GRANDMA
by Mike Cronk
15 February 1977

Many people have paraded through my life leaving their footprints behind, but few have left as deep and lasting an impression as my grandmother, LEONA MARIA WINTERHALTER. The memory of her warm heartedness and generosity is forever etched in my mind. Grandma had a way of making a child feel special. Her sunshine smile always radiated a warmth that pervaded my entire being. Grandma made a child feel loved. Her kiss hello and her hug good-bye made me feel secure and happy to be alive. In grandma's house my sisters and I were given a freedom never allowed at home. She would serve us unlimited quantities of homemade peanut butter cookies, allow us to snoop in every drawer and closet, and play for us the songs of her youth on the piano for hours on end. My grandma's patience knew no bounds.

One special way in which my grandmother touched my life was by giving me a keen interest in my family roots by making my heritage come alive. A big event in my childhood were the occasions when grandma would bring out the family photo album. The two of us would sit snug together on the old brown couch in the living room, her arm around me and the album open on our laps. As she turned each yellowed page and freely reminisced, the years fell away, until great-grandparents, uncles, aunts, and assorted cousins, many years removed, were resurrected once again in her memory and in my imagination. Grandma made the austere photographs turn into living, feeling, human beings, each with their own story. My great-great-grandfather, Peter Schmidt, was just starting his job as a cabinetmaker after coming with his family to Grand Rapids from the old country in the 1850's. Aunt Caroline was tearfully saying good-bye as she and her new husband, August Pulte, left their families behind to emigrate to Texas, one year after the American Centennial. Grandma, as a little girl, was gleefully splashing in the water coursing down the street from the flood of 1904. I relived the tragedy of the day absent-minded Uncle John fell down the elevator shaft in the old Grand Rapids City Hall. There was my grandma's older brother Paul kissing his bride-to-be good-bye as he left for overseas and the trenches in France, a young man of twenty-three, only to die there of the influenza in 1918. I saw great-grandma Schmidt bustling around in her kitchen, saying to my mother, "Virginia, if you don't eat more you're going to get consumption!"

My inheritance from my grandmother is the love and appreciation for my forebearers that she instilled in me as a child. I have a deep feeling of oneness with those whose blood flows in my veins. Thanks to grandma, the impressions of their lives are firmly implanted in my heart to share with my children and my children's children in the distant years to come.

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THE HOMECOMING…A CHRISTMAS STORY

Our Grandma, Leona Maria (Schmidt) Winterhalter, was born on the 2nd day of the New Year in 1897, on the west side of Grand Rapids, to August Peter and Anna (Winzig) Schmidt. Her date of birth was one she would sometimes lament as being too close to Christmas, because so often a gift given would do double-duty as both her Christmas and her birthday present. Grandma did, however, LOVE Christmas! It was her favorite holiday of the entire calendar year. The Christmas tree would go up a full month beforehand and be decorated. Then Grandma would spend the next 30-days tweaking the Christmas decorations…arranging and rearranging…and rearranging some more. I remember the “bubblers”…Christmas lights that warmed up and sent streams of bubbles up a clear glass tube. Those were a huge favorite! There were also the spinners that were activated by the heat of the old-fashioned Christmas tree lights, causing little propellers to whirl in their clear-sided multi-colored plastic housings. And, with all the other ornaments, the tree was also festooned with generous amounts of tinsel “ice cycles,” The results were that the decorated tree, with all the wrapped presents underneath and numerous Christmas cards displayed up and down the sides of the wide oak doorway between the living room and dining room, created a magical wonderland!

I also remember the manger set on the dining room table. Grandpa was a woodworker, and had made a rustic manger with a colored Christmas light at the roof peak, signifying the Star of Bethlehem. Grandma was a painter and she had painted the manger and all the individual nativity figures. The Holy Family were nestled amongst real straw in the manger. All of this was set on a field of cotton batting, laden with glitter and stars. Grandma would also bake up a storm at Christmas time. There were Christmas tins with melt-in-your-mouth ‘S’s’, powered sugar coated short-bread cookies, anise stars, and others, all arranged between layers of wax paper. My personal favorite was her penuche fudge. If I had died in that moment with a piece in my mouth, paradise would have been assured! Grandma also played the piano and we would gather and sing Christmas carols around the old upright that had originally belonged to Grandpa’s parents.

Although my Grandma was the most loving and accepting person I have ever known, she always felt hesitant and inadequate as an individual. Growing up as a girl, her mother often compared her to her absent-minded Uncle John Schmidt, who had fallen down an elevator shaft in old Grand Rapids City Hall in 1909 and to her bookworm cousin, Louise Busch, who always had her nose poked in a book. These comparisons, and others, were not meant to be complimentary and Leona took them to heart, never feeling she was quite good enough. As Grandma got older and the confusion of dementia began to settle in, it only exacerbated her feelings of “less than” and caused her even more anguish over her gathering “forgetfulness.” When she would come to our house on Christmas Eve, there was a repertoire of phrases that she would repeat again and again. Grandma would say to me, “My, you’re getting tall!” and when she’d feel my hands she would say, “You’re hands are so cold!....cold hands, warm heart!”. There was also a German beer stein on the shelf in our living room that had belonged to her mother and had German phrases around the outside. Grandma would ask, “Do you know what that says?” and she would then translate them for me.

