Welcome to
Elizabeth Soderholm's Life Story

My maternal grandparents came from Luxembourg. They arrived in this country with nothing in the 1800s. My grandfather, Jean Pierre (John Peter) Clemes, arrived in 1894 as a farmer bound for Bellevue, Iowa who stayed in Chicago. My grandmother, Marie Witry, arrived in 1898 as an indentured servant. They met in Chicago and got married in 1902 when my mother was on the way. They lived at 5116 Bishop St. on the south side of Chicago near the stockyards. Eventually they went into business, opening a saloon on the south side of Chicago near the Bridgeport neighborhood (5700 S. Ashland Ave.). They lived above the saloon. They served lunches over the counter. They made a business of that until Prohibition. Then they sold that business and bought a large apartment building on the south side (7000 Green St.) and became property managers. The first photo at the end of this chapter is of the Clemes family: John Peter, Marie and their three children, sons Will and John Peter Jr. and daughter Helen. The second photo is of my parents, Eli and Helen Cartwright.

The Cartwrights were born and lived on the south side of Chicago in Bridgeport. My grandfather Edward Alexander Cartwright worked in trucking as well as house painting. My grandmother, Annie Fitzgibbons, grew up on the south side of Chicago. I never knew her family. I remember her telling me about how she could see the Chicago Fire of 1871, the sky was lit up. Annie would make codfish suppers for us on occasion, made from a box of dried cod. They were already old when we were growing up so we didn't have a lot of interaction. In his later years, during the 1930s, my grandfather would come down to my father's moving business and would tend the gas pumps connected with the business. He would bring his sandwich from home wrapped in wax paper tied up with string in a brown bag. I remember him saving the waxed paper, string and bag to take home for the next day's lunch.

My father came into the saloon for lunch. That's how he met my mother. My mother went to secretarial school and got a job in the secretarial pool at Marshall Field's, a Chicago department store. My father would drive her to work at Marshall Field's downtown in a side car on his motorcycle. They were married in 1925. My sister Mary Jane was born in 1926. My father's business began to grow and he built a two-story warehouse at 2218 West 69th Street. I was born in 1928. We lived in an apartment in the Clemes' 18-unit apartment building at 843 70th St.. We lived there until I was five. By that time, my grandparents were pressed to make payments on their building and could no longer afford to subsidize my parents' apartment. That is what caused us to move out of the apartment building and into a small apartment my father carved out of the warehouse. My father was upset and had to find a place for his family. Those years, 1933-34, were very hard for everybody, including my parents. My parents valued hard work, trying to provide a home and family life for their two girls. My father was grateful to receive his bonus from his World War I service; he only had $8 in his pocket at the time. I remember driving up and down the street with my father during the Depression looking for Apartment for Rent signs because that was a signal that someone was going to move out and had to do something with their furniture, such as moving and storing it. My father was always looking for business. He had a truck; he wanted to use it. My father's family lived close by. His brothers were also in the hauling business, in ice and coal.

My mother was a hard worker. She worked in my father's business, answering the phones, along with doing the cooking and cleaning for her family. She was very strong-willed, while my father was very gentle spoken and easy going. He would be the one to calm down my mother. "Now, Helen...," he would say. He had a good sense of humor, was very friendly, always looking for ways to grow the business. My father was a big Chicago Tribune reader. Every night he would get the paper from 63rd and Western and come back to the warehouse and sit down and read the paper for a couple hours. That was his recreation.

My mother's family was Roman Catholic and we were raised Catholic. (I am not sure about my father's religion; he never went to church.) First Communion and Confirmations were important. My sister Mary Jane and I received the sacraments together because it was easier on my mother to have us attend events together and Mary Jane could look out for me.

My father had the greatest influence on me. He was creative and showed initiative in starting his own business. He was independent and that influenced me in trying to do things for myself as much as possible. He was a good worker and that taught me to follow-through on what needed to be done. He was also a planner. He was a conservative Republican who believed in the power of business. He was a practical man, not showy. He was very friendly. He encouraged us. He had a good sense of humor. "How are you today? Oh, so-so like the tailor." He cared about his family, including his parents and his sisters.

