Fourth of July has passed for another year. On Saturday night, Jeff and I fell asleep to the sound of booming skies, carried to us from around the whole Bay Area. For several years, we’d climbed to the strip of land that attaches itself to our property to the South East of our property – a strip of land that is almost sold to the people whose house behind ours faces a different street – to watch the fireworks from what we had come to call “The Panhandle.” Not this year. We started to go to bed earlier during COVID – waking earlier each morning, too – and so we were in bed at the end of daylight.
The booms from all over the area filled the air as I lay awake, always falling asleep later than Jeff, who falls into sleep soon after his head hits the pillow. I listened for a while before I, too, fell asleep. As I listened, the sounds took me back to a Fourth of July many years ago.
Some memories shine, as if lit by a magic light from within.
I was little, probably four or five. I lay on a hill in Washington Park on the North Side of Milwaukee, next to my Dad. I expect that my mother and the baby, Suzie, and probably my big brother, Ronnie, were with us, but they did not show themselves in the memory. It’s as if Daddy and I were alone on the hill. Of the five of us, Dad – I later took to calling him FRB, a nickname which stuck with the whole family – holds center stage in the memory. He was the one in our house who talked the most, an extravert who lived with four introverts.
Daddy watched the fireworks with his extraversion on full display, along with the fireworks. “OOOOOH,” he said, loudly. “AHHHH,” the sound followed. With each burst of light, a new sound escaped from Daddy. “OHHH…” he claimed, again. I lay close to his side on the side of the hill. While the fireworks flashed overhead, I turned to watch Daddy as enjoyment and wonder flowed from him.
*
Why do some memories stick, and not others? I’d like to know. Every Fourth of July, I think of those moments, moments now over 70 years old, as the fireworks boom overhead. I’m still there on that hill, laying close to my Daddy, his joy spreading along the grass to me.
*
For many years now, the dry days of summer in Northern California surround me. Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, Mt. Shasta in the distance, from the Warner Valley, CA, 06/9/2026
Suzie called her “the hugger.” Yes, Auntie Irene – one of the extroverted Bahlert’s – loved to hug us when we arrived at her house on Old Lime Kiln Road in Baileys Harbor, Wisconsin. And she loved to hug us when we left. She was, indeed, “the hugger.” Like my dad, Frank Bahlert, Auntie Irene talked fast and kept on talking, no matter what. And she would cry sometimes, too. Her emotions came easily to her, and they couldn’t be kept quiet. It wasn’t quiet with Auntie Irene around.
When Dad had his two weeks off from the steel mill each summer, we’d drive up to Door County – 200 miles north of Milwaukee, a peninsula bordered by Lake Michigan on the East and Green Bay on the West – and spend a week.
Sometimes we stayed in a rented cabin, rented from the Kellstrom’s of Sister Bay, and sometimes we’d stay with my Uncle Fritz, Aunt Goldie, Bobbie and Susie. For several years, they lived on a farm East of Sister Bay, where they kept pigs. After a long day at the shipyards in Sturgeon Bay, Uncle Fritz, my Dad’s younger brother, would collect garbage from restaurants along the highway to feed the pigs. The fastest I ever rode in a vehicle – a small truck – was with Uncle Fritz. My cousin Bobbie in the middle, me on the passenger side, and Uncle Fritz at the wheel, he sped up to 100 miles per hour. I think I was too young to consider what could have happened at that speed – and without seatbelts. Uncle Fritz was one of the quiet Bahlert’s, like my Auntie Edna, Uncle Clarence, Uncle Ray, and my cousin Terry, Ray’s daughter.
Auntie Irene, like my Dad, was a talker – as well as a hugger. After college and after I had been hired as a Claims Representative in the Social Security Office in Green Bay, Wisconsin, I’d sometimes stay the weekend with Auntie Irene and Uncle Erdreich – others called him “Peggy.” They had an upstairs to their house, an upstairs reached by a narrow stairway built into the wall. I’d stay alone in one of the two rooms up that narrow passage, looking up from my bed at the trees that pressed against the windows as the wind blew. Food was always plentiful at Irene and Erdreich’s house. Auntie Irene would bring out dish after dish of good food, filling the table with her cooking along with her non-stop talking.
