Father: Clifford SAWYER
Mother: Mabel GRUNNET
Spouse: Rosena SAWYER
4 Children, all living
At right, Jim's most recent Vi photo (skewed i.e. pic of a pic) ===>>
Father: Clifford SAWYER Spouse: Rosena SAWYER 4 Children, all living
At right, Jim's most recent Vi photo (skewed i.e. pic of a pic) ===>> |
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Chicago, IL 1929-31
James (Jim) was born at Mercy Hospital, where his father's oldest brother, Charles, worked as a surgeon. While he was growing up, the family moved many times, most often related to his father's job as manager at an insurance general agency, then branch manager of Ohio Casualty Insurance Company. Jim remembers having to make new friends often, attending 8 different schools in three states from grades K-12. They never stayed for more than a few years in one place. Because of this experience, Jim resolved to stay in one place as his own 4 sons were growing up in Grand Haven, MI so they could enjoy the benefits of stability during their formative years.
The family had moved to Chicago so Cliff could help his older brother Charles Francis aka Uncle Tom to collect bills from some crusty characters e.g. mobsters, some connected with Al Capone, who was VERY active in Chicago at that time. Also, Jim's birth at (Catholic) Mercy Hospital where Charles practiced was apparently free of charge, which may have also influenced their move there.
Minneapolis, MN (5212 Vincent Ave) 1931 to 33/4
Not long after Jim's birth, maybe in 1931, the family moved back to Minneapolis, to a house on [5212] Vincent Ave, in the SW part of the city. Jim's very earliest memories are of being in a crib and of neighbors bringing in a great big German (Shepherd) police dog who 'pushed his nose through the railing and probably frightened me'.
Minneaplis, MN (4220 Alden Drive in Morningside) 1933/4 to Summer 1935
Not long after (1933?), the family moved to 4220 Alden Drive in the suburb of Minneapolis called Morningside (NW? see pics below), only 3 or 4 blocks away from Grandpa and Grandma GRUNNET’s home on Sunnyside Avenue in Morningside. Morningside was a small community, it had a little school at the bottom of the hill on Alden Drive, but when Jim was old enough to go to school (which was when he wasn’t quite 5 i.e. Fall 1934), he had to be bussed to the Edina school (now an upscale suburb on the W side). It was several miles away and he'd be picked up the 1st semester in the morning and the 2nd semester in the afternoon and his teacher there was Miss BEAMIS, a nice, short little lady. He remembers his friends, one was Bobby COLE, another (a red haired young man) was Jimmy DORSEY who lived not too far from Jim over by the streetcar tracks. In those early years of his recollection (he could draw a floorplan of that home on Alden Drive), you'd go down the hill from their place and the 1st house below them was Mr. PARSONS’, who'd built their house and now rented it to them. Next to him were the HAGGARTY's and they had 2 children; a son who was a bit older than Jim's brother [Bob], Jimmy HAGGARTY, and a daughter who was younger than Jim by about a year whose name was Greta, and Greta was my friend and we played together. Right below their house just a half block was the little school where Bob went and it was on the front piece of a peat bog, and we were always instructed: don’t get out in the peat bog. The peat bog sometimes had fires going in it, it would smolder, and it had areas where you could probably drop into a crevice or a crack, so we were warned: don’t walk into that area.
Jim remembers the area there by Alden Drive up the street, maybe half or two thirds of a block, were cousins of his Mom, Delphin and Elva LARSEN, lived with their daughter Jeannette [4244 Alden Dr, see pics below]. Across the street were the WAXELBAUM’s, next door going up the street towards Delphin and Elva’s house was a man who drove a gasoline truck, which was pretty small in those days. He remembers significant little things e.g. this was before refrigeration, before refrigerators, and they had an icebox, and they’d hang out a sign and if you put the 25 number up you'd get a 25 pound piece, and if you put 50 up you'd get a 50 pound piece. The iceman would come in a horsedrawn wagon with a kind of a rubber thing over the top of it to insulate the ice, and he’d chop off a piece and carry it in with his tongs to put in their icebox that kept the food cold. Also their bread was delivered by the 'bamby' man, who also had a horse and buggy, and would come maybe once or twice a week and Mom would buy bread from the bamby man. A real treat was to go out to a root beer stand in Edina where they could for 2 cents buy a little child’s portion of root beer and for a nickel a larger mug for the adults. They'd go over there in their ‘29 Model A Ford [2dr sedan, #1 in CBScars] and they'd put a little tray on the side of the front door and that was a big treat.
Speaking of cars, Jim remembers very well when they bought what was Dad’s first purchase of a car, for something like $175, a used ‘29 Model A Ford (cf CBScars). This was probably in ‘34 when Dad bought this Model A from a Mr. DAHL, Jim remembers very well it being delivered to their home there and the first winter they had it, Dad put it up on blocks in the little garage out behind their house. Garages in those days were just basically a shelter, just a dirt floor. They brought the spoked wheels in and Dad painted them kind of a yellowish color during the winter months and the battery also came in because roads were not plowed, there was no such thing as salt on the roads, and Dad had quite a drive to go downtown in Minneapolis, so the car sat on blocks during the winter and he took the streetcar, which was only about 3 blocks away for him to catch. Also about that time [Sep 1933] Dad and Mom went to the Chicago World’s Fair (actually Chicago's 'Century of Progress' celebrating its 100th bday). They brought Jim back a [model] car, a very nice little car, it was green and it was a Chrysler Airflow, which was all the rage, they came out in about ‘33, ‘34, way ahead of their time, streamlined and that was Jim's pride and joy, that little green car.
When Jim was in kindergarten i.e. late fall ‘34, before he'd turned 5, Mom would occasionally be gone when he got home from school because she was with a group called the Mother Singers, and she'd leave Jim something to eat and he'd take care of myself, which was, I suppose, a little unusual [at that time i.e. a latchkey kid]. On occasion, Mom would send him to the store, maybe 3 blocks away, with money to buy a loaf of bread or a pound of hamburger and he always got a penny for candy at the confectionary store, which was down by the meat market in the grocery store.
Here are some pics of those times on Alden Drive. Also 5yo? Jim and Bob on a granite plaque and a wary 5yo? Jim in a cap.
Minneapolis, MN (3212 39th Avenue) Summer 1935 to Summer 1937
After a year or 2 at Alden Drive, the family moved into [downtown? E side] Minneapolis after Jim's kindergarten year to be closer to the office where Dad worked. He worked for a man named Bill KOOP, it was the W. T. KOOP insurance agency, and they'd moved their HQ from Minneapolis over to the Hamm building in downtown St. Paul, I think Hamm building named for Hamm brewery, which was a St. Paul brewery, and that was the building that Dad worked in and it resulted in their moving way over to the east side of Minneapolis to 3212 39th Avenue. While living here, Jim attended 1st and 2nd grade at the John A. JOHNSTON school, and right across from the school was a little Methodist church called Epworth Methodist Church. It probably didn’t seat over 50 or 60 people. Pastor Thomas B. SHORTS and family, he was the pastor, and the family went to that church quite faithfully. Jim remembers Mr. BLACKFORD sang in the choir, and Mom and Dad both sang in the choir and Dad used to say that Pastor SHORTS would get his message together probably on his way to church on a Sunday morning :-) because the primary contents of his typical message had to do with no alcohol and no tobacco, and these messages at my tender age made a significant impact upon me. My first grade teacher was Miss FLAVEN and second grade was Miss RICHARDSON and after second grade we moved then over, oh not very many blocks, to 41st Avenue (instead of 39th Avenue).
It was when they lived on 39th Avenue that they bought their 1st electric refrigerator, a Cold Spot brand. It stood up on legs maybe 15" off the floor, they bought it at Sears Roebucks on the installment plan and it was a great, great marvel for their family, and that same refrigerator that they probably bought in ‘35 was still with them when Jim finished high school in 1947 and were living on Park Avenue. So those were exciting days.
It was in probably early ‘36 that Jim's Dad bought his 1st NEW car and many of Jim's recollections, because he seems to have been a natural car buff, are related to cars that the family bought, and even later in life the cars that he bought. His Dad bought this ‘35 Ford, gunmetal [gray], 2 door sedan for under $500, about the time that the ‘36’s were coming out [Sep?], and when they said standard, it meant that it only had one taillight, one sunvisor, one horn, no heater, but it had an 85 HP engine. It was the pride and joy of the family, especially Dad. And on one occasion on the way to Mankato Dad opened it up, and it went maybe 83 mph! Jim remembers another occasion with that Model A between St. Peter, MN and Mankato on the way down to visit Uncle John and Aunt Mildred [(SAWYER) BALLARD], Dad opened up that old Model A and it went 72 or 73 and it was really bouncing around and frightened Mom, but Dad really enjoyed that.
Jim remembers many social visits to extended family members, though probably not as many as his own family [Jim and Rosena and boys] later enjoyed. They'd go perhaps at Thanksgiving go down to Mankato (about 80 miles south and a little west of Minneapolis [in Blue Earth County, where the 'Little House' Ingalls lived]) down through Shakapi, Belplain, Leseur, St. Peter, Mankato, just a 2 lane highway that pretty much followed property lines, making 90 degree turns here and there. Early on, Uncle John and Aunt Mildred (SAWYER, my Dad’s sister) BALLARD lived on a farm out in Blue Earth County. It was a farm that had been in the John BALLARD family (he was the oldest son) and it had thick (1.5 feet) brick walls, no electricity, kerosene lanterns for light and there was a telephone line that came in with one of those little jobs [boxes] where you cranked it and it made a ring and I guess everybody could get on the party line. It was a beautiful area, and Jim's family would look forward to seeing cousin Johnny and they had a dog, a collie-shepherd mix, Tippy, who took a special shine to Dad [Cliff]. They had some nice times with John, Mildred and cousin John down there in Mankato.
And then on occasion, they'd drive almost straight west, again going through Shakapi, out to Stewart, MN, also maybe 75 miles from St. Louis Park or Minneapolis, wherever they were living. There they'd visit with mother’s [Mabel's] side of the family, there were the HANSON’s and LARSON’s (a little town of about 500 people). In Stewart was the general store that had much earlier been owned in part by my grandpa GRUNNET, where it was LARSON, HANSON and GRUNNET (maybe not in that order). It was fun to go there, they'd visit with cousins and every night the Flyer (train, Northwestern line?) came through and Dad would typically take the boys down and they'd put their ears to the track and for a long, long way away they could hear or feel the vibration of the track and then the train would go through going maybe 80-100 mph and snatch off a mailbag (from the station) and it was just kind of exciting. It was a little town, no street lights, no concrete walks, just boardwalks for sidewalks and something you would picture way back for maybe the turn of the century, it didn’t look much different. But the HANSON family, Mom’s cousins, lived there, and old Uncle Enewald HANSON, whenever there were big family gatherings they would go to a lake nearby and he’d swim across the lake and it was probably a mile or so wide. He had sons, one Harold HANSON, who was an all-American football player at the University of MN and Ernest HANSON, who was a fraternity brother of Dad’s [Cliff's, hmmm, connection in meeting Mabel?], who was the center on the U of M’s basketball team. So it was an interesting family there in Stewart, MN [much later, Jim's good friends the HOLMs had a store in Hutchinson, MN, not far N of Stewart. They later sold it and moved to AZ where they met Jim/Rosena at SBC, but shared the Stewart/Hutchinson connection].
They also got together sometimes with [Mabel's sis] Aunt Myrtle and Uncle Dave [LARSEN] at their house occasionally for special occasions or with Aunt Florence and Uncle Emil [also LARSEN, bros m. sisters], who also lived in the Country Club area of Edina, just a couple blocks away from where Myrtle and Dave lived.
Jim used to tell a story that probably occurred somewhere around this time. He and friends (and Bob?) would go (walk? street car?) to a railroad bridge in the area over a fairly deep river canyon and walk out onto the tracks. But if a train would come and there wasn't time to get back to the edge, they'd have to hang from the girders underneath for dear life! He never told his parents about this, not surprisingly. Boys will be boys! Another story I remember he told was of a time playing outside when he discovered a big pile of coins. Without thinking he called out to the other boys to come look. But, you guessed it, they didn't just look but grabbed all they could and stuffed it into their pockets. Jim felt that wasn't fair since 'finders, keepers' after all. So that was a lesson for him.
Minneapolis, MN (2752 41st Avenue) Summer 1937 to late summer 1939
After Jim finished 2nd grade, the family moved over north of Lake St. to 2752 41st Avenue, right across the street from the Harriett Beecher STOWE portable school (K-4). He had a teacher there named Miss LANGDICK in 3rd grade, a nice Scandinavian lady, and in 4th grade was Miss WILLARD, who was also the Principal. They had a home right across the street and a big Maple tree that Jim and bro Bob and their friends thoroughly enjoyed climbing in. And across the street from the playground, which was pretty much weeds, but even so a place to play and have fun.
