The Martindale Sisters of La Crosse Project

1912

K graduates from Smith College and the following year, 1913, enters a Master's program at UW Madison for Home Economics ("Agriculture"). She no doubt wants to be closer to family, and writes longingly to her mother about how much she misses her. In one revealing letter, K tells her mother that H and brother Staff had always told K that she would be the one to return home to La Crosse and take care of their parents. 

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1915-16

After unsuccessfully looking for a teaching position in Wisconsin, K secures one at Baker University in in Baldwin, KS, teaching Home Economics. Although the pay is low, she writes home and seems to be very happy and proves to be a hard working young teacher who takes her work very seriously. She becomes engaged to Tom Shepard, who is also a faculty member and the basketball coach. 

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1916-17

K has left Baker University because of the low pay, and is now teaching Home Economics at the U of Washington, in Seattle, Washington State. Tom Shepard is located in Syracuse, NY, looking for work and eventually enlists in the army. 

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1917

Mother Sophie falls sick and letters speak of a major operation, which turns out to be a double mastectomy.  K is asked to resign from her teaching position, and decides to come home to take care of her mother. K has made important decisions to put her family first over her own professional life, which will influence the rest of her life story. Nothing has turned up so far in letters as to what happens to her engagement with Tom Shepard, but mother Sophie was insistent that she thought K too young and that no one would be good enough for her little treasure. K never married. 

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1918-1923

These years have K moving around wherever family needs her: from La Crosse to Los Angeles to the Indiana Dunes, K's role is to help the family. She spends large chunks of time with H and the baby Bonno in Los Angeles and stays for long periods of time with H and Bonno in the Indiana Dunes when H is trying to make her own grand plans materialize. 

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1923

Father Stephen IV dies unexpectantly from a heart attack and K returns to La Crosse, never to leave again. She and brother Stephen V start the long and complicated process of immediate plans for the insurance business and their father's estate. K throws herself in the entire process. Brother Stephen shows no interest in living in La Crosse to sell insurance and he makes this very clear. We see K becoming the center of all communication between mother Sophie, the siblings, relatives, and all professional correspondance, despite the fact that woman were not at all seen in the insurance business. K must persist and fight to be respected as a professional agent for the Detroit Fire and Marine Insurance Company. The learning curve is steep. She works hard at this for 25 years until her retirement in 1948.

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1925-1963

Years of long emotional letters to and from K and H about H's troubles and troublesome life. K tries to correspond with H, but H will have none of it and refuses to cooperate with K because of unsettled estate business. K has a network of friends in and around Chicago who send her news about H, without H's knowledge. K sends small amounts of money to H and corresponds with lawyers, social workers, doctors and banks to try and keep H afloat. After H's death, Katharine picks up a short correspondence with Bonno, who now identifies with her Native American roots. The initial hostility towards her Martindale side is clear, but dissipates with K's rational responses. Bonno gives her aunt a new perspective on her own troubled childhood, yet K chides her for leaving her mother alone in her old age. 

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1976

Katharine dies, alone, in the hospital in La Crosse. 

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