The Meaning of Names

The Meaning of Names by Karen Gettert Shoemaker
(Red Hen Press, 2014)

Meaning of NamesI truly enjoyed reading The Meaning of Names by Karen Gettert Shoemaker because it is by a Nebraska author about Nebraska, and it is historical fiction, my favorite genre. Shoemaker did a great job of making the characters come alive and keeping me interested in the plot while weaving into the narrative the dramatic events of the war years.

The plot centers around Gerda Vogel, whose parents were German immigrants, and is set in the fictional Sandhills town of Stuart, Nebraska, during the years of 1918 and 1919 in the midst of World War I and the Spanish Influenza world-wide pandemic. When she marries farmer Fritz Vogel against her parents wishes and moves away, she becomes isolated both physically and emotionally from her family. Catholic priest Father Jungels, local physician Ed Gannoway, and John Kaup, ridiculed by the townspeople because of his polio deformity and who steps up to drive the doctor to his house calls for people dying of the flu, add dimension to the main plot.

Shoemaker’s descriptions are brilliant. Of Father Jungels, she writes, “The new priest had fingers like sausages. His ample chin fanned around his neck and folded over the edges of his collar. With skin smooth and unblemished as a young boy’s under dark hair, thin and retreating, he looked like a middle aged child . . . ” (70). She also sets up the ironic cycles nature, foreshadowing the impending terror of the epidemic. “The late September midday would hold the heat of summer, but on the morning of the first death, autumn was on the rise. A light fog lay in the hollows until after the sun topped the horizon. Daylight revealed skeins of snow geese following the ancient flyways south” (152).

This book especially intrigued me because I have been doing my own research in the Minden Courier for my next book, and I was surprised about how deeply World War I had  affected other Nebraskans and how true to reality the events in the book were that I had discovered in my own research.

The first news article that I read in the Minden Courier (on microfilm) about the war’s affect was an October 24, 1915, notice that the local horse dealer, Mr. Watts, wanted to buy two loads of war horses to ship out immediately. The following June 24, 1915, an short editorial was posted: “Last week a couple of men were in this neighborhood buying up horses evidently to be shipped to Europe to be shot to pieces. Anyone who doesn’t think more of a horse than to sell it for that purpose ought not own a horse. Let those warring nations raise their own horses and if they cannot raise them as fast as they can kill them, let them be without horses.”

After the president declared war in 197, the draft began in Kearney County, and by June 17, 838 young men had registered. Then the draft began, with the Minden Courier printing a list of the first 300 to be drafted. Each month a certain quota had to be filled, and the men reported for physicals at the Minden county court house. As I read through the list of draftees, I looked for the names of our grandparents, just as Fritz Vogel searched for his.

Meanwhile, the Minden women gathered for the Red Cross to make bandages and knit clothing; young men joined the US Boys Working reserve for farm labor; and Kearney County people joined the nation in food conservation regulations:  2 wheatless days per week; 1 wheatless meal each day; 1 meatless day (Tuesday); 1 meatless meal each day;  every day a sugarless day.

In The Meaning of Names, Gerda witnesses a group of men brutally beat a young German boy and throw him off of the moving train while others in the train car shout, “Kill the kraut!” When a newspaper article distorts the incident to emphasize the patriotism of the young would-be soldiers, Gerda argues, “That paper is wrong. I know what I saw.” Her husband warns, “Don’t be borrowing trouble, Gerda” (70) .

Although Shoemaker’s novel did show the prejudice against Germans, in many communities it was even worse than for the Vogels. I was appalled at the fear that prejudice instilled in the countryside. In Kearney county, there was widespread concern that German farmers were hoarding their wheat to keep it from American servicemen. On August 8, 1918, the Courier reported that the Council of Defense decreed that foreign languages could not be used in public, in churches, or in Sunday Schools—except a special service could be held for old people. Moreover, no one could use the telephone unless they spoke English! And since all telephone lines at that time went through a local operator, this could be easily monitored.

Even after peace was declared,  a Minden man named Anders Jensen, a 58 year old bachelor, was charged with being a “German Alien Enemy” because he would not “cease lambasting the administration and the president.” His 80 acre farm was seized, he was sent to Lancaster jail, and ultimately taken to a prison camp because he told people that he would  rather have the ex-kaiser rule than Wilson. Another man, Ed Jordan of Wilcox, was paroled after he had been convicted of disloyalty. However, he had to report to the local post office each week and was under close surveillance. His crime was that while he owned fine farm, he refused to purchase Liberty Bonds, and he made disloyal remarks to a government man who was posing as a book agent to trap him. Jordan’s wife divorced him, and the court gave her a “liberal allowance to raise children as Americans.”

However, Shoemaker’s descriptions of the impact that the influenza epidemic had on Nebraskans was extremely well done, especially the emotional pain and scars suffered by the survivors. “Isolated as they were on the small farm east of that obscure town, how could any of them know they stood on the brink of a horrible history? Would Gerda have abandoned Katherine to her illness if she had known the strength of the demon flu? . . . While the world focused on a war in which Man killed Man with horrific abandon, Death slipped behind the battle lines and entered their homes, took their families” (177).

Again, in my research in the Minden Courier, the Spanish Influenza dominated the news stories. Two Kearney County men died from flu during training in Seattle and were buried at the Fredricksburg Cemetery; all schools were closed; and all public meetings both indoors and outdoors were called off by the State Board of Health. In addition, the October 1918 draft was cancelled because of the epidemic. This was especially significant to my family and my husband’s family because my grandfather, August Berndt, was  #149 on the list for that month, and Terry’s grandfather,  Guy Bloomfield, was #843. It gave them a reprieve until November–and then the war was over–for our families and the Vogels. “Armistice Declared!” (214).

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