Irene Kendrick-Now and Then in Lenawee

My Great Grandma; Irene Emily Beach Kendrick...  had always wanted to write, that is to become an author. She had several articles and poems published in magazines under the "nom de plume" Hope Long de Ferd  (deferred)This was taken from Proverbs 13:12. It reads "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life." When she was seventy, she started a weekly column, Now and Then in Lenawee in the Adrian Telegram. It Continued for thirteen years. Here is a sampling of those articles from the 1940's.The last one was published February 8, 1952.

(After entertaining and instructing thousands of readers of The Adrian Telegram for the last 11 years, Mrs. Irene Kendrick concludes her excellent series of Now and Then in Lenawee County articles with the following.)

Valedictory
  Just s'posin' you had to write an obituary for the baby you had thrown into the lake? On purpose. With due consideration aforethought. Now, reader of "Now and Then," that is just what this is going to be. "Now and Then in Lenawee" was mine own begotten child. Dream child, that is. Sometime before it was born there appeared in the Telegram a new feature. A page Devoted to the Interests of the Farms of Lenawee. Frank Rowley had fathered a child, and it was no dream child though he always called it his baby. It was growing in interest, for city folks like to read of what is going on out in the country. As I read it I felt my own baby coming nearer and nearer to the borning.
  It's birthday came one August morning in1940.There had been a good shower in the night and it was cooler. A good morning to set out cabbage plants. There was a sign out on the gatepost, "Late cabbage and cauliflower plants for sale." Three little granddaughters were busy setting up housekeeping out where it would be shady almost noon, and Phil, their big brother, was building an airplane out of discarded silo doors out by the barn while his big dog Mikki sat near him. Advising him, maybe. A nice car slowed up and came on up the drive. In it was a pretty young woman with some lively young children aboard. I don't remember how many. Yes, there were plenty of plants for sale. In the absence of the grower I would officiate. The order was given, and Philip was sent to fill it, and the children allowed to get out of the car and play with some frolicking kittens.
  Then came one of those flash acquaintances in which Destiny seems to take a hand. The cabbage plants were at quite a distance away down the lane which was sunny and no one, not anybody seemed to be in a hurry. It was one of those mornings when it was all right just to live and be glad of it; when there was time for a bit of idle talking that need not be excused. About gardens; children's clothes; potluck suppers; Oh, just anything. Just "passing" the time o'day. It got around to this: Didn't I think that it was a good idea, when one's children had got big enough, for a woman to take up some kind of - well, you might call it more education. Not to just settle down and get old before you really are old? I certainly did. Sort of grow up with your children. That was a theme that had plenty of conversational possibilities about which we were in accord. When I told how but for the unhappy circumstances of the Great Depression right then being overshadowed by the rising war cloud, I hoped to be going to school over to the U. of M. "Why, is that so," she said, surprised and a bit amused as she looked into my aging eyes, my hoary head and widened girth, "What would you have taken up?" "Journalism." That answer was ready. "So you would like to learn to write!"  "Oh, I can write. I have written." Sounded like a grammar lesson. But I want to know how to write right. I never had much schooling." Phil was coming up with the cabbage plants and the children were collected and visit was over, but just before leaving, the caller said "If you can write, why don't you send something to the Telegram? My husband is the editor." "What is his name?" I asked. "Donald Frazier." And so Now and Then in Lenawee was born. It was properly christened not long after when I dolled it up and took it upstairs at the Telegram building and was given the official blessing that made it one of the family. And so,  it was that Frank Rowley's "baby" and mine became playmates over the years, and anyone who can read may know the rest of the story.
  What years they were, those fearful forties. So full of so much of everything for everyone. Evil that is indescribable and good that was and is forever will be indestructible. As a pencil packin' grandmother of six unwarlike warriors sent forth to battle who, all but one, came home, there has been plenty to share with you as "Now 'n Then" brought contrasts between the old days and these, intended, taken as a whole to somehow comfort or console us. But now, already entangled in the frantic fifties, is it any wonder that words fail? No obituary, however eloquent tells all. In this case there is no use in trying to, any way. So let "Now and Then" just say "good bye" and let it go at that.