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The Clan Brownlee | |
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| Robert Deane Youle | |
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Robert Deane Youle - by Harriet Youle O'Neal Robert Deane Youle was born and raised in Winfield, Kansas, a small town in southeastern Kansas. His father, Earle Youle, worked as a teller in the town bank and his mother, Edith Trautwein Youle, kept the home. He was the only son, having one older sister and two younger ones. Having later been blessed with two daughters, he claimed he'd been surrounded by women all his life. He attended high school in Winfield, playing tennis there, and since the family home was only blocks from Southwestern College, he continued his education there, where he met Mary Ellen Brownlee. In college Robert played on the tennis team, was on the debate team and also was in some theater productions. After graduation, Bob planned to teach history at the Winfield high school. He had the job lined up when fate intervened in the form of a scholarship to Columbia law school in New York City and World War II. As a result of these two events, he would never return to live in Winfield. Bob was a year ahead of Mary Ellen in college, so he went off to New York for a year, leaving her in Winfield. She graduated and taught in western Kansas for a year and then they married on the farm in Pretty Prairie. May was at the wedding sporting a very BLOND bob hair-do. After the wedding, they both headed to New York. Mary Ellen worked as a secretary, probably being the chief financial support of the couple. Bob succeeded in making Law Review and like other final year law students, he was granted permission to finish school before reporting for duty in the Navy. Bob went to officers' training school somewhere in the Carolinas and Mary and Bob moved there for a brief while. Once our dad was assigned as supply officer to a ship in the Pacific (the USS Suffolk, I believe) and departed, our mother returned to the farm to stay with her parents. Bob was among those who suffered that first terrible kamikaze attack-possibly at Okinawa, according to May. Sometime during the war, Bob must have received some R & R because Harriet was born in May, 1945, in Hutchinson. Harriet spent her earliest months in Pretty Prairie, learning to eat jelly off the tip of a knife (I'm told Granddad fed me that.) Fortunately, Bob survived the war, returned home, and the three of us headed back to New York, where Bob took a job with a large law firm. However, he was not happy there and in time we headed back to the Midwest, where he took a job with the Lathrop law firm in Kansas City, Missouri. He would work there the rest of his life. Everything seemed to be going very well. Bob was working hard at his new job. He and Mary had started attending Linwood Methodist Church, joining the Harmony Sunday School Class. Here they met a group of friends that still keep in touch with us to this day. Our Dad would need these friends indeed. On June 14, 1949, a new baby was born, but the next day our mother would die. As several people from the old Harmony class have told me, that was the saddest time they remember. The baby was named Mary Ellen. Dad was left with a demanding new job, a four-year-old daughter, and a newborn. That's when May and Bowen stepped up to the plate. I don't believe they had been married very long, but they agreed to take Mary Ellen with them, until Dad could get arrangements made. At that point, May was editor of a newsletter for the Republican party, which she gaveup to take care of baby Mary. This would continue for two years. Harriet spent one summer with May and Bowen and learned what happens if you claim you can't hear May's piercing whistle that means come home NOW! Other relatives, my dad's sisters and their husbands, ended up in KC, too, and they helped care for Harriet when Dad was at work. We had wonderful neighbors, too, and Harriet frequently went to their houses after school until Dad got home. Some of these neighbors had a niece who fixed Dad up with a date with Dortha Elizabeth Younghans Thompson. Harriet liked her a lot. She had a teensy-tiny apartment with a Murphy bed that came out of the closet. Harriet thought it was terrific. Bob and Dortha were married in 1951. May and Bowen came to the wedding. Mary and Harriet were flower girls. Harriet was tickled pink to get to march down the isle, but Mary broke away and ran back in the middle of the ceremony to sit on May's lap. May and Bowen were stoic about this event. May had promised her mother that when the time came that Bob could raise his two girls, she'd return Mary Ellen with nary a peep, and she and Bowen did. We don't know how. Harriet recalls that Mary Ellen was one unhappy camper and let out a lot of loud peeps about being dumped on a bunch of near strangers. Dad and our new mom honeymooned on the East Coast, visiting one of our cousins on the Youle side who was in the hospital recovering from severe burns. When they returned, our mom, who had had that wonderful, small, quiet apartment all to herself would discover that she was not to have peace and quiet for a long time. Mary Ellen attached herself like a leach to our mom. Dortha tried very hard to be the best possible mother she could be. Dad was never much of a disciplinarian, and in the two years he'd been raising Harriet, he'd become rather lax about such things as bedtimes, and Harriet had taken full advantage of this. Mom, with her German heritage, had to put some order into our lives and Harriet didn't take too kindly to that either. However, Dortha stuck it out, raising both Mary Ellen and Harriet with great love and constant care, while Dad worked long hours at the law firm. We eventually moved from the house at 5508 Euclid in KC, where he and Mary Ellen had moved when they came from New York. They moved to a southern part of KC in a house they built and loved, and they would live there until they died. Dortha and Bob were active in their church-Randolph Memorial Methodist Church, where Bob wrote the by-laws and served on the Board. They continued to see their friends from the Harmony Sunday School Class, playing bridge, going on fishing vacations, and going out to dinner together. Bob died unexpectedly in July, 1979 of a massive coronary while at work. Dortha died at home after a long illness, suffering from a form of dementia and lung cancer, on June 14, 1987. Dortha always was very grateful for the way the Brownlee family treated her as one of the family-despite how difficult it must have been for them to see a stranger taking the place of their Mary Ellen-and was very fond of Ray, who would drive up to KC for a surprise visit now and then. We'd wake up in the morning and see his little red car parked in front of the house. He'd usually arrived at least an hour or two before we got up. |
Bob Youle
