REMEMBRANCES OF CHRISTMASES PAST – Shirley Hetzel: “I have been blessed with family and so many friends over the years.”

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By Renee Bettendorf

BOYCEVILLE- “I have been blessed with family and so many friends over the years. And I just want to say Merry Christmas to you all and Happy New Year and God bless you all,” said 92 year old Boyceville resident Shirley Hetzel.

Shirley currently lives in a little house in town decorated with pictures of her many friends and family members. For most of her life she lived on farms many of which were horse farms, in addition to family and friends, horses have been a large part of Shirley’s life.

She was born in 1932 in Waukegan, Ill, a town about 45 miles north of Chicago. Her father was a carpenter who built homes; he passed away at an early age which left Shirley’s mother on her own with six children. 

“Our Christmases weren’t much because my mother didn’t have the money,” said Shirley. 

One of Shirley’s nephews, Ted, was adopted by Shirley’s mom. Shirley was close with Ted since he was just two years younger than her and they spent a lot of time together growing up while her mom worked for $25 a week. Shirley wonders sometimes how her mom managed.

“When Christmas came around, we were kinda light on everything, we didn’t have money to do anything, but we didn’t know this,” Shirley said.

Even though they didn’t have much, Shirley remembers some fun things they did during Christmas. For example, some years a family friend would give Shirley and Ted a corn cob pipe and her mom would mix up a soap solution and they would blow bubbles out of the pipe. 

And on Christmas Eve Santa would come to their house and scatter oranges, tangerines, grapefruit, apples, nuts and candy all over their kitchen floor. Shirley and Ted would be pretty excited about all these treats and they would race each other to fill up their bags. 

“We never got food like that, that was all too expensive for my mother to buy,” she said. 

Other than the treats that Santa brought and the pipe, they did not usually get gifts but they did have a Christmas tree. Her mother had a string of bubble lights that they used to decorate the tree, they strung popcorn and they would gather on Christmas Day for a family potluck dinner.

One year her mother saved up and bought Shirley a pair of figure skates. There was a pond across the road from where they lived and she couldn’t wait to try out those skates. She skipped Christmas dinner that year and taught herself how to ice skate.

“I fell I don’t know how many times,” she said. “I coulda cared less about Christmas dinner, I was skating! I was one happy girl…I’d never had a gift like that in my life,” she said.

Shirley’s husband Armon, who passed away in 2010, was born in Birnamwood which is about 30 miles east of Wausau. His father died young and Armon, who was the youngest, was raised by his mother along with his eight siblings. 

“They were a group, I’ll tell you we had a lot of fun with his side of the family!” she said.

Shirley and Armon met when she was in eighth grade. At that time Shirley was attending a one room schoolhouse and at the end of the school year they had a picnic. Armon’s sister lived next door to the school and he would stay with her sometimes. Armon came to the picnic to play baseball.

Shirley was playing first base and Armon was playing second base. He threw the ball to her and then apologized, saying he didn’t know she was a girl. Shirley just pointed out that she’d caught the ball.

The two started to date a few years after the baseball game when Shirley was a sophomore in high school. Ted introduced them and at first Shirley said “he didn’t seem to like me”. But eventually they went to see a movie together and hit it off. They were married in 1951 after Shirley graduated from Warren High School in Gurnee, Ill.

Armon left school early, went into the workforce at age 16 and later joined the Marines. In 1952 the couple had their first of two sons and named him Armon Jr. But, Armon didn’t get to meet his son until Armon Jr. was nine months old. This was because Armon had been deployed to Korea before the birth.

“What a reunion that was!” Shirley said when the two Armons finally got to meet. 

Shirley and Armon had another son, Russ a couple years later and the family of four enjoyed many Christmases together. Christmas trees were important to Armon and he would never have an artificial tree, said Shirley. She remembers Armon was picky about Christmas trees and they spent time finding the perfect one. Then they would come home and decorate the tree with Shirley’s mom’s bubble lights but instead of popcorn they had tinsel.

“No matter how old the kids were or how cold it was, we’d have to go cut a Christmas tree,” said Shirley. 

The young Hetzel family moved to Palatine, Ill which is northwest of Chicago and Armon got a job working as a horse trainer for show horses. The horse owner that hired Armon had heard of him because of his previous job at a horse farm in Gurnee. One of the horses Armon worked with at the farm in Gurnee won grand champion and had become quite a stallion.

Armon started working with horses professionally at a young age. At 16 he went on the road while working for the horse farm in Gurnee. His job was to drive a six pony hitch competitively at horse shows. The ponies he drove pulled a fire engine and they competed against other hitches at the shows. Also at these shows was the famous Budwiser hitch, which had eight horses. Armon was friends with the Budweiser hitch driver and one time they switched hitches and Armon got to drive the Budweiser hitch.

“Their meals were candy bars and beer,” laughed Shirley as she remembered Armon’s time on the road.

