The following recollections are from Mary Kaiser Conard, written in 1988, she describes her memories of  her maternal Grandparents as well as her mother and each of her Aunts and Uncles. Please do not copy these or otherwise distribute them without permission from Mary Kaiser Conard.

UNCLE JAKE 

Uncle Jake is what we called him and there were other Jake Schuster's in Ellis.  When I visited with a second cousin in Billings, she referred to this quiet man as "one-eyed Jake".  I'd never heard the reference before, but held lost an eye, injured with a steel fragment.  He had an artificial eye. 

He was the last of Klara and Ferdinand's children born in Austria, and was a little sailor on the Kaiser Wilhelm at the age of five months. 

Ten years her junior, Mom called him her "grease monkey" because he was always taking something apart or experimenting with something.  He was a good mechanic.  We took the family car to him for overhaul as long as he had his shop in the back yard together. 

He and Dad could really "souse" together, and occasionally both get a little "crocked".  Mom said she hated to see this because Dad was a happy, boisterous drunk and drinking made Uncle Jake very sad ... to tears, then she'd cry too. 

He married Elma Mikelson, a vivacious, pretty, dark-haired lady ten years younger than he.  They had three girls; Leona Mae, Vivian Irene and Rosalie Ann.  They called them, "Nonie, Toots and Tiny." Their house was along Big Creek, and one time they lost everything to a flood.  They bought 'another house away from the flood plain and after he and Elma were divorced, she remained in that house, and he moved back to the house by Big Creek.  She was just 49 when she was killed instantly in a car accident.  She worked at Hays and had been in Ellis visiting.  She was returning to Hays when her car hit a railroad abutment 1-mile West of Yocemento.  There the highway made two sharp corners as it crossed the tracks.  Neither of them had remarried.  In later years Uncle Jake worked with the Ellis County Road Crew. 

In a recent visit (1988) Frances had with Leona (now Armbruster) she said, "He no longer recognizes army of the family, and is being cared for at a rest home in Russell Kansas."

I liked this introverted quiet man.  I don't know as I ever carried on a conversation with him, but it seemed at the family gatherings there was always a time when he and Mom sat aside somewhere visiting, quietly together.  He didn't seem quite as outgoing as the rest of the family, so that's possibly why I know so little about him.  He was easy to trust, and the quality I admire about him is his ability to render a piece of equipment into an unrecognizable pile, put the pieces back together correctly, add a little gas and "It goes." 

By Mary Kaiser Conard 1988