Chapter Twenty-four

I stepped in front of the window just as a snowflake shimmered past. My eyes have grown dimmer over the years but my heart still sees things as clearly as ever. There, I am still a farmer of sorts, always will be. It’s a part of my soul.

Not one day goes by where I don’t think about Jan but I’ve also come to realize a new chapter has opened up in my life. It comes with new friends, new opportunities, new memories. That’s what matters most anyway. The journey, not the destination.

The learning goes on. And I can hardly wait.

Chapter Twenty-three

First came the snow. And then came more snow. So much snow, in fact, that it set records. The winter of 1996-1997 came with predictions for a possible 100-year flood.

Eight blizzards hit us that winter, snow falling and drifting and spinning around until visibility fell to zero. Frigid temperatures, combined with hurricane-force winds, created air that blew straight through you with a wind chill factor of 50 below zero.

Each of these storms left another massive layer of additional snow that was going to have to melt in the spring, producing an excess of raging water seeking the path of least resistance which may or may not be within the boundaries of the banks of the Red River or any of its tributaries.

Andy blew in on November 16, Betty came December 16, Christopher on December 20, Doris hit January 9, Elmo on January 15, Franzi came on January 22, Gust on March 4. But the worst storm of all, hard-hearted Hannah, packed the final wallop on April 5. Almost one hundred inches of accumulated snow in five short months, drifting into communities that normally received around forty inches. Several people lost their lives, caught out in the blizzards, freezing to their deaths.

Spring came late that year. Then the snow began to melt. Fast. Just like every spring in the Red River Valley, a few of the lower areas began to flood but it didn’t take long for us to realize that this time was different.

The Red River runs right through Grand Forks. Every day, as more snow melted and joined forces in the water, the river rose a little higher. As the predictions for flood grew closer and deadlier, residents came together along its banks, volunteering long muddy hours, far into each long night, piling sandbag after sandbag on top of the dikes to keep the river from bursting onto the streets. And their homes.

Before long, the river started rising at an accelerated rate, faster and faster until it began to climb two feet a day. And more. Fighting the water became useless, it was impossible to stay ahead of it. People who, a few short days ago had high hopes they would beat the flood, gave up their fight and began to make plans to evacuate their homes.

As water began to pour into homes that had never flooded before, helicopters hovered over the town around the clock, alerting residents of impending evacuations. Trucks roared through the streets hauling clay to put on top of dikes in a feeble attempt to stop the rising water. Police and emergency vehicles became a common sight in most of the neighborhoods, their piercing sirens droning constantly in the background.

Every day, the prediction for the crest came in. Every day, the predictions were met and exceeded as the water continued to rise. This was the situation when our daughter Cathi and granddaughter Jenny, along with their two horses, their dog, and their pickup truck full of their belongings, came to visit us on April 18 on their way to relocating in Colorado from Oregon. In preparation for their arrival, I had secured a boarding facility for their horses near our home. Now that was no longer an option because it was underwater. After scrambling on the phone, making calls to area boarding facilities further out of town, I managed to find a place to keep the horses on high ground. As Cathi drove the gravel roads with the horse trailer, water flooded the ditches and the fields, inching towards the tires. There was water everywhere.

That night, around two in the morning, I jumped out of a deep sleep when the phone rang. It was our neighbor from across the street. “Our neighborhood has been given orders to evacuate right away. You have to get out of your house. I didn’t see any lights on over there and I wanted to make sure you were awake and getting ready to leave.”

I raced from my bed to the TV, turning it on and searching the channels for some confirmation of my neighbor’s warning. It wasn’t hard to find, every station was broadcasting the news.

Within twenty minutes a fire truck cruised, very slowly, down the street with blinding lights flashing and bull horns blaring, “Everyone must leave the area immediately. This is a mandatory evacuation. You have no choices. Leave your homes now.” The emphasis was no longer on fighting the flood. It had shifted to saving lives.

At the time, I was certain our house would be untouched since nothing close to that level had ever been recorded for the river. There was, as of yet, no water on our street but we packed up a few belongings, thinking we’d be back in a day or two, and all headed to our son Brad’s house for the night. His house stood a couple of miles away, sitting on slightly higher ground.

None of us slept much so, early the next morning, before the police had a chance to chase us out, Cathi, Jenny, and I drove back to the house to quickly bring a few things upstairs from the basement, just as a precaution. It didn’t take long before we were ordered out of the area again, not giving us enough time to bring everything up. Anyway, what was the point? The only things that were in danger of getting wet were the few things left sitting on the basement floor. Everything on the shelves would be fine. Or so I thought.

The water continued to rise. Things went from bad to worse as the flood triggered a fire that broke out in the Security Building, a historic landmark that was close to 100 years old, in downtown Grand Forks. It was a cruel irony that the four feet of water that were running fast and furious through the downtown streets prevented the fire trucks from entering and casting water on the flames themselves.

Airplanes passed over again and again as they dropped fire retardant onto the buildings that were still standing. The fire department was forced to use unusual tactics to fight this fire so they finally brought in fire trucks, perched on top of flat-bed trucks, into downtown Grand Forks. The air was frigid, the water excruciatingly cold, and several of the firefighters had to be hospitalized and treated for hypothermia.

The fire spun out of control, eventually spreading to eleven buildings and destroying much of downtown Grand Forks. Total losses were estimated at more than a billion dollars.

Brad’s house was too small to accommodate all of us but we weren’t sure where to go. Some friends that lived close to our farm, the Halstenson and Reinholz families, got word that we needed a place to stay. They took us in and treated us like family. Cathi and Jenny decided to pack up the horses and head on to Colorado.

Water continued to flow over curbs, filling first the streets, then the buildings, sometimes rising so high that entire blocks were completely underwater, their residents rescued by boat from the roofs of their homes. Thousands of people fled to nearby towns and farmhouses where they were welcomed and sheltered, many leaving so fast that the only possessions they were able to save were the clothes they were wearing. Phone calls were laced with panic as people desperately tried to find friends and family. Strangers around the community and around the country quickly became neighbors as people did what they could to help. Support poured into the community from all over the country.

We weren’t allowed to return to our home until six weeks later, when the flood waters had finally receded enough for us to get in and access the damage. We couldn’t believe what we found.

Our house sat at 54 feet above the river and the flood had crested at 54.4 feet, maintaining that level for several days until the water, very slowly, receded back within the banks of the Red River. Our newly carpeted, newly finished basement had been flooded to within six inches of the ceiling. Everything in it, including all the furniture, the furnace, and many treasured possessions and heirlooms, were lost. The only things left from the basement were the few items we had carried upstairs before the water filled our street.

The entire town banded together to begin the massive clean-up. Almost every home in East Grand Forks and most of the homes in Grand Forks had flood damage. Many people who lost their homes, their cars, and every one of their belongings were now forced to start all over with nothing.

The river had risen up and swallowed both Grand Forks and East Grand Forks. Literally. Entire neighborhoods were gone, some never to be rebuilt. Along both sides of every street, as far as you could see, piles of debris reached over six feet, heaped with a lifetime of possessions, furniture, and mementos that had been destroyed. In all, 112,000 tons of debris were removed. But not one life was lost to the flood.

When the water started going down, our spirits started going up.