In 1938 the family made a trip down to Waupun, WI (where Clifford's gdad BenC had staked a claim many years before) in the ‘29 Model A Ford to Dad’s Aunt Alice’s funeral, and back in those days, the roads were pretty much gravel, very little paved road between Minneapolis and Waupun, maybe 300+ miles, so it was a great big trip. That was when they carried home in the back seat of that Model A Ford the marble-top table that presently DWS/J have as the [posthumous] gift from Aunt Alice (d. 23 Apr 1938) to Jim's Dad (it has, of course, been in the family ever since). Uncle Tom (Charles) arrived with his family, who were Malcolm and Helen Jeane, and Don, in a great big long Packard that had folding seats between the front and back seat. The whole group went on a tour through a Carnation condensed milk factory as an outing, which was kind of a special thing at that time. Jim was 8 years old and it was an impressive time with the gathering of his Dad’s brothers and his sister Mildred and family members. That was the last time Jim visited Waupun, WI, which was kind of a long-time family hub. It was while living at 41st Ave in 1939 that the family also made a trip out to Yellowstone Park in that old ‘35 Ford, it was an exciting adventure for all (and likely sparked the later idea of Jim working there).
Jim remembers his friends from 41st Avenue; Jack PELBICKY who lived down the alley, and Harold WALSTROM, better known as Gondy (rhymes with scone-dy) who lived just across the street, south of the side street there on 41st, and his friend Wesley PETERSON, and the three of them got along well together. It was a rough neighborhood. There was a toughguy [bully] who lived up the alley whose name was Dutchy VANDERHEIDE, who really terrorized the neighborhood a bit. They were maybe 3 short blocks away from Bracket Park, which was quite a large Minneapolis Park, and in the winter time it was a great place to go ice skating. They would flood a huge area and they would play hockey and Jim and his friends would play all kinds of games, and Jim guesses they'd go over there in the morning and skate as long as they could during their Christmas vacation, maybe all day long using skates provided by Aunt Florence. And it was also while they lived there that Jim got his first bicycle, also from Aunt Florence, who would give Bob and him clothing and things such as skates and even bicycles that her 2 sons had pretty much outgrown out there where they lived in the Country Club area Edina, so it was an interesting time during their lives.
When Jim was in 4th grade, his grandpa [Niels] GRUNNET died at age 66 in 1939. This was quite a shock to Jim and was only the 2nd funeral he'd attended (1rst = Alice). Grandpa was 1st generation from Denmark (i.e. 1st born in USA, his dad was b. Denmark), and Grandma’s [Laura LARSON] line was also Danish and she was actually born in Denmark. Grandpa had earlier been part of the general store there in Stewart, [but had] sold that interest. The family, with 6 children, had moved out to Idaho in 1910 and staked a claim and proved it out [by working the 160 acres of land] but came back to Stewart in 1914, where Mom (Mabel) in fact finished high school. They later moved to Minneapolis to Sunnyside Avenue in Morningside. Jim remembers that on his birthday, probably in 1934 when he turned 5, he got a dollar as he usually did for birthdays, and what he most wanted was a pair of rubber boots. Now Grandpa worked downtown on Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis at a shoestore. This was depression time, jobs were hard to get, and Mom took little Jim downtown on the streetcar and they went to the store where Grandpa worked. Jim told him he’d really like to have a nice pair of rubber boots, and he went out and came back in with just the nicest pair of rubber boots Jim had ever seen and, after he tried them on and they were just right, they asked Grandpa how much they were and he said, well, how much do you have? When Jim said he had a dollar, Grandpa said that’s exactly what they cost! So Jim got just the nicest pair of rubber boots that were enjoyed for several years after that. That was from Grandpa GRUNNET, who was an easy-going, gentle sort of man who in the years that followed, as Jim's family moved into Minneapolis, he would come occasionally and spend time and fix leaky faucets and fix up things, he was very handy. Jim remembers that funeral, probably the 2nd funeral that he'd ever had gone to (Dad’s Aunt Alice in Waupun was the 1st). It was held in Minneapolis at Lakeview cemetery, a beautiful place located where 38th street ended heading west in those days. The name was because it had a view of Lakes Calhoun and Harriett. It was in the Chapel in the cemetery and Jim still remembers that they had a soloist who sang Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me ... and it made an impression on Jim as a 4th grader and of course the loss of a grandfather. Grandma [Laura LARSON] GRUNNET lived into her 80s. Jim remembers the family visiting her whenever they could, and that she spent her last days at a Methodist retirement home called Walker Home in Minneapolis. She was a very strong, solid and godly lady, who really prayed for her family and came from the old Danish Lutheran background, but there were alot of Methodist folks on that side of the family also [probably converted from Lutheran].
Minneapolis, MN (4080 Xenwood Ave, Brookside, St Louis Park), late summer 1939 to May 1942
Jim remembers this summer of 1939 as certainly a very significant one in the life of the SAWYER family. It was the eve of WWII, which started in September of that year (when the Nazi's invaded Poland 9/1). Grandpa GRUNNET had died in March. That summer the family travelled in their 1935 Ford west through South Dakota, the Black Hills, the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming and into Yellowstone Park. Many of the roads in those days were not paved, and sometimes it was 50 or 60 miles between towns, it was a real adventure for all of them. Later that summer another significant thing happened; for the first time the family purchased a home. They'd always rented prior to that time and it was a new home located in a community called Brookside, which was part of St. Louis Park, a western suburb of Minneapolis. The address there was 4080 Xenwood Avenue. [The builder] had another job and lived in the house while he was building it and when it was finished, put it on the market. They spent $4850 for this home. It was on a corner lot in this newly developing little community. It had an attached single garage, there were two bedrooms, an unfinished basement and an unfinished attic. Not long after they moved there they converted the heating system from coal to gas, gas-fired radiators, which were quite common in those days. Bob started right out in 7th grade, which was the Junior High and was located maybe 1.5 miles away, but Jim went to a great little school called Brookside (K-6), with a room for each grade, just a block away from home. And it was a new adventure [Jim says, chuckling] really, all new friends, and a newly developing neighborhood. Jim remembers well his 5th grade teacher Miss JONES, and his 6th grade teacher Miss JERWILKY (sp?) who also served as Principal for the school. For some reason Jim can picture those days and those classes, he could go up and down the aisles and tell you who sat where [wow, photographic memory?]. He really did enjoy those years, they were special, he played soccer out in the primitively gravelled fields, they weren’t grassy playing fields. Jim served on the Safety Patrol to help students [other kids] across the busy highway on the east side of the school. He remembers selling Saturday Evening Post magazines and, in 5th or maybe between 5th and 6th grades, he won a nice Scout hatchet, because he'd made so many sales, and Jim believes that hatchet is still with DWS in Grand Haven. He had his 1st paper route. It was a Sunday morning route, not many customers, all spread out, it was called a bonus route. He got up at maybe 5:30am to deliver the papers, not much fun to collect, but did get some income and it was probably a good experience. It was in that year, at that location, that Dad (Cliff) traded off that faithful old ‘35 Ford and bought a used ‘40 Buick Special. Jim liked it, as most of the family did, but Dad didn’t like it very well, so not long after that he traded it in on a brand new 1941 Ford Special Deluxe (see CBScars).
When the family moved to St. Louis Park they went to a little Brookside Methodist Church for a short period of time, just a tiny little church. They later returned to Lake Harriett Methodist Church over by Lake Harriett, where they'd attended probably when they lived on Alden Drive. It was in that church that, on a Sunday morning [in 1940, when Clifford was 40yo], Pastor Henry LOUIS brought what we'd consider to be a real gospel message. Dad went up afterwards, shook his hand and congratulated him on such a good message upon which he basically apologized, said he got kind of carried away and didn’t intend to get into something like that. Well, the blinders kind of fell off Dad’s eyes and he decided that if he had to apologize for that kind of a message the family must be in the wrong place. That isn’t really where he wanted to raise his family, bring his sons. So they left that church, somewhat to the dismay of Mom, who sang in the choir and really wasn’t too excited about leaving her friends and activities there. The family spent months searching and visiting various churches e.g. Presbyterian, Baptist, etc. and going to special meetings with evangelists and going out to Medicine Lake to hear special evangelistic people and heard some great ones. Down to 1st Covenant church in downtown Minneapolis, but finally settled in at Bethesda [EV] Free Church, way over at 26th Avenue and east 38th Street which was way east yet of where the family was living. Dad was excited about the men’s ministry, and Bob and Jim went with him, because he really wanted his boys to go with him and Mom didn’t go, somewhat because Dad didn’t use great ways to encourage her to go. But that was the family's church background, and it was at Bethesda that a wrestling team from Wheaton College came to Minneapolis to compete against the University of MN. And this was starting into the war years, probably early ‘41, and Dad was so impressed with that group of young men that he kind of put in the back of his mind that he would really like to have his sons go to that school sometime. And of course that was the seed planted for Bob and then Jim to later go to Wheaton College. On reflection, Jim says it had to be either early 1941 or the middle of 1944 since they moved to Atlanta, GA in May of 1941 and didn’t return to Minneapolis until the summer of 1944. He's not sure.
Following those two good years at Brookside School, Jim started Junior High, about 1.5 miles north of his home. Though a bus ride was available, Dad thought such things were for softies, so Bob and Jim walked to school. It could be very cold in the wintertime in that part of the country, in fact, Jim remembers 25-30 below zero days where they'd bundle themselves up and follow a railroad track that took them most of the way to school and just keep their heads down and their faces covered. They’d have ice forming on the scarves across their mouths, but probably that kind of exercise was good for them. Not long after that, in fact it was a Sunday in December, December 7th of 1941, Bob and Jim and Bob's friend Smitty, Bob SMITH was his real name, were playing Monopoly when, over the radio, they heard the 1st report of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The next day, they heard President FDR over the school Public Address system declaring war, declaring US entry into WWII. Not many months after that, Dad had taken a new job with the American Auto Insurance Company, at that time it was one of the most prominent auto insurers in the United States. The family would be moving to Atlanta, GA, where Dad would be training to take an office management position at one of their other branches around the country. They thought at that time that it might be in California. Incidentally, when the war came, [there were] threats of food shortages, rationing, etc. and of course it did come to that a bit later. In order to beat the hoarders, Dad bought a 100-pound bag of sugar and a 50-pound 'wheel' of cheese in a round, wooden container. And when he, not long after that, left to drive the 1941 Ford to Atlanta, he carried these commodities with him in the trunk of his car. Jim remembers that they moved just before Jim finished 7th grade, so he had to do the last month or so in Atlanta, which was tough since of course they were studying different materials and of course the southern culture was very different than up north too.
st#? Virginia Ave, Atlanta, GA, May 1942 to Summer 1943
One interesting personal note is that Jim made a decision to trust Christ at Grant Park Baptist Church while living in Atlanta, GA in May 1942 (so he was 12yo). This Southern Baptist Church was hosting an evangelistic meeting led by special speaker Hymen APPLEMAN, a well known [Messianic] Jewish evangelist of the day.
Since Jim's Dad Clifford was always very interested in his sons being involved in an income situation, learning how to work, and learning how to do different things, while in Atlanta Jim got another paper route (he'd had one earlier while in 5th-6th grade, also some magazine sales, described above). Jim finished 7th grade in Atlanta and then stayed for his whole 8th grade year there. Now the Atlanta paper route was a big one, over 100 customers, the Atlanta Journal. It was an afternoon and Sunday paper and it was a nice route, handy to where we lived over on Virginia Avenue, just a block over from Highland Northeast, where they lived in Atlanta. It was a 25-cent a week subscription for customers and Jim got maybe 5 or 6 cents for each customer i.e. after he collected from them and paid his weekly bill to the paper, so he earned maybe 5 or 6 dollars a week which was pretty good money in those days.
