GRANVILLE (BUD) AND CONNIE KEELER HOOK
As told by Bud

I worked at Standard Oil after I graduated from high school at Des Moines Tech, and in 1953, several life-changing events happened. That year our mother took us back to Phoenix to visit the old home place. I remember we went to Chandler, Arizona and visited a lady who asked me to get up and sing. That seems to me the first time I realized I could sing, and I've been singing ever since. Most importantly, when we came back I met Connie Keeler.

She tells, "Our meeting was rather strange. My parents are Maurice and Leah Keeler, who farmed near Weldon. That was where I grew up and my memories are of a good childhood, with good parents and good activities. As was true with most farm kids, I had my share of  chores, and was involved in 4-H. I attended Clarke Community High School where I chose a business course. was so young when I graduated that Mom and Dad didn't want me to venture off to Des Moines, so I raised pigs. I took the profit from that venture, which was probably all the income with my dad covering the expenses, and bought a spinet piano. I took l essons from Mrs. Cabin in Osceola.

"When my parents agreed, I went to work in Des Moines at American Mutual Insurance Company. I took the piano with me to the house in Des Moines where I had found room and board. My landlady happened to be Bud's sister-in-law's sister, and because of this interesting arrangement, Bud and I met. His mother bought eggs from a farmer, who delivered them to my landlady, and Bud came with his mom to get them. One day when they came, Bud's mother noticed and remarked, "Oh, you have a piano!" She started to play and Bud started to sing and that was how I first noticed him. We began going together and were married April 7, 1956."

Connie and I decided farming might be the way to go, so after we were married, we settled in the Weldon area on the home place of one of her folks' two farms. In 1957, we had our first son. Connie had uremia and he onlv lived 12 hours. This was a traumatic time for us, and actually, the entire country was going through a crisis. There was no war but the suspense was extreme. We knew Russia was our enemy but when, how, or where she might strike was the great unknown. Young men like myself knew at some time we had to serve in the military. Without having served, we couldn't plan any kind of a future. As Connie and I thought it over, we decided I might as well volunteer and get it over with, so I sent a letter to the Draft Board and told them to call me.

During my basic training at Fort Carson, Colorado, we were shown some enlistment films. They showed Nike guided missiles, and I called Connie that night and told her I was excited about them. We decided I should re-enlist at that time for the extra year - giving three years instead of two.

When we finished basic training, I was stationed in Chesterton, Indiana. The Nike site was just a little cornfield with a tower at the base of which were two long semi-trailers, which held the radars. We were inside the radars tracking airplanes. That was called the ASC area. This whole exercise may seem a little strange to readers now, but it was deadly serious because Russia had missile capability either in the north because of their proximity to Alaska, or from the south, because they were supplying missiles to Cuba. Most of the planes we were tracing were B-25s from Offut Air Force Base in Omaha, where men and planes were always on alert, ready to take off at any moment the signal was given. So few people were aware of the imminent danger!

About a mile south of the ASC area, below ground, was the area where the missiles were. The operators would push a button and the missiles would come up in a firing position. The ASC area would track aircraft that took off and flew down Lake Michigan to our location which was off the edge of Chicago on the shore of the lake. They would simulate an actual happening, and we would give coordinates to the launching area. They imitated a firing and we tracked it to know whether or not we had a "kill." We would lock on them with our radar. They would dive or ascend trying to get away from the radar but when they realized we were locked on; they would shoot chaff, which were tiny pieces of tinfoil, from the canons on the front of their planes. The tinfoil pieces would make a sound like pffff, and maybe spread 50 to 100 feet in each direction. It was very interesting. I think I was there about a year.

Sometime between 1956 and 1958, I was sent to Thule, Greenland. It was supposedly peace time between the Korean and the Vietnamese conflicts. But we had an enemy, Russia, and even though we knew who it was, we didn't know what they had in mind or what they might be going to do. The day we got there, we had a meeting with the battalion Commander. In front of all of us he said, basically, "We don't care what happens to you while you are here.  All we want to know is when it happened." We were up there just in case. No question about it.