After the waters had receded, people struggled for many months to rebuild. The progress was remarkable to watch. Where houses and yards once graced the landscape, the debris was cleared and replaced by beautiful parks. Where there was once nothing but a five-mile-wide swath of muddy river, charming new restaurants and shops now stood. Where a fire once raged, gutting downtown Grand Forks, new office buildings and boutiques now welcomed the public.

More than 46,000 people, 90% of the population, fled from the two cities with just their children, their pets, and the clothes on their backs. It was one of the largest evacuations in the history of our country. Very few homes were spared. Those that weren’t destroyed were damaged in the flood.

In the midst of all the devastation, I felt blessed to witness such hope and determination that graced the faces of the people who refused to give up on their city, their neighborhoods, and their lives. No matter what, they still had each other. And when it comes right down to it, that’s all we really have. What’s in our hearts. No flood can touch that.

Chapter Twenty-two

Jan was only six years old, just a baby, really, when she first discovered that she was adopted. She would have preferred to learn about it from her parents, possibly with some compassion attached to the word, rather than by the neighborhood bullies whose manner of doing things included neither sensitivity nor tact.

Until she was in the first grade, Jan didn’t even know what the word meant. And she probably might have remained oblivious to her adopted state if one of her classmates hadn’t come up to her during recess, put his finger in her face, and use the words she would never forget. “You are adopted. You are adopted. You don’t even have a real family. They didn’t want you so they gave you away. You’re just an orphan. You are adopted.”

Stunned and hurt, Jan pulled away and ran home as fast as she could. The screen door leading to the kitchen slammed hard behind her as she burst into the room, finding her mother preparing supper. “Is it true? Am I an orphan that nobody wanted? What does adopted mean?”

Her mother put down the knife she was using to cut carrots and stared out the window, collecting her thoughts. What was she going to say to her beloved daughter?

Back in 1927 when Jan was born, conversations weren’t as open as they are today and could only include certain socially approved topics. Like what color drapes you were considering putting in the living room. Or the promotion your husband just received at work. How much money he made was not allowed and neither were the problems your family had that stemmed from that. Never was the word adoption mentioned. It implied unwanted pregnancies and hushed voices behind closed doors. Jan’s mother turned to her, gave her a big hug, and nodded her head. “Yes, you are adopted. That means that when you were born, your mommy couldn’t keep you so she gave you to poppa and me, who wanted you so very much.” She quickly changed the subject, not wanting Jan to know the truth, that one of her greatest fears was that Jan’s birth mother would someday come to steal her away from them.

Jan and her brother Clint were both adopted when they were babies by Chris and Jennie Hill from Washburn, North Dakota. Chris died in 1954 and, after Jennie’s death in 1974, Jan began to wonder more and more often about her roots. Why was she given up for adoption? Who was the family that she was born into? What were they like?

Finally, on one snowy, blustery day in December of 1979, she made the decision to begin the search for her birth family.

A few years earlier, I had instinctively known that, someday, Jan would feel the pull hard enough to go looking for them.

Serving in the North Dakota Legislature at the time, I decided to stop into the Department of Vital Statistics at the Capitol building in Bismarck. It was high noon and the office had been emptied for lunch. Except for one young clerk.

I told her I needed the names of Jan and Clint’s biological parents, telling her that it was extremely important, something I needed for critical medical reasons. Mind you, I was fully aware that those names were sealed and could not be released to me. But I had to try.

This clerk was new to her job with only three days under her belt, not yet fully aware of all of her employer’s stringent rules and regulations. After disappearing in the back room for a few minutes, she returned with all four names copied on a piece of paper. Stunned beyond belief, I quickly thanked her and bolted out the door, tucking the names safely away in my billfold.

There they stayed until Jan began to talk to me about her desire to learn about the beginnings of her life. My heart skipped a beat of joy as I gave her a big smile and asked her if she would be interested in knowing her birth parents’ names.

She hesitated and raised her eyebrows as she answered that yes, of course she would. After waiting all this time, I finally reached into my wallet and took out the piece of paper with the four names on it. Her mouth dropped open and for one of the few times in her life, she was speechless.

Her birth father was Edward Rowley, her birth mother was Julia Thorson, and she had been born in Grand Forks. Fueled by this fundamental piece of the puzzle, we began to research records. This was way before internet access and the comprehensive research tools available on it so we had to do it the old way, enlisting libraries, phone books, church records, and public records to help us find out more. We could find nothing about her mother but we did find a Netta Rowley, along with her address, listed in the current Grand Forks phone book. On further investigation, we found out Netta had been married to an Edward Rowley but that he had died several years earlier.

Jan decided to pay Netta a visit. I went along for support but waited in the car, allowing Jan, at her request, to approach Netta alone. She nervously stepped up to Netta’s front door and knocked.

As it swung open, Jan introduced herself, “Hi, you must be Netta Rowley. You don’t know me but I’m Janice Gunderson. I was adopted as a baby by a family from Washburn. I’m not sure who my natural parents are but I think that maybe Edward could be my father. Could I talk to you about that?”

 The more Jan talked, the redder Netta’s face became. Finally, she could contain her anger no longer. “That’s impossible! I was married to Edward for many years and we never had a baby girl that we gave up for adoption.”

Jan hesitated. “I was born, along with my twin brother John, who died soon after birth, on October 27, 1927 to Julia Thorson. Are you sure you don’t know anything about it? I understand this probably comes as a shock to you and I deeply apologize for that. It’s just really important to me to find out where I come from. Can you help me?”

After denying knowledge of the twin’s birth several more times, Netta finally admitted she was aware of the situation but was still too angry about the affair that broke up her family and caused her divorce to talk about it.

The following week, Jan contacted Netta again and gave her a rose. This time, Netta invited Jan to come in. They sat in the living room as Jan asked Netta for more information about her birth father and if she could borrow some photographs of him that she could copy and keep. Netta seemed reluctant, hesitant to answer Jan’s questions. Then, out of the blue, she decided she didn’t want anything to do with Jan. No more information. No photographs. Because of Netta’s hurt and anger over the affair and its disastrous consequences, she had grown to be a bitter, resentful woman. Jan decided it would be best for everyone not to have any further contact with her.

Jan’s adoption had been processed through Children’s Village in Fargo. We hired them to do a search for us but when we met with them to discuss what they had found, they told us they hadn’t been able to uncover any new information.

There was a folder, clearly marked with Jan’s name, lying on the table where we were all seated. I strongly suspected it contained information we would have been grateful to receive. Heart to heart, I told the clerk that I understood she couldn’t actually give us the information contained in the folder but could she leave the room and let us look for ourselves? That way she would not be directly involved in doing anything to jeopardize her job. She refused.

We weren’t about to give up. We started to check old membership rosters in area Lutheran churches to find if Julia Thorson was listed in any of them. One of the local pastors in Grand Forks found her name and those of her five children listed as former members but nothing about where they had gone. We put ads in the local newspapers but got no replies. We kept trying as many possibilities that we could think of but it was always the same. Dead ends. There was no trace of Julia after she left Grand Forks.