324 Ross Ave, Hamilton, OH, Summer 1943 to June 1944
The family moved to Hamilton, OH, in summer 1942. Dad had left the American Auto and gone with the Ohio Casualty Company because apparently the hope that he had of being transferred to be manager of his own branch with the American Auto had stalled, nothing was happening, so we went to Hamilton, OH, the headquarters of the Ohio Casualty Insurance Company, where Dad would be trained to take the responsibility of one of their branches at a later time. So, its between 8th and 9th grade for Jim, he's 13 years old, in the first part of the summer, with some pressure from Dad to get a job, he rode his bike way out into the country and got a job with a farmer whose name was Karl STAHLHEBER. He also had a trucking business and was gone, so Jim got a job, room and board and 1 dollar a day pay working for his hired man, and that job entailed all kinds of things; driving a tractor, doing some really messy things like cleaning the henhouse out that hadn’t been cleaned for probably a year or two, and shoveling out a full basement of rotten potatos, all kinds of fun things. After about 5 weeks of this Jim came back into town and got a job at a place called Handy Pantry, a little deli that was only about a block away from where they lived at 324 Ross Avenue in Hamilton. It was owned by a bachelor alcoholic named Bill BOYD. He lived upstairs from the little store property and oftentimes didn’t get down from his apartment until middle of the morning, so Jim was 13 years old and would go over and open up the store and deal with the suppliers who came in with fresh bread and that kind of thing, and waited on customers until the owner would come down. He made 30 cents an hour and probably worked 50 to 60 hours a week for the rest of the summer. It was a good job in some ways but had some down sides. When school started that fall, and Jim entered 9th grade at Woodrow Wilson Junior High in Hamilton, OH, he got a better job. He worked at Beeler’s Drug Store after school, sometimes in the evening, sometimes weekends. He managed the ice cream and the soda side and obviously enjoyed the product himself. He got maybe 35 cents an hour for that job and it was a good job, but at the end of that school year [June 1943] the family moved back to Minneapolis, to 3441 Park Avenue South.
3441 Park Ave S (St Louis Park neighborhood), Minneapolis, MN, June 1944 to Fall 1948
After Jim and Bob finished 9th and 11th grades in Hamilton, the family moved back to Minneapolis. Interestingly, Jim remembered that school ended Tu 6 Jun 1944 aka D-Day, as the Allied armies stormed the beaches of Normandy. Back in MN there was again pressure [from Dad] to find a job and way south of where they lived, out at Chicago Avenue, there was a drugstore, HANEY’s Drug Store he thinks was the name of it, that was the next job, 40 cents an hour. He worked there, then at a STILLMAN’s Grocery Store, then at STRONG’s Bakery and, most significantly, after he'd gone into 10th grade at Central High School, probably late that [school] year [so Spr 1945], he got a job at Sears Roebuck, the big mail-order house, a big multi-story building, which was only about a mile from where they lived, working at the employee’s cafeteria. He had to do a little fibbing about his age, because they had a minimum age of 16. His manager there, her name was Miss Audrey KITCHEN, was a nice lady and Jim felt she kind of took an interest in him [helping him succeed] because soon he was in charge of a 3-man crew [Jim + 2] that would come in, all 3 were high school students, they'd come in after school and scrub all the kitchen floors and mop and scrub the cafeteria floor, do pots and pans and generally tidy up and finish preparing the kitchen and the dining area for the next day’s business because they didn’t serve any more food after maybe 3 o’clock in the afternoon in the dining room. It was a great job. Jim started at 55 cents an hour and fairly quickly moved up to 75 cents an hour. Now a really special part of the job was that, once they finished cleaning and checked out they could come back to the kitchen and fix up anything they wanted to eat and this was back in the days when food was rationed and it was really tough for Jim's Mom to find anything, oh, like a good steak or whatever, those just weren’t available [and remember these are very hungry teenage boys]. But the executive dining room at the employee’s food service there at Sears had all kinds of good things come in, and they were allowed to go back and grab a big steak and bury it maybe in a can of mushrooms and a half a pound of butter and as long as they cleaned up after themselves they were welcome to eat whatever they liked. Maybe that was why it was considered a non-profit organization, we helped to make it that way! :-) So that was that year [10th grade, ending June 1945]. Then the summer between junior and senior year in Central High in Minneapolis, Jim worked on construction, it paid a dollar, 15 cents an hour, and Jim thought it was, you know, a good conditioner for going out for fall football there at Central High. Jim was a common laborer and every morning a bricklayer would pick him up and they’d drive up to north Minneapolis and spent that summer building a big addition to a linseed mill, a [mal]odorous location sometimes. He’d carry 12-inch blocks and mix morter, they called it 'mud', for the masons, and it was probably a great conditioner, it was hard work. He thinks the blocks weighed 80 pounds a piece, one on each side, you’d walk across an opening, a basement opening, with one of those in each arm, and put it on a little pully deal and run it up to the masons.
Jim graduated from Central High School in Minneapolis on June 13th of 1947 and about 3 days later was on his way out to Yellowstone Park on an overnight train along with a number of other young guys primarilly, but girls too, from Minneapolis/St Paul area. He had a contract to work for the Yellowstone Park Company and his particular job took him to Canyon Lodge [in] about the middle of Yellowstone Park where he'd receive $90/month plus some tips and a round trip train fare if he finished the summer and finished his contract. It was a very interesting summer, he was a busboy there. He enjoyed many opportunities to get around the park and ... more details of that summer on another occasion, but at the end of the summer came back, had not been accepted at Wheaton, though he'd applied a month or two before high school graduation, so with [chuckling] strong urging from brother Bob he signed up to go to St. Paul Bible Institute, which was a long ways away, it was actually he thinks 3 or 4 streetcar rides, which later led him to buy his first car, which was a 1934 very much used Ford rumble seat Coupe (cf JCScars), and he’ll talk about that at another time, but he went to St Paul Bible Institute for a semester, and it was an interesting experience, a long commute, but didn’t really feel led that he'd be a pastor or a missionary which was basically what that school was in the process of training people to do. So at the end of the first semester he transferred to Bethel College, also a long commute, by that time, however, he had the old ‘34 Ford and drove to school to Bethel College. It was just a junior college at that time across from the state fair grounds in St. Paul [later called the Snelling Rd 'old' campus]. He took alot of math courses and during that time was actually being processed at the University of Minnesota with their counseling and testing department that finally culminated in their suggesting that he pre-enroll in their industrial engineering program. He did that. But because of, again, some strong urging from brother Bob and Dad, instead of going to University of MN that fall of ‘48 he went to Wheaton.
Jim remembers that summer at Yellowstone doing kitchen and maintenance work this as a great experience and a nice time and made some friends (including a girlfriend! Rats, should've gotten her name). He remembers a lesson he learned during that time by observing the waitresses and their attitudes. Some went out of their way to be friendly, kind and pleasant to their customers, while others displayed brusk, harried or rude attitudes. He observed that, while both types did the same amount of work, the former made two or three times the tips that the latter did. In addition to being a Christian virtue, it also makes practical sense (it pays to be nice). This lesson was also reinforced during his later Fuller Brush days, when he noticed that he could sell much more product by simply being nice to the children of his customers, sometimes giving them little prizes and trinkets (basic salesmanship and attitude lessons).
This is where Jim finished Central High School (Minneapolis) in June 1947. He still remembers many classmates and has communicated with several in connection with reunions over the years, most recently the 60th in 2007!
Wheaton, IL, Fall 1948 to Spring 1949, Freshman year, Summer 1949
Fuller Brush salesman summer 1949
Wheaton, IL, Fall 1949 to Spring 1950, Sophomore year, Summer 1950
Hmmm, what did he do during the summer of 1950? Likely stayed at Wheaton and found work there, but not sure. Somewhere around this time when Jim was a young adult, he got a chance to take a ride in a plane. The pilot (owner?) was apparently trying to make a little money with his skill, and for a small fee he'd take people up for short flight. After he described it and saw this picture, he confirmed it was a plane like this one, a Beech[craft] 17 'Staggerwing'.
Wheaton, IL, Fall 1950 to Spring 1951, Junior year, Summer 1951
In the summer of 1951, Jim had started part time working for Argyl Builders, a man from Canada who was a student at Wheaton thought it would be profitable and practical to build homes and give budding young missionaries, for example, a chance to learn the building trade skills. Well Jim got a job with him, and based on some little experience with concrete blocks and construction, it wasn’t long before he was the responsible person for the masonry crew that did stone fronts on homes and fireplaces, brickwork and cement finishing and decided to stay the summer of ‘51. The two summers before were Fuller Brush summers. The summer of ‘51, between junior and senior year, Jim was the foreman of a masonry crew. There were about 5 on the team and one of them, Glen HECK, had an old ‘37 Ford with a rack on top where they would put the morter mixing box up on that vehicle, and they would go to various jobs in Wheaton and in Glen Ellyn and work maybe 55 hours a week, and his pay was maybe $2/hour, or even $2.20, which was great pay for that day. The crew lived with a maiden lady named Miss PALMER right by the football field there in [Wheaton] and she had an old, kind of like a little carriage house behind that had been fixed up with a little apartment on the upper level and 4 of them shared that place, renting it for maybe $40/month, but she let them work it off in yardwork, so it was almost free [cash-wise] and they cooked all their own meals and worked on construction that summer.
In August of 1951, Jim took a leave from his summer job at brick and cement masonry in Wheaton, IL to join his parents in Mill Rift, PA (NE corner of PA) and met the following relatives:
1) Emma (SAWYER) LAWTON, youngest child of John Nearpass SAWYER (brother of Benjamin Carpenter SAWYER) and Martha (CRANE) SAWYER. Married Harry LAWTON. Emma was a first cousin of Clifford.
2) Olla HAZELTON, grandaughter of Hannah SAWYER, B.C. SAWYER's oldest sister.
3) Hannah S. MALONY and Kate GREEN, grandaughters of James SAWYER, B.C. SAWYER's younger brother.
4) Mabel SAWYER, a schoolteacher, a grandaughter of John SAWYER, a brother of B.C. SAWYER.
5) John SAWYER the carpenter, a grandson of John SAWYER, brother of B.C. SAWYER and a cousin of Mabel (of #4).
6) Uncle Bert and Aunt Lucy (VOORHEES) SAWYER, Uncle Tom (Charles) and his second wife who had been a friend in his youth (Aunt Gertrude had died earlier). Bert and 'Tom' were brothers of Clifford, with 'Tom' the eldest and (formerly) head surgeon at Chicago Mercy Hospital (where Jim was born).
Wheaton, IL, Fall 1951 to Spring 1952, Senior year, Summer 1952
Jim married Rosena GEARHART on Tu 17 Jun 1952 at Nappanee, IN (her hometown, where her stepdad was pastor of First Baptist Church [plate]). They had both graduated from Wheaton College just the day before the wedding. It was timed that way to allow many of their college friends to attend. Jim graduated with a B.A. degree in Economics and had been recruited by Procter & Gamble at the college placement office based upon a long interview, a 3-hour written exam and a flight down to P&G’s property in Ivorydale, a suburb of Cincinnati. And then another trip that they paid for, a flight out to Amarillo, TX. So after their honeymoon at Crystal Lake, MI, they drove to Cincinnati and Jim reported to work there at P&G. He'd been hired to be trained in their Industrial Engineering program for the summer of ‘52, and so after about 6 weeks of training there in OH, he and Rosena, along with another young couple (Tony/Pat BREWER), were sent out to Amarillo, TX, to be Industrial Engineers in a program that P&G managed called Pantex (under contract with the DoD), where components for atomic weapons were manufactured. In doing this, P&G was trying to get Jim deferred from the Army draft. Unfortunately, Jim's MN draft board didn't look favorably on this, as Jim before long received notice to appear for induction into the Army in Minneapolis, MN [fall 1952]. Jim mused that he might have been deferred had he been working on a farm or doing something significant in MN, but working in TX in an atomic energy facility didn’t seem to quality [i.e. not directly helping MN], so he got a draft notice. With the encouragement of friends, Jim called the naval district he'd been involved with earlier and asked for and received orders instead from the US Navy to appear for 2 years of active duty (he had joined the Navy reserve after high school to avail himself to basketball, swimming, etc. facilities at the Naval Air Station in Minneapolis and gone inactive during Wheaton College days). They had his orders changed to appear at Bainbridge, MD, for boot camp.
Following 'boot camp' at Bainbridge, MD, where he qualified for and was urged to go to NOTC (Naval Officers Training Corps) school in exchange for signing for 4 years (which he declined), Jim received orders to proceed to the headquarters of the Atomic Energy Commission at Sandia Base in Albuquerque, NM. He was the first Seaman on the base when he arrived. His brother Bob, drafted into the Army, was stationed with his Army unit in the same building quadrangle as Jim's Navy unit. Following nearly a year of training (going to school, learning about atomic weapons, after a delay getting another [i.e. this time atomic] Q-Clearance, while Rosena taught school 2nd semester, filling in for a 4-5th grade teacher at Lavaland [L'Haviland?] school who'd been killed in an auto accident), his unit (a Special Weapons Team) was transferred to Norfolk, VA Naval Air Station, then sent to sea for a total of 6 months, 3 months each on two aircraft carriers (Lake Champlain and Bennington). Baby JRS was born at Norfolk Naval Hospital. Jim was discharged 2 months early in August? 1954 (and narrowly escaping a fatal explosion on board the Bennington) and accepted a position in a manufacturing business (Screw Machine Specialties) in Grand Haven, MI owned by Frank and Abe KIEFT (found the position via Wheaton's placement office). Jim and Rosena had honeymooned in Crystal Lake, MI (north of Grand Haven) and had liked the West Michigan area (i.e. Ottawa Co., scenic, conservative, prosperous, many residents of Dutch heritage, including the KIEFTs, c1980 it was the 2nd most politically conservative county in the USA, after Orange Co, CA).
