Kewpie

This is a Kewpie Doll.  They were created by Rose O'Neill, who in 1909 made a comic strip featuring this little character.  The dolls came soon after, in 1912, when the comic strip became popular.  The name Kewpie came from Cupid.  An authentic Kewpie always has tiny blue wings on its shoulders.  These dolls were extremely popular carnival prizes during the first half of the 1900s.  These days, an Asian Food company makes Kewpie Mayonnaise.

Carol loved Kewpies.  She collected them, sold and traded them.  This one was her favorite. She had this in her French cabinet ever since I can remember.  Look on top of its head and you will see a  bobby pin holding a curl of golden hair.  This is Carol's hair.  She always put locks of her hair on the dolls.  Even when she sold them, they usually went to their new home with her hair on their head.  Yes, it was weird. And it seems even weirder that I still have this odd little doll, now that I think about it.

The Baby that Died

There are no photos of Jody Jim Warriner, because he did not survive his birth.

Every time we were downtown and drove past Goodbody's Ivy Chapel, I got to hear the tragic story of Jody Jim, because his ashes were stored in the mortuary there.

At corner of 3rd and Ash

Jody Jim was Carol's final biological child.  He was named after the boy character in a movie called "The Yearling." Since his brother Darwin D was born 6 and half years earlier, the family had gone through ungodly amounts of domestic trauma, to the point where it was unlikely the marriage between Darwin S and Carol would survive.  Somehow they had come to a truce and it was hoped that this baby would bring them back together.  

Carol had already given birth to 6 children.  She felt like she had this process down pat.  And since she had already given birth to at least two of her kids at home, she wanted to have a home birth at 4071 Eagle Street.  In this day and age, no doctor would have advised that she attempt a home birth. She was 37 years old, overweight, and probably diabetic by that time.  The child was very large, and she, at 4 foot 10 inches, was very small. 

According to Carol, there was a doctor and a nurse in attendance on that fateful day of March 3, 1959.  Carol labored on a table in the living room with no progress. The doctor and nurse stood above her pushing on her belly with each contraction.  But there was no way the child could be born. His head was too big, her pelvis too small. 11 year old Lynda was in the kitchen listening in horror to the panicked voices and screams of her mother.  After hours of hopeless labor, the doctor gave up and took Carol to Mercy hospital in Hillcrest.  At that point, the baby was already dead.  There was a C-section to remove his body, along with the ruptured uterus.  Her child production days were officially finished.  

His body was removed to Goodbody's Ivy Chapel, where it was cremated.  The family could not bring themselves to retrieving his ashes, so they left them there. 

Goodbody's Ivy Chapel no longer exists as a mortuary.  But it is a historic building, designed by Irving Gill, and will remain downtown forever.  Where Jody Jim's ashes ended up is anyone's guess.

The family sued the Doctor for malpractice, but they did not win. 

According to Carol it was her husband's fault that they lost the lawsuit.  He was called to the witness stand, and Dr Mina's lawyer asked him if he thought Carol had suffered pain above and beyond the pain of normal childbirth, and he supposedly testified that it was normal childbirth pain.  And the decision was made in favor of the doctor. 

Whether his answer affected the decision or not, the guilt that Darwin S would feel over the lawsuit loss would affect him for the remainder of his life.

Carol never got over this experience.  This tragedy would launch her into a compulsion that would affect the entire family for years to come.

First Child

Carol became pregnant within a couple of months after getting married.  This first child was very nearly her last child, when serious complications arose in June, 1940.

She was very ill with morning sickness from day one of this pregnancy, but after the nausea started to wear off, Carol began having much bigger problems with her blood pressure.  The doctors called it Toxemia, which is another term for pre-eclampsia.  She was ordered to bed rest for the remainder of the pregnancy, but continued to have problems.

