Aunt Mae's 90th

A record by L. Craig Schoonmaker (nephew; Uncle Jim's sister Gertrude's son)
(Best viewed at screen resolution 800 x 600.)

On May 12, 2007, friends and extended family of Mae Wynne gathered in a banquet room at the Midland Park, NJ, firehouse to celebrate her 90th birthday. Here are some fotos of the event.

To the extent I know names, I supply them. Unless otherwise specified, captions refer to people left to right, back to front. To assist anyone who would like to offer IDs (or correx; send info to Schoonmakr@aol.com), all pix are numbered, and unidentified individuals are noted by letter after that number (e.g., 6a). In some cases, I show very similar fotos that I took to play safe (inasmuch as I'd rather have repeats than miss a shot that cannot be replicated later). They are not identical, tho, since even in staged fotos, people moved. So some people might think one foto is better (of them), while others think another better. You be the judge.

First, my peeps.

Foto 1, My Peeps, the Schoonmakers in attendance: Sue Ann, Brian, Trina; Bob Pannkuk.
Sue Ann will adore this foto.

We shared the table with Nugents (Aunt Mae was born Mae Nugent).

Foto 2:  Sue Ann, Brian, and Trina Schoonmaker; Douglas Deicke, Aunt Marion (Nugent) Deicke
(Aunt Mae's sister), their cousin Betty Ann Pannkuk, her husband, Bob Pannkuk. Better, Sue Ann!

Betty Ann (Stemmermann) Pannkuk is the dauter of Lydia and Bill Stemmermann. Bill was Bertha (Stemmermann) Nugent's brother, which makes Betty Ann first cousin to Aunts Mae and Marion. Here's a view of the Nugent side of the table. I had another foto that caught 'Cousin' Doug lifting something on a fork, but have taken pity, and suppressed that foto, to show him fully dignified.

Foto 3: Nugents/Stemmermanns: Bob Pannkuk, Betty Ann Pannkuk, Aunt Marion, her son Doug Deicke;
Trina Schoonmaker, Sue Ann's hand. Brian is missing. Perhaps I took this picture over his head.

Here's Aunt Mae, drinking alone. Nobody can stand her.  So sad. (Kidding!! I dasn't leave my dry-humor remarks on their own. Some people take them seriously.)  She's watching the brilliant slideshow of old pix that Cousin Faith put together. Unfortunately, I couldn't identify many of the pix, there was no vocal narrator (in order not to interfere with conversations), and I was too far away to read the captions, so I didn't watch much of it.

Foto 4: The birthday girl.

Next we see Jim Nugent, from Texas, who hugs his great-aunt. I believe the briefcase he's carrying contains the German-language Stemmermann family Bible that he brought to give Aunt Mae. Stemmermann was her mother's family name. Like my mother, Aunt Mae is half-Irish and half-German, in the same way, Irish father, German mother.

Foto 5: James Nugent, Aunt Mae.

Here's a better view of the slideshow. Foto is darkened a tad in my graphics program to bring out the projected image in the background, of Uncle Jim and Aunt Mae some years back.

Foto 6:  Unidentifiable person beyond Aunt Mae, Douglas Deicke the younger.
(I don't know if he is a "Jr." or if some particular, like a middle name, differs from his father's full name).

Here, my sisters watch the slideshow. Perhaps they recognize more of the people in those old fotos, given their advanced age.

Foto 7: Douglas Deicke the younger; Sue Ann and Trina Schoonmaker.

Here's a closer view of the slideshow, which is a bit washed out by virtue of a flood of lite from the open door to the grassy yard that kids and watchful parents went out to. Lots of motion over in that corner.

Foto 8: Onscreen, Uncle Jim. Relatively stationary in the right rear of the foto are Doug Hoek (right)
and his dauter (I'm a spelling reformer), Amy (Hoek) Kubik (left). Michael Ward is to the right of the little girls.

The next two pix are of Christopher Ward's family. Cousin Nancy has three sons and one dauter. Oldest to youngest, they are Christopher, Leigh Ellen, Michael, and Timothy.

Foto 9:  Christopher Ward and family: Chris, his wife Lisa, son Christopher, Jr.,
and dauter Mia. (Sounds Italian, doesn't it? Instead of "Mama Mia", "Dauter Mia".) 

In that picture, Chris is facing away from the camera. In this next, his face appears but his wife's and dauter's faces hide behind balloons. Sometimes the camera catches a scene just after you line up the shot.

Foto 10: Christopher Ward and wife, Lisa; son, Christopher, Jr., dauter, Mia.

Here's Cousin Nancy's son Tim, with his girlfriend and mother.

Foto 11:  Cousin Nancy (Ward); son's girlfriend, Amy Marzka; Timothy Ward.
You can almost identify the people in the fotos that the album he is holding is open to.

