ROBERT  (BOB) AND EMMA CREVELING

Emma

I was born in Madison Township of Clarke County, Iowa, in 1934, the same day and year as the Dionne Quintuplets. My mother's name was Ruth Woosley Iiams and Dad was William Boyd Iiams, but he was always known as Boyd. Dad's mother came from England. There were 12 in their family and half were born in England, but I don't know in which town. His grandfather was a baker and they had money in England, but when they came to the United States they were very poor. They couldn't get over the difference between the two countries until they were established.

Dr. Dean delivered me at home. I weighed a little over ten pounds, and I had the six-week colic. Mom would have liked to give me away. Mom and Dad rented the farm and when I was five years old, they bought a farm down the road a 1/2 - mile in Washington Township. We lived there until I graduated from high school in 1952. I have never lived outside of Clarke County. I have a sister, Darlene Morris, four years older than I am. She lives in Des Moines. My brother, Dwayne Iiams, lives on the home farm, which he bought when Dad and Mom passed away.

There were no sons in the family until I was seven years old, so I helped my dad in the field. We didn't have electricity until I was a freshman in high school. That changed many of the ways we lived but nothing was as exciting to me as having ice cubes in July. That was wonderful! I can remember thinking, "Oh! I can have an ice cube in my glass of water!" Before that, we had no refrigeration, so our summer meals consisted of fresh vegetables from the garden or meat that was freshly butchered. To provide food the rest of the year, we canned. The exception was we could butcher and eat chickens year round.

We milked cows morning and night for our milk at home and sold the cream and extra eggs to buy our groceries like sugar, coffee, flour, salt and whatever else we couldn't raise. I helped Dad with the milking, by hand, from the time I was five years old until I left home. The lack of electricity ruled out milking machines. When REA (Rural Electric Association) brought electricity, they also went around the area and taught people how to be electricians. Back then they didn't have to be licensed.

When I graduated from high school in May 1952, I went to work for Dr. Stroy. I'd had very little acquaintance with doctors. I'd heard of Dr. Bates, but I had no first-hand knowledge about him. Dr. Dean, who delivered me, practiced on the first floor of his house, which is still (in 2009) standing in the 100 block on North Main. Dr. Sells and Dr. Stroy practiced together on the east side of the square, the second floor of 109 South Main. They were there until they bought the building they named Osceola Hospital. At the time I worked there, Dr. Harkens and Dr. Stroy each had their own hospitals just off the southwest corner of the square, on Fillmore street.

My working for Dr. Stroy was a bit of a happenstance. I was in town with Mom buying groceries when I saw Betty Adamson, who had been working in his office. She had married G.F. Hoffman, an attorney, and they were moving to set up his practice in Leon. She told me she had been working for Dr. Stroy and they would need someone to replace her. I never dreamed of getting to work in an office, which was what I really wanted. I hadn't taken a secretarial course in high school because I planned to go to school to be a Registered Nurse. When all this came about, I went over and filled out my application, saying I would like to start to work when Betty left. She "broke me in," so to speak, showed me the ropes of what I was to do and how. Then it was up to me.

When I went to work there, the first floor was the doctor's office, second floor was the hospital, on third floor was the kitchen where the cooks made breakfast, lunch, and supper for the patients. We girls, who worked for Dr. Stroy, lived on the third floor also. I did blood tests, urinalysis, gave shots, filled prescriptions, and took care of the patients. I didn't need a piece of paper saying I was qualified to do any of those. It was altogether different than in today's world.

Living in town was my first experience of being away from my mom and dad. My mom had never been real healthy. She had heart problems for years. I was able to continue caring for her because I had Thursday afternoons off Mom would come get me, I would go home, bake bread, and clean the house for her so it would last until the weekend, when I would do it again.

I mentioned working for Dr. Stroy, and orders came from him, but as far as I was concerned, Wicket was the boss. Her name was Estella Moran and she was Dr. Stroy's nurse for years. We all called her Wick. Her family was originally from New Virginia, and her husband's name was William Moran. He worked for Liggett Cleaners and became a handyman and custodian for Dr. Stroy. He was known as Tick Moran.

Over the years, Dr. Stroy had several doctors with him. When I went to work for him, Dr. Boden was there. When they moved to California, we thought the world would come to an end. How would we take care of all the patients? There were several doctors who followed Dr. Boden, who were sort of in and out. Dr. Kitti Kahlamabiti, who was originally from Thailand, was here in the early 70s. He was so smart! I remember most how small his hands were, and how the smell of the unusual spices they used in their food lingered on his clothes when he came back from lunch. His wife was from Pennsylvania and her dad was a coal miner. I thought Dr. Stroy could retire at that time because we had a good doctor. But then Dr. Kahlamabiti moved to Victor, Iowa. There were several people who liked him so much, they have continued to follow him for their medical work. It was really Clarke ,County's loss when they left.

