Brownie’s Dancing Days and a Lifetime of Mothering

She was banned from the dance hall after that. But Ethel dearly loved to dance, and though her father had become severely depressed by her mother’s death and was becoming harder to deal with because of his drinking, she managed to have fun in high school. She attended all the dances, and thanks to her many friends and their parents, who treated her very well, she was pretty happy. Her friends called her “Brownie” for her big brown eyes and another nickname she gave herself was “Ets.” Ethel and Lloyd attended Catholic school in North Dakota but were baptized and confirmed in the Lutheran church (Agnes’ Tomitum’s Norwegian religion, it is assumed) and graduated from the tenth grade—the final grade in those days. Ethel was merely 14, though she thought she was 16 due to being misinformed of her birth date by her mother and father—we know not why. She received a certificate stating she was qualified to attend any college in the state, which she desperately wanted to do, but Ed Williams said girls didn’t need an education, and that Ethel should instead get a job so she could help pay for her own clothes. She had become a clotheshorse and loved being well dressed her entire life. She worked as a typist in a doctor’s office in Dunseth, North Dakota. Ethel often said she was a good typist. Ethel moved to Moline with her father and brother Lloyd in 1926 when she was 15. She married Floyd in 1928 at the age of 17, She was introduced to Floyd by her best friend, Mary Hill, who thought Floyd Guild was a very special guy she would like. Floyd was said to be an excellent dancer and took Ethel to all the dances at the Turner’s Hall where he belonged to the Glee Club, as he had a good singing voice and loved singing. He became an advanced tumbler and competed with the Turner’s Tumbling team. Floyd was very proud of his muscular body and made a biceps muscle for his kids whenever they asked him to. Ethel said she thought he was a “dream boat” when they met. Ed Williams lived on and off with Ethel and Floyd in his early years in Moline and permanently beginning in about 1934, when he suddenly stopped working, possibly because he was severely depressed. Before then, he held several jobs no one can recall. Ethel’s brother, Lloyd Williams, was married soon after arriving in Moline. Then he divorced and never remarried. He never had children. At some point, he moved from Moline to Savannah, Illinois. The jobs he’s known to have held there were as a bartender before the war and as a chauffeur to a rich eye doctor, after. He joined the army early on in the war. He was a semaphore expert in the Army Signal Corps. Lloyd was honorably discharged just before the war ended. As a result of injuries he incurred in an amphibious landing in New Guinea, he later suffered a collapsed lung for which he had two surgeries. One of these surgeries was in 1965, preventing him from attending his father’s funeral, which upset Ethel terribly. He eventually disappeared from Ethel and her family’s lives, much to their sorrow. Ethel’s kids all liked him very much and got excited whenever he came to visit. His legacy to the family was teaching everyone how to make bread and butter and peanut butter sandwiches on a piece of folded-over white bread, and then how to dunk them in cocoa for breakfast, a tradition that lasted all through their childhoods. Grandpa Williams lived at home with Ethel and Floyd from 1934 until his death. He helped Ethel raise her kids, did housework, gardening and canning, and did not take an outside job again until quite late in life. When he did work, he gave his entire earnings (except the dollar a week he spent on whiskey) and his entire savings to Ethel and Floyd, including the two thousand dollars he withdrew from his Postal Savings account, for the addition of the two bedrooms and the bath to the house on 39th Street. He told Ethel and Floyd the little house would never hold seven teenagers. He was seriously injured on the job at the Herman Nelson Corporation when he slipped off a catwalk into a vat of metal stripping acid and burned his leg from the ankle to the knee quite badly. He was treated successfully with Tryptar, an experimental drug that chemically removed the dead skin so the wounds could heal rapidly. His leg healed completely with the help of two skin grafts. Ed stopped working after the accident and started walking with a cane. Called “Grampa” by his seven grandchildren and “Gramps” by Floyd, he was really loved by everyone. His favorites were Delores and Bob but he was fond of all the kids. They all knew he was a great help to their Mom, who adored him. Ed Williams, who liked his whiskey, would sometimes get drunk at Harvey’s Bar in Highland, and Floyd would have to go pick him up. Once, Floyd had to go looking for him when he showed up missing entirely and finally found him sleeping in a railroad boxcar. Ed Williams died of a heart attack on February 22, 1953 at age seventy-one and is buried in Riverside Cemetery, in Moline, Illinois. He has no headstone. After Ethel married Floyd and gave birth to a daughter, Iris, she worked sorting buttons in a button factory, where she was paid by the pound. Her next job was as a telephone operator. She also worked for a while at the Moline candy factory where they made Nibs Licorice Bits. Ethel Guild gave birth to seven children. The first child, Iris, a daughter, in May, 1930, the second, a son, Bernie, after the Great Depression ended in 1936, and the remaining five: one more son, Bob, then 3 more daughters, Carol, Delores, Diana each also born about eighteen months apart and finally Barb, who came three years after Diana. Some reports say Ethel’s father, Ed, was more or less permanently on Floyd’s case for keeping her pregnant all the time. But Ethel loved having babies, and often told her kids she would have had even more if only she could have afforded them. She nearly died from a goiter in 1934 at twenty-three years of age. It was successfully operated on by a doctor who, oddly, himself later succumbed of the exact same malady. She wore her scar or “thyroid necklace” as she called it, the rest of her life. This hypothyroidism occurred before iodine was added to salt, and the Illinois soil provides none to things that grow there. Ethel took thyroid tablets from then on. Though she was advise to wait 5 years before having more children, two years later, she was pregnant again with Bernie. Stories of Floyd and Ethel Guild’s life together with their family are well—if not exhaustively—documented in the individual stories told by their seven children in this book. After all the children had left and Floyd had died, Ethel was by herself but continued to lead a full and satisfying life. She spent time with her handcrafts, became an artistic expert at creating Christmas ornaments and played cards at her home or at her friend Florence Britz’s home almost every evening. She took in Carol and Chris after Carol’s divorce, and then Dee and Susy after Dee’s divorce. She loved helping to raise her grandchildren. Ethel adored babies above all. She spent three months of the year with her daughter, Diana, in Florida and often made visits to her other children’s homes around the country. Her lifelong dream was to go to Europe. In 1979, Ethel’s son, Bernie, sent her to Germany for a long holiday with her daughter, Carol who was living there with her husband, Charlie and their son Chris. Bernie joined them and they all toured Germany and Denmark in a huge government- issued Mercedes. Ethel loved that trip. On April 22, 1988 during a yearly visit to her daughter Diana’s home in Hollywood, Florida, Ethel died at age 77 from complications stemming from an ovarian cyst surgery and precipitating congestive heart failure. She is buried in Riverside cemetery in Moline Illinois next to her husband Floyd, with the wrong birth date on her pre-engraved head stone. It says, “Born 1909,” but should, as she learned late in life, read 1911. But that never bothered her, because she was delighted to find she was two years younger than she thought when she researched her birth records to get a U.S. Passport. Ethel was a hard-working dedicated mother above all. She gave pure unqualified love to each and every one of her 7 children and each one loved her back with all their heart.