Viola Straub may be the last witness to Schaumburg Twp.'s rural roots

Pictures of grandchildren and great grandchildren fill the Schaumburg home of Viola Botterman Straub. But it is in the photos tucked away where the true story lies.

With some urging, she shares her historic photos, the ones that offer a rare glimpse of rural Schaumburg, when families gathered for barn raisings and box socials, and when children walked to a one-room schoolhouse.

Straub is the last of her generation to remember those days directly. She will turn 98 on Aug. 24, while the other descendants of the original Schaumburg Township farm families have all passed on.

Viola Homeyer Meyer was her only other contemporary. She too had been born on the family farm where he grandparents had settled in the mid-1800s, and she continued to live in the area all her life. She passed away July 5, at the age of 90.

"I wish I could go back to those days," Straub says wistfully. "You'd get up early and start by feeding the chickens and the ducks and the geese. Those were full days."

Schaumburg historians count on Straub as one of their best resources when trying to document local history.

As it is, they recorded her oral history for their "Preserving Schaumburg History" project, and it is stored within Schaumburg Township District Library's digital archives.

"I still turn to her for information when I need to," says LaVonne Presley of Schaumburg, one of the volunteer facilitators.

Straub was born in 1911 and grew up as the sixth of seven children on her family's 80-acre dairy farm, on Wise Road just west of Roselle Road.

As a child, she fed the farm animals in the morning, before walking with her older siblings to the one-room East District School of St. Peter Lutheran Church in Schaumburg. Her father had been baptized before the Civil War.

"We had to go to the teacher's house to get a bucket of water from the well," Straub recalls, "and then the kids took turns carrying buckets of coal to heat the pot belly stove in the corner."

When she returned home she had to change her clothes to resume her farm chores, which ranged from picking vegetables for a neighbor's roadside stand, to cherries to sell in baskets along Roselle Road. She milked the cows when needed, and drove the tractor while the men baled the hay.

Or, she'd collect eggs from the chickens and walk up to the store to exchange them for groceries. She and her siblings would receive small bags of candy for their trouble.

Straub met her husband, Albert, at a box social. Just like it was portrayed in the classic musical, "Oklahoma," single women prepared fancy box lunches that men would bid on, as a fundraiser for the school.

"I never made any box lunches," Straub insists. "I didn't believe in it."

Instead, she says, she met Albert after the bidding ended, while square dancing.

They married in 1936 at St. Peter's Lutheran Church, where she and all of her siblings had been baptized and confirmed, as well as her parents and their siblings. The nearly 100 guests returned to her family's farm for the reception, as was the custom.

Their wedding portrait, was taken at a studio in Elgin, since "people didn't pose for pictures in the church back then."

She has outlived everyone in the photo, except the children. The ring bearer, she points out, was her teacher's son.

After the wedding, her life on the 80-acre Straub dairy farm was much like her upbringing, though the farmhouse was larger, adding to her workload.

Once again, her days started early, when she rose to make breakfast for the men before they went out to the fields. While they worked, she cooked, canned and gardened, as well as raising her two daughters - Beverly Shuttle now of Scottsdale, AZ; and Carolyn Gyurnek of Schaumburg.

For many years, the couple raised as many as 100 turkeys on their farm. Nearly all were sold to local families in the area, Straub says, since there were few restaurants in Schaumburg at the time.

When it came time to bale the hay, she once again drove the tractor while the men bundled it. She also pitched in with other duties when needed, from shucking the corn to milking the cows.

"We did everything," Straub says simply.

Straub and her husband sold the farm to developers in 1960, but their work didn't end there. Both went to work as bus drivers for Walter Fiene who started the Schaumburg Transportation service.

Consequently, Straub went from driving a tractor to driving a four-speed, manual transmission school bus.

What started as driving area children to St. Peter's, soon expanded to include Schaumburg Township Elementary District 54 students, before leading to Palatine Schaumburg High School District 211, where Straub was the first woman driver.

She eventually logged nearly 45 years behind the wheel of the 72-seat yellow school buses, and only retired at the age of 83. Even then, Straub continued to work in the lunchroom at Aldrin Elementary School, dispensing milk to the children, before finally retiring at the age of 85. She only stopped driving a car, two years ago, at age 95.

As for her secret to her long life? Her grandson, Keith Gyurnek of Schaumburg, credits her clean living on the farm, while Straub says her work ethic kept her young.

"There's no secret," Straub says. "I always said, 'Get up early and do your work.'"