Bob and Emma

I was dating Bob Creveling. Bob was born in Ringgold County. He went to school there the first year or two, and was probably about seven when they moved to Clarke County. They lived in Clarke County ever since. Bob gave me my engagement ring on Thanksgiving, 1953. His brother's wife said, "When are you going to be married?" I said, "Good land! He just gave me my diamond. I'm not going to ask him this soon when we are going to get married." She said, "Well, I'd like to know." On a weekend when we were visiting them in Kansas City, I finally asked. He said, "I don't believe in long engagements. Since I gave you the ring Thanksgiving Day, let's get married on Christmas." So we were married Christmas Day in 1953.

There was a complication because our Christian Church, where I had always attended, had burned, and I wondered where we would have our wedding. Bob's brother was married in the Presbyterian Church in Indianola, so we asked their minister to marry us. He said, "May I ask why you have chosen to be married here?" Bob explained his brother and wife were married there, and our Osceola Christian Church had burned. The minister said, "That's fine. I'll gladly marry you." Our wedding party consisted of our parents, Bob's and my brothers, and my sister.

We settled on a farm north of Osceola, where we have lived ever since. I stayed home and helped my husband on the farm, where we were in the SPF Hamp Shire Pure Bred hog business. SPF indicated Certified Pathogen Free, meaning no virus pneumonia, rhinitis, parasites or lice mange. I am not sure how many years we raised hogs, but I know we went out of business in 1973, because circumstances required we live elsewhere. We couldn't live in two places and have baby pigs in Iowa. That was before updated equipment, like we have today, was available, and they would freeze to death. After we went out of business, we chose not to raise hogs anymore.

I quit working for Dr. Stroy for awhile but continued to work off and on for him from 1952, until he passed away at the age of 78 or 79. Then I worked vacations, or filled in if Wick wanted a day or two off, because I knew how to handle patients, do the blood work and so on. When we had our four children, I worked until I packed the suitcase for the third and then I quit again. I had Carol Sue in 1956, Pat (Patricia) Courtney in 1958, Lynn born in 1959, and our baby, Julie, in 1961.

We will have been on our home farm 56 years this coming Christmas, with the exception of 1972, when our house burned. It happened on Christmas night, our 19th anniversary. We'd had 40 or 50 people for dinner. I've been noted for doing things like that all my life. Everybody had left, I had practically everything cleaned up — dishes put away, and pans washed. I had just gone in to sit down when Pat said, "Mom, what is that?" Smoke was billowing out from the wall register. When we saw what was going on, I ran upstairs to get Lynn, Bob pulled me and our son out because we were being overcome by smoke, and locked the doors so the girls wouldn't come in. We lost everything except what we were wearing. Bob and Lynn didn't even have shoes. But everyone of us survived well and happy, and when you have life, that is all that matters. You can replace everything else. Although we never discovered the cause of the fire, I am sure it was electrical. I will never in my life forget the putrid smell. It still bothers me when I smell something electrical burning. I couldn't stand to hear the whistle blow for a long time.

Because it happened at Christmas, we had a few days to adjust and get clothing ready for the kids to go back to school. Carol would have been a junior, Pat a freshman, Lynn seventh grade, and Julie in fifth. Julie's friends all gave her part of their Christmas. Pat's friends gave her all kinds of things as did Lynn's. They took up collections to buy kids' clothes. Talk about feeling humble! There is no question we have one of the grandest communities in the world. They came and brought clothes for us adults and the kids, food, love and everything because we had nothing. It is like a death in the family because we didn't save one thing!

I don't know what day of the week Christmas would have been in 1972, but a few days later, I went to church and all I had to wear was what people had given me. I was singing in the choir and I have always remembered a remark Frances Wilder made when I went back to put on my choir robe, "I knew anniversaries were hot but I didn't expect it to be this hot."

I want to also mention Dr. Fred Wood. He has one of the biggest hearts in Clarke County. At that time he had Bell/Wood Ltd. at Dr. Harken's farm, where he raised Black Angus. There were apartments in the house and Fred told us we could live out there. We paid him $100 a month. That wouldn't even have paid for the fuel we burned to keep us warm. We just couldn't believe it! We got to watch his bull, Longfellow, a purebred Lemousin, being born and raised while he was at the farm. He was quite a bull. Dr. Wood had an embryo shipped in a rabbit across the ocean. It was later transplanted in a Guernsey cow. The Guernsey carried the calf to full term. Longfellow was one of the first Lemousin to be born in the United States.