Jim's 1st aircraft carrier Lake Champlain CVA-39. He said this type was the best at the end of WWII (Essex? class, speed record of 40mph avg Gibralter to NYC!), later replaced by ?-class in the 50s and Forrestal class (1st nuclear pwrd) in the 60s? His 2nd carrier was Bennington CVA-41? (i.e. the one w/explosion in catapult, get pic).
Note: The USN carriers Langley, Lexington and Saratoga (latter 2 36k tons, ~200 planes) had formed the 1st-generation US carrier fleet, built in the 1920s (TL 'The Carrier War' p34). The next generation of 'fast carriers', built in the wartime 1940s, were 27k-ton Essex-class carriers, which were escorted by 'scores of tiny [8-11k ton] escort carriers (CVEs)' (132, and CVAs? = 'Attack'?). The Bennington took part in the WWII attack on the Japanese super-battleship 'Yamato' ('pride of [their] Navy') on 6 Apr 1945; Yamato sank the next day (p166-7), a huge win for the Allies.
Grand Haven, MI 1954-99
The business grew and was incorporated in 1963. Jim started as Office Manager and rented the house next door at 1243 Fulton Street from the company (e.g. pic w/baby JRS by garage, house is now gone, just the cement pad remains). Jim later became General Manager and part owner (he and 'shop boss' Ken bought in gradually). He served as VP and Treasurer and later as President. He and his business partner (Ken VanBeukering) sold the business in September of 1979 (Jim was not quite 50) to Humphrey Products. He was to phase out over 5 years (first year at 100%, 2nd at 80...) as specified by a Management/Consultant contract.
As Jim was reminiscing about these early GH times on Mo 12 Apr 2004 (on a dictaphone, which was used to capture many of these recollections), he said that he and Rosena had attended a new church the day before, a startup church nearby [Classic Residence] called Grace Baptist Church meeting at the Grayhawk Elementary School and led by 36 year old Kevin BALL who had volunteered to help them with our Bible Study in-house there at Classic Residence. Kevin was trying to start a church there, so Jim, Rosena and 8 others went over for an 10am Easter service, though they'd already gone to Scottsdale Bible Church’s 7:30am service. And as Jim had thought about it later that Sunday, he thought of the phrase deja vu because it reminded him very much of the experience they'd had 50 years before when they'd moved to Grand Haven. This little church here [in Scottsdale] had maybe 15 people besides the visitors, and Kevin was an ex-Marine, single man, very earnest, very enthused about his faith, and trying to get something started.
So it was 50 years ago [in 2004] when they went to Grand Haven and didn’t know really where they'd be worshipping. Neither Jim nor Rosena had a Baptist background, but Frank NELSON, who'd been a fellow classmate of theirs at Wheaton, in their class in fact, had been in the service, so he was a bit older, had been in the U.S. Navy during WWII, used his G.I. Bill to go first to Nyack (originally called a Bible School, perhaps a college by that point [founded 1882 by A B Simpson, Cairns p481]) for 2 years and then transferred into Wheaton. Jim thought Frank came in as a junior at Wheaton, and he and Jim were fellow students in a political science class. Jim didn’t know Frank well but both were very outspoken participants in discussion in that class. So later when Jim and Rosena moved to Grand Haven, Frank called on them and was very anxious for them to join him, and help out a little struggling church that met at the corner of Franklin and Despelder in Grand Haven [in] an old woodframe building [that] probably wouldn’t seat over 60 people, but the first Sunday that they attended they had son JRS in a little car-bed with them, so JRS might have been just maybe 2 or 3 months old by that time. There were, Jim thinks, 13 adults plus some children at the service. The church had been through kind of a difficult time enduring a split, and quite a number of the folks that had assumed some of the leadership had left the church. Those remaining included Roy and Bee [Beatrice] DILLINGER [kids Jerry, Betty (WILDEY, VANHALL), Aleitha (DARLING), Pat], Tom and Clara WATSON, Moni and Harta VANDERMOLEN, Al BOER, maybe some readers will remember some of those names. Jim and Rosena toyed with the idea of visiting and going to other churches, there was a Baptist church in Spring Lake where they had some friends, that was (also) a conservative Baptist church. That branch or that denomination of Baptists, where the one that was called First Baptist Church on Franklin and Despelder was a GARB Baptist church, General Association of Regular Baptists, a very narrow conservative Baptist group [founded 1920s, Bruce Shelley's CHiPL p?]. So they visited Gospel Chapel and Abe KIEFT did a lot to try to get them to go there. Frankie [his wife] would call and invite them for breakfast on a Sunday morning, church to follow. And also some encouragement from Frank KIEFT to go out to Hope Reformed Church on Mercury Drive [SE side of GH], a church that he and several other men had had a significant role in developing and starting. But Jim remembered there was one situation where Frank [NELSON], who would come over fairly often when they lived on 1243 Fulton Street, and he would come in and sit and visit and if Jim were busy reading a magazine, he’d pick it up and read it and pick up Jim's Pepsi, perhaps, whatever Jim was having with his magazine and just sit and visit and relax :-) . And Jim remembers he said one evening; well Jim if you have to go to one of those places to keep your job, then you better go there, but basically he REALLY wanted them to come to his church so after some deliberation Jim and Rosena started at that First Baptist Church, a little struggling body with a bachelor pastor who was making $15 a week and board and room staying with the DILLINGERs [this also avoided the problem of choosing between Abe and Frank].
It wasn’t long after that Jim and Rosena became involved in many aspects of that church. Jim thinks within a year he was Chairman of the Board and he was maybe 25 years old by that time [1955, so 26-7yo]. They both joined the choir that started soon after, and were even asked to sing duets on occasion for the congregation. Then there were some young people, you all remember Jim HIRDES and Jim VANDERMOLEN and Larry TINDALL and Ron ELENBAS and Judy TOMA (sp?) and some of the others that were in that first group. They started leading the high school group and it was a nice group, had probably 15 kids because they were attracting some of the high schoolers from other areas of the town, other churches, and Jim/Rosena stayed with that for probably [chuckling] 15, 16, 17 years, helping and leading other kids [SPS: I remember mtgs at 120 Crescent Dr in early 70s, tho I was too young to join, Mom would play piano and singing e.g. 'Is There Something Missing ...']. Jim thinks he and Rosena probably stood out in some ways because they'd graduated from college. At that time, he doesn’t think other than the pastor there was anybody in the congregation that had ever gone beyond high school. So that seemed to be one of the triggers to get them hooked up in various areas of responsibility. Rosena, he's quite sure, was chairman of the ladies mission group and played the piano and even the Hammond organ the church later bought. But it wasn't too many years before the church needed to expand. Many new families were coming in. You probably all remember the WHITEs, Bill and Eleanor and their 3 children, Jeanie and Char [later Mrs. Bill FOUTZ, they owned Apothecary Shoppe on Robbins Rd, lived on Dale Court in big dark wooden-shingled home] and Doug, who moved to town and seemed fairly affluent, they moved into a nice place, and were very involved and not long after that the OSBECKs (Gordon, Betty, son?, Nancy, Tom) came to town, maybe 2 or 3 years into this. But whatever the case, the church needed more space.
Backing up a bit, Frank [NELSON] was single and interested in finding a good wife and there were a number of young ladies in the congregation. Perhaps you remember Ginnie McCALEB, who certainly had her cap set for Frank. But he met Lois NELSON, who was also a Wheaton graduate, probably 3 years behind Frank. She was hostess up at the Maranatha dining room up by Maranatha Bible Conference. One day Frank said he was going to ask that young lady out and wondered if they might drop around at Jim/Rosena's place there on 1808 Sheldon afterwards [they'd moved there from Fulton in Jan 1956]. Sure enough, that evening they showed up and Jim thinks the idea was so they could kind of check her out and give Frank some sort of an appraisal and Jim/Rosena concurred that she was certainly a very fine quality young lady and that led to a courtship, and an engagement and a marriage. In fact, Jim was the Best Man at that wedding and that necessitated the church getting a place for a pastor and a wife to live (a parsonage), so they bought the old house next to the church there on Franklin and Despelder and it was an old house, but it was fairly suitable considering all that was happening. And so that was the church's pastor and wife in the old church.
The church leaders had also been thinking about buying a lot across the street that was vacant and other ideas as well for expanding space. But finally they homed in on some lots out south of Grand Haven, just off Lakeshore Drive. They bought those, they were big, they went very deep, and Jim thinks they bought maybe 3 lots or more and had to fill them up [with backfill dirt], they were a bit low, but the church then built the first (of 3) building there. It was a general purpose building and Jim ended up as co-chairman of that building program. It [laughing] was not an elaborate building [get a pic sometime] but it was, compared with our old quarters, a very big step up. They spent probably most of the year building that, moved in, had a special dedication service, named it Lakeshore Baptist Church [LBC], and Jim is sure all of his sons will remember LBC. This was probably early 1960s, and shortly after the completion of that, Frank and Lois announced that they would be leaving, he would be resigning. And Frank actually went to Michigan State University [MSU] and worked for, and at great effort to him, got a doctorate in education, that led to his becoming a professor at the University of Wisconsin branch located in Milwaukee. And Lois taught school for many years there in Milwaukee until her retirement age [she still lives in that area, Frank d. 13 Oct 2006, kids Brent and Karen].
But getting back to LBC, there now had to be a Pulpit committee, and Jim ended up as Chairman of that Committee as well as several more to come. And they ended up calling Pastor [Lloyd T] 'Bud' BOLDT, Jim thinks you’ll remember Bud BOLDT. And he used to call himself, 'lightning Boldt' :-), interesting man who came and was LBC pastor for a period of time followed by Wayne CHILD [SPS: I think CHILD was before BOLDT], whom Jim had heard down in Lansing, IL. In fact, Roy DILLINGER and Jim had made a trip down to hear him speak at his church before inviting Wayne to come and be a candidate at LBC. Well new folks kept coming and it wasn't long before even more space was needed, so they built a new building [late 60s], in fact a sanctuary adjacent to the older general purpose building that had been completed in around 1962-3. So this newer, larger and quite nice building was built next door to the old one, with a passageway connecting them [SPS: We spent ALOT of time at LBC, LOTS of memories!]. And it wasn’t too long after that that LBC built a brand new parsonage on the south side of that newer building. And of course the SAWYER family attended there for many years and the sons will remember that it was about 1978 [when Jim/Rosena/DBS left], so the family had been there 24 years at LBC, but at that time felt led to leave. There were alot of things, alot of reasons. Our pastor at that time was Phil VanWYNEN. Phil and Marietta whom Jim/Rosena knew quite well, in fact, they were involved in a small group with them, and the WADDELLs, later the DODDINGTONs and later Chuck RYCENGA and his wife also became part of that group. But getting back to the church, the church grew some, it didn’t grow rapidly, but it was coming along fairly well, but because of what we were discovering and sensing in our little groups, we really felt like we needed more and the church was not open to small groups [SPS: kind of a new concept at that time]. By that time, Jim/Rosena had been replaced as directors of the youth ministry, but Jim was teaching the largest adult class and it was quite a large class and it was a good class even though there were some clashes over having coffee in the sanctuary with some of [the folks, like, pauses to remember names] Henry and Lois RADAMAKER. Jim wouldn’t go into detail with them, they were also the home [base] for the local John BIRCH Society in Grand Haven, an interesting couple!
Oct 1966
1972
One addendum before moving on is that LBC is really quite a large congregation now [2004]. They bought a very nice piece of ground farther south of Grand Haven and built a very lovely new sanctuary and a Christian school which is pretty good sized, quite a nice facility. Jim/Rosena's friends Jim and Pat MORRIS are very involved in that. And Jim/Rosena visited there for the funeral of Betty WILDEY (her name as our family remember her, she later m2. ? VANHALL), Jim thinks that might have been 2 years ago [2002] when they were back in Grand Haven. So he just wanted to close this by saying that the Lakeshore Baptist Church which he and Rosena were part of right from the beginning is a pretty significant sized congregation now, south of Grand Haven, not too far from where DWS/J are living [D&J began attending there regularly in 2009, left 2014].
