Montgomery County OhArchives Biographies.....Stout, Mary Monroe October 31, 1921 - June 24, 2011 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/oh/ohfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Ralph Cokonougher rcokon@hotmail.com August 26, 2013, 11:53 pm Source: Written by Emily Susan Stout Author: Emily Susan Stout The following biography was written by Emily "Susie" Stout, the daughter of Mary Monroe Stout. It is submitted and presented here by Emily Stout's request and permission. This is her message to the future, and as yet, unborn, generations of her family, so that Mary, and her family, will be remembered. MARY ELIZABETH MONROE STOUT Written by her daughter Emily Susan Stout (Susie), August 2013 Background I’ve always loved talking and listening to stories told round the table. Mom and I used to sit at the kitchen table and talk. Also, when Aunt Nalda or Dorothy (my father’s aunt) would come over I would sit and listen to them talk until I would be told to leave the table (so that they could talk about more mature things that a kid was not supposed to hear). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mary Elizabeth (Monroe) Stout was born October 31, 1921, in Bethlehem, Indiana. Her mother’s father, Sanford Breckinridge Smith (Sandy), born 1873, was co-owner of a riverboat called “The Hanovarian”, that ran passengers and freight between Bethlehem and other ports on the Ohio River. Mary’s mother was Fern (Glenna Fern Smith Monroe (two more husbands – can’t remember their names), born 1901, and her Father was Emmett Consley Monroe, born 1898. She had one sister, Nalda (Elden Nalda Monroe Mcginnis Denlinger), born April 26, 1924. The family moved near Indianapolis, Ind. when Mary was about 3 and then to New Moorefield, OH. a few years later. Though these times were hard, especially during the depression, she told of fond memories of helping her Mother can food from their big garden, cooking on a stove heated with wood, and her parent’s friends coming over for small parties, where they would square dance. Her father, Emmett, played the fiddle and would call the dances out. And I think she said her mother, Fern, played the piano. Her father worked at International Harvester (now Navistar) in Springfield, OH. and when the depression hit his work time was cut to 3 or 4 days a week. By doing this, the factory didn’t have to lay off as many workers. The family lived in the country in a two bedroom house on Twitchell Road, New Moorefield, OH. They would put out two big gardens. One garden was potatoes and the other was a variety of vegetables. Her father, Emmett, would help the farmers in the area to butcher or bring in the crops when they needed help. He would make a little extra money this way or they would bring home some of the meat from the butchering and this helped get them by. They also had a milk cow. They pastured the cow in the next door neighbor’s field. The house had an outdoor toilet and they didn’t get electric installed until Mary was a teenager. Mary was 5 feet 2 inches and barely weighed 100 pounds when she graduated in 1939 from New Moorefield School. Her parents had divorced when she was a teenager. Her Mother ran around on her father while he worked. Before my Aunt Nalda died (of cancer), I remember my Aunt Nalda and Mom talking about how they would come home from school and their Mom would be sitting on the couch with a strange man. And there were several men. Mary’s mother became an alcoholic. Mom married a farmer by the last name of Corn. She told me that he had a temper and when she was pregnant, during an argument, he pushed her down the stairs and she lost the baby. She left him. He begged her to come back, but she divorced him. Many years later (in 70’s?) Mom told me she read in the newspaper that her former husband had died when a tractor turned over on him. Nalda, her sister, married Shorty McGinnis (he was nicknamed Shorty because he played short stop on his baseball team). Actually Mom had dated Shorty before her sister, but she wasn’t interested in him. When WWII hit, Shorty went into the armed forces and was stationed in Oregon, I think. I believe he had something to do with protecting the west coast. After Mary divorced her first husband, she moved in with her father, who lived in the same house on Twitchell Road. Her sister, Nalda, and her husband, Shorty, were also living there. They had moved back to Ohio after WWII ended. Emmett decided the house was too crowded and so found another place and moved. Mary stated that she felt like she was in the way living with her sister and new husband. Mary was now working at Crowel Collier (sp?) in Springfield, OH. They printed several magazines. A couple of the guys threw her down one of the shoots and she landed among the men working on the line. So sounds like they had a little fun while they worked. Mary was a divorced woman and so many of the men thought she would be more “fun” than some of the younger unmarried women. So they were constantly teasing her and asking her out. But she didn’t want to go out with any of them. There was