Thule had been an Eskimo village, that had been moved about 60 miles south. We were 250 miles south of the North Pole. The topography of Thule is hard to explain. There were two mountains with a valley between and way back was a great ice sheet that came forward and dropped off. Beyond that was the bay. Fierce storms came off the ice sheet, and we had them categorized in "phases,"numbered from 1 to 5. Phase 1 was very light and they graduated to Phase 5, in which, literally, rocks blew through the air horizontally. One day a fellow was out checking the antennae. These went round and round, and were designed to pick up enemy planes. He started to climb one, which was about 40 feet high. He was a stocky kid, built like a football player. He probably weighed 250 pounds. He started climbing when one of those winds hit. He held on to the framework of the tower and was waved like a flag. The antenna was blown clear out into the bay. It was never found.

Ours was a "hot unit," so we had to constantly be on the alert in anticipation of something, that thank goodness, never happened. Our camp was on the top of a mountain. We had long barracks, that unfortunately burned shortly after we got there. So we had to go down to the launch area between the mountains, where the missiles were and radar equipment was, as well as our sleeping quarters and mess hall. It was a seven mile drive in, out, and around to get there every day, then back the same way. We rode in the back of what they called a "deuce and a half," which was a 2 1/2 ton Army Truck with a wooden box on the back of it. Heat came through a little door that the driver slid open. Except for that, we'd have frozen to death.

The weather was terrible! A lot of the time we had to go hand in hand from the barracks to the mess hall, one man ahead of the other because we couldn't tell where we were going. The temperature got down to 70° below zero. Three months earlier, in the previous cycle of service­ men, a black kid attempted to go from the barracks to the mess hall, which was probably about 15 yards. He was dressed in a tee-shirt and fatigue pants - no shirt, no coat. Half way across he dropped dead. His lungs froze just like that. The year I was up there in June, it got up to 60°. That was unheard of.  The only reason I could think of, Bud Hook was there.

That summer it was just like back home except for icebergs in the bay. The ground, for all intents and purposes, was nothing. It was like Colorado above the tree line. There is vegetation, but very small. We got out and walked around to see some of the territory. Looking down over the edge of the mountain, we could see houses on the other side of the inlet, called a fjord. There were eight or ten houses, all two story, just like farm houses. It made me think of home, maybe just because we saw something besides Army.

We had a tower called BMEWS, which was a radar screen designed to pick up anything that came over the border. From a distance it looked like the old drive-in movie theaters. Looking at it down our mountain toward the ice sheet, it appeared monstrous, and it was 10 miles away. There was an occasion that happened after I was back Stateside, but I could imagine the panic. They had an alert that missiles were coming over the North Pole from Russia. One night, here they came, confirmed by radar. They got Stateside, and all of a sudden the radar lost them. The next night the same thing happened.  They learned over the course of time that the BMEWS antenna was sending a signal, and the moon was in a certain position in the sky to coordinate with that antenna. It sent a false reading. They sent an electrician up to investigate. He made a few adjustments with a screw driver and straightened it out. No more problems. It must have been terrifying! Of course, it was top secret. Lay people knew nothing about it.

But speaking of top secret: I remember them telling us when I got into Nike missiles, they were top secret. ''You are cleared for top secret." However, we'd go into a grocery store and they had every detail on the side of a cereal box, "Nike Guided Missiles" - the length, range, everything! All that they told us was top secret was right there on the box!

It was fantastic to watch planes come in - particularly the mail planes. From up on the mountains, we could look through the windows and see a little tiny speck come over the mountain that was maybe 40 miles away. We could spot a mail plane - somehow we could distinguish those from any other plane we ever had. It had a nose and then another big round nose on the front of it, which was their radar. It was the most fascinating thing I ever saw in my life. Those pilots would be flying toward Thule, contend with the storms, clear a big black hangar, and come in for a landing a little way off the water of the bay.

One day I was up on this mountain and heard something behind me. I turned around and here was an Eskimo with his dog sled and team of dogs. He stopped and pulled out a Prince Albert can, which was a familiar sight back in those days. It was flat and had loose tobacco in it. Smokers rolled their own cigarettes. He opened the can and showed me cigarette butts. At that time I smoked and he made signs that I interpreted as his letting me know he wanted me to give him some. I don't know how I got what he was telling me but I know he said, "This is for my mother, this is for my father, this for my brother, and my sister." I gave him a couple cigarettes and he gave me a letter-opener made of black teakwood sanded down perfectly. It was beautiful.

When we had come through the ordeal at Thule, we became honorary members of the Royal Order of the Blue Nose. I was there from April 7 until November 1959. During that time, on July 27, 1959, our little handicapped Tami was born.  She weighed 10 pounds, 11 ounces. Connie wasn't a very large person, and having lost another baby, neither Tami nor Connie were expected to live. Jack Beaman, working through the Red Cross was able to get me an emergency leave so I was home. Tami Sue lived in spite of being severely mentally and physically handicapped. We kept her at home, and never thought she was a burden. She lived to be 43 years old.

