Wilhelmine Reich King was born in Garisch-Partenkirchen, in the Alps of southern Germany, during the days of Nazi occupation. She was raised in a Catholic orphanage and later married an American soldier by the name of Paul Edward King of Hopkinsville, Kentucky. After the war, she and Paul moved to Louisville Kentucky.
Because she lived her early life in very "hard times," she was always a fighter, a saver and a survivor. She had an uncanny ability to never pay full price for anything. She would always "intimidate," "negotiate" or get it for "free." She was what I would call a "tough woman" with a "big heart" - but only if she liked you!
I met Wilhelmine in the summer of 1964, when I responded to an ad in the paper for a basement apartment near St. Joseph Infirmary on Eastern Parkway where I had a summer job. I started out in her basement, but I was invited to stay in their house during holiday breaks from the seminary. Slowly, but surely, they became like my "adopted parents" until they died a few years ago. I presided at both funerals. The following are stories about her that "you just couldn't make up" if you wanted to! I think they prove that Wilhelmine, at least, was a "tough woman with a big heart" and a "survivor" to say the least. Paul, on the other hand, was quiet and submissive. They had a small restaurant together when they first came to Louisville, but had to give it up after a few years. Wilhelmine had several jobs in her life-time, but Paul had a barber shop downtown until his retirement.
The first time I met Wilhelmine, she was sitting in an inflated kiddie pool in her back yard. When I told her I was there to look at the apartment for rent, she insisted that I get in the pool with her - I mean really insisted! It may have been the first and last time I was able to tell her "no" - probably because my sister was with me! The first thing I learned about her soon afterwards was that she never took "no" for an answer from anybody! As far as me, she would do anything for me about 50% of the time and embarrass me to death the other 50% of the time!
One of the things she would do when I was in a store with her was to help herself to samples even though samples were not offered. If it were a department store with bulk candy, she would start eating some of it as I ran to not be see with her! If we were in a grocery store, she would start eating the grapes, all of the grapes, as I ran to another part of the store not be be seen with her. She could get away with about anything she wanted, no matter how embarrassing it would be to anyone with her!
One thing she was good at, and loved to do, was to return items to the store with no receipt no matter how many years ago she bought them. She would save tags for years, just for that purpose. She bought some sheets for me one time. They were, of course, on sale! They had little teddy bears printed on them. She even put them on my bed for me. When she asked how I liked them, and after I had slept on them for a few days, I said, "They are for kids, but they are OK, I guess, because no one will see them, but me!" The next day, she told me that she had washed them and returned them to the store and got her money back! A few times, she would buy a dress for a special occasion, wear it once and take it back to the store for a refund! How did she get away with all that? She had this way of bullying cashiers and speaking in her heavy German accent until they "gave in" just to get rid of her! She could intimidate them no matter what the return policy was or how long ago she purchased the item. I know because I have watched her do it - always from a distance!
When she went out to eat in a restaurant, she would fill her purse with sugar packets, salt and pepper packets and paper napkins. She would over-buy shampoo and toothpaste by abusing the coupon system and playing innocent. If it would be a coupon for one free bottle or tube, she would somehow manage to leave the store with multiple bottles and tubes with that one coupon. When she died, she had hundreds of bottles and tubes of outdated beauty products on her shelves. There were two huge bags, bigger than a black leaf bags, of sugar packets she had taken from restaurant tables over several years.
I remember one time when I left a grocery store in anger and threatened never to ever enter that store with her again. They were giving away little stamps you could collect in a book and then cash the books in for a prize when it was full. I stood behind her as she brow-beat the cashier into giving her multiple stamps. Then she turned around and looked at me and said to the cashier, "Give my little boy some stamps too!" I could feel my face turning red as I walked out of the store to wait for her in the car and give her a tongue-lashing!
The closets in her poor house were literally stuffed with clothes and other items. She was what I would call and "organized hoarder." You could hardly get into some rooms. She had clothes from Germany that she had brought with her in the 1940s. She would intimidate some of her friends into helping her "straighten stuff out" every year or two. After my first attempt, I refused to get involved because she refused to get rid of anything "in case I might need it."
Getting her a Christmas present was easy. She liked free food so I would go to the grocery and get a couple of big boxes of various cuts of meat and canned goods and wrap them up. She loved it. Even though there were only two of them, she had two freezers - one in the house and another one in the garage. I always told her that, in a famine, I would head for her house because I would know that it was stuffed with food!
Se would drive miles out of her way to save $.02 a gallon on gas. One day, we were out in her car and I noticed that the gas needle was on "empty." I begged her to stop as we drove past two or three gas stations on our way home. We were waiting for a light to change in an intersection and the car stopped under the traffic light right in the middle of the intersection. We were out of gas! Horns were honking and people were driving past us as I got out to help push the car out of the intersection and wait till her husband could bring us some gas. I was so angry at her that day that I waned to choke her right there in the car!
She had several German friends here in Louisville, some she knew when she was a young adult in Germany. For some reason, she could never get along with all of them at the same time. She was always on the "outs" with one or two of them at all times. They would "make up" and then one or two others would switch places and be on the "outs" for a while. I heard about it as soon as I came in the back door, so I always expected it and never worried too much about it. I knew that the latest "falling-out" was always temporary.
As much as she aggravated me, she was good to me. She came to all my ordinations. She let me stay at her house at any time. She fed me. She even introduced me as her son and tried to get me to call her "Mama King." I was right there with her when she died. I led both of their funeral services and blessed their graves. Paul had a peace-filled personality with an innocence about him. Wilhelmine, on the other hand, was quite the opposite. She "ruled" whatever situation she was in and let us all know who was "in charge." Those of us who knew her history, understood that she acted the way she acted because she could never stop being a "survivor!"
