Mary Ellen Ducklow

Ducklow, Mary Ellen

Mary Ellen Ducklow, age 83, of Appleton, died Monday evening, May 8, 2006. She was born June 1, 1922, to the late Hugh and Ruth Ellen (Whittier) Pomeroy, in Neenah and had been a life long resident of Appleton. At the age of 14, Mary Ellen was an intern with the Post Crescent. She graduated from Appleton High School in 1939 and then attended Beloit College and graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Magna Cum Laude, with a degree in journalism. Following her graduation she was employed by Holt, Rinehard Publishing, in New York City, for one year. Mary Ellen then moved back to Appleton where she was employed by the Appleton Post Crescent, where she covered city hall, police, fire and the courts. She married William Thomas Ducklow on February 19, 1944; he preceded her in death on June 23, 1985. Mary Ellen was station director and manager of WAPL – FM, where she had her own talk show, “College Avenue, USA”, from 1960 – 1971. Following this she was employed by Gimbels Fox Cities as a fashion coordinator from 1971 – 1979. While at Gimbels, Mary Ellen produced weekly fashion shows, in the store restaurant and was also the director of the Teen Board. Mary Ellen was director of events at UW Fox Valley, where she taught news and mystery writing. She wrote three books, Dr. Do Tell (the biography of Dr. Victor Marshall), The Biography of Gordon Bubolz and 1930 – Something, A Nice Neighborhood With Tall Trees. Mary Ellen was a freelance writer who wrote for numerous regional and national publications including, New Month Magazine, Exclusively Yours Magazine, Cat Fancy Magazine and Fox Cities Magazine. She was known for her many play reviews in the Post Crescent, where she reviewed plays of the Riverside Players, Attic Theater, Fox Valley Center and various high schools. Mary Ellen was life long member of First Congregational U. C. C., a member of Appleton Jaycettes, Appleton Memorial Hospital Board, YMCA, Friends of Hearthstone, Grignon Home, Appleton City Wide PTA Council, Charity Circle of King’s Daughters, Outagamie County Red Cross, Outagamie County Historical Society, Women in Management, Appleton Heritage Society. She was on the Board of Directors of Peabody manor and was a founding member of Wednesday Review Book Club. She is survived by three children, Hugh W. (Beverly) Ducklow, Williamsburg, VA; Thomas P. Ducklow, Appleton; Nan Ducklow (Anthony Das), Mount Jackson, VA; two grandchildren, William and Kelsey Ducklow. Memorial services for Mary Ellen will be held at 11:00 am, Friday, May12, 2006, at the funeral home, with Reverend Jane Anderson officiating. Burial will be in Riverside Cemetery. Friends may call at the funeral home from 9:30 am, Friday until the time of the service. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be directed to Fox Valley Center.

WICHMANN FUNERAL HOME
537 North Superior Street
Appleton 920-739-1231
www.wichmannfuneralhomes.com

Memorial Day
I guess it’s appropriate that I dash off this chapter, about Memorial Day, on Memorial Day. It’s gray today, and cold, which is totally, absolutely wrong, wrong, wrong, for what my father and mother used to call Decoration Day.
No, Memorial Day is supposed to be a green and gold and blue and white glory, slashed with millions of crimson geraniums and with battalions of straight little red, white and blue cotton flags fluttering from their skinny sticks on hundreds of graves in the cemeteries. “My” cemetery was Riverside, all stately, but somehow, along with its dignity high there on the tree-canopied palisade above the Fox, comforting and homey. It was – is – a symbol of belonging.
I grew to accept Riverside cemetery as mine, dashing about the carefully manicured plots, careful to step around, not on, the graves, as Mother and the other ladies, consulting their cemetery maps, placed the little flags and propped the single geraniums in their small clay plots.
I remember. I remember.
Riverside Cemetery was then, another, a sort of special “home” too – like The Store and The Avenue and the red church and the Y and Lincoln School and the ravines.
How did one find the Pomeroy family plot? It was as familiar as turning off Franklin Street at the tracks, by the lumber yard billboards across from the freight depot, and dashing home that long block of Division Street to the sidewalk draped with the lilac bushes.
Well, inside the Cemetery, you don’t count the first road, which is the west perimeter of the cemetery; you start counting after that one. Then there is the real first road, winding to the right, where the palisade starts its slide above another of those Appleton ravines down to the river bank. And there it is, the second, the right road … under the trees, past the imposing monument (not ours), that is a gray granite tree trunk with the branches sawn off. Yes. There it is.
So many flags flutter there today when I write instead of following the high school band and the parade units under the archway and along the flower-scented paths. The band always halted buoyant martial music and muffled and rolled its drums as it passed under that road-spanning gate.
The cemetery? It’s a kaleidoscope of memory, a bright prism of a celebratory May morning, slipping into the gray of the October Day when the honor guard fired its traditional volley over my father’s grave, when the slow notes of “Taps” soared over the green and the granite and the flowers; when the solemn gentlemen in their army uniforms meticulously folded the great flag that had swathed his casket and presented it to my small, bewildered mother. I remember she poked me sharply in the ribs and hissed at me, “Don’t your DARE cry. Your Daddy would HATE that.”
I never have.
The Parade? It always started at 9 a.m. sharp, as the big flags snapped and crackled from the Avenue light posts. The parade stepped off, I think, at State Street and then proceeded down the Avenue to Lawe Street, north on Lawe, and then east on Pacific to the cemetery; the Pacific Street bridge was the most exciting segment; the marchers had to break step because the bridge might fall down into Bellaire Park ravine, everybody used to tell everybody else. (My father proposed to my mother on that bridge; she said “yes” the third time.)
And when the units came to the cemetery entrance, the music ceased and the shuffle of feet on the asphalt was a whispery counterpoint to the roll of the drums.
I always envied the folks who lived on Lawe and Pacific Streets; they could sit on their steps or sway back and forth in their porch swings and sip iced tea as the procession clicked smartly by. Everybody hung out family flags from the veranda rails … oh Lord, I forgot to put mine out this morning … it’s still the one that comforted Daddy’s casket.
I remember North Division Street on Memorial Day was like a bouquet of sunlight and maple trees and the whipping of Old Glory from the front of a dozen houses.
It was a long walk back, or a careening bike ride, home from Riverside Cemetery.

It seems shorter now.

Memorial Day is for remembering.