George Kooyer History

They tell me that on June 6, 1917, about noon, a bawling, squealing boy was born to Will and Kate Kooyer a mile west of Ellsworth, Michigan; the last of a family of four children. Guess that makes me the baby of the family.They tell me that a next door neighbor lady, Cassy Eaton was there to help take care of me, and gave me some black coffee as a stimulant. Guess I never got over the habit.

Some of my earliest memories of my childhood go back to playing school with my sister Janet. She would  come home from school and ask, "What shall we play?" I would say, "School!" We had a door leading off the kitchen at the foot of the stairway. This door became our blackboard.

My school days at Ellsworth put me in a room with kindergarten through third grade. I remember as I was learning to count and write my numbers, that when I came to 100, I insisted that I had to write 1001, 1002, etc. I also remember one noon hour when I was in third grade, we were eating our lunch (no hot lunches at school  in those days) in our room and a couple of boys started throwing an apple back and forth between them. Suddenly one boy made a bad throw and put a nice round hole through the window.

All through summer vacation I had to spend many hours hoeing the garden and picking string beans. Much of my time in the bean patch was spent teasing my sister. She still talks about the sound of a train I made up, using her boy friends names.

Evenings during the summer were spent with neighborhood  boys playing all sorts of games. Many evenings I spent fishing trout in a neighborhood creek, or on Eaton Lake, fishing off the "old stone pile". Occasionally a trip to Moblow (*word is faded so not sure of spelling) Lake would  produce a half a pail of small bullheads, about six inches long, and an occasional perch.

As I grew older, my brother Andy and I spent many evenings on Eaton Lake. We would troll, or still fish for bluegills, and then as it got dark we would head for the "bullhead hole" where we caught many bullheads, ten or fifteen inches long. There was always a little competition as to who could catch the most fish. One night, Andy sat at one end of the boat and I on the  other. We used the same boat, fished the same depth, used the same action, even fished about six inches apart. Andy caught fourteen while I got one. Don't think that I didn't get kidded! Good old memories.

I even remember one Halloween night, the Vander Ark boys and I went to Herman Van Stadems house and quietly started soaping windows. All at once the soap squeaked on a bedroom window, and it so happened that Mr. Van Stadem was putting the baby to bed in that room. Sensing trouble, we ran out to the road and laid down under a big maple tree. The back door came open and out came Mr. Van Stadem carrying a lantern. He walked out the driveway passing about fifteen or so feet from us. We could hear him mumbling quietly. If he hadn't been carrying the lantern, he would have seen us there. The next day at school, I asked his son Fred if  anyone had been at their place the night before. He said yes, and began to name some of the boys from town who had been there and soaped their windows. I never did tell him the difference.

Every fall, during the month of October, we had a two week potato digging vacation. I always had to help in our own field, as Dad raised certified seed potatoes. Some years we would get lots of rain which made the work very slow. We would bring the car out to the field, and when it started to rain we would sit in the car until the shower passed over; then go back to work again. There was lots of hard work on the farm, but we had plenty of food, and with all the exercise we all stayed quite healthy.

I do remember one winter when we had an epidemic of Scarlet Fever. I came down with it first; then Janet, John, and about the time we were getting better, Dad came down with it. Mother took care of all of us but never caught the disease. Of course in those days, we were under quarantine, and no one could leave the house. Our neighbors had it at the same time and their dad "batched" it in the tool shed in the cemetery on their farm. He took care of our cows and livestock along with theirs, so we could still sell our eggs and cream. How's that for neighbors helping neighbors?

Living through the great depression years was an experience I will never forget. Many people went hungry, but that was no problem for our family. We had food in abundance on the farm. We had our own cows for a  supply of milk, cream, and butter. (We churned our own butter.) We kept a flock of about 200 chickens, so had lots of eggs. We raised a big garden and Mom canned many quarts of vegetables. We also had apples, pears, plums, and sweet and sour cherries. We always had a big bin full of potatoes in the celler under the house. We raised our own popcorn and spent many an evening eating popcorn together.

We didn't have electricity, so our source of light was kerosene lamps, and a gasoline lamp. We had to walk to school as there were no busses in those days. Our road was not plowed in the winter, so we traveled to town and to Church with a team of horses and a sleigh.

I graduated from high school in May of 1935. Our class consisted of four girls and eight boys. In the spring of 1938 I heard of a farm job in Rudyard, Michigan. I wrote a letter of application for the job, and soon got a reply to come to work. I hitch-hiked a ride and arrived at the Henry Hesselink farm on May 18, 1938 to begin work. God certainly had His hand in all this, for it was there in Rudyard, that I met Thelma Cornwell, who one year later became my wife. God has given us  many happy years together, and at the time of this writing, we will be celebrating our 59th anniversary on June 6, 1998.

God has blessed us with five children; three boys and two girls. We have thirteen grandchildren, and at this time we have five great grandchildren, two step-great grandchildren, and are expecting two more in August of 1998. God certainly has been good.

We serve the Lord at Brimley Baptist Church, where I teach the adult Sunday School Class, and serve on the Board of Deacons.

I worked at several different jobs over the years. I worked in Sault Ste. Marie, MI, for Sears as a shipping clerk, and a year in a factory in Muskegon, MI, where we were living when our oldest son Dick was born. We spent two and a half years on a farm in Williamsburg, MI, where our second son Don was born. We then moved to Rudyard, where I clerked in an A&P Store for about two years, at which time our oldest daughter Judy was born. At the age of 30, I took up the plastering trade, apprenticing under my father-in-law, Frank Cornwell.  I followed this trade  until I retired at the age of 63 because of health problems.  Our last two children, Dan and Nancy, were also born while we lived in Rudyard.

We spent eleven years in Traverse City, MI, where I worked for a building contractor. During this time we attended Immanuel Baptist Church, and were involved in a building project that took most of my summer evenings to stucco the exterior of the building, and much of the interior as well. Those were great days as we watched the Church grow from an average attendance of about 120 to 400.

Since retiring in 1980, we moved back to Rudyard, where we are living at this present time. I have been able to do some dry wall taping, and painting, but more recently am no longer able to work. Two artificial knees and by-pass surgery have taken their toll, so I guess it's time to "hang up the tools" and enjoy being lazy.

We spend much of our time together playing games, reading, and taking a good afternoon nap. (insert by Nancy: Dad also spent many hours wrapping hangers which were a coveted gift to the many people he gave them to.) We try to spend one day a week calling on shut-ins in two nursing homes in the Soo. It makes one sad to see the condition of some of the people in there.

We are both so happy that the Lord saved us many years ago, and that we have the privilege of serving Him here until He returns for us, or until God calls us home.

(Dad finished writing this in the Spring of 1998)

God did "call Dad home" on August 19, 2002, early in the morning hours after a lengthy battle with cancer. Dad was a very godly man and to me (Nancy) he was a spiritual GIANT and my "spiritual HERO". He gave our family a wonderful, godly heritage. I will always see him in my memories studying God's Word in the early morning hours. I will always smell his coffee that he sipped from his "old tin cup" as he studied. I will always be grateful for an earthly father who wanted nothing more than for his family to know his Heavenly Father. May each one of us continue to pass on this wonderful heritage to our children who will pass it to the generations to come. To do this.... we will have understood the "heartbeat" of our dad.

   

Judy McCain kindly provided this account of her father’s life, which he had shared in autobiographical fashion.