The Beatles Sing Margie
Margie Dolezal loved the Beatles and so, to get in the proper mood to write about her, I directed Alexa to stream Beatle music and am sitting quietly for a while, alone and gazing out the window across a sun dappled yard that is slowly collecting birch, red maple, and walnut leaves. I nearly weep, wondering where all the years have gone. I stumbled across this yard as a first grader when it was a cow pasture.
The Beatles were never received very well by the two generations before me. My grandparents thought they were satanic. My mother thought a little better of them, primarily because she couldn't simply agree with her own parents, but probably more because my immersion into music had proved a less nerve-wracking pastime than committing delinquent acts. As I listen to them now, fifty years later, I am struck by how sweet and clean their music was, particularly in comparison to some of the things that were yet to come. I can see why Margie loved the Beatles.
My mind slips back to La Crosse, Wisconsin. The year is 1970 and I am living on Badger Street, practically on campus. Cathy and I have struck up a romance which looks like it is going to last, and she has moved into a house about a mile away on Madison Street. She has a roommate.
I have four of them, of course, to make expenses less. Lined up in the little 25-foot long upstairs bedroom is an assortment of five cots and beds. Cathy's brother Steve and her cousin Vern are in two of them at night. The other two belong to the Stogis brothers, Ken and Jim, from Illinois. We are living in a predicament of squalor which has been repeated by endless streams of college boys all over the world and throughout modern times.
I was back attending classes, and more seriously than I had leading up to my "flunking out" for a semester, which extended my proposed graduation date to January of 1971, in direct conflict with my class ring, which had 1970 inscribed on it. With my one point eight grade-point average, I am fairly certain that the officials at UW-La Crosse had no expectation that I could attain straight A's in order to meet the standard.
I had a lot invested in the timeline, however, since I had joined the U. S. Navy Reserve because my college deferments had run out and I had drawn number 15 in the very first draft lottery. I had gone to boot camp and had six months of reserve meetings before I would have to go on active duty.
Every Wednesday night I attended my required meetings at the Naval Reserve Center on the south side of the city. In addition I had to spend one weekend per month there, drilling, standing at attention, and attending various classes designed to prepare me for life in the Navy. Cathy, intent on impressing me with her cooking skills, offered to make dinner for us after my meetings in her new apartment.
The first dinner she made was chicken Kiev and it was my first visit to her place. I rang the doorbell and the door was opened by a tall, beautiful girl with long black hair and a shy, impish smile.
"I'm Margie," she said. "I'll get Cathy."
Cathy and I ate our dinner at a tiny kitchen table. Margie conveniently disappeared to give us privacy.
That is the way it went on Wednesday nights for many weeks. Somewhere along the way I proposed marriage to Cathy and she accepted, with some provisions regarding the Navy.
Cathy's younger brother, Chris, was also attending classes at the university by now and, as all women are matchmakers at heart, Cathy thought to introduce him to her roommate. I can't remember exactly when and how this introduction took place, but Chris has an elaborate personal legend about it.
Apparently he was awestruck by her immediately, but owing to a combination of cowardice and discretion, he felt he probably didn't have a chance of interesting such a beautiful girl. He asked to see her and she responded something like, "I'm very busy but I'm always at church at the Neuman Center. Why don't you come there?"
I'm thinking he went and she didn't happen to be there that time, frustrating him greatly and sinking his hopes. Chewing at his fists and occasionally slapping himself, he temporarily gave up.
Now we have to fast forward to July 24, 1971. I had miraculously graduated college and attended Naval Radio School in San Diego. I was on two weeks leave before going to my first duty station, Washington D.C. Cathy and I were married in Blenker, Wisconsin, and the reception was held in the front yard of the family home. I think that Margie and Chris were both in the wedding, but their various duties kept them occupied. Chris remembers that his dad sent him to the house to set up beer or perform some errand and that he missed the dinner altogether.
There was a record player set up in an upstairs bedroom with the speakers jammed into an open window. I remember seeing Chris and Margie up changing records in that window briefly, but the evening ended and everyone went wherever they went. Cathy and I drove away to our honeymoon in northern Wisconsin.
A week later we were on our way to Washington D.C. and a year and a half later we were finished with my active duty and back in Wisconsin. We had rented an apartment in Madison from my old college roommate Duane and I was trying to use my G.I. bill to get into graduate school. I went to the University of Wisconsin for a semester as a special student, taking courses in psychology. We decided to throw a party in our new apartment. Chris arrived with a girl he was interested in but who was breaking up with him. There was a knock on the door and when it opened, there was Margie with Cathy's brother Steve! I think Steve had agreed to pick her up and bring her to the party, but the logistics of the whole thing didn't promote their being together. I am of the opinion that Chris was probably as surprised as I was to see his brother bringing a girl who, in retrospect, was a person of high interest to him. I don't have any brothers but I can readily appreciate the irony. It almost qualifies as a corollary to Murphy's Law which states that if something disastrous can happen, it will happen.
