A BADER CHRISTMAS

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On Christmas Day, 1947, five of the six Bader siblings reunited with parents, Rev. Carl George Sr. and Edna (Maudie), at their home in Lincoln, Nebraska. (Rev. Bader had been assigned to the Methodist church in Lincoln in 1944.)

By this time, Bobby, Ernie, Barbara, and Carl George Jr. were all married. Only 16-year-old Philip still lived at home. Jeannie flew in from California. 

Barabara was the only one of the Bader 8 who missed this reunion. Her husband, Art Jensen, was still in the Navy and they had started a family. In December, 1947, they might still have been on Midway Island in the Pacific, or they might have relocated to Long Beach, CA.

But the rest of the Baders were on deck on what looks like a bright, sunny Christmas Day in Lincoln! 

Decorating the front porch, above, from the left, are Philip and Jeannie, Carl Jr. (behind Jeannie), Bobby, and Ernie. With—of course—Doc, the dog, smack in the middle!

In this other group shot, we have Philip and Ernie in back, with Jeannie, Maudie, Norma (Bohlken) Bader (she and Bobby married in 1942), Nadine (Goyer) Bader (she and Carl Jr. married in 1946), and Carl Jr.

In 1946 or '47, Ernie married Charlotte (Carlie) Prather. 

She's not in the Christmas pics, but three days later, she and Ernie and some of his gathered sibs took a tour of the University of Nebraska campus in Lincoln. 

This is Carlie and Ernie (and, yes, he was that tall, at 6' 8").

Here are Bobby, Jeannie, Carlie and Ernie at UN. My guess is Carl Jr. who was also on this excursion, took the photo.

And finally, the car they all rode in on! I don't know whose car this was, but it looks like Ernie driving (or possibly Carl). 

That's definitely Jeannie putting on her lipstick in the front seat!

And who's the photographer casting his shadow on the car? My guess is Carl Jr.

SIBLINGS

Here's a great shot of five Bader siblings: Ernie (with Doc, the dog), Bobby, Carl George Jr., Jeannie, and Philip. The only one missing is Barbara.

I think this was taken in 1941, so that might have been the year she was in nurse's training at Mass General in Boston. If she had already moved out to California with Jeannie at this time, she would have come back with Jeannie for this family reunion.

My guess is the occasion was Bobby getting engaged to Norma Bohlken. Another snapshot in this group is dated Nov. 1941 (everybody is wearing the same clothes), and Bob & Norma married in May, 1942.


Here's another shot from this group. That's Bob and Norma in the middle, flanked by Philip and Jeannie. (I love those stylin' open-toed pumps Jeannie is wearing! Some day soon I'll do a post just on Jeannie's outfits; she was such a fashion plate!)

All these pictures appear to be taken on the grounds of the Methodist Church in Holdredge, NE., where The Rev and Maudie and the youngest Baders lived from 1940-1944.


Here are some undated photos of Philip and his mom (Maudie) from about  that same time. This is also their home adjoining the Methodist Church. (This porch figures in many, many Bader family photos.)

I don't know why they're both grimacing in the right-hand pic (maybe they were squinting into the sun?), but everyone looks more relaxed in the other one!


Um, I'm not exactly sure what's going on in this photo, but that's Philip again, fooling around!

Some wag (probably big brother Ernie) has scribbled this caption on the back:

"Latest thing in potted plants."

Or—

"What did you put in that last one, Mike?"

YOUNG BADERS

Here's a photo of Barbara, age 9 (ca. 1930).  Isn't she cute? Pictures of Barbara in her girlhood always remind me of Kiera when she was little—especially this one!


I assume this is a (badly hand-tinted) school picture; it's glued onto colored construction paper in the form of a small card, so this was probably a school project to make cards for the parents.


Inside, Barbara has written, possibly in crayon: "Me in a (...)" I can't make out the last word, but it might be "beret," which seems to make sense.




 Photos of the eldest Bader brothers, Bobby and Ernie, in childhood are just about nonexistent (except for those few I've already posted). But here's a candid pic of Jeannie as a young teen (of course, it's not dated!), probably mid-1930s.

