Kallus, Emilie L., was Aunt Millie to her niece and five nephews, including me. She was the fourth child, third daughter, born to Elizabeth (Wiesner) Kallus and her 1890 immigrant husband, Frank J. Kallus, on August 6, 1900 at Ellinger, Texas and died on January 2, 1938 at La Grange. Losing her mother at nine months, an older first cousin, Mary Knezek, immigrated from Europe to care for her and the other three, seeing them to adulthood and surviving two.
Aunt Millie graduated from La Grange High
School in 1918, entered Providence Sanitarium in Waco in 1921 and graduated as a registered nurse in 1924. Mostly, she was a private nurse but spent some time caring for tuberculosis patients in Colorado early in her career. Eventually she succumbed to tuberculosis when I was a senior in high school. Her equanimity in approaching her death made the passage from "Thanatopsis" I had recently memorized as a senior English requirement so full of meaning that I have never forgotten it:
"So live that when thy summons
comes to join.
The innumerable caravan, which moves
to that mysterious realm, where each
shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
'Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at
night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained
and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy
grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his
couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant
dreams."
William Cullen Bryant
Most importantly she bequeathed her estate to help her niece, and nephews to pursue their lifes' callings. This bequest administered by her father (Grandpa Kallus) helped most of them to pursue their educations. Her niece (my sister) became a nurse, one nephew (my brother) a farmer, and the others (my cousins) a science teacher, an engineer, a medical doctor and me, a university professor. Without her short life and final thoughtfulness I may not have had this opportunity to honor her in this special way.
John Pesek 4/95 |
