When I wrote my book on pet tarantula care, All About Tarantulas, in 1977, there was only one other book in print on tarantulas, and that was a children's picture book. The adult book, The Tarantula, by Dr. William J. Baerg, an excellent work published by the Regents Press of Kansas in 1958, was out of print. A dream came true at the end of 1978 when the Regents Press and William & Eloise Baerg themselves gave me permission to reprint The Tarantula, chapter by chapter, in our American Tarantula Society's bimonthly newsletter, Tarantula Times, which I did. As a prelude to his book, Eloise Baerg agreed to write this about her husband who was 93 at the time. ~ Dale Lund
William J. Baerg, was born in Hillsboro, Kansas, September 24, 1885, of German-born parents who had immigrated from southern Russia in 1875. The German farmers had been invited to settle in a wheat growing region by the State of Kansas and the Santa Fe Railroad. The most famous of the sons of the settlers was Dwight D. Eisenhower of Abilene, Kansas.
Seven brothers and sisters grew up on the Baerg farm, two of whom were to become college professors. Life was hard in the pre-machine age. When the farmers had to try to plow fields hard as concrete, the plows drawn by horses with raw necks, my husband resolved he would get away from the farm.
Unaware of what college to attend, he relied on his girl friend who directed him the the University of Kansas. He loved studying and going to lectures. His first major was chemistry. So happy was he just being a student, he decided upon graduate work at Cornell University. By this time the naturalist in him was coming to the fore - he loved botany, bird study, and insect life - so he decided to work toward a PhD in entomology.
When he got the offer of a job at the University of Arkansas, he thought of it as a good starting place. Little did he realize he would spend his entire professional career at the U. of A. The untamed beautiful Ozark hill country was the perfect setting for a nature lover, and an understanding dean who let him carry on projects not strictly entomological made life here very pleasant. He put out a guide to the birds of Arkansas, bulletins on the black widow spider, and papers on scorpions. Asked at the boarding house table about those "awful hairy tarantulas one sees along the road in the fall," Mr. Baerg said he knew nothing about them but would consult the literature. There was no literature. So he got busy. The book The Tarantula tells the story from there on.
My husband and I met in 1929. I was a student majoring in English literature and was not really aware of an entomology department. How, then, did our paths cross? I had a good friend whose husband was a professor and she liked having groups of people in on Sunday afternoons for discussions and tea. Bill was almost notorious on the campus because he had gone to Russia in the summer of '29 - Russia the controversial country, the hope of the Liberals and the despair of the Conservatives. Bill's speeches on his travels to the land from which came his parents - really Germans who'd been invited into Russia by Catherine the Great - were very critical of the Communist regime and aroused the ire of the campus visionaries who saw Communism at the hope of the world. With Dr. Baerg so in demand, my friend asked him to speak at one of her Sunday afternoons. I was in the group. Bill says he became interested in me that day. After going out together several times we decided we had enough in common for marriage. My concern was that he was nearly twenty years older than I. To my worry that I might be left a widow in middle age, he replied, "I promise to be a good husband for twenty-five years." Well, he has been a good husband for forty-eight years! Since no other member of his family in the generations he knows about has lived to be over ninety, he wonders what whim of the gods has selected him for longevity. Whatever the whim, he accepts old age with patience and serenity.
We have two children; yes, to our good fortune, a daughter and a son. Gretchen Gearhart, our daughter, now middle aged, has five grown children, all of whom are a source of great interest - sometimes worry, sometimes joy - to their grandmother. After twenty years in the New York area - where I loved visiting them because of the theater and the eating places in New York - the Gearharts are moving to Joplin, Missouri. I can hardly believe it; how great to have a daughter for a neighbor.
Our son is a Stanford man through and through. Entering as a freshman he kept right on to a doctorate in chemical engineering and now does research for Intel, a lively firm on Silicon Row right under the shadow of Stanford. He has to do with the rearing of five children; just how is a complicated story. Right now his energetic wife is back in school doing graduate work. A busy modern household they have.
As for hobbies and interests, both of us are readers and we love books. The walls of my husband's study are lined with books, many of which he bought and read in his bachelor days before TV came along to distract us. All through the years I've done a bit of teaching and am, even now, teaching one course in high school English. The teaching keeps me in touch with the cultural revolution our society is undergoing and it gives me the income for the grandchildren's birthday checks.
Our house and garden have always been a main interest. Until recent years Bill worked in the garden nearly every day. We have on our half acre, enclosed by a stone wall, many beautiful trees. I accuse my husband of having wanted to set out one of every kind of tree he ever heard of. He should have owned an arboretum.
Two years ago, because magnolia trees are messy the year round, we carried out an old threat and had the great tall magnolia cut down. I went off to London with a granddaughter so I would not have to see how the mighty was fallen. For a time some tree lovers quit speaking to us. Even though I miss having the green boughs for decorating at Christmas time, we are glad to be rid of all the cleaning up the tree required.
Recently some of the enterprising neighbors in the Hillsboro, Kansas, community succeeded in getting together a large number of people for a reunion at the country school across the road from the farm where Bill had grown up. The featured speaker, Bill's brother, Professor Gearhart Baerg, head of the German Department at DePauw University, delivered a scholarly address, beautifully phrased and liberally sprinkled with quotations from the classics. Then the chairman called upon speakers at random to come forward with reminiscences. As Bill walked down the aisle an inspiration came to him: He would ask, in Low German (the language all had spoken in their homes), how many remembered crossing the road to have his father, a skilled amateur dentist, pull a tooth for them. Up went the hands and out went the corners of their lips in big grins. For Bill to address the crowd in Low German was as if his brother had appeared in a dinner jacket and he in overalls. When the evening was over Gearhart grudgingly admitted, "You bested me."
An independent in politics, my husband leans toward the Conservatives. Now that he is an onlooker he enjoys his daily Tulsa World and his weekly Time magazine. His witty and sometimes caustic comments on the antics of the politicians - and especially the lawyers - keep me entertained. How good that he can still read, though slowly and between naps, at ninety-three.
From boyhood Bill has been a lover of German literature and Goethe is his favorite. We plan to have read at his funeral:
"Wer immer strebend sich bemüht,
Den können wir erlosen."
"He who keeps on striving,
Him we can save."
- Faust, Part II
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