Mary Ellen VanBlaricum, née Shearer

August 11, 1923 to March 9, 2019

This is a very belated eulogy for my mother, Mary Ellen VanBlaricum. I have no excuse for taking a year to the week to finally get around to writing this. The deadly sin of sloth comes to mind but it is not that I didn’t care, it is that emotional inertia slowed me down. I also have to say that, as I put the finishing touches and edits on this, it is Friday, March 13^th, the fifth anniversary of my father’s death.

I am going to state right up front that while this is my mom’s eulogy, my brother and I, as well as my dad, are going to get mentioned several times. Please do not take this as lack of focus or braggadocio, but rather, we are mentioned to point out my mother’s focus and strengths. I think we tend to judge people’s lives by what their life’s work was and the products they might have produced. We were her life’s work and the products of that work.

Some of this eulogy comes from words my brother, Glenn Franklin VanBlaricum, Jr., wrote for a piece that appeared in the Heritage House (an assisted living facility) newsletter when she moved into her apartment there in the summer of 2015. Some of the words (paraphrased) come directly from my mom and my dad when I interviewed them over the years. I have included a few more details than the nonfamily members might want to know but this allows them to be recorded for posterity. Also, while I have referred to this as a eulogy, it is also part obituary and part biography. Call it what you will…it is about my mom’s life.

Mary Ellen, circa 1924.

 Mary Ellen Shearer was born on August 11, 1923, the sixth of nine children of Dessie Bernice (Everette) and Benjamin Franklin Shearer. (Aside: Ben Shearer’s grandmother was Elizabeth Starbuck who traces her lineage back to the Macys and Coffins who established the colony on Nantucket Island in 1659.) Having nine children between 1912 and 1930 (if you do the math, that is one every two years), Dessie was obviously a very busy homemaker and mother. To quote my mother, “Mama was a saint.”  Ben worked in construction with a specialty in concrete finishing, but was also a skilled hunter and fisherman who supplemented the family dinner table with fish and game. Their home was in Olney, Illinois, a small town in southern Illinois which is also famously the home of white squirrels. As a baby, Mary Ellen lived on North Walnut Street in Olney and apparently enjoyed sitting in the front yard in a wash tub.

Ben and Dessie Shearer’s family – Standing L to R: Mary Ellen, Frances, Bertie, Elmo, Eunie, Walt, June. Seated Tom, Ben, Dessie, Von. NOTE: My mother is pregnant with my brother in this photo and is also wearing a pair of pilot’s wings.

My notes say that my mother’s parents moved to Kankakee, Illinois, when she was about two years old and lived in a house owned by her Uncle George Shearer. What my grandpa did there in the construction industry is information that may be lost to history. Although, given the Shearer and VanBlaricum families’ proclivity for storytelling, I am sure we can make something up to fill in the void. They then moved from Kankakee to Noble, Illinois, in a new Model T Ford with running boards equipped with expansion luggage racks. The car was full of luggage, two adults, and seven kids. This seems like a scene from Ma and Pa Kettle.

Mary Ellen started school in Noble which is a small town about eight miles west of Olney. They lived on an apple orchard where her Uncle Sam Everette also lived and worked. Her sister La Vaughn (Von) was born in Noble. While they lived there, which was during the Depression, Ben went to Anniston, Alabama, to work for a short period of time. Mary Ellen would walk from the house at the orchard to the school south of town. Her feet didn’t reach the ground when she sat at her desk so her brother Elmer (Elmo) cut a log in half and carried it all the way to school and put it under her desk so she could rest her feet. Apparently, according to her older sister Eunice (Eunie), while their dad was working in Alabama, they mostly had chicken to eat. Eunie said that they got tired of the chicken sandwiches and tried to trade them at school. What they tried to trade them for is also lost to history but given the locale I suspect that they were hoping for a rabbit, squirrel, or ham sandwich.

Mary Ellen (on the left) and her sister Eunie.

It is also not clear when the family moved back to Olney from Noble but my mom told me that she didn’t finish first grade in Noble. By second grade, the 1930/31 school year, she was in Room 3 of Central School in Olney. She told me that she lived in five different houses as she grew up, each one a step up from the one before. She said that they had a pet duck that lived more than ten years.  They also had a hunting beagle, Jiggs, that, after a hunt, her dad would have to carry home because it had worn itself out chasing rabbits. This explains some things for me. When I was a kid, we also had a pet duck and a beagle. The duck, as I recall, didn’t live long but our beagle lived fourteen years with my mom taking extremely good care of her.

Olney Central School, Grade 2, Room 3, May 1931 – Mary Ellen Shearer is pictured in the lower right corner.