[narrated Mo 24 May 2004] After talking to SPS and getting an idea this past week of maybe something he'd like to digress to, he's going to talk today about some significant friends he and Rosena had had over the years. He felt God had blessed them with unique friendships through many many years, certainly through their whole married life, which was almost 52 years [in 2004], but then even before that. And Jim wanted to preface his comments by saying that people are really important, certainly more important than things, and that had certainly been the case in their lives. Arizona was a wonderful place to be, but it was especially wonderful because of the people that God had brought into their lives in the years that they'd been here. [rustling papers] He started out with then-current friendships and even before that mentioned that having SPS and family nearby is just like frosting on the cake for Rosena and him here in Scottsdale at Classic Residence [later Vi]. To have them nearby, to have SPS come over on Wednesdays, nearly every Wednesday afternoon, has been a great blessing, a great plus for us in being here [SPS: us too].
Jim/Rosena were legal residents of Grand Haven, MI from 1954 to the end of 1998 (45 years). From 1980 on, they spent increasing amounts of time in Scottsdale, AZ (after 1st buying a condo at Trail West Lodge in CO, then selling that and buying 1st Scottsdale home [condo] at 8200 E Chaparral unit 5020 i.e. just E of Hayden on N side of Chaparral, end unit) and changed their legal residence to AZ in Jan 1999. In 1998, they moved out of their apartment in GH (landlord Harold MINNEMA, 1st cousin of Ir's Aunt Clara) and made Scottsdale, AZ their new full-time home. In Dec 1999 they sold their home at 6301 East Aire Libre Lane in Scottsdale and moved into a new retirement community called Classic Residence in the Grayhawk area of Scottsdale (co-owned by Hyatt and Plaza Corp, later renamed 'Vi at Grayhawk' at 7501 E Thompson Peak Pkwy #347).
Jim recently [2004] retrieved a file he kept of papers during their early married years. He said he was a big plane buff in those days (he knows several WWII pilots at Classic Residence), mentioning in particular the P-47 Thunderbolt, a very heavy fighter. While at Wheaton, he lived at Kellogg House, with Mr. and Mrs. KELLOGG. Mr. Kellogg thought very highly of him and wrote a glowing recommendation (i.e. reference for employers) which Jim still has. He also has a letter from Mrs. ? of the Wheaton placement office congratulating him on getting the P&G job and saying he basically had the "pick of the bunch" (the P&G job was seen at the time as the 'plum'). Another thing in that file he's really proud of is the results of an assessment that was done by (firm?), sponsored by Frank KIEFT, of SMS mgt, that concluded Jim was clearly the best candidate for CEO at SMS. He has said before that whenever he'd feel down, he'd get these results out and it made him feel better (affirmed his worth, skills). Jim started at SMS Mo 7 Sep 1954, 50 years ago last week (today is 14 Sep 2004).
30 Dec 2004: JCS recalled yesterday (bro) Bob and Lois' [BENEDICT] wedding (53 yrs ago). His dad (Clifford) did not attend, not approving of the wedding (thought they were too young, unestablished, JCS says this was very foolish of his dad). He drove his Mom and Jim GRUNNET to the wedding from Wheaton in his dark blue '39 Ford (JCScars #4). Bob and Lois had no money for a honeymoon, so the other 3 dug into their pockets to give them what they could. JCS later found out Bob and Lois stayed a few days in Green Valley [AZ? S of Tucson] and then hitchhiked out to CO! JCS kept only about $10 to get him back to Wheaton. He dropped off his Mom and Jim G. at the bus station so they could ride the bus back to MN, then drove back to Wheaton. The weather was miserable and his car electrical system was shorting out (lights flicker/off, engine stalling, deep snow/slush). He was really worried about not making it back (also little money). He finally pulled into Kellogg House at Wheaton, relieved.
JCS recently noted the [41st] anniversary of Fr 13 Apr 1963, when Abe Kieft unexpectedly had a stroke and died, changing forever the GH situation for our family. Abe had been a difficult boss and JCS said he probably would NOT have stayed much longer (e.g. his friend Lowell VANDERVORT later offered him a position as Controller of several Minneapolis area hospitals). Anyway, JCS was with us guys (his sons) that Friday at Duncan Woods for an Easter egg hunt (I [SPS] was nearly 5yo) when he heard the news. After that, he was the only one who knew how to run SMS and things began to change. By the time Lowell's offer came, he was settled into mgt and had just bought a new home (1808 Sheldon Rd), so declined.
A very tough event occurred when Mark VanBeukering, son of JCS' business partner Ken, was killed in Vietnam on 9 Oct 1969. JCS recalled that a couple of military guys came to tell Ken but he was out of the office (lunch?). So JCS had to tell Ken before they returned later that afternoon. He recalled that as one of the hardest things he'd had to do.
JCS had eye surgery in Feb 2000 w/Dr Sipperle (SPS drove him down to the doc's Mesa, then Tempe, ofc at least once; saved $ v. his Scottsdale ofc). His right eye had a 'macular pucker' or wrinkle at the back of the eye, and it needed to be 'straightened out' via surgery. The lens was also replaced, but JCS said it didn't match the other eye. His left eye got a new lens in 2014? when a cataract was removed at Mayo.
Cruise with Erikson's and Vandervoort's ('Viking Serenade' sailed 19 Feb 1996 from Long Beach in Los Angeles, visited Catalina Island
with Hart's and Minnema's Apr 2000 at Sun City West? Rosena's hair is all gray by this time
As mentioned, Jim and Rosena began coming to AZ long before 1999 [c1980], but in that year they changed their legal residency and [on Sa 3 Dec 1999] moved into Classic Residence. Since their friends were always VERY important to them, here are some of Jim's recollections of their AZ friends as recorded on his dictaphone.
Cal and Gayle HOLM live [when this was recorded 2004] only about 3 miles from us [SW corner of Pima and Pinnacle Peak Rd, near Messinger mortuary (the same one that later provided services for both Rosena and Jim), but since then they'd moved out W to Trilogy]. They’re from Minnesota, [they] lived out in a little community not far from where [Mabel] came from, Stewart, MN, but they came from the little town of Atwater. They have been dear friends, they’re the closest to our age of any in our small groups and they have been so special as friends and we are grateful for that friendship. Also Chuck and Darlyne HOLLEY are certainly very good friends. I don’t know what we would have done a year ago when I had my surgical procedure were it not for their thoughtfulness and kindness and just doing way above and beyond anything we would’ve expected. So they have certainly been special to us and probably that friendship goes back at least a dozen years, maybe more. Then there’s certainly, in that category of special friends, Bill and Char CURRY, who have really been special friends for maybe 4 years or 5. They owned a place in our Golden Heritage community where we lived before we moved to Classic Residence and I used to see Bill at the pool and we got acquainted and it was their friends the SCHMIDTs who bought our home over there on 6301 East Aire Libre [Lane] and our friendship has grown, they came to our church, Bill has been very much a part of the musical department of our church, and they have been special, special friends and we’re grateful for them [Bill told Dad that he's the reason Bill has renewed his lapsed Baptist faith]. We think of, oh, I think there’s 5, 6, 11 other couples in our 2 groups that would be considered as dear friends. I won’t take time to list all of their names [SPS: Monday group is HOLMs, Bob/Marianne KENRICH, Brooke/Georgia DOLPH, Gary/Meribeth GILLESPIE, Larry/Vicky SEMEREAUX, Bob/Sheila DOWNEY (w/Johnny Erickson Tada ministry), Tuesday group is HOLLEYs, CURRYs, Dave/Bev HUDDER (until their recent move east), Larry/Susan ZUPANCIC, Don ('Doc') and Gretchen LAMB (later disbanded after last 3 couples left town)] but certainly all of them are important to us. After you’ve been in groups as we have these two groups for so many years, you get well acquainted with people, and they are really dear friends.
You know, going backwards, which is what I’m doing on this subject [friends and small groups], I think of friends who have been longterm friends that are still our friends. Bill and MaryJane WADDELL, certainly, going back to probably about 1973. We don’t have the closeness with them that we once had, but still consider them as special people and grateful for the impact that they’ve had on our lives for a long period of time starting back in Grand Haven. And then there are others that I think of, going backwards. I think of Bob and Joan HART, who are still very special friends, with a place out here in AZ in Surprise and a place back in Grand Haven. We’ve known them and they’ve been our friends for probably 25 years. I think of the NYBOERs, Dutch and Cindy NYBOER, who have been our friends, and though we don’t talk to them often, we still consider them special friends, as we do Denny CHERETTE, who has been a special friend for many years. I think of Dick and Bev DODDINGTON, who we’ve known going way back, maybe 25 or 30 years, who are still in Grand Haven, our friends. Jim and Pat MORRIS, who I think all of you know, still at Lakeshore. Jim and Pat have been friends that we look up when we go back to Grand Haven, as we do, as we hopefully do each summer [Rosena's last trip was summer 2007, just before entering Vi Memory Support, and Jim's travels slowed down after that].
[pause] Well I think probably the next category going backwards would be those who were special friends from our years at Wheaton College, and that has to take us back, 52 plus 4, 56 years since we started at Wheaton College. And the nice thing about these friendships are that they were mutual, both Rosena and I for the most part, and its been just really special to be able to do things with some of them over the years to keep in touch with some of them. Of course, Kerm ERICKSON would probably be number 1 on my list there. Kerm and I were roommates for 3 1/2 years. We lived in a private home called Kellogg House. Those last 3 years of our college experience [there] were 5 of us in that private home, which was on Emerald Avenue, long since been changed and moved out of there because of the expansion of the college and their, I think its called Anderson Dining Room area, but it was right down behind the old alumni gym and the Kelloggs had earlier sent, I think, 5 children through the college, and they had places for 5 of us for 3 years. And Kerm and I roomed together and he was a very special friend and still is. We’ve kept in touch and, as you know, Kerm is now retired but he was a general surgeon, they served in Ethiopia for a number of years, and then down in Appalachia, and then the bulk of his career in a clinic up in Cambridge, MN, he and Eunice. Eunice, maiden name ECKHOF, Eunice ECKHOF and Kerm were married just a few days after we were married and Kerm was my best man but we were on our honeymoon when Kerm got married, so I couldn’t be in his wedding. They had 4 daughters, one [Julie] of course passed away, but 4 daughters, and all of them went to Bethel College up in MN. Kerm and Eunice special, special friends. And then there was Lowell VanderVOORT who was in that same Kellogg House the first year before he graduated, but we kept in touch. He married Dru[silla] and we’ve kept in touch over all the years and they’ve been dear friends. We’ve traveled with them, done many things together, they have been very hospitable, lived most of their latter years out in the Palm Springs area of CA. Lowell retired from the CEO job of Eisenhower Hospital there in Palm Springs area. And Dru went to be with the Lord about 2 years ago now [5 Mar 2002] and we still try to keep in touch and get together occasionally with Lowell, who lives by himself in a retirement community not dissimilar from the one that we live in. And then there’s of course John STAMM who we’ve kept in touch with. John and Doris have spent, I suspect, 45 years in Costa Rica as a teacher, as missionary, instructor; an interesting, a brilliant person, was our housemate for I think all of those years at Wheaton. He graduated before we did, but was doing graduate work, and so John STAMM, a special friend. Jane and John ELLIOT [he d. since JCS recorded this], keep in touch with them, special people. Glen and Ginnie (ERICKSON) HECK, Ginnie ERICKSON whom I dated a bit when I was a freshman, and Glen who was in our wedding. And still they live in Wheaton and are very involved in activities there. They were and are special people to us. Spence and Ruth (DILLER) SAWYER [he d. late 2009]. Spence not directly related to us, but a good friend and we worked together and built chimneys and did cement finishing and all those kinds of things together there at Wheaton before graduation and before we left town [he'd been home-schooled, unusual in those days]. I think of Ralph and Margaret (CARLTON) ALBINSON, both friends of ours who have spent all these years now in Minneapolis where they have a mortuary business, probably pretty much passed on to their sons at this point in time, but dear friends also going back to our college days.
