Origin of Birth

My roots come from the fertile farm fields of Sterns County, Minnesota. They go back for generations when my ancestors, unnamed and long since forgotten, arrived from Germany in the early 1800s. It was a strict German Catholic culture with time-honored rules and regimentation that hadn’t changed for centuries. It was what my mother, grandparents and their grandparents understood and accepted without question.

To be very clear, I’m not talking about the class of white Americans covered so thoroughly in Nancy Isenberg’s new book ‘White Trash.’ My roots were poor white working class; an agrarian society that lived for and off the land. Skilled artisans in the arts of land cultivation, animal husbandry, soil management, raising livestock, veterinary basics, dairy and meat processing and so much more. Only the hard-working survived.

Growing up in the one church town of Saint Marin, my mother, as the youngest of eight, had her chores and responsibilities chosen for her. Education was seldom a part of that equation. That meant stenography school for her three sisters and cleaning out the chicken coop for my mother. So, although Hildegarde’s education ended in the sixth grade, her lineage was about to experience profound changes; even if she didn’t know it at the time.

My mother’s early years were documented in a hand-written sixteen-page, rambling oration of her youth, early years on the farm and frequent travels to the Twin Cities for work. She had often lamented to my sister and I that she stopped going to school after sixth grade because someone had to stay home and care for her aging parents.

I have no idea what kind of education my father had although I doubt it went past the eighth grade if even that far. His ancestry, lineage and time spent on earth have long since been shrouded in mystery. There were rumors that he was an itinerant musician and laborer but that has never been confirmed. His name was never mentioned in our home when I was growing up and he’s remained an enigma all of my life.

Sharon’s parents were in pretty much the same situation in terms of their education. Sharon’s father went as far as the eighth grade and her mother had two years of high school. Pretty normal for that generation at the time. For that social-economic agrarian class of people, education wasn’t as important as hard work and feeding the family. It truly was another time and place.

Fast forward another generation and things were very different for Sharon and I. Because of a lucky break in eighth-grade, I was able to attend Cretin High School and then St. Thomas College; on my own dime. In both my family and Sharon’s family, it was understood that our parents had neither the means nor the inclination to fund any advanced education beyond high school.

Sharon’s lucky break came when a nun at St. Felix High School in Wabasha, Minnesota told her she should attend college, more specifically, St. Catherine’s College in St. Paul. That was a radical departure from the pathway most of her classmates intended to follow. In small town Wabasha, it put her in league with the banker’s daughter and the lawyer’s son. You know; those folks in town.

I have a BA in Journalism and Sharon has one in Education along with some credits towards her master’s degree. Our kids have done even better.

The rule for our kids in high school was that they couldn’t work during the school year and had to have either classes, camp or jobs during the summer months. It taught them both a lot of good lessons in life. Brian went on to graduate from the University of Notre Dame and has a master’s degree in business/computer technology from the University of Colorado. Melanie excelled in Speech and Debate in high school, winning a number of awards on a local, regional and national level. She went on to the College of Saint Benedict and was awarded a full scholarship to attend law school. Their spouses also have advanced degrees.

Not surprisingly, this fourth generation is doing even better. There is an unspoken understanding among our grandchildren, prompted more by example than lecture, that education is more important than ever before. They’ve seen through their daily lives what hard work and a solid base of knowledge can do for a person’s career. It hasn’t escaped their little pea brains that much is expected of each of them.

Maya, the eldest, is a sophomore at the University of Colorado at Greeley. She’s a psychology major and understands the next steps will most likely include a master’s degree and perhaps a PhD.

The other four grandchildren are all in high school now. The Colorado twins as well as Brennan and Charlotte in Minnesota are actively engaged in extra-curricular activities. Three of the four are in NHS (National Honor Society) and are taking AP (advanced placement-college) courses. The youngest, Charlotte, just entered high school as a straight-A student all through grade school.

So, from a rural agrarian society to post-collegiate studies in four generations has become our mantra. Each generation propelled by an accumulation of knowledge that proved critical to their success in the real world. Fortunately, for Sharon and I, education was the key to our own success and that of our children. We believe it will be the foundation upon which our grand-children will grow as well-informed and involved citizens of the world.

Damning the Intellectuals

I never made it as a hippie, not even close. But I can remember being labeled as such because of my longish hair and bell-bottom jeans. Old people would stare at me, some with distain in their eyes, and others would just shake their head. Even worse, some knew that I was college-educated and that made it even more intolerable for their simple lifestyle. ‘Who did I think I was?’ They would ask themselves.

As radical and shortsighted as it may seem, damning the intellectuals is actually a tactic that’s been used by those in power for centuries. From the Roman gladiator games to the Khmer Ruge in the 70’s, blaming the problems of the state on those deemed different from ‘regular folks’ has always seemed to work…..at least for a while.

The Ku Klux Klan grew in power as poor whites found another class lower than themselves (in their eyes) and blamed their own problems on that class of people. My own mother revealed a deep-seated distrust of Jews when she would occasionally talk about being ‘jewed down’ by some merchant in town. I was too young to completely understand the source of her prejudice but even then I found it distasteful and ignorant. More recently, my In-Laws would occasionally criticize those in the cities for their own rural issues.