Mary Ellen graduated from Olney High School in May, 1941. During her junior high and high school years she played shortstop on softball teams. In high school she played on a sponsored team which was managed by her older brother, Elmo. We know nothing of her skill at sports but if she was anything like her older brothers, Elmo and Walter (Walt), she was immensely talented or at least would have claimed to have been.

Mary Ellen is third from the left in the back row (the really happy one). Her brother, Elmo, is the team manager.

As a high school senior she worked for NYA, National Youth Administration, helping teachers grade papers and such. She said it paid a pittance but enough to afford to buy her class ring which cost $12. After high school, Mary Ellen worked for the Surplus Commodities Office (part of Roosevelt’s New Deal) at the Court House in Olney for a while. She then got a job as a long distance operator working for Illinois Commercial Telephone Company. The phone company sent her to Lawrenceville to school for two weeks to learn to be a long distance operator (one ringy dingy, two ringy dingy). This was her first time away from home and she told me that she got to eat out for two weeks. She went to Lawrenceville on a Sunday and shared a room and a bed with an older lady who was also being trained. The phone company paid her $12.00 a week and her take home pay was $11.76. She was living at home and paid her parents $5.00 a week for room and board and she also helped with the housekeeping. 

At that time the Shearers lived in a big house at 705 East South Avenue in Olney. Also living there were her younger siblings (Tom, Von, and June) and her older sister, Eunie and Eunie’s husband, Clarence B. (Pede) Miller. Mary Ellen worked at the phone company into the summer of 1942, even after she got married in July of that year.

My mother told me that while still in high school, during the summer of 1940 before her senior year, she met my father, Glenn Franklin VanBlaricum. Her best friend was from Wynoose (yes, that is a real Illinois town) who knew two guys from nearby Noble, Illinois. Glenn also was from Noble. My dad would come into Olney with these two guys and my mom’s friend introduced her to him. They met at the open air dance floor on top of the bath house at the Olney swimming pool. (As an aside, her father Ben, while working for the WPA, did all of the finish concrete work on the Olney bath house, swimming pool, and dance floor.) She said at the time my dad was teaching in the rural school in Noble, had a Ford, but no spending money. I guess that means he had a hot rod Ford but not a two dollar bill.

Mary Ellen and her five sisters the year she met Glenn. From left to right: Eunie, Mary Ellen, Frances, Von, June, Bertie

Glenn, the youngest of eight children, was born in 1920 to Molly (Long) and James VanBlaricum. (Another aside: Glenn’s 7^th grandfather came from Holland in 1634 as an indentured servant for Van Rensselaer.) Glenn’s parents owned a small 56-acre farm on Hog Run Creek south of Noble about half way between Noble and Wynoose. Glenn had a year of college at Eastern Illinois State Teachers College (now Eastern Illinois University) and taught in rural one-room schools in the 1939-40 and 1940-41 school years.

Mary Ellen and Glenn's wedding photo.

In July 1941 Glenn enlisted in the Army Air Corps and went off to flight school in Texas. My mother told me that she dated someone else while Glenn was in flight school. She and Father were only friends at the time but did correspond. She said that in one letter he wrote that he was going to get married after he got his wings but didn’t say to whom. The letters must have been interesting because in July 1942, immediately after Glenn received his commission as a second lieutenant and his wings as a fighter pilot, he returned on leave to Noble. He, at age 22, and Mary Ellen, at age 18, made plans, in a lakeside honkytonk north of Olney, to elope to St. Charles, Missouri, on July 16, 1942 … Oh, the power of a young man in an officer’s uniform with wings on his chest. Before they eloped, my mother went home to wake her parents and tell them what she was doing and to get her new dress. Her dad, Ben Shearer, simply said, “Drive carefully.” My father borrowed his folks 1937 Chevy but didn’t tell them he was going to get married. He kept it twenty-four hours and the brakes went out on them while he had the car so the drive home from Missouri was probably more thrilling than they had hoped for. They spent their first night of marriage in the New Olney Hotel. My dad always told the story that my mom’s right arm was sunburned in the car on the way home and when she complained about it he said, “If you had been sitting in the middle where you should have been then you would not have been sunburned.” I am pretty sure we heard that story on every one of their wedding anniversaries.

Two days after their wedding, Glenn was transferred to Morris Field, now Charlotte Douglas International Airport, in Charlotte, North Carolina, to begin fighter pilot training. There he was assigned to fly the P-39 Bell Airacobra. While he was there Mary Ellen continued working as a phone operator and lived at home for a couple more weeks. She then joined him in Charlotte.  She caught a train to Cincinnati from Olney. Unfortunately, troop trains got first priority and her train was late getting into Cincinnati. The conductor told her he would help her find her train but instead made a pass at her. Since her train wouldn’t be in until the next day she got a taxi to a hotel and slept with the light on all night. She then got up at dawn and went back to the train station and sat there all day waiting for her train.

