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| Charles and Anna Plohar Maigatter |
One hundred years ago today, at 11:57 pm, my material grandmother, Anna Plohar Maigatter, gave birth to her fifth child and third daughter, Evelyn. Anna and her husband Charles lived in a small town along the northeastern Wisconsin shores of Lake Michigan. They had grown up outside of a farming village even farther north along the shoreline, both raised by parents and grandparents who emigrated from 'the old country' decades before.
The month my mother, Evelyn, was born featured such newsworthy headlines as:
Boston Braves no-hitters
General Pershing troops march into Mexico
Mary Pickford - first female film star to get $1M contract
Boeing aircraft flies for 1st time
Boy Scouts of America forms
Democratic convention - Wilson campaigns on slogan "he kept out of the war"
and Theodore Roosevelt declines nomination of the Progressive Party
Voters in East Cleveland approve(s) women suffrage
Mom and Dad were both born in 1916. The intervening years took them from birth, through schooling, marriage, family life, experiencing the growth of a nation, retirement, and aging in the era of the internet. What transpired over those decades is worth more than a cursory glance, not only in terms of family genealogy and world events, but in the moments of daily lives that brought the country and its citizens from a life of austerity appreciated to one of privileged prosperity.
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