Here, Trina tells Brian not to give the balloon he is holding to a kid to let it fly into the sky because loosing balloons is an ecological no-no. What goes up must come down, as trash that not only produces visual litter but also, in the case of mylar, nonbiodegradable litter that could adversely impact some animals.

Foto 12:  Trina and Brian Schoonmaker, Jim Nugent (right background).

Little conversational groups formed and dissolved, to re-form into different groups, as people who hadn't seen each other for a long time caught up.

Foto 13:  Unidentifiable young woman [13a], Aunt Marion, Cousin Faith;
Jim Nugent, Chris Ward.

The next three fotos show sisters chatting and dancing together. Here, the Nugent sisters are at the left edge of the dance floor and the Wynne girls engage them in conversation.

Foto 14: [14a] prepares to take a picture; Faith's dauter Kristi (Nattress) Wachtman,
holding her dauter Amanda, chats with Nancy's husband "Ward" (Charles Ward, that is);
Aunts Marion and Mae chat with Cousins Faith and Nancy.

The Nugent Sisters launch into their famed dance routine. The Wynne Sisters had already started.

Foto 15: Faith's dauter Kristi Wachtman and her dauter Amanda,
Cousins Nancy and Faith; Aunts Mae and Marion.

Then the Schoonmaker Sisters joined in, when the music turned faster. Here they jitterbug, which is, I am reliably informed, a dance popular when they were young. Yes, I know it's hard to believe that they were ever young, but my mother told me they were, once upon a time. Long, long ago. Faith says, "Dance was called Jitterburg in the 40's — the Lindy in the 50's — and, Nancy tells me, it is now referred to as the East Coast Swing." So now you know!

Foto 16: Aunts Mae and Marion talk to Kristi and her dauter, Amanda Wachtman;
Sue Ann and Trina Schoonmaker, Faith Hoek and Nancy Ward dance.
Someone has apparently absconded with Faith's shoes.

That foto sequence made me think of the 1954 Irving Berlin tune "Sisters", from the movie White Christmas:

Sisters, sisters
There were never such devoted sisters,
Never had to have a chaperone, No sir,
I'm here to keep my eye on her
Caring, sharing
Every little thing that we are wearing
When a certain gentleman arrived from Rome
She wore the dress, and I stayed home
All kinds of weather, we stick together
The same in the rain and sun
Two different faces, but in tight places
We think and we act as one
Those who have seen us
Know that not a thing could come between us
Many men have tried to split us up, but no one can
Lord help the mister who comes between me and my sister
And Lord help the sister, who comes between me and my man

Here, Aunt Mae and Aunt Marion talk with Doug Hoek's dauter.

Foto 17: Aunt Mae, Aunt Marion, (Cousin) Doug Hoek's dauter, Amy (Hoek) Kubik.

The party setup was brilliant, the venue spacious and agreeable. This is what greeted attendees on entering the firehouse, two posters of fotos from Aunt Mae's youth, in Bogota, NJ, I think, which is where Aunt Mae met Uncle Jim (my mother's little brother) and my mother met my father — the veritable center of the family universe! ("Bogota", by the way, tho spelled the same way, was named not for the capital of Colombia, but for a "Bogert" family, local settlers. It is also pronounced differently. In "[Santa Fe de] Bogotá", Colombia, the stress falls on the third syllabic; in Bogota, NJ, on the second. Wikipedia offers this interesting bit of trivia:

This community is not to be confused with Bogotá, capital city of Colombia. 1.54% of Bogota's residents are from Colombia.

Well, I found it interesting.

Foto 18: Welcome table.

Here's a closer view of the poster on the left side of the welcome table.

Foto 19: Left poster on welcome table, showing pix of Aunt Mae as an infant and young child,
including a couple of class pictures.

And here's the poster on the right.

Foto 20: Right poster on welcome table, showing pix of Aunt Mae, and of
Aunt Mae and Uncle Jim thru the years.

To the extent any of the fotos in these posters can be appreciated from this foto, if anyone wants to supply specific identifications, I will update these captions to show those IDs (left to right, top to bottom, please).

An important feature of the party, and something Aunt Mae could take away and review at her leisure, was a wonderful memory book of fotos, anecdotes, and good wishes from friends and family. This next foto shows the poster and balloons that called attention to the table on which the memory book rested.

Foto 21: Poster and balloons drawing attention to memory-book table. The pictures on this poster are of
Mae and Jim Wynne and their dauters Nancy Ward and Faith Hoek, plus some pix of Mae's parents,
Bertha (Stemmermann) Nugent and Jim Nugent, and of Mae's siblings, Marion and Jim. Note that
most of the fotos are black-and-white, but one is sepia. If you scan in old fotos, you can
turn sepia pix into brilliant, like-new b&w pix.

Here's a view of the opening page of the memory book, which tells of what was happening in the world when Aunt Mae was born.

