Ionia County MI Archives Biographies.....FENDER, Warren NA - January 6, 1925
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LaVonne Bennett lib@dogsbark.com February 15, 2007, 12:47 pm

Author: Harold J. Fender; in THE SEBEWA RECOLLECTOR, February 1978, Volume 13, Number 4; submitted with permission of current Editor, Grayden D. Slowins

A LETTER---A BIT OF NOSTALGIA FROM MADISON HEIGHTS:
To Mr. Grayden D. Slowins, January 13, 1978 - Dear Sir:  My aunt, Mrs. Kenneth 
(Statsick) Smith, who resides near the Lakeside Cemetery, sent me this clipping 
some time ago (the clipping was from the IONIA COUNTY NEWS concerning a photo 
of the Ionia County Board of Supervisors of 1892-94 and Grayden's efforts to 
identify the board members pictured) and I have had a desire to answer it for 
some time.

Adam Fender was my grandfather.  I am the son of Warren Fender.  I went to the 
Goddard and Bretz schools.  I have seen my granddad together with his daughter, 
Dora Everest, spend many hours on the assessment rolls of Sebewa Township.

I happened to be born in the house where Karl Eckhard lives or did live, the 
first farm north of the railroad, west side, from Woodbury.  My parents then 
lived on what was known as the George Fletcher farm, the first one south of 
what was then the West Sebewa Store.  (Clyde Avery's farm)

My Dad passed away January 6, 1925.  We then lived just north on the west side 
of the road from the Hemple farm.  (M-66)  Leon Williams also served as 
supervisor of Odessa Township.  Even then politics seemed to play its part.  My 
folks were all Democrats and Granddad was supervisor many, many years but Dad 
never made it in Odessa.  It seemed it always went Republican because Leon 
Williams always won.

The Karl Eckhard farm at the time of my birth, 1906, was owned by my maternal 
grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Statsick.

One of George Schneider's daughters, Etta, was my schoolteacher at Goddard.  At 
the Bretz School, Hazel Rogers was teacher for a time and Velma Deeg also 
taught.  In my eighth grade we had a teacher from Portland whose name I have 
forgotten.  In the first three weeks she was so homesick that all she could do 
was stand by the window and pine her heart out.  She quit and Etta Schneider 
finished the term.

I worked for Grover Cook on the farm the summer of 1925 and then worked for my 
uncle, Ray, in the South End Garage at Lake Odessa.  It is now a grocery 
store.  I drove the hearse for Weed and Wortley.  Mr. W. Wortley's daughter, 
Madge, married Maynard Leak.  The Leaks lived across from the Sebewa Baptist 
Church.

In 1927 I married Coral Rairigh.  Her dad, John, of Woodland ran a threshing 
machine (now extinct).  Her brother, Glenn, lived on the south side of the old 
Clinton Trail just west of the Ionia Road.

The Lake Odessa High School burned down when I was in the 9th grade.  Mrs. 
Fender and I celebrated our golden anniversary last June 25, 1977.

Lots of luck and good wishes, Harold J. Fender, Madison Heights, MI


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