Longtime farming family gathers for big time reunion
The historic Didier Farm in north suburban Prairie View welcomes hundreds of school groups each fall to its pumpkin patches, and visitors throughout the year to its farm stand and greenhouse.
On Saturday, the 86-acre parcel that dates back to 1912 drew another loyal contingent: more than 200 extended family members, or four generations beyond the 14 "original" children of Al and Emma Didier.
As families arrived they put a star next to their names on the family tree that filled several posters on the wall. Each family line wore different colored T-shirts to identify their descendants, and they took turns posing for group photos.
In typical farm tradition, they put out quite a spread. They went through 175 hamburgers, 160 hot dogs and 120 pieces of chicken, and that was just for lunch. During the afternoon, they roasted a 100-pound pig for the family dinner.
In between, family members rode on tractor-drawn hay rides, competed in potato sack races and three-legged relays, all while reconnecting with long lost cousins, who last gathered for a reunion nearly 20 years ago.
"I'm meeting some cousins for the first time," said Nancy Didier, whose husband, John, runs the Prairie View farm with his two younger brothers, all sons of Herb Didier, one of the 14. Herb Didier died in 1990.
They gathered in honor of the 90th birthday of their oldest surviving sibling, Sr. Johanna, whose given name was Martha Didier when she was born in 1918. Since 1966, she has served as a missionary in Brazil.
She and another sibling, Sr. Mary Peter, formerly Clara and now 87, were among four of the Didiers to enter the convent, joining the Sisters of St. Francis of Mary Immaculate based in Joliet.
"This is wonderful," said Sr. Peter, former 35-year director of the Our Lady of the Angels Retirement Home in Joliet. "Seeing the family together, is beautiful."
Seven of the original 14 siblings survive, and all seven attended with their extended families. Besides the two sisters, they are Lorraine Schuetz of Huntley, Marcella Merriman of Lake Placid, Fla., Jerome Didier of McHenry, Barbara Flynn of Richmond, and Paul Didier of Wauconda.
"I've contributed quite a few to this group," quipped Schuetz proudly, the eighth in line, who raised her family in Wheeling before moving to Huntley. She claimed bragging rights for the day. All but two of her immediate family members showed up, of her eight children, 23 grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren.
One treasured photo opportunity was the portrait of the oldest and youngest in attendance. That happened when they put 4-month old Marcella - named for her grandmother, Marcella, the ninth of the 14 - on Sr. Johanna's lap.
Sr. Johanna and Sr. Peter told how the St. Francis nuns taught the Didier children when they attended St. Mary's School in Des Plaines.
In fact, though the Didiers are known throughout Lake County because of their prominent farm, their parents, Al and Emma (Geimer) Didier, lived on a Didier family farm in Evanston after they married in 1913, before moving to Des Plaines in the early 1920s.
They raised their 14 children on a 56-acre truck farm off Oakton Street in Des Plaines between Wolf and Mount Prospect roads, that was separated by railroad tracks that ran through the fields, Sr. Johanna describes.
Sr. Johanna was third oldest and she vividly recalls working on the farm growing up, mostly planting vegetables, including corn, beets and onions. "When I went to Brazil, I taught the people to garden," she says. "They had plenty of meat and rice and dairy products, but no vegetables."
Two months after Sr. Johanna entered the convent in 1936, her sister Barbara was born, followed in 1939 by the youngest, Paul.
The Lake County connection came when Herb, the seventh in line, married Mary Sue Link, whose family had worked the land in Prairie View, near Lincolnshire, since 1912. The young couple moved back to the farm after their marriage, where they raised their nine children and slowly converted it to Didier's Farm.
Its expansive setting, complete with picnic tables set up under a covered portico, and surrounded by the farm buildings and crops in the fields, seemed to underscore the farming legacy and down home values handed down through its generations.
"There's no secret to it," Schuetz said. "We've just always been a close family."