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By the time 9 o'clock Mass was over on Sundays, Ma Lausche always had a regiment-sized buffet of breaded chicken, veal and pork chops, with a Slovenian side dish of sauerkraut and Roman beans, on her dining-room table. All day long the relatives, friends and neighbors came visiting —to eat, drink, gossip and talk politics. In the evenings the family circle tightened around the upright piano in the parlor. Every member of the family played a musical instrument, or sang. Ma Lausche assigned the voices and instruments, and led the singing. Almost always, the finale was her favorite: My Country, 'Tis of Thee.
After Louis Lausche died in 1908, Frances became a gentle matriarch. "My greatest debt in life is to my mother," says Frank Lausche fervently. "She was a good, charitable person, wanting to help everyone, meticulously avoiding any acts or words that might bring hurt upon other people. Mother was proud of her children. I can still see her, dressed in her old black coat, as she stood in the courtroom and watched me take the oath of office as judge." Ma Lausche did not live to see her most famous son become mayor or governor. She died on the Fourth of July, 1934.
Struggle Upward. Even as youngsters the Lausche kids worked at odd jobs. Frank and his brothers folded and delivered copies of Ameriska Domovina. At twelve Frank got his first steady job, at $2 a week, lighting gas lamps in the neighboring village of Bratenahl. After his father and his older brother Louis Jr. died, he helped Ma Lausche in the wine shop and cafe. Some biographers have depicted the Widow Lausche and her brood in terms of stark poverty. Actually, they were always as well off as any of their neighbors. Life was a struggle, but it was a struggle upward.
Frank was a good athlete, and baseball was his first love. As a high-school sand lotter, he was hot enough to catch the eye of a professional baseball scout, and in 1916, at 20, he went off to play third base with the Duluth White Sox. His batting average for the season was .300, and he was known as "The Terror of the Northern League." In 1917 Lausche moved up to the Lawrence, Mass, team in the old Class B New England League. But the Eastern pitchers soon discovered his weakness: a low curve on the outside. At the bottom of a slump, Frank was fired, just about the time the U.S. entered World War I. After officers' training school at Camp Gordon, Ga., 2nd Lieut. Lausche began playing third base on the camp team. Another scout spotted him and, on his discharge from the Army, signed him to a contract with the Atlanta Crackers, in the Southern Association, for $225 a month.