Lois Marie Templer was the first of three children (one of whom died in infancy) born to Wayne and Susan Davis Templer. She grew up in Elmira, NY, earned a degree in practical nursing from the Robert Packer Nursing College, Sayre, Pa., in 1915, and married Francis Rappleye "Rap" Baker on February 1, 1917. Gregarious, well-read, witty, and mercurial, she was a gifted painter and poet who yearned for big city life and the company of artists and intellectuals. Family legend has it that she corresponded with Edna St. Vincent Millay and hobnobbed with the watercolor artist Lars Hoftrop, among others.
From the time she was a child, Lois filled notebooks with poetry, much of it sentimental posey that displays her ongoing struggles with melancholy; but there are verses that contain moments of luminous originality:
Give me a little home. The smallest places
are roomiest, when peaceful joy is quiet.
The tiniest houses frame the happiest faces.
Small, crowded yards hold shady trees and rest.
And from the little homes shall troop the great
To dance and write, and sing,
and rule.
(-c. Lois Templer Baker @1950
all rights reserved)
She was occasionally published in literary magazines of the day and received fan mail from readers. One poem, "My Treasures," a discontented mother's apology to her children, appeared in the well-known Pathfinder Quarterly and reprinted in several other poetry venues. Where her talent really burst free, however, was in humor --she had a real flair for humorous prose and rhyme, as in her indignant protest when the family cottage outhouse was modernized with an actual toilet seat affixed to the original rough-wood hole. Something of a peristalsic Luddite, Lois strongly objected to this attempt at modernization. Her (pleasantly scatological) 3-stanza poem was still nailed inside the privy when it was demolished in favor of indoor plumbing in the 1940s, and includes the following complaint:
A new seat replaces the old one we knew.
A beautiful picture commands you to view--
The piano top finish that lifts its proud head.
But whenever I use it --my urge just goes dead.
(-c. Lois Templer Baker, 1928, all rights reserved)
Poetry also helped maintain harmony in her uneasy and frequently contentious marriage. Her children vividly recalled scenes of volatile argument, hurtful words and objects thrown; but in a day or two Lois would write a few waggish verses of apology (without letting her husband off the hook either, one can't help but notice) and all would be well again, as in:
The grocery bill, oh! the grocery bill!
The very thought of it makes me ill.
How much this and how much that
And can I squeeze out a new fall hat
By cutting the grocery bill.
The first of each month the fireworks fly!
Everyone has blood in their eyes!
Was it cost of meat or too much fruit?
And your husband seems an awful Brute
when he rails at the grocery bill.
When I die and in Heaven I land,
Please God, don't mention the price of ham!
Just let me carry my harp around
and not care how much butter is a damn pound,
and to Hell! with the grocery bill.
(-c. Lois Templer Baker 1932, all rights reserved)
Her most difficult years were apparently right after the birth of her third child in 1927, when Lois briefly threatened to leave (and packed up to do so) for New York City and her dream of a world of art and radical thinkers. In the end, she stayed with her family, but she was never really happy and eventually gave up writing and painting altogether. Still, she could be warm and loving, especially toward her grandchildren, who for some reason all called her "Butch." True to her nature, every one of the many apartments and rental houses Lois and Rap occupied, no matter how small, was always stuffed with books, and Lois was a subscriber to the New Yorker from its first issue on. Aside from Miss Millay, Lois's favorite literary figures included Dorothy Parker, Edith Wharton, and the humorists James Thurber and Robert Benchley, all of whom she could quote at length. She was also a wonderful though colorfully messy cook, and had the unique habit of wandering around the house on hot summer days wearing nothing but shoes and a hat.
Lois and Rap's last of many moves took them into the countryside south of Elmira in 1948, to the big old farmhouse on 10 acres in Webbs Mills, NY, that would stay in the family for more than 30 years. It fulfilled Rap's gentleman-farmer dreams (he had a special fondness for dangerous mowing machines), but for Lois the relative isolation was burdensome and fed into her bouts with depression, so her daughter Liz Mullin and family spent more and more time with her, and eventually moved in. This is where theSearcher grew up, wandering the bucolic fields and creeks and woods with a freedom American children may never know again.
Moreover theSearcher very fondly remembers weekly Sunday brunchfests-in-bed with her grandmother Lois, each of us bundled in quilted bedjackets and jammies, books and newspapers and five Siamese cats piled all over the coverlet, a box of peppermint bon-bons on the nightstand for me and a few sample-sized bottles of gin tucked under the pillows for her, reading aloud to one another, mediating cat squabbles, solving the Sunday puzzles, reciting poetry and playing word games -- and sometimes, Lois would ask theSearcher to write her a story. She understood, and encouraged, that which she had given up for herself. Even now, almost six decades after her death in 1956, she remains an iconic figure in the memories of her grandchildren.
