Once upon a family history: Siblings compile, publish family history for patriarch Wilbert Welker

Ask Wilbert Welker about his life and he'll grin and say that, "A lot of the time, I don't know how I got from where I was to where I'm at."

Which isn't exactly true. He remembers. He likes to tell stories, too, but with 94 years to pick from, where do you start?

Wilbert and Stella Welker

Of course, Wilbert Welker usually starts with Stella.

When he was shipped off to the Pacific Theater in 1942, he had never met the 20-year-old nursery attendant from Cape Girardeau, whom he would later marry. She began writing him letters at the behest of a friend, as something to keep up the spirits of the boys "over there."

They started out sweet and platonic, some signed "your unmet friend," but the two grew closer with each letter. Maybe it was their shared Catholic values. Maybe it was the way Wilbert's endearingly poor spelling betrayed his farmer's accent when he talked about home and "gitting some cold Cokes to drank."

But whatever it was, those letters led to a 58-year marriage that produced five children and "17 grandchildren, 12 of 'em boys," as Wilbert likes to put it. About three years ago, when the children found the letters in the basement of an old farmhouse, they decided that the story, pictures and letters needed to be preserved for posterity, so they compiled them into a book through local publishing house Concord Printing.

Sitting with his daughters in his Jackson living room, surrounded by pictures of his extensive family, Wilbert quietly thumbs through his copy of "The Life and Times of Wilbert Welker." They had interviewed him when they were compiling it, but when he saw the finished product for the first time at Easter, he didn't quite know what to make of it.

"I thought, if people gets ahold of this, they'd put me on a pedestal," he says now.

His farmer's modesty balks at the thought. The truth is, his life wasn't extraordinary in the conventional sense. He wasn't famous, never got wealthy, wasn't a decorated war hero.

But that's not the point of the book, explains his youngest son Dr. Jim Welker, who is now the superintendent of the Cape Girardeau Public School District.

"It's a remarkable story for the fact that he worked hard all his life to raise his family," he says.

Wilbert Welker's life story is remarkable for its intimate depiction of the simple virtue of a simple life. Of an Indiana honeymoon and farmhouse chores. Of hard winters and spring baptisms. It's a humble Midwestern epic, with the kind of scope and humanity that resonates with everyday people. It's for anyone who's ever had to scrape together grocery money or kicked the tires on a busted-down pickup. It wasn't always easy, but somehow they made it work.

"It gives you a whole different way of looking at your parents," says Wilbert's daughter Mary Anne. "They had dreams and hopes and problems."

She turns to look at her father, who nods.

"And we dealt with 'em," he says.

Folded neatly in his easy chair, shoulders slightly stooped, Wilbert doesn't look much like the sepia-toned private first class on the wall. Until he smiles. Then it's unmistakable, and there's a palpable sense of history in seeing that same smile light up his face -- as if it traveled 65 years to get there.

It's those kinds of instances that make grandpas like Wilbert such a rare connection to another time, and his daughter Susie says that's the reason they wrote the book: so their children can more fully appreciate family and the tangible link to history it provides. And like all good grandpa stories, it holds wisdom.

Wilbert proudly tells how at 19 years old, Stella decided to strike out on her own rather than be married to an older man. She found a job at St. Francis Hospital in Cape Girardeau, where she would begin writing to Wilbert.

"Her brothers all told her, 'Oh, you'll be back, you'll be back,' but she never went back," Wilbert says.

She only had a sixth grade education, but was so nurturing in the maternity ward that she was eventually given an honorary nursing degree.

School wasn't easy for Wilbert, either. He chuckles recalling how he "crawled out of the eighth grade on my hands and knees," but with a little elbow grease, he was able to make it as a farmer. "When I finally got some land out at Gordonville, the other farmers would laugh because I'd let the cows out back and let 'em eat off the corn stalks," he says. "They said, 'Oh he'll never make it. He'll never make it,' but I'm the only one left out of all of 'em that's still around and owns their land."

Neither success story is high-profile or glamorous. Instead, they're something more valuable to posterity: relatable. They simultaneously emphasize the importance of education and the greater importance of perseverance. It was a dynamic evident in Stella's unyielding insistence that her children go to college. All of them did.

Not surprisingly, the Welkers raised two teachers, two farmers and a nurse.

"When you measure success, it's not so much about the accolades you win," says Jim Welker as he sits in his administrative office. "They were successful because they measured success by their family."

Welker was able to present his father with an honorary diploma at Jackson High School in a Memorial Day ceremony in 2002. He grabs a picture from the bookshelf in the corner. It's father and son shaking hands under a diploma, both beaming with pride. It meant a lot to be able to give back, he explains, because his dad didn't just tell him right from wrong. He showed him how to live.

"They gave us our values," he says. "They instilled in us a work ethic and taught us how to treat people."

Back in his living room, Wilbert says his values are rooted in his strong faith. When he returned from the war, tanned and roughened by three and a half years under the Pacific sun, he finally got to go on a date with the girl he had begun calling "blue eyes." They ended up going to mass. Welker smiles again; he holds that memory with particular fondness.

"I was all brown and dark, and she thought I looked pretty rough," he says. "But she said, 'Why don't we go to mass?' and that suited me just fine."

They would go to mass together for the next 58 years until Stella passed away in 2006. The way he looks up at the picture of the two of them, leaned together in the farmhouse doorframe, it's not hard to see how much he misses her. He doesn't need a book to remember the life they shared, but he's happy to see that his grandchildren and great-grandchildren now have a way to know his wife a little better.

Now every Saturday, the family gathers at McDonald's for breakfast with Grandpa Welker. It's a chance to catch up and hear the occasional "back in my day" yarn. Jim Welker says that's why he's glad the book preserves that for posterity.

"To us, they're stories of the work ethic, values and patriotism that makes this country great," he says.

But Wilbert remains humble. He's not concerned with notoriety. Ask him what he thinks of the book and he'll think about it, look at his daughters, look at the pictures of grandkids on the wall. He just wants the best for them.

"I guess the most I'm hoping to get out of it is that they'll be better people for it," he says.