Sadye Irene Fleming Wildermuth to her son Robert Earl, 13 December 1975 — eight months before her death

What this letter is

13 December 1975. Sadye Irene Fleming Wildermuth — Robert Earl’s mother, the Marietta-and-West-Virginia-line Sadye whose family her son the genealogist could find almost nothing of on paper — sits down to write her son and his wife Dottie a Christmas-season letter. She apologizes for not having written in so long. This is, as of this writing, the only known letter from Sadye preserved in this archive in her own hand. She would die eight months later, in August 1976. Robert Earl labeled the cover of the page “Grandma W. Letter.”

That she could write in detail at all, after the six weeks off potent medication and transfusions, is the small mercy this letter records.

The letter itself

Transcription

Dec. 13, 1975

Dear Bob, Dot & family:—

I am going to try and write you a letter. Hope you can read it as I haven’t wrote for so long.

The Dr. says I am progressing very well. He has taken that potent medication off and no transfusions for about 6 weeks now. I feel pretty good only weak. I don’t have much pain in my back now unless I am up too long.

We sure are having beautiful weather here. It is 72° here today and sunny. We have had freezing temperatures several times but our grass is still green and growing yet. It has tried to snow a couple of times but just flurries. Not like December weather.

Dad sure likes the dishwasher and it is a blessing for him. Thanks to you. He feels pretty good for his 76 years. Carl is pretty good. Has lost some weight but that is good. We are getting along fine. The girls come down every so often and help us out.

Betty Jo came Thanksgiving and brought the turkey and everything down to pumpkin pie. We had a nice Thanksgiving. For Christmas it will be Buffet style and that will be all.

We had a nice Christmas card from Sandy and Bruce.

We mailed you a package about a week ago with a few little things for Debbie and Bobby. I’ll bet he is quite a boy by now.

I am getting tired and running out of news, so will close for now.

All our love Mom, Dad & Carl

What the letter records

Sadye’s health. “The Dr. says I am progressing very well. He has taken that potent medication off and no transfusions for about 6 weeks now. I feel pretty good only weak.” By December 1975 Sadye had been receiving regular blood transfusions and some unnamed “potent medication” — the kind of combination that suggests a serious hematological condition. She had been taken off both for six weeks at the time of writing. The remission would not be lasting; she would die in August 1976, less than nine months after this letter. The matter-of-fact register in which she relays the doctor’s news — without dramatization, without complaint, with the small added note that her back only hurts “if I am up too long” — is consistent with the family-memory line Robert Earl carried about his mother: that her family seldom discussed itself, and that she did not. The voice the letter preserves is the voice of someone who handled hard news the way one handled the weather.

Earl Adam at 76. “Dad sure likes the dishwasher and it is a blessing for him. Thanks to you. He feels pretty good for his 76 years.” This is Earl Adam Wildermuth two years before his own December 1977 massive stroke. He is 76 (his birth date is 6 October 1899 per his page; 76 in December 1975 fits exactly) and managing the household chores with the help of the dishwasher Robert Earl gave them. He would outlive Sadye by about sixteen months. The dishwasher detail is the small grateful note — Robert Earl had given his parents a dishwasher, which in Earl Adam’s hands became “a blessing” during Sadye’s last year of being too unwell to do dishes.

Carl is fine. Carl Edward Wildermuth, Robert Earl’s brother, was living with their parents at this point — the letter is signed “Mom, Dad & Carl,” which is the family-of-three living-in-the-same-house signature pattern. “Carl is pretty good. Has lost some weight but that is good.” By 1975 Carl was about 45.

Betty Jo brought Thanksgiving. Betty Joan Wildermuth Haddox, Robert Earl’s sister, brought “the turkey and everything down to pumpkin pie” at Thanksgiving 1975. The four-children-of-the-family Sadye-and-Earl-Adam household pattern is visible here in the small detail: “the girls come down every so often and help us out” — the daughters helping their mother in her last year, the way American families did.

The package for Debbie and Bobby. “We mailed you a package about a week ago with a few little things for Debbie and Bobby. I’ll bet he is quite a boy by now.” Debbie and her brother Bobby were two of Robert Earl and Dottie’s children — Sadye’s grandchildren. The line “I’ll bet he is quite a boy by now” is the line of a grandmother far enough away from her grandson that she hasn’t seen him recently enough to know — the standard mid-1970s long-distance family register that letters and packages had to span before video calls existed.

Sandy and Bruce’s Christmas card. Sandy — Sandra Sue Wildermuth Clement, Robert Earl’s daughter and another of Sadye’s grandchildren — was in her own household with husband Bruce by 1975, sending Christmas cards back to her grandparents.

The closing — tired but pleased to have written. “I am getting tired and running out of news, so will close for now.” The letter is short by the standards of a Christmas-season family letter; Sadye is doing what she can. “All our love” she signs — and the joint “Mom, Dad & Carl” sign-off makes clear this is from the whole household.

Why the letter matters

Sadye Irene Fleming Wildermuth is one of the people the archive has had least of in her own voice. Robert Earl’s research notes record his mother saying she could give him almost nothing about her family. Her birth certificate could not be found in any of the West Virginia counties where family memory placed her childhood; she had to assemble proof of her own birth from friends-of-the-family attestations. She is named in obituaries, in the 1990 Heritage memoir, in the structured FamilySearch record, in her son’s manuscript. But her register — the way she actually said the things she said — was barely on the archive at all.

This letter is what changes that. In one short page, written when she had every excuse not to write, she carries forward the small register the family lived in: how the doctor says she is progressing, how Earl is at 76, how Betty Jo brought the turkey, how she hopes Bobby is “quite a boy by now.” The texture is plain, hopeful, brief, and unselfpitying. It is, in this archive, the only document in Sadye’s own hand.

She would write again across the next eight months — presumably — but no other Sadye letters have been preserved yet. The next Sadye-of-the-family voice in the archive is her own absence: the August 1976 funeral notice, the December 1977 follow-on death of her husband Earl Adam. This 13 December 1975 letter, in her own handwriting, is the only voice we have from her.

Source: Wildermuth-letters.pdf pages 9-10 (gitignored locally; transcribed content surfaced here). Cover-page label by Robert Earl: Grandma W. Letter. Original held in family archive.