Iowa 1995

Mark's grandma, Helen, really wanted us to join her annual summer trip to her hometown of Davenport, Iowa.

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We left early on Saturday, June 24. We took 2 cars, since Helen planned to stay 2 months, but we could only stay 10 days.

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Here is Helen (age 68) with Sarah (age 5) and Jacob (almost 4) at a rest stop in New Mexico.

It's a very long drive, but we made the trip in just 2 days. We spent the night at this motel in Liberty, Kansas.

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Jill, I checked on the hotel/motel thing. Motels can be 1-3 stories, but the room doors open on the exterior and are located near the parking lot. Hotels open into the interior of the building. Now we know!
We arrived in Davenport on Sunday. We were delayed an hour in Des Moines when Helen locked her keys in the car and we had to wait for AAA to rescue us!

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We stayed in the home Helen still owned in Davenport, where Mark's dad Tim and his wife Mary were living.

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Mary was quite sick at this time and passed away only 5 weeks later. We were very grateful we made the trip to see her one last time.

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This is Tim (age 47), Mark (age 27), Sarah (age 5) and Jacob (age 4).
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Jacob's 4th birthday was on Monday, June 26, so he got to celebrate with family in Iowa!

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We spent the next few days seeing the area with Helen, who showed me all the places that were important to her: the factory where she worked for decades; the graves of her parents and husband Lyle (and her own headstone, ready for when she joins Lyle); the house in Bettendorf where Mark spent his first 4 months of life.

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We visited her younger sister, Kathryn, and drove across the Mississippi River into Illinois and back again. She told me stories about her youth, her days as a young bride and mother, and Mark's childhood.

Mark himself has many fond memories of fishing on the Mississippi as a boy.

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This is a view of the Mississippi River where it flows past Davenport. The paddle wheel boats are actually floating casinos.

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Doesn't it look picturesque?

On Wednesday, Mark and I loaded up the kids and drove to a nice hotel in Glenview, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago where the Chicago Temple is located.

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Early Thursday morning I attended a session at the temple while Mark took Sarah and Jacob to Kohl's Children's Museum in Wilmette, 3 miles away.

We have lots of video of the kids at the museum, but no photos!

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Until I scanned in these pictures, I never realized this is the one and only picture from this trip with ME in it!

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It's a beautiful temple. I especially love the texture of the granite bricks. It was the first of the new small temples I had seen.

After I changed clothes, we drove to Gilson Park in Wilmette to see Lake Michigan. I was amazed how much it felt like being at a beach on the Pacific Ocean! I'd never seen a lake that's so big you can't see the other shore.

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To this day, Lake Michigan is the farthest East I have ever been.

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We didn't stay long. Jacob fell asleep in the car and was quite grumpy.

From there we drove to the Brookfield Zoo, in another suburb of Chicago.

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Looking back, I cannot imagine how we managed to fit so much into just one day! We were a lot younger then...

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Sarah and Jacob had a great time checking out the animals. We all bought new Brookfield Zoo hats to keep the sun out of our eyes.

It was just a year later, in August 1996, that a 3-year-old boy climbed over the side of this enclosure and fell into the gorilla pit. A female ape--with a baby of her own clinging to her back--picked up the child and protected him from the other gorillas, cradling him in her arms and eventually taking him to her trainers who were waiting at the side door.

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It was surreal when I saw it on the news, to realize it was the same Chicago zoo, the same gorillas, the same enclosure that my children stood at in this picture!

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Some say she was guided by training, but I say this gorilla is a heroine who was operating on pure maternal instinct!

At the end of a long, exhausting day, we made the drive back to Davenport, arriving late.

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While in Iowa, Mark hoped to locate some of his family. His mother left him and his dad when he was 4 months old, and Mark was raised by his paternal grandparents. He never knew his mother's side of the family.

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His birth mother, also named Mary (do we sense something Freudian here?), went on to have 3 more children, John, Don, and Becky, but Mark did not grow up with them.

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Helen made some calls and located a phone number for Mark's mom. He was able to call and speak with her, but she wouldn't meet him.

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However, she did give him a number for his sister Becky, age 20, whom he had never met.

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Mark called her and she nervously agreed to meet us at this McDonalds on Friday. She wanted to be sure this was legitimate.

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We waited while Sarah and Jacob enjoyed the little Ronald McDonald show on this little stage. We checked out every girl who walked in, wondering which would turn out to be his sister.

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When she finally arrived with a friend, we knew her immediately. She looks just like their mom, whose photos we had seen.

Becky agreed to meet us the next day at a nearby park. She brought her little boy, 3-year-old Patrick, so Sarah and Jacob got to meet a cousin they'd never known.

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We had a long, pleasant visit, which was a great way to end our stay in Iowa. The following day we were back on the road headed toward Arizona, but the rest of that story will have to be shared in another post tomorrow.

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And as for the tale of Mark's family, well, that is an entire unfolding saga all its own. We'll save that post for another day...