On The Mark: Family memories bring comfort this holiday

Thanksgiving is a great time to reflect on family history. Covid affords us, regrettably, more time to do so. To pore over old photo albums, view what our parents and grandparents and great-uncles looked like in their youth and parenting stages.

Last week I wrote about the cousins who have stood in as sisters for me. This week, I'm thinking about all the men I came to love and adventure with through my father's family's relations.

My father grew up in Cromwell, the son of a Danish immigrant - a skilled carpenter with a sixth-grade education - and his college-educated wife who was Cromwell's English teacher for many years. We have few photos of my Grandfather Markusen's family, but many, many of my grandmother's relations. We have my great-uncle Frank Wilson to thank for that, an avid early photographer whose work is safely stored at the Minnesota Historical Society. My grandmother and her three sisters grew up in Stillwater, two blocks from my great-grandmother's brother Frank Wilson's home.

Because my dad, David, was a gregarious and joyful man, we spent a lot of time with his extended family. Even after he died from a rock climbing fall when I was 27, I found myself on adventures with his contemporaries and their sons and daughters. One branch of the family, the Curtis Wilsons, took on the considerable task of organizing family reunions every five years or so. Most of these were in Stillwater. In 2014, I organized one in Cambria, California, where one branch of the Wilsons had settled. And in 2019, we held one in Stillwater, again.

Among my favorites of Dad's cousins was John Tryon. Uncle John grew up in Washington D.C., and during his years at University of Minnesota, he and my dad went on canoe trips, sailed the lakes and rivers and hiked and talked physics and engineering. Uncle John began inviting me on their family rafting trips down western (Utah's the Green) and Alaskan (the Copper) rivers. I loved these trips, with their challenging rapids, golden sculptured walls, bird life, and the occasional grizzly footprints at campsites along the Copper. On arriving at a likely campsite, John would jump off the raft and play his recorder to scare away grizzlies. I enjoyed the company of his sons, wives and grandsons on these trips. In later years, Rod and I would visit John and his wife, Helen, in Boulder City, Nevada, where we might spend a day slowly paddling down the Colorado River below the intimidating Boulder Dam. John was full of humor and wisdom, and he told marvelous and sometimes racy stories about my dad.

The oldest and youngest of the Wilsons, Chester and Henry, begat younger men and women who were contemporaries of my parents. We spent many Thanksgivings with them. I loved the drone of mature men singing the doxology before the feasts spread out over long tables, chairs crowded in together. Henry had this marvelous trick of making a mouse out of a handkerchief and springing out of a hidden pocket to children's great amusement.

Of the five Wilson men in my grandmother's generation, only one moved away from Minnesota. The youngest, Robert, moved to California where he worked as an agricultural expert in the San Fernando Valley and ran a radio show on the subject. He and his wife Jane begat four children, two girls and two boys. When my parents were living in Los Angeles during World War II (my dad researching autopilots), they spent many lovely weekends with this set of Wilsons. We've kept it up, thanks to reunions. At that 2014 reunion in Cambria I mentioned before, we had a wonderful time touring the coastline, consuming barbecue, watching slides, sharing stories about what the family meant to us. Four generations of us participated!

At the periodic reunions we've had, the high points are the slideshows that Curtis Wilson and later, Steve Tryon, have put together for us. I love most the way we all kibbitz from the audience, telling stories about family members displayed on the screen, stories that bring out their humor, courage, accomplishments and goofiness. And often there's music. In Cambria, our cousin Steve played his bass, our own Beth Wilson played the keyboard, someone played a brass instrument, and we sang the old songs that our parents and grandparents had loved.

I could go on and on. But I won't.

Happy Thanksgiving weekend, everyone, however distanced you can and should be. I'm hiking with my husband, brother, and the latter's son and daughter in Jay Cooke, foregoing the gathering around the table with all its harvest goodies. And there will be a future day around the table.

Ann Markusen is an economist and professor emerita at University of Minnesota. A Pine Knot News board member, she lives in Red Clover Township north of Cromwell with her husband, Rod Walli.