I had enrolled for the spring semester and it didn't look promising for me to get accepted as a graduate student at Madison with my 2.01 undergraduate grade point. Someone made me aware of a program in school psychology that was looking for applicants. It was offered at a place none other than my alma mater, UW-La Crosse. I drove up there and got admitted to the program provided that I attend summer classes and prove myself. I enrolled and was eventually accepted. Cathy and I rented the downstairs of a house out on Jackson Street, not far from the Heilmann Brewery. I loved the program. While we lived there, Cathy gave birth to our first daughter, Sara.
Over the next two years, we had several parties and all our friends would visit from time to time. Chris even moved in with us for a few weeks while he worked at a cooler plant. Cathy tried to continue her role as matchmaker, setting Margie up on a date with my colleague Jim French, but it didn't bloom into a romance.
I think that Cathy could read that Chris was infatuated with the elusive Margie. One weekend we were staying in my grandparents' spare bedroom in Sparta. Margie's parents lived in Hillsboro a few miles away and we picked her up to go out. Cathy invited Chris to join us and we went to a few bars and probably got dinner somewhere. A blizzard was occurring and the roads were deteriorating rapidly. Citing some bogus excuse, we asked Chris to take Margie back home. The poor guy drove up over the Norwalk Ridge and up and over Wildcat Mountain in the raging snow and ice to take her home. He slept on the family's couch with Margie's sisters and brother peering at him.
Eventually I graduated and took a job as school psychologist for the Green Bay Public Schools. We bought a little house in the suburb of Preble. We invited people to visit and somehow Margie and Chris both visited us at the same time. Margie was home from a teaching assignment in Houston, Texas, and after a couple days, she returned there. Chris returned to central Wisconsin.
Chris had finally had enough of Murphy's Law and decided to take action.. We got a phone call from him that he had gotten in his Volkswagen and was halfway to Texas to visit Margie in Houston. The car didn't make it but Chris did. About three days later we got a giddy call from them both that they were engaged. To this day, he laments that he was in love with her at first sight and that due to perverse timing and chains of events, all that time was wasted that they could have been happily together.
Chris and Margie did get married. They had three children, Ben, Dan, and Jon. Our lives have intertwined for fifty years. For a time they lived in Green Bay. When we moved to Portage, Wisconsin, they moved to an apartment there, later buying a house in nearby Rio. Ultimately they moved to Wisconsin Rapids and then built a house in his hometown of Auburndale, where they lived for many years before selling it and moving to an empty nest apartment in Elk Mound, Wisconsin where their youngest son and wife teach school.
We have gone on vacations, weekend road trips, and cruises together and Cathy and Margie have travelled together overseas. Some of these adventures I have chronicled elsewhere, but generally speaking we have probably been closer to them than anyone else over the course of our lives.
Now, as I sit here writing and reminiscing, Alexa is playing "Blackbird" by the Beatles, and indeed the blackbirds are swooping about in the little valley outside my patio window. All of the lovely early Beatles songs are reminding me of Margie.
Margie, smiling and giggling as she answered that door in her and Cathy's apartment. Margie, giggling as she thanked me for swatting out the flames when her fur collar caught fire from being too close to a candle at a supper club. Margie, smiling as she triangulated all of Chris's foibles and saw past them to the essence of the man she was in love with.
Margie, laughing as she attended game after game after game of her three boys, from grade school through high school and college and beyond. Margie faithfully never missing church and unflinchingly clinging to her faith in God in the face of two successful fights against cancer and a third against a form of leukemia.
Margie, getting up and going to work early and staying late despite recovering from radiation, chemotherapy, and surgeries. Margie, putting up with the stresses of teaching and going the extra mile, always, because she had standards which she would not let slip.
Margie, smiling lovingly as she spent her first year of retirement babysitting her grandbabies while their parents went to work. Margie, delighted, when Chris agreed to obtain a passport so that they could make a trip to Ireland, then pensively accepting when a series of seizures and a fourth cancer diagnosis put an end to their foreign travel plans.
Margie, giggling and enjoying life even as cancer progressively limited her universe. Margie projecting forth the strength to fly to California for a wedding and to Florida to visit us. Margie, enjoying going to church and to breakfast out, when it was difficult but all she could physically manage. Margie, smiling lovingly at Chris, her caretaker, when she could no longer leave the bed without help, and smiling and laughing with her sisters when they visited. Margie, using all her strength to reach for and gently kiss the hand of a newborn grandbaby that no one could be sure she would ever see.
A year and a half ago, I agreed to go with Cathy on a trip to New Zealand. The flight was long and I spent most of it with my head resting on my hands with my elbows on the little swing-down tray. After an eternity we landed in Sydney, Australia, where we were to catch our final flight. As the plane taxied to the gate, Cathy's phone rang. It was her brother, Steve, calling to tell us that Margie had passed.
We lit a candle in a New Zealand cathedral for Margie and less than a day later we encountered, on a hike, a young woman with long black hair, a willowy look, and a giggling smile, traveling alone. Blackbirds were swooping around the trees. We have lit votive candles in other places in Margie's memory, not because of our own devoutness, but in respect of hers. A few weeks ago we lit one in the final home, in Epheses, Turkey, of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Margie would like that.
Now I'm sitting and reminiscing on one of the last warm, sunny mornings before autumn closes in and Alexa is playing the Beatles.
The Beatles are singing of Margie.
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