Henry Ford was a successful capitalist but a fervent anti-Semite. Charles Lindberg was a great aviator but an anti-Semite too. Down through the ages, leaders, great and small, have found a ready audience to appeal to by passing blame on to another ethnic group of people. Intellectuals are often at the head of that classification.

I can remember back in college when I was working at a motor freight company in Saint Paul. Our job was to clean out the warehouse and loading dock each Saturday morning. It was neither a hard nor intellectually stimulating job but it paid the rent.

Our boss was the weekend foreman who hated his job, hated himself, and most of all hated “those Goddamn college kids.” For whatever reason, he held a disdain for educated youth, especially college kids.

No question was honest or reasonable enough that he wouldn’t use it to criticize the questioner. He loved to belittle, denigrate, insult, and ridicule anyone who dared inquire about anything. The best way to deal with him was avoidance at all costs. After a while his comments became the source of many hilarious jokes made at his expense. It was a great way to pass the time, ridiculing his clothing, stance, ignorance, and pitiful outlook on life. It was also a very sad statement at his station in life and the depth of his hatred for himself and those around him.

In his best-selling memoir ‘A Walk Across America’, Peter Jenkins talks about the reception he received from many small town folks as he wandered through the southern states back in the early seventies. With his wild hair, full beard, and backpack; the locals were immediately suspicious and wary of this stranger in their midst. ‘He was probably a hippie, high on drugs or worse yet some college-educated kid come to laugh at their simple lifestyle. Either way, he wasn’t welcome in their midst.’

When Peter decided to live with a black family in North Carolina, the locals went crazy. The whites hated him because he was white and living with n#**#*. The bootleggers suspected that he was a revenue agent sent to spy on them. Worst of all, he was college-educated which sealed their conviction that he was a problem, plain and simple.

I can remember encountering ignorance at work, in the service, and the workplace. A lack of education is one thing - hand-me-down prejudice is something else.

I never made it as a hippie, not even close. But at least I tried to be open-minded and accepting. A trait I’ve tried to pass on to my children and grandchildren. I think it’s stuck with them and I couldn’t be happier.

District #196

One of the favorite pitches that realtors love to give prospective home buyers is the quality of the local school district. In the case of district 196, it was certainly true. For despite all of the normal drama and trauma that goes on behind the scenes in education, the district has proved its worth over the years and certainly for my two kids.

Mind you, it wasn’t always a perfect place for students or educators alike. Unfortunately there were a number of kids back then as now who didn’t fit into the system and got lost along the way. There were also a few teachers who should have been digging ditches instead of wasting my children’s time in the classroom. I was always amazed at my kid’s abilities to see through the BS that passed for a teacher’s interest in them and knew those teachers were just taking up space at the head of the classroom.

But overall, both teachers and administrators alike, at least back in my time, were devoted to the betterment of my kids. That’s all that counted in Sharon’s and my mind.

Both my wife and I are just a bit fanatical about the importance of education in a young person’s life. It was always non-negotiable issue with us. I went to Cretin High School when it was strictly an all-male military school. Sharon went to St. Felix, a Catholic High School in Wabasha, Minnesota. Both institutions were excellent breeding grounds for academic-hungry young students’ eager to make their way into the world.

I had to laugh when my old classmates from Cretin would question why I sent my kids to Apple Valley schools instead of Cretin or Visitation. I simply told them that Apple Valley schools were very good and that was good enough for me. Enough said. I was right.

We believed then and still do today that parental involvement was one of the keys to our kid’s success in school. We practiced it and our kids knew it. Sharon and I went to every teacher-parent conference from the first one in first grade to the last one senior year.

Brian was very fortunate in his education, excelling at sports, arts and academia.

Melanie did the same.  Each had their own areas of interest and we’re so grateful they found their place and themselves in those academic, athletic and artistic environments.

Both our kids were tested in ways I hadn’t imagined.

Melanie called us one night at 3:00 in the morning. She was in Lexington, Kentucky at a state Speech and Debate tournament. She had gotten sick from something she ate and was throwing up and nauseous. What to do? She was supposed to debate that morning at 9:00am. We told her she had to decide whether to go ahead or not but we encouraged her to give it a try. She said she couldn’t let the team down. So she got up early, dusted herself off and took home with an award.

Brian was in his senior year of wrestling. It was the state tournament and he was slated to wrestle an outstanding young man from Sibley High School that had gone unbeaten all season. Brian gutted it out and won the match….because he believed he could.

Both our kids believed they could do whatever they put their minds to. They learned that in the trenches of Apple Valley High School. I’m sure there are many other stories just as inspiring from every other school in the #196 system. That’s what a good education can do for your mind and your body.

There always seem to be rumbling about the schools of our past as compared to the ones today.  Changing demographics, newer schools, social and culture changes are constantly evolving and reconfiguring the educational landscape. Despite these ever-evolving changes, I suspect that District 196, despite its normal flaws and fallacies, is still a good breeding ground for those students who are able to grasp the opportunities there.

It certainly was back in the day when the District graduated our own two citizens of the world.