one guy who was kind of quiet and never asked her out. His name was Doug Stout (Orville Douglas Stout, born July 3, 1926). He had just gotten out of the Navy where he had been on a ship that brought supplies from Hawaii to the mainland during WWII. One day the guys were talking and kidding around with Mary and some of the other ladies. They were trying to get Mary to go out with them. Mary said I’ll go out with him” – and pointed to Doug. He said, “I don’t have a lot of money to take you anywhere”. Mary said, “I don’t care”. So they went to the drive-in to see a movie that night. They went out every night that week and then drove out of state and got married on September 7, 1946 (because you had to be 21 to get married without your parents consent in Ohio at that time) . Their friends at work had bets on how long the marriage would last. I don’t think anyone won that bet because the marriage lasted 40 years, when Mary lost her husband, Doug, to a heart attack. Doug was an only child. He didn’t get along with his step-father, and so was renting a room at his Uncle Jim and Aunt Fern’s house, when he and Mary met. He was only 20 and Mary was 25. His family didn’t like Mary – after all she was older than him and a divorced lady, at that. His mother, Elsie May (Stout) Dement, born 1908, wanted to have the marriage annulled since he was under 21, but Doug said, “I’ll just live with her and marry her again when I turn 21”. So the marriage was not annulled. So they got their first apartment, but had little belongings. They didn’t have any bedroom chests so they used boxes for their clothes. They didn’t have a car – took the bus to work. They got their first TV after their second daughter was born. Mary and Doug had 5 children -- all girls. First came Nalda Ann (named after Mary’s sister), in 1947, then Gloria Kathleen in 1949, and then me, Emily Susan (Susie), in 1951. Since no children were allowed in their apartment, they bought their first house which didn’t have indoor plumbing. They had to go next door to get any water they needed from a neighbor and their house only had an outdoor toilet. I believe Mary said they paid $2,500 for it. Doug and one of his Uncles put in a bathroom and connected the house up to the city water. They lived there when Nalda and Gloria were born. The next house they owned was on Greenmount Street, in Springfield, OH. That was where they lived when Susie was born. The family sold that house and bought a house in the country at 3851 Middle Urbana Road, in the fall of 1953. It was surrounded by farm fields and the nearest neighbor was a quarter mile away. Then in 1957 Doug’s employer went out of business. It took a couple months before he found another job, and with three children to feed, a house payment, etc., eventually all their savings were depleted. Soon Doug got a job working nights at his new job working in the mail room of the Dayton Daily News. Mary learned she was pregnant again, but because Doug was new at his job, the family was not yet covered by hospitalization -- so the hospital or doctor visits for Mary’s pregnancy was not covered by insurance and they had no savings left. Mary and Doug argued a lot during the pregnancy. The stress was high. Doug would get mad and not talk to anyone for several days at a time. He was under a lot of pressure. When their 4th daughter, April, was born April 24th, 1958, she was gravely ill and just lived one day. The baby’s funeral was more added expense which Mary and Doug covered by borrowing on their life insurance plans. A grave stone was purchased several years later and placed on April’s grave in the area designated for babies at Ferncliff Cemetary in Springfield. Mary had been scheduled to have surgery while in the hospital after April’s birth so she wouldn’t have any more children, but since she lost her baby it was decided to postpone this surgery. The family got through this tragic event and then a couple years later, their 5th daughter, Donna Maria Stout (Boyer) was born in 1960. Mary’s sister, Nalda, and her husband, Shorty, had adopted a baby son they named Alan, born September 1946. Nalda and Shorty eventually divorced, and Nalda later married Henry Denlinger. They moved to Houghton Lake, Michigan and had a daughter named Mary Kathryn who was born in 1962. Mary took a part time job at the Northridge Bowling Alley watching the kids of the bowlers when her 3 oldest kids were teenagers. She would work about 8 or 9 bowling sessions a week and got paid $3 per session. She sometimes took her youngest daughter, Donna, with her. So with her $27 a week salary she helped supplement her family’s income – including paying for the family’s membership to Lakewood Beach Swim Club. The State of Ohio decided they were going to put a new road in right where our house was located on Middle Urbana Rd. (I believe it is known as Route 338). The State would buy it and they (Mary and Doug) could take them to court if they didn’t like it. They only got about the same price for the house as they had bought it 16 years earlier. Gloria had just graduated high School. Nalda had moved