I liked to introduce friends to my family in Door County. Friends were always welcome. One day, I invited a friend who worked with me at the Social Security Office in Green Bay. We headed to Door County on Friday night. After we’d met Auntie Irene and Uncle Erdreich, Becky and I headed out for some adventure of our own. Becky surprised me as we pulled out of the driveway and onto the highway: “there’s no excuse for someone to be like that,” she said. My feelings about Auntie Irene did not change with her comment, but my feelings about Becky did. I had no excuse to be a friend of someone who judged these loving, kind folks so harshly.
Another friend traveled with me from California to Wisconsin, many years later. We, too, made the pilgrimage to Door County. In her way, Bonnie told me, “I’ve never met people like this before.” Together with my mother, Bonnie and I climbed the narrow steps to that simple upstairs room and stayed the night. We were recipients of a kind and gentle hospitality.
When I took my husband Jeff up to meet the Door County folks for the first time, his kind and open manner made him welcome from the start. He loved to meet the family I loved so dearly, and they welcomed him with kindness. Jeff gets excited about a lot of things – which is fun (but can be exhausting). Together with Auntie Edna and Uncle Werner, Auntie Irene and Uncle Erdreich, we went to take a look at the cabin that Werner used to house seasonal workers who came from the city to pick cherries every summer in his orchard. We walked through tall grass to the frame house, following one another on a narrow path. As we approached the house, Jeff was saying: “this is great! “
Behind me as we walked along the narrow path to the house, I heard Auntie Irene say, under her breath: “I feel sorry for Mary Elyn.” I can still hear her voice, saying out loud only to herself what she was really thinking…
I was hospitalized in the summer of 1996. Before Jeff and I had made the trip back to Wisconsin, I’d written a note to my beloved Auntie Irene, who was ill and in a care home. “Wait for me,” I’d written. When Jeff and I and my mother made it to Door County, Irene had already passed. I sat with the others in the narrow wooden pews of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. After the funeral, I stood on the steps of the church, looking over the heads of my Bahlert cousins, some of whom I had not seen for many years. I remembered what I’d written in my note to Auntie Irene. Auntie Irene had waited. And I had returned, just in time, as it turned out.
I could say that Sue and Bill have changed. Sue passed in 2003, and Bill passed in 2024. For many years, Sue and I had been the best of friends.
I met Sue in December of 1978. At the time, I was a Claims Representative in the Social Security Office on the South Side of Milwaukee. My supervisor, Larry Alt, had told me that I should meet his wife. He thought we could be friends. When I arrived at the Social Security Office on Fond du Lac Avenue on Milwaukee’s North Side to help adjudicate a back load of SSI claims, I managed to scout out Sue, hard at work at her desk. One day, after the rest of the office had gone home and both Sue and I were working on claims at our desks, I sat down across from Sue. She and I started a conversation that day; in my mind, that conversation was the beginning of one long conversation that ended with Sue’s death in 2004.
When Sue and Larry moved to the Chicago Area a few years later, Sue would come up to spend a weekend with me from time to time. Those weekends had a familiar routine. From the moment she sat down in my living room in the red velvet chair that faced the couch on Friday night until she left early on Sunday afternoon, we talked and talked. At the time, Sue was a smoker, and I’d sit across from her as she lit cigarette after cigarette, the smoke rising in the room along with our laughter. When the evening had come, we’d go to dinner at some good restaurant and sit there, too, talking and talking some more. On Saturday, Sue would sleep in, and I’d rise early to do some weekend cleaning in the apartment until Sue was up. And then – the conversation continued. Sometimes we’d teach one another a new makeup trick, or try on one another’s clothes.
All dolled up again in the evening, we’d find another good restaurant where we’d have dinner and talk – and talk.
I think Sue was surprised when I decided to go to seminary, and left Milwaukee in late December of 1981 to move to Berkeley. But her surprise and my move didn’t matter; the conversation continued. I listened to the details of her life as she divorced Larry and as she moved up in positions in the Federal Government, eventually becoming District Manager of Social Security Office. That position suited her political instincts and her intellect – and her ambition. As I sat down to write about her now, I googled her name and discovered other local community positions she held when she later moved to Milwaukee to be head of staff in a large District Office.