We were hoping I'd be stationed in the States permanently, but they sent me back. However, I came home on another emergency leave in November.  I'll never forget the day they called me in to the office. Captain Graves and the Chaplain were both there. Captain Graves was the nicest guy!  He called me "Bud," which was too informal to be appropriate in the military. He said, "You've suffered a long time. It is time you were home with your family. We're going to take care of that." They sent me home and I was stationed in Missouri the remaining seven months of my tour. I was discharged after serving three years, two months.

We came back to the farm, lived on the home place, and I worked as a farm hand for Connie's dad. One of the most memorable experiences was that we raised 17,000 turkeys in two years. There is only one thing dumber than a turkey, and that is the guy that raises them. If you have a turkey you will discover there are 10 different ways for it to commit suicide. He will stand in a rainstorm with his head back, his mouth wide open, and drown. When they hear a noise, they will all rush and crowd at the side of a building. In one day we lost 650 small turkeys from smothering. We were throwing these dead birds out of the building, crying while we did it.

But we had joys. Tami was the #1 joy of our life, and Bambi Lou was #2. She was born July 20, 1961 and there were no complications. The same was true with Scott, our fourth child, who came along later - May 10, 1972, to be precise. Another joy! One of the things I remember so well about Bambi was that she loved to have me pick her up and hang her on the door, holding on to the top with her little fingers. I'd leave here there and walk away. She would look around to see where I was, and expect me to come back, which, of course, I always did. When she was 2 1/2 years old, I told Connie I'd like to go to the timber and hunt squirrels. Bambi begged to go. "Please, Daddy, let me go, I want to hunt squirrels!" So I took her along, and the first thing we saw was a squirrel lying on a tree limb sunning himself. I took a shot and knocked him off the limb. Suddenly, Bambi began to cry. ''Daddy, why did you do that? Why did you kill that little squirrel?" That broke me up and to this day I have never hunted again. I had not realized how I would break her heart. She was something else and has continued to be, all these years.

With extra care, Bambi recovered, and in the fall there was a whole family that needed a foster home. There were actually six children but we were licensed for only five, so they had to find another home for the sixth. There were three girls and two boys, ranging in age from the oldest, who was in 7th grade, to the youngest who was 18 months.

The first thing we noticed was lots of hubbub, particularly at meal-time. We immediately moved a small table in with our kitchen table, and put candles on the tables. When the candles were lighted, everyone knew we were supposed to sit down and have a nice, quiet meal - no fighting or chat-chat. We also discovered they'd had no training in regard to care of clothes, which had come to us in two clothes baskets. Wherever they took them off, they would just drop them - out in the yard or wherever they were at the time. We solved that problem by putting up a coat rack at the back door, giving them a place to put coats and shoes. For sleeping arrangements, we had two bedrooms upstairs and two bunk beds in each. That took care of four, and the fifth was provided for with a roll-away that came out of the closet. Once we got a place for clothing and a bed situation established, our lives sort of fell into a routine. School started soon after they came, so Connie had to do a lot of sewing to get their clothes ready, but once they all went to school, with the exception of the little boy who was only 18 months old, and our Tami, we had the day to recuperate and get ready for night.

When we had the pleasant surprise of discovering we were to have another child, Connie's nerves couldn't take it.  After a couple weeks, the oldest boy was placed with his own relatives, which seemed a safer situation with our girls.  We didn't want to invite trouble.  Then we realized that the second older boy was the instigator of our problems so we worked with Human Services and they found him a good foster home, with people he really liked. While he was gone, they placed others with us - some were two year terms or shorter, some were just overnight - in and out, just as needed.

That left us with three girls and one boy, plus our own three children. The other children were with us through high school. For the oldest girl, that was about four years, then she went with relatives of the family. The one we got at 18 months was with us not only through school, but when he was 18, he joined the Marines. He was in the service four years, came out and lived with us for six months, went to college in Ohio - and we never heard from him again. That's tough! We grew so close to these kids, we felt no different toward them than toward our own.

That was another issue we faced. We had to make sure that there was a good balance between how we related to our birth children and the foster ones. We kept checking with the school psychologists to see if there was any personality change, and they always reported that the children handled it well. We believe it has made them better people in their relationship with others. The school counselors told us our children were good instigators to bring others in, to make them act as a group. Tami was a good teaching tool. The children were always very receptive of her. She centered us. Our relating to one another revolved around her.

