ad from Jennie's
1913 Yearbook

framed prints. I wanted to spend, spend, spend, but your grandfather kept me in check. I did, however, purchase a small volume of fiction.”

“Excuse me, ladies, Grandfather. But there is more food over there calling out to me!” John—Johnny—bounded over to the banquet table.

“Isn’t it grandly hospitable that the college is hosting this banquet? Picnic? Party? Whatever it is?” Lizzie posed the question as all nodded.

“Indeed!” “Oh, absolutely!”

“And how fortunate we are we are, having such a marvelous time at no expense!”

Ella slapped the table and guffawed. “You mean, at no expense to you, old man!”

Ella Stark took liberties with her father no one else dared. But she felt entitled. She was, after all, her parents’ primary caretaker, though her brother David helped with farm duties. At times, her obligations were taxing.

Everyone looked at Grandfather Stark for his reaction. Breaking into a smile, his eyes twinkling, he responded, “Entirely true!”

Miss Jennie May Stark, graduate, looked around her. And felt sublime. There was a certain glow surrounding her, helped, in part by the fact her robe hung over the back of her chair so that her white ensemble with the yellow sash was now evident. But she did not remove her cap; it was too securely fastened to remove without risking her hair tumbling down.

The Culmination
Jennie's Diploma!

Jennie slipped the diploma out from the exquisitely tied ribbon. She just had to peek. “Oh!” she sighed in relief. “They got the spelling of my middle name right! I do not know how all of the others could bear not having their middle name recognized, but wonder of wonders, there it is!”

Jay stood up.

“Jennie? We need to meet the photographer at the columns. Our appointment is at four o’clock sharp, and we must be there well ahead of time.”

“Oh! Right! The photographs! Well, off we go!”

 

Lithograph at the top
From this book of
Tennyson, given to Jennie

*Photocopy of a photo of Mr. and Mrs. Gardner, identified by Vicky Ross