Betty Wissler’s mother was Hilda Shute, the middle of three college-educated and accomplished sisters who grew up in Richmond, Indiana in the 1880s and 1890s. Hilda was the daughter of Eleonora Lupton Shute and John Howard Shute, called Howard. The Shutes, birthright Quakers, came to Richmond from England several generations earlier. Howard and Eleonora met at Quaker meeting and married in 1886. They moved from Richmond to Aurora, Illinois on the Fox River when Howard became executive secretary to the first head of a railroad in Chicago. That job provided a comfortable living for the family. Howard commuted into Chicago by electric railway. This might have been in the 1870s. Eleonora, who was a school teacher, gave birth to three daughters, Florence, Hilda, and Eleonora. Hilda was born in 1887. Howard died suddenly of early diabetes when the children were very young.

 

After her husband’s death, Eleonora Shute moved back to Richmond with her young daughters to live with her two sisters, Jean and Anna Lupton. They moved into a large brick house at 208 N. 14th Street. The Lupton sisters’ father and a brother had died in the Civil War—not of war wounds but of cholera. At that time little was known of the causes or treatment of cholera and, of course, antibiotics would not be discovered for another 50 years. The father and brother had just finished the construction of the house, which still stands, just before they went off to war. The Lupton sisters all dressed in the simple style of Quaker women of the time and never cut their hair, as was the custom. Hilda had striking curly red hair.

 

All three Lupton sisters became professional women. Aunt Jean Lupton, who never married, was the first woman to be a legal secretary in Richmond. Jean earned a good salary which helped to support the three Shute girls and their mother. Anna was a first grade teacher in Richmond.

 

Betty remembers that when she was growing up in New Castle, the Polk family still drove to Richmond to visit the Luptons on Sunday afternoons, a 30-mile drive. Betty remembers the lilies of the valley and the violets in the grass of the house’s big yard. Barbara also remembers Aunt Jean and her violet-filled yard. On Polk family visits, Anna Lupton, a first grade teacher, would draw beautiful pictures of birds for Betty and her sister Mary. Anna also had an interesting breakfast routine. She would pour boiling water over shredded wheat and then add sugar and milk. Betty remembers that Hilda had a Ouija Board and would bring it out to ask life’s big questions with her sisters. Florence, Hilda, and Eleonora attended schools in Richmond and all graduated from Earlham College.

 

Florence Shute, the oldest of the three and a petite woman with great energy, was a talented musician. She sang and played the piano, studied music at Earlham, and lived most of her life in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where she was head of the music department of the city’s largest high school. She particularly enjoyed that teaching job, Betty remembers, because many students were first generation Europeans and Asians, new to the United States and eager to learn. She tried to go to Europe every summer for special tutoring in orchestral and choral conducting. Florence was also actively involved in peace movements throughout her adult life. She collaborated with a Catholic priest in Pittsburgh who was a leader of the movement there. Florence took a special interest in Betty and Bob’s children when they were young and joined the family on at least one trip to Switzerland.

 

Eleonora, the youngest Shute sister, married Fred Hallowell, a New York Times foreign reporter who was assigned to Rome for some time after they were married. Eleonora was a small town girl who did not enjoy world travel. The marriage ended in a mutually-agreed divorce. Eleonora then managed bookstores in New York City.

 

Hilda Shute graduated from Earlham College, majoring in German and music. Hilda enjoyed learning languages and taught Latin, German, and French after graduating from college.

 

After college, Hilda’s first job was teaching high school in Russiaville, a small community in Indiana -- really just a wide place in the road, Betty remembers. It was not an easy assignment. Many of her students were older than she and they sometimes gave her a hard time. They made fun of her red hair and tried to scare her. She remembered boys peeking in her window at night. Although still young, she was then appointed head of the modern language department in Kokomo, Indiana’s high school. Mary Polk remembers that Hilda most wanted to teach German but most schools had given up teaching German during World War I when anti-German sentiments grew extreme.

 

Hilda married Oakley M. Polk in the Quaker church in Richmond in 1915. Mary Polk remembers that the church was later turned into a museum and Oakley used to tease Hilda about her church becoming a museum. Hilda and Oakley met at a maple sugaring fest, invited by friends.

 

Oakley Polk (1885-1959) had grown up in Lincoln, Nebraska, where the Polk family had settled. Many were lawyers or judges. His parents owned the local newspaper in Lincoln. His father was Milton Polk. His mother was Catherine (Kitty Lou) Alsbaugh. Oakley had one younger sister, Emma Polk, who married Henry Chesick. His mother and father divorced after his father had an affair with a woman who lived next door and she became pregnant.

