The Girls from Ames

by Jeffrey Zaslow

  “Liesl knows exactly why we’re all down here together,” Kelly tells the other girls over dinner, “and she’s excited for the details.”

  She plans to tell Liesl the specifics of the weekend—where they went for dinner, how they went for hikes, the sort of conversations they had until early in the morning. But those are just the particulars. What Kelly really hopes Liesl will pick up in her retelling is a feeling of how deep the bonds between women can get.

  She’s not sure what exact words she’ll say, but Kelly the wordsmith would like her daughter to know this:

  “Having these women in my world has meant not only acceptance, but radiant joy and laughter that knocks me right out of my chair. Through our darkest moments, we have lifted each other up. In every moment of grief we’ve shared, our laughter is a life vest, a secure promise that we will not go under.”

  17

  Mysteries and Memories

  It is just after breakfast on the final day of the reunion, and Jane tells the other girls that she has noticed something: They’re showing up in her dreams a lot more lately.

  Maybe it’s the fact that, through email now, the girls seem to be in closer contact than at any other time in their adult lives. Maybe it’s because of her daughter’s bat mitzvah project involving Christie or her deepening bonds with Karla. She also suspects that, because they have been sharing stories for this book, long-buried memories and questions have been floating into her subconscious.

  In the mornings, she doesn’t have clear recall of these dreams, or any real sense of what they might signify. She just knows she has spent part of her night in Ames with old friends. Later on some mornings, when she’s out running, she also finds herself thinking about the girls and the roles they’ve served in her life.

  For all of the Ames girls, even in their waking hours, there is a dreamy quality to some of their memories of their lives together—especially those involving mysteries and unanswered questions.

  As the years have passed, however, they’ve found the courage to make contact with certain people or to ask questions they didn’t ask when they were younger. And so some old mysteries can be at least partially resolved. This is especially true on two fronts, one involving Marilyn, the other involving Sheila.

  On August 1, 2007, the I-35 Bridge in Minneapolis collapsed during evening rush hour, sending about a hundred vehicles into the Mississippi River and onto its banks. Thirteen people died, 145 were injured, and because more than 140,000 vehicles had crossed the bridge that day, it felt as if a terrible lottery had hit the residents of the Twin Cities. Who was unlucky enough to be on the bridge at exactly 6:05 P.M.?

  After the collapse, area residents fielded millions of phone calls and emails from their friends and relatives across the country, all asking: “Are you OK?” As Minnesotans, Karla, Kelly and Marilyn heard from the other Ames girls in the hours that followed; the others shared their concern and then relief that they were safe. But Marilyn was most moved by the very first email she received after the collapse. It came from Elwood Koelder, the other driver in the 1960 accident that killed her brother.

  She still hadn’t met him or had their long-awaited full conversation. But she was touched by his unexpected email. “Just a quick note,” he wrote, “checking that none of your family has been involved in this catastrophe.”

  Marilyn wrote back that her family was fine, and that she appreciated hearing from him. It was meaningful to her that Elwood had chosen a tragedy like this as an opportunity to show concern for the family scarred by that long-ago tragedy involving him.

  After that, Marilyn did get on the phone with Elwood to follow up on the letter she had written to him. She later recounted the conversation in an email to the other Ames girls. It felt surreal speaking to him, she said, but also cathartic.

  “I told Elwood what I always say to my kids: ‘There’s a difference between an accident and ‘on purpose.’ If Elwood had killed Billy intentionally, I don’t know that I would be interested in contacting him. But it was an accident, and he was just a child himself.”

  Elwood told Marilyn that he was on his way home from church the morning of the accident. He said he doesn’t remember the actual collision—how fast he might have been going, how the cornstalks obstructed his view, anything. At the moment of impact, he was thrown from his car, ended up underneath it, and passed out. When he came to, he heard his horn blaring and tried to get up, hitting his head on the undercarriage of the car. The horn continued unabated, so he made his way to the hood, opened it, and pulled on some wires, and finally it went silent. That’s when he saw the McCormacks’ destroyed car, some of its occupants still inside, and felt an awful kind of adrenaline racing through his body.

