Madeline Van De Veire – Early Years

Madeline Van De Veire was the sixth child, fourth daughter, born to Peter Van De Veire and Elodie Dobbelaere and my mother. She was born on January 29, 1918 in Paterson, New Jersey in a duplex home on Pennsylvania Avenue that my grandfather had just finished building. Her birth certificate was completed and filed by the midwife. On her birth certificate her father’s name is given as Nicholas. We are not sure where that came from. My grandparents had emigrated from Flanders, Belgium in 1901 and settled in Paterson because my grandfather had friends there.

Madeline at about 18 months.

My grandparents lived on the second floor of the duplex which had a full semi-finished attic to house their growing family. There were 2 bedrooms in the attic that were enclosed and lots of unfinished storage space. My mother shared one of these bedrooms with her next oldest sister, Margaret. She attended parochial schools graduating from St. John’s High School in 1937. Most of her youth was spent during the Great Depression and the hardships suffered by everyone made a lasting impression on her. For the rest of her life, her motto was, “Waste not, want not”. When we would go out to dinner, she would scoop up all the uneaten dinner rolls and stick them in her purse along with paper napkins, salt and pepper and condiment packets. If someone did not finish their meal, she would insist that we get a doggie bag. When we were kids, we used everything she salvaged too. “Here, you can make a sandwich out of this roll.”

Madeline wanted to be a nurse. Her father was opposed to this idea. He broke his leg in the early 1900’s and spent time in a hospital. His view of nurses was that nurses were nothing but servants cleaning and waiting on sick people. My mother’s oldest sister, Mary, stuck up for her and convinced their father that she should follow her dream. So my mother went back to school to take all the science courses that the Catholic high school didn’t offer and then enrolled in the nursing program at Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital in New York City.

She loved nursing. Madeline was an extrovert and always related well to people. She told me once that even if she didn’t like a person, she could always find at least one good quality they possessed.  The people were not a problem. As daughter number 4 in the household, she never got to cook and did not even know how to make a cup of tea when she got to nursing school. She took a lot of ribbing from her classmates because she was such a novice in the kitchen. She never really liked cooking and was always willing to let someone else do it. When I was young, my mother would give me a choice, “Would you rather cook or iron?” I always chose cooking. She was always happier ironing.

It was in nursing school that she met my father. He was a medical student at New York Medical College finishing his last 2 years of clinical studies. We heard much bantering when we were kids about who pulled who into the linen closet for a kiss. My mother would also visit my father in the lab where he had student employment taking care of the mice and rats. My mother claimed he would terrorize her by chasing her around the lab while carrying a mouse. She always hated rodents. Ah, young love!

On a picnic with friends at the Bronx Zoo in the spring of 1941.

My mother graduated in February 1941 and was awarded her R.N. shortly thereafter. My father graduated in June 1941 and headed out to Lincoln, Nebraska for an internship. Many letters were exchanged debating whether they should get married now or wait or even get married at all. Finally, she said Howard called and said, he thought they should get married now. So she packed up her stuff and took the train to Lincoln. She got a job as the head nurse in the nursery at the hospital and on September 21, 1941, Madeline Van De Veire and Howard Baldwin took the train to St. Mary, Kansas and were married, a day my mother described as the happiest day in her life.

Wedding Day, September 21, 1941