What Was Our Wedding Day Like?

This August 20, 2021 will be the 55th Anniversary of our marriage. I was 21 years old and my husband to be was 23 years old.

He had completed his undergrad degree at UW-Madison in June. His plans were to teach high school speech at Badger High School in Lake Geneva, WI while I commuted from Lake Geneva to UW-Whitewater to complete my undergrad degree in Elementary Education with a minor in Library Science. We planned our wedding for a date that followed my summer classes at UW-Whitewater and before school began at Badger High School in Lake Geneva, WI. We rented a furnished apartment which was on the second floor of a large home. This apartment was used from Memorial Day to Labor Day as summer rental housing for people who flocked to Lake Geneva for their summer vacation destination. The town was on a beautiful lake with many vacation amenities during the summer months. We could move in after Labor Day and would need to move out before Memorial Day the next May.

With a wedding on August 20th, we would have one week for a honeymoon before John would begin his teaching job and I would begin my fall semester of school.

Our wedding day was perfect. The weather was beautiful and all that was planned unfolded as we had hoped and prayed for.

How Has The Country Changed During My Lifetime?

As I write this, there have been 76.5 years in my lifetime. In those years I have seen a number of changes so I will try to enumerate those as I answer this question.

I was born early in the morning on December 7, 1944 in a hospital in La Crosse, WI. My parents lived 45 miles from LaCrosse but because of some complications in the early months of my mother’s pregnancy with me, she had switched to a Dr. in La Crosse rather than keep the Dr. in Viroqua who thought there was no hope for her to carry me to full term. The photo below shows the La Crosse Hospital where my mother worked during her high school years and where I was born in 1944.

My mother attended La Crosse Central High School from which she graduated in 1939. She was able to attend this school because the Gundersen-Lutheran Hospital in La Crosse had built a Nurses Home where girls from the country could live while they had jobs at the Hospital. This building is still on the grounds of the hospital but is no longer a girl’s dorm.

My mother attended high school during the day and worked as a Nurse’s Aide in the evening. She walked 23 blocks to and from school each day.

The photo below is a recent picture of the high school in La Crosse.

My father attended Viroqua High School. He and one of his brothers got to school on foot and one horse. One of them started out walking and the other started out on the horse. The distance to school was probably about five miles. The one who rode the horse stopped and tied the horse to a fence after about one mile on the road and started walking. The other brother walked until he got to the horse which he then untied and rode on beyond the brother who was walking. They kept this back and forth walk and ride system until they arrived at school. The school had a barn for the horses that students rode to school.

A Dear Friend Since Days of Childhood...

This week’s story is about someone who has been a special acquaintance of mine since childhood. We were never school classmates because we never attended the same school. We attended the same church so we were Sunday School classmates even though we lived in different states. The photo below shows Lakeside Evangelical Free Church at the corner of Sarnia and Huff Streets in Winona, MN. This photo was taken after it was converted from a church to a home in the years following the church’s move to a larger building known as Pleasant Valley Ev. Free Church but that happened after each of us left home.

My family and I lived on a dairy farm in WI when I was a child which was seven miles from the church we attended in Winona, MN. Our farm was near Fountain City, WI (photo below) which bordered the Mississippi River a few miles north-east of the bridge across the river into Winona, MN which also bordered the Mississippi River on the west side.

I was probably about ten years old when my family and I began attending this church. This was a place our family loved and I have many wonderful memories of our years as part of the congregation of this church.

But the highlight of my years at this church was my friendship with Andrea Stallknecht. She was almost exactly one year older than I as we both had early December birthdays. Almost immediately as our family began to attend Lakeside Free Church, Andrea and I became inseparable friends while at church and while attending all activities for children, teens and families that were held there. The photo below was taken of the Pastor’s Instruction Class which we both attended the year I was in fifth grade. In the picture below, my eighth grade brother is in the middle of the back row with Andrea on his left. I am on the far right. This class was held on Saturday mornings during the school year. We memorized lots of scripture and were taught many valuable things about the Bible and its teaching during that year of time.

Our church encouraged youth ages 10 - 18 to attend a week of Bible camp during the summer. Andrea had probably had one year of camp experience before we became friends but I was easily convinced that a week of summer camp would be lots of fun. She and I began attending Camp Decorah together probably in August 1955. Her parents invited me to go with them to check into camp. Andrea and I were able to stay in the same tent every summer through our school years and loved those experiences immensely. Each year we climbed Decorah Peak while at camp so my sister Margelyn and I stopped to get some photos of the peak on a drive by the area a few years ago.