The key piece of the puzzle that unraveled the mystery was when we discovered that one of Julia’s sons, Ernest, had graduated from the University of North Dakota. Our daughter-in-law Marsha checked the school records and found all the information we needed. Ernest had died in April 1978 and his obituary listed a brother, Ellwood, living in Albuquerque, New Mexico; a brother Harold in Chicago, Illinois; a sister Helen Gray in Logansport, Indiana; a sister Lucille Schiffner in Riverside, California; and their mother, Julia, living at the same address in Riverside. We were so excited about this new information we hardly knew what to do next.

Jan decided that, since her mother would be quite old, she should first contact her daughter, Lucille. She didn’t feel a phone call, at this time, would be appropriate so she decided to write a letter, spending hours on it even though it was less then a page long. It basically said that she thought Julia Thorson was her mother and, if that was true, then Lucille would be her half-sister. Jan asked Lucille to call us collect. Anytime.

She dropped the letter into the mailbox and waited.

The letter made its way across several states, arriving in Riverside as Lucille, her sister Helen, and Julia were all sitting around the kitchen table enjoying their afternoon coffee. Sam, Lucille’s husband, picked up the day’s mail from the mailbox, then dropped the envelopes on the table as he walked through the house onto the back patio. There, on the top of the stack, was a letter postmarked Grand Forks.

Lucille picked up the envelope and examined it. None of them could imagine who would be writing to them from Grand Forks after all this time away from there. Feeling a little uneasy, Julia suggested Lucille open it right away.

Lucille read the letter out loud, first with disbelief, then with shock. She slowly lowered the page to the table and both Helen and Lucille’s heads turned towards Julia at the same time and asked if this could possibly be true. Julia’s smile lit up her entire face. “Yes, it’s true. I have tried many times to tell you, but I never could.”

The evening of February 7, 1980, the phone rang. It was Lucille calling for Jan, the call she had been waiting for days to receive after a lifetime of wondering. As they talked, an hour went by. Then two. Then Lucille extended an invitation to Jan and me to come out and meet them.

It didn’t take us long to pack for California.

The day arrived, a bright, sunny day, that we were due at Lucille’s apartment. We were very excited. And nervous. We picked at our food during breakfast.

As it grew closer to ten o’clock, the time we had scheduled to arrive, we got into the car for the short trip from the motel to meet Jan’s new family. We drove up to the address and a man came out from under the hood of his car and introduced himself as Sam, Lucille’s husband. We later found out that he had been under the hood all morning, waiting for us, pretending to nonchalantly work on his car. They had been as nervous as we were.

Sam took us inside to meet Jan’s half-sister, Lucille. Then we all walked next door, to Julia’s apartment. There, Jan’s other half-sister Helen and her jubilant 90-year-old mother were sitting in the living room, Julia’s arms outstretched to Jan for the hug she had waited a lifetime to give.

After over 53 years, mother and daughter were reunited.

Jan asked Julia if she had ever thought about her. “Every day of my life,” she said without a moment of hesitation. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship that would last the few years that Julia had left to live.

It was a mixed blessing when the day arrived to start back home.

We made a stop in Albuquerque to meet Jan’s half-brother, Al. Because he was older than his sisters the day that Jan was born, he remembered it clearly. But he had never mentioned it. Not to either Lucille or Helen.

Al explained, his eyes bright with tears, “I felt so bad when mom decided to give you up. I begged her not to do it but she did what she thought was best for you. It was always a wish of mine that some day you would come and find her. This is a very happy day for me.”

Several years earlier, Al had retired from doing portrait photography. His studio was in a building that sat along old Route 66 in Albuquerque. Both winters that we spent in Los Angeles, several years before, we had driven right by his studio, never knowing how close we had been to Jan’s half-brother. I wonder how many times in life we do this, come so close to our dreams, never knowing that all we had to do was reach out a little further, a little higher than we dared hope.

But before we arrived home, we had one more stop. On our way through Fargo, we pulled into the parking lot at Children’s Village. The clerk we had dealt with before, the one we had pleaded with to let us look through Jan’s folder, saw us walking up to the door and sensed we were coming to cause trouble. She was relieved, then astounded, as we told her the story of our trip to California to meet Jan’s new family and that they were everything Jan had hoped they would be.

The clerk beamed as she wrapped Jan’s folder with a pink ribbon and labeled it complete and reunited.

That fall, Helen, Al, Lucille, and Sam came to visit us on the farm. They were so interested to see our home, meet our friends and family, and visit the long-ago places of their childhood. They showed us the house in Grand Forks where they lived when Jan was born. A columnist for the local paper interviewed everybody and wrote a beautiful article about the reunion for the Sunday edition.

Then, the following January, Jan received a call from Lucille. Their mom was ill in the hospital, not expected to live much longer. I was in session with the Legislature so I couldn’t get away but Jan boarded the first plane to Riverside to be with her mother. The family had been afraid that Julia would not live until Jan arrived but, as she walked into the hospital room, Julia opened her eyes, looked at Jan, and gave a weak smile. Then she died. She had waited over 50 years for her daughter to come into her life. Now she had waited one last time.

We spent the next three winters in Riverside, California to be close to Jan’s new sisters and brother. The bonds grew stronger as we blended into an extended family. Our last winter there, Lucille was sadly diagnosed with cancer and died. We felt privileged to have been able to meet her when we did, to be able to share in her life for the short time we had. It was a privilege to have known her.

Finding Jan’s birth family never diminished her love for her adoptive family. They are still her real family, holding her childhood memories, the people she’s loved since the day she was born. She was fortunate to have had two mothers, sitting at the bedside of both as she shared her love for them on their journey into heaven.

Before long, the day came that I decided to retire from farming, a bittersweet day tinged with sadness. This land had been farmed by my family for 110 years, first by my grandfather, then my father, and then me. But our children were all interested in careers other than farming, following their own dreams and goals, so Jan and I rented our farm land to a neighbor and built a new house in Grand Forks, one of Jan’s lifelong dreams.

I shed some tears as I tightened belts and polished the paint on all my beloved farm equipment, getting it ready to sell at the auction that was to be held the following month. Everything sold. After the auction was over and everyone had left, I took a long, lingering look into the empty Quonset. I pulled the heavy doors shut one last time, got into my car, and drove off.

If I’ve learned anything through the years working as a farmer, it is that you take things as they come. You accept things and move on. No matter how hard that is.

Chapter Twenty-One

 

It was an adjustment coming back home to North Dakota but it wasn’t long before Jan and I began receiving invitations to give slide show presentations at churches all over eastern North Dakota, helping to raise awareness and compassion for the needs of the Ethiopian people. We ended up giving over two hundred of them. I’ve always loved to talk, to tell stories, and my public speaking skills became even better because of all this exposure. Before long, suggestions were casually thrown around that I might be a good candidate to run for the North Dakota House of Representatives, that they needed good, honest people like me in the Capitol, helping take care of the state.

At first I brushed off the comments as ridiculous. Then I started taking the idea more seriously. I didn’t know a whole lot about serving in the State Legislature but, over the years, I’ve found that common sense is the best way to face new problems. I didn’t think this would be any exception. With considerable encouragement I decided to pursue the idea and, during my years as a farmer, ended up spending six winters in the State Capitol Building at Bismarck.

