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Millie's 19 kids made Mother's Day special
By Carole Cloudwalker
This document was published online on Wednesday, May 07, 2008
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| The Krenning family (about 1961) included (front, from left, using current last names if not Krenning and ages at the time) Sally Henderson, 11, Debbie Gibson, 9, Doug, 8, and Steve,10, (second row) photo of Mike (who died at about age 2), Terry, 15 (now deceased), Jack, 13, mother Millie Krenning, 49, Sheila Wolf, 3, father Carl Krenning, 51, Judie Howe, 12, Ronnie,14, (third row) Karen Gimmeson,16, Betty Singley, 29, Mary Jane Saunders, 24, Vickie Ross,19, Jerry, 23, Carl, Jr., 18, Pat, 21, Shirley Hodson, 26 and Sandie Jones, 20. (Courtesy photo) |
Mother's Day 2008 will not pass without at least 17 people remembering the petite Cody woman who guided them through childhood and steered them toward happy, productive lives.
She was known to the community as Amelia “Millie” Krenning, who died Dec. 9, 2007, at age 93.
To her 19 children, she was known simply as “Momma.”
Several women of the Krenning family gathered recently to reflect on their mother and what she meant to them as they grew up, first in Colorado, then in Worland and Burlington, and later on Paul Stock's ranch north of Cody, which became known as “the Krenning place.”
That was because there were enough Krennings living there to populate a small town. The children's father worked as farm foreman.
The property, off County Road 2AB, now is owned by Reuben Bullock. When the Krennings lived there it produced hay and grain for use as livestock feed.
When the family patriarch, Carl Krenning, applied for the Cody ranch job, he whitewashed the facts a little to Paul Stock, saying he had only 13 children. He feared the true number might lose him an employment opportunity.
But he was known as a good farmer, and Stock hired him.
Stock soon counted up the kids. A generous employer, the boss provided meat and housing for the burgeoning brood of Krennings. In addition, Stock and his wife treated Carl and Millie to regular dinners at Cassie's, giving them a break from parenting duties for a few hours of socializing, the girls recalled.
Cleanliness reigns
As they related incidents from their childhood, the girls also revealed images of the life of a woman who was steadfast in her beliefs, insistent on cleanliness, and determined that her children always would wear clean, pressed clothes and polished shoes.
Shirley Hodson, one of the older Krenning girls, remembers that her younger siblings wore white, high-topped leather shoes until they were about 8, as was the style.
“Mom insisted they had to be whitened and polished every night, and the shoelaces had to be washed,” Hodson said. All the shoes then were lined up near the door, ready for the next day's use. That could total 38 shoes.
Pat Krenning, also among the older girls, said if guests stopped by in the evening, “they couldn't believe how many shoes there were” lining the wall, both the white high-tops of the younger children and the saddle oxfords of the older ones.
Hodson remembered the girls all wore clean dresses to school each day.
“Momma would stay up until 2 a.m. to make sure all the dresses were ironed,” she said.
Though the girls all wore hand-me-downs as well as occasional new clothes, their mother took such good care of the garments that no one suspected they were not new, except their former owners.
“And when the boys started wearing jeans, they all looked the same (size), so Momma would write the owners' names in ink inside the pockets - that way she could tell which boy belonged to which jeans,” Pat added.
The Bunkhouse
When the family moved to the Stock ranch, the two-bedroom house provided for the manager was not large enough for all the Krennings. They were given the use of a second dwelling on the property, which they called “the Bunkhouse.”
It was a three-bedroom home where most of the children slept, sharing both bedrooms and beds.
Though the homes Stock provided for the Krennings were possibly the finest they had lived in up to that point, their mother favored one room above all others, the girls remembered.
“She was most impressed with the laundry room - she loved it,” Shirley said.
Possibly that was because until making the move to Cody, Millie had only a wringer washer and a clothesline to use in keeping her family spotless, which she insisted on doing.
And Stock insisted with equal vigor that Millie should have a new washer and dryer to replace the wringer machine.
Love and guidance
While being the mother of 19 children surely meant much work, the family remembers how strongly their parents loved them, and what good guidance they were given as they grew up.
“We never sat down and decided to have 19 children - but we never decided not to, either,” Shirley remembered her mother saying once, by way of explanation for her large family.
“We were rich, in our eyes,” Sandie added. “We were not deprived.”
Eleven Krenning children were born at home and eight were born in hospitals, the girls said. The home births were attended by physicians, who in those days made house calls.
Millie Krenning instilled strong religious values in her children, and they enjoyed attending Sunday School and church.
When the family still lived in Burlington, daughter Sandie Jones remembers their mother “always sent us to Sunday School and church with money (for the collection plate) tied tightly in a white handkerchief so we wouldn't lose it.
“After church, we would go to the Rexall drug store and get a soda for 10 cents, and then we'd go to the movies for 25 cents,” Sandie added.
“Momma always said we were all going to graduate from high school and all going to get baptized,” Shirley added.
Millie had a strong love of cleanliness and taught her girls to scrub floors on their hands and knees, wash windows inside and out often, and abhor dust.
“We didn't wear things out from use, we wore them out from cleaning,” Pat said.
Still no dust
Sandie remembers that once after her son, Millie's grandson, enlisted in the Marines, he came to visit his grandmother while wearing his dress blues, complete with white gloves.
‘“I'm going to find some dust in Grandma's house,” he told his mother with a devilish grin.
But even running his white-gloved fingers over the sill above a door, there was no dust to be found.
“Mom said, ‘I told you so,'” Sandie remembers her mother saying about the incident.
Good and bad memories
Millie Krenning knew happiness from raising her children, but there were terrible times, also. She lost a two-year-old son to illness, and later lost an adult child who died in an accident.
In 1963 she was widowed, losing “the love of her life,” as her daughters said, with 13 of her children still living at home.
Pat remembered her father telling Millie, “When we're married 50 years, we're going to go to California.”
But they didn't make it. They were only married 32 years when he died.”
Because no car could contain all the Krennings, trips were infrequent. So when the older girls were working and had some disposable income, they decided to treat their mother to a trip to Hawaii for her 75th birthday.
The group was so large that “everybody asked if we were the Mary Kay ladies,” Pat said.
“Our house in town (near the east end of Stampede Avenue, where Millie moved after her husband's death) was never meant to hold 19 children,” Shirley said.
“But it was big enough to hold the memories, mementoes and warmth of a woman who loved many people.”
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