My dad died 4 years ago today. He was 96 years old and he died just two days after I had my 76th birthday. He was born at Brice Missouri in January 1923. Brice was situated near the Dallas and Laclede County lines and close to the Niangua River. The name was changed from Brice to Bennett Spring when the State bought the land from the Bennetts and began to build a state park in the 1920s and 1930s. Old-timers still call it Brice sometimes and to my dad it was always Brice. (And yes that is why we have a Brice Street in Lebanon.)
My dad whose full name was Francis Herschel Rowden, preferred to be called Fritz. He was married to my mom, Wilma Lorea Dame on November 9, 1942 and I was born on August 27, 1943. My sister, Lois Rowden Nichols, was born in 1945 and shortly thereafter my parents were divorced and my mom took us home to live with our maternal grandparents, Everett and Nellie Dame.
So I missed out on knowing my dad for several years, seeing him rarely because he lived in northern Missouri most of that time. In 1969 we made contact again and when I became pastor of the Oakland church in 1999, he and my stepmother moved back to Lebanon and became active members of that church where my mother also attended. My sister and brother-in-law also moved back to Lebanon about the same time and we all enjoyed attending church together. The divorce had occurred over 54 years ago so it was similar to a familiar TV ad about a clean up crew in that it was “like it never even happened.”
My dad loved to sing and his instrument of choice by then was the dobro guitar. I have faint memories of him playing the steel guitar many years ago. My brother, Kenny Lindsey, took a leave of absence from his own home church for a while to help us out with the music and my dad found great pleasure in singing with him and Luke Lewis (who passed away recently).
His favorite song was “In The Garden” but he liked all the old hymns. As a young man he had a thick shock of red hair but as he aged it turned to a beautiful shade of silvery white, and it became a Father’s Day tradition that he would sing “That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine”, a country song written by Gene Autry and made famous by Johnny Cash.
He and my step-mother, Dorothy, volunteered at the Hughes Center, helping serve at the buffet dinners and visiting with others his age. He often entertained at other Senior Centers in this area and loved to sing and play music with my sister and her children, Toni Cook Morris and Frank Cook and other family members.
My dad had a prodigious memory throughout most of his life. He wrote extensively about growing up in Brice and living in Lebanon. I have used several of his stories when writing my history columns and will continue to do so. I am so glad he left these written narratives. Had he not done so, a very large account of how life was lived by the Rowden and Smith and Burns family ancestors here in Laclede County especially in the first half of the 20th century would be lost forever.
© Joan Rowden Hart 1976
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