The information contained herein is the work of many people, so many that I will not attempt to name all of them. Credit has been given in some, but not all cases, but my thanks go out to each and everyone who contributed.
Much of the "story" is the recollections of the author. No attempt has been made to verify correctness of such recollections and the same event may be told by more than one source with some variations, but that's the way recollections are.
The statistics are accurate. I received this information from unimpeachable sources. Each of John Clough's living children supplied the facts for their own immediate families and the facts for his deceased children were supplied by one or more of his grandchildren in their respective lines.
I am planning to put this into loose-leaf form so that additions to the family may be added, as necessary. Additional sheets can be inserted into the statistics as new families are formed.
Feel free to add anything you want to your copy of the story. It would be greatly appreciated if you would send a copy of any additional information which you have added to your copy to:
They will have the Master Copy in their Abernathy, Hendricks, Clough Museum on their ranch near Gann Valley, South Dakota. It is my hope that this master copy will be kept up to date by future generations.
I am not furnishing binders for this book for two reasons. First, it would complicate shipping, and second, one binder is relatively inexpensive, but multiply it by 100 and it runs into some bucks.
The purpose of the "story" was not to correct anyone's recollection, their spelling or their grammar. This is simply a hodge-podge of memories which I think will be enjoyable to all of you, especially so to future generations.
Thank you, again.
Raymond B. Clough
P.S. Money is the stuff that buys the things that you do without because you ain't got none of.
If I am ever to get this genealogy done, I must start, and I can't start any sooner than now. First I would like to convey what little I know about our predecessors. As far back as I have been able to trace our ancestors on the Clough side is Robert and Eunice Gould Harmon who were the parents of Caroline Harmon who was born April 9, 1812 at Portland, ME. She married Mace Richard Clough June 2, 1835 at Portland, ME. Their marriage record shows his residence as Vermont, no town.
All attempts to trace the lineage of Mace Richard have been unsuccessful. Mildred was certain in her own mind that we were of the lineage of John Clough of Salsbury, Mass. She thought the line was through Winthrop Clough whose father was killed at Crown Point in the French and Indian War. Winthrop was raised by another Clough family. He was fined at Concord, New Hampshire for forging his marriage license. This information is taken from Volume 1 of the genealogy of John Clough of Salsbury. He married Elizabeth Mace. The genealogy states that nothing is known of this family. I did, however, find in Montpellier, VT a record of the death of a son of Winthrop Clough and Elizabeth Mace Clough. I could find nothing more, I think his name was Robert and the date of his death 1841. I think Mildred relied heavily on the Mace name showing up at the right time since we are still naming our children Mace. If this ever proves to be our line it would take only one generation between Mace Richard and Winthrop and then the road would be wide open to John of Salsbury who came to this country in 1635. I surely would be convinced, even if it could not be proved, if we found that the Clough of that missing generation married a woman named Fiske, my grandfather's middle name.
There are certainly some obstacles to my acceptance of this lineage. First my father always said that our line came from two brothers who came over from Scotland together. One stayed east and one went west. Since this was in very early colonial time (before 1650) west may have meant 20 miles west of Boston, almost certainly no farther west than New Hampshire. Dad said that we were of the line of the brother that stayed east, which probably meant the area immediately around Boston. I am not sure that dad really knew this but if it is correct it eliminates the possibility of our decent from John of Salsbury. He definitely did not come over with a brother.
Another thing dad told us was that he had a grandmother who was a "full blooded Welch woman" his grandmothers names were Caroline Harmon and Laura Arthur.
Are these Welch names? I don't know but I wonder if that was a great or great-great grandmother and her name was Mace. Maybe that's not Welch either. I don't know. We do know quite a bit about Mace Richard, we just don't know who his parents were.
We suppose that he was attending a seminary of the Methodist church at Portland, ME. when he married Caroline Harmon. There is a listing of the churches he served in Maine. The first if I remember right was in 1838 and he continued to pastor churches in Maine until 1855 when he took his family to Kansas to take an active part in the anti-slavery movement. The church record shows his activities at least to some extent in Kansas. There is a letter written by his daughter Mary after her mother's death in 1883. Robert Clough has furnished a copy of this letter and it is included in this genealogy.