 

Oakley was 17 when his parents divorced. He and his mother and sister moved to New Castle. Oakley finished high school in New Castle and worked after school in a friend’s clothing store selling overalls and “Sunday suits” to local farmers. Most farmers had only one Sunday suit so those purchases were not frequent but the store was prosperous in the 1920s. Slowly, Oakley bought into this store and became half-owner. At one point, things were going so well that he invested in some Florida real estate. That land turned out to be not as advertised and he lost money – an unusual episode since he was not a speculator.

 

Elizabeth Anne Polk (later Betty Wissler), called Liz Anne, was born on November 11, 1917. Mary Patricia Polk was born in 1921.

 

In New Castle, the Polks first rented a house on South Main Street with a big backyard that had a cherry tree, a peach tree, and two pear trees. Mary Polk may have been born there. The house had two bedrooms and a coal furnace. Mary and Betty shared an enormous bed. “To cut down on arguments,” Betty remembers, “we used a pencil and drew down the middle of the bed. Then we still argued endlessly about whether someone had stuck an elbow over the line. There was no direct heat to the second floor so we ran downstairs with our clothes in the morning to get dressed on the first floor.”

 

The Polks moved to the South 11th St. house where Mary Polk lived until her death in 2011. Mary remembers that it was initially owned by Auntie Ice who loaned it to the young family without charging rent. Auntie Ice lived next door in a big house. Her husband was a farmer who had bought land that was very good and had made a lot of money. They managed quite well. Auntie Ice was the sister of Oakley’s mother, Catherine Louise Alsbaugh, and was married to Willard Ice. Auntie Ice had had one daughter who died at age nine of meningitis. Family helping family in that way was considered the normal thing, Betty remembers. After she was married, Hilda taught German at the New Castle high school.

 

When the United States joined World War I in 1917 Oakley, like other young men, was likely to be drafted, but he was allowed to remain home because he had a new baby—Betty.

 

Continuing to work at the clothing store, Oakley would drive to the Chicago headquarters of Hart Schaffner Marx in the family car and bring back Sunday suits that had been ordered. When Betty was 10 or 11 years old, Oakley took her with him on one of the Chicago trips. The trip took most of the day.Once in Chicago, Betty and her father stayed at what is now the Hilton Hotel downtown. Betty recalls how the manufacturing company looked —an old factory. One room was for visiting salesmen. It was a Jewish organization so everyone assumed that Oakley was Jewish too.

 

Oakley’s younger sister Emma also lived in New Castle. Emma always worked with her husband Henry Chesick in his printing store and shop where there were big printing machines in the basement. Henry came from a Czechoslovakian family that had settled in Madison, Wisconsin. He was the first in his family to go to college. The Chesicks had two children—John and Catherine. John became a professor of chemistry at Haverford College, a Quaker college in Pennsylvania. Barbara remembers that Catherine was exceptionally beautiful and was married in a lavish backyard ceremony at her parents’ home after an earlier fiancé was killed in World War II. Catherine did not have children, perhaps because she had epilepsy—then thought to be inherited. She and her husband developed alcohol problems but she recovered and had a good life when older, Barbara remembers.

 

Betty and Mary Polk went to elementary school and high school in New Castle. Betty remembers: “We walked to school about six blocks away. Everyone walked, except people who came in from the farms who got to ride a bus. I was always a little unhappy because living that close we were not allowed to eat at school and had to walk back and forth at lunch time. My mother always cooked a lunch. She made sautéed eggplant with crumbs at least once a week. Other lunches were scrambled eggs, grilled cheese sandwiches, sometimes accompanied by homemade tomato soup.”

 

“I liked school. I liked some teachers better than others. I remember a 6th grade teacher—the only male teacher I remember in the lower grades—who would become unconscious suddenly. He would look at the class with a blank stare for five minutes and then begin again to teach, not realizing what had happened. At first the children giggled but that stopped because we liked him.”

 

Mary and Betty worked in their father’s men’s clothing store as soon as they were tall enough to see over the counter. “I remember putting my chin on the display case where all the ties were. My first job was selling ties—as soon as I could see above the case. I don’t remember ever being paid—it was just what we did. It was fun. It was exciting. Saturday was a big day because the farmers would come into town and buy their overalls and the food they would need for a whole week. New Castle was very much a farm town then. Only Chrysler had an assembly plant.”