We were out at the farm the year we had the big snow in April and nobody could get out of the town of Osceola for four days. We were all snowbound. That was the spring of 1973. When we finally got out home, we had lost 19 or 20 head of cows and calves. The ones that were in the timber pasture were fine. Where the land was flat they suffocated. A lot of people were hurt by that storm. Bob and Lynn went out all day in the snowstorm to help them get the cattle in the barn at the Bell Wood farm.

Because nothing but the house burned, we rebuilt on the same site. The Adamson family — Bill, Shorty, and their brother-in-law Bob Evans, thought they could start that spring. They had promised another house but they could work the two together. The other house, which they built the same year, is where Julie and her husband live now so our two houses were built the same year. We moved in November 16, 1973, so we had Thanksgiving in our new house. That was appropriate. It was quite an event one year after our disaster.

I stayed at home, helped with farming, and enjoyed being a stay-at-home Mom. In 1984, when the crunch came, I thought I should get a job in town because by then Lynn was old enough to help Bob on the farm. I started working for Dr. Spencer, the podiatrist. I worked for him for 20 years. I always thought when I worked for Dr. Stroy, I fit in with their family. I loved it that I could feel comfortable going to visit him and Mary at their home, and when I started working for Dr. Spencer, I had the same relationship with him and his lovely family. They are like my own kids. I would like to see them more often than I do, but we still know when each other's birthdays are and what is happening in each others' families. I feel very privileged.

I helped with patients, took x-rays, for which I went back to school. I was in my 50s at the time. Doctor was a professor with the University. of Des Moines, so Mary Ruth Jones and I went together for classes. We went on Tuesdays afternoons, the only afternoon when we didn't have patients. We ate a sandwich on our way, had classes until 4:00 or 5:00 in the evening and drove back home. It was quite a feat. It took quite awhile but I got my radiology license.

Dr. Spencer served several communities. He bought the office building in Osceola, which was home base and always had the biggest practice. When it was up and going and there were enough patients, people were coming from northern Missouri and southern Iowa, so he opened an office in Lamoni. Then there were people from the east who came over saying they needed him to come there. That is when he opened the Chariton office in the hospital. People from Corydon needed us to come down there, so he set up that office, also in the hospital. Each of those towns had nursing homes, where we would go see patients on rotation, as well as having patients in the offices however many days the need dictated for that town. We loved if because we started in Osceola in the morning and ended in Osceola at night. I said I had worked for a general practitioner the first part of my life, and was down to feet and ankles when I finished.

I didn't know there were so many things to be done for feet and ankles until I went to work for a podiatrist. It isn't just about getting toe nails trimmed. People have a lot of pain in their feet. May those who have a good pair be thankful! Lots of people have arthritic hands, some also have it in their feet, which often causes joints to swell and gnarl. It is pathetic. Sometimes people have hammertoe, which is arthritis in the middle joint. It causes the toe to buckle rather than lie flat, sometimes resulting in a sore on it, or an ulcer, and it never heals. The arch in the foot can cause problems. A lot of people are flat footed and in a lot of pain. Dr. Spencer did bunyons and bunyonectomies of the big or little joints. He took care of those. He is a wonderful doctor.

When I first started working for Dr. Spencer, he was an assistant professor, then he became the professor and taught classes on Wednesdays in Des Moines and had patients in the afternoon. We were always busy or on the way to another clinic. We started in Osceola on Monday morning, went to Chariton in the afternoon, started at nursing homes, followed by patients in the office. We had a rotation all the time. We were busy all five days of the week.

I had just quit working there in October 2007, when in December, his assistant, Glenda Flaherty, and he were coming back from Corydon. Between Corydon and Chariton, they had a head-on collision. They were both badly hurt. He has had to give up his practice due to the injuries he suffered in the accident.

I have enjoyed volunteering. In the early 70s, as they were becoming organized, I became involved in Clarke Community Housing. First, I went to every house in Fremont Township to take up a collection so we could get started. I don't know how many houses there were, but on some of them I called more than once. If the people weren't there, I went back until I found them at home. I made it to every house and there were only two where I wasn't given money.

When Clarke Community Housing began, the men did all the business and the women took care of the people. We showed and rented the units.We made and kept a list of everybody who applied to live there, and from the list, we called the name that came first to tell them an apartment was available. If they were still interested in living there, we made an appointment for them to come to see the apartment to decide if they wanted it. If not, we went to the next name. We never did otherwise. We always took the first name. "First come, first served."

The men did the paper work — Arcel Luce and George Buesch nearly always did that. Arcel thought it was so nice that he and Velma could live in those units their last 12 years. He thought it was wonderful to be able to start something and enjoy it. The part I like to remember is the many people who got to live in Clarke Community Housing, who had never lived in a new home or one as nice as these. They were so pleased with the units and really enjoyed them. It will now be under different management because we had to sell out. Time changes things.