The Capitol Building itself is often referred to as the skyscraper on the prairie, a little over two hundred forty-one feet tall, making it the tallest building in North Dakota. The grounds are manicured to perfection with the Capitol Mall, a large open field of grass flanked with walking paths and elm trees, running down the center. It’s here that a world-breaking record was recently made when almost nine thousand people sprawled out on the snow, waving their arms and falling into history, earning the distinction of the most snow angels made simultaneously in one place. Now that’s something you don’t see every day.

Meeting new people and answering their barbed questions on the campaign trail were challenging, inspiring, and kept me on my toes. More than once, I ran into my competitor campaigning in the same town, in the same neighborhood, at the same time. We’d meet for lunch, compare notes, and discuss our experiences.

But no matter how many times I went through it, the night of an election was always edged with anticipatory stress. And, even though I was elected six times, I did find out what it was like to lose one year because of a miscount. The day after the election, I was working in the field, sitting in my air conditioned cab listening to the election returns on the radio. The polls had been delayed in getting their votes counted but the announcer finally had the results. I had lost.

My heart fell. I was really disappointed. Serving the state was something I loved to do and now I would no longer be called to do it. Fortunately, my disappointment didn’t last long because two hours later they said that there had been a reporting mistake. I had won the election after all. The big grin on my face lasted all day long.

North Dakota has one of the more interesting legislatures in the nation because any member can introduce a bill on any subject they want. That bill is then heard in the proper committee, voted on, and brought up to the floor of the full house or senate for a final vote. If it passes both houses and the governor signs it, it becomes law.

One of the most important contributions I made was to establish a state employee equal employment policy. Before this, a lot of the state employees ended up transferring between offices because the pay varied so widely for the same job, causing unnecessary friction between departments. Some offices had difficulty hiring anyone at all because they were forced to pay such low salaries. There was considerable opposition to my proposition, but I helped pass this bill in the house and testified for it in the senate. It passed there, too, and became law.

I quickly found out there is much more to politics than just the Republican-Democrat split. There is east against the west, city against rural, and conservative against liberal. Even though I’m a conservative Republican, I had friends in both parties, everyone simply trying to do what is best for the state and not necessarily what is best for the party.

Most of the time, Jan joined me in Bismarck, especially after the kids grew up and left home. We made a lot of new friends and, one Sunday, we were invited to a wedding in a local Lutheran church. The ceremony was beautiful, the bride and groom grinning with joy. Afterwards, all the guests were directed downstairs for the reception. The photographer wanted the bride and groom, along with the rest of the wedding party, to remain upstairs so he could complete the photography. Everyone else mingled and talked and had some punch while we waited for the bride and groom to finish and start the reception line, a steadfast tradition that was strictly adhered to.

Someone finally announced that we did not have to wait for them any longer. The photo session was going to take up considerably more time than was first expected and the guests should go ahead and begin the buffet. No guest really wanted to be first so, finally, one of the hostesses came over to Jan and me and asked if we would please come and start the line. We walked over to the buffet and picked up our plates while the rest of the guests reluctantly formed a line behind us. We filled our plates with delicious food and got the very first pieces of wedding cake. When we were almost finished serving ourselves, we turned around to find a place to sit down. There, right behind us in line, were the bride and groom. The word humiliated doesn’t begin to describe how we felt.

Whenever we could, we all liked to infuse some laughter into our daily schedules. When a new member joined the legislature, it was up to the rest of us to come up with ideas to make sure they were on their toes. During one session, I happened to be chairman of the corrections and review for the Daily Journal. It was basically an honorary position since there was already a paid staff in place that did the actual proofreading and editing. One of the newest legislators was assigned as co-chair for the position and, with a straight face,  I told him that this corrections and review job was so demanding, we needed to take turns going through the journal each day, making changes right away so we wouldn’t fall behind. It wasn’t until he spent two full days going through the Journal line by line with a fine-tooth comb that I finally admitted the truth to him.

During each session, several young North Dakotans are selected to work as pages, delivering messages and running errands for members of the Senate, the House of Representatives, and various Legislative offices. Serving as a page offers young, aspiring politicians a wonderful opportunity to observe things firsthand.

They were also fair game as unknowing participants of our twisted humor. At the front of the assembly room, a set of lights, one for each desk in the room, was mounted on a large board on the wall. Whenever one of us needed to talk to a page, we would simply push a button, turning on the light that corresponded to our particular desk. The pages would know immediately who was calling them and they would make their way over to the person who wanted to talk to them.

One morning we all agreed, at precisely 10:00, to push the summons button at each of our desks, the one that called the pages. As they wandered around the edges of the room, waiting to be enlisted by us, every light on the entire board suddenly blazed with light. The looks on the pages’ faces were priceless.

Legislators and state elected officials got invitations to banquets at least four, sometimes five, nights a week. Since steak is locally grown in North Dakota, it is often the meat they served, usually too rare for my taste. Neither Jan nor I are able to eat steak that undercooked.

While attending one of these banquets, Jan and I took our places near the center of an immense auditorium where over three hundred guests were seated. The governor, along with several other state officials, sat on a special raised platform at the front of the room, a prominent position that honored their stature. As the waitress began filling the water glasses, I asked her if they were serving steak that night. She said yes. I then asked her if there was any chance we could get it well done. Very well done. She said yes again and left our table.

After about half an hour, the kitchen door opens and out comes our waitress with two plates of food. Since the head table is always served first, I assumed these plates were destined for the governor. But the waitress sailed right past him and proceeded to the center of the room. She stopped right behind Jan and I and placed our steaks, perfectly well done, on the table right in front of us. Every head in the room swiveled towards us, craning to see who these dignitaries were who were so important that they needed to be served first, even before the governor.

We wanted to slide under the table and disappear.

Chapter Twenty

Animals of all kinds, both wild and domestic, inhabited the immediate area around the mission station. In order to keep them from eating the feed we had for our own animals, we hired men to stand guard, keeping the strays away.

They held their posts deep into the night because of the very real possibility of bandits paying us a visit. So every evening, when daylight started to mingle with dusk, I checked to ensure that the guard for the night shift had showed up. They didn’t carry any weapons, so one of the guards asked me if I had something he could use, something to keep within reach in case he had to protect himself. Since I had recently bought a dangerous looking souvenir, a spear with a four-foot handle, I offered it to him for protection. When dawn arrived and he traded places with the day shift guard, he left the spear on the back porch.

One stifling Sunday afternoon, air perfectly still and not a cloud in the sky, I was sitting at our kitchen table answering some of the many letters we received from friends and neighbors back home (one day we got twenty-seven letters). Because we appreciated them so much, Jan and I were diligent about writing back.

I glanced up just as two stray donkeys trotted up to the house, headed straight for the tasty flowers that Jan had planted. I jumped up to chase them away, angry with the guards for not doing their job.

Grabbing the spear from the back porch, I took off after them, running as fast as I could, intent on touching at least one of them in the rump with the spear, discouraging any further visits. But with the high altitude and furnace-like heat, I quickly realized I wouldn’t be able to run this fast for very long. Stopping to take aim, I thrust the spear into their direction, hoping they would continue to run all the way off the property. Horrified, I watched as the spear landed dead-center into the rump of one of the donkeys, deep enough to stay put. Mind you, I had been warned that if I ever killed someone’s chicken, either by accident or on purpose, it would be extremely expensive because I would have to pay not only for that chicken, but also for all the future generations that chicken could have produced, had it lived. What in the world would a donkey cost me?

