Ramona correspondent
“Everyone here has a story they will always remember about my Grandpa,” Kelly Stroda said, as she concluded her grandfather’s eulogy, “and chances are each of these stories is different.”
I smiled when I heard these words at Maurice’s funeral Friday, because as she was speaking, I was recalling several “Maurice stories” myself. I imagined what it would be like to have a funeral service where everybody in attendance told his or her story.
When someone dies it’s as if a fragile pottery vessel has been broken and now that person, that “entity” that was Maurice, is in fragments and pieces, never more to be whole on this earth. But when family and friends gather, and the loved one is spoken of and celebrated, they are brought back to life in some small way, and it’s wonderfully comforting.
Maurice had been away from Ramona for quite some time —living in a nursing home in Marion, and then for the last year, in a nursing facility in Herington. But while Maurice was not in sight every day, he was, and never will be, gone. The streets, the buildings, his grandkids, his children, his wife, are all living reminders of his life here in Ramona.
Maurice was born in 1926 and graduated from Hope High School in 1944. He met his future wife, Margie Vinduska, at a polka dance and they married in 1948. I interviewed Maurice and Margie on their 55th wedding anniversary in 2003. Maurice delighted in relating how he met Margie.
“I met her at a wedding dance in Pilsen — and it lasted this long!” he said with a mischievous grin.
When I asked about their wedding and honeymoon, Margie quickly added, “We went home right after the wedding, and milked my folks’ cows because they had to take my brother to Illinois to school.”
The young couple set up housekeeping on a family farm just south of Ramona, where they lived most of their married life. A fire on the homestead in 2004 brought them into town to live in the little green house on B Street. In 2006, Maurice underwent surgery — one leg was removed — and although his son, Art, built ramps and tried to get the house ready to hold him, he never returned home to stay.
The Strodas had eight children: Tom, Terry, Marilyn, Bob, Art, Elaine, Jane, and Jim. When Maurice left this earth, he and Margie had 14 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
Kelly Stroda, Bob’s daughter, wrote her grandpa’s eulogy, with the help of aunts and uncles.
“I saw Grandpa as sort of a Renaissance man because he had several careers in his lifetime,” she said. “Although he was raised in a farming family, he chose a different route. He worked for Beech and Boeing before becoming an independent plumber for a number of years.”
Margie Stroda told me that her husband worked for Brooks Construction, burying the telephone cables, and then he worked for Tri-County Telephone for about 19 years before retiring in 1988.
“He got to retire early because he’d saved up all his vacation time and sick leave,” Margie said.
Granddaughter Kelly told an amusing story that related to Maurice’s work for the phone company.
“When he was a telephone technician, he’d keep baggies of old, crunchy Fig Newtons on the dash of his truck,” Kelly said. “My aunts and uncles told me they always wanted to throw the cookies away, but Grandpa never let them. He used the stale cookies to distract dogs when he needed to get to a house.”
Listening to Maurice’s life history taught me things I didn’t know about him — such as the fact that he started the Ramona Fire Department and he was a storm chaser for Marion County. I learned that he loved to water ski, even though he couldn’t swim.
When I met Maurice, back in 1990, my sister had just purchased a little house in Ramona that was right across the street from Maurice’s daughter, Jane, and her family. Maurice owned the Ramona garage, repaired lawnmowers, and had the only gas station in town.
But there was occasionally one step between driving up to the gas pump and actually getting gas, and that step was “finding Maurice.” Finding Maurice wasn’t too difficult in a town with five streets. Usually he was at his favorite place — Betty’s Café —sipping a beer and chatting with Harold and Betty.
Another favorite memory was how Maurice would cruise by our little house (and his daughter’s, too) every day around noon as he was heading home for lunch. He’d honk or wave.
“Watching you girls work is more fun than watching television,” he teased.
Family members agreed that there were three things that will always remind them of Maurice — black licorice, polka music, and pugs. Kelly said her childhood memories are full of visits to the farm where she’d find her grandpa in the back room, sitting on a bar stool, dressed in overalls and a stocking cap on his head. Not far away would be one of his pug dogs.
“He was usually drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette,” she said, “and the TV would be playing polka music by Al Grebnick.”
Maurice’s love of music inspired him to start two bands —the Polkateers and the Santa Fe Trail Riders.
“Maurice never played an instrument,” Margie said, “but he loved music so much. The bands were pulled together by Maurice and Florian “Skeeter” Makovec, with kids, mostly from Centre.”
Maurice died Oct. 13, in a Manhattan hospital. He was 82 years, 9 months, and 12 days old.
Following Mass of the Resurrection at St. John Nepomucene Church in Pilsen, Maurice was carried to the Pilsen Cemetery. Maurice, who had been a life-long Catholic and was a member of the Knights of Columbus, also served as Grand Knight in the 1960s. At his funeral, his widow was presented a special certificate honoring his lifetime membership in the Knights of Columbus Council 3423.
After the graveside service, Maurice’s children and grandkids removed flowers from the beautiful spray that rested atop his casket. I approached as Jane and her sister, Marilyn, were taking roses and sunflowers for remembrance.
“Dad was always a people-person,” Jane said. “I teased him when he went into the hospital a few days ago, that he just needed to find a few more pretty nurses to flirt with.”
After the service and luncheon in Pilsen, the Stroda family gathered in Ramona Senior Center.
“So many came from such a distance,” Art Stroda said, “and we aren’t ready to see them go home yet.”
“The kids don’t get to see each other all that often,” Margie said. “So they really enjoyed visiting. You know, I wanted a big family, and I wanted a family that didn’t fight. That is my blessing, because my family all gets along. When we were making decisions in the last days of Maurice’s life — whether that was at the hospital or the funeral home — the kids just kept saying, ‘Dad would have wanted it that way,’ or ‘What would Dad have wanted?’ That was everyone’s attitude, so I feel very blessed.”
Maurice was ornery and a tease all of his life. When I asked Maurice and Margie what made their marriage work way back in 2003, Maurice, always the jokester, grinned and said to his wife, “Don’t tell ‘em a darn thing!”
While Maurice hasn’t been driving down main street in a long time, he is seen here at every turn. That’s one of the mysteries of small-town life — you’re almost embedded in the buildings, the streets, and the hearts of those who knew you. And for Maurice and Margie, there are quite a few Stroda descendants in Ramona — a daughter, a son, four grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. They’ll be flying the Stroda flag for years to come.
And that’s the news from Ramona where a traffic jam is two parked cars and a dog in the road.