Jule's Bell Ceremony

These comments were delivered by Christopher Wilkinson, Jule's son. The bell ringing was performed by David Schmalenberger, a close family friend.

From ancient times and until quite recently, tolling a bell was a customary way to signal the death of a loved one and in some cases, honor the number of years the person lived. We have chosen to use that custom today for my mother. While tolling our bell, once for every year of her life, we will pause to note one or more memorable events in Mother’s life.
On June 13, 1912, Jule Porter was born to Alice Coe Porter and Ford Davis Porter in the town of Brookfield, Illinois, now a western suburb of Chicago. She was the first of ultimately five children; she had one sister and three brothers. She outlived them all. She was named for her maternal grandmother, Julia Jane Whitney Coe who for some unknown reason hated the name “Julia” and made it clear that she preferred “Jule.” When informed of this, my grandfather felt compelled to return to the courthouse to file a second birth certificate, replacing “Julia” with his mother-in-law’s preferred name “Jule.”

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Among mother’s earliest memories was the night of November 11, 1918. She was five and a half years old; by then the family had moved west of Brookfield to the village of Western Springs. She was in bed when all of a sudden, the volunteer fire department alarm started to sound. Soon people were pouring into the streets; there were cheers and all manner of noise makers were creating an incredible din. Her parents got her and her younger brother up; they got dressed and went out to see what was going on. An impromptu parade had begun, and a bonfire was burning in the village square. My mother recalled people bringing pots and pans from their kitchens if they had nothing else to create a racket. Within moments, they learned that an Armistice had been signed between the Imperial Army of Germany and the British and French allies: the Great War, the War to make the world safe for democracy, the war to end all wars, the First World War was over.
The townspeople, mother included, stayed up all night, parading and celebrating. Two women from neighboring houses brought egg beaters to contribute to the celebratory noise and they marched along turning the handles so the beaters whizzed in the air. Carroll loves that image and the memory of the joy in Mother’s face when she told that story. Mother always claimed that as a consequence of marching around town all night that she permanently damaged the arches of her feet. But she said it was worth it.
That same year, Western Springs, like the rest of the nation and much of the world experienced the Influenza pandemic that ultimately cost more lives than did the Great War. Other members of mother’s family contracted the disease, but she did not. This may account for a rather extraordinary development late in her life.

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Mother’s career as a professional writer began early. Western Springs had no newspaper of its own and so relied on a paper from an adjacent community for local news. Mother was Western Springs’ correspondent for two years when she was in the seventh and eighth grades reporting on birthdays, local residents’ travels, and similar developments. She was paid 25 cents for every column inch of news that found its way into an issue.

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Mother graduated from the University of Chicago with a Bachelor of Philosophy degree in English, having received an Honors Scholarship awarded by the faculty for some portion of her education. She immediately took a job proof reading mail-order catalogues for either Sears Roebuck or Montgomery Ward. When she was offered a job as a reporter for the LaGrange [Illinois] Messenger, a weekly newspaper published in yet another western suburb of Chicago, she took it. This job, which lasted only six months, would be followed by numerous others as she took whatever work was available in the Great Depression. Another consequence of her working on that newspaper was that she met my father who also worked on that paper while attending the University of Chicago from which he too would graduate, though several years after my mother. My parents married in 1938.

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On December 11, 1940, at the age of 28, mother gave birth to Stephen Adams Wilkinson, my older brother. By then, my parents were living in Chicago, and my mother had a series of clerical and secretarial jobs. As she would recall later, “I had learned shorthand and typing as those were the only jobs available to women at the time. In those days, newspapers and commercial writing jobs went only to men.”

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On September 12, 1946, at the age of 34, mother gave birth to me. The Second World War was by then over, and so she made an early contribution to the Baby Boom generation. She recalled that so many babies were being born that the staff was horribly overworked. The nurse who brought me to her in her hospital room after delivery neglected to support my head properly. Mother was outraged and let the nurse know of her anger in no uncertain terms. It has occurred to me that the nurse may have had the last word: on my birth certificate, my middle name (by which people know me) was spelled “Christfer.” Several years ago in an effort to correct this, I sent fifteen dollars and a form to the appropriate unit of the State Government in Springfield. My reward was the insertion of the letter “o” after the “t.” Officially, my name is now spelled “Christofer.” Part way home.