Soon she had to be hospitalized, as she was very near to full-blown eclampsia, which causes seizures, organ failure and death.  According to Carol, the doctors ordered her to remain very calm, and told visitors to limit their time and to not get her upset. The next part of the story is another reason why she hated sister Nina. She said Nina tried to kill her.

Nina came to the hospital to visit her, and was given the warning from the nurse.  According to Carol, Nina ignored the warning, and starting telling funny family stories in order to get Carol to laugh.  The more they conversed and laughed, the higher Carol's blood pressure rose, then suddenly, Carol lost consciousness and began to convulse in her hospital bed.  The nurses ran in and called the doctors, who noticed that not only was she in distress, but the baby was coming, so they wheeled her down to the delivery room.

Carol told me that even though she was unconscious and seizing, she knew what was going on, because she was viewing the scene from above her bed.  Doctors were trying to stabilize her, another one was delivering the tiny premature baby, and one Doctor said they were losing the mother, and made the comment, "What a shame, she is just a kid and isn't even married."

That comment made Carol so frustrated and mad (because she was unconscious and couldn't correct him. She kept trying to shout, "look at my hand, I have a wedding ring") that she snapped back into her body and they revived her.

The baby was very small, but would survive and be named Patricia Ann, born June 12, 1940.
The doctors told Carol she came so close to death that she should never try to have another child.

Of course, she didn't heed their advice, and was pregnant again two years later.

Who was Bill Tompsett?

Not too much is known about Carol's first husband.  This is his family tree.  Most of his family came from New York, and before that, from England. His grandfather Charles Helmer had been an RFD (Rural Free Delivery) for the US Post Office Department. He was born in Michigan.

He and Carol were married in September 1939.  The 1940 Federal census tells us this:

He was 19 years old, he only completed 2 years of high school, and during the previous 52 weeks, he had worked a steady job for the city as a street cleaner, earning $520 for the year.

Carol was 18 years old, completed only 3 years of high school, and did not have a job during the previous 52 weeks. (We know she was living with sister Nina, helping with baby Jerry)

What was not recorded in the census was that they were expecting their first baby, who would be born in June 1940.

Carol hated Bill Tompsett as much as she hated her sister Nina.  From the time I was very young, she would tell me stories about their drama-filled marriage.  She said he had a job with the railroad and was required to be gone most of the time.  But when he came home and they were together, they fought constantly, and there was violence between them.  Also, every time he came home, she got pregnant, and then he would be gone again.

Carol told me that Bill Tompsett had been named after a brother who had been born a year earlier and who had died.  She found it extremely creepy to be named after a dead sibling. The creepy thing about this was that the older child died on Fed 20, 1920--exactly one year before Bill was born on February 20, 1921.  She also said his mother Laura was crazy, and that Bill was a schizophrenic.

They moved from place to place in the Detroit area.

In 1949, when Carol was pregnant with her fifth child Skippy, Bill Tompsett died.  I have no evidence of this yet, but here is the story she told me again and again when I was a child:

After 9 years of a super violent marriage, she was pregnant with number 5.  For some reason, Bill Tompsett, who was living somewhere else other than with his family, wrote a long emotional letter to her, telling her how much he loved her and how sorry he was that he couldn't be a good husband to her, and that the only solution would be for him to take his own life.  Then he rigged up a hose to the tailpipe of his car, got inside, started up the engine, and suffocated on gas fumes.  She said the cops came to her house and told her what happened and gave her the note.

I cannot substantiate this story yet.  I don't have a death certificate, never saw the suicide note, and cannot find any newspaper articles, obituaries, or corroboration from anyone who knew Carol at the time. But that fact was, he suddenly died in 1949, leaving her with 4 young kids and one more on the way. And I have a theory about why he committed suicide, which I will explain in another post.

Carol's First Husband

Carol was in a hurry to get out on her own.  Back in those days, it just wasn't proper to live alone.  A girl needed to be married in order to get out from under her family's control.  When Carol was sent to live with sister Nina, she met a guy, and before too long they were married.  Everyone called him Bill. This grainy photo is Bill and Carol Tompsett. This rushed marriage was a ill-fated decision that they would both come to regret.