  Dr. McCormack was already out of the car, and Elwood helped him lift Billy out of the front seat. Elwood recalled what Dr. McCormack said to him: “Thank you for your help. I’ll take it from here.” (After learning of Elwood’s recollection, Marilyn and her family saw it as a quintessential Dr. McCormack response. It was just the sort of gentle direction he’d use to guide a nurse, an EMT or his own children.) Over the years, Elwood said, he has wondered to himself: “Is there anything else I could have done to help that boy?”

  Elwood spent a week in the hospital, recovering from a concussion. He also had a knee injury. Because he was driving on a permit that allowed him to travel only to and from school, he was charged with not having a valid driver’s license. When his case was reviewed, however, his family argued that the fifteen-year-old boy had driven to church Sunday school the morning of the accident, so in essence he was on his way home from “school.” The court fined him just $25 and the case wasn’t pursued any further. The McCormacks never chose to file a civil suit.

  “When he told me about the $25 fine, that was the only part of his story that twisted a knife in me,” Marilyn wrote in her email to the girls. “I had to repeat to myself: This was an accident. He didn’t do this on purpose.”

  Elwood told Marilyn about his family—three daughters, a step-son who is an army staff sergeant, grandchildren. He talked about his work as an Iowa-based truck driver, delivering doors and countertops to retail outlets such as Home Depot, and he said he was reeling from the high price of gas. He said he hoped to meet Marilyn in person the next time he drove through Minnesota.

  After the phone call, Marilyn’s older sister, Sara, decided to write to Elwood also. She shared her letter with Marilyn, since she thought it might be cathartic for Marilyn also to have a record of Sara’s recollections of that day and her memories of Billy.

  She began by thanking Elwood for his concern after the I-35 Bridge tragedy, then shared with him a few images of Billy. (He died just before his seventh birthday, when Sara was five.) Sara recalled being a preschooler and wrestling with Billy in the hallway early one morning. Her father, still in bed, called out to them: “Billy and Sara, are you two dressed yet?” “We were completely naked,” Sara wrote to Elwood, “but Billy replied with a resounding ‘Yes!’ It was a unique concept to me that one could lie, but I followed his example with an equally enthusiastic ‘Yes!!!’ before we scampered off to put on our clothes.”

  Sara told Elwood about one of her father’s favorite memories of Billy: “When Dad returned from work each day, Billy would laugh so hard that he would sometimes fall on the floor.” Sara also wrote of how, after the accident, adults would say things to her that felt a bit off the mark. “I recall a well-meaning woman who said, ‘God needs your brother more than your family did.’ Even though I was young, I thought, ‘It was simply an accident. The God I know wouldn’t take a child away from a family for his own needs.’ ”

  Sara wanted Elwood to know that “the crossing of your path with ours gave my siblings and me the opportunity to learn more about our parents’ philosophies of life. Dad said that many people offered him condolences after the accident. He also told us about a custodian at the medical clinic who lost his son at about the same time. The boy had been playing in a cons
truction hole, and the dirt caved in on him. ‘People may have known me better because I was a physician,’ Dad said, ‘but my pain was no greater than his.’ Dad kept speaking to the custodian about his son’s death, because he knew others would move on and stop asking.

  “Dad was clear and gentle when communicating with parents of a child who had died. He would ask about their marriages, whether they had left their child’s room untouched, and if they still expected to see their child run into the kitchen at breakfast time. ‘I know it is like rubbing salt into wounds when I ask you about your child,’ Dad would say, ‘but I want you to be able to speak about your child with laughter and joy, rather than pain. I will keep meeting with you until that happens.’ ”

  Sara wanted Elwood to understand also how grateful she was to have Marilyn as her sister. “I always regarded Marilyn as a special present to me from my parents,” she wrote. In explaining the trajectory of the McCormacks’ lives after the accident, Sara also said that the family came to say “I love you” more frequently. “We try not to lose sight of the extraordinary importance of family and friends.”