Foto 22: Memory book, open to first page.

Look how thick the book is! How many of us have so good a record of our lives, in fotos and stories? How many of us have anyone who would take the enormous amount of time and trouble necessary to create such a massive record of one's life (to date)? I congratulated Aunt Mae on her 90th and told her I wanted her to stay around a good long time, unlike my mother, who died shortly after her 90th birthday due to a medical mistake (that's right: a medical mistake, at 90, not from natural causes). She reassured me that she's not going anywhere. Toward the end of the party, a friend departing said she'd see Aunt Mae at her 100th birthday party. I chimed in, "It's a date."

Here is a representative spread of pages within the memory book. What a lot of work went into this! My brother Brian said that some of it was put together 'on the fly'. The granddauter who compiled it, Faith's dauter Kristi Wachtman, was trimming fotos and making additions as the party began! What a good kid. And beautiful work, I might add.

Foto 23: Representative spread in memory book. Note that there are not just fotos but also poems
(the text in 'pinking-sheared' boxes) and even a note in its envelope (lower left).

Let's get back to the people at the party. Here, we see Michael Ward with some kids from his Aunt Faith's side of the family.

Foto 24: Third and fourth generation: (standing) Kait Sterns (Faith and Doug's granddauter, dauter of Myndi;
Casey O'Reilly (we get it, you're Irish!), Faith and Doug's granddauter, dauter of Megan), Michael Ward;
(seated, blue shirt) Michael O'Reilly (Faith and Doug's grandson, son of Megan); his girlfriend
Lily Hewitt, holding Melissa Wachtman (Faith and Doug's granddauter,
dauter of Kristi and Drew (that would be "Andrew") Wachtman).

"It takes a village to raise a child", and the party contained a Wynne village. Here is ________ [25a], tending kids not hers. In this first view, Andrew _________ [25b], _________ [25c]'s son, looks under a tablecloth, I think for an action figure that fell to the floor.

Foto 25: Andrew ________[25b] looks under table for dropped toy, while __________ [25a]
makes sure he doesn't go too far or hit his head in his eagerness, while
_________ [25c], __________'s son, has something to drink.

In this next foto, __________ [26a] offers the action figure to Andrew, while __________ [26b] looks on.

Foto 26: [26a], [26b], Andrew _______ [26c].

Cousin Faith takes a picture (or video) of, I think, one of her dauters and a granddauter. I think that dauter, [27a], is the one who got royally sick of being mistaken for Faith, over and over that day.

Foto 27: Cousin Faith takes picture (video?) of one of her dauters, [27a], and a granddauter, [27b].

Now we get to the more formal picture-taking part of the day, when various groups stayed relatively still for the camera. First, moi and my sibs. (Note: Alan did not make it to the party. Busy, busy!)

Foto 28: The Schoonmakers, L. Craig, P. Brian, Sue Ann, and Trina. I noted only much later
that we are all wearing black pants. No, we did not consult in advance.
It is not The Official Schoonmaker Uniform.

The groups were arranged in various categories, but not neatly/exclusively. This next group, in 3 slitely differing pix, is the first two generations of Wynnes/Nugents, plus Doug Deicke the younger.

Fotos 29-31, Generations 1 and 2: Doug Hoek, Charles Ward, Aunt Marion (Deicke),
_______ Deicke (Doug's wife), Douglas Deicke the elder, Douglas Deicke the younger;
Cousin Faith, Cousin Nancy, Aunt Mae. The next two pix have the same order.

In this foto, instead of "Smile", or "Say cheese", I instructed the group to "Snarl".
Nancy gladly complied, to my sister Trina's horror. In reviewing the pix later,
I became glad that people moved between pix rather than trying
to freeze into a prearranged pose.

At some point, someone thought to bring over big balloons as, I must say (must you?), a very handsome backdrop. Alas, no one noticed that someone also left a broom in view, which I certainly didn't notice until I was reviewing these pix.

This next group of four fotos shows the fourth generation, I believe. It was a bit hard to get everyone in the foto who was supposed to be in it. Chris Ward's son, Christopher, Jr., was initially absent, then ran, twice, from the group to his father before he sat still, urged on in that by my brother Brian in foto 35.

Fotos 32-35, Generation Four: [32a], [32b], [32c], Aunt Mae, [32d] in arms of [32e];
[32f], [32g], [32h], [32i] in arms of [32j], [32k]. The right-front chair is for Christopher Ward, Jr..
This same order applies to Fotos 33-35.

The next four fotos are of the group Cousins.

Foto 36, Cousins (Third Generation): [36a], [36b], Aunt Mae, [36c], Leigh Ellen Ward;
Timothy Ward, his girlfriend, Amy Marzka, Christopher Ward, restraining  son,
Christopher, Jr., James Nugent, Michael Ward.