Now I think for the next segment I would think back to those high school years. I graduated from Central HS in Minneapolis in June of 1947. We had been there about 3 years and it was great that I could go all 3 of those years to the same school. As I think I’ve mentioned earlier, brother Bob went to 3 different high schools in 3 different states for his high school years. But those years were also very interesting years. Early in those 3 years I was part of a really alive youth ministry at Bethesda [Evangelical] Free Church. We had 2 adult leaders, Don ORTLUND, who was, he and his wife were really very very effective in working with young people and Irv CARLSON and his wife. And I suspect that the most significant friendship there was Ken PETERSON. Ken and Barb, whose maiden name was VerHIGH (sp?), good Dutch name. Barb went to Minihaha academy. Ken was 2 years behind me at Central High School. And they were in Junior High in fact when I first met them, and as the time progressed, Ken would come to Bethesda Free Church. In fact we would pick him up every Sunday morning on our way to church. And he became part of that youth ministry, that youth group, which was very very important in my life. I think of others in that group. There was Bob LARSON, and there was Dale BJORKLUND, and there was Joan ATKINS. Ginnie BURNSON was a special friend of mine, I dated, she and I went out together quite a few times back in those days. She was from north Minneapolis and had to come a long way to go to Bethesda Free Church. And that youth ministry has left a, made an indelible impact on my life. I’m really grateful for those friendships. And of course Ken PETERSON is still a close friend. I hear from him, in fact, talked to him in the last several weeks. As you all know, they live in Wheaton IL now. Ken, who’s only just a couple years younger than I, still is employed as [part of] kind of an accreditation process, where he, as a former hospital administrator, and I think perhaps a doctor and perhaps an accountant go to hospitals and go through some testing procedures that accredit hospitals. But Ken and Barb have been special friends going way back to probably the middle ‘40s. And I [chuckling] certainly am grateful for their friendship over that period of time. And also during that high school period, other friends I think of at Central High School in Minneapolis there; Luke ANGELES, a young fellow from a Greek family and Buzz JOHNSON. Then I think of a couple of friends who I worked with at Sears Roebucks; Dick KRISTOFERSON, who also went to Central High, and Bob MANGAN, who went to Roosevelt High. And the 3 of us worked together there at the employee’s cafeteria at Sears Roebucks for several years. And they were very very good to us at Sears, and somehow or other I ended up as being in charge of this little work crew, but Dick and Bob and I spent hours and hours and hours together working and playing ping pong and the recreation room and [in] fact, Bob and I applied for jobs at Yellowstone Park the summer of ‘47 and he was down at Lake Lodge, which was, oh, I think 30, 40 miles south of where I spent that summer at Canyon Lodge up by the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. I wish I knew what became of Bob MANGAN and Dick KRISTOFERSON.
Stepping back in[to] the years before high school, we only spent a year at Hamilton, OH, and that was, of course, 9th grade, and there we lived on Ross Avenue. And next door to us was the WHETSTONE family. I’m sure my brother Bob would remember Bud WHETSTONE and Dick WHETSTONE, his younger brother. They had a sister too, I think her name was Janis. But Bud was in my class and we had some level of friendship there. And that year passed quite quickly before we moved back up to Minneapolis. The year before that we lived in Atlanta, GA. And I think of several names, not close friendships, since we lived there just a little over a year, but they were friends. I finished 7th grade there and went through 8th grade. I remember a young man named Clyde and then there was a fellow named Jack BROCK who were friends, but not close friendships like we had experienced prior to that time. In fact that takes me back to the years in, well, St. Louis Park. We were there for 3 years. We moved there when I was going into 5th grade, and I went to that Brookside elementary school. And some of those friends I still remember clearly, I could go up and down the aisle, I think, and name those who were friends there, I think of Joe DUTYWARD? and I think of Paul and Nancy MARTIN, twins that just lived a block over from us, their dad was mayor of the community [St Louis Park]. And that was where I started playing ping pong, he had a ping pong table in his basement, and I would go over there and play ping pong with Paul MARTIN and, oh and there was Bill TESMER and there was Wilbur KRUSE and Don HAUK and there were just lots of folks. I can remember those, actually, 3 years a little more because I went to 5th, 6th, no it was actually 3 years, because I didn’t quite finish 7th grade there, junior high, 7th grade when we moved away to Atlanta. But I kept in touch with several of those friends over the years, not in recent years but for many years after we left there. And prior to that we had lived over on 41st Avenue in Minneapolis, and I had a friend up the alley named Jack TELBICKY. And then there was another young friend whose name was, oh he went by the name Goendy WALSTROM, they lived very close to us, and he had an older brother Shorty, who was Bob’s friend. And that was an interesting neighborhood, we only lived there 2 years, I went [to] 3rd and 4th grade, so I’m moving back in time now, way back to 2nd grade, and Sonny LEE, who lived next door, big family, on relief, back in those days, in a just a little, little place but they had a big, big family, and Sonny was my age and Sonny LEE and I were friends. And then there was Melvin ANDERSON who lived up the block, and I remember people who lived up in the corner, they weren’t necessarily good friends, but they were about our age, and it was Ebe and Ula RICEBECK, interesting names, I think they were from Denmark. And probably we gave them a bad time over their names. They lived up the block from us there and that was on 39th Avenue where we lived for a couple years. And prior to that, we’re going way back to Kindergarten now and, oh I was 4 years old and I remember Bobby COLE and Jimmy DORSEY and those 2 were special friends, and down the street from us the first house when you went down the hill on Alden Drive was the PARSONs who, I think I mentioned earlier on one of these tapes, they were the ones who owned our house and right next to them were the HAGGERTYs, and they had a little girl named Greeta, who was probably 3, and I was 4, and so Greeta was my friend, Greeta HAGGERTY, back there on Alden Drive. I went to Kindergarten there, started when I was 4 years old, and it was an interesting experience to be bussed over to Edina. We moved away from that area after my Kindergarten year, moved into Minneapolis, and I’ve given you more of that detail earlier in this tape. So I think that covers it, I’m sure I’ve forgotten some friendships that were probably very important at the time. But all in all I want to say that God has blessed me, God has blessed us with special, special people in our lives. Not only all of these dear friends but our sons and our daughters in law and our grandchildren who we pray for every day and are so grateful for them and for what the Lord is doing in their lives.
Jim talked here about Rosena's fine china sets, which was always a special interest of hers. She often asked him about those i.e. where they came from, their stories, even as late as June of 2007, just a month before she went into Memory Support. Contact me if you're interested in hearing more about that.
So going back as far as my memory takes me would be probably about 1933 or ‘34. We had moved to Morningside [district within Minneapolis], Alden Drive, suburban to [west of] Minneapolis and we were going to a Methodist church called Lake Harriet Methodist Church. [It] was located right on the west side, just up the hill, probably less than a block, from Lake Harriet, a very lovely lake entirely encompassed by the city limits of Minneapolis. The pastor’s name was Henry LOUIS. A youngish man, its hard for me as I think back to being perhaps 4 or 5 years old at that time, but he might have been 30 or 35 years old, a relatively young pastor. And we were quite faithful, Mom and Dad both sang in the choir, went to Sunday School class there. We went there during those months, and maybe a couple of years that we lived on Alden Drive, until in fact we moved to east Minneapolis, to 3212 39th Avenue South, when I was ready to go into 1rst grade. That would probably be the summer of 1935.
And when we moved there, there was a little Methodist church around the corner, on 32nd Street between 38th and 37th Avenues, on the South side [of the road, Avenues apparently ran N-S, Streets E-W]. A small frame structure, probably didn’t seat more than 60, 75 people maybe at most in the sanctuary. A little balcony up above, a full basement used for dinners and ice cream socials and Sunday School. But also the lower floor, the basement, of the parsonage, which was located just about a block and a half west, on the corner of 32nd Street and 36th Avenue, was where I recall attending Sunday School class. There was a Sunday School Superintendent, a nice lady named Mrs. VETTER. And so I attended class there. And the church service was just like a block and a half. I remember Dad [Clifford] commented once that Pastor [Thomas B. or ‘T B’] SHORTS, elderly man, probably in his 60s at that time, that his preparation for his Sunday morning message was done on his way to church, which I guess indicated there wasn’t very much depth or content, but he was very strong against alcohol and tobacco, and that was kind of the main subject of his. I remember some of the songs we sang and some of the things that he would say, but that strong emphasis against tobacco and alcohol made an indelible imprint on my young life, and I guess it never changed. Pastor SHORTS had 2 daughters, oldest named Enid, a very nice young lady. But kind of a little side story, my Mom invited Enid and her [i.e. Mabel’s] 1rst cousin, Allen HANSEN, to our home for dinner, introduced them, and it budded into a real romance, in fact they were married and Allen and Enid were Pastor and wife for many, many, many years in the Methodist church also. Primarily smaller Methodist churches through the Midwest, and I understand even I think in the last year, cousin Jim GRUNNET told me that cousin Allen HANSEN died at about age 95 in a little community in north Minnesota. We attended that little church, Epworth Methodist Church, for about 4 years. We actually moved north about 4 or 5 blocks, and a couple blocks east to 2752 41rst Avenue after 2 years, and lived there 2 years. Well I went to 3rd and 4th grade at that 2nd address. But all through those 2 sets of residences, 4 years total, we did attend very faithfully that Epworth Methodist Church. And I think I said earlier in this tape that both Mom and Dad sang in the choir and were very active in church activities and events.
Then in the summer of 1939, I think I’ve noted in other tapes related to the places that we lived, we moved to suburban Minneapolis, a town called St. Louis Park, in [which] was a subcommunity called Brookside. We moved there and went to Brookside Methodist Church, Pastor WALKER. Just a little church, probably started out way out in the boonies like a country church and the little community was built up around it. Went there not too long before we decided apparently that we would drive back over to Lake Harriet Methodist, which was probably 6 to 8 miles from our address there at Xenwood Drive in St. Louis Park. So we went there for several years again, lived in St. Louis Park about 3 years total, and probably the last 2 we were attending Lake Harriet Methodist Church again. And it was during that period, and probably we’re talking about 1940, that a probably [chuckles], a significant event in the life of our family happened [i.e. left mainline, joined evangelicalism]. On a Sunday morning, Pastor Henry LOUIS brought a message that we would consider to be a gospel message today, but was kind of unique [unusual] to the Methodist church which we would call today a modern[ist] flavor of Methodism. And so, when Dad went after the service down to congratulate Pastor Henry LOUIS on what a nice and striking service we had experienced that morning, the pastor said he got carried away and he apologized for getting into whatever it was that he got into related to the gospel message. So it seemed like the blinders dropped off my Dad’s eyes. His question in his heart was: ‘What am I doing bringing my family, my sons, to this church? There must be something different that I should be doing.’ And we henceforth left that church. I would say my Mom was very disappointed in that, and really never became faithful again in a church as she had been to the Lake Harriet Church, then the Epworth Methodist Church, then back again after a year in a little Brookside church, to the Lake Harriet church again. And Mom had a nice voice and enjoyed being part of the choir [and apparently didn’t share Dad’s concern].
So we started looking, church hunting, and probably church tramping, for 6 months. During that period we visited just a multitude [of churches]. I remember 1rst Baptist Church in downtown Minneapolis, where W. W. RILEY, who was fairly well-known back in those days, was a pastor, big church. And we went to a Presbyterian church, I think 2 Presbyterian churches, and just a number of different churches. [We] went to special services, I remember Mordecai HAM, the evangelist, whose pianist’s name was Raleigh TREADWAY, and he was holding special summer services at, I think the building was called The Arena, probably used for hockey in the wintertime in Minneapolis. Interestingly enough, Mordecai HAM was the person [to whom] Billy GRAHAM attributes his stepping forward and trusting Christ as his Savior at a service down in [probably near Ashville, NC, since Billy's family lived at Montreat near Black Mtn, just E of there]. So Mordecai HAM was very impressed upon [made a big impression on] us, my Dad, and primarily my brother and I [i.e. not Mom] who went to those services. But ultimately we chose Bethesda [Evangelical] Free Church, located [at] 26th Avenue and E 38th Street [in] south Minneapolis, Pastor H. B. PRINCE was the pastor, interesting man. Dad was especially attracted there because he had a friend, Mr. HOLMES, I forget right now his 1rst name, an older man who had left Lake Harriet Methodist and become very involved at Bethesda Free Church. [They had] a strong men’s ministry, they called themselves ‘The 20-Minute Men’ and this strong men’s group would go out and they would share their testimony, and they would do it in 20 minutes. And thus the name. That became a very significant place of worship, a long long drive from our address out in St. Louis Park. But we attended, from St. Louis Park, Bethesda Free Church. And I think another significant point I would like to make about Bethesda is that while we were there, this was just before WWII, a wrestling team from a little college called Wheaton in Wheaton, IL, had the morning worship service. Sharp young men, and they were competing in wrestling at the University of Minnesota. Now whether it was an invitational or just a one-on-one team I’m not sure. Our dad was so impressed with these young men that he apparently stored away in the back of his mind that that’s where I would like to have my sons go someday. And this was probably, could be 1941, certainly not beyond the middle of the year in 1941, before Pearl Harbor, and before we moved of course out of that Minneapolis area down to Atlanta, GA.
