Obituary of Mildred LaBorde

Mildred LaBorde passed away Monday, April 28, 2014 in the Lincoln Community Hospital in Hugo. Mildred, the seventh of eight children, was born February 23, 1923 to Joseph and Lora Irma (Sisco) Clark about 23 miles south of Limon on their homestead in the area called Amy Community. Her siblings were Harold Raymond, Vearl Louise, Edith Irene, Iola Ernestine, Alfred Joseph, Kenneth Eugene and Floyd William, now all deceased. “One of the first things I remember away back when I was a few years old was a cupboard my Dad made me out of an orange crate. That morning I cried because I couldn’t go to school with the rest of the kids. He built the cupboard to make me feel better.” “When I was a kid I wore bloomers. These bloomers were made out of flour sacks. I’m sure everything I wore had some name of flour stamped on it. Bloomers were terrible things to wear. Probably if you looked close they said ‘Kansas Best’ or ‘Hungarian’ or maybe ‘Semolina’ but anyway, those big baggy bloomer legs were good for something. My best friend Barbara Walker and I would get into Iola’s love letters from her old boy friends, put them in our bloomer legs and go out and sit behind the evergreen trees and read them. We had more fun—nothing like keeping up on old boyfriend news. Iola didn’t know about this for a long time.” The Clark children were all schooled through 8th grade in a one-room school house called Victory School located about one and a half miles southeast of their farm until 1939-40 when it was moved into Hugo (now located in what used to be George Sober’s sideyard) and most attended high school in Hugo. “Our school days were like everyone else’s back in those days—walk to school carrying lunch pails. I had one ‘bought’ lunch pail, most of them were pails we bought jam or lard in. Our lunches were sandwiches, cupcakes or cookies, sometimes a hard-boiled egg, a tomato or an apple. Lots of times our sandwiches were cold fried egg sandwiches. (There is nothing worse than a cold fried egg.) There was a well at school where we could pump water for washing our hands and drinking.” “Then there were high-top shoes and long stockings which I hated to no end. Then in the winter we wore long underwear. They were terrible too. You would pull the legs of the underwear down and fold the legs so you could put the long stockings up over them. I think I had to wear them longer than any kid in the neighborhood. When Easter Sunday came we could take our long stockings and long underwear off and dress for summer. All the kids went barefooted in the summer, but I was always tender footed and most always wore shoes.” “I remember too how my Dad chewed tobacco when he planted potatoes and when he was working in the field and mowing alfalfa. In the afternoon Mom would let me take him a sandwich and a cold drink which we called ‘ginger water.’ Another cold drink us kids had was called ‘fizz’—water, soda, sugar and vinegar.” After her father passed away in 1931 when she was age 7, her mother with help from the three oldest boys operated the farm through drought and dust storms. Her mother maintained a large garden and canned vegetables and meat, dried corn and apples for later use and put smoke salt on pork kept in a barrel in the cellar. They burnt cow chips, corn cobs, what scraps of wood there were around plus coal from the Barker and White ash coal mines at Matheson. They had milk cows, chickens, hogs, a team of mules, a team of horses and a saddle horse. “I remember my first bottle of pop. It was strawberry. Some people by the name of Les and Mary Phelps had a 5 and 10 cent store in Hugo. After my Dad’s funeral they had us come to their place for lunch. I remember we had a roast beef sandwich and a bottle of pop. Don’t remember what else we had. I remember too the first ice cream bar or ‘milknickel’ that I ever had. Harold bought that for me. I always got $.25 for my birthday from Mrs. Lundquist. I would buy two yards of material and Mom would make me a dress. Material was only $.11 a yard then.” “Mom always had a big garden. She canned vegetables from the garden. We had cattle, hogs and chickens, so we always had our own meat, milk, cream, butter and eggs.” “During the dust storm days in the ‘30s, us kids would go to school in the morning and in the afternoon these big clouds of dust would come up. The teacher would turn school out so we could get home before the dust storm got there. Those dust storms were terrible. The dust was so thick you couldn’t see anything. Mom would make egg sandwiches and cover them with a dishtowel to keep the dust off. Everything was covered with dust.” Entertainment those days consisted of box suppers, pie socials, ice cream socials, basket dinners and Sunday afternoon ball games. At the neighborhood house dances, her mother played the piano, her father the accordion and others would bring a violin or banjo and join in. "For entertainment, we had to make our own--we had