The Plum Coulee house in 1970.
Bruce in front of the Plum Coulee house in 1997.
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The Plum Coulee house in 1970. |
Bruce in front of the Plum Coulee house in 1997. |
Jerry tells us that when he was born, February 5, 1915, the temperature outside was some 65 degrees below zero, and all of his brothers and sisters watched his birth. However, Sid, Ben and Emily fill us in on the "rest of the story."
Ben and Emily both say that it couldn't have been that cold -- but would allow that, with the modern "windchill" factor, it might have been. Ben, nine at the time, was in the hospital with "St. Vitus Dance" (now called rheumatic fever) -- the source of his present heart valve problem, so he wasn't there. Emily says she doesn't think any body watched -- and, according to Ben, that specifically includes our Pop because he had shoveled his way out of the house to go for the doctor and the doctor and he hadn't made it back. It was a multi-story house but a mattress had been thrown down stairs for the occasion. Rose was seven at the time and Ben suggests that she must have helped. Molly and Emily were too small -- and Sid wasn't talking. Jerry was by far the biggest baby (12 pounds?) of the family but apparently it went off without a hitch.
Dr. Suzanne Bertram provided a slight correction to her dad's description: "Dad made a slight technical error in his description of Ben's illness. St. Vitus Dance is an old term for the choreaform movements associated with Rheumatic Fever. It is not synonomous with Rheumatic Fever. Rheumatic fever is an inflammatory disease which occurs as a delayed sequel to untreated group A streptococcal pharyngitis or "strept throat" and involves many body systems (such as the heart, joints, skin, ...)."
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