Honor Flights

Oaknoll residents Bob Laudie, Bill Byington and George Dane had the opportunity to go on an Honor Flight to Washington D.C. Eastern Iowa Honor Flight is a non-profit organization dedicated to sending veterans to our nations capital, where they can visit historical sights and war memorials.


Bob, Bill, and George are veterans of World War II. We thank them, and all veterans, for their service and sacrifice.


For photos of their trips, please visit the Oaknoll Facebook page at www.facebook.com/oaknoll on Veterans Day, November 11, 2011.


We hope you enjoy this short video of Bob Laudie filmed during his Honor Flight on October 18, 2011.

Oaknoll Nurse Shirley Cox Wins Award

Congratulations to Oaknoll nurse Shirley Cox, who was recently awarded the University of Iowa College of Nursing/John A. Hartford Center for Geriatric Nursing Excellence Long-Term Care Nursing Leadership Award for her career in long-term care and her mentoring of nursing students!
Check out the video for highlights from the event.

The Tale of the Oaknoll Oak

by Willa Jones

A resident saw it
Out there in the Oak.
A dark mass of something,
Was it a joke?

She called in her neighbor
To look in the oak.
What is that big blob?
Or is it a joke?

"No," said her neighbor.
"That's no joke in your oak.
I think it's a turkey
Asleep on that limb,
It may be about time
To awaken him."

From under a bush
Came a hen turkey then
With chattering poults
Numbered One to Ten
One scratched here,
Six over there,
Five and Eight argued
They wouldn't share.

The blob shook awake
And looked down from the limb,
That racket on the ground
Was bothering him.

"What's going on?" he called from the oak.
"Come down here and help," yelled his wife.
"These kids are no joke."

Big wings flopped him down.
He'd straighten them out.
With face red, feet stomping,
He began to shout.

The poults didn't listen
They were scratching around
All over the place.
Three and Ten had a race
To get the same bug.

One and Two over there
Found a big slug.

They were having such fun
In their new atmosphere.
The grass was for scratching
They couldn't hear.

From the window the residents
Looked down on the drama,
While big old Dad Turkey
And old Turkey Mana,
Looked on in amazement,
As their poults One through Ten
Fed themselves joyfully and then
Ran under the bush for a quick little rest,
Mama went after, she'd done her best.

Big old Dad Turkey
Flew into the oak
To become the dark blob
He was no joke.

Oaknoll Trees

by Loren Horton

A maple tree
Stands proudly in the yard
Right next to a ginkgo tree

By late September
The maple tree sports colored leaves
Bright red, orange, yellow
The ginkgo tree is still green
And shows a reserved façade

The two tree neighbors
Present a vivid contrast----
Each in its own way
Demonstrates nature's beauty
We are glad to have variety
To ease our eyes and hearts

All too soon there will be change
And we will see naked branches
Starkly grey against winter snow

Summer's End

As summer comes to a close, here are two pieces by Claudine Harris to celebrate the season.

All Things Shimmering

     Never been to Missouri, never expect to go there. But every summer a day comes when boxes of their bounty piles into my co-op store. Missouri peaches are here! One of the embellishments of summer. Long awaited. Long dreamed of. Peaches arrive the same week Marvin's sweet corn is heaped high on the counter, its brown silks limply cascading from tight green husks, like so many dark tresses on a pillow. Corn fresh from the field. There is none better, swiftly, slightly simmered, and eaten at once.
     Summer mornings are too hot, even at dawn, to tempt a walk through the neighborhood before settling down to writing. A pair of goldfinches beyond my window cling upside down on the drying stalks of catnip and nameless weeds, pecking at the seeds of August. Blossoms of impatiens in the rock wall await silently the brief thunderstorm that may bring them relief.
     Evening is corn on the cob, glistening droplets on my window screen, and a peach.
     August is all things shimmering.

Butterflies

     At last a summer day like those in childhood, bright and clear, wind free, dry. Endless. A day to chase butterflies, made mud pies in the shade and color them with the rainbow tables in a paintbox.
     Climb a tree to near its top and sway there, holding tight, hoping to see a boat leave the dock on the lake at Vevey. Summer in 36, 37? But this is Iowa, already the end of August.
     The paintbox is long abandoned with the dolls. Trees are not climbable and no lake stretches out, lazy, to distant blue-gray slopes. Butterflies only seldom flitter by the window.

Iowa Rhapsody

by Loren Horton

Summer heat
Punctuated by flashes
             of lightening
To a background continuo
             of bass thunder
Leavened by the heaviness
             of humid air
So fitting a stage setting
For picnics, fireworks
Small town festivals
When communities unite
In a social family reunion

The leaves thick on sturdy branches
The grass burned with brown patches
And the native wildflowers
Overwhelmed with yellow
Interrupted by occasional bluish-purple
Rivers and creeks
Flow sluggishly by grassy banks
Lack of regular rain
Reduces the volume of water
Redecorating for turtles and frogs
And making bullhead habitat smaller
The swimming holes are challenging

When all these phenomena
Come together in this season
Summer becomes collective
A mosaic of these myriad parts
But coalesced into a visible whole
Understood by those who live in it
Mysterious and alien to strangers
Who have never known the joy
Of standing on a back porch
To watch the lightening strikes
Illuminate the dense cloudbank
To listen to the crash of thunder

The character-building nature
Of these aggregate experiences
Create a comradeship of sorts
Based on mixed common feelings
Shared by those who have known
The pleasures and the pain
Endured the physical discomforts
Been exhilarated at the sense
Of survival in face of obstacles
Understood most fully
By the band of brothers and sisters
Who have grown up in Iowa

The Dress

by Jonnifer Ellsworth

One constant feature of my "growing up" years was the annual journey from Cherokee in northwestern Iowa to my grandparent's home in Sandusky, Ohio. My mother, Mary Ellsworth (Oaknoll resident from 1991-2004), grew up in Sandusky where her father was sales manager of a major paper and boxboard manufacturing firm, Hinde and Dauch.

My grandfather was born in 1877 and grew up on Isle St. George (North Bass Island) less than thirty miles from Canada in Lake Erie. He was the youngest of six children born to Howard Hill Morton and Annie Milner Morton (pictured below).

Howard Hill Morton

Annie Milner Morton

 His oldest sibling, Alfred, was born in 1866 in Washington D.C.  His parents resided in Washington a little more than two years at the beginning of Abraham Lincoln's second term as U.S. President. Howard had been hired as a correspondent by the Cincinnati Enquirer to report on Lincoln's second term and, following the assassination, the family returned to Ohio and settled on North Bass to grow grapes for the wine industry.

The dress was a pink silk ball gown made in Washington for Annie to wear to Lincoln's second inaugural ball. In the photo below,  I am standing in the backyard  of my grandparents home in Sandusky wearing "the dress." The year is 1950 and I am six years old.

Here I am wearing "the dress."

 The photo of my mother is a studio portrait taken in Sandusky in the early 1920's. All female Morton children had their photos taken in "the dress." We were posed standing on chairs or orange crates with the dress skirt flared over them and sometimes tissue paper was used to expand the skirt bottom outward. It had a 19-inch waist and none of us could get into it much above the age of 6-8. It was donated to a Lakewood, Ohio historical society by my aunt when the last Morton grandchild was born a male.

My mother, Mary Ellsworth, in "the dress."