In August, Glenn was transferred to Drew Field, now Tampa International Airport, in Tampa, Florida, for advanced flight training which consisted of combat formation, gunnery, and cross country training. On September 12, 1942, Glenn was transferred from Drew Field to Ft. Dix, Trenton, N.J., for assignment to the 81st Fighter Group. The troops went by train from Tampa to Trenton while Mary Ellen followed by automobile with two other wives. On September 23, 1942, Glenn was transferred to Camp Kilmer to await the arrival of the 81st Fighter Group to go overseas. On September 27, 1942, Glenn embarked for overseas service on the Queen Mary to Glasgow, Scotland. He was then assigned to Kirton-Lindsey, England, for a few months and on December 23, 1942, he flew nonstop from Land’s End, England, to Port Lyautey, Morocco, North Africa. On January 8, 1943 Glenn went into combat in Tunisia. He was in combat against German ground troops in Tunisia, was in the Battle of Kasserine Pass, and later against German ships and planes during the U.S. invasion of Sicily. My dad did tell me (and I have it on tape) that of the original 27 pilots in the 91st fighter squadron he was in, only five came home. War is hell.

Mary Ellen, Glenn, and Glenn Jr. in Florida circa early 1944.

After Glenn left, my mom moved back to Olney to live with her parents. She was pregnant and happy to be with her mother because, as she said, “I didn’t ‘know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies.’ ” On May 18, 1943, which was Glenn's 23rd birthday, Mary Ellen gave birth to a son, Glenn Franklin VanBlaricum, Jr. (Ten months and two days—you were counting, weren't you?) Glenn Sr. got the telegram announcing his son’s birth while sitting in a fox hole in Tunisia.

After Glenn Sr. returned to the States, exactly a year after being shipped out, they lived briefly in Atlantic City about a half block from the Boardwalk on California Avenue. Glenn then finished out WWII as a base operations officer at Page Field in Florida with Mary Ellen and son. When living in Ft. Meyer, Florida, they rented a house from Mr. John Melvin Parshall. Mr. Parshall ran a machine shop and made parts for Thomas Edison. Mrs. Parshall was Thomas Edison’s bridge partner and she told them a fair number of stories about Edison but, alas, none were passed on to me. Glenn finished out the war at Punta Gorda Air Field, Florida, where he was Base Operations Officer, Link Trainer officer, Air Sea Rescue Officer, Weight and Balance Officer, and general flunky (his words, not mine). The three of them lived on Alligator Creek and when Glenn needed picking up at the base on the days he flew he would buzz their house. On August 29, 1945, they moved from Punta Gorda back to the Olney / Noble area.

After the war, Glenn returned to teaching in Noble. He and Mary Ellen bought their first house, which, like virtually all houses in Noble, had a well for water, an outhouse, and an ice box. It was a good family time, with most of Mary Ellen's siblings living in or near Olney, and two of Glenn's brothers and both sisters, near Noble. This allowed three years of stability for Mary Ellen after moving several times during WWII. On March 11, 1947, Mary Ellen and Glenn lost a baby at birth, Thomas Lynn VanBlaricum.

In 1948 the family made the first of a number of moves north to better teaching positions but worse weather. This move was to Newton, Illinois, where Glenn again taught in the elementary school and was a winning basketball coach.  Michael Lee VanBlaricum, that’s me, was born on September 27, 1950. Mary Ellen began to explore her artistic inclinations, and took up textile painting along with sewing, knitting, and crocheting, since with only two children, a husband, a dog, and a chicken, she obviously didn't have much to keep herself busy. The chicken, an Easter chick named Mister Easter, met his end in a stew pot, a fact that Glenn Jr. learned about only some years later.

Glenny, Mary Ellen, and Mike as a babe in arms. LAte 1950 or early 1951 in Newon, Illinois.

The next move was to Charleston, where Glenn earned a bachelor's degree in elementary education on the GI Bill from Eastern Illinois University in May 1952. While living in the barracks in Charleston, I drank a bottle of weed killer that a neighbor had put in a milk bottle and left on the porch. I had my stomach pumped and the neighbor was lucky to have survived my dad’s wrath. After that, I lost my taste for weed killer.