I have volunteered at school the last two years in Robin Freed's second grade room, and will go again this next year. There will be new kids and each one of them is really special. They made a little booklet for me this year, and each one of the kids wrote, "Thank you for reading to me," and some would say. "Thank you for listening to me read." Ordinarily I don't read to them but once in awhile there will be one who might be a little bit slow and they read one page and I will read the other. They love that.

Bob and I go out to Terribles' casino a couple times a week. He likes to play cards and those have better odds than the machines. While he does that, I don't miss a single show. We love to see and visit with people we know from our own community because a lot of people go there to eat, and we get to make new friends with people who come there from all over. I like to go up and down, see who is there and what they are doing. It is a place to enjoy not a place to get carried away. I use it as entertainment, and say, "This is what I do in my retirement."

Last year at the boat there was a drawing, and my name was drawn! I won a cruise to the Mexican Riviera. We were married on Christmas Day, so for our 55th anniversary I gave Bob the cruise as his gift. We had a wonderful time. We went to Des Moines, flew to Las Vegas, spent the night, the next morning we boarded a bus and went to Los Angeles where we boarded the boat. We were on it 14 days. It was a different kind of vacation. Every night when we went to the room (our cabin), there would be an itinerary of what would be available the next day. So we could choose what we wanted to do and we could fill the whole day. We didn't have to wonder about where we were going or what we were going to do unless we had to find out how to get to where we wanted to go.

It was good to come back and some of our kids and grandkids were there when we got home. They had a big dinner — mashed potatoes and gravy and meat loaf, like we have when they come home on Saturday or Sunday. They had fixed that for Grandpa and me when we got home.

How fortunate Bob and I are to have our family that close! We have enjoyed our kids growing up, our grandkids growing up, and now we are enjoying our great grandkids. We never know what it is going to be like on the weekends. We might have a dozen to eat and it makes a difference how Grandma feels, how much we feed them. They will call and ask, "Grandma, what are you having for dinner (or whatever)?" And we just work from whatever we've got.

Our first-born, Carol Sue, went to college, and graduated with a degree in Liberal Arts and Education. She married E.K. Jones III, and they live here in town. His grandfather was an attorney in Osceola. She now teaches and works part time at Robinsons. She helped tutor a little boy in school at Murray. At this time (summer 2009) E.K. has cancer of the brain. He was a semi-driver and this has all just happened. The skids were pulled out from under our feet in October. He was delivering a load when he had a seizure and things started happening. We don't know quite where we are. We go back in a month to see how he is. They found another spot, so we will have to wait and see what God has in store. They have two boys and a girl — E.K. IV, Robert Mendell (Robbie), and Elizabeth.

Pat (Patricia) Courtney is next oldest and lives here in town. She is a cosmetologist, and has been a high school bowling coach for nine years. She took the kids to State seven of the nine. Her husband is Carey Courtney. They have Coresa and Eric.

Our son, Lynn, was born in 1959. He lives with and takes care of Bob and me. We are good for each other. He has a route of people he mows for and mows our yard also. He is very particular. In the winter he and Bob cut wood. I worry about it because Bob is going to be 80, but he knows what he can do and what he can't do. He helps Lynn, which is good for both of them because a chainsaw can be dangerous. Lynn has a step-son, John Palmer, and we enjoy him.

Our baby was Julie. She works as a secretary at Hormels. Her husband is Denny Halls. They have three boys — Billy is the oldest. We are so proud. We now have a doctor in the family. He graduated in May 2009, with his Doctor's degree in Pharmacology. They live south of the Country Club. We are proud of all our children but he is our first doctor. Ryan is the second boy. He is in Ames getting his Master's degree, and working full time for Syngerta, soybean analyst. The little one, Kyle, bless his heart, works for REA and helps Dad farm.

And we have great-grandchildren — Coresa has two — Carrie Ann and Andrew William. We call him Andy. Those are the two oldest great-grandkids. Then E.K. IV has Brooklynn; Roby has Riley, Lila, and Blake; Beth has Chrystopher and Maddalynne; Kyle has a little girl, Keylee, who was born in March. She is such a good baby! She eats and sleeps and makes faces. She is so loving and we all love her to death.

Our baby, Julie was 48 yesterday June 8, 2009. Unbelievable! We went with our birthday cake and got to eat birthday cake and see Keylee last night. Not many people have the privilege of having their children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren living so close to us and close enough to each other, that they know one another. We know how blessed we are.

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Last Revised November 25, 2014