out the summer of 1965 and later married her husband, Vernon Blair, on May 27, 1967. And so Mary and Doug bought a house that had just been built in Huber Heights, OH. It was just north of Dayton and so closer to Doug’s work in downtown Dayton. So the family had moved to 7766 Redbank Lane in July 1967. Nalda’s first daughter, Jennifer Suzanne Blair, who was born September 25, 1969. Nalda moved back home just before Jennifer was born and divorced her husband. Nalda moved back out in 1971, but Jennifer continued to live at Mary and Doug’s house quite a bit – sometimes weeks at a time, and so she was more like one of their kids than a grandchild. Mary became quite attached to her and she and my sister, Nalda would argue a lot over her care. Mary’s Mother, Fern, died of cancer, in the spring of 1972, and her Father, Emmett, died of a heart attack, in the fall of 1972. In the spring of 1971, Susie, moved out and got an apartment with a couple girlfriends. Gloria moved out when she married her husband, Thomas Lee Farquer, in August 1973. They moved out of town, eventually living in Toledo, OH and then Libertyville, Ill (just north of Chicago). They had 3 children, Kathryn Mackenzi – known as Mackenzi or Mac, born in 1978; Nathan Stewart, born in 1980, and Anne Lindsey – known as Lindsey, born in 1982. Mary developed sudden onset macular degeneration in her eyes around 1980. She said she was reading a book one day and suddenly it got harder and harder to read. Because she could only see with her peripheral vision she could no longer read or drive a car. Doug died suddenly of a heart attack the end of September in 1986, just after their 40th wedding anniversary. He had been retired 3 years from his job as night foreman for the mail room at the Dayton Daily News. Mary’s last grandchild was born on February 14th, 1990 – Valentine’s day. Nalda had Melissa Irene Blair -- and so there were 20 years between Nalda’s two children. Donna and Susie never had children. Donna lived with Mary until 1990, when Donna married her husband Greg Boyer in October of that year. Mary continued to live in the house on Redbank Lane until 2010. The family helped her maintain her house (mostly Donna and Jennifer), mowing the grass, painting, etc. Donna helped with all Mary’s finances and took care of her medical needs. All four of Mary and Doug’s girls worked at Wright State University at one time or another. Gloria worked there first – for about 3 years. She met her husband, Tom, there. He was a student just graduating with a chemistry degree. He went on to get a masters in chemistry from Bowling Green University, and a law degree from University of Toledo. Nalda was next to work at Wright State and worked there for 32 years until her retirement at age 60 in 2007. Susie started working at Wright State in the fall of 1974. One of her professors persuaded her to take a class. Well, one thing led to another and soon Susie had a Bachelors in Accounting. Susie worked and went to school at Wright State for 5 years. After that, Susie was an accountant for various companies, but then took a job in the Tax Exempt Division of IRS. She worked there 23 years. Susie never married, but has had a long happy relationship for many years with a man named Ralph Cokonougher. Donna was the last to work at Wright State and still is. She plans to retire when she gets in her 30 years – which will be soon. So between the 4 girls they will have worked at Wright State over 70 years. Nalda’s daughter, Jennifer, also received her bachelors at Wright State in Paleontology, and her daughter, Melissa is earning her nursing degree in a joint program with Wright State and Sinclair College. At Tom’s Farquer’s suggestion, a small ongoing scholarship was established by the family at Wright State in the name of Mary and Doug Stout. Mom lived comfortably on Doug’s pension for 5 or 6 years until it ended and then she lived on social security the rest of her life. She seemed to enjoy living alone and became more reclusive in her later years. She enjoyed listening to her radio – her transistor radio went to bed with her every night and she left it on all night. She also watched TV with her limited peripheral vision and played her record albums (she had quite a collection). She loved talking about the current politics and was more up to date than most on what was going on in the news. She liked listening to her talk radio programs on health and finances and was always trying to advise her daughters to stay away from some of the financial traps out in the world. She also liked to listen to Ralph Limbaugh on the radio – much to the chagrin of her more liberal daughters. Mary’s mood changed as she got older. She seemed to always look on the bad side of situations – pointing out the bad things that could happen whenever one of her kids were excited about some new project. She liked attention – even if it was negative attention. She would say over and over again “I can’t see”. She would bump into walls when she knew her kids were watching – which was intentional since her arms would be at her side when she did so