And the Ferdinand Community Service Award goes to …
Special from Ferdinand News
“You guys are always writing about the Ferdinand Cardinals,” notes Juliana Lindauer, her comment referring to the Ferdinand News.
“So the first thing I want to tell you is this. There was also the Ferdinand Pirates and Francis was the catcher. We got married in ’49 and he played before and after. They were coached by Jim Pund and their biggest rival was Mariah Hill. The Mariah Hill team was made up, I think, almost entirely of Boslers.”
After their third child was born, Juliana seldom attended the games because she had to chase them through a pasture laced with cow patties.
While playing for the Pirates was one detail of his storied life that Juliana wished to convey about her beloved late husband, Francis, she notes it is far more important for readers to know of his love for her and her for him. “I miss him.”
Francis passed away on Thursday, October 8, less than a month before he was to be honored with the Ferdinand Community Service Award, which was presented to his family Thursday night.
Juliana’s baseball tale started a two and a half hour conversation that never lagged. Joining Juliana were oldest son, Mike, and daughters, Joan Guillaume, Sue Brames and Janice Hochgesang. Missing were daughter Sharon Mehling, who was on her way home from a doctor’s appointment in Ohio, and son Phil, who was napping as he had to rise around 12:30 a.m. to start milking on the family dairy farm.
* * * * *
The Ferdinand Chamber of Commerce and town officials hosted the town’s biggest gala of the year Thursday night with honors going to Dave Fischer winning the Forest Park Alumni Award, speeches by no less a personage than Indiana’s 50th Governor, Mike Pence and finally, the presentation of Ferdinand highest honor by Town Council President Ken Sicard.
Sadly, Francis must be feted posthumously; however, 27 of his nearest and dearest, including wife, Juliana, all six children and their spouses and various grandchildren and their loved ones will be present to accept the award on his behalf.
One of the most important things to know about Francis — besides the fact he was a Ferdinand Pirate — was this: Francis Lindauer never said an unkind word about anyone.
He tried never to gossip about others. He could always be counted on to wear a broad smile, whether restoring a Kitten Steam Engine, working on the family farm, volunteering at the Dubois County Museum or educating fourth graders about farming in earlier centuries.
“Dad’s smile was contagious,” explains daughter Joan Guillaume, “and his eyes always twinkled.”
He even wore his trademark smile when hunting for rattlesnakes in Sweetwater, Texas.
What?
It’s true, all his children agree.
Francis and his cohorts, Jackson Meyer and Clete Lubbehusen, piled into a non-air-conditioned pickup one sweltering August day and drove to Texas, where they joined what has been billed as the world’s largest rattlesnake roundup.
An avid hunter, he didn’t stop with rattlesnakes. In 1962, Francis and his friend Leroy Haug gathered supplies for a trip to the Upper Peninsula in Michigan. They packed two hams, some bread, küchen and eggs, as well as an Army surplus tent into an International Scout. Each left home with a $100 bill.
When they arrived at their destination, the two were distressed to learn they would each have to pay $32 for an out-of-state hunting license, taking a big chunk of their vacation funds.
Still, they managed to shoot a bear. After gutting it out, they strapped it atop the truck roof, its massive head hanging over the windshield, and headed for home. The bear was frozen solid, but as they approached Indianapolis it began to rain and the bear started to thaw.
They made it back to Ferdinand around 4 a.m. Francis happened to be Ferdinand’s American Legion commander at the time and as such, was in possession of a key. Because the bear was thawing, they got the idea to stow it in a cooler at the Legion.
They propped the 400 lb. bear on beer cases, its mouth possibly (although no one can confirm) held open with sticks or pencils in what appeared to be a ferocious growl, so that the next morning when Jerry Durlauf arrived for work and opened the cooler, he was confronted with what looked to be a huge black snarling bear!
Both men still had money in their pockets, one returning with $14 and the other with $16.
Francis must have had a good time because that was not his last bear hunting trip. Over time, he shot six bears, six moose, and even harpooned a seal. He also hunted for more typical game such as deer. He describes his last big game hunt in a letter to his grandchildren, written on his 75th birthday in 2003, the contents of which can be found at the end of this article.