Somehow, I had to remove that spear. There was no way around it. I took off running after them, once again. As they made an abrupt turn around the corner of a building, I knew this was my last chance to redeem myself. Using every last bit of my energy that I had, I lunged for the spear and got my hand around it. I pulled, hard, and it detached from the donkey just as I fell to the ground, utterly exhausted. As I lay there in the dust, watching the donkeys trot down the road, I sheepishly looked around, hoping that no one had see this embarrassing episode. For the first time ever, there didn’t appear to be anyone around. I got up, limping into the house, the bent spear in my hand.

Jan, resting in bed and reading a letter, looked up and asked me where I had gone. Since I was hoping to forget it ever happened and was desperately trying to catch my breath, I blurted out, “Oh nothing much. I just chased two donkeys away from the house.” As I sprawled into the nearest chair, trying to get enough air into my lungs to breath normally again, I heard someone laughing, uncontrollably. There, looking in the window and laughing so hard that he could barely stand up, was Pastor Hofer. I was mortified. “Oh no. Don’t tell me you saw the whole thing.”

Between his fits of laughter, he replied, “Saw what? What did you do?” I had no choice but to tell him the whole story while he tried his best to stop his hysterical laughing. At the time, any humor in the situation escaped me completely.

Ever since that day, I always kept my eyes open, alert to the possibility of finding a wounded donkey somewhere. But I never did. The story, thanks to Pastor Hofer’s efforts, ended up spreading throughout the mission station and I quickly earned the nickname the donkey chaser. During our six-month stay in Ethiopia, I lost a total of twenty-seven pounds. I’m not sure if donkey chasing had anything to do with that, but it sure felt like it did.

It was a sad day, the day we left Ethiopia. As we were packing our belongings and souvenirs, we found eleven-year-old Teklay, one of the beloved children we’d come to know, hunkered down in one of our large boxes. He wanted to come with us so badly, he cried as we helped him climb out of the box.

Goodbyes and hugs, along with many tears, were shared all afternoon as we finished packing and Pastor Hofer arrived to drive us to the airport in Axum to catch our plane. The airstrip was an uneven grass field, the ticket office was a thatched hut, and the airplane, a DC3, was nicknamed the Vomit Comet because it gave passengers such a turbulent ride.

We came to know and love the people of Ethiopia. They were the most compassionate, giving individuals we had ever encountered, sharing everything they had, even though they had very little. The sheer joy they greeted each morning with, their excitement at just being alive, was inspiring and motivating. Even though Jan and I were sent halfway around the world to teach these amazing people, they taught us more than we could have ever imagined.

Chapter Nineteen

A few weeks later, I was startled out of a deep sleep sometime during the middle of the night. Several fists pounded simultaneously on the door of our house, several people called out my name, again and again. Apparently someone was trying to get my attention.

I opened the door and the small crowd that waited outside immediately told me that an elderly lady from the compound had died. They needed me to take her body to Axum, a nearby town, for burial. I didn’t see that I had a choice, so we placed her body on a cot and carefully put it into the canvas-covered back of the Land Rover. The entire crowd of people piled in after her except for her very-pregnant daughter and husband. They sat up front with me.

I need to mention here that bandits roamed this countryside every night, creating havoc wherever they went. Because of this, at sunset each and every day, the police block off the roads and stop all traffic from entering, trying to avert any catastrophe before it happens. So before we could even begin our journey to Axum, we had to convince the police to open the blockade for us. I kept thinking about the truck driver I’d recently met who had stopped by our compound to get help fixing the hole in his truck’s radiator. The bandits had shot the hole while they were trying to get him to stop his truck.

Once the road was cleared, we began our long, jarring ride on the narrow mountain road, the mourners wailing and howling and crying out into the night. So there we were, loaded overcapacity with one dead body, moaning mourners, and an overdue pregnant woman, looking for bandits at every turn of the dark mountain road.

It was close to dawn when we arrived in Axum. I had to make several stops as, one by one, everyone got off the truck, each with a duty to perform before the funeral could take place. One contacted grave diggers, one notified the priest, and others got busy spreading out across the town, giving notice of the pending funeral.

But by noon it was all over and the funeral crowd gathered around an enormous feast, lovingly prepared by the local women. All except me. I did not want to die eating their food so I drove home alone, hungry and tired.

Later that afternoon, as I was trying to nap, the deceased woman’s son-in-law came, once again, knocking on my door. As I opened it, he looked at me with a stern expression and reprimanded me for opening the door to my house in the middle of the night. He reminded me how dangerous it could be and said I should never do it again. “It is so dangerous,” he warned, “that you should always send your wife first to see who it is and what they want. Remember that.”

A few weeks later, just before daybreak, I was, again, startled out of a deep sleep to hear a knock on the door. By now, I realized that anything at all could be waiting for me outside that door. I opened it anyway. Without sending Jan first. A long line of people were approaching the house, with two of the men carrying long poles on their shoulders. Attached to these poles, situated midway between the two men, was a chair. Riding in that chair was a very pregnant woman. Apparently, they had traveled many miles to get here and were not going to be turned away.

According to local custom, a woman in childbirth cannot seek help until the sun has set three times. So here it was, the fourth day and they were asking me to take them to the doctor in Axum. We helped the woman, screaming with birth pains, into the back of the Land Rover. Then I made the mistake of telling them that only three people could go along and asked them who that would be. Since they all wanted to go, there were some loud arguments as the three lucky participants were finally selected. Then everybody settled down and we started off.

After only driving about three blocks, they, all at once, hollered “Stop! She has delivered.” I slammed on the brakes, hard, got out, and ran to the back of the truck. There was the newborn baby, covered in blood and mucous, lying on the freezing, dusty, metal floor of the truck. Everybody was fussing over the mother, taking care of her needs. The baby, sobbing with its first breaths, was completely ignored.

My heart was pounding as I tried to decide what to do next. If I, too, ignored and baby and left her unattended, there was no doubt in my mind that she would die. If I picked her up and she died anyway, I would probably be in big trouble. I managed to get someone’s attention, convinced her to pick the baby up and cover her with a cloth for warmth and comfort. Now, remember that the mother had been in labor for three full days. As soon as I had come into the picture, she immediately gave birth. In their eyes, that made me some sort of hero.

Boy babies in Ethiopia are baptized forty days after birth, girl babies wait for sixty days. Since I was the new hero, Jan and I were invited to be guests of honor at the baptism, scheduled to take place in two months, when they would have a celebration and huge feast. We didn’t know what we were going to do because there was no way we would be able to eat their food. Lucky for us, the baptism date fell during the time we had already gone back home to North Dakota.

When I wasn’t tending to pregnant mothers or repairing wells, I did all I could to fix up the house we lived in, trying to make it easier for the director once he returned. I had gotten hold of some paint and decided to paint the bathroom. Shortly after I had finished, Jan went in to use the toilet. Seconds after the door closed, I heard a loud scream. My first thought was that I had used the wrong color. Then it dawned on me I had painted the toilet seat and forgotten to tell her about it.

 

Chapter Eighteen

The Ethiopian farmers basically have only two tools to work with, a wooden plow pulled by oxen and a hand scythe to cut the crops.

