Woodall, Barbara Schauer
February 17, 1915 - December 16, 2016 Photo was taken on the occasion of her 100th birthday. Barbara Woodall was a individual with qualities of an artist .... she observed her surroundings in detail whether they be the character of indivduals, trees, flowers, architecture or clothing and always expressed an imaginative opinion about that which caught her eye. For that reason at lest she was an interesting person to sit with. But she was much more as seen in her sensitive, kind and compassionate response that felt through the surface to the source of her own or someone else’s sadness or happiness offering comfort and encouragement.
Barbara Woodall was born Bertha Barbara Melholff Schauer, February 17, 1915 to her parents, Carolina Melhloff Schauer and Ludwig Schauer of Turtle Lake, North Dakota. She had two older brothers, Ferdinand and Edward, and a younger sister, Frieda. Her childhood years on their farm in North Dakota were both harsh and gentle but always filled with surprise and adventure. Winters were spent with long hours huddled around the kitchen potbellied stove. To break the unwelcome hold of winter the family would pack themselves into the two hot rocks placed on the floorboards and be off to visit the neighbors. But it was the evening skies of summer, the Northern Lights, that offered up the splendor of luminescent greens, blues, purples and even reds that caught her wonder. She loved the ground too, searching for and collecting beautiful rocks and noticing the bright, beautiful purple and yellow crocus flowers peeking out of the snow. Although nine and ten years older than her she loved her brothers as playmates allowing them to use her as a tossing ball. She learned not to be afraid of the air and to be patient for the catch.
Life changed greatly for Barbara in her early teens. Her parents decided to lease their farmland in Turtle Lake and try their luck in the kinder climate of Goodland, Kansas. A change in cimate did not result in a change of fortune for in their move they entered the early stages of Dust Bowl. At fifteen she left the family’s combination straw and tin roof rented sod home to earn money for the family in Loveland, Colorado as a domestic helper and babysitter for a family with three young sons. It was the Depression years and although job offerings in a store were rare she was offered one in Loveland a year later and was able to send more money to her parents in Kansas.
In Loveland she met her future husband, Edward Vogel, at the Emmanuel Lutheran Church. She married him at the age of eighteen, moved to the family farm and began a family of three boys and one girl. For the next twenty years she was preoccupied with all the duties their home required until the day Edward died, at the age of forty-three in a tractor accident on his way back to the house for a noontime meal.
The next year Barbara sold the farm and with her four children moved to California first settling in Stockton. Then, a year later she moved to San Francisco and Oakland to set up two modeling business called The Loretta Young Way. Bankruptcy came quickly to her trustiung and inexperienced position forcing a move to Lodi where her mother, Carolina, had left her a home after her recent death. Meanwhile, her older son, Arlen, had married and had two children, but died at the age of twenty-six of a lingering kidney disease.
Her gifts of optimism and perservance were close by during the following years for she became an employee at Newfields Department Store and saw her remaining three children graduate from Lodi Union High School and continue on to college and with her sons, the military. She had two brief marriages, one to John J. Becker of Lodi ending in divorce and one to Jack Woodall of Elk Grove, CA ending in his death shortly after their marriage.
She remained living for the rest of her life with her son, Wayne, after he finished a military tour of Vietnam. Together they had many adventures living in the Western States beginning with twenty-seven years in Rancho Cordova, CO and last of all Rio Rancho, NM. These last years of quiet and solitude anchored her in a private peaceful world after so many years of so many tasks to fulfill. Her earlies world of open-ended daydreaming and devotion to nature repeatedly restored her enthusiasm for a long life.
Her descendants include her first son, Arlen Edward Vogel (deceased) and wife, Elizabeth (deceased) with their daughter, Julie Davis Green of Citrus Heights and grandson, Chase and granddaughter, Alaina of Citrus Heights and their son, Edward Davis and wife, Julie of Morada, CA and their daughters, Kristen and husband, Blake of Livermore, CA and daughter, Amber and husband, Tim of San Rafael and their son, Jordan of Morada, CA; Barbara’s second son, Richard Vogel and wife, Daphne of New Zealand, their daughter, Hope Vogel and partner, Ben Swartz and their two sons, Matthew and Aaron of London. Richard and Daphne’s son, Christopher Vogel and wife, Jennifer and their daughter, Katy of Owensboro, Kentucky, Barbara’s third son, Wayne Vogel of Rio Rancho, NM and Barbara’s daughter, Jane Vogel Mahon of Corrales, NM with her daughters, Janine Mahon and partner Kai Cheng and her daughter, Nemali Hypolite of Albuquerque, NM and Jane’s daughter, Raven of San Francisco and partner, Mikey Young of Rye, Australia.