Born To Be a Newspaper Man

by Martin J. McGowan Jr.

My Arrival

My birth on Oct. 28, 1920, was announced in my father's newspaper, the Appleton (Minn.) Press. A sister was born to my parents a year before I was born. She died at birth and was given the name Jane.

Just 20 months after I was born my mother died. She was a registered nurse at Swedish hospital in Minneapolis and contracted tuberculosis from a patient. In those days there was no drug available for treatment. The only thing that could be done was to send the patient to a sanitarium, often in the fresh air in northern Minnesota

For many years I thought she was sent to a facility in Pine River. When I moved to that area I decided to check with the death records for Cass county in Walker to learn what the records said about her death. After a search that produced nothing, a helpful county official said maybe she died at Pine City in Pine county. So I sent the requisite fee to the keeper of records in Pine county and received a copy of my mother's death certificate.

With the letter and fee, I asked the county official if there had been a sanitarium near Pine City years ago that treated tubercular patients. This official responded that indeed there had been a sanitarium there and it is now used for a nursing home. It is also worth noting that I was rather frail as a child and that every time I took a TB test it always came out positive. From that it was assumed I contracted a bit of the TB from my mother but it must have been a mild case for I survived.

After the death of my mother my care was taken over by my grandmother, Sarah Breen McGowan, my father's mother. Our household was made up of my father, his mother and sister, Gertrude McGowan, and me. We lived in a big house on the main street in Appleton a block and a half south of the city hall in the middle of town. This house was known as the McElligott house. Many years later this same house played a large part in my life.

My father had many tragedies in his life. When he was 12 years old his father died. As the oldest son in the family he had to drop out of the ninth grade in school and go to work to help support the family. My grandmother didn't approve of my father's marriage-or any of her son's marriages, for that matter. Then his first child died. After I came along his wife died soon after. It was not until his second marriage when I was 13 that some of the breaks in life came his way.

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