LETTER: Good memories
To the Editor:
I read with sadness of the death of Dr. E.K. Schroeder. He not only was the first dentist I remember visiting in my youth, he, Ruby, and their sons were neighbors of ours just up the street from 620 Hudson.
His son Dennis was a good friend of mine. I spent more than a little time at the Schroeder house. Mrs. Schroeder was one of those "second" mothers who we kids claimed in those growing up years in Marion.
I can vividly remember my first "tooth pull" in Doc Schroeder's office there in the Case building above Duckwall's. He didn't have the modern drugs, tools, and other "dentist magic" of this modern era, but he made it as painless and tolerable as any human could make such a trauma for a kid in his pre-teen years.
He was a really nice man who was just as good a person as the words which this newspaper used to describe his life a couple of weeks ago.
The last time I encountered the Schroeders was the last couple of days my family was in Marion, late February 1958.
The good doctor was doing "Dad duty," and helped a few of us guys build a boat in his basement. We painted it blue, took it down to Mud Creek, and set lines for a couple of nights before I left town. I don't recall we caught too many fish but it was a really good memory of friends spending some final hours together before life took us in different directions.
And, yes, it was the same occasion that we listened to the "new phenom" Elvis Presley record as he sang "Nothin' But a Hound Dog" all night. I wrote about that memory a while back. Good times with a good family and a good member of the Marion community who left a positive mark on many lives, including mine.
Finally, in response to Bill Meyer's "sort of farewell, but not quite," a couple of issues ago, I remembered my first encounter with Bill and Joan when they lived just down the street from us Hayens.
Television was just taking center stage, and we Hayens didn't have our first set quite yet. Tom Good and I sneaked up on the Meyer front porch a couple of times and watched their set through the open front door.
One evening Joan heard us out there, we ran like possessed demons, but she called to us to come back, come in, and watch. Needless to say, we ran on as fast as we could. If our fathers Ed or Fred G. had heard we were up to such antics, Tom and Jan's lives would have passed before their eyes, proverbially speaking!
Anyway, thanks Bill and Joan for all the years and for those still to come. Until next time.
Jan Hayen
Parsons
