Published: September 06, 2008 09:44 pm         

Beckley grandma writing stories she hopes will keep the family ties tied

What began as a fable designed to discourage a young grandchild from putting small objects up his nose has blossomed into a project designed to connect families.

While Dick and Fran Klaus were entertaining their daughter Kellie in their Beckley home, their grandson Ben, who was 18 months old at the time, was playing with some unpopped kernels of popcorn.

“At that age, he loved to just play with those kernels, roll them around in his hands and look at them. He was just fascinated by them for some reason,” a nostalgic grandmother said.

Ben disappeared for a while. When he returned, the kernels were nowhere to be found. When Klaus asked where they were, Ben’s muffled nasal response, “I don’t know” told her — up his nose!

Fortunately, they were removed with no major emergency, but a concerned grandmother made up a bedtime story she hoped would send Ben a message.

Titled “The Nose Garden,” the story goes something like this:

A little boy was helping his dad plant a summer vegetable garden. The boy decided to stuff some of the different seeds up his nose.

Shortly after he returned to school in the fall, the boy heard the snickering of teasing children. To his surprise, the children were laughing at the cucumbers growing out of his nose. A few days later, his nostrils were producing tomatoes. A few days later, corn sprouts began to appear.

“I was hoping the idea would be a deterrent, and maybe it was. As far as I know he didn’t stuff anymore popcorn kernels up his nose.”

Over time, Klaus put the story into print and added illustrations to accompany the story.

“It got me started writing whimsical stories, but then, I decided it would be nice to share some real stories about my parents and other family members, so our four grandchildren would have a sense of being connected to us and to family members they never met,” she said.

Born to European immigrants, Klaus never knew her grandparents and always felt a sense of loss for never having met them other than through the stories of her mother and dad.

“One of the things on my bucket list is to visit Slovakia and see the country where my parents lived and to see if I can find any of their relatives there.”

Her love of history and genealogy fueled the flames of other writing projects, such as her research on Beckley’s history and the publication of “A Pictorial History of Beckley,” for Beckley MainStreet, now known as Beckley Renaissance.

Following that came research on an old diary and letters that came to life in “Whispers of Wildwood,” which offered a glimpse into the lives of Beckley’s founders.

A member of St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church, Klaus was asked to edit and assemble the work of Father Rick Shoda, oversee the photography of the 50 windows and compile the book, “The Windows of St. Francis.”

All the while, family stories, some based on fact, some on fiction, kept writing themselves in her head.

Klaus began to write them down in what has become a yet unpublished series called, “The Adventures of Zabejoal.” The name combines the first two letters of the names of each of her four grandchildren — Zachary, Ben, Josh and Allyson. Josh and Zach belong to the Klaus’ son David; Ben, now 7, and Allyson are Kellie’s children.

Each Christmas season, Klaus writes a special story for each child. Usually, it is a glimpse into the life of a family member, and sometimes a story about something happened when that child was young.

“With the world changing so fast and families scattered so far apart, it’s my hope that these stories will bind our family together,” Klaus said. “I write about one family memory, and I tried to include a moral in each one.”

She’d like to see more grandparents put their lives down in print for posterity.

“You don’t have to be flowery or picturesque. Just tell stories that you remember about when your children were small, or when you were growing up or things their grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins did. It’s the story they will remember, not how it’s written,” she said.

Klaus said she believes there’s no better gift she can leave behind.

“My hope is that over time, each child will have a collection of memories and stories that they will share with their children. I hope it will be a gift they will treasure more than anything else I could give them.”

— E-mail: bdavis@register-herald.com