My earliest memories are of being in the apartment in my grandmother's building. It was a one-bedroom apartment with one bathroom, a small kitchen and a dining room and a living room. My father wasn't there much during the day because he was trying to earn a living. I was at home with my mother and my sister Mary Jane, who was 18 months older than me. I remember sleeping in the Murphy bed with Mary Jane in the living room. I remember one Christmas morning being in the Murphy bed beside the Christmas tree and we were so eager for Christmas that we nearly pulled the tree down on top of us. Another Christmas memory is of Santa Claus coming down the street. We were looking out the window of our first floor, we opened the window and Santa stopped to talk to us, shake our hands, and wish us a Merry Christmas. That cemented our belief in Santa Claus because we saw him! I also remember taking part in a day care program that was held in a nearby church.

My mother took me out in a buggy in the yard of the apartment building. Some neighbors looked at me and saw that my head was to one side and I couldn't focus. So they said to my mother, "Oh, that's too bad." (I can remember being in the buggy.)

I was the middle child. I was close to Mary Jane, who was 18 months older than me. We played together and got into mischief together. When she was about ten and I was eight, we were on vacation in Wisconsin with relatives. Mary Jane climbed up in a tree and was laughing so hard she couldn't get down. My mother (who was pregnant with my younger sister) finally came out and helped her get down. I can see her sitting on the branch.

My younger sister Helen, known as Babe, was born when I was eight and Mary Jane was ten. She was born during a very cold January and we had moved into the warehouse by that time (1936). There was a bathroom, a bedroom and a kitchen. Babe was wrapped in nice woolen blankets and our mother put her in a wash basket. Times were tough and we didn't have a lot.

Mary Jane and I played around the warehouse. There was an empty lot next door and Mary Jane and I planted a flower garden in the weeds.

My parents were both very attentive. They were concerned about me. Because they were running a small business, they were always around the warehouse. Mary Jane and I would be playing around the warehouse, and someone was always around.

I lived in the apartment owned by my grandmother and then moved into the apartment in the warehouse. The warehouse was on a streetcar line. On one corner, there was a coal yard. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad went by the warehouse, delivering coal to the coal yard. In back of us down the street, there was Acme Aluminum. We got to know some of the neighbors who lived across the street from Acme Aluminum on the edge of the residential section.

When it was time to go to school, the Chicago school district had me come in for testing. They saw that I was smart enough for school but I had special needs. I was placed in Marquette School, a school outside my district that had a special classroom for children with special visual needs called Sight Saving. The classroom included children from all eight grades and was specially designed for our needs. All eight years of elementary school, I had Martha DeGryse as my teacher. She was an excellent teacher and had a great influence on me. We would leave the Sight Saving classroom for the regular classes and then would take our assignments back to the Sight Saving classroom and Ms. DeGryse would then give us our assignments in a format we could use. Mary Jane went to this school with me even though it was outside our district because she was supposed to watch over me. My parents would take us to school every morning and pick us up.

When grammar school was over in 1942, I needed to find a high school that would accommodate my special needs. I went to Parker High School which was on the Normal Teachers College Campus. It had a Sight Saving class. Helen Gallant was my teacher for my four years there. We would "travel" to regular classes and then go to the Sight Saving class for support. They had kids come up to the class to read to us when necessary. I graduated from Parker High School in 1946.

My closest friend growing up, other than Mary Jane, was Ruthie Stern who lived across the street. She lived upstairs with her father in an apartment in her grandparents' house. Ruthie was probably Mary Jane's age. The three of us would play together out in the street and around the trucks and gas station.

There was always good food around our house.

Every morning my father would have coffee and oatmeal, then go down and open the business.

My mother was a good cook. One of her specialties was potato pancakes which are a German/Luxembourgean specialty. My Grandma Clemes made grape jelly every year. During tough times, we had a lot of grape jelly sandwiches. She also cooked her own cheese: Kochkase. She cooked country German food, including blood sausage.

The Wizard of Oz came out when I was a child. We would go to the Southtown Movie Theater which was a movie palace that had a nursery and dioramas of Chicago. I loved to go to movies. Sometimes my father would drop off me and Mary Jane and when he picked us up, he would whistle so we knew where he was. We also went to the Highway Movie Theater and the Ogden on 63rd, and the Capital on 79th and Halsted. Widens Bakery was also on 79th and Halsted and was a favorite bakery of my father.