Once the grain was cut, the stalks were gathered together and spread out about one foot deep on a circle of hard-packed level ground. A team of oxen was hitched to a pole in the center of the circle, where their job was to walk over the grain stalks, packing down the pile so that the kernels of grain broke away from the straw. The oxen walked around and around until their job was done.

Now, these oxen weren’t, of course, housebroken so as they circled, they simply did what came naturally to them. One of the lucky farm assistants was assigned the critical job of throwing the fresh manure, with his bare hands, out of the threshing circle. Since it was virtually impossible to clean out the urine, it was simply left in the circle. Eventually the straw, along with the grain, soaked it up.

The farmers removed the piles of grain and straw from the oxen’s circle and threw each one high into the air, further separating the grain from the chaff, then scooped it into bags with their hands. From there it was carried to a storage area, usually heavily infested with rats, until they took it to the mill to be ground into flour.

One afternoon I climbed into the Land Rover and drove to Selek-Leka to buy a few supplies that the farmers needed. The store was a small, one-room building with a tile floor, sitting in front of the storekeeper’s home and the various livestock that he owned. While I was browsing through the store, a small calf wandered in, entering from an open door connected to the back yard. Before the storekeeper noticed the adorable little visitor and had a chance to remove him, the calf left a steaming pile of manure in the middle of the floor. Cursing the calf as he led the bellering animal back outside, the storekeeper grabbed a broom and swept the manure out the back door, leaving behind a dark, moist trail on the floor.

Seconds later, a woman entered the store to buy some salt. In Selek-Leka, the customary way of measuring dry goods was to throw some on the floor and then scoop up the required amount by hand into the buyer’s container. The storekeeper didn’t give it a second thought as he poured some salt on the floor, in exactly the same place where the calf had left his mark, and scooped the appropriate amount of salt into her goat skin bag with his hands. I have a feeling the salt she bought that day may have been a little extra spicy.

The food in Ethiopia may have tasted good but I’ll never know because I never ate it. I was too leery of getting violently ill from the way the food was prepared. One of their most popular dishes, a staple of their diet, was enjara. It looked pretty much like a large, dirty sponge shaped like a pancake.

It’s made from tef, a cereal grain that is very high in nutrients. To make the enjara dough, women collected water from a stagnant pond in the cattle pasture then added in a sourdough started and the tef which had been ground into flour. It formed a thick batter that was allowed to sit so the yeast from the sourdough starter would become active and work its magic.

When everything was ripe and ready to cook, the women used a flat woven basket to gather dry oxen dung, placing the pieces inside the stove and lighting them on fire. Once the dung heated up the stove to the right temperature, they baked the enjara on the stove’s clay top. The batter was poured out, similar to how pancake batter is poured, and covered with a domed lid made from cow manure, clay and straw, to form a make-shift oven.

The bottom edge of the cover flaked off manure into the batter and the droplets of steam collected on the inside of the lid, dripping down and landing back onto the baking enjara. Once properly cooked, the women stacked the enjara onto the same woven basket that they had used to gather the cow dung for the fire. When it came time to eat, a highly spiced stew was ladled onto the center of the enjara and they ripped off pieces from the edge, dipped it into the center mixture and ate it with their fingers. It smelled heavenly. The delicious aroma certainly tempted me, but I held my ground and refused to eat any.

One simmering, Saturday afternoon, my interpreter Waldo Michael wanted to treat me to a drink of homemade beer called tulla. We walked together over to the local refreshment stand, a building built of sticks plastered together with cow manure and straw. We made ourselves comfortable, seated on top of a log. Waldo Michael ordered his tulla and, since I don’t drink beer, I ordered a bottle of Coke. I’m not sure what formula the company uses in the Coke they ship to Africa, but it tastes nothing like the tasty, sugary recipe they use in America. The tulla didn’t look particularly appetizing either. Large particles of something were floating on the drink’s surface and large particles of something else were drifting off toward the bottom of the cup.

I felt pretty safe deciding on a bottled Coke until I saw what came next. The Coke sat in a tub of water scooped from a stagnant pond where cattle had walked and dirty clothes were washed. The water didn’t do much to keep the Coke cold since it sat at room temperature. And that hovered around 105 degrees. This water, too, had large particles of something floating in it. But I had a pretty good idea where those pieces came from.

The storekeeper pulled the Coke bottle out of that tepid bacteria bath and popped the cap off. She wiped the top of the bottle dry with her shama, a long scarf that all the women wear and hardly ever wash. It comes in handy on many occasions; for wiping their hands, blowing their nose, and cleaning their baby’s bottoms. Then she handed the bottle to me.

I had no idea what to do with the Coke. Waldo Michael was watching me so I could not just dump it out. Anyway the dry dirt floor would show exactly where I had poured it. I didn’t want to hurt Waldo Michael’s feelings by not drinking it so, under the circumstances, I did the best I could. I drank the coke without touching the bottle to my mouth. If you think that is easy to do, I challenge you to try it sometime. Waldo Michael kept staring at me until he finally said, “I can’t believe an American doesn’t know how to drink from a bottle.” He had no idea.

 

Chapter Seventeen

Ethiopia was a completely different world. The air carried an essence of sweet and sour fragrances intertwined with dust, the water tasted slightly of something metallic and sharp, and the unwavering heat all simmered together, permeating our experience of the countryside. It took a long time to get used to this culture, so traditional and extraordinary, yet so different from our own. On the other hand, we quickly grew to love the Ethiopian people. It was hard not to.

Before we left Asmara, Loren Hovestad, the man due to soon leave for language school, the very man I was filling in for at the mission station, took us to lunch at Georges, a restaurant that had a well-known reputation for being the best place to eat for miles around. As we entered, I scanned the room, taking in the unsanitary conditions, the dirt, and the flies. Neither Jan nor I ate much during that meal. But it’s interesting to note how our perceptions changed over time. Months later, on our way back home to North Dakota, we stopped in to have a meal at Georges one more time, surprised to see how clean it was and how good the food tasted. The restaurant hadn’t changed one bit. We had.

We arrived at the mission station, tired with the cloud of jet lag hovering over us, and we were introduced to our new home, quite clean and comfortable. For the next few days, we began to settle in. We began to learn about these delightful people, the Ethiopians.

About a week later, late into the night, I was deep in slumber when I awoke with a jolt, Jan’s hand covering my mouth. “Shhh. Be quiet. Listen. Don’t make any noise,” her voice quivered, her eyes huge.

In the deep primordial canyon directly behind the house, loud rhythmic beats of a drum kept time as wailing, chaotic voices sang and roared through the night. We listened intently for any signs of danger to accompany this frightful serenade, hoping they weren’t planning on coming any closer, but they didn’t appear to mean us any harm. Gradually, we both fell back into a fitful sleep, waking early in the morning to find out it was simply a traditional wedding celebration, Ethiopian style.

There were an abundance of creatures here that we had never encountered on the Midwestern prairies. We had been warned about the profusion of lizards that take up residency on both the inside and outside of houses, the hordes of rats that populated the countryside around Selek-Leka. Jan had a fear of both that bordered on hysteria.

On her first day of teaching music to the children, she had to walk on a path bordered by tall grass on her way to the schoolhouse. She watched the rats skitter through the grass and dart across the path, deathly afraid to take her first step. With a deep breath and a huge leap of faith, she started toward the school. As the rats scurried around her feet, a deep calm came over her and, out of the blue, her fear of them completely disappeared. As for the lizards, they climbed over, through, and into all the neighboring houses constantly. Except for our home. Never once did we see one there.

