Henry, Chester, Grace       Rev. A. D. Stowe           Brother Fritz and Grace


       Without the help of my saintly aunt, my mother would not have survived the huge burden of motherhood--five babies in seven years. Our beloved Aunt Grace Stowe Fish gave up exciting and glamorous “high society” life in Racine, Wisconsin, to rescue her little sister Ruth Stowe Blodgett in Northfield, Minnesota where I spent the first 22 years of my life.

      These are the only photos I have of this remarkable woman. On the left is Henry Robert Hagen, husband of my oldest sister, Elaine. Henry was a two-fisted, rugged, St. Olaf college grad and football player who aspired to be a resort proprietor on Gunderson Lake, 28 miles north of Deer River, Minnesota. My father, Northfield’s Municipal Court Judge A. B. “Buzz” Blodgett staked them to this failed enterprise. Henry and Elaine slaved to build a rough-it fishing and hunting facility, but the fishers and hunters never showed up.

     The dog is Chester, a Chesapeake Bay retriever, who recovered from a near fatal collision with a car and a stupid encounter with a porcupine. Grace is dressed as she always dressed in modest fashion. Her arm around Chester’s neck is a graphic demonstration of her affectionate relationship with dogs and children. Diminutive and trim, she never uttered a cross word in all the years I knew her.

     The center photo is her father, our grandfather, the Reverend Andrew David Stowe, Episcopal minister and publishers of Stowe’s Clerical Directory of the Episcopal Church of the United States. To his grandchildren he was God. He died in 1926 when I was five, so my memories of him are blurred, but his distinguished mustache, goatee and fringe of hair cast a holy halo effect on my childish mind.

     And here is Saint Grace caring for my 18-month-old little brother Fritz while my mother--also tiny and slim--is probably in the basement of 606 East Fourth Street, doing her daily laundry chores between meal preparations. In the 17 years I knew my father, I never observed him lift a finger to help my mother. That was the culture of the times. Housework was for women. No real man would be seen dead pushing a carpet sweeper across a dusty rug.

      Grace succeeded her father as publisher and editor of Stowe’s Clerical Directory when he died. To do so she had to find living quarters and workspace away from our crowded stucco house. Every three years this little lady constructed a “who’s who” of Episcopalian ministers by typing and pasting up biographic sketches that filled more than 300 pages. After preparing these résumés she mailed them back for proofreading with stamped addressed envelopes. If necessary, she mailed out second and third reminders. I helped her pack hundreds of directories in cardboard boxes for shipment to the ministers who purchased the book.

      When she could no longer live alone, she traded publication rights to the directory for life care in a church-owned St. Paul retirement facility.

      Her rented quarters in Northfield were in a yellow frame house on Union Street between Fourth and Fifth--half way through my 125-customer newspaper route. I was eleven. I stopped to visit her every weekday. She always greeted me with a hug, a kiss, several cookies and a glass of cold milk. To the five Blodgett kids, amazing Aunt Grace was a second mother.