Even when I was young, I enjoyed traveling. The first photo at the end of this chapter shows my entire family, including my grandmother Marie, in front the the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. The year is probably 1941. We went there because my father was delivering furniture nearby.

One of the most memorable news events was the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. I was 13 years old. Mary Jane and I went to the movies and when we came out and my father picked us up, he told us there was a bombing in Hawaii.

In June 1946 as I was preparing to graduate from high school, Miss Gallant, my special education teacher, asked to speak to me. She told me that if I wanted to go to college, there was money available from the State of Illinois, but she needed to know right away if I was interested. I said I was. I wondered how I was going to do that since I didn't know anything about college; no one in my family had been to college. I looked up colleges, looking for a college in the Chicago area that I thought I could handle with my blindness. I found Mundelein College, a Catholic women's college which I could get to on the streetcar (the El). I visited Mundelein with my parents and found out that I could board there. I don't think my parents had thought about me going to college, but they supported my going to college and boarding there. I took summer classes at DePaul and Loyola, mostly philosophy classes, in order to keep working on my graduation requirements. I graduated from Mundelein in 1951, taking an extra year to finish since I could not keep up a full class load each semester due to my blindness. The second photo at the end of this chapter is of me and my parents on my Mundelein graduation.

In July of 1945, my future husband, Lars Soderholm, came home on a month's leave from the army. He was visiting my sister Mary Jane with whom he went to Harper High School. His friend Robert Rebeck was dating Mary Jane. It started out with the four of us going out together. See the 1945 photo of me and Lars at the end of this chapter.

The next year when he was out of the army, we began dating. I went to Mundelein and Lars started college at Armour Institute of Technology (now Illlinois Institute of Technology). We dated all through college, with my living at Mundelein and coming home on weekends.

Lars graduated in 1949 and got a job as a safety engineer. I graduated from Mundelein in 1951.

After I got my college degree, we started to consider marriage. We got married at Thanksgiving (November 22), 1951. Lars was not Catholic so we got married at the Most Holy Redeemer rectory. With the help of my parents, we were able to buy a house in Evergreen Park. My parents never owned a house and they were willing to buy the house for us. We paid rent toward paying them back. Lars had a good job and we had a house. I worked as a sales woman at Carson Pierie Scott in Evergreen Park.

Elin was born December 30, 1954. Robert was born February 10, 1959.

I stayed home to take care of my children. I also watched TV, including the NBC Home Show with Arlene Francis. During 1957, they had a segment where they asked the audience to submit an essay on why education and good teachers are important. The author of the winning essay would win a trip on Scandinavian Airlines to India. I wrote the initial version of the essay and Lars edited it. Our essay won! We went to New York in April 1957 so that I could appear on the Home Show as a winner. See the photo at the end of this chapter of me on the set of the Home Show. We did not want to go to India, but we took a trip to Sweden on Scandinavian Airlines in September 1957 to visit Lars' family.

After we won the trip to Sweden, I got the TV contest bug. Every week on the Price is Right, they drew a post card to win a trip. I had the travel bug and would write about 500 post cards when they had a good trip (maybe every six months or so). If your name was drawn and the price is close but not over, you win the items and they bring you to New York to appear on the show. I had done research on prices so when my name was drawn in 1962, the prices I had for airfare to Rome and some other items were very close but did not go over. I appeared on the show as a contestant and won a player piano. Lars and I went to Rome and made stops in Brussels, Zurich and Paris on the way. All we won was the airfare so we needed money for the other travel expenses. I was considering selling the piano to pay those expenses but Lars' mother wanted us to keep the piano for Elin to take piano lessons. Lars' parents helped with the other travel expenses and took care of Elin and Bob while we were gone.

In addition to winning contests in order to see the world, another accomplishment of this stage of my life was figuring out how to get my children to kindergarten in spite of being unable to drive. When Elin went to kindergarten, a neighbor on our block drove her. When it came time for Bob to go to kindergarten in 1964, there was no one to drive him. So I decided to see if it was possible to organize a bus. (The school district did not provide any transportation.) I researched how much it would cost to get a bus. I got the list of children going to kindergarten and contacted the parents to see if they would be willing to pay to have bus transportation for their children. Most were willing, so the bus became a reality. I was the bus monitor every day.