First marriage record

Dad's Sister June

Darwin S Warriner's older sister June lived in Texas for the last half of her life.  She was a very talented artist.  Photo with her nephew Darwin D, was dated May 25, 1953, "Aunt June and Babe"

This is one of her pen sketches.  This was up on Mom's bulletin board for decades.

Carol's Family Tree

Carol came from a very interesting set of parents.

Her mother, Elsie Caroline Tetzloff, was the daughter of deaf parents, Charles Tetzlaff and Cynthia Williams.  Neither of them had been born deaf:  they were of normal hearing until childhood diseases rendered them unable to hear.  They were sent to the Wisconsin School for the Deaf at Delevan, Wisconsin.  That is where they met and after graduation they were married.

Photo of Charles Tetzlaff in The Deaf Lutheran

Charles was of all German stock.  He was the smartest kid at the school and he wanted to be a teacher, but his parents made him learn the trade of shoemaking.  He made custom shoes by drawing the outline of the person's feet on paper.  Although he was good at his trade, new-fangled shoe factory production drove him out of business.  He ended up working hard labor at a sawmill.

Cynthia's father was a civil war casualty.  He was wounded near the end of the war and after suffering greatly from his wounds he died when Cynthia was about six years old.  Her mother was German.

Charles and Cynthia were looked down upon because of their deafness.  Their 4 kids, including Elsie, had to put up with alot of teasing from neighbor kids who called them dummies.

Cynthia was known in the family as "Little Grandma."  She died in October 1921, the same month her granddaughter Carol Jane Martindale was born.

Carol always used to talk about "Little Grandma," as if she had known her.  She felt some sort of spiritual connection to the grandma whose life ended just before Carol's was beginning.

After Cynthia died, Charles Tetzlaff moved in with the Martindale family and stayed with his daughter Elsie until he died at age 91.

There was some German spoken in the household, but Carol's only German language recollections came in the form of a German Nursery Rhyme that goes back to the 1800s.  She would recite it to me me when I was little.  It went something like this:

"Drei Klein Entchen
Schwimmen auf dem see
Kopfchen in das Wassen
Schwanzchen in die Hoh"

meaning,
"Three little ducks
Swimming on the lake
Heads in the water
and tails in the air"

Carol's father, Don L Martindale, was of mostly English stock.  His dad Albert was one of those good-looking guys who was nothing but trouble, the kind of man you don't want your daughter to date.  Albert was smart, musical, and a accurate rifleman. He was a horse trader, a gambler, an auctioneer, and always was engaged in questionable  activities.  A real job was too boring for him and he was always trying out some kind of scheme.

He fell for Lillian Washburn, married her and immediately joined a circus. Lillian became a bareback  horse rider and sang to entertain.  Albert had a trained bear and soon started initiating his young sons, including Don L, into the traveling circus life.  Don was just starting to perform on the trapeze when Lillian decided enough was enough and divorced her husband, taking their three boys and returning home to Marinette.  She supported herself by having a dressmaking business.  Albert disappeared from their lives and never returned.

Don L went to work full time in the sawmills at age 12, then went into the Navy for 4 years.  After that he wandered around from state to state with some buddies, living in hobo camps, jumping trains, living as a vagabond. He picked up a cocaine habit, and developed a bad alcohol problem.

Meanwhile,his mother Lillian remarried and had a 4th son.  She needed help with the dressmaking business, so she hired local girl Elsie Tetzlaff to keep up with demand.  And after a few months, the prodigal son Don L showed up on his mother's back door.  He was done with the life of a bum and came home.  He got a job at the sawmill, fell in love with Elsie, gave up his partying ways completely, and the two of them married and spent the next 20 years having 9 children.

Here is Carol's family tree: