Hilda & Helen Haak

Hilda & Helen Haak as children [circa 1913, probably Iowa]

Matrilineal Reflections

Hilda K. (Terryberry) Haak

b. 1911 - d. 1980

Technically, I met my “grandma Haak” (above left) when I was a young child myself, but I don’t have any direct memories of her. She passed away at her home in Lisbon, Iowa in the spring of 1980 only a year after I was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Her brief obituary mentions six grandchildren; I was the redhead, and number six. Number seven was my cousin Ron, another East Coast Crawford-Haak cousin who missed the chance to get to know our Iowa grandmother directly. Recently, we’ve had the opportunity to reconnect and gather together some of the pieces of our family history. What we know for sure consists of a relatively slim set of facts about Hilda’s life, a few stories, and even some common sayin’s that were her trademarks.

Hilda was often known as part of duo: the Haak Sisters, Hilda the younger and Helen the older (above right). At age 25, Hilda Katheryn Terryberry Haak is also pictured below
(second from the right) between her spouse Orville L. Crawford (right) and her sister’s spouse Rex Dean (left), who is next to Helen Elizabeth (middle, left). The couple to the far left is John S. Haak and Edith Effie Terryberry Haak, our great grandparents. This 1930s Thanksgiving photograph makes me wonder where they were standing, with barely a tree in sight, three very recognizable Iowa Haak women and their partners. Flash photography became more widely available in the mid 1930s, perhaps making this rare portrait of the Terryberry-Haak family more feasible. Mystery is: who was behind the camera?

Thanksgiving [Nov 26, 1936, probably Iowa]

My Father’s Father, Orville (above far right), is the only member of this crew who seemed to know how to crack a smile. “Grandpa Crawford” is someone I remember well and visited with often, spending childhood summers and holidays in Lisbon with him and lots of family at the 215 West Main Street house. He wasn’t a very smiley or talkative guy, but he was always kind and generous to us.

Orville grew up on the Crawford Farm in Cedar Bluff, Iowa (south of Lisbon about 20 miles) the son of Ida McNee and “Lew” (William Llewelyn) Crawford. As a child, Orville attended a one-room school house that used to stand on the far corner of The Farm, which has now been plowed over to grow commercial corn crop. Later, Orville lived in Mechanicsville and then opened an HVAC shop in Lisbon on Main Street, which he owned and operated for many years. He married Hilda, who was trained as a beautician like her mother (above, far left) and together they raised four children in Lisbon, including Ron’s mother (Barbara Baker) and my Father (Don O.), as well as Bob (d. 2001) and Dick, the oldest and youngest respectively.

My Father left Lisbon when he was 16 years old. At the time, the town had a population of about 1,000. Today it’s just over twice that. He went on to college at Northwestern in Chicago, eventually graduated from Harvard Business School, started a small finance firm and never left Boston again, except to travel. He met my Mother - Liane Allyson from Manchester, New Hampshire - at Trinity Church in the center of Boston’s historic South End district. We traveled back to Iowa from New England many times as children, but some traditions have faded as we became more geographically disbursed (I’m based in New York City, for example).

My Father remembers his mother Hilda as relatively stern and reserved, the daughter of a family named “Terryberry” (matrilineal) who came to the U.S. in from Europe the 1700s but either moved to Canada or headed west from their original northern New Jersey homestead by Schooley’s Mountain. Rumor has it that Hilda fell out of touch with her Terryberry family members, but we’re told that her sister Helen maintained correspondence longterm.

“Oh joy!”

Hilda was 69 years old when she passed away. There is no cause of death listed in her short obituary and the word “unexpected” is used to describe her passing. Helen’s family tells me that she wasn’t particularly well, especially in her later years, but she was known for proclaiming “Oh joy!” at almost any occasion, at times with an ironic twist.

What I personally recall most vividly is her very green house on Main Street - green on the outside, green on the inside. When I was young, her bedroom was preserved and included a wooden vanity with a full set of mirrors, brushes, and combs, left there as an homage to her past as a local beautician. Her very pink bathroom was a spa-like oasis for any child or visiting teenager, complete with a huge wall mirror, a pink porcelain bathtub and a mobile made of little owls that hung overhead for many years.

Hilda Haak & Orville Crawford's family home [Main Street, Lisbon, August, 2023]

Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of those interior rooms as they were, but recently I was given another photograph (below) of a different family home on Lisbon’s Main Street. Edith Effie Haak (below), my great grandmother, seems to have set up shop at home herself. When this photo was taken and who’s sitting in the chair we don’t know, but it seems apropos to include it here as part of Haak Family history.

A very special thanks to Marilyn S. for finding this photo (below) and for always being so helpful with this archive project, alongside many others.

Edith Effie Haak in her Main Street home, Lisbon Iowa [year unknown]

Page from the Haak-Crawford Family files [The Lisbon History Center, 2022]

Note: this post may be updated, as new information becomes available [September, 2023].