Armon trained show horses for the farm in Palatine for four years. Then the owner sold the farm. At that point Armon and Shirley decided to start their own horse training business in Grayslake, Ill which is a town about 15 miles south of the Wisconsin border.

In Grayslake they lived in some living quarters that were in a stable. On one end of the stable were their bedrooms and the other end had a living room and kitchen, they had to go through the stable to get from one side of their house to the other.

“It was fun!” said Shirley. 

They named their business The Hetzel Training Stable and showed Hackney horses (a type of high stepping carriage horse) as well as Welsh, Hackney and Shetland ponies.

“That man could do anything with a horse and he loved it,” said Shirley of her late husband.

The Hetzels showed horses for themselves and their customers at county and state fairs in the midwest and out east. They also showed in Canada. They did this all summer long coming back to the farm periodically to drop off or pick up horses and ponies. 

“And of course the boys were always with us,” said Shirley of Armon Jr. and Russ.

Shirley and her sons stopped showing each season when school started, she always thought school was important. Armon would have to do one show by himself and other horse trainers had the same problem so they worked together to get through that show. After the last show of the summer/fall season, there was one more show over Thanksgiving and that was the Chicago International Stockyard Show. All four Hetzels would work at that one.

“So that’s how we would spend our Thanksgiving,” said Shirley.

After the show over the Thanksgiving holiday things slowed down and the Hetzels would take some time to enjoy the Christmas season.

When the Hetzel kids were little they were involved in a Christmas program held at their church on Christmas Eve. They were always afraid that their dog, a black lab named Liza, wouldn’t let Santa into their house. They had a difficult time concentrating on the program because of this.

“They didn’t pay any attention to the Christmas program, they were worried about that dog letting Santa in the house!” laughed Shirley.

But the dog always did let Santa in, Shirley made sure of that. After they were all in the car ready to leave for the program, she would ‘forget’ something, run back into the house and put the presents under the tree.

“Santa was always there with the gifts under the tree and then the fun began,” she said. “They would open them all and it was something.”

On Christmas day they would have a meal at the farm. Sometimes they would invite farmworkers or they would have family over. Shirley said their family members liked to come out to the farm. The farm in Palatine was an interesting place because it also had reindeer, buffalo and elk. 

On Christmas morning they would give each horse a carrot and an apple. Armon really liked to decorate for Christmas and Shirley remembers them putting up Christmas lights inside and outside their horse stable and there were wreaths for each stall.   

“My husband was a nut for decorations,” she said.

Later on the Hetzels bought a farm near Lake Geneva and they had a lot of fun decorating that place for Christmas too. They had some life-sized fake horses that they decorated and hitched to a sleigh. They also had two giant concrete horse heads that they had stocking hats made for. The farmhouse had so many Christmas lights that the neighbors would joke that it looked like the house was on fire.

When show season rolled around the Hetzels had lots to do. They would show between 15 and 20 horses per show, many for their customers. There were things they had to do before each show which included grooming all of the horses and ponies and polishing the harnesses. They did all this early in the morning before the shows and it took some coordination.

“The first time we went to a horse show, we didn’t know nothing and the kids were little!” she said.

But they got the hang of it. Their boys would always be in the ring showing in kids or amateur classes and Armon also showed. Shirley would get horses ready to go into classes and she did show a few times herself. Shirley won a class at the Indiana State Fair even though she didn’t want to drive that particular pony because he was very temperamental and could tip the hitch over.

“The boys were always helping us with our business,” she said.

Armon Jr. left home, went to college in Kansas City and became a veterinarian. He was a bovine vet in Glenwood City for 47 years. Russ became a Michigan State Trooper and retired after 32 years then went on to work in the courts and also worked security for the Detroit Tigers. 

After their kids left the house Shirley and Armon still traveled with the horses and showed them but they had to hire people to help and it was hard to find good help. They retired in 1998, bought a place near Connorsville and spent winters in Texas. Armon would play Santa and Shirley was an elf in their community in Texas and they would distribute presents to needy children in the area.

Shirley has grandchildren and great grandchildren but no great great grandchildren yet. She said that Christmas started all over again with the arrival of grandkids and that was a lot of fun. She and Armon would go to Michigan or Glenwood City for Christmas after their kids were married and had families of their own.

“The kids get married and go off in different directions and all of a sudden you two are all alone and you don’t do the things you used to do when the kids were there,” she noted.

One year after their kids had moved out and they still lived in Lake Geneva, Shirley and Armon hitched up a pony to a sleigh and took Christmas cookies and candy around to all their neighbors. And the neighbors gave them drinks in return. After several drinks they decided they’d better head for home.

“And thank God the horse knew how to get there!” she joked. 

Shirley moved to Boyceville in 2015 and remains active especially at her church where she enjoys quilting, helping with Bible school, going to Bible study and good naturedly ribbing her pastor for being a Bears fan (she’s a Packer fan).

“I’ve had a wonderful life and wonderful friends. There’s nobody like your family and friends,” said Shirley.