A few years later, after she had dated many men in the years following her divorce from Larry, she met Bill. I knew something was different about Bill from the way Sue talked about him. She had a lift in her soft voice with its Southern nuances. And I was right. A couple of years later, they were married. I flew from the Bay Area of California to Midway Airport in Chicago, where Bill picked me up to drive me to where I’d stay for the weekend. I had the honor of officiating their wedding ceremony. On our ride through the city, I remember Bill saying: “I’m standing on solid ground.”
Indeed. Sue was finally happy. Bill was happy. Together, they formed a large blended family.
On Friday, February 6, 2004, I received a message on my answering machine from Sue’s mother. She happily relayed the news that Sue was in recovery from surgery, and that she had done well. I was surprised. I had not known about a surgery. Later that day, I received news that Sue had died. I don’t remember who relayed the news of this second announcement.
That spring, I returned to Milwaukee to take part in a Memorial Service for Sue. Bill had taken care of the details. I led the service, delivered a eulogy. Her daughter Meredith said a few words. Then, the room opened to the people who were there to remember and honor Sue, her life and achievements. I sat and listened for a long time. When the service had ended, Larry Alt came up to me in the narthex of the church. Larry said, “Sue would have liked this.” I hope he was right.
*
A couple of years after Sue’s death, Jeff and I were staying with Randy and Michael in their home in Pewaukee. Bill took the opportunity to see me again. As he and I sat together at the kitchen table, looking over the beautiful yard, Bill turned to me and said, “I have to get on with my life, Mary Elyn.” I looked into his eyes: “I know you do, Bill,” I answered. Later, a friend suggested that Bill’s announcement to me had been important to him.
From time to time, I saw pictures of Bill in his new life with a new wife – also Sue – in Florida. My warmth for Bill remained. I had hoped to see him again. One day in 2024, he left a message for me on Facebook. “I’d like to see you again, Mary Elyn,” he wrote. “I’d like to see you again, too, Bill,” I answered. My reunion with Bill did not happen; Bill passed in December of 2024. Meredith left a message for me on Facebook.
“There are places I remember All my life, though some have changed, Some forever, not for better Some have gone and some remain.
All these places had their moments With lovers and friends, I still can recall Some are dead and some are living In my life, I’ve loved them all…” words and music, John Lennon and Paul McCartney
“All these places have their moments, with lovers and friends I still can recall…” photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, 2026.
My dad had worker’s hands. His hands were broad, wide, the nails often broken from his days in the steel factory, the veins pushing blue against his light-colored skin. When I was little, those hands would lift my little sister by her feet straight up into the air on the living room floor after Daddy came home from work. Until the days before his death, I didn’t know how my father identified with his strong, worker’s body. In the hospital, he said with a mournful look in his eyes: “I was always so strong.” Then, he was ravaged with cancer.
Some days, Dad came home from the steel factory with a steel splinter in those strong hands. That hurt. Each time, he would call on Suzie, my sister, to remove the splinter. And she would, working slowly and carefully with a needle, her eyes close to this outstretched hand, intent.
Dad was a gentle man, in spite of his strength, maybe because of his strength. Of the two – my mother and my dad – he was the most able to express his feelings. If Dad’s feelings were hurt, it showed on his face. If he was happy, we saw that, too, his eyes sparkling. When he was angry, his voice rose to a deep shout. I was afraid of his power when he was angry, although he did not take it out on any of us. He was rarely angry. I saw him lift a chair in anger once, and I remember that moment, my fear, I expect, completing the memory. Many times, I saw my father cry. One of my dearest memories is of my Dad sitting in his chair, watching “I Love Lucy,” his favorite. Dad roared with laughter at her silliness, looked over at one of us, and said “fun, isn’t it, honey?” Not once, but every week!
Whenever I smell beer, I think of my Dad, sitting in “Dad’s chair,” drinking four bottles of beer, every night. I never have liked beer; I suppose that’s why. For all that is given, when alcohol is present, much is taken away.