Early one morning, as I was on my way over to a neighbor’s house, I stopped and watched as several men began to butcher an old ox that was no longer fit to work in the fields. They led the animal to the butchering spot and, without hesitation, slit his throat. It wasn’t long before he fell to his knees and bled to death.

The very second the ox stopped kicking, the men started to skin it, keeping the hide underneath the carcass to help keep the meat off the ground. With no refrigeration in this intense African heat, they needed to work fast or all the meat would quickly spoil. They cut it into small strips and hung the pieces up to dry. Immediately, it became covered with flies.

Not wasting one ounce of this animal, the men divided the rest of the carcass, the bones, the organs, into five equal piles, one for each family that had purchased the ox. To insure that each pile was as close to the same size as possible, each buyer put a unique mark on a slip of paper, folded it so the mark couldn’t be seen, and placed it into a basket. Flagging down a passing stranger, they asked him to randomly pick the slips of paper from the basket and place one on top of each pile, making a fair and unbiased decision as to who gets what pile. Each of the five families then subdivided their portion in the same way to sell to additional families.

One of the things I was most thankful for was that our mission station had running water, one of the few that did. The source was a deep mountain well that spouted crystal fresh gravity-fed water from a pipe connected at the bottom of the well.

One hot cloudless morning, the pipe sprang a leak. This was something that had to be fixed right away and I, of course, was the most likely candidate to do it. How on earth was I supposed to shut off the valve on the inside of the well, at the bottom, so I could work on the pipe? I couldn’t even swim.

Luckily, a farm worker was quick to volunteer his help. He looked at me, grinned, and said loudly, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost” and then plunged into the ten feet of water to shut off the valve. There was no doubt in my mind that it was the first bath he had taken in a long, long time. Maybe the first bath of his entire life. As he dived to the bottom, I could see the dark, greasy film from his unwashed body and clothing float to the surface and pool together creating a murky, muddy film in the water.

From the moment we arrived at our mission station, I had been told to boil and filter all my drinking water. I never had to be told again.

Chapter Sixteen

The idea of going to Africa came out of the blue, out of a master plan that God began designing long before my part in it was revealed. I smiled as I remembered how Jan’s excitement had, thankfully, overshadowed all my fears.

The journey began at our church, which is really no surprise. In the heartland during the sixties, the church was the life-blood of the community, the central core that pulsed rhythm and balance into our lives. Elk Valley Lutheran Church stood on fertile ground by a lonely country road in the midst of lush grain fields and shelterbelts less than a mile from our farm.

One dusty day during the long, hot summer of 1968, our pastor Bob Cox and his wife Anita paid us a visit. We all sat around our kitchen table to talk, just like we had done many times before. But this time, I became uneasy when he started the conversation with “I have a life-changing question to ask you and I hope you will understand how important it is.”

He had my attention.

“There is a Lutheran mission station in Ethiopia that needs an experienced farmer to supervise their farm program. They are looking for someone to be there for about six months while the permanent director is in another city attending language school. This little African farming community also needs someone to teach music to the school children. Oben, you are an excellent farmer and an experienced people manager. Jan, music is your passion and you are good at teaching. My question to you both is, will you go? Can you help?”

For once in my life, I was speechless. Thousands of questions flew through my mind so fast I couldn’t catch up and verbalize them. It was a volunteer position. How could we possibly pay the $2600 airfare? Who would take care of our three children? How could I just quit farming, pack up, and go to Africa? How could we leave our house empty for that long? Especially during the winter when pipes can freeze, furnaces can quit, roofs can cave in from the weight of the snow.

We weren’t even sure where Ethiopia was. Jan left the kitchen table and came back with the children’s globe. The tops of our four heads were almost touching as we turned the globe from North Dakota to Ethiopia and back again. Either way, Ethiopia was a long, long way from our farm in the Red River Valley in North Dakota.

Bob told us we were needed from October to the following April. When he and Anita left our house that day, they left Jan and me with a lot to talk over, our heads spinning with possibilities.

Since that time of the year doesn’t involve plowing, planting, or harvesting crops, we decided that, with a little help from our friends and a lot of help from our divine sources, we could be gone for that period of time. After much worrying and talking and changing our minds back and forth, we decided to go.

When you consider doing something like this, word spreads like wildfire and the exact things you need arrive from highly unexpected sources. I received a phone call from Margaret Brandon in nearby Larimore, the very same couple who used to take me in during the winters when I was attending high school. “Lester and I have been thinking about you ever since we heard you may go to a mission station in Africa. We’ve come to the decision to volunteer our home for your two daughters to stay while you are gone. We won’t take no for an answer.” Soon a similar call came from Jim and Vella Hougen, opening up their home for our son.

Piece by piece, everything began to fall into place. Our church put the word out that we needed help with our airfare. In anticipation of donations coming in, we set up a special account with Valley Bank to receive contributions for the $2600 airfare. Then we took out a loan, hoping we’d be able to pay it back later.

Later, after we had returned from Africa, I nervously paid the bank a visit. All but $70 had come in. The bank decided then and there to make that final contribution themselves, solving the problem right to the penny. The loan was paid off, in full.

But not everyone thought it was a good idea to go to a foreign land to do missionary work. One lady at our church, one of the more out-spoken members, voiced her concern by telling me that a person certainly didn’t have to travel that far away to help out people. There was plenty to do right here in North Dakota.

“You’re absolutely right,” I replied. “So you should probably get busy and do something.” She pursed her lips, muttering something that I couldn’t hear. I guess my comment wasn’t quite enough fuel to feed her contradictory nature.

Only three days before we were scheduled to leave, I finished my fall plowing and we were off to Ethiopia. As Jan and I boarded the plane for the first leg of our long journey, we looked at each other, hoping we were doing the right thing. Neither of us had ever flown in a commercial jet before and we held each other’s hands tightly as the airplane lifted us up into the familiar deep blue sky of the prairie and beyond, deep into our unknown adventure.

By the time night fell, we were high above the Atlantic, neither of us sleeping a wink. We were exhausted when the plane landed and taxied into Rome the next day. While we waited in the airport for our next flight to arrive, assured by airline employees that our departure would be clearly announced, we felt comfortable enough to take turns sleeping while we waited. And waited.

According to my itinerary, it was nearly time for our plane to take off but we still hadn’t heard any announcements. I became concerned and walked down a long hallway to the departure gate to see if the flight had been delayed. Just as I arrived at the gate, they were making the last call for passengers to board the plane we were scheduled to be on. I yelled something, hoping they would interpret my frantic words and hold the plane, and sprinted back to get Jan as fast as I could. We jumped on board just seconds before they closed the door for take-off.

We flew into Asmara, a sprawling city located at almost 8,000 feet on the edge of an ancient, extinct volcano. As we exited the plane, the stifling air that hit us felt just like it does when you peek your head inside the oven to check a roasting turkey. Only the foreign odors that wafted my way were like nothing I had experienced before, especially the accoutrements surrounding a savory, golden bird.

