In 2012, I had the opportunity to interview my aunt Myrtha Westenskow and my Uncle Pete Westenskow.

  

Myrtha and Pete were two of six children of Jacob LaMar Westenskow and Merdith Kent. They were respectively the couple’s fourth and fifth children.

 

Myrtha became terribly sick with the flu when she was less than a year old. She and her sister Rowain were hospitalized in 1922. It was during the Spanish Flu epidemic that started during 1919 and reached Imbler, Oregon, two years later.

 

Myrtha, Rowain, and Merdith wound up in the hospital.

Myrtha recalled the following.

 

“Dad stayed up three nights in a row. Spinning us around his head (to keep us alive),” she said.

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Rowain didn’t survive thanks to suffering from the triple threat of the flu, whooping cough and pneumonia. Myrtha recalled a picture of the two sitting at a table just weeks before they both got sick.

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“Dad kept her little shoes. He said (Rowain) ‘was really a sweet little girl,’” she said.

 

Myrtha said she believed that the illness she suffered as a baby impacted her hearing and vision the rest of her life.

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Myrtha recalled getting her picture taken with Rowain as they sat at a table.

 

“That’s the only thing I have of Rowain,” she said.

 

After Rowain died, LaMar and Merdith had two more children, Pete and Betty.

 

Merdith never recovered from the death of Rowain. It was so stressful for her that she, for whatever reason, blocked out any memory of Rowain. She suffered from what we would now call post traumatic stress, bi-polar disorder and postpartum depression.

 

Merdith was at times a danger to herself and to her children. I’ve heard that she at times threatened her children, and Grandpa would come home from work to find them locked in closets.

 

Grandpa’s mother, Anna Keller, stepped in to take care of Betty as Merdith wasn’t able to.

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“They took Betty down to Grandmother Westenskow,” Myrtha said.

 

Merdith received some mental health that was available at the time which was minimal compared to what we have now. She spent some time off and on at a sanatorium. It didn’t help much. Of course, there wasn’t any medicine to treat the depression that she had at the time. It was all talk therapy.

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 At one point, Grandpa was forced to lock Merdith in her room at times to keep her from running off. Nothing helped, and Grandpa finally had to have her institutionalized permanently.

 

I remember talking to Grandpa about Merdith, and, despite all the trouble she had and the people hurt by her actions, Grandpa never said anything negative about her. He told me that she was “a good woman.” A man before his time, Grandpa realized that Merdith couldn’t help what she did and that she wasn’t herself.

 

Myrtha has few memories of her mother.

 

“I remember very little about her,” she said.

 

Merdith was institutionalized from the late 1920s until the 1970s when she died. Myrtha recalled going to visit her.

 

In his 1964 biography, Grandpa wrote the following:

 

“I consulted several doctors, and they all told me that the chances for recovery was very remote. In order for me to carry on and make a living for my family, I obtained a civil divorce,” he wrote.

 

Grandpa continued to visit Merdith with his children. Merdith often didn’t know who they were.

 

“For quite a while she wouldn’t speak to us. She didn’t know what was going on,” Myrtha said.

 

Yet, on occasion, Merdith would suddenly come to and realize who she was talking to.

 

“She came out of it, and (I) had a good visit with her. She told (my daughter) to ‘be sure and wear your sun bonnet,’” she recalled.

 

Mrytha said that her oldest sister and Grandpa and Merdith’s oldest child, Winona, declined to say much about their mother.

 

“She didn’t want to talk about it. It scared her to death,” she said.

 

In a history written by one of Merdith’s granddaughters, the following was recorded:

 

“My mother, Winona, said that ‘After losing Rowain, Mother was never the same.’ She would have a breakdown, be taken to the Sanatorium for a time, get better, go home, but, as the pressures of being a farmwife were renewed, Merdith would again be recommitted to the sanatorium,” writes the history.

 

At this time, doctors advised Merdith not to have any more children. My Uncle Pete had been born about this time. Yet, three years later, Betty was born. 

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“Mother also told me that Merdith was not allowed to care for Betty. Apparently, the family feared for Betty's life. My Mother, Winona, told me, one time after her youngest child, Betty, was born, that the baby was kept from her,” writes the history. “One day, Merdith did get a hold on the baby. ‘Go get Uncle Wilford and Uncle Dan,’ my mother was told, ‘And hurry!'”

 

Soon afterward, Wynona found her uncles and quickly brought them to her house.

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“It took all three of these men to take the baby away from Merdith, her determination so fierce. As I write this, in 2007, I wonder if, in addition to the Bi-Polar disorder (Manic-Depressive) that she was eventually diagnosed with that after Betty was born, that Merdith had some kind of Postpartum disorder which aggravated her other conditions,” she said.

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The history reports that Grandpa always took his children to church and school.

 

“At other times, they went down to Grandpa Peter Westenskow and his wife Ann Keller Westenskow’s (home). Winona remembers her grandmother as being very kind.

 

The history reports that Merdith eventually became increasing dangerous to herself and her family.

 

“Things came to a head one day, when Merdith pulled a butcher knife out of the kitchen drawer and went after my mother. Winona was in the hall with the entrance to the kitchen on one side and the bathroom on the other,” it said. “Winona quickly ran into the bathroom, closed and locked the door. She remembers her mother outside screaming at her.

 

After this episode, Merdith was sent to the sanatorium for the rest of her life. She was thirty-two years old.”  

 

Merdith’s son, Peter, and the couple’s fifth child, was almost four years old when his mother was institutionalized for the last time.

 

“The time she had her breakdown, I was three and a half  or four years old. I don’t have any memory of her at home,” he said. “Dad took her over to Penalton (sanatorium). She never recognized me.  She didn’t associate me as her son. She never did know me. She thought I was a friend.”

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Uncle Pete told me that life was really hard at the time.

 

“The trouble (was) times were tough. They shouldn’t have had so many kids so close together,” he said. “(Merdith) was frail anyways. She shouldn’t have had so many. Having one right after another, she couldn’t do it. It was tough living. She had too many too quick.”

 

He noted how Rowain died during the flu epidemic.

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“(They) lost little Rowain. Myrtha nearly died,” he said.  “You just suffered. Tough times.”

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