In our house, Dad was the most extroverted of us all. In the days before his death, the minister visited. I don’t remember his question to my father, but I do remember Dad saying: “the girls are quiet, like their mother.” This strong, sensitive, extroverted man who spoke in a rural Wisconsin dialect was surrounded by introverts!
When I was a teenager, I invented the nickname that would be his for the rest of his life. I invented the name that we all called him, the one that stuck: FRB. His initials. We still refer to him as FRB, in my house. I still make up nicknames for my loved ones, too. Always have, always will.
One day many years ago, I had lunch with a male colleague. Sometime during our conversation, he remarked: “you’re comfortable around men.” I don’t know that I had ever thought of it, but I expect it comes from having a strong, gentle hearted man love me from the time I was born. Even more, a strong, gentle hearted man liked me.
In my first apartment, the inside of a hall clothes closet was my place to post inspirational quotes. I cannot remember the source, but one was a quote: “The best thing a man can do for his children is to love their mother.” For all my father lacked – education, refinement, a profession, assertion – he loved my mother. He said so, often and out loud. He told us he loved us, too, with great glee and feeling. My folks did not go out on dates. From time to time, they would be invited to the wedding of a friend, one of his co-worker’s kids, probably. Then, my father, always proud of his good looks, got dressed in his working-class suit, and waited for my mother. When she came into the living room from the bedroom off the dining room, my father would purse his lips: “woo-hoo!” he would say, his eyes alight. Then, my mother’s face shone.
I don’t remember my Grandpa Markowski, my mother’s father, but I had heard the story, many times, of how he was with me to witness my first steps. He died a few months after I had turned one – on November 25, 1950.
I don’t know much about his life, either, but I bring to mind my own thoughts about how life was for him after he immigrated to the United States. He worked in a foundry in Milwaukee. He returned to Ukraine – which would soon be swallowed whole into what was the Soviet Union – to bring his wife, my grandmother, Feodosia, to the United States. I know that many immigrants left family in the Old Country, never to see them again, to start a new family. In his new country, Vlas Markov Srebny would lose his name, to take up a name more easily understood: Alex Markowski. When I return now to stand at the grave at the cemetery on the north side of Milwaukee where he and my grandmother – her name in the new country was Frances – are buried, only the name he acquired in his new land remains. I’m always saddened to think of this. It’s a common story, I’m sure.
These past few days, I’ve been sifting through old pictures again. I like to look at them from time to time. During the early days of COVID, I spent several days sitting in our yard, sorting through large boxes of pictures. I got as far as grouping them into decades. I think that’s as far as I’ll go with them. I’d been looking for a particular photo of my mother and my brother Ronnie, but I didn’t find the one I was looking for.
I did find a treasure this time. I’m not sure how I missed it before. My mother had told me that the day my Grandpa Markowski died, he had come to the door of our family’s upper flat, asking for money. She had said no to his request for money – probably knowing he’d spend it on liquor – but he’d declined, and walked away. The treasure I found included more details, details I had not been told.
In my mother’s handwriting, two yellowed pieces of paper, apparently torn from a notebook, maybe a notebook intended for family history, recounted:
“Alex Markowski was born Vlas Markov Srebny on February 11, 1881. He was born in Kiev, Ukraine. In 1903, he joined the Army. Also, he married Feodosia Maksuda in 1903. Of this marriage were born Ivan ((John), George, Michael, Mary and Hannah, and Peter. Of these, only John, Michael, Mary, Hannah and Pete remain. He came to America via Boston, Mass., and the Great Lakes to Milwaukee in June, 1910. He returned to Ukraine in the year and returned to America with his wife. He received naturalization papers on May 25, 1943. He taught himself to read and write. He was always alerted to the affairs of the entire world.
May he rest in peace.
On Saturday, November 25, 1950 at 8:30 Dad collapsed on North Eleventh and West Reservoir. It was a very cold day which stimulated his heart. Added to this, he climbed up and down three flights of stairs, and bucked a sharp wind up a steep hill, where he collapsed. He passed away immediately.”