Next the family moved to Toledo, Illinois, where Glenn became the elementary school principal. My dad joined the Masons, Mother joined the Eastern Star, and Glenn Jr. joined the Boy Scouts. I just hung around and my mom tried to keep me from not hurting or poisoning myself which was only partially successful.

In 1954, the family made a big move to Momence, about 50 miles south of Chicago, where Glenn became principal of the elementary schools (two of them) and the junior high school. Momence has a totally different climate where people ice skate in the winter, and where the VanBlaricum family members were teased for having a "southern accent" by people who had a definite Chicago accent; well, all except for me who, only three at the time of the move, started developing a Chicago twang. The family lived in Momence for seven years, the longest in one place yet.

During that time, Mary Ellen was my Cub Scout Den Mother for a while and worked hard to keep me from falling into the Kankakee River, which was at the end of our block, and often took me to the physician’s office to have parts sewn back together, concussions fixed, and various diseases treated, including double pneumonia. Glenn, Jr. delivered the Kankakee Daily Journal to everyone south of the Kankakee River in Momence, became an Eagle Scout, and blew up mailboxes on Halloween.

In 1961, Glenn took a job selling textbooks for the publisher D.C Heath and Company and the family decamped to Princeton, Illinois, shortly after Glenn, Jr. had graduated as valedictorian from Momence High School. Glenn Jr. went on to also be valedictorian of the University of Illinois Class of 1965. In 1967, Glenn became superintendent and high school principal in Wyanet, Illinois, but still lived in the same house in Princeton. Glenn and Mary Ellen lived in Princeton for 21 years, during which time both sons received BS, MS, and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, both married, and both came to live in Santa Barbara. Glenn, Jr. married Claire Dunn in July 1972 and I married Pam Calvetti in June of 1972. Yep, you heard that right. I got married a month before my older brother.

After Glenn retired in 1979 they began to spend winters in Santa Barbara, first just to evade frigid weather and then to spend time with their three grandchildren (a boy, James, by Glenn Jr. and Claire, and two girls, Ann and Susan, from Pam and me.)

They also began to travel for pleasure, taking trips to New England and Canada, the southeastern states, Alaska, Hawaii, and the Southwest.

It was while she lived in Princeton that my mother took up painting, mainly still lifes and lots of flowers. She never took on portraits, but did a fine job with Goofy.

In 1982, after finally tiring of the northern Illinois winters, Mary Ellen and Glenn moved back to Olney to be near four of Mary Ellen's sisters and one brother. She painted and Glenn made wooden toys and household articles that she decorated using the fine art of tole painting. They enjoyed selling their creations at craft shows.

Mary Ellen and Glennon their 65th wedding anniversary in their home in Goleta.

In 1997, Mary Ellen and Glenn moved to Goleta, California, to be nearer to their Santa Barbara-based sons and families. They enjoyed the California life style and were delighted when their two great-grandchildren (Ellen and Calvin) were born. Glenn Sr. died at the age of 94 on Friday the thirteenth in March of 2015. She and Glenn were married for seventy-two (72) years. After Glenn’s death, Mary Ellen moved to Heritage House, making new friends and enjoying the activities. However, she did think that the arts and crafts classes were a little elementary.

Mary Ellen died at the age of 95 on March 9, 2019, at home in her apartment at Heritage House. She is survived by her two sons, three grandchildren, and three great grandchildren. She is also survived by her sister, Von Crum, of Olney, Illinois, and more nieces and nephews than I have ever been able to count.

It is hard, as her son, to summarize the life of my mother other than through the story I told above. Getting married at 18 to someone who immediately went overseas during WWII, having a baby at 19, losing one at  23, and then having to put up with me starting at age 27 would wear anyone down. I can say that my mom had an incredible sense of humor which, I would like to think, she passed on to her two sons. It is likely this sense of humor, which seems to have been a trademark of the whole Shearer clan, allowed her to always have a smile on her face despite all that life threw at her. She also loved music and was constantly singing around the house.  When she wasn’t singing she was listening to music on the radio. She was an incredibly stoic person. I never heard her complain of either the hardships or pain that she endured despite her occasional migraines and her degenerative arthritis which ultimately caused her to have two new knees. When she did take note of these it was usually with a heavy dose of humor. 

Fortunately, she got to know two of her three great grandchildren and enjoyed every minute of being with them.

End Note: 

In writing this I found a set of my mom’s notes where she was answering my questions from back in 1989. On the first page of her notes she put the following quote:

“Our memories are an untidy family album crammed with images and dreams, scattered and uncatalogued, and their sudden recurrence is wholly unpredictable.” She attributes it to Readers Digest but  without author or date.

To see my father's obituary on my Blog click this.