Fairview woman decorates big despite health setback

Carol Dumstorff’s stroke April 27 threatened to interfere with one of her favorite things — holiday decorating.

“I wasn’t going to not have Christmas this year,” said the 69-year-old wearing in a pink sweatshirt with a snowman on the front. She sat at her kitchen table, surrounded by all things Christmas. Behind her, a white flocked tree sparkled with red decorations. A jolly ceramic Santa and Mrs. Claus held forth from atop the black refrigerator. Wooden gingerbread men dressed up the space above the kitchen sink.

Go ahead, peek inside kitchen drawers. Dishes this time of year are red and green. Yes, Carol has holiday silverware. Handles are clear with red and green sparkles inside.

“Christmas is always my favorite time of year,” she said. “My mom (Eleanor Bova) is dead eight years. She died Dec. 22. It was her favorite, too. I do a lot of this because of her.”

A lot means filling every nook and cranny of her split-level Fairview Heights home. There’s a peppermint ornament tree with everyone’s initials and a snowman who sings Elvis. The angel wing candy dishes? A reminder of Mom.

“After she passed away, I bought them for my daughters and myself. I put them out every year.”

After all, Carol’s mom scouted holiday decor for her daughters, too. An animatronic blue snowman came from Mom. A mini snowman pops out of its top hat.

“I took Mom to the doctor in St. Louis,” said Carol. “We stopped in Fairview after we came back. She said, ‘You have to have this for Christmas.’ It will be out till the day I die.”

Husband Orville gave Carol a bigger hand in decorating this year.

“We would be putting up lights and he would say, ‘Let’s take a break,’” said Carol. “When we were putting up the tree, ‘let’s take a break.’”

Make that seven trees, one for each room.

“His tree is the white tree. My tree is the big tree downstairs. He calls it my junk tree. I have ornaments the kids made in kindergarten and first grade. I got stuff from everywhere.”

Sure, you have to use your imagination to see bells in the egg-carton ornament Brian made in first grade. “He’s 50 now.” But the papier mache Santa by daughter Staci has a lot of personality.

“This (decorating) took me 2 1/2 weeks. Every room has something,” Carol said, leading the way. “You will see. I love it. I never thought my house was little. I raised four kids here. Where is all the room?”

“Filled with Christmas,” said Fern Williamson, a former neighbor and longtime friend.

Trouble ahead

Carol was busy managing the Shiloh Circle K April 27 when she got sick. After a rough weekend of nausea and exhaustion, she was hospitalized and diagnosed.

“I thought, ‘I don’t have time to have a stroke.’”

“She was bad,” said Fern. “She didn’t realize she was gibbering. No one could understand her. She would pound her fists.”

“It was not good,” said Carol. “It hit on all sides. My face dropped. My speech was slurred. I couldn’t walk. I got angry. Why me? This shouldn’t be happening to me. I have a full life. I’m busy. I don’t have time for this. Doctors said, ‘One day at a time.’ I heard that so much. ‘If you tell me one day at a time again, I am going to throw something at you.’”

She was in the hospital two weeks.

“They worked on my speech. I had to do math problems, finish sentences.”

Family rallied to support her.

“My daughter (Traci Christianson) works for Washington University. My sister (Samantha Newsom) is an officer manager at Memorial. Between the two of them, it was hilarious. What one wasn’t (bothering the doctor) with, the other was. What should I be doing? What should they be doing to help me?”

Husband Orville took over when Carol got home.

“We’ve been married 49 years. Orville waited on me hand and foot.”

Carol set her sights on Orville about 50 years ago when she was a clerk at a St. Louis dance studio and he was a student.

“He can jitterbug and slow dance like you wouldn’t believe,” she said. “He’s smooth on his feet. I would have to practice when our kids were getting married. He’d say, ‘You are not going to embarrass me, Lefty.’

“He is so tall and a toothpick. In all the years we have been married, he hasn’t changed his size. I am a yeller. He doesn’t say anything.”

Orville, retired from Peabody Coal, is more a man of action.

“Right now, he is at (Fern’s) house putting on a garage door opener. He’s 80 years old.”

Carol is no slouch either. During 20 weeks of therapy, she worked hard.

“I constantly did exercises. I told them, ‘We are going to get off this walker.’ All I could think of was, ‘Now you are an old lady and you are on a walker.’

“They said I wanted things too fast. (The physical therapist) put Solo cups on the floor and said, ‘Step over them without losing your balance.’ They didn’t let up on me. If I wanted to get lazy, she would get right on me. She would say, ‘Move,’ and I did.

“Two months after that, they let me off my walker. I’m still using a cane, still pushing myself. I’d say I’m close to 95 percent, except for the cane. I have to get a little more control before I can walk without one.”

Family times

A poinsettia banner waves in the breeze out front. The front door is wrapped like a present.

“I usually have the outside decorated,” said Carol.

Plenty of outdoor lights invite friends and family to gather there.

“Everybody knows Christmas morning we will be at Mom’s,” she said. “My four children and seven grandchildren, they all come over. We open presents, eat. They stay around till later in the evening. We play games. Fern is part of our family. How many did we have for Thanksgiving, Fern?”

“About 20,” said Fern, who retired from Macy’s last year. “This is a small house. Kids were everywhere.”

Grandson Gavin Heien, soon to graduate from O’Fallon Township High School, brought a buddy named Ben visiting from the United Kingdom.

“He had never experienced Thanksgiving,” said Carol. “He was all excited to try everything. He just fit right in.”

As does Fern.

“I use to be her next door neighbor,” said Fern. “We’ve been friends 42 years. Our daughters are the same age. She has twin girls. They went to William Holiday School together. She has been baseball coach, Brownie leader. ... They would say, ‘Get Carol, she’ll do anything.’

“I was born and raised here. My family left. I have no family here. I don’t know what I would do without her.”

Fern sees to it that Carol paces herself when they go out to lunch or shopping.

“If she would get tired,” said Fern, “we would find a place to sit.”

Fern knows all about the decorating, too.

“All these wreaths here, her and husband made,” said Fern, walking beneath a festive red and green ribbon design on the way to the lower level.

“When I went to the craft fair, and they charged $65 a shot,” said Carol. “I thought, I can do that. I do everything else.”

Including ceramics. She paints the many figures in Nativity scenes and several sizes of Christmas trees, then does it again to give away.

“I did this Nativity when Brian was 3,” Carol said. “My husband made the barn. I made them for my kids, too. It takes me a while.”

“We all have them,” said Fern.

A little ceramic Christmas tree is son Craig’s work.

“We were all in an accident coming home from Brian’s baseball game,” said Carol. “A guy crossed the center line and hit us. My husband was in the hospital two weeks. Craig’s legs got crushed. He had to go back for seven surgeries. He was 9. In October, he turned 48. I took the little tree up to St. Elizabeth’s and he painted it, then I took it to have it fired.”

With that, the Christmas clock Carol hung on the wall began playing the refrain to its 11 o’clock song, “sleep in heavenly peace.”

This story was originally published December 13, 2015 at 4:18 AM with the headline "Fairview woman decorates big despite health setback."