  For his part, Elwood now says he was “blown away” the first time he heard from Marilyn, and he welcomed news of her existence. It was overwhelming to him to learn that she was born after her dad’s reversed vasectomy. Speaking one day by cell phone as he drives his truck, he says that getting to know Marilyn and her family has served to ease his mind. Billy has been part of his life for forty-seven years. “I’ve thought about that little guy,” he says. “And now, knowing that a new life came into the world for the one that went out, well, it’s a miracle, is what it is.”

  Elwood says he has been moved and impressed by what Marilyn has told him about her friendships with the other Ames girls. It’s sobering, he says, to think that Marilyn’s identity as a doctor’s daughter and her place in this group of friends were in certain ways informed by her brother’s death and her feelings of not wanting to disappoint her grieving parents. “You never know what will happen to you because of what happened to someone else,” Elwood says. “You just never know.”

  Around the same time that Marilyn was tracking down Elwood, the Ames girls were also reestablishing ties with Sheila’s family.

  They had gotten word that Sheila’s younger brother, Mark, had a four-year-old son with a rare form of cancer. A Caring Bridge Web site had been set up to share health updates, and the girls visited it and left messages to let the Walsh family know that little Charlie was in their thoughts.

  Kelly, Sally and Karla had seen Sheila’s mom a couple of years earlier at the memorial service for Cathy’s mother. But for most of the others, this was their first contact with the Walsh family in many years. Visiting the Caring Bridge site, of course, reminded the girls of all those months when Christie was writing about her cancer journey. It was hard for Karla, especially, to read about Charlie, but her note to the Walshes was upbeat: “I’m sending positive energy to all of you. Know that Sheila’s friends are praying for your family.”

  The other girls also left notes of encouragement, identifying themselves to Charlie as “friends of your Aunt Sheila.” “You are a very handsome boy, and oh so brave,” wrote Angela. “I went to school with your Aunt Sheila and think of her often.” Marilyn wrote: “Keep smiling, champ!”

  Sheila’s mom, Sheila’s sister and two of her brothers had moved to Kansas City, Missouri, and they were touched to see all the comments on Caring Bridge from Sheila’s old friends. It had been a long time.

  One afternoon, on the spacious back deck of Mark’s upscale suburban home, he and his mom, along with his sister, Susan, and brother Mike, agreed to speak for this book about their feelings regarding the other Ames girls, and to share their memories of Sheila. (A third brother, Matt, lived out of town.)

  Mrs. Walsh admitted that she was disappointed because most of the other Ames girls didn’t stay in touch after Sheila died. “They just literally deserted me,” she said. “They never came around. Never. It would have been nice if they had.” But she is forgiving because she understands that they were also grieving and were unsure how to respond or what to say to her.

  She saw those who attended Sheila’s funeral. “Yes, some of them came, but you know, they were grieving within their group.” She doesn’t recall them coming up to her; if they did, it was brief. “It’s OK. They were young.”

  (For their part, the Ames girls recall feeling a bit slighted at the memorial service. Ushers asked them how they knew Sheila, and when they said they were her friends from childhood and high school, they were directed to a side pew. Susan’s and Sheila’s college friends were seated more prominently. When people are grieving, and their emotions are so heightened, they notice such things.)

  Sheila’s family described her as being completely devoted to the other Ames girls. If someone made a crack about, say, the weight of one of her friends, Sheila would respond sharply. “She was intensely loyal,” said Susan. “If you were in her inner circle, she would jump off a cliff for you.”

  The Walshes smiled and laughed over many of their memories of Sheila. They remembered when she and some of the other Ames girls did neck exercises, twisting and stretching their necks so they wouldn’t get wrinkles.

