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Local talent rekindles Gale’s Spirit
A spirit rekindled in Portage’s Public Library last
month, and two Jefferson County women provided the spark. A Fort Atkinson
writer and researcher and a Waterloo actress contributed their talent to bring
alive a character from the past during Portage’s recent Friendship Village
Celebrates Zona Gale Day. 
For this event, Nancy Breitsprecher of Fort Atkinson wrote the play “Hearts Kindred” centering around the relationship Pulitzer-prizewinning Zona Gale and her Mother Eliza. Jinx Davis of Waterloo played the character of Eliza, who, at the end of her life had gained wisdom, yet, who remained a proud and concerned mother, a vital and occasionally silly woman.
Brought back to “life” for Saturday’s performance, Eliza
showed surprise and delight to return to her body again, if only for a short
time, after so long, “beyond the veil” writer’s Zona’s term for the realm beyond
death. Dressed in a black lace dress of the style of the turn of the
century, Eliza reminisced about people in Portage, about the people she’d met
through her famous daughter and the lessons it had taken her a lifetime to learn
but which Zona seemed to have known instinctively. Eliza feared for her
daughter in her 
daring
career when she undertook a man’s career as a journalist, writer, and activist.
But to a certain degree Eliza lived her own dreams through Zona.
To opening the play Eliza’s character gave a little of
her background, recalling how she desperately wanted to go to college herself.
From her perspective from “beyond the veil,” Eliza chuckled that President
Chadbourne, who’d once barred her and other women from attending the University
of Wisconsin, later had a women’s dorm named after him.
Eliza’s family lived out a hard life farming. Her
brothers joined the Union army and she became a schoolteacher at age 15.
“The big boys thought they would get me at algebra, but I showed them. I
studied at night,” she laughed in memory. Moving to Portage, Eliza married
Charles Gale, and they started saving for Zona’s college costs as soon as the
little girl was born. Meanwhile, Eliza joined the Presbyterian Church, “because
they needed a contralto.” Zona didn’t share her mother’s singing talent,
but as Eliza said, “Zona taught me that people sing in different ways.” 
As Zona matured, time after time Eliza had disagreements with her impetuous daughter, only to have time prove her daughter right. Even when Zona turned against the typical U.S. Military patriotism during war, Eliza learned—not immediately, but eventually—that Zona only acted on what she believed to be right. “There are some of you that are probably burning her in effigy,” Eliza said, addressing Portage residents. “When the War came, she would have nothing to do with it. Charles even went out and bought war bonds in Zona’s name, so he could walk down the street with his head up.”
The set for the play in the Portage library included Eliza’s chair, a period lamp on a stand by the chair, and a basket of letters, correspondence from Zona’s time.
“I don’t remember this one,” Eliza said, picking up and
caressing the folds on one letter. “Oh, I was dead.” The letter, written
by zone shortly after her mother’s death in 1923, read “I have been thinking
that the umbilical cord that binds us to this
earth…is spiritual. There is a cord that has never been cut.” Coming so soon
after her death Eliza considered Zona’s words a personal tribute. A letter
from Charlotte Parkins Gilman brought back memories of Eliza’s concern, which
she now knew had been misplaced. “I thought she was a radical. I didn’t
want zone to be friends with her,” Eliza confided. “She said such things that
would turn the world topsy-turvy, like women had to have their own money, and
wouldn’t it be great if women could go out in the world and work, like men.”
Zona did start making money writing; moreover, she set up accounts for herself,
for her father, and for her mother, giving Eliza her first spending money of her
own. “I didn’t spend it mind you,” the mother fluttered, “Except to go and
see Zona.” Reading a letter fro Edna Ferber, a Jewish writer from Appleton
who became Zona’s friend, Eliza quoted Edna saying, “Shaking hands with Zona was
rather like crushing the wings of a bird.”
Zona was tiny, but she was strong,” Eliza said. “When
Zona knew something was not right, she could not turn her back on it.” In
reacti
on to an
injustice perceived, zone wrote a book about a woman with a drunken, abusive
husband. The woman, parting with tradition, left to start work, earning her own
money. “It was a scandalous affair. I don’t remember any of my neighbors
talking to me for several months.” Eliza sighed, a sound that carried both
concern and pride. “Even against all my advice, Zona would always do the right
thing.”