Cause of death, discovered in autopsy: Lupus erythemotosis, leading to kidney failure.
______________________
Bio by theSearcher
c.all rights reserved
From the time she was a child, Lois filled notebooks with poetry, much of it sentimental posey that displays her ongoing struggles with melancholy; but there are verses that contain moments of luminous originality:
Give me a little home. The smallest places
are roomiest, when peaceful joy is quiet.
The tiniest houses frame the happiest faces.
Small, crowded yards hold shady trees and rest.
And from the little homes shall troop the great
To dance and write, and sing,
and rule.
(-c. Lois Templer Baker @1950
all rights reserved)
She was occasionally published in literary magazines of the day and received fan mail from readers. One poem, "My Treasures," a discontented mother's apology to her children, appeared in the well-known Pathfinder Quarterly and reprinted in several other poetry venues. Where her talent really burst free, however, was in humor --she had a real flair for humorous prose and rhyme, as in her indignant protest when the family cottage outhouse was modernized with an actual toilet seat affixed to the original rough-wood hole. Something of a peristalsic Luddite, Lois strongly objected to this attempt at modernization. Her (pleasantly scatological) 3-stanza poem was still nailed inside the privy when it was demolished in favor of indoor plumbing in the 1940s, and includes the following complaint:
A new seat replaces the old one we knew.
A beautiful picture commands you to view--
The piano top finish that lifts its proud head.
But whenever I use it --my urge just goes dead.
(-c. Lois Templer Baker, 1928, all rights reserved)
Poetry also helped maintain harmony in her uneasy and frequently contentious marriage. Her children vividly recalled scenes of volatile argument, hurtful words and objects thrown; but in a day or two Lois would write a few waggish verses of apology (without letting her husband off the hook either, one can't help but notice) and all would be well again, as in:
The grocery bill, oh! the grocery bill!
The very thought of it makes me ill.
How much this and how much that
And can I squeeze out a new fall hat
By cutting the grocery bill.
The first of each month the fireworks fly!
Everyone has blood in their eyes!
Was it cost of meat or too much fruit?
And your husband seems an awful Brute
when he rails at the grocery bill.
When I die and in Heaven I land,
Please God, don't mention the price of ham!
Just let me carry my harp around
and not care how much butter is a damn pound,
and to Hell! with the grocery bill.
(-c. Lois Templer Baker 1932, all rights reserved)
Her most difficult years were apparently right after the birth of her third child in 1927, when Lois briefly threatened to leave (and packed up to do so) for New York City and her dream of a world of art and radical thinkers. In the end, she stayed with her family, but she was never really happy and eventually gave up writing and painting altogether. Still, she could be warm and loving, especially toward her grandchildren, who for some reason all called her "Butch." True to her nature, every one of the many apartments and rental houses Lois and Rap occupied, no matter how small, was always stuffed with books, and Lois was a subscriber to the New Yorker from its first issue on. Aside from Miss Millay, Lois's favorite literary figures included Dorothy Parker, Edith Wharton, and the humorists James Thurber and Robert Benchley, all of whom she could quote at length. She was also a wonderful though colorfully messy cook, and had the unique habit of wandering around the house on hot summer days wearing nothing but shoes and a hat.
Lois and Rap's last of many moves took them into the countryside south of Elmira in 1948, to the big old farmhouse on 10 acres in Webbs Mills, NY, that would stay in the family for more than 30 years. It fulfilled Rap's gentleman-farmer dreams (he had a special fondness for dangerous mowing machines), but for Lois the relative isolation was burdensome and fed into her bouts with depression, so her daughter Liz Mullin and family spent more and more time with her, and eventually moved in. This is where theSearcher grew up, wandering the bucolic fields and creeks and woods with a freedom American children may never know again.
Moreover theSearcher very fondly remembers weekly Sunday brunchfests-in-bed with her grandmother Lois, each of us bundled in quilted bedjackets and jammies, books and newspapers and five Siamese cats piled all over the coverlet, a box of peppermint bon-bons on the nightstand for me and a few sample-sized bottles of gin tucked under the pillows for her, reading aloud to one another, mediating cat squabbles, solving the Sunday puzzles, reciting poetry and playing word games -- and sometimes, Lois would ask theSearcher to write her a story. She understood, and encouraged, that which she had given up for herself. Even now, almost six decades after her death in 1956, she remains an iconic figure in the memories of her grandchildren.
Cause of death, discovered in autopsy: Lupus erythemotosis, leading to kidney failure.
