Dirt Farmer's Son. Terry A. Maurer
Tommy, and Jimmy, their younger siblings, to walk over to the farm. Mose was famous in my eyes because he could shoot straighter and faster than anyone I ever knew. He could drive faster than most people too. He always scared the devil out of my mother when he would take us to mass during those summer Sundays. Mom would scream “Slow down” most of the way to church.
Mose liked all things fast, motorcycles and ice planes. The ice plane took his life on Saginaw Bay later in 1971 or 1972 when he hit open water at seventy miles per hour in early spring. Uncle Mose was my confirmation sponsor in 1954 and always was fun to be around. He took us boating on Higgins Lake and rabbit hunting in the swamps with my dad and our best rabbit and deer dog Poochy, also known as Caesar by the adults. Mose always carried hard Christmas candy for the rabbit hunts, usually passing it out after we started a big fire amid the snow-covered cedars in the middle of the mud lake swamps just west of the New York Center railroad tracks.
Louis and Poochy the dog
Summertime was still the most fun, especially when our Leonard cousins could walk to the farm across the Sixty—that’s what we called the big area between Mose’s cabin and the farm. We never really had a name for the farm; it was just our home. Other people called it the old Barber Place or the Godfroy Farm. Dr. Godfroy was my godfather and my dad’s cousin and business partner. It eventually became the Maurer Place by the neighbors. The closest neighbors were the Millikins, nearly three miles away. We were in a very remote part of Beaver Creek Township, on a dead-end road. This is definitely an advantage for Avita Water now. The old farm, now in 2011, is owned by my aunt and uncle, Andy and Margaret Cherven, left to them through Doc Godfroy’s will in 1980.
When Sue and Sally would make the walk over to the farm, we would usually end up down at the fish pond, swimming. Always we would get a drink at the flowing wells. Sometimes we could get the girls to help weed the carrots or pick strawberries before the swim. Prior to 1950, when we were all under eight years old, my dad did not work us too hard. Picking up the eggs was something Sue and Sally always wanted to do, being city girls from Saginaw. They also preferred city milk to cow’s milk, as they called what we drank, and sometimes squirted them when Tony and I would do the milking.
In the fall, it was time for school at Frederick. I went to first and second grade there. The time before first grade is not very memorable, and even first grade is difficult to remember since I was four years and eleven months old in 1947 when I started school. My parents wanted me to be in the next grade to Tony, so I started early. Tony was five years and seven months old when he started first grade. I think my math is correct.
At any rate, I don’t remember too much about first grade. Mrs. Odell was my first-grade teacher, and she gave me a set of cookie jars which looked like strawberries to give to my mother, who loved anything strawberry. I disliked phonics and still don’t understand it. Floyd Millikin was my buddy and neighbor from Beaver Creek and was in kindergarten when I started first grade. I skipped kindergarten. Floyd was the third born of this close Millikin family; Marian, Connie, Floyd, Pauline, Bob, Luella, and finally Marci is the birth order. Our families always enjoyed getting together. Floyd and I were friends until he died of a heart attack while presiding over a Road Commission meeting in Crawford County in 1994 or 1995. Floyd helped me set up the first water bottling plant for de Maurier in 1987. Floyd also told me about a week before his death (he already had a heart attack about six weeks earlier) that he had eaten too many doughnuts at his job with the Michigan State Police and that he also smoked too many cigarettes. Floyd was fifty-one and is buried in Grayling.
Roscommon was six miles from the farm, and Grayling was ten miles. We went to church at St. Michael’s in Roscommon. I remember the first time I saved somebody’s life from drowning. I actually saved friends from drowning three times. The first time was during recess from catechism at St. Michael’s in Roscommon. It was probably in December 1947; the ice under the bridge on Main Street was frozen but not too thick when Tom and Jerry (the McCutchison twins) and my brother Tony got on the ice. I was still standing on the shore when they, all three, went through the ice with their winter coats and boots.
The water was just over their heads, not really very deep but deep for five- to six-year-olds. Tony immediately started hollering to me, “Help, help!”
I said, “I’ll go to town and get somebody. I’ll be right back.”
He said, “No, we’ll drown, you’ve got to crawl out on the ice and pull us in.”
I lay on the thin ice and stretched my arms out to grab my brother. I got Tony’s hand and started to pull while Tom and Jerry clung to the ice, treading water in the frigid hole. I got Tony nearly up on the ice when it broke beneath me landing. Now all four of us in the icy water. The good news, we learned that the ice would break all the way back to the shore, probably ten feet. We all managed to get to the bank. The twins, who lived in town, ran home. Tony and I went to the nearby rectory where Father Grill’s housekeeper stripped us down, got the priest’s bathrobes, and sat us on the floor radiator until our mother came to pick us up. I never heard nor do I remember what she said about the situation. I am sure it wasn’t good. She was always worried, maybe from that time on that Tony and I would fall into mud lake and drown on our many hikes to the fish ponds with the flowing wells.
Frequently after church in Roscommon, our family would stop at Grandma Cherven’s little farm for a visit. She always seemed to have Glenn Miller on her big old radio. My mother was the third of ten. She had three sisters, Ann, Teen (married to Mose), and Fran. She had six brothers, Frank, John, Al, Mike, Ed, and Andy. All but Frank served in World War II and all returned in one piece. Here is an article published in the newspaper The Roscommon Herald in 1942:
Five sons in U.S. Army
This week we pay tribute to Mrs. Justine Cherven, the mother of five sons in the US service. Mrs. Cherven, the mother of 10 children, was born in 1886 in what was once Slovakia and then Poland after the First World War.
Mrs. Cherven came to the U.S. and Chicago when she was 16. She was married there in 1907 to Andrew Cherven who was also a native of the same country. The Chervens then moved to a farm 4 miles North of Roscommon in 1910 and moving in 1923 to their present home one mile Northwest of Roscommon. Mr. Cherven passed away three years ago.
Mrs. Cherven has worked hard through the years to raise her fine large family and the esteem with which the community looks on them shows how well she has done her job.
One by one Mrs. Cherven has given her sons to fight for America, her adopted country. Alois, 27, left first and is now Sargent at Camp Murphy, FL; Edward, 25, left 14 months ago and is stationed in Orlando, FL; Andrew, 21, enlisted and is in Colorado Springs, CO; Pfc. John, 29, now en route to a California camp; and Michael, 18, the youngest son, left Tuesday evening for Camp Custer.
Mrs. Cherven’s other children are Frank, Mrs. Bernard Maurer, and Frances, all of Roscommon, the latter daughter, living at home, Mrs. Henry Friday, Jr. of Cheboygan and Mrs. A. L. Leonard of Texas, whose husband is in the army.
To Mrs. Cherven, a quiet, pleasant woman, and wonderful mother we pay her tribute, in giving her five sons to fight so that this land of ours may remain forever the home of the free and the brave. She is more than giving her share.
To our knowledge, Mrs. Cherven is the only mother in Roscommon County with five sons in the armed services.
Roscommon, Michigan
Terry’s Cherven uncles—Michael, Edward, John, Andrew, and Albert—with their mother, my grandmother, Justine Cherven in 1943, all WWII veterans.
Nashville, Michigan
Terry’s Maurer uncles, Lenny, Bug, Dale, and Edward, in 1943, all WWII veterans.
On those visits, I would go upstairs and find khaki uniforms hanging everywhere. It was from 1944 to 1947 I’d see this. It looked