I’ve probably covered other places in earlier tapes, some of the details of our move from St. Louis Park down to Atlanta. Dad had gone ahead and worked for the American Auto [insurance] Company and the house got sold and Mom and Bob and I went down, I would say it was early May. We left before [the] school year was up, probably a month and a half, and took the train, I think the Hiawatha, down to Chicago and changed trains in Chicago, went out on a night train, I think probably the Southern railroad, heading for Atlanta, and moved into an upstairs apartment at 975 North Highland NE. And Bob was in the 9th grade and I was in 7th, and it was kind of a painful deal in that we got down there just probably 6 weeks before the school year was done and had to take tests on materials that were very much different than what we had experienced back in St. Louis Park. But whatever the case, we visited a number of churches there too. There was an area called Druid Hills not too far, maybe 2 miles, from where we lived, and there was a Baptist church there, probably Southern Baptist, and there was a Methodist church, and we visited both of those churches. But [we] found our way to a Christian Missionary Alliance [CMA] church, and of course we had not been acquainted with this denomination before, but there was a little Alliance church and a pastor named Dr. David Ira FANT, an older gentleman. But apparently our dad was taken up with the message, with the Missionary Alliance position on things [i.e. conservative], so for about a year we attended this [CMA] church. Also a pretty good drive from where we lived, maybe 6-7 miles. And just as an aside, it was during that period of time that we were visiting a special evangelistic series of meetings by a Jewish evangelist named Hyman APPLEMAN, a good Jewish name. And I think it was at the Grant Park Baptist Church. That was in May of 1942, and it was at one of those services that I felt led to raise my hand and go forward and get some instruction related to inviting Jesus to be my Savior [age 12]. And I’ve kind of thought back and noted that [date], I think it was Sa 30 May 1942, many times since.
Well we only lived in Atlanta about a year, and Dad made another employment change. [Its a] long story, maybe I’ve explained in other tapes, he left the American Auto [Co.] and went with the Ohio Casualty Insurance Company, who were headquartered in Hamilton, OH, which is about 30 miles north of Cincinnatti in southern OH. It was a relatively small town, so we moved there summer of ‘43 and I started in 9th grade there, Woodrow Wilson Junior High, and I suppose because of our experiences in Atlanta, we found another little [CMA] church. And I don’t know how much you sons and daughters-in-law know about the Alliance church, but it is and was a very solid, biblical church. Still is, still active. A[iden] W[ilson] Tozer (1897-1963 66yo) came from that persuasion. There were several others that were pretty significant writers and biblical scholars. So we spent a year there and I’m not going to dwell on that a long time except to say we were active. And then the company transferred Dad back to Minnesota. It was the 1rst management, office management, state office management position that would come available, he was being groomed for that. And Minneapolis became available and so back we went to Minneapolis. This time in the southern part of Minneapolis, Park Avenue South, 3441 South Park Avenue. But probably within 4 miles maybe of Bethesda Free Church. Probably the church location had some bearing on choosing the address that we chose. Though we were just across the street and down the block from Park Avenue Methodist, which was a solid, old time Methodist church, where some of our relatives went, cousin Jim GRUNNET went there and a number of my friends from High School. But we went back to Bethesda Free Church that summer of 1944. I subsequently went to my 3 years high school at Central High in south Minneapolis, finishing of course in 1947. Brother Bob just had his senior year, so he graduated from Central High in 1945 and, kind of interestingly, brother Bob wanted to go to the University of Minnesota with some of his best friends from Central High. That seemed to be where the activity and where the action was, but our dad hadn’t forgotten about that little college called Wheaton down in IL and his desire prevailed there, and so my brother [in] the Fall of 1945 left home and went away to college at Wheaton.
Probably it would be good for me to say a little more about Bethesda church and its influence on me. The young people’s group, a fairly significant number of young folks, representing Roosevelt High School and Central High School and Minnehaha Academy, about my age, were involved at Bethesda Free Church. And we had a man who had returned from the service, in fact 2 of them, Don ORTLUND, who was actually the younger brother of Ray C ORTLUND Sr who you’ve all heard of [m. Anne, longtime pastor of Lake Ave Congregational church in Pasadena, CA, also Mariner's Church in Newport Bch, CA, and fnd'd Renewal Ministries], and another man named Irv CARLSON, who had grown up in Bethesda church. These 2 young men, coming out of WWII, were very much [spiritually] alive and desirous of honoring the Lord and so they headed up the high school youth group at Bethesda Free Church. And I really think that was one of the most significant times in my young life. Ken Peterson and Barb, who was Barb VERHIGH [Dutch] at that time, were part of that group. I could go down the line and mention many others that were very special to me and in fact I still, don’t keep directly in touch but through Ken and Barb, I hear about Bob LINDGREN and Patty PANGBURN and Ginny BERNSON and Dale BJORKLUND, and different ones. A number of friends who were part of that group for 3 years. In fact I was part of that longer because I stayed in the area after I finished high school for another year [i.e. worked at Sears, joined Navy Reserves]. And so those folks were very significant in my young years.
Well the next 4 years of my life took me to Wheaton College, where I joined my brother, in fact lived down the hall in the dorm, called Unit 2, it was later renamed. Pretty primitive by today’s standards, but that’s where I began my Wheaton College experience. I suspect I could back up just a moment and say that our Dad took us out to the edge of town in Minneapolis, and I had my suitcase carrying pretty much all of my worldly possessions, and Bob and I hitch-hiked down to Wheaton to start my Freshman year. And during those 4 years we visited, as most students do, College Church of Christ and Wheaton Bible Church. Ahh, not real active those first few years in either of those 2 but in the latter part of those college years I began to attend, as did Rosena GEARHART. She and I would go to a church over in Glen Ellen, Glen Ellen Covenant Church, with Pastor POLLACK, who was also a professor in the Bible department at Wheaton College. And the folks that Rosena had stayed with for a year, I think maybe her 2nd year at Wheaton, the FRIZAINE’s, Burt and MaryAnn FRIZAINE, were very active in that church. So there were usually vehicles that would pick up college students from Wheaton and give us transportation over to the services. So I’d say the last 2 years certainly and probably a little more we were [both] active in the Covenant church, relatively small church, probably a big one today, but a pretty small church. A number of the professors from Wheaton went there as well as a fairly significant number of students. And that kind of wraps up I would say MY church history prior to our marriage in June [of 1952] the day after we finished Wheaton College. So probably from here on it’ll be a little bit different story, its a new time in the life of your dad.
JCS on Sa 3 Jan 2015, taken by DWS/J who arrived earlier that day for a [last] visit
JCS and Denny Cherette (visiting from GH) taken Su 8 Feb 2015 at SBC Chapel, wow, JCS looks great just shortly before 3/1-27 spiral!
Here's the pic JCS had in his Safe Deposit Box at Vi, c1950s
After Jim was given morphine for the pain he experienced confusion and even troubling hallucinations, so (Christian) Hospice nurse Shar recommended (on the morning of Su 15 Mar 2015) we put some Bible verses up on the wall of his Skilled Nursing room, which we did later that day. Here they are
For I am convinced that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, neither death nor life,
angels nor demons, the present nor the future, height nor depth, nor any powers nor anything else in creation
- Romans 8:38-9
Be anxious about nothing but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus
- Philippians 4:6-7
taken Su 3 May 2015 not long after added engraving for JCS
... add description of funeral service here (like w/Rosena's html) ...
- Aug/Sep, JCS feels intestinal pain, but assumes its just stress-related i.e. estate issues related to Rosena's passing, finally goes to Dr late Oct/early Nov?
- Th 6 Nov 2014 uh oh, Mayo Dr BAXTER suspects pancreatic cancer, orders CT-scan, which shows 'quarter-sized tumor on pancreas, 3 smaller ones on liver', more testing needed (called 'silent killer' since usually too late when detected)
- Mo 17 Nov 2014 begin week of barrage of tests at Mayo (they initially said tumors were too small to see)
- We 19 Nov 2014 1st mtg w/Dr NGUYEN ('Win'), orders endoscopy
- Th 20 Nov 2014 MRI, endoscopy at Mayo, latter 1st proof of pancreatic cancer :-(
- Fr 21 Nov 2014 Dr KRIEGSHAUSER does liver biopsies (5x, he doesn't see cancer, hmmm)
- We 26 Nov 2014 meet nurse Anita and Dr Ramesh RAMANATHAN at Mayo ... '1yr max w/o chemo, perhaps dbl with it' ... later says 4-8 mos!? ... 3 drugs #1 gemcitabene ... wow!)
- Mo 1 Dec 2014 JCS hesitating on chemo, SPS suggests 'try 2 cycles'
- Tu 2 Dec 2014 Ann VonHOFF calls JCS, convinces him to try chemo
- We 3 Dec 2014 JCS/SPS visit lawyer, misc. chgs, Peggy hugs JCS and prays w/us
- Th 4 Dec 2014 JRS/L arrive for a visit, Euro Pizza supper, attend RES Christmas band concert (w/JCS), they lv Mo am
- Mo 8 Dec 2014 1st chemo ('gemzar' aka 'gemcitabene')
- Tu 9 Dec 2014 DBS arrives
- We 10 Dec 2014 SPS p/u JCS/DBS and drv to taxman
- Th 11 Dec 2014 DBS drvs JCS to Mayo Hosp, SPS arr. 8:45a, DBS lvs 9:30a, Hickman Port installed
- Mo 15 Dec 2014 2nd chemo
- Mo 22 Dec 2014 supposed to be 3rd chemo, but no, blood tests too low
- Th 25 Dec 2014 JCS over for b'fast, gifts, drv to Stacy's for big lunch, talk
- Tu 30 Dec 2014 SPS p/u JCS for Mayo 'palliative' mtg (Dr, social wrkr, chaplain)
- Sa 3 Jan 2015 DWS/J arrive 9am, lunch, c/o Mom's gravesite, FH dinner
- Su 4 Jan 2015 SBC Chapel, Brio's w/HOLLEYs (they treat!)
- Mo 5 Jan 2015 DWS/J lv early, begin 2nd 'cycle' of chemo
- We 7 Jan 2015 SPS to Vi am, but JCS bad intestinal pain (from fiddling w/file cab?), uh oh, jacuzzi, then p/u lunch, lv early (JCS really tired/sore)
- Mo 12 Jan 2015 2nd (4th) chemo, Basha's, d/o JCS ~3pm
- Mo 19 Jan 2015 3rd (5th) chemo, doc says no to adding Abaxane to Gemzar, JCS too old (may put him into ER), OCN Mattie, JCS buys TV, probiotics, miralax (off 'reglan', yeah)
- Mo 26 Jan 2015 JCS's 1st post-chemo CTScan (routine, he goes alone w/limo)
- We 28 Jan 2015 meet w/Dr Ramesh, uh oh, bad scan result, gemzar not working ('could continue but what's the point?' and JCS complaining of hair loss, sight hazy, foggy mind, and of course very tired/sore), 3 options, 1 quit chemo (and call in hospice), 2 try Abraxane alone (1 in 3 tolerate it, 1 in 10 effective, usually given w/gemzar), 3 standard chemo ('folfox' 5FU / oxaliplatin) ... JCS to think it over 1 week (SPS tries to convince him #2, but he leans #1 ... RATS! Ann advises 'I'd do #2' but ack's it looks bad, DBS concurs w/Ramesh's view)
- We 4 Feb 2015 SPS p/u JCS, to HARTs in new addr (Sun City Grand), GREAT meal!