______________________
Bio by theSearcher
c.all rights reserved
Lois Marie Templer was the first of three children (one of whom died in infancy) born to Wayne and Susan Davis Templer. She grew up in Elmira, NY, earned a degree in practical nursing from the Robert Packer Nursing College, Sayre, Pa., in 1915, and married Francis Rappleye "Rap" Baker on February 1, 1917. Gregarious, well-read, witty, and mercurial, she was a gifted painter and poet who yearned for big city life and the company of artists and intellectuals. Family legend has it that she corresponded with Edna St. Vincent Millay and hobnobbed with the watercolor artist Lars Hoftrop, among others.
From the time she was a child, Lois filled notebooks with poetry, much of it sentimental posey that displays her ongoing struggles with melancholy; but there are verses that contain moments of luminous originality:
Give me a little home. The smallest places
are roomiest, when peaceful joy is quiet.
The tiniest houses frame the happiest faces.
Small, crowded yards hold shady trees and rest.
And from the little homes shall troop the great
To dance and write, and sing,
and rule.
(-c. Lois Templer Baker @1950
all rights reserved)
She was occasionally published in literary magazines of the day and received fan mail from readers. One poem, "My Treasures," a discontented mother's apology to her children, appeared in the well-known Pathfinder Quarterly and reprinted in several other poetry venues. Where her talent really burst free, however, was in humor --she had a real flair for humorous prose and rhyme, as in her indignant protest when the family cottage outhouse was modernized with an actual toilet seat affixed to the original rough-wood hole. Something of a peristalsic Luddite, Lois strongly objected to this attempt at modernization. Her (pleasantly scatological) 3-stanza poem was still nailed inside the privy when it was demolished in favor of indoor plumbing in the 1940s, and includes the following complaint:
A new seat replaces the old one we knew.
A beautiful picture commands you to view--
The piano top finish that lifts its proud head.
But whenever I use it --my urge just goes dead.
(-c. Lois Templer Baker, 1928, all rights reserved)
Poetry also helped maintain harmony in her uneasy and frequently contentious marriage. Her children vividly recalled scenes of volatile argument, hurtful words and objects thrown; but in a day or two Lois would write a few waggish verses of apology (without letting her husband off the hook either, one can't help but notice) and all would be well again, as in:
The grocery bill, oh! the grocery bill!
The very thought of it makes me ill.
How much this and how much that
And can I squeeze out a new fall hat
By cutting the grocery bill.
The first of each month the fireworks fly!
Everyone has blood in their eyes!
Was it cost of meat or too much fruit?
And your husband seems an awful Brute
when he rails at the grocery bill.
When I die and in Heaven I land,
Please God, don't mention the price of ham!
Just let me carry my harp around
and not care how much butter is a damn pound,
and to Hell! with the grocery bill.
(-c. Lois Templer Baker 1932, all rights reserved)
Her most difficult years were apparently right after the birth of her third child in 1927, when Lois briefly threatened to leave (and packed up to do so) for New York City and her dream of a world of art and radical thinkers. In the end, she stayed with her family, but she was never really happy and eventually gave up writing and painting altogether. Still, she could be warm and loving, especially toward her grandchildren, who for some reason all called her "Butch." True to her nature, every one of the many apartments and rental houses Lois and Rap occupied, no matter how small, was always stuffed with books, and Lois was a subscriber to the New Yorker from its first issue on. Aside from Miss Millay, Lois's favorite literary figures included Dorothy Parker, Edith Wharton, and the humorists James Thurber and Robert Benchley, all of whom she could quote at length. She was also a wonderful though colorfully messy cook, and had the unique habit of wandering around the house on hot summer days wearing nothing but shoes and a hat.
Lois and Rap's last of many moves took them into the countryside south of Elmira in 1948, to the big old farmhouse on 10 acres in Webbs Mills, NY, that would stay in the family for more than 30 years. It fulfilled Rap's gentleman-farmer dreams (he had a special fondness for dangerous mowing machines), but for Lois the relative isolation was burdensome and fed into her bouts with depression, so her daughter Liz Mullin and family spent more and more time with her, and eventually moved in. This is where theSearcher grew up, wandering the bucolic fields and creeks and woods with a freedom American children may never know again.
Moreover theSearcher very fondly remembers weekly Sunday brunchfests-in-bed with her grandmother Lois, each of us bundled in quilted bedjackets and jammies, books and newspapers and five Siamese cats piled all over the coverlet, a box of peppermint bon-bons on the nightstand for me and a few sample-sized bottles of gin tucked under the pillows for her, reading aloud to one another, mediating cat squabbles, solving the Sunday puzzles, reciting poetry and playing word games -- and sometimes, Lois would ask theSearcher to write her a story. She understood, and encouraged, that which she had given up for herself. Even now, almost six decades after her death in 1956, she remains an iconic figure in the memories of her grandchildren.