I want to brag about Connie who, in addition to our four, has been mother to 70 kids who didn't have mothers of their own. It wasn't that their blood mothers didn't care about them. In most cases they didn't have parenting skills, or there were circumstances that prevented it. Connie always tried to work with the birth mothers. For 37 years, she has done everything to give them a solid foundation, and is still doing so, because we still have two boys who are in high school.

We have been an emergency home in many situations. One military wife, who was on her way to a wedding, became extremely sick, and ended in the Osceola hospital. She had two of the sweetest little kids whom we had for three or four days. We have kept lots of babies in a respite sort of case. Every kid has a different story, none are the same. But potential foster parents need to know that just because they might have the children for however long, doesn't necessarily mean they respond accordingly. In the case of our original five, after all was said and done, they decided they wanted to return to their roots. They have nothing to do with us and that hurts so bad! One of them acknowledged our 50th anniversary. She is the closest to us. It is hard because I take great stock in my kids and I couldn't have thought more of these than if they were my own.

We could write a book about every foster child we had because for years and years, Connie has kept documentation of every one of them. Agencies that have a need and right to know call Connie for information, and she is able to dig in her files and find answers. Some of the cases are success stories and in some there are no obvious good results. We do what we can and that is all we can do, but we have been grateful for the opportunities we have been given.

As though Connie didn't already have a very full "plate," she did a lot of volunteering at the Community Center in Osceola, giving medical transportation. She had a little bus, handicapped equipped, and drove six little handicapped children to the Creston Jefferson Developmental School for ten years. It worked really well because Tami was then able to attend that school, along with the others. Connie was also hired by the Visinet Company out of Creston and they did supervised visits between the parent and a "child at risk" on mutual ground. They supervised, bathed, and fed them. She documented every child and kept files on them.

So here we are in 2007. Tami died of pneumonia February 1, 2003. After high school, Bambi started to college at Creston and transferred to Indian Hills Community College in Ottumwa to finish her nurses' training. She spent seven years getting her schooling because, while doing that, she also worked full time in Cardiac Care at the hospital. She was married during those years to Dennis Cohagan, and as she graduated, she was just about to have their first baby. She is now a Legal Nurse consultant in Medical Rehab, and the initials behind her name are RNLNCCCM (Registered Legal Nurse Consultant Certified Case Manager in Medical Rehab). She has done really well. Dennis has had a long employment with Burlington Northern Railroad, beginning when he was 18 and he is still with them at 50. They have two children, and live in Abingdon, Illinois.

Scott lives in Earlham, a bricklayer in construction work. He married Chris Mercer, whose grandmother was a well-known resident of Osceola - Lou Miller, who worked in the recorder's and auditor's offices in the courthouse. Scott and Chris have two children.

Through the years, I continued to sing. I sang with Don Carson's Rhythm Dusters from Weldon. Don asked me one night if I would come sing with his band when his lead soloist was unable to be there. I was with him 15 years. I never did dance. I watched people for all those years and wondered how they could move their feet like that, but I never tried it. I've sung for funerals, weddings, and musical programs. Connie has played the piano for church since she was a teenager, and often has accompanied me. We've been a duet, sticking together like glue.

I wish the kids today had what we have - we think and believe alike. We believe the church is important. We took every one of our foster kids to Sunday School and church, which was instilled in us by our good parents and the good background they gave us.

I was a school bus driver for 30 years, and in 2004 I had an accident that I've never completely recovered from. One wintery morning - February 24 - I was trying to back the bus out of a snow bank, and I got stuck in our driveway. I fastened a chain between the bus and my pickup, and had one of boys back up the pickup. I got down on one knee behind the pickup to unhook the chain, and he backed up and didn't stop. I was caught between the bus and the pickup bumper. It brought my shoulder around to the front, punctured my lung, and I was unconscious in a Des Moines hospital for 17 days, a total stay of six weeks in rehabilitation. I am still doctoring for it. A good thing is that we were able to get workman's compensation.

At this point in our lives, we continue to do crop farming, a little musical entertainment now and then. Connie continues to play for church, weddings and funerals when asked, and we have the enjoyment of the two boys we are trying to nurture, and, of course, we enjoy the grand­children when given the chance. We are proud of our heritage and our family.

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Last Revised November 3, 2013