No place like home

With 91 years coming back, Widholm says Ashkum's best

By Jo McCord
Daily Journal Link

jmccord@daily-journal.com

815-432-3685

Ashkum in Algonquin means "more and more" -- the antique version of "never enough" -- a phrase that suits the exuberance of the sesquicentennial celebration coming Thursday through Sunday.

It also describes the zest for live of Ashkum native Marion Meents Widholm.

Earlier this month, she was unavailable for interviewing. She was away on a fishing trip to Minnesota and Canada with her daughter, Beth Campbell, also of Ashkum, and family.

The weather was disappointing. Cold and rainy. And she caught only one walleye.

But she's 91.

Ashkum residents of all ages regard Marion with awe -- and not just because of her advanced years, but because of her life as the wife of prominent businessman Milton Widholm.

"I've done everything. I've traveled the world. I had my own airplane. I've been known to always have my suitcase packed," she remembers fondly.

Back in the 1950s the Widholms had a lighted air strip next to their house northeast of town.

Milton, an instrument rated commercial pilot, would fly Marion to destinations far and wide: to California to visit their son, Jack, then studying at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Or they'd take a jaunt to Mexico or the East Coast.

Or they'd simply fly some place for Sunday dinner. Airports had lovely tea rooms, she said.

Milton loved flying and the Beechcraft Baron airplane was extremely handy to his business with lumberyards and customers in Rockford and Park Forest.

He flew to destinations from Canada to Guatemala.

It sounds like she had a wonderful life.

"I have had," Marion said. "I tell you what: I have flown more hours than a lot of people ever thought of and seen more things around the world and know people from all over."

Her children urge her to record her memories so they can assemble them into a book -- and a good read it will be.

She and Milton, both Ashkum born and bred, eloped to Louisville, Ky., on July 4, 1936. They didn't tell their parents until the next paycheck.

They moved to Watseka, where Milton worked for the county highway department and Peoples Coal & Lumber. They moved to Mackinaw, Ill., where he managed the Hunter Lumber.

The couple were enticed back to Ashkum in 1942 when Fred Stout wanted to sell his interest in the grain company. "Mr. Stout told my dad, you've had a large family, but they all leave town. If any would like to come back, I'll sell them my business," Marion says. Her dad told Stout that Milton was a farm boy so maybe he would like to add grain dealing to his lumber career.

The pair also traveled the world by commercial means.

Marion tells of being in India with the crowded conditions and over-population. She said she saw children in their mothers' arms with flies all over them. Once she reached to brush the flies off, but Milton stopped her, saying it might not be a received as proper.

Having seen the best and worst the world has to offer, Marion says Ashkum is definitely the best.

"Every time we took a trip when we would come back home, we would say we're glad we're here. This is the best place to make a living... The garden spot of the world," she said.

Deep roots

Marion's grandfather, M.R. Meents, was one of Ashkum's first settlers. He was 18 in 1868 when he came here from Germany with his five brothers.

Unashamedly in keeping with the "more and more" mentality, he wanted to learn everything so gladly started school -- in first grade. A classmate, Philadelphia Cloke, was among the children who laughed at him.

She got over her giggling, however, and married him. They had 12 children -- and a thrifty bent for saving half of each dollar earned.

M.R. worked for a grain company and later started his own, employing his sons. They went on to found the Farmers Trust and Savings Bank in Ashkum which expanded to Piper City, Clifton and Cullom.

"My grandparents had the minister over every Sunday for dinner. He would walk the railroad tracks from Clifton, preach the sermon and eat Sunday dinner and then walk back," Marion said, noting that Grandmother Philadelphia must have been a great cook.

Marion is a lifelong member of that church, Ashkum United Methodist, carrying on the family tradition started by her grandparents.

Road builder

Marion's dad, Richard R. Meents, was their oldest child. He became a state legislator, serving in the House 1915-1921 and the Senate 1921-1932. He became known as father of the hard road system "to pull Illinois out of the mud" -- championing those one-sale concrete slab roads, some of which still survive in Iroquois County and elsewhere.

Having all these stars in your past can be daunting.

"I told a school teacher: 'I've never been myself. I've always been somebody's daughter, somebody's wife or somebody's mother,'" she said.

The teacher encouraged Marion by saying: "I have taught four of your children, and you didn't do everything wrong."

Children

Their children are Jack, emeritus professor of plant physiology at the Edward R. Madigan Laboratory at the University of Illinois; Beth, married to Fed-Ex pilot Conrad Cambell and co-owner of Gatherings antique store in Gilman; Janet Repetto, a retired nurse and interior decorator in Boulder, Colo; and Eric Widholm, an architect in New Orleans.

WHAT: Ashkum Sesquicentennial.

WHERE: Main Street, park and downtown.

WHEN: Thursday-Sunday.

HIGHLIGHTS: Thursday -- Queen contest 7:15 p.m.;

Friday -- Fish fry 5 p.m., Elvis impersonator Rick Saucedo; Saturday -- 11 a.m. parade, 5 p.m. beard contest, chicken dinner, 7 p.m. The Silhouettes; and Sunday -- Breakfast at the Lutheran Church 7-10:30, all community worship service 10:30; vintage style show 2 p.m., pork chop dinner 4 p.m., "The Swing Kings" 5 p.m. and fireworks at 9 p.m.