So exciting...we were going to have Christmas in our own house!  After twelve years of renting, we’d become homeowners November 1, 1967! I don’t remember what gifts we’d purchased for the girls or for one-year-old Jon, but I do remember five-year-old Chris’ gift.  Paul and I both agreed he’d love [...]

Kari, a first grader at Elvehjem Elementary, arrived home after school, very excited.  She announced she would be an angel in the Christmas program. (Yes, sixty years ago things were different.) Being Kari’s mother, I wasn’t surprised she would be selected.  With shoulder-length blond hair and an angelic being, who [...]

Even during the two-week winter break, Paul was busy with scheduled wrestling practices most every day. Near the end of the second week, he finally had a free day, and he, along with Bill Sommers, was invited by some of the veteran teachers to play cards. Paul and Bill, no [...]

On a late December 1959 afternoon, Paul and I bundled up two-and-a-half-year-old Kari and year-old Lori to go to the Capitol for the annual Madison Public School Christmas event. The Capitol, adorned with a huge beautifully lit Balsam Fir in the center of the rotunda, captured the festive spirit. Along [...]

Decorating cookies, getting ready for our elementary school and Sunday School program, getting a tree and decorating it, sledding, tobogganing, ice skating, anticipating gifts…the memories of Christmas in the forties keep emerging. Growing up during the Great Depression and World War II years, over eighty years ago, was very different [...]

Since moving to Osage in 1951, our family is renting. Seems foreign, because in Ogema (Wisconsin) we still own a home, the same house where I was born in 1936. I lived there until my father’s work caused him to commute further and further away. Now he’s building Our Savior’s [...]

Never before or since have I lived in such splendor as I did my senior year in high school. During the years my father was building Our Savior’s Lutheran church and for three years after, my family rented five different homes in Osage. The opportunity to rent Dr. Isham’s home [...]