and not out exploring what was ahead. She would exaggerate and tell “tales” to us and cause the family to sometimes quarrel. She was a chain smoker most of her life but stopped cold when she was in the hospital with heart problems. She had triple by-pass heart surgery at 76. She was quite a handful in the last two or three years of her life. Her stories would get more exaggerated and we began to suspect that she was in the early stages of dementia. She moved to a nice one bedroom apartment in a very nice independent living facility in July 2010 – which was her idea. She seemed happier -- until she fell and broke her hip in January 2011. Mary died in June 2011, never quite recovering from this fall. Mary lived to see her great granddaughter Sydney Marie Farquer born in 2007, and her great grandson, Cole Thomas Farquer born in 2010. Gloria lost her husband, Tom, to cancer in 2010. Her children were no longer living in the Chicago area. Mackenzi has a successful store in Queens, New York. Nathan married his wife Jordan in 2008 and their family located to Miami where he is a supervisor at an airline company. Lindsey married her husband, Jesse Hernke in 2010, and is a vet tech in Madison, Wisconsin. Mary had another great grandson born in 2012, who is named Everett Douglas Hernke (parents Lindsey Farquer Hernke and Jesse Hernke). And Gloria decided to move to Madison, Wisconsin to be closer to her daughter, Lindsey, and new grandchild. MEMORIES OF MOM Teaching us to sew, to embroider, and to cook. She made a lot of the cloths for her kids when they were little. One Easter she made dresses to match for herself and her 4 girls – all in different shades of pastel. She took us to church every Sunday at the New Moorefield Methodist Church – the same one she went to as a girl. Sometimes we would get to church early so she could play the piano since we didn’t have one at home. (Mom later got a piano sometime in the 60’s). We loved to work at one of the fundraisers for the church – dinners that the community would come to. The kids would clean the tables as people left and new hungry people arrived. Mary would work in the kitchen. They had great roasted chicken sandwiches, homemade ice cream (we loved the lemon) and angel food cake. She took us kids to the basketball and football games if we wanted to go and since they had a station wagon, she let all our friends pile in too. Doug worked nights, but Mary would sometimes pop a grocery bag full of popcorn and take us kids to the drive-in theatre to watch 2 or 3 movies. She made wonderful apple pies, fried chicken and fudge. And also german chocolate cake -- from scratch, which was Doug’s favorite. She liked going to the bowling alley where Doug bowled and socializing with the other wives. Mary didn’t like to swim – was afraid. But she made sure all her kids had swimming lessons – and would take them to the pool at Lakewood Beach and stay all day – even though she didn’t get in the water. She had a great appreciation for music and would sometimes play classical music and then try to get one of the kids to name the composer. And she even appreciated the Beatles’ music and didn’t seem to mind when the same Beatles album would be played every morning while the kids were getting ready for school. Two of her kids had tickets to see the Beatles in 67 and the concert got cancelled because of rain. She used some silver dollars her father had given her to give the kids money for transportation back to the concert the next day in Cincinnati. She had a nice singing voice and would sing while she was doing her housework. She taught the kids lots of songs while they were riding in the car. And it certainly was a mixed media – there were funny songs, a few of Perry Como’s songs, and of course there was The Old Rugged Cross, and the Ninety and Nine. Additional Comments: The following is the obituary of Mary Stout, as used at her funeral: "Mary Elizabeth Stout STOUT, Mary Elizabeth age 89, of Huber Heights (Miamisburg), passed away Friday June 24, 2011 at Miami Valley Hospital. She was preceded in death by her husband, Orville Douglas in 1986, daughter, April in 1958, sister, Nalda Denlinger in 1995, and son-in-law, Thomas Farquer in 2010. Mary is survived by her daughters, Nalda Blair of Huber Heights, Susan Stout of Greenfield, and Gloria Farquer of Libertyville, IL; daughter & son-in-law, Donna & John "Greg" Boyer of Miamisburg; grandchildren, Jennifer Blair and partner Michelle Feichtner, Melissa Blair, Mackenzi Farquer, Nathan & Jordan Farquer, Lindsey & Jesse Hernke; great grandchildren, Sydney Farquer & Cole Farquer; niece, Mary K. Parr. Funeral service 11:00 AM Wednesday June 29, 2011 at Marker & Heller Funeral Home, Huber Heights Chapel, 5844 Old Troy Pike. Interment Glen Haven Memorial Gardens. Family will receive friends at the funeral home on Tuesday from 5-7 PM." Photo: http://www.usgwarchives.net/oh/montgomery/photos/bios/stout35nbs.jpg File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/oh/montgomery/bios/stout35nbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/ohfiles/ File size: 21.2 Kb