In 1961, Paul and I, plus our two little girls Kari (5) and Lori (3) lived in Madison on Cottage Grove Road, renting in the old Hernsmeier farmstead. Today, some fifty years later, the house and barn on the property are gone, an apartment house in their place and a fire station next door. Whenever we return to Madison and drive past the “now subdivision,” we recognize the few stately oaks proudly marking the old place. We’d moved there over spring break, 1958, when Lori, our preemie, was just four months old.
Paul worked so hard cleaning up the property. Elinor Brown, Mr. Hernsmeier’s daughter, extended us a break in rent if he’d consider the job that consumed several years of evenings, weekends and summers. The two-bedroom bungalow served our needs, but we dreamed of having our own home. Finally, we managed to purchase a lot on Woodvale Avenue, just a mile away in the new Elvehjem subdivision. The corner lot, resplendent with shagbark hickory trees gave us cause to hope we’d soon have our own place.
But, one evening, after a particularly hard day at school, Paul told me what he had been agonizing over. He said though he knew he had a good job and liked his school; he knew if he were to continue teaching, he would have to change subject areas. He’d need to teach a subject where he had natural aptitude and interest, and that interest was not history and social studies, but rather industrial education. To make the change he’d need to return to college for at least a year, maybe more. To finance a return, we’d need to sell our Woodvale lot.
Dumbfounded, I felt my secure role as a stay-at-home mother dissolving before me. Where will you go to school? Where will we live? How will we live, money-wise?
One full year and two summers later, he received his Master’s Degree in Technical Education from Northern Iowa University. During that time, he lived in a rooming house at Cedar Falls and the girls and I lived with his parents in Osage. I worked as a receptionist at Osage Medical Clinic and loved the job while the girls got to know both sets of grandparents better.
In the fall of ’62, Paul returned to Monona Grove High School. The school had extended him a year’s leave of absence. So, we gathered our stored furniture and returned to Cottage Grove Road. As neighbors when we lived in the Hernsmeier place, Hilda Hammer and I had become good friends, and because her University of Wisconsin professor husband had accepted a years’ sabbatical in LaJolla, California, we rented their three-story monstrosity for the year. Plus…in November of ’62 we welcomed Christopher Ren.
There was another move the following year, another four years of renting, another baby, and finally – our own home.