As Grandma’s dementia deepened and her accompanying incontinence progressed, it was getting to be more than Grandpa could handle, so when they came to our house for Christmas Eve in 1978, we all knew this would be Grandma’s last Christmas at home. I was a part-time photography student at G.R.J.C. and for my Christmas present I had asked for a flash unit for my Minolta 35mm camera. The intent of that gift was to enable me to capture a last photo of Grandpa and Grandma together. Once they arrived and were seated in their usual spot on the davenport in the living room, I told them I wanted to take their picture. As I was focusing my camera and preparing to take the shot, Grandma suddenly leaned in and placed her head on Grandpa’s shoulder. She had the sweetest, most beatific smile on her face. The shot was taken and the results became an instant family photo “classic” of the two of them. In February, Grandpa placed Grandma in Crestview Nursing Center and felt so very guilt ridden for doing so! Our confused and bewildered Grandma used to wander out of the facility, wanting to “go home.” The staff ended up securing her to her wheelchair. She would ask for “Al,” wanting to know when Grandpa would be coming. In truth, the level of care that Grandma required was wearing him down to the very bone…It was killing him. The following May, Grandpa did indeed die of a heart attack as he was exiting the parking lot of the Kalamazoo Meijer. Grandma continued her existence at Crestview. The family had made a decision not to let her know that Grandpa had died and eventually she quit asking as her memory of him slipped into the abyss of unknowing with so many other memories of her past life.

Our Grandma, who used to be fastidious about her grooming, now languished unkempt in the nursing home. Her hair was straw-like with no real form. White hairs grew out of a mole on her chin. Someone had dropped her dentures, leaving one front tooth broken off at a diagonal. Even her clothes were not her own…someone else’s name written with a black laundry marker on the inside of the collar. Her beautiful smile became less and less evident. Finally, she stopped talking altogether. The last time I saw Grandma, she was lying in her bed. Mom and I got her up and tried to get her to walk. It was like her knees and elbows were locking up and every movement was so tentative and uncertain. Walking backwards, holding her hands, I slowly guided her down the hallway to the common room and sat her down at the piano. She was silent with eyes downcast, but with one finger, she slowly pecked out a little tune that we had never before heard. It must have been a little German melody from her earliest girlhood days. That day was the last day I ever saw my dear Grandmother alive.

On Christmas Eve, 1982, while the Cronk and Limber families were gathering for their own holiday Christmas festivities, Grandma lay alone in her bed in the nursing home. She no longer walked or talked and was curled up in a fetal position. An aide came in and took her temperature. She was running a fever. The aide sat beside her for a while and held Grandma’s hand. When she finally rose to leave, Grandma squeezed her hand as if to say, “Please, don’t leave!”, and the aide began to cry. Sometime, in the early morning hours of Christmas morning, Leona Maria Winterhalter, exhaled her final breath. And, in that very moment, the wicking away of her very essence within her imploding world ceased. And, in that very moment, she was given the ultimate Christmas gift…one that would last for all eternity. And, in that very next moment, she was called Home.

Have a Blessed Christmas, Grandma, now and forever. Amen.

~Written Christmas Day, 2019, by Mike Cronk

*****

Leone was actually my great-aunt, but Al and Leone raised my mother after her own mother, Erna, died. Leone was the sister of Erna. Al and Leone were more like grandparents to me than my real grandparents on my father's side. Although they have been gone many years, I miss them dearly. ~Mike Cronk, 1 Feb 2011

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WINTERHALTER – MRS. LEONA M. WINTERHALTER, aged 84, widow of ALFRED F. WINTERHALTER, passed away Saturday morning at the Crestview Nursing Center. Mrs. Winterhalter was a member of St. Francis Xavier Church

she is survived by one daughter, MRS. ANDREW (ALICE) LIMBER of Grand Rapids; five grandchildren; a niece, MRS. MAX (VIRGINIA) CRONK, Grand Rapids; a brother, RUDY SCHMIDT and a sister, MRS. LOUISE ESCH both of Grand Rapids.

Funeral Mass will be offered Monday 1 pm in St. Francis Xavier Church. Interment Mt. Calvary Cemetery. Mrs. Winterhalter reposes at the Alt Mortuary, where relatives and friends will recite the Rosary Sunday 8 pm. Friends may meet the family at the Mortuary Sunday 2 to 4 and 7 to 9.

THE GRAND RAPIDS PRESS, Grand Rapids, Mich., Sun., Dec. 26, 1982, Pg. 2C, Cols 5-6

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KENT COUNTY, MICHIGAN, MARRIAGE RECORDS (1921), Record No. 13607 - RUDOLPH F. LANDGREN & LEONA M. SCHMIDT, married 3 August 1921, Grand Rapids, Kent Co., MI. RUDOLPH (Accountant), b. Grand Rapids, is a son of FRED LANDREN & CHRISTINA SJOQUST. LEONA, b. Grand Rapids, is the daughter of A.P. SCHMIDT & ANNA WINZIG.