Foil: 62 Panel: 1 Column: 4 Line: 79

Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Friend

Honored by:
Janis Bartling Myers

Mary Burdine Bartling was born February 3, 1922, on a farm near Iowa Falls, Iowa, daughter of Mortimer and Floy Brightwell Brooks. The family moved to grandfather Brooks Farm 6 1/2 miles south of Iowa Falls, where she grew up.

Throughout her life, Burdine authored several published magazine articles and poems.
She also made a book of her memoirs and wrote a cookbook of favorite family recipes.

This is how she describes her childhood in one of her memoirs written in 2007:

As a young girl, I loved the smell of new mown hey in the green meadows. I did much bird watching. I especially enjoyed the meadowlark songs coming from proud birds perched on fence posts. When I was a child, I would pick wild strawberries in the ditches. Wild plum trees grew in the grove and wild grape vines climbed profusely on farm fences. Now, along with increased cultivation of the land, the use of pesticides has depleted many types of plants, including many kinds of wild prairie flowers that I adored as a child.

Burdine attended Ellis No.2 country school, graduated from high school in Iowa Falls, Iowa; graduated from Ellsworth Junior College and then received her teaching certificate from Iowa State Teachers College. She taught first in a one room school house. She taught departmental grades in Hansell, Iowa.

She married William H. Bartling on March 15, 1943, in Eldora, Iowa. She had to give up teaching after her marriage as married teachers were not hired. When Bill was called up to serve in the army during World War II, she was able to get a job as a fifth grade teacher in Hubbard while Bill was serving 2 1/2 years in Italy. She wrote an article titled "Young Brides Endured Many Hardships in World War II" that was published in the September/October 2010 issue of Iowa History Journal which provides the wife's perspective of those war years. After Bill's return, they moved to the Waterloo - Cedar Falls area, where they lived from then on and raised their family.

Burdine always appreciated nature - rocks, trees, flowers, and wildlife.

I have lived my entire married life in Black Hawk County. Since 1965 I have lived in a wooded area of town amongst very old oak and shag bark Hickory trees. Thus, while sitting in my living room chair or at my kitchen table, I have enjoyed many song birds outside my picture windows. During the winter, the woodpeckers - downy, Hairy, and Red-bellied ?€“ frequent the front yard feeder, enjoying their suet. I see gorgeous Cardinals and Blue Jays year around. In the spring, many robins, American goldfinches and warblers collect in my backyard. Then the orioles come dressed in their orange or yellow and black. The nuthatches, chickadees, and wrens are always fun to see, too.

Her love of the outside shines through in her poem, published in Lyrical Iowa in 2014.

Promising Pears

Little green ovals, await a shapely fate
A branch with six. a nuthatch picks
Some tan early, some yellow quite late.
Most are perfect, only a few nicks.

With time, more will appear.
Fat squirrel gorges as branch sways.
Birds, animals - please stay clear!
Now, a chipmunk found a way.

Under, I see tracks of a deer.
This tree isn't only your treat.
Shoo. Get away. Just stay clear.
Future pears are mine to eat.

Burdine was an excellent wife, mother and homemaker - cooking, baking, gardening, and canning:

Over the years, I enjoyed the outdoors - gardening, growing flowers, and hiking in nature. Our large garden required much work, but it yielded fresh vegetables and strawberries. My family and I shucked peas and snipped green beans in the shade of our backyard. I canned tomatoes and other vegetables for winter use. My interest in flowers led me to a fifty-year membership in the Cedar Heights Woman?€™s Club, Flower Garden Division.

Burdine shared her love of nature with her daughters Janine and Janis, whom she loved dearly, and they in turn could not have been more proud of her or loved her more:

I worked with the Girl Scouts when my daughters were young and we went on many nature outings. I also took the girls to a Rock and Mineral Club to learn about rocks and, to my surprise, my oldest daughter found an Iowa geode in the road in front of our house. When broken open, long spikes of seemingly perfectly cut crystal glistened. My favorite find was an arrowhead which was unearthed where the then "new" city swimming pool was to be built.

My family loved Iowa morel mushrooms and we enjoyed looking for them in the woods. After hard hunts sometimes mushrooms appeared magically in front of our eyes as if our glance produced them. Once while hunting morels, I lifted an umbrella leafed May Apple plant with my stick and found a newborn fawn, so young he was unable to stand, still shaking from the trauma of birth. We left him alone with his surrounding mushrooms. A mother deer was likely nearby. We left the area so she wouldn?€™t have to worry about her young one.

Her daughters grew up and moved out, and her husband of 48 years died November 30, 1991. For almost a quarter of a century she lived on her own, despite limited mobility, staying active and touching the lives of her now adult daughters, students, friends, relatives and caregivers.

She was a member and officer in the Cedar Falls Woman's Club, a president of Cedar Heights Flower and Garden Club, and attended Christ Lutheran Church.

She was artistic and enjoyed painting, doing crafts, and quilting. She made a large Dresden quilt when she was already wheelchair-bound and had to use her hand to run a foot pedal of her sewing machine. She enjoyed cheering the Chicago Cubs and watching her favorite horse in the Kentucky Derby on TV. She was an avid reader and particularly enjoyed Presidential history and biographies. Reading aloud allowed her to share with others, if only her cat 'Poof', a Flame Point Himalayan.

She appreciated every day and every person who came her way, and she loved to make others happy:

Yes, I have lived my entire life in Iowa. I have no regrets because I love the change
of seasons. I like being close to nature. I think Iowa is the best state in the Union
and the United States is the best country that I know and want no other.

Mary Burdine Bartling died on July 12, 2015, at the age of 93. Until her last days, she had an amazingly active and curious mind:

Lunar Intrigue (published in Lyrical Iowa in 2011)

When I was a child, the sky was darker, richer with wonder.
Less evening light, a child's imagination, rural isolation -
For whatever reason, my moon became my friend.
Sayings regarding the "Man in the Moon" intrigued me.

Clouds, positioning, time of year changed its shading.
I spent hours watching, trying to figure out his moods.
But he always gave me company. When leaves left the trees,
The moon lined up so that from my bedroom window

He could wink a good night. Sometimes, sending
Showers of meteorites, he seemingly reached to me.
Years later, the Space Race placed men on the moon.
TV images of puffy moon walks, rover rides, an American flag.

Now water exists on the moon, they say - a gallon found.
The moon is larger than space, for me, more full of mystery.