 

That clothing store failed during the Depression. Oakley Polk owned the store with Morris Goodwin. When the store closed, Betty was about 14 and suddenly felt very responsible for the family. She went out and found jobs. She washed dishes in the local restaurant. She typed for Uncle Chesick. She and Mary operated a popcorn stand at the only local movie theater and sold peanuts that they toasted in their oven at home to be just the right brown color.

 

Both Hilda’s and Oakley’s families were birthright Quakers but in New Castle there was no Quaker silent meeting of the sort that Hilda liked. The Quaker meeting had music and preachers. The family joined the Presbyterian church, which had a young peoples’ program that the children in town wanted to be part of.

 

In high school Betty remembers some teachers who influenced her. “There were three siblings who were teachers. They were farmers who got up early and did the milking and then came to school. One man taught physics—I loved the subject probably because I loved him. One taught math. The third taught Latin. I think it was the teachers who hooked me on learning.”

 

Hilda stayed home when Betty and Mary were young. Later, during the Depression, she started substituting as a high school German teacher when Oakley’s store closed. Betty remembers that Hilda was paid only in scrip because the school board had no money to spend. “I worried about the whole family during those years.”

 

Betty graduated from high school in 1935 in the depths of the Depression. “My father had insisted that whatever else I did in school that I learn to type. He paid me to type his business letters.”

 

Betty entered Earlham College the following fall. “I always assumed I would go to college—maybe because my mother assumed that both Mary and I would go to college. I think the only question was where we would go. That soon became evident. Earlham offered both of us full scholarships and it was close enough to home so that transportation was not a big issue.”

 

The Depression was hard on the Polk family. It hit pretty suddenly. Farmers who were Oakley’s customers at the clothing store could not pay their bills and the places Oakley had bought clothing from refused to honor his credit. The store stayed open a little while but pretty soon there were no customers. Either Oakley didn’t have what they needed or they didn’t have the money to buy what they needed, Betty remembers. People just patched their blue jeans. Betty remembers worrying about the family. They couldn’t pay for groceries for more than a year. The grocer just did the best he could to get food that people had to have. A farmer who usually came by our house with eggs and butter and milk and scurried away “because he knew we couldn’t pay but he wanted us to have what he knew we needed. Everyone sort of took care of everyone else.”

 

After the clothing store closed, Oakley applied for a job with the Federal Housing Administration, a new agency created to help people find affordable housing. His job was assessing applications for newly available mortgages to make it possible for people to buy their own homes. He was given a job assessing those applications for a three- or four-state area. That meant that he traveled a lot. Sometimes the travel was farther than surrounding states. Once, the whole family drove with him to Oregon, Washington, and California. They drove in an old Cadillac. Betty remembers that she saw black cherries for the first time in Oregon. This was about 1933 or 1934. They stayed at travelers’ inns, much like later bed and breakfasts.

 

The FHA job provided Oakley an opportunity to learn about real estate and provided a step toward starting his own real estate business in New Castle. Oakley Polk Real Estate was formed on the unusual idea of always telling people the negatives about the property that was for sale as well as the positives, Betty remembers. Mary Polk worked with her father and picked up the idea and expanded it, sometimes loaning people the money they needed for their down payments. The Polks knew everyone in the town and all about their families.

 

During high school summers, Betty waited on tables and organized activities at a Presbyterian summer camp on one of the northern lakes in Indiana. Perhaps 10 cabins with 10 campers each formed the camp which also had beautiful woods. Betty remembers the night when a skunk wandered into their cabin and hid under a bed. Pondering what to do, the campers simply opened the door wide to provide the visitor an easy exit and got back into bed.

 

During college summers Betty worked at a summer camp for girls outside Philadelphia. There she developed her own program in canoeing and archery. She remembers that it was the only place she ever saw a hummingbird’s nest with eggs in it.

 

Betty and Bob graduated from Earlham in 1939. Both had full tuition scholarships for graduate work at the University of Chicago, Bob to the medical school and Betty to the school of social work. Most of their friends had not gone on to college. They found work to support their parents during the continuing Depression. Hilda and Oakley Polk knew Chicago because of Oakley’s frequent trips there.

 

Betty entered the School of Social Service Administration founded in 1908 by Sophonisba Breckinridge. Ms. Breckinridge, the first woman to be admitted to the bar in Kentucky but barred from practicing law because she was a woman, came to the University of Chicago to get a Ph.D. in political science.