Lars grew up with a group of guys from Elizabeth Street. They went off to the war together so the wives got together. We remained friends and "The Club" got together at one another's houses once a month.

My other friends were from Mundelein College: Joan Bodeau, Vivian Fielder and Florence French.

I have one grandchild, Kristin, who was born in 2001. Kristin has always been a busy, active girl, taking part in gymnastics and other activities. It has been a delight to watch her grow up.

I was hired as a rehabilitation teacher for the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind in 1978 and retired in July 1998. For a few years after retiring from the Commission, I worked part-time at a center for the blind elderly teaching basic living skills.

My biggest enjoyment has been traveling. I have tried to see as much of the world as I could. I usually traveled by myself on Elderhostel/Road Scholar programs as well as Smithsonian, Special Expeditions and Presidents & Patriots programs. Some of my most memorable trips:
-A Presidents & Patriots trip that started in North Carolina and continued through Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas and Texas. Highlights included the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis and the Grand Old Opry, the Bush Library and the LBJ Ranch.
-A Road Scholar trip to attend the Rose Parade in Pasadena. We had a chance to decorate a float, see the parade and then have an up-close look at the floats. It included the best roast beef dinner I ever had on New Year's Eve.
-A Presidents & Patriots trip on Lincoln. It included Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois (Springfield, Galesburg and Chicago).

During the last few years, my biggest challenge has been my problems with walking. I had learned to live with my loss of vision and inability to drive; I learned to get around and work successfully. Part of the reason I retired was that my hearing was beginning to go--and I had 20 years in with the Commission for the Blind. A few years ago, I found I was having problems walking. I had always walked everywhere. For several years, I couldn't get an answer as to what was causing my walking problems. Then in 2018 I was diagnosed with a Parkinsonian condition that affects my walking ability. I have done the best I can to adjust to this situation. I continue to travel with Elin but we are limited to where we can go. We mostly take driving trips around New England. The photo at the end of this chapter is of me at the Mount Washington Resort in New Hampshire in 2019.

Today I am grateful that Elin and I are living together in our townhouse in Needham.

In 2009, the Metrowest Transit Authority rererouted the bus I had been using for transportation to Marlborough and Framinigham. We knew it was time to move. After much looking, we found a townhouse in Needham that is in the MBTA service area and moved to Needham in 2011. Here in Needham, I could use the train or the bus, or walk to nearby stores and services. The Needham Heights area has a variety of stores and services. I also became eligible for the RIDE for door-to-door service. (Elin and I use the RIDE to go to Boston for Boston Symphony rehearsals.) Plus we are only five-minutes away from Bob, Diane and Kristin. I am very grateful that we found this perfect place in Needham.

I am proud that I was able to raise a family and do the things I have done with my vision disability. I am proud I was able to get an education that helped me do these things.

In addition to my parents, the people whom I most admire and who influenced my life are the special education teachers I had in the Chicago public schools. Martha DeGryse and Helen Gallant gave me the knowledge and confidence I needed to pursue an education and a career.

The most powerful lesson I have ever learned is that you need to try things to see if you can do them. Getting an education was hard for me with my vision loss and no one in my family had gone to college. But I tried and succeeded. I had to be able to speak up for myself.

One of my guiding principles is to do as much as you can with what you've got. I have been lucky enough to encounter organizations that share that value. I attended the Carroll Center for the Blind in 1975 for training to adjust to additional vision loss and their support helped me to continue to work and travel. The Bay State Council of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind are other organizations that I support that help the visually impaired accomplish as much as possible.

Another of my guiding principles is to get involved in your community and make your voice heard. I have been a member of the League of Women Voters in both Southborough and Needham since the League promotes civic education and citizen involvement.

When we lived in Southborough, I saw the gap in public transportation between the Worcester Regional Transportation Authority and the Mass Bay Transportation Authority. I attended regional planning meetings to understand the problem. I brought the point of view of a disabled person who must rely on public transportation to these planning meetings as well as to the press. I was proud when the Metrowest Regional Transportation Authority was established and Southborough voted to join the MWRTA.

My greatest blessing has been that I've retained as much vision as I have to allow me to attain an education, have a career, raise a family and travel the world.