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In January, 1947, mother began her twenty-eight year career at Institutions Magazine, a publication for the restaurant and hotel industry. (Earlier this year we learned that Institutions’ current owner, the wealthy Dutch publishing firm Elsevier, stopped publishing the magazine.) She became the Food Editor of Institutions. At the time she was the only person to hold such a position in the food service publishing field. It was as a result of her work, that she made the acquaintance of the founder of the Culinary Institute of America, edit the first edition of its basic textbook: The Professional Chef, and write several associated text books as well. Copies of her publications are on display here today in case you are interested.

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On September 2, 1960, over the initially strenuous objections of my father, but with the support of both of her sons, Mother provided the down payment for a mortgage from what was then the Norway National Bank to purchase the farm here in Norway from Lyman and Rosa Herrick. Beginning the following year, she and we came every summer to renovate the house and enjoy the best of the State of Maine. To put that date in a more contemporary context, this coming September 2 will mark the fiftieth anniversary of that purchase.

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On November 28, 1968, gained a daughter when Carroll Feild Wetzel and I married in Bond Chapel on the campus of the University of Chicago.

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In December, 1976, mother retired from Institutions Magazine and its then parent company Cahner’s Publishing. From 1977 until father died in 1995, she and he divided their time between the farm in North Norway and an apartment in Greenville, South Carolina.

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On November 8, 1980, Samuel Evan Wilkinson was born; mother’s first and only grandchild. When we informed her of his first name, she was overjoyed. Samuel was the name of her maternal grandfather, Samuel Augustus Coe, husband of Julia (or Jule) Whitney Coe, for whom she was named. We had no idea when we named Sam of this historic connection. Samuel Coe had been a lieutenant in one of the Illinois artillery units that participated in the siege at Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1863. He was also a part of the honor guard that stood over the casket of President Lincoln while it paused in Chicago en route to burial near Springfield. A high chair that had been made for him in the 1840s is now at the farm. By now, it has accommodated the bottoms of five generations of his descendants.

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On July 7, 1994, my older brother, Steve, died of complications of AIDS in Wallingford, CT. He was the first of our family to be buried in the Shedd Cemetery in North Norway.

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In February, 1995, my father died in Greenville, South Carolina. He too is buried in the Shedd Cemetery. After that, mother, who claimed that she had never really liked Greenville, moved back to the farm. She continued to reside there and in the village of Norway itself until her death.

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On March 30, 2001, Jule Porter Wilkinson’s great-granddaughter was born to Sam Wilkinson and Bobbi Nesbitt. Alexis Porter Wilkinson’s middle name honors her great-grandmother.

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In November, 2005, mother fell and broke her left hip. She was rushed to Stephens Hospital after being discovered by Brenda and Vern Maxfield lying on the floor of her bedroom in the apartment on Oak Street that she rented in town. She not only survived the surgery but in the course of the next three months of recuperation contracted Influenza A and Influenza B (one of these twice) as well as bacterial pneumonia. She survived them all. It seems reasonable to suppose that the fact that she did not contract Influenza during the 1918 pandemic might offer an explanation as to why she was able to throw off these viral and bacterial attacks as well. Thanks to the dedicated staff at the Norway Rehabilitation and Living Center she became ambulatory once more. After several additional months there, she moved to the Home for Creative Living and started making regular day trips to the farm in the warm months with a companion.

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On June 16, 2008, mother’s second great-grandchild: Montgomery Jackson Wilkinson was born to Bobbi and Sam. His nickname, “Jack,” honors the memory of his great-grandfather, my father, whose nickname was also “Jack.”

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There could be little doubt, though she endured after the medical crises of the winter of 2005 and 2006, that mother was in physical decline. What happened to her is what happens to the rest of our species when disease does not intervene: the body wears out. Cell structures do not replace themselves; muscles weaken; senses do as well. On the morning of December 1, 2009, in the midst of breakfast while seated at the side of her bed at Norway Rehabilitation and Living Center, mother choked briefly on some juice. Her attendant wiped her mouth, lay her back on the bed, and held her hand. In a matter of moments, she died. Quietly, without pain, without the loss of her mental faculties. Though the death certificate identified the cause of death as a myocardial infarction, and there is no reason to quarrel with that diagnosis, I believe that simply identified the immediate cause of her death. In a larger sense, she died of old age: a better end would be hard to imagine.