 

Ms. Breckinridge was a senior faculty member when Betty entered the school in the fall of 1939 and she was the house mother of Green Hall where Betty lived. Betty remembers her as austere, a firm believer in women’s rights, and ahead of herself by a generation or two. Meanwhile, Bob moved into a medical fraternity house on campus.

 

Bob and Betty were married quietly on April 7, 1940 at the Thorndike-Hilton chapel on 58th street and University Avenue with four students who were friends attending. At that time it was the general assumption that graduate student women would not get married while in school or working. Bob and Betty moved into a very small third floor walk-up apartment at 6136 Woodlawn adorned with bed bugs, Betty remembers. “Our nearest grocery was a block and a half away.” Betty remembers buying their best roast pork for 15 cents a pound and learning to cook “by chance.” Betty continued her studies in the fall of 1940 after Barbie was born in November, taking Barbie to class while she was sleeping. Ms. Breckinridge liked Bob although she didn’t expect to like husbands. She was the first one to give Barbie an ice cream cone.

 

Betty realized she couldn’t complete her Master’s degree while raising Barbie and Mary, born in 1944, and working to help support the family while Bob was still in school. Bob and Betty house-sat one summer for some Earlham friends. They then moved to 5610 Blackstone, a coach-house/garage apartment. Because of fuel rationing during war time, there was never enough heat for 24 hours. Betty remembers how cold it was for Barbie crawling on the floor. The Wisslers then moved to 5744 Drexel, a married-student housing apartment, where Mary was born in 1944 and David in 1947. Betty remembers staying in the hospital the required 2 weeks when Mary was born, including a full week of bed-rest. Betty remembers when their pet hamster, placed in the bathtub with the plug in, took out the plug and dropped her babies down the drain. That apartment was half a block from the hospital where Bob was still in school. Betty worked for the Red Cross during the war and for Chicago Child Care (58th and Drexel) for many years doing foster-home and adoption placements.

 

The Wisslers moved again to 5715 Drexel, a first floor apartment across the street, with two bedrooms. Barbie and Mary shared a bedroom. John was born while they lived in that apartment, in 1949. In a rare trip away, Bob and Betty took a week off and went to Oklahoma to visit friends.

 

After Betty and Bob Wissler were married, Oakley would often come to Chicago and take them and their children to the Tropical Hut restaurant on 57th and Kenwood for a treat. The Tropical Hut had great butterscotch sundaes. It was decorated in a South Sea Islands theme and served steak and lobster tails.

 

Mary and Barbie remember Betty canning peaches and tomatoes in the summer in the apartment kitchen. Since the family had no car, Bob and colleague Marc Beem would take the street car to a farmers market at 71st and Cottage Grove. They brought back the ripest peaches and tomatoes. Betty and Louise Beem would then boil the peaches and tomatoes and fill mason jars. Placed in David Wissler’s red wagon, Bob and Marc took the jars to the hospital at night to process in the autoclave.

 

Mary remembers cooling off in a wash tub on the apartment’s wooden back landing on hot days. “The alley, the climbing trees in neighbors’ yards and the alcoves between buildings were full of adventure for me and my friends. We had the run of the block at ages 6 and 7. We made mysterious potions out of berries that we found on shrubs and bottled them, tried to turn coal into diamonds by burying it (we heard that would work), and started digging a tunnel to China between two buildings. I hunted four-leaf clovers and made clover chains (and ate quite a lot of clover and grass) with my best friend Barbie Probst and tried to enlarge my butterfly collection by trading for a luna moth (I never got one).”

 

Living at 5715, the family had a white cat, George Snowball. A shocking day was when George was hit by a car in the alley. Betty also remembers a horse-drawn Wanzer milk wagon delivering milk to the back door and a knife sharpener who came around in the alley.

 

Barbie and Mary walked to Ray School at 57th and Kimbark with a group of neighborhood children and walked home at lunch and back again in the afternoon. Betty remembers that Mrs. Adams was the very good first grade teacher. Before Ray School, Barbie, Mary, David and John went to a nursery school on Woodlawn near 58th.

 

Betty remembers that while ice skating under the Stagg Field stands with David and John a group of boys grabbed her arm. She fell on her hip and may have broken off a bit of bone that some years later led to the first of several hip replacements. Because no one in Chicago did hip replacements then Betty went to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston for surgery.