  Susan said she and Sheila were sometimes very close, and other times, there was distance—or they fought. Though they were only eighteen months apart, they traveled in different circles of friends, especially as they got older. Sheila had told the other Ames girls that it was hard to live in Susan’s shadow, because Susan was so beautiful and accomplished, and got along better with their mom. Susan now understands some of the dynamics. “I was a rule-follower,” Susan said, “and Sheila wasn’t.”

  They shared a room, and Susan has sweet memories of late-night conversations and of games they played as little girls. One was a convoluted “how hot are you now?” game they’d play by adjusting the settings on each other’s electric blankets.

  “There’s something about losing a sister,” Susan said. “It’s like losing a part of yourself. In a lot of ways, she made me feel good about myself.” She added: “Each of us has put our memories of Sheila in a sort of protective, separate compartment, deep down inside somewhere.” It was emotional for them to be talking again so openly about her.

  Sheila was headstrong. When Mrs. Walsh took the girls clothes shopping, she said, “Susan had this tall, thin figure and was easy to fit. Sheila was harder. And she always wanted something that didn’t look good on her. So shopping trips could be ruined.”

  The family was often reminded of how close Sheila was to Dr. Walsh. Mark said that as an early teen, he used to go on a five-mile race with his father, and Sheila sometimes pedaled along on her bike. The first time he outran his father, Sheila was very upset. “She was actually crying,” Mark said. “She asked me, ‘How’d you beat him with those little legs of yours?’ She just had this bond with him. She was Daddy’s girl.”

  “She knew how to work him,” said Susan.

  “To Sheila, he was a softy,” Mrs. Walsh added.

  As a dentist, Dr. Walsh had a reputation of being very gentle when he put his hands in a patients’ mouth. He often had that same gentleness in how he dealt with his children, especially Sheila.

  Susan and Sheila were in the same sorority at the University of Kansas—when Sheila was a freshman, Susan was a sophomore. For her twentieth birthday, Susan received $100 from her dad. He died two days later at age forty-seven of a heart attack, and Susan ended up using the $100 toward plane tickets for her and Sheila to go home for the funeral. On the plane that day, they both were very quiet, their faces pale, their eyes red from crying. Two young men on the plane noticed these two pretty, red-eyed girls and tried to hit on them. “Hey, what have you two been doing?” one of them asked.

  “They assumed we were stoned,” Susan said. “It’s weird, the things that you remember about moments like that.”

  After Dr. Walsh died, Sheila was grieving for herself, but also v
ery concerned about how her mother was faring. “She was just so empathetic,” Mrs. Walsh said. “And she was such a good listener.”

  Mrs. Walsh said she never went on a date after her husband died. She was too busy trying to raise five children on her own. She smiled at one memory of the weeks after Dr. Walsh’s death. She was with a friend in her bedroom, trying to figure out how much the family would have to live on after factoring in Dr. Walsh’s life insurance pay-out and any remaining proceeds from his dental practice.

  “Oh my gosh,” she said to her friend after she finished her calculations. “We’re only going to have five hundred dollars a month. The mortgage is more than that!”

  The women looked at each other. “I can’t believe that son of a bitch would leave you with just five hundred dollars a month,” her friend said.

  Mrs. Walsh did some more figuring. She never was too good at math. Turned out, Dr. Walsh had made sure the family had $5,000 a month to live on. Because he sensed that he’d die young, like his father, he had made sure everything was in place.

  When Sheila went to Chicago in January 1986 to work for a semester interning as a child life specialist at a hospital, her brother Mark didn’t really know what that job was. Now that his son was receiving cancer treatment, he understood. Child life specialists offer emotional support, education and resources to families. They are trained to ease young patients’ fears. They look out for their siblings. “When Charlie is going to have a procedure, something where they need him awake and they’re going to hurt him, the child life specialist comes in with dolls or toys and distracts him. It helps. Sheila just loved kids, so I can really see her doing that.”

  Sheila loved the job and loved living in Chicago. Her family noticed a growing maturity about her. She was living in housing provided by the hospital, making new friends, and was also spending time with Bud Man, her old friend the Budweiser employee from Iowa. He was then living in Chicago.