Francis was a dairy farmer, as was his father, Otto and grandfather, Henry. Born on a farm near St. Henry, the Lindauers moved to the current farm northeast of Ferdinand (on East 23rd a/k/athe Ferdinand Forest Road), when he was a lad.
One of his new neighbors was Juliana Weyer, who was sad her relatives had sold their farm because she would miss her good friend and cousin. Little did she know, the wandering boy wearing a big grin would be her life partner.
The two had been married 66 years on May 7 of this year.
In the beginning Francis palled around with Juliana’s brother, Ray Weyer, but that all changed after puberty struck.
Francis was named Dubois County Outstanding Young Farmer of the Year in 1956 by the Jasper and Huntingburg Jaycees. This was before Ferdinand had its own chapter. The award was presented by Louis Welch who was with the Dubois County Soil and Water Conservation Service. At the time Lindauer was on the Boy Scout committee (he laid all the blocks for the first clubhouse), a member of the American Legion firing squad, the Huntingburg Conservation Club and the Huntingburg VFW Post.
Francis was also instrumental in the advancement of Ferdinand through his membership with the Ferdinand Development Corporation.
The investment group built a medical clinic, then brought a doctor to town. They helped make Ferdinand’s first library a reality in 1965 and developed Ferdinand’s Industrial Park, among other accomplishments.
Both he and Juliana were honored with the Brute Award from the Catholic Diocese of Evansville on November 21, 1993, and at one time, Francis served as Ferdinand Township Trustee. He had to give that job up to accept a Ferdinand mail route, a job he held for 34 years. He took his lunch in a pail each day, always a thick bologna sandwich and a pickle with some kind of fruit for dessert. He followed the maxim— neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet would prevent him from finishing his rounds.
But his kids laugh, he also took a beater automobile and sometimes he’d have a flat tire or get stuck in mud or snow. One day he went through three cars in an effort to finish his route.
Francis retired from the Postal Service in 1983. In 1977, Francis became a dealer for SI feeder wagons. By 1989, he owned the largest unit sales dealership in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
For 26 years, the Lindauers invited fourth graders from Ferdinand Elementary, St. Anthony, Pine Ridge, Nancy Hanks, and occasionally Holy Family to visit the farm where he and like-minded friends would treat them to exhibitions using old time farm equipment and, because this was a dairy farm, an ice cream treat.
“When he welcomed them, Dad wanted them to visualize how it would have been 150 or175 years ago,” Mike explains, “to understand where our ancestors came from. They didn’t care how much money they had. It was about making sure their families were well fed, warm and dry. They cared about survival.”
Joan, his sister adds, “He really wanted to remember the traditional ways of doing things — the way it all started — he really wanted to teach the children about the history of farming and how food really got to the table.”
“I always told him he should have lived in the stone age,” Juliana quips.
Mike explains this educational experience actually started when Ferdinand Elementary educator Delores Lueken, then teaching third grade, asked Francis and Albert Hassfurther to bring some tools of the trade and speak to the students for Pioneer Days. They did so and presented each of the students with a small sack of corn meal. When she called the following year and asked him to bring a steam engine, he suggested it might be better to bring the students to the farm and the annual event grew from there. Switching to fourth graders made sense because that’s the year Indiana history is taught.
It was quite possibly due to his education of area youth and her support that Francis and Juliana Lindauer were named 2005 Grand Marshals of the Ferdinand Heimatfest Parade.
Francis and his family also staged old time farm shows for 14 years, averaging around 4,000 visitors annually who admired the working equipment, much from the previous century. However, insurance issues called a halt to the shows.
So where did the old equipment come from?
“Dad was interested in early tractors,” says Mike. “If it had rubber tires or cushioned seats it was too new.”
He had acquired a couple of pieces, but back in 1989 he traded for his first Kitten Steam Engine with Paul Stowfolz of Pennsylvania. Built in 1923 with serial number 214, the Kitten was delivered on the same day as the St. Anthony Quasquicentennial Parade.
Mike says they missed the parade for that reason.