parties, dances, clubs. Mom was a charter member of the Willing Workers club. It’s still active. We went to Sunday school every Sunday. I belonged to 4-H—took cooking, sewing and home furnishing. We didn’t have a car to go to town but we had a good neighbor who would come by and bring us kids to Hugo to see Santa in the park. Santa had a sack of candy and nuts with a toy. The boys got racers and Iola and I got dolls—really nice!” “The Dimmitt family, Ballantyne family, Mom, Iola, Alfred, Kenneth, Floyd and myself would all go arrowhead hunting on a Sunday afternoon together. Ballantynes had a two-wheeled trailer behind their car and all the kids would pile into the trailer and the grownups in the car and we would go off to some field that had blown off and spend the afternoon hunting arrowheads. I have quite a few arrow heads.” “I can see my Dad now playing his accordion. He enjoyed that and so did the rest of the family. My Mom played the piano and Daddy played the accordion for house dances. Everyone who had room in their house would have a dance. The whole neighborhood would gather at these dances and have a great time. Every family that came would bring either cake or sandwiches. At midnight everyone stopped dancing and had ‘supper’ of cake and sandwiches and coffee.” It was at one of these dances Mildred met her future husband, Laurence Charles LaBorde. They married May 15, 1941 in Hugo. They lived in three rooms in his mother’s [Mary Ida (Johnson) LaBorde’s] house (old Swennes house), until 1945 when they purchased their permanent home (the old Parker Hospital, remodeled) where they reared their two children, Janice Christine and Larry Charles. Laurence raised cattle and operated a small truck line, hauling livestock, grain, machinery, furniture, etc. Mildred helped by driving the trucks, hauling cattle for a number of years until the children occupied more of her time. Later Mildred drove the school bus for several years; drove every route as a relief driver part time, then had her own route. After Laurence retired, they purchased an RV and enjoyed traveling around the country. They toured Nova Scotia with his brother Gerold and wife Darlene, RV’d the southern states with son Larry and family, visited relatives in Missouri and Washington, vacationed in Hawaii and went on a paddleboat cruise down the Mississippi on the Delta Queen, to name a few. A highlight, much mentioned, was their trip to an Indianapolis 500 race. Laurence passed away June 10, 1998. Artistic, creative and community oriented, Mildred was always interested in local and family history. She and her sister Iola created scrapbooks containing news clippings, photos of businesses and homes around Hugo along with notes about who operated the business or lived there and when. Mildred enjoyed sewing. She always made most of her own clothes, clothes for her children and grandchildren when they were young, draperies for the house, etc. And she loved flowers and enjoyed working in her own flower garden and yard. Following are some of Mildred’s activities through the years. Club activities: •Royal Neighbors Lodge member – more than 46 years •Past Oracle Club member – more than 43 years •Gleaners Club member – more than 40 years •Big Sandy Home Extension Club member – more than 40 years •Hospital Auxiliary member– since hospital opened •Historical Society member – more than 25 years •4-H leader – 16 years Community activities: •Promoted the idea for a flower garden in front of the hospital in 1982; planted and maintained it for more than 10 years with help provided by her sister Iola, Lois Mellott and Lillis Robinson. •Baked countless birthday, anniversary, wedding and other special-event cakes for folks around the community for most of her married life. •Hosted, with Laurence, numerous Amy Community, LaBorde and Clark family reunion picnics for many years in the Hugo park and in their large yard. •Created floats representing LaBorde Truckline for the Lincoln County Fair parade for many years, accumulating a large stash of silver dollars from prizes. And later for a number of years, just for fun, participated in the parades as a clown with her daughter Janice and other family members. Personal activities: •Oil painting, usually landscapes, but tried her hand at animals, flowers and portraits of people. •China painting—created many beautiful plates and lovely dolls. •Ceramics—fired her plates, figurines and pots in her own kiln. •Quilting—made numerous quilts; also machine-quilted many quilts for others. •Gardening—besides the hospital flower bed, she always had lots of flowers in her yard plus a vegetable garden. Mildred is survived by her daughter Janice Routh and step-grandsons Eric (Kristin) and Jon Routh (Lisa); son Larry LaBorde (Norene); grandchildren Lann LaBorde (Dani) and Tanya Fell (C.J.); and 12 great-grandchildren, Quinn, Elliott Delia, Wylie, Cade & Nolan Routh; Madison, Cody, Logan LaBorde; and Coy, Rex & Gillian Fell.