Here’s the peak in the distance of the photo below. The camp is a Boy Scout campgrounds. They used it early in the summer and allowed the grounds to be rented for a week in August by a group for use as a Bible Camp for children from a number of churches in the area.

There were many other church events that we attended together. As teens we had youth fellowship at church prior to the Sunday evening service, youth group parties quite often were held at the Stallknecht home, as teenagers we added a stop at an ice cream parlor after Sunday evening services and in winter we had ice skating parties, tobogganing parties and scavenger hunts. We giggled through church services if our mother’s let us sit together. We also had a blast each 4th of July when we had a church wide picnic at the Arches Park which was a beautiful place to run and play. The spring banquet for teens was a fun dress up event for the area youth who did not go to their school proms. If something happened at church, Andrea and I would both be there and be doing it together.

As I look back on this special childhood friendship there is something I haven’t yet mentioned which was a huge gift to me. Our church had a Sunday morning service and a Sunday evening service. Both my family and Andrea’s family attended both of these services unless we were snowed in. So every Sunday during the summer months, Andrea would ask if I could go home with her after the morning service and stay all afternoon until evening service after which I would go home with my parents. I am quite sure I had this privilege at least a hundred times if not more. Andrea’s father was the caretaker/groundskeeper for a very wealthy widow. Andrea’s family lived on the estate of Mrs. Little. The grounds of this property were a paradise with many amenities which I did not have on our farm. There was an inground swimming pool, tennis courts, five acres of mowed grass, a rose garden and beautiful wooded paths all around the property. Andrea and I had limits to what we could do so only once did she give me a tour inside Mrs. Little’s fabulous 48 room mansion but there was still plenty that we could do. Andrea’s family always warmly welcomed me. As I visited in this home so often, I was observing a rich measure of hospitality which allowed me to learn things that I would use later as a Pastor’s wife and a mother in my own home. I was blessed by the opportunities I had as Andrea’s friend and our friendship has lasted into adulthood though we have not continued to live near each other where we could attend the same church. I am sure that our shared commitment to Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior provided the basis for our common interests so that we enjoyed being together no matter what age we were.

The picture below is of Andrea and me a few years ago.

Our husbands joined us for the photo below.

I am very thankful for this dear lifelong friend and her wonderful family.

 

What School Year Jobs Did I Have During My College Years - 1963-1968

I began my freshman year at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, WI in September 1963.  I had been accepted at UW-Madison and at UW-LaCrosse.  The LaCrosse campus was closer to home and less expensive so my plan was to attend that school unless I could get into one of the two scholarship dorms at UW-Madison.  I qualified to apply for a room in one of those dorms because I had been the Salutatorian of my high school class.  The dorms provided a lower cost than other campus dorms because the scholarship dorms required the residents to participate with assigned weekly duties in the dorm’s common areas such as the lounge, hallways, bathrooms and the kitchen/dining area.  I was really hoping to get a room in one of those dorms because my brother was starting his senior year at UW-Madison and he had made life in Madison sound very inviting.  He was very active in Badger Christian Fellowship which was a branch of Inter-Varsity which is a college christian ministry.  I knew I would join him in attending their weekly meetings if I was able to be assigned a room at Zoe Bayliss or Susan Davis House. 

I applied for a room in one of those houses. In time, I received a response with a letter that told me I was not accepted for a room but had been put on a wait list.  The letter told me to reply if I wished to remain on the wait list.  I was very disappointed about this and since it was already quite late in my senior year of high school, I felt my chances of getting assigned a room were near impossible so I didn’t return a letter asking to be kept on the wait list.  I was willing to settle for acceptance at UW-LaCrosse.

A few weeks after I received the letter from UW-Madison, however, I arrived home from high school and Mom handed me another letter from Madison.  I opened the letter and read its message.  “Congratulations, you have been accepted as a resident at Susan Davis House.”  I looked at Mom and said, “How can this be?  I didn’t return the letter asking to be kept on the wait list!”  And then I learned that my mother had not taken my earlier “No” for the final word so she had returned the letter for me asking to be kept on a wait list.