Familiar faces at the Printery House

The ache behind my eyes swelled to a full-blown migraine. My armpits and palms started to sweat. My mind raced like a rolodex in a stiff wind, and I grew concerned about the blood vessel protruding from my forehead.

The other ladies in the Printery House's Packaging and Proofreading departments joined the conversation with big smiles on their faces. They even seemed at ease amid the chaos.

"No," Lois Gockel interrupted, "Judy's husband's mother is a sister to Nancy's husband."

Lois Gockel (left) and Anna Mae Kemper sound like auctioneers once they start explaining family ties at the Printery House.

"Then there's Karen Luke in Shipping," Lois said, plowing ahead. "Her husband Steve is related to all of us. His grandmother was a Kern."

"Wasn't Karen a Runde," I asked, surprising everyone in the room, including myself.

"Yes," Lois answered. "She's related to Carol McQueen in Shipping through the Henggeler side. John Runde was her grandfather and he was married to a Ginther, but it was his mother who was a Henggeler."

"I see, I see," I said, even though I didn't. (Is it just me, or did she stick that Ginther in there just to throw me off?)

I was receiving a lesson in the family ties between employees at the abbey's Printery House. Everyone told me to talk to Anna Mae, she'll know. Seems Anna Mae, who has worked at the Printery House since 1963 (a full four years before I was born by the way), is the unofficial Printery House genealogist. She's related, on her mother's side, to the Schiebers. Read that name one more time. It will come in handy later.

Conventional wisdom in the corporate world says a company should turn over 10 percent of its employees each year.

As you may have gathered by now, the Printery House isn't putting too much stake in what corporate America thinks. More than half of its employees have worked there for more than 10 years. The four people with the longest tenures, Anna Mae Kemper, Wes McQueen, Gerald Auffert and Gerald Schmitz, have served a combined 189 years. "The Printery House is run more like a family business," says Roy Haas, director of sales and marketing, who came to the Printery House two years ago. Haas also gets headaches and sweats a lot when he tries to figure out who is related to whom.

I had imagined writing a heartwarming article about familial bonds in the workplace, and I naively hoped to start by constructing some sort of Printery House family tree. Well, by the time Anna Mae and her "cousins" finished with me I felt like I'd been thrown into B'rer Rabbit's briar patch. It was like eating spaghetti one noodle at a time while trying to remember the name of each noodle.

Wes McQueen (left) and his wife Carol have worked at the Printery House their entire marriage. Today they each direct a department.

The deeply Catholic area around Conception Abbey is still home to the same families who came to Northwest Missouri in the mid 1800s from Germany and Ireland. Most of the names on the Printery House payroll can be found engraved in stone across the road in St. Columba Cemetery. When people in large Catholic families marry people from other large Catholic families . well, keep reading.

Ronda Strueby, head of Packaging, is the niece of Ted Holtman in the Pressroom. Anna Mae is a second cousin to Kathy McCrary in packaging who is a first cousin to Lois. And they are all related by marriage to Linda Schieber in the Art department. Kathy and Lois are both descendants of the Kerns.

Kathy McCrary's sons, Donnie and Rick, work in the Pressroom, which begs the question, if they are slacking, can their supervisor threaten to tell their mother?

Remember Carol McQueen (Take a second here; I'll wait if you need to go back and refresh your memory. We first mentioned her on page 11). Well, Carol is also the first cousin of Helen Wiederholt in Accounts Receivable. Turns out Carol's mom, Ann Henggeler (who also worked at the Printery House) is the sister of Helen's father, and they are (NEW NAME ALERT) Wilmeses!

Carol is married to Wes McQueen, the Pressroom supervisor, who in his 38th year has the second longest tenure at the Printery House! Their two daughters, and Carol's mother, sister and two aunts also worked at the Printery House! And you may have already guessed, Wes and Carol are related to the Schiebers! I can't stop using exclamation points!

Wes and Carol's twin sons, Jeremy and Jared, work for the Benedictine sisters at nearby Clyde, as did their brother Ryan. You'd think there would be a 'Benedict' or a 'Scholastica' somewhere in this family.

Things got a little too close for comfort when in frustration I exclaimed, "Geez, you all are probably related to me!"

