Moths

A luna moth lives at most about a week in its adult form.

From the moment it emerges from its cocoon and unfurls its wings to dry in the breeze, the clock is ticking. The moths do not eat in their adult form, they exist solely to find a mate and lay eggs for the next generation before they die and are no more.

In life there are certain constants. Things like the north star, or the sun rising in the east that are seemingly unchanging and which serve as mooring posts to ground us in hectic and chaotic times.

The Medford community lost one of those constants this week with the passing of Hildegard Kuse at age 96.

Throughout her long life, Kuse had a passion for learning and equally a passion to share what she had learned with others.

On a warm early summer afternoon nearly two decades ago, I brought my daughter, Beth, to the Kuse Preserve located just north of the Medford High School complex. We came to learn about luna moths. Hildegard had contacted me earlier to let me know that their batch of moths were emerging from their cocoons and that I should bring Beth to see it.

At the time Hildegard and her sister Loretta were raising the moths, which have declined in recent decades due to environmental and man-made factors. Hildegard sent us home with a small box that contained a leaf with luna moth eggs on it. She gave Beth instructions on how when the caterpillar emerges we should feed it freshly picked birch leaves from the tree in our yard.

They took us on a tour of their farm and showed us the log building that was the original homestead.

Years later at her sister’s funeral, Hildegard asked me about the moth eggs and if we had been successful in raising a batch.

I spoke with Hildegard many times over the years. Often she would call with an idea for a story or project. Other times, she would reach out on some issue of historical merit to set the record straight with information she had gleaned from her research or had experienced first hand. She would often complain that the paper did not include information about who people’s parents or grandparents were when we would write about students or young people’s achievements.

She would talk about growing up in a Medford that was far different than the one we know today. She would talk about interaction between the white residents of the community and the band of Native Americans who lived nearby and about the tensions between those descended from German immigrant populations and those of English descent. She had definite opinions about the editorial battles that took place between The Star News and the German language newspaper the Waldbote.

She was born into a Medford without electricity, being just outside the city limits and grew up in a landscape still early in its recovery from the cutover that left relatively few trees of any size standing in the region.

She was an innovator and a pioneer choosing an academic life earning multiple degrees and teaching at the university level to prepare future generations of educators.

It would be easy to say that Medford is diminished by her passing, but that would not do justice to her legacy as an educator. The Medford community was enriched for many years by her wealth of knowledge and by her willingness to share that knowledge to all who would listen.

The regret for many of us is not having taken the time to sit and visit with her as often as we should have.

Hildegard’s legacy will live on in the lessons she taught, the knowledge she shared and in the many lives she touched. It will live on in the Kuse Farm Museum and Nature Preserve and for those who walk its trails and pause to rest and think at its mindfulness stations. Hildegard remains alive in the apples that fall from the tree her father planted and in the oaks whose acorns Hildegard collected as a child and sold for pocket money to the local University Extension officer for reforestation efforts and in the educational materials. She remans alive in the puppets, artwork and religious items created by her and her sister Loretta and all those whose lives she touched.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News. Contact Brian at BrianWilson@centralwinews.com.