- Th 5 Feb 2015 SPS meets HoV guy Steve, signs up, assigned to Dr John Williams (same as Rosena), Denise Gerald (Rosena's HoV nurse) to visit tomorrow and each week thereafter, need to consider orange DNR form, hmmm, seems too early to SPS
- Fr 6 Feb 2015, JCS gets 1st regular weekly HoV home visit from nurse Shar (nice Chr lady, Denise not available, but will be regular HoV nurse)
- Sa 7 Feb, SPS to help JCS w/broken file cab, but Chuck HOLLEY does instead (Thx)
- Su 8 Feb 2015, Denny CHERETTE in town, p/u JCS, to SBC together, pic
- We 11 Feb SPS p/u JCS, am mtg w/Dick to kick off tax work, pm mtg w/HoV John/Denise/Aneda, they say only 40% of panc. cancer cases -> severe pain, mostly just tiredness, energy loss, cntl-able pain
- Su 15 Feb 2015, JCS writes note (found later) 'Not feeling well any of the time' :-(
- Mo 16 Feb, HoV nurse Denise 1st weekly 10am visit to JCS
- We 18 Feb, JCS is thinking of hiring a helper, on his mind alot
- Tu 19 Feb, I p/u JCS and -> tax guy ('B' done, tax pkt to me, JCS 'done' :-( ), DBS/J arrive, 3 to FH for dinner next night 2/20
- Fr 13 Feb, JCS experiences pain problems, foggy, calls Denise, gets patches, better SA am (pain is ramping up, tylenol/tramidol not cutting it anymore)
- Sa 21 Feb, 6 out to bfast (bros/wives, no JRS), DWS to Prescott, DBS SBC & home 2/22
- Mo 23 Feb, Denise sick (cold) so nurse Renee visits JCS instead, he stops taking Plavix (own choice, hmmm, stroke -> coma?)
- Tu 24 Feb, SPS/DWS lunch w/wives, then pool, tt JCS, DWS/J lv early next am
- We 25 Feb, SPS' last regular We visit :-( JCS started on 1 81mg aspirin/day, had SPS move excess files and p/u misc Basha's, he's tired so SPS lvs early
- Fr 27 Feb, o/n JCS called HoV w/emerg, guy nurse Mike comes 2am
- Su 1 Mar 2015, wow, beginning of 'terrible month', SPS/I visit JCS at Vi, bad, call HoV, male nurse comes, X-ray (no blockages, good)
- Mo 2 Mar 2015, JCS calls SPS, HoV nurse Denise Gerald there, recommends sending him to HoV 'Eckstein' facility (near 96th St S of Shea) 1 week (due to emerg. calls?), SPS hesitant (seems drastic), but OK (what's the harm? she says JCS' 'miserable'), HoV xfrs him 1pm, SPS/I visit, active walking tour, JCS very talkative/active (HoV later gives him Ativan for anxiety)
- Tu 3 Mar, JCS visited at HoV by GRUNNETs, HOLMs, SHEPLEYs
- We 4 Mar, SPS visits JCS am, good sleep, nurse Judy, Dr Frank B next 24hr, Dutch N calls, coming Th-Sa
- Th 5 Mar, SPS d/o Ir am for trip to BC (via Bellingham); Dutch N visits JCS
- Fr 6 Mar, SPS visits JCS am, call help firm, discuss hours/cost, Denise insisted yest. that he can't go back to #347 w/o that, SPS suggests 1wk Vi CC (or Ekstein), JCS reluctantly agrees (JShep: JCS holding on til JRS visit)
- Sa 7 Mar, SPS can't visit since Ir gone
- Su 8 Mar, AJS/MxT wedding in Scranton, PA; once R to Ren. Fest, SPS visits JCS pm, sit in sun (help him walk a bit)
- Mo 9 Mar 2015, after 1 week there, JCS is MUCH weaker, can hardly walk (wow, he walked fine 1 week ago?!), transferred by HoV to Vi Care Center (he's disappointed, wanted to go back to #347 w/hired care, which HoV insisted upon in that case). SPS arr. Vi shortly after HoV delivers him there ~2pm (see van), visit him in rm 620, talk, wheel him up to #347, recliner, Pat Sullivan surprise visit, nice, but pain growing, so back downstairs, 2 oxy hits, I lv 5:15p
- Tu 10 Mar 2015, JCS calls SPS 9am, lotta pain, pls call Denise (I do), Ron to push JCS in whlchr to #347 later (4x! for wash), I drv to taxman to d/o 'A' tax pkt (hoped JCS could come, but no); today was when JCS was given morphine, unbeknownst to SPS (Dr GW, said she thot he was already on it, no, just oxycodone, which admittedly wasn't cutting it, needed extra 'hits' often; hmmm, but HoV said they were against chg but were overruled, that's how Vi works, duty Dr o/r's all others, hmmm, dilemma, he DID need more pain cntl, but I HATE what morphine did to him i.e. zombified)
- We 11 Mar, R slps in, so SPS visit JCS am, R to o/n party 5:30p, JRS calls 5:40p at airport, I p/u J/L/M, visit JCS 7-7:45p, home 8:15p
- Th 12 Mar, Ir returns today (chg'd to see J/L/M), R back noon, p/u Ir 4p w/R, home 4:40p (today? SPS finally learns of morphine, tt HoV, told L of pwr struggle which HoV lost)
- Fr 13 Mar 2015, AJS/M arr late today, Ir/I/R arr CR 9:30a, talk, visit JCS, lunch In-N-Out Prominade 'uneasy feeling in pit of my stomach' (don't know what's happening to JCS [morphine]), then back to JCS, but he's tired, so they to movie, us home, later to P F Chang's Scottsdale (for Ir's bday)
- Sa 14 Mar 2015, tough day, AJS et al arrived last nite, stayed w/JRS at airport, visit today 12:30p, talk, quiet, read BW, AJS/M arr. 1:30p, talk, JCS in pain, crisis, I call HoV, nurse Marilyn, AJS/M lv 3:30p to p/u RAS, I stay a bit longer, help him to/fr b'rm, 3:40-4:40 just me in #347, call Chuck, Wanda, J Hirdes, chk emails, A/M/R back 4:50p, talk, Ir/R arr 5:30p, visit JCS, upset, distressed in b'rm, hugs RAS, but confused, upset, embarrassed (thinks I'm selling furn to gkids?!), to PeiWei, I lv 8, get call 9:30p, back 10-12, wow, JCS confused and upset, I get teary, he says 'almost certain ... part of loving community ... govt plot ... hears Chuck/Meg ... satan' wow, finally takes meds, I lv midnight (I think this is when the morphine [hallucinations] was really kicking in and he was fighting it, but by Su AM it had him 'pinned down')
- Su 15 Mar 2015, I arr 8am, JCS groggy, dull, confused, frustrated, feels like intestinal blockage, physical suffering (but last nite's emotional, mental and spiritual suffering gone), HoV nurse Shar comes, 1hr in rm, 1/2 hr in hall (as A/M/R wait nearby), nice Chr lady, I tear up, OK, lock up #347 and d/o 3 gkids at airport 11:10, home 11:40a, call DWS, JRS, DBS, print Bible verses (suggested by Shar), I go back 3pm, I stay til 6:30p, JCS theology questions, Alan Jackson gospel CD, yest he fought for cntl, but today accepts limits (more), but still trying to learn 'new rules' and regain cntl, more circumspect, but still angling (says I'm smarter than him now :-( kind of thinks I'm in on plan to keep him down :-( ouch), then must come back 10p to convince him to take meds, wow, tough evening
- Mo 16 Mar, Ir visits JCS after CBS (he wanted to talk to non-St fam, triangulate, mentioned JRS) JCS tells Ir that St will make a decision that will have BAD consequences in future!? Denise/Ir say don't try to reason w/him, just hallucinating (or maybe the cancer affecting him i.e. pancreas/liver releasing bad chems?), just play along, humor him (I can't do that), I visit him 3-6p, sleep/wake, walks unsteadily
- Tu 17 Mar, Ir/I to Vi, she washes sheets for JMS arr, Tom (painter) tells me of his mom's refusal to take morphine (til later), I help JCS shave, he talks of being 'kept', he IS eating better and has NO pain, but senses he's been 'hoodwinked' :-( Ir said JCS told her he knew it would come to morphine and he'd lose mental sharpness, wow, that's good; 1 I wish I'd known of morphine's effects in more detail (not just confused, LOST personality), 2 I thot it wouldn't be for awhile, 3 wish I'd been consulted by Dr GW
- We 18 Mar, tho I've had trouble sleeping lately, last nite slept better; I call AM for a mtg w/Dr GW; DT calls, taxes done, mtg 10am (1st chk w/o JCS sig :-( ); visit JCS, tt HoV nurse Renee, says they favored trying 'diluadid' (v. morphine, those 2 plus oxycodone are the 'top tier' pain meds), possibly less foggy, but Dr GW later vetoes!? lunch w/Ir at BCB; I cancel paper and xfr files/cab :-( ; JCS at music program, I roll him back (tries to write 'providers')
- Th 19 Mar, me to CR mid-AM, load more files, visit JCS in DR, really tired (and foggy), eats a bit, home 1:30p, call again re Dr GW mtg, lv 8:30p to p/u JMS at airport, drv her to Vi #347, try visit JCS, nogo, home 10:30p
- Fr 20 Mar 2015, Renee calls, she'll be late due to emerg, 11-12 v. 10am, JMS to look for nurse Jennifer in meantime, we lv 10:15 for Vi, stay til 1pm, tt Dr GW, I wrote 3 notes from that (1 she thot JCS was already foggy before, and already on morphine (no/no), 2 said liver damage can release toxins into blood stream (SPS: not til Sa, coinc. that's when morphine kicked in!?), 3 don't want to disrupt meds (ok), but she agreed to chg meds since wants to work w/family, so last morphine 12:25p, 1st diluadid 4pm; tt Renee, JCS to courtyard in whlchr, he eats nil :-( nurse Peggy calls 3:30p, I need to call Harts (back), and JCS saying he wants off HoV?! She'll give extra Ativan, 4p JCS supposed to get meds but refuses, talking re hallucinations, wow, rpt of Sa? JMS to take him for walk, Ir/R meet JMS later at PeiWei
- Sa 21 Mar, to Vi 1-3:45p, visits from Holley's, Curry's (tearful), J Shepley, Henry O, Jody, I take JCS outside, walk, talk, nice, later to St/Sa w/N/R, skyview app, then sit w/JCS to 9p, girls lv, home 9:30p (they're giving him Haldol as needed, thyroid med stopped, said he had 'blow up' this AM, 3 people had to hold him down for Haldol shot :-( nurse Peggy, JMS helped calm him down too)
- Su 22 Mar, to SBC, but JMS txts 'anytime' so we lv during closing prayer, I stay 10:30a to 6:45p, Ir ~3hrs, I p/u Costco lunch, this AM JCS was sure 'this was it', but later rallied, walked, outside, to asst living, 4pm meds, visits (Larry ...), naps 4:30-6:30p, Lee Kwan Yew dies 91yo, I tell JCS (seemed to remember who LKY was), JMS finds bedsore on JCS, treats, buys treats for staff, JCS not eating, wants to die, but drinks a fair amt, JCS wants to go to #347 (to die), but JMS and I delay, he forgets (or doesn't mention again), after we left he got hyped, rcv'd Haldol, then calm, 8p meds, 'bewitched hour' 6-8p
- Mo 23 Mar 2015, lv home 9am to p/u JMS, d/o at airport, arr JCS 10:40a, talk, walk, cookie, he to bed 11:30a, meds 12 (3x), Ir arrives 12:40p, up to #347, pack last files, call Wanda, Marian FLOYD, rats, bad key, back to JCS room 1:10p, borrow J Shepley's key, get new key from #347, fin load car, Ir in 620, say bye to JCS ('see you tomorrow'), lv 2:15p from JCS (Ir home, me to Costco, wow, this turned out to be the last time I saw him awake :-( rats, didn't know it at the time)
- Tu 24 Mar 2015, SPS/Ir arr. 12:30p, wow, JCS in a coma, Ir lvs 3:30p, me to #347, 1 more chk 4p, same, home 4:45
- We 25 Mar, I call Vi 7:30a, no chg, I lv 9a for Vi, talk, pray, play hymns, some visitors, HoV Cindy arr. 12, low oxygen (70 v. 98) so liver/kidneys not working well, Ir arr. 12, 1st monthly mtg w/Vi 1pm, up to #347, caravan home 2pm
- Th 26 Mar, p/u DBS 10:30a at airport, w/JCS 11:30a-2p, nurse Maria: JCS BP 99/55, fast pulse rate, warm exc feet, O2 sat 75%, I p/u Costco lunch, pool 2-3p, nice, 1st time in 1.5mo, sit w/JCS to 4p
- Fr 27 Mar 2015 8am JCS passes away (DBS had been there earlier, then walked, JCS was gone when he returned, JCS-timed?), I got call from nurse Ruth 8:30a, make calls, arr. #347 9:30a, wait for Messinger, lotsa calls, Subway lunch, arrangements (to FH/Cem, 4/7 svc), Ir arr. later, all to PeiWei, pic of JCS pic on piano, home 8:30p
- Tu 7 Apr 2015 9am burial, 11am svc, DWS talks, Pastor Steve ERIKSON officiates, reception
JCS lived 4,451 weeks and 2 days, or nearly 1,024 months. He was about 4 months past his 85th birthday when he died.