I have two first cousins who are married to Schiebers, my Aunt Patsy is married to a Wilmes, another cousin is married to a Schmitz, and somehow the Schiebers are related to the Wilmeses, who have some connection to the Popes, and my Aunt Martha is married to Bob Pope (a 1949 graduate of Conception Seminary's high school).

Kathy McCrary can keep an eye on her two sons, Donnie and Rick. They are her co-workers.

For some reason, my left eye started twitching and I felt a burning sensation on my scalp.

In a fit of panic I changed the subject. This had to stop before I ended up discovering I had some great, great, great uncle who was a Kern. I couldn't afford to compromise my journalistic objectivity.

Bonus Question:
Gerald Schmitz, who is in his 36th year at the Printery House, is married to Patricia, who once worked in proofreading. What was her maiden name?
A. Ivanov
B. Weinberg
C. Gonzalez
D. Schieber

Midway through my conversation with Anna Mae and the girls, I had to set a ground rule. We had to limit ourselves to Printery House people. I had no choice. When Pauline Constant, who began working at the Printery House five months before I was born, brought up that her husband and son both worked for the abbey as electricians, and Anna Mae noted that they were all related to Mary Kay Sullivan at the Post Office, I began to hyperventilate.

And all hell would break loose if we brought Father Joachim Schieber into the discussion. I could feel his presence up the hill in the monastery, like Marlon Brando in the Godfather. Let's just say he's related to everybody and leave it at that.

As my mind acclimated to the frenzied pace, and the cramp in my note-taking hand subsided, I realized something. These women were having fun. There was a pride in their voices and warmth in their laughter. Each name they uttered set free a memory that spread like the aroma of lilacs. The tangled family histories, confusing to me (and probably most people who read this), are anything but confusing for the Schiebers, Wiederholts, McCrarys, McQueens, Wilmeses, Henggelers, Schwebachs, Struebys, Holtmans, Kempers, Lukes and the many other related families.

Break time at the Printery House is as comfortable as a family reunion.

The familial briar patch of Conception, Conception Jct. and Clyde, and even nearby Stanberry, provides a unique sense of place and belonging. I remember when we moved here from Seattle, my wife found it amusing that local drivers wave at everyone they meet on the road. I told her they were simply playing the odds. More than likely they knew whoever it was in the other car, and it might be construed as unfriendly not to acknowledge them. It would certainly be impolite to ignore Karla, your second cousin twice-removed.

While the corporate world would frown on such pervasive nepotism, "for some reason it works here," says Peggy Osborn, customer service manager and marketing representative whose mother and two daughters also once worked at the Printery House. A Methodist from nearby Ravenwood who says she's Osborn is one of only eight employees who are not related to any of their co-workers. "At least not right now," she jokes.

Father Alphonse Sitzman, may he rest in peace, directed the Printery House from 1957 to 1984, and is widely accepted as the man who put it on the map. While his reputation as a leader and businessman is secure, I have reason to doubt his attention to detail when hiring personnel. According to Anna Mae, he had a strict policy against relatives working together. Hmmm . think he might have missed a few?

If it seems like Printery House jobs are handed down from generation to generation like heirlooms, there's a reason, Osborn says: "Number one, because the monks allow it. They understand that family comes first, and that creates a loyalty. They do right by you and your family, so you want to do right by them."

"I can say my mom needs a job, and they say bring her in," says Osborn. "There's no application to fill out; they take the word of the person making the recommendation. I think they figure if they've got a good worker, a family member is probably going to be a good worker, too.

Of course, she adds with a chuckle, "it probably makes it harder to get rid of someone who isn't cutting it."

* * *

Eventually - and mercifully - Anna Mae and Lois's relentless barrage of cousins, in-laws, parents, siblings, uncles, aunts and grandparents sputtered to an end and I took my leave. They laughed at me as I slumped away, slack-jawed and light-headed.

I stumbled out into the morning sun, wishing I'd gone to bed earlier the night before and vowing to add more fish to my diet.

But I'm pretty sure I learned six things (although I'm starting to wonder if everything I know is wrong):

2. Nepotism, so frowned upon in the corporate world, has gone totally insane at the Printery House;

3. There is a mysterious family named Kern that everyone in the communities of Conception, Conception Junction and Clyde seems to be descended from, yet there is only one Kern living there today;

6. If I plan to spend much more time with Anna Mae and Lois, I really need to check with my doctor about that vein in my forehead.

Tower Topics ~ Winter 2004