Mothers' Memories
by Janis Williams
When I met Marietta Scherer, I was struck by her resilient spirit. She was in a wheelchair, and she had a number of health challenges, including respiratory problems that required the intermittent use of oxygen. Her hearing was not good, and her blood pressure had to be monitored closely. She was living at the Summit at Lakeway, a retirement facility that includes nursing care and oversight. But on the first day I visited, Marietta was surrounded by pictures of her family, stretching all the way back to her great-grandparents, and with a sweeping gesture she told me, "I had such a happy childhood. I'd like to create a record of it for my children and grandchildren."
Indeed, as I perused the photographs on the table before us, I saw many pristine images of an American family in the Midwest during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. As she was growing up in Ada, Minnesota, Marietta had three sisters and one brother. Her family lived across the street from her grandparents.
The family was prominent, with her father and grandfather leaders in the city and the state. One of her grandfathers, Albert Hanson, was elected state senator. The other, Rev. John George Spaeth, was an Evangelical pastor who served churches throughout Minnesota and the region. Marietta's own father, George Howard Spaeth, became the state's first tax commissioner. Because the family owned the local bank, as well as farm land and other holdings, the Spaeths and Hansons remained economically comfortable even during the Great Depression and World War II.
After the war, having moved to San Francisco to work, Marietta married Dale Robert Scherer—and the young couple began their own family, which eventually grew to include four sons and a daughter. Their firstborn son, Stephen, died in 2004. Marietta's husband, Bob, died in 2007.
Today, Marietta lives in Austin, Texas, where three of her children—Luci Temple, Kurt Scherer, and Geoffrey Scherer—have settled. Recently, she welcomed her first great-grandchildren to the world.
Marietta's life is thus a bridge across seven generations, stretching from 1852 to the present year, 2010. With a familial memory encompassing nearly 160 years, she dedicates this book and these images to her family, in gratitude for a long life sustained by familial ties. On her last birthday, Marietta was 90 years old.