Cause of death, discovered in autopsy: Lupus erythemotosis, leading to kidney failure.
______________________
Bio by theSearcher
c.all rights reserved
From the time she was a child, Lois filled notebooks with poetry, much of it sentimental posey that displays her ongoing struggles with melancholy; but there are verses that contain moments of luminous originality:
Give me a little home. The smallest places
are roomiest, when peaceful joy is quiet.
The tiniest houses frame the happiest faces.
Small, crowded yards hold shady trees and rest.
And from the little homes shall troop the great
To dance and write, and sing,
and rule.
(-c. Lois Templer Baker @1950
all rights reserved)
She was occasionally published in literary magazines of the day and received fan mail from readers. One poem, "My Treasures," a discontented mother's apology to her children, appeared in the well-known Pathfinder Quarterly and reprinted in several other poetry venues. Where her talent really burst free, however, was in humor --she had a real flair for humorous prose and rhyme, as in her indignant protest when the family cottage outhouse was modernized with an actual toilet seat affixed to the original rough-wood hole. Something of a peristalsic Luddite, Lois strongly objected to this attempt at modernization. Her (pleasantly scatological) 3-stanza poem was still nailed inside the privy when it was demolished in favor of indoor plumbing in the 1940s, and includes the following complaint:
A new seat replaces the old one we knew.
A beautiful picture commands you to view--
The piano top finish that lifts its proud head.
But whenever I use it --my urge just goes dead.
(-c. Lois Templer Baker, 1928, all rights reserved)
Poetry also helped maintain harmony in her uneasy and frequently contentious marriage. Her children vividly recalled scenes of volatile argument, hurtful words and objects thrown; but in a day or two Lois would write a few waggish verses of apology (without letting her husband off the hook either, one can't help but notice) and all would be well again, as in:
The grocery bill, oh! the grocery bill!
The very thought of it makes me ill.
How much this and how much that
And can I squeeze out a new fall hat
By cutting the grocery bill.
The first of each month the fireworks fly!
Everyone has blood in their eyes!
Was it cost of meat or too much fruit?
And your husband seems an awful Brute
when he rails at the grocery bill.
When I die and in Heaven I land,
Please God, don't mention the price of ham!
Just let me carry my harp around
and not care how much butter is a damn pound,
and to Hell! with the grocery bill.
(-c. Lois Templer Baker 1932, all rights reserved)
Her most difficult years were apparently right after the birth of her third child in 1927, when Lois briefly threatened to leave (and packed up to do so) for New York City and her dream of a world of art and radical thinkers. In the end, she stayed with her family, but she was never really happy and eventually gave up writing and painting altogether. Still, she could be warm and loving, especially toward her grandchildren, who for some reason all called her "Butch." True to her nature, every one of the many apartments and rental houses Lois and Rap occupied, no matter how small, was always stuffed with books, and Lois was a subscriber to the New Yorker from its first issue on. Aside from Miss Millay, Lois's favorite literary figures included Dorothy Parker, Edith Wharton, and the humorists James Thurber and Robert Benchley, all of whom she could quote at length. She was also a wonderful though colorfully messy cook, and had the unique habit of wandering around the house on hot summer days wearing nothing but shoes and a hat.
Lois and Rap's last of many moves took them into the countryside south of Elmira in 1948, to the big old farmhouse on 10 acres in Webbs Mills, NY, that would stay in the family for more than 30 years. It fulfilled Rap's gentleman-farmer dreams (he had a special fondness for dangerous mowing machines), but for Lois the relative isolation was burdensome and fed into her bouts with depression, so her daughter Liz Mullin and family spent more and more time with her, and eventually moved in. This is where theSearcher grew up, wandering the bucolic fields and creeks and woods with a freedom American children may never know again.
Moreover theSearcher very fondly remembers weekly Sunday brunchfests-in-bed with her grandmother Lois, each of us bundled in quilted bedjackets and jammies, books and newspapers and five Siamese cats piled all over the coverlet, a box of peppermint bon-bons on the nightstand for me and a few sample-sized bottles of gin tucked under the pillows for her, reading aloud to one another, mediating cat squabbles, solving the Sunday puzzles, reciting poetry and playing word games -- and sometimes, Lois would ask theSearcher to write her a story. She understood, and encouraged, that which she had given up for herself. Even now, almost six decades after her death in 1956, she remains an iconic figure in the memories of her grandchildren.
Cause of death, discovered in autopsy: Lupus erythemotosis, leading to kidney failure.
______________________
Bio by theSearcher
c.all rights reserved
