The DAY MY GRANDMA, MRS. BUTTERBALL, CHECKED OUT of this WORLD, GOD BLESS HER....WELL, i MAY as well dive right into the sad chapter of my grandma Helen Mills. From what I've been told and read she was a lovely woman born of a good family in Chicago, Illinois and loved horses. She attended a woman's college and somewhere along the way met my grandpa Leo Peters. They married and had six daughters (no sons): Martha, Linda (my mom), Diana, Barbara, Sandra, & Brenda (born developmentally disabled) (names in order of age, from oldest to youngest, although I am not sure if Brenda is the youngest, and, by the way, she passed away in the mid 2000's). My mom was born in Evanston Illinois as was Martha and that's where Butterball began. My grandfather must have met my grandma Helen in a work-related setting because if I recall correctly she was the daughter of a meat company executive and that's where my grandpa worked (Armour, I think). It was while at his first job that my grandpa came up with the idea for the "butter packet" (a way to color & shape butter to make it more aesthetically appealing). He apparently brought the idea to his superiors but they weren't impressed and so he decided to "go it alone" and started the butter business in the garage of their apartment in Evanston, a few blocks from Lake Michigan. And the rest, as they say, is history... it was SO SUCCESSFUL that not long later they moved across the lake to Grand Rapids where grandpa bought a large building to start a Butterball factory, and he also bought the largest mansion in Grand Rapids (750 Plymouth). However, while my grandma Helen was no stranger to success and wealth, the conjecture is that it was too ostentatious for her and despite going with the flow for many years and raising six daughters, she eventually got tired of it. However, in those days, getting a divorce caused a person to become ostracized by society, especially in the church, so perhaps she did not think that divorce was an option. Instead, she "checked out." In the link below you can read my Aunt Diana's 1st person narration about the moment she found out. She tells it better than I can.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/29821134/Unfinished-Business-by-my-aunt-Diane-Kammi...
