Baltz family: Home is where the (Sacred) Heart is

Catholics in northeast Arkansas reunite, reflect on special family memories

Published: September 6, 2013

by Dwain Hebda
Associate Editor

The “Great Eight Super Siblings” are Madeline Baltz Throesch (front row, left), Rita Baltz Dust, Guy Baltz, Mary Therese Baltz Davis. Millie Baltz Kueter (back row, left), Albert Baltz, Genie Baltz Harper and Janet Baltz Holt.

Paul Yemma knew that by buying and moving into his wife Christie’s grandparent’s home in Pocahontas he was entering into a place of special significance to his in-laws. He had no idea to what degree.

The weekend of June 28, he found out firsthand, as more than 125 Baltz relatives made the trip back home for a family reunion — “home” being the original house on Convent Street.

“The first thing all of my cousins did was come in and look around the house,” Christie said. “People were running around upstairs and looking for the rooms and even the closets they remembered as kids. Paul said, ‘That’s not normal,’ but I told him, ‘It’s their house, too.’”

Christie understood exactly how her cousins felt. Like them, the 4,000-square-foot house near St. Paul Church had been the center of her growing up. Perched atop Catholic Hill in Pocahontas, it was where the family gathered in good times and bad; where you stopped in before a Friday night date or pitched in on the weekends. And it was where the late Matthias and Mary Louise Baltz stole off to from their wedding reception June 27, 1933, for a private moment between themselves and God.

They signed their names on a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which bore the words, “We consecrate to Thee O Jesus of love, the trials and the joys and all the happiness of our family life, and we beseech Thee to pour out Thy best blessings on all its members absent and present, living and dead — and when, one after the other, we shall have fallen asleep in Thy blessed bosom O Jesus, may all of us in Paradise find again our family united in Thy Sacred Heart.”

The framed picture hung above the couple’s bed through almost 70 years of holidays and ordinary time, through the birth and raising of their eight children, their 50th wedding anniversary, the arrival of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Matt’s death in 1988 and Mary Louise’s death in 2003, before finally being relocated.

By 2012, as Christie and Paul completed renovation work on the family home, family members recognized 2013 would have been the year of Matthias and Mary Louise’s 80th wedding anniversary. The idea of a reunion was launched.

Organizers realized many of the 72 great-grandchildren had never met and even the adults might have difficulty matching the youngest members of the clan with Mary and Mathias’ eight kids — who dubbed themselves the “Great Eight Super Siblings.” Thus, each branch of the family came up with a color of T-shirt, bearing an original design that incorporated a family tree and the family name. The resultant photo from the festivities shows the kaleidoscope of generations and points of origins, as well as from whence they sprang.

Following a prayer service that officially opened the reunion, a new certificate of dedication was presented for signature by 125 members of the family. It read, “We have come on this 29th day of June, 2013 to celebrate life. As the descendants of Matthias and Mary Louise Baltz, on their 80th Wedding Anniversary, we rededicate ourselves, as they did 80 years ago, to the love of this family and in thanksgiving to God the Father and the Sacred Heart of Jesus.”

Throughout the weekend, the weather stayed particularly pleasant for an Arkansas summer. Mary Therese Davis of Clarksville, Tenn., one of the Great Eight, said it reminded her Mattias and Mary Louise were undoubtedly in their midst.

“One neat thing I remember is the feeling I had, whenever a cool breeze came by, that Mother was with us,” she said. “We have called our mother the patron saint of favorable weather. When planning family weddings, picnics, et cetera, we would put her in charge of praying for nice weather because she was so good at it. Sometimes the farmers would be really needing rain, though, and she didn’t want to pray against that so she would ask for favorable weather and trust in God. She and our Dad certainly gave us good examples of leading a prayerful life.”