Two people from the mission station met us at the airport and immediately packed Jan, me, all our luggage, and months of supplies into a battered British Land Rover for the five hour trip to our destination village, Selek-Leka. I somehow got lucky enough to ride shotgun, perched precariously on top of all the boxes, suddenly feeling very homesick for my new Oldsmobile back on the farm. It felt like we’d journeyed through time, transported to this mysterious and extraordinary land of great antiquity, with a culture and traditions dating back more than 3,000 years.

As we traveled in the Land Rover, a leisurely ride that was reminiscent of a spin on a bronco, through this hot, arid bush country, the driver drifted back and forth across the road to avoid impact with the constant flow of colorfully-dressed people and domesticated animals. They were everywhere, fading in and out as the particles of dust slid around them, sometimes clearly visible, sometimes not.

One of the first things I learned about traveling in Ethiopia is that there are no rest areas along the road. A bathroom stop meant that you simply looked for the closest bush. I had a feeling there was a lot more to learn about this exotic country.

Chapter Fifteen

On November 22, 1963, I was driving into Larimore, Jan beside me in the passenger seat, on our way to pick up some groceries, talking about some remodeling that we were planning on doing to our home when the music we were listening to on the radio was abruptly cut off. The announcer, his voice bent with emotion, relayed the shocking news that President Kennedy had been shot while riding in a presidential motorcade in Dallas, Texas. The broadcast continued on to say it appeared a secret service agent had been shot, too.

My heart flew to my throat. Jan eyes filled with tears as her hand covered her mouth, stifling a scream. Her brother, Clint Hill, was a secret service agent with the presidential party. We had talked with him on the phone just the day before and knew he was scheduled to be in Dallas, too, protecting the first lady. Immediately, I turned the car around and headed back home. I ran into the house and raced to the phone to call Clint’s wife, Gwen. We couldn’t get through.

Sitting by the television set, not moving, barely breathing, we waited anxiously for any word on the situation. Each and every one of the channels had interrupted their scheduled programming, revealing to listeners the latest information they had on the shooting the minute they received it. We finally learned that no secret service agent had been wounded but that President Kennedy had been killed.

This news devastated the people of the United States. He was only forty-six on the day he went to Dallas, the youngest of all the presidents that had been elected before him. Now, he was the youngest to die.

There was an unprecedented number of people in the streets of Dallas that day, a demonstrative crowd that was there to rally support for President Kennedy and get a glimpse of his glamorous wife, Jackie.

As the motorcade slowly made its way down the parade route, the president ordered the open limousine to stop several times, allowing onlookers to get close and shake his hand.

Clint, stationed on the running board of the secret service car directly behind the presidential limousine, had the assignment to watch over Jackie Kennedy. But the open car and close contact with the crowd made Clint nervous. As they proceeded down the street, Clint heard a sharp sound, like a gun shot.

He immediately, instinctively turned towards it. “I knew something was wrong. I saw the president grabbing his throat. But before I could get to the limousine, another shot was fired, hitting President Kennedy in the head.”

Clint moved into action, attempting to jump onto the rear of the limousine and losing his footing. He stumbled, regained his balance, ran a few steps, and then reached for the handhold on the back of the car. Clint grabbed it tight and stepped onto the left bumper of the limousine while the driver continued to accelerate.

“I pulled myself onto the moving vehicle and reached towards Mrs. Kennedy, who had crawled up on the trunk of the car. It appeared to me that she was searching for something, trying to retrieve something. I got up on the trunk and forced her back into her seat, using my body as a shield against further shots. There was a wound in the president’s head, about the size of my palm, and there was a lot of blood in the car.”

Clint paused. “As I lay over the top of the back seat I noticed that the president’s head was bleeding profusely. I then saw that Governor Connally’s chest was covered with blood and he was slumped in his seat. At this point, I had not realized that the governor had also been shot.”

The limousine moved out, at breakneck speed, to the nearest hospital but Clint maintained his position, shielding the president and the first lady with his body.

“When we arrived at Parkland Memorial Hospital, I jumped off the presidential car, removed my suit coat and covered the president’s head and upper chest with it. I helped to lift him from the rear seat of the car onto a stretcher and accompanied the president and the first lady into the emergency room, directly across the hall from Governor Connally.

“The emergency room was very small, filled to overcapacity with a large number of doctors and nurses. I asked a nurse standing just outside to please have everyone, except those medical personnel who were absolutely necessary, to leave the emergency ward. She quickly took care of it.

“I then asked for the location of the nearest telephone, contacting the White House in Washington and informing them of the tragedy. I made it clear that the situation was extremely critical.

“By this time, President Kennedy was dead. It was not yet an official release but I requested that the attorney general and other members of the president’s family be contacted immediately so they would not have to hear it over some news media.

“I telephoned the nearest mortuary and requested that they bring the very best casket they had that was available now to the Parkland Memorial Hospital emergency entrance and deliver it to me. It arrived in less than twenty minutes.

“Air Force One, the presidential plane, was moved to a different location at Love Field, secured completely away from public view. I requested that no press be admitted to this area and then checked on the shortest and most direct route from the emergency room to where the hearse was waiting.”

To make room for the casket on Air Force One, four seats had to be removed. Once that was completed, the casket was placed aboard with Mrs. Kennedy right alongside it.

But the plane could not depart until Vice President Johnson was sworn in as the 36th President of the United States and a judge was on his way to make this happen. All personnel on Air Force One, including Mrs. Kennedy and Clint, were requested to witness the swearing-in ceremony which took place in the Presidential Compartment of Air Force One.

Air Force One departed Love Field and arrived at the presidential suite in Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland where members of the immediate family and close friends were already waiting. A new casket had been obtained from a local mortuary in which the body was placed and taken immediately to the East Room at the White House.

We will probably never know for sure who was responsible for killing John F. Kennedy. What we do know is how his violent death impacted our country. Naiveté was left on the street that day in Dallas, our sense of invincibility changing into vulnerability.

As a stunned nation struggled with the enormous tragedy, the secret service agents couldn’t stop to mourn. They simply had to carry on with their job to protect the new president. The assassination shook the organization to its core and left the secret service agents who were on the detail, devastated.

That fateful day in Dallas forced the secret service to make some drastic changes, but things would never change for Clint. It was something that would never go away. “I still have nightmares about it. It bothered me from that point on and got progressively worse. Unfortunately, on that particular day, all the advantages went to the shooter. Eventually, that’s the reason I retired.”

Clint was honored for his bravery, the only secret service agent who attempted to cover the president’s body with his own, and was presented with an award for his valor in the face of tragedy a few days after John F. Kennedy’s funeral. Jackie made a rare appearance to personally thank him.

Images of the funeral, the boy’s salute, the widow’s composure, these are tucked away but never forgotten. The shock and sorrow of that event and the following days became embedded in the national consciousness.

The publicity became too much for Clint, who was suffering from loss and guilt. He thought he should have saved the president’s life. He felt he should have done more but there was nothing more he could have done.

He came to stay with us on the farm for a couple of weeks, just to get away from the constant hounding of all the reporters and the publicity. I put him to work, to help immerse him in something other than his horrible memories. He worked hard, a great help getting all the machinery and fields ready for next spring’s planting. Our neighbors treated him as just one of the family and he was able to relax, a little, after his intense ordeal, without the incessant reminders of those around him.