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Sharing Memories With Mary Volkert

photo by Larry Johnson

Tuesday October 16, 2007

By Larry Johnson

   Mary Volkert was born 90 years ago on October 19, 1917, in Appleton, Wisconsin. The event was doubly distinguished by the fact that it was the 7th anniversary of her sister Eleanor's birthday. According to Mary, Eleanor was unimpressed, and her own celebration unaffected, by the arrival of a baby sister.

     Appleton was a small Midwestern college town when Mary was growing up and it provided a secure and friendly atmosphere. Her father and his brother owned and operated a meat market and grocery store, and, Mary remembers, that the family managed to have good food and to eat well even during The Great Depression.

    By the time Mary was four or five, she discovered a talent for dancing, and by the time she entered first grade she had earned about $100, dancing at various service clubs, such as the Elks and Lions.

     Mary stopped dancing at the age of 14, when she fell in love with the flute and the piano. Her skill with these two instruments would serve her well, later on, when she and her husband Erie moved to Vermont in the early 1940s.

     After high school, Mary enrolled in Lawrence College, just down the street from her house, and graduated, four years later, with a degree in English Literature.

     Mary Voecks and Erie Volkert were married in 1939, the year that Mary graduated from College. Erie's first job was at Huron College in South Dakota where he taught theater. Mary had taken a short, post graduate course in secretarial studies and this enabled her to get a job as the private secretary to the President of Huron. Mary confessed that her shorthand was shaky and that it was fortunate that her boss spoke slowly. Unfortunately, the college was suffering financially and the president left after about nine months, and so did Mary and Erie. Their next stop was Randolph-Macon College in Lynchburg, Virginia, a girl's college where Erie taught theater arts. This was a temporary position lasting one year and, once again, Mary and Erie were looking for a new teaching appointment.

     It so happened that there was an opening at Brown Ledge Girl's Camp in Mallets Bay on Lake Champlain. The couple moved to Vermont with the expectation that they would be here for the summer only, but a position at Middlebury College became available and Erie was hired to teach theater. This was 1941, and Erie taught at Middlebury until 1996, when he retired.

     At about this time, Mary began playing flute with the Vermont State Symphony. The orchestra was playing in Rutland on December 7th of that year when they heard the news that Pearl Harbor had been bombed.

     Mary not only played with the symphony for the next two or three years but also became the secretary to Allen Carter, director and primary cause of the Vermont State Symphony Orchestra. “The only pay we ever got,” Mary told me, “was an occasional transportation reimbursement. The state only provided the orchestra with $1000 a year.”

     It was great fun playing with the symphony, Mary told me, but when the children began arriving, traveling became problematic. Mary retired in order to raise a family, but there was no thought of giving up music.

     There were four children in all---two boys and two girls. One girl on either end of the family and two boys in the middle. Jennifer, nicknamed Jiffy, was the oldest, then came Larry and Randall, and last but not least was Lisa.

     When Mary began teaching flute and piano at her home in Middlebury, it was not unusual for her to beat time to a student's playing while bouncing a child or two on her knees.

     Today, at 90, Mary is still busy. Although she doesn't play the flute or piano any longer, she is as creative as ever. The many art classes that she enrolled in over the years prepared her admirably for the creative direction she has chosen. She calls herself a “scrap artist”.

     “I like to make things out of stuff,” she explained. “I make things out of nothing, or I try to.”

     Mary makes mobiles and wall hangings out of toothpicks and hibachi sticks; bird sculptures out of river stones glued together; and place mats from rolled-up pages of magazines. There are also original water colors gracing the walls of her comfortable little home on North Pleasant Street.

     In the not too distant past, Mary would collect driftwood and turn the pieces into interesting sculptures, but she is no longer quite as agile as she was once, so now she satisfies her creative urges by knitting pillows and writing verse.

     One of Mary's poems that I find particularly amusing is called  “Armadillo”.

               “For dessert he favors 'subs',
               Made of beetles, ants and grubs.
               He's Roly-poly as a pig,
               With legs too short and Ears too big.

               “We learn from animal lore the score,
                That when they have babies there are
                                      Four.
                All are girls, or all are boys,
                Saves on clothing, saves on toys.”

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