(Btw, this wire-haired terrier appears in family photos throughout the '30s and '40s. I've always heard about "Doc, the dog," but I have no idea if this is the same Doc in all these photos, or if the Baders had more than one dog named Doc.)


 Here's a candid portrait of three generations of Baders. I don't know where of when it was taken, but judging from the age of Philip (far right), I guess maybe 1937 or '38.

That's clan matriarch Emma Elsner Bader (wife of J. R. Bader) in the foreground. Directly behind her is her daughter, Alma (Carl George Sr's younger sister). Behind Alma is Ernie, and to the right, younger brother Carl George Jr., Edna (Maudie), and little Philip. Carl George Sr. is standing at the left.

The two little girls (identified in another photo I have) are Joan Bader (in front of Carl Sr.) and her sister, Gretchen Bader (next to Philip). They are the daughters of Carl Sr's youngest brother, Jean Bader (he was the child sitting on the moon with mama, Emma, in that vacation postcard I posted awhile ago). Jean does not appear in this photo, but I assume that's his wife, Sara Marshall, mother of the girls, standing between Carl Sr. and Alma.

Here's another snapshot of little Philip and his Bader cousins. Gretchen (left) is one year younger than Philip (born 1933); Joan (right) is two years older (born 1930).

Below is one last image. I'm pretty sure that's Philip (with his very distinctive asymmetrical hairline!), but I'm not at all sure those are Gretchen and Joan in the photo with him. (But then again, who else would it be, so close to his age?) Nor do I have a clue where this was taken. Surely not a parish house; it looks like the steps to a library or some other public building.

But I post this because Philip looks so debonair and soulful for his age!

BABY BADERS

Say "hello" to the next generation of Baders!


Pictures of Carl and Edna Bader's children as babies, or even young children, are very rare. So I was delighted to stumble across this grouping when going through my mom's things. These vintage snapshots are all plastered together onto a single sheet of thick black paper, which was probably a page in a photo album, once. They are undated, of course, and whatever may have been written on the back is mostly lost to the misty depths of time.


I recognized Edna right away in this picture. (Who was, by the way, fondly referred to as "Maudie" by all of her children for the rest of her life.) That "Hello!" is also in Maudie's handwriting. But which of her six children are these?

But I knew immediately as soon as I saw this photo:

This is first-born Robert Elsner Bader, born June 7, 1916, on the right, and second son, Ernest Birney Bader, born August 5, 1919, on the left.

40+ years later, in the early '60s, both Uncle Bobby and Uncle Ernie used to come stay with us in Hermosa Beach for the summer (they were both university professors in the Midwest). And they look exactly like themselves in this photo! I would know them anywhere!

This is the only photo in this group that was loose, and Maudie has written on the back, "My boys!" The only boys she had at this time.

Which mean the baby in these photos must be Barbara!

The time period is perfect. Barbara Anne Bader was born March 13, 1921. If these snapshots were taken in the summer of 1921, when Barbara was an infant, Bobby would be five years old, and Ernie two, which looks about right.

Bobby was born in Worcester, Mass., and Ernie was born in Malden, Mass. Barbara was the first of the Bader children to be born in Nebraska, where the family would live until the Great Migration westward to California began in the '40s and '50s.

In her letter/memoir "My Mother," Barbara writes that she "was born while (the family) lived in Clay Center (NE), but delivered in the Methodist Hospital in Omaha, Nebr." Some intrepid peeling on my part reveals at watermark on the back of one of these photos: "W.S. Reed, Kamera Kraft Shop, Clay Center, NEBR."

Maudie writes on the front of  this photo (above, right) "Doesn't she look like Bobby?" I was impressed with how much Toddler Ernie looks like baby pictures of Jeannie and Philip, that you'll see in the next couple of posts.

 Anyway, here's Maudie and her children, ca: 1921 — Bobby, Baby Barbara, and Ernie. I can't quite peel  enough of the black paper away from this photo to read the entire inscription on the back, but it looks like Maudie has written "She's (meaning, Barbara, I presume) sure the beauty of this group."