A Christmas baby, born in Long Island, Kansas in 1929, my maternal grandmother, Joanna Kats, came into this world in the wake of Black Thursday, the worst stock market crash in United States’ history, signaling the onset of the Great Depression.
When the Dust Bowl devastated the region, her displaced farm family moved to this little corner of Iowa in 1938, a few short years before the U.S. entered World War II.
The oldest of 12 children, she married my grandfather, Albert Groeneweg, on February 22, 1950. Their legacy is farming, faith and family.
She passed away on Thursday. She is survived by nine children, 28 grandchildren and 57 great-grandchildren. That might sound like a lot until you see her mother’s obituary from 1992, which lists 67 grandchildren and 95 great-grandchildren.
I’m only sort of joking when I say I’m related to half of Sioux County.
About eight years ago, I interviewed my grandma for a mass communication class assignment, talking about the changes in media access and consumption that she saw during her lifetime. I kept the recording, knowing there would come a day when I would want to hear it again.
While I’m grateful to have my grandmother’s voice preserved, I can’t help but wonder why we don’t ask more questions and record more answers about our family histories when we can.
I keep thinking of the things I’ll never know about my grandmother — at least not in her own words. What did she think about being a homemaker, a farmer’s wife, raising nine children, eight of them girls, who from what I can tell have grown into strong women? What hopes and dreams did she have for them, for herself?
In my years as a journalist, I’ve learned more intimate, personal details about relative strangers than my actual relatives. Somehow it’s easier to talk to people I don’t know.
With family, it’s like looking through the lens of a camera, not realizing it’s zoomed in — and maybe we’re only seeing the superficial stuff. But if we could pull back and see the whole picture, the whole person, what kind of life would come into focus?