That was the start of an avocation that would lead in many directions. Because of the Lindauer family’s efforts, the Dubois County Museum in Jasper features quite possibly the finest antique farm equipment display in the state, if not the nation, most of it donated and/or loaned by the family.
When he wasn’t working or hunting, Francis loved to walk the Back 40. He would check the trees and know instinctively if one was dying.
He always told his children he would provide the lumber for whatever they needed. Janice and her husband, Larry Hochgesang’s home is built from Lindauer farm lumber. So are Joan’s barn and chicken house and Sue’s barn. In fact all the Lindauer progeny can point to something that was built with timber from the farm.
Francis didn’t just watch a tree die, he replaced it. He researched the various species and determined what kind of tree to purchase. A couple years ago he contacted Stark Bros. Nursery and ordered a Butternut tree. When it didn’t go ahead, he contacted the nursery for a replacement. The woman at the other end said it would take 50-60 years for the tree to bear fruit (in this case nuts).
“Well I don’t care,” Francis told her. “If I die tomorrow I’d still plant a tree today.”
“I think you’re a farmer,” the woman at the nursery opined.
The family notes the second one died as well, so as a memorial to their father they will plant another Butternut tree, but in a different spot.
Toward the end of his life, when Parkinson’s, arterial fibrillation, heart disease and COPD slowed him down, Francis Lindauer still wanted to be outdoors watching the squirrels. “He was such a gogetter,” notes Joan. “But even at the end, when he could no longer use his hands or feet, he wanted to try.”
She continues, “A week before he died he told me, ‘I’ve got so many projects to do.’”
Daughter Sharon, who could not attend this interview, texted her thoughts: “I was always proud to say Francis Lindauer was my father.”
Francis Lindauer was buried on October 12, National Farmers Day, something that could not have been more fitting.
“I never heard him speak ill of anyone,” Joan says. “What better example for a family?
What better example of a citizen?
And what better person to receive the Ferdinand Community Service Award?[hr]
Francis’s letter to his grandchildren Jan. 19, 2003
I was born January 19, 1928 at St. Henry and we moved to a farm at Ferdinand when I was five years old.
Living on a farm we always had plenty of chores to do, like strawing the cows every evening, feeding the pigs and chickens. We did not have electricity in the country till I was 11 years old so we had to do our homework in the kitchen by the light of a coal oil or kerosene lamp and it was hard to see.
When we worked and milked in the barn we used a kerosene lantern for light. I walked to a one room country school about two miles from home every day.
After about the 4th grade I had the job to start the fire in our school every morning when we needed to have it warm. We had one big pot belly stove in the middle of the classroom with desks all around and the teacher and her desk were in the front on a low platform.
All eight grades were in one room and the total children were usually about 40 kids.
Our school was close to a woods and a lot of times we played in the woods, climbing trees and hiding in the brush. Our teacher did not like this but we did. We also played games like ball, marbles, dare base and piggy in the hole.
For starting the fire in the stove and getting the wood and coal in from the wood shed my teacher gave me a silver dollar at Christmas and at the end of the year. This was a lot of money and I still have them [the coins] today.
I cannot say any special day that I met my girlfriend Juliana which is your grandma now, since we were neighbors all our life and she also went to the same country school so I always knew her.
In 1945, I joined the Navy during World War II and got out in 1946 after the war was over. The ship that I was on was the USS Suisun AVP-53, which was a sea plane tender and repair ship.
We got married in 1949 and then along with working on the farm with my father.
I was a rural mail carrier out of the Ferdinand Post Office for 34 years.
I have always enjoyed farming, watching crops grow, harvesting and being around livestock and working outdoors. I always loved the outdoors and did a lot of hunting and fishing when I was younger. I hunted big game in a lot of states out west and in all of the provinces of Canada except Newfoundland and the Yukon.
My last hunt was in 1985 in the Northwest Territories, hunting for caribou and seal and I got one of each. We hunted about 400 miles SE of the magnetic North Pole. About 20 years ago I started collecting and restoring old tractors and steam engines. Now we have about 20 of these along with helping some on the farm. I keep busy.
Today is my birthday and I am 75 years old.
Grandpa