Foto 37: Same handsome group, minus Chris's handsome son.

Foto: 38: Same IDs, with addition of Chris's dauter, Mia.

Jim Nugent is not just well-tanned from Texas sunshine. His mother is from Thailand, another similarity between branches of the family. My brothers Alan and Brian also married Asians, in their case from the Philippines. Those marriages did not, however, produce children, or they'd be in these pix too.

The next four fotos were supposed to be of the group "Spouses" but show a jumble of individuals and generations.

Foto 40, 'Spouses' (and others): (back row to himself) [40a] holding his son, [40b];
[40c], [40d] being held by her mother, [40e], [40f], Aunt Mae,[40g], [40h];
Christopher Ward, Jr. (back to camera) and his mother Lisa, sister Mia, and father Christopher Ward, [40l], [40m].

Foto 41: Same group except for addition in top row of Timothy Ward, his girlfriend Amy Marzka
and sister Leigh Ellen (last name?); and in front row, far left, Michael Ward.

Foto 42: Same group except for addition on front right of [42a] and [42b]'s children, [42c] and [42d].

Foto 43: Same group except for addition of [43a] in front of Michael Ward, his ________.

These last two pix from the party are of the second generation plus one spouse. I don't know where Ward was.

Fotos 44 (above), 45 (below), Second Generation: Sue Ann Schoonmaker, Douglas Hoek, Faith Hoek, Nancy Ward;
L. Craig Schoonmaker, Aunt Mae, Trina Schoonmaker, P. Brian Schoonmaker.

I guess we moved in the second foto, or whoever generously took both pix had trouble holding the camera still, given an unfamiliar center of gravity to that camera.

It occurred to me only in reviewing all these many names that, aside from Aunt Mae herself, there are no Wynnes left. The other Mae Wynne, Uncle Jim's oldest sister (yes, I had two Aunt Mae Wynnes, but met only one of them, tho I did speak by phone with the other on a very few occasions), married Hughes McFarland, and their children, Pete and Pat, are McFarlands. Uncle Arthur had no children, despite two marriages. My mother, the younger of Uncle Jim's (older) sisters, had six children, all Schoonmakers. Uncle Jim and Aunt Mae (Nugent Wynne) had only dauters — tho he did call Faith "Mike".

I noticed that there were a number of frequently-recurring first names in the extended family. Nancy said that it was her understanding that if she had been a boy, she'd have been named "Thomas", not "James, Jr.", and Faith would have been called "Michael". Heck, she was still called "Mike", even tho a girl. Indeed, an old foto I found showed Faith with hair so short that I thought at first that maybe it was me in the picture! Nope. At that time, Faith's hair was cut very short. Close, but no cigar. (By the way, my name "Craig" and "cigar" are anagrams, so I sometimes say, "Close, but no Craig." Puzzles the heck out of people.)

I have three more fotos to offer, of the house the Nugents and James Wynnes lived in when I was a child, 397 Elm Avenue, Bogota, as it looks today. I drove past the house after the party. I wanted to check my memory of the steam-locomotive trains that ran nearby. As I put it in my fotoblog, "Newark USA", on May 13th:

I took the scenic route home, stopping to see the house Aunt Mae and Uncle Jim occupied when I was a child, to see how close it was to the railroad tracks. I had remembered it wrong. I thought that the fantastic steam engines roared past their property just beyond a hedge, but it turns out that the tracks actually were a short block, then undeveloped, beyond their property line. When you're a tiny kid and an enormous, noisy locomotive approaches, then speeds past, spewing thick smoke in rhythmic spurts as drive rods move back and forth, and wheels spin round and round, and the clickety-clack of steel wheels hitting the gaps in steel track adds to the clatter, it is pretty darned exciting. Kids today have no idea how exciting trains used to be.

Either I had the wrong address or the house has changed a lot (for one thing, I think there was a great big tree out front in those days) — or I didn't remember the house at all well. This first picture shows the house from the front. The Wynnes lived on the second floor. I remember thinking it odd that there were two families living in one house. We lived on the third floor of an apartment house in Palisades Park, but you expect apartments in an apartment building. This house looked like a regular house, that one family would live in. Indeed, if the single mailbox is any indication, the house today is occupied by only one family. The guy on the right in this pic was walking his dog when I was there.  I mentioned that relatives used to live there, and then asked if there were railroad tracks near, since I couldn't see any. He steered me right.

This second view is of the back of the house, from the northeast.

And this last foto is of the back of the house as seen from the southeast.

There are three train tracks at most a couple of hundred feet this side of that foto. I remembered only one track, or at most two. They must have added some.

There you have it, my summary of Aunt Mae's 90th birthday celebration. If any of the extended Wynne clan would like a digital copy of the original of any of these fotos (at higher resolution than appears here), just let me know (Schoonmakr@aol.com) and I'll email it.