19 - Ted
Jonathan: All right, I think we’re going now. It’s January 30, 2026.
Laura: Okay, I am almost 88 years old. And I wrote memories of my children when I was much younger and they were much younger. But as I read these, I’m amazed at the detail that I had forgotten. And so that’s why I think my children would like to hear me read these memories. Perhaps two or three kids have them in print, but I’m glad that we’re going to video it. So here we go. Today I’m covering Ted. Ted was due on July 26. That would have been a month before our first wedding anniversaries. So we sure didn’t waste much time, did we? On the 4th of July weekend, we decided to go to the beach with grandpa and grandma Bartleson and Laura. We went on Sunday afternoon and we had a picnic. We trudged across a large amount of sand dunes. And of course I thought I had lots of time yet, but on Monday morning I woke up feeling funny. We decided to call the doctor at noon and he said come right away. When I got there I was dilated three centimeters so he said get to the hospital. I was scared of hospitals so I felt no urgency to get there so we went to grandma’s house to chat. I said that I really wasn’t at all uncomfortable and grandma said just you wait. We finally went into the hospital at three. Those interns kept poking around and telling dad it would be a long time yet. But Ted was born at five that afternoon. He was perfect. A beautiful round little head, rosy colored skin, but he had no hair. I had been advised that to take bone meal every day during the pregnancy, I would guarantee that my baby would have hair. So I had taken that stuff religiously to no avail. We brought him home to our 8 foot 31 foot trailer.
He had a little bassinet in the only tiny bedroom in the back and it wasn’t long and we sold that trailer and Uncle Dick started building our house on Kerwood. During this time, we lived at my folks cottage in Grand Haven and Uncle Paul came and stayed with us while Grandpa and Grandma were taking a trip. Paul rode Teddy on his shoulders all over the place.
When he wasn’t on Paul’s shoulders, he was in his playpen out in the sand. He would always raise his little finger when he heard an airplane go by, he would say. Well, he just about went nuts with all the outboard motors he could hear that he thought were airplanes. One day we took him to the house on Kerwood and the plasterers had left some steel mesh on the floor. No one was paying attention to little Teddy and he fell smack on his nose. He had a waffle cut that bled really bad. I was heartbroken. We rushed him to Dr. Demal who said that stitches would disfigure him, so he just put tape carefully on it and told us to keep Teddy’s hands off of it, which wasn’t easy. Ted was so sweet when his sister Connie came. However, one day I found him sitting under his crib smelling his teddy bear and I knew he felt shoved out of the nest. He picked up anything Connie threw out of the playpen or high chair and was so faithful about walking her back and forth to Baxter Christian School.
Finally, his first grade teacher, Mrs. Banchus, said to me, I should try to take off the responsibility because he was too serious about it. I was mad at her about that, but looking back, I know that Ted was really a tender-hearted brother.
Ted and his friends had enemies just like any other schoolboy. Sometimes they were one and the same, like Brian Boss, for example. I’ll never forget how excited he was when he got his cadet shirt. He earned a ton of badges, too, at the church cadets. They’re still sitting in my kitchen drawer. He played rocket football and we would all walk down to Martin Luther King Park on Saturday with a dog on a leash and watch Ted play. He also played football in ninth grade. And I remember bringing him to Dr. Baker and asking if the doctor let his sons play football, was it safe?
He told me soccer was really safer. It was sometime during this period that Ted had a couples party. I don’t remember details, but I do know Laurie Vandenberg was nuts about Ted. Excuse me. So she finailed her way into being his partner that night, but he made it really clear he wasn’t excited about her at all.
Looking back, it seems hard to imagine all the babies that Ted had to welcome into our family and even help take care of them. He had to put up with three sisters all in quick succession.
So when Scotty came, Ted would let Scott wrestle and we’d laugh and watch. And of course, Ted would always let Scott think he beat.
Oh, I’m sorry. Our Dunham Street house, we lived in for a few years just down the road from my grandpa, Jansma. And daddy and Ted built an HO train in the upstairs bedroom. I think it was daddy’s project more than Ted’s. He was also the kid who always brought new friends to our campsites when we went camping. He would slide down the sand dune into the pen water on a board that he had waxed. The kids called it smurfing.
First child, a son to carry on the Bartleson name. Always polite, even as a little boy. Always sensitive. Now Ted is in his 60s and he owns his first house not so far away from where I live in Lake Odessa and he’s faithful now about taking care of my yard, seeing if I needed anything, and always bringing me something he saw on sale at Myers, either strawberries or fruitcake fruit. So he’s still thoughtful today. He’s precious to me. And I hope he hears and sees my memories.
Jonathan: That’s really nice, mom.
Laura: Well, can you see how the detail is so much better than answering the kind of questions you were asking me?
Jonathan: Would you like me to stop the recording now, or are there other things you’d like to just say?
Laura: No, I think I sort of summarized, cut off the last little bit where we’re just talking to each other, will you?