Wilbur Fiske Clough, my grandfather, was a railroad surveyor and teamster. Part of his life he transported coal in Kansas and Colorado. We also know that he lived in southern Kansas, certainly at Coffeeville at one time, and Oklahoma, where he died in 1896. He married Jennie Case from New Hampshire, which unfortunately is about all I know about her except that she lived with her daughter Caroline in California for several years before she died. I think she died about 1912.
Wilbur and Jennie Clough had four children, Mace Richard, Ernest, Caroline and John. John was my father. It seems to me, that what little dad talked about his father, it included horses. Wilbur must have been especially good at handling horses, a valuable accomplishment in the 1860's 70's and 80's. He talked about his father having a small team, but with his handling they could out pull much larger teams.
It seems that he ran a freight line from eastern Kansas to Colorado, hauling general merchandise west and coal east. The vast expansion of railroads in the west after the civil war and into the 1870's put him out of business. I think it was then that he became a railroad surveyor.
Dad also told of a trip with his father when they saw a large herd of bison. A few years later the bison were gone. What he saw was probably one of the last of the big herds.
Dad always said that we had no close relatives bearing the Clough name except our own line as all of our male ancestors for several generations were only sons, until, of course, his own generation.
John Clough was born July 7, 1874 at Manhattan, Kansas, the fourth child of and Jennie Case Clough. (Please note, I'm not real sure of his birthplace. All I ever heard him say was that he was born in Coffeeville, Kansas under a cabbage leaf. However when I wrote up his obituary at his death, my brothers and sisters corrected his birthplace to Manhattan. I tried to check records in Kansas, but was told that there were no state records prior to 1900. This may or may not be true. So we let Manhattan stand.)
Regardless of where he was born he spent his early life in southeast Kansas and northeast Oklahoma. He told us that he was at Coffeeville when the James gang robbed the bank there in a daylight raid. He never claimed that he observed this and he could not have been more than 8 years old at the time, but I suppose that in a small town this was talked about for many years and he undoubtedly got the details second hand. He had many more tales of the U.S. Marshals and the outlaws in Oklahoma when he was young. It was really the Wild West at that time.
The family was living at Pawnee, Oklahoma when his father died in 1896 at Chateau, Oklahoma, John being about 22 years old at the time. For several years before, and after his father died he did many things. He drove cattle, played violin, some piano with a circus band and taught an Indian school. Somewhere along the line he picked up the trade of a journeyman printer. This is rather surprising as he had only a few years of formal schooling. There does seem to be a respect for learning running through the family. Mace Richard sent his daughters to college when such a thing was almost unheard of for young ladies. John, as I said had very little formal education but he taught himself. I have never known another man in any position with as good a command to the English language as my father. In time he came to Omaha, Nebraska where his brother Mace was. I think he worked there as a printer.
At Omaha he met Lyda Corey. Their story is that she fell for him right away. Actually she stepped off of a merry-go-round and fell flat right in front of him. Of course he helped her up and I don't know how long afterward they were married in Wagner, South Dakota on June 9, 1901. They then returned to Omaha where they lived until their first two children were born, Harry and Mildred. They then left Omaha to homestead west of Murdo, South Dakota. Lyda's brother Clarence also homesteaded there at the same time. They were required by the homestead law to build a dwelling on the homestead land. John went to Pierre, about 80 miles, and bought lumber for a house and hauled it by team and wagon to the homestead. To reduce weight to a minimum, he cut all material to size in Pierre. There were, of course, no roads. It wasn't much of a house, but no homestead houses at that time were much. John was gone a great deal of the time making a living for the family, while Lyda stayed on the homestead with two small children. It was a really hard life, Water had to be carried a long distance. There were no conveniences.
I'm quite sure that they never proved up on their claim. About this time John accepted ministry in the Methodist church. The family moved to Presho where their third child, Casper was born. John's work was establishing new churches and then turning them over to someone else, moving on to establish another one somewhere else, never being long in anyone place. He established churches at Belvedere, where Marion was born, Midland, Whitewood and Newell, where I was born. There were probably other places that I can't recall. It was a really brutal existence and poorly paid. It got to be to much to drag five children to anew place a couple of times a year and in about 1912 John resigned his ministry and changed his church affiliation. He then took up his old trade as a printer and moved to Mitchell where he worked on the Mitchell Republican.
The next few years were a reasonably settled time and for really the first time since Omaha they enjoyed reasonable prosperity.
Now I must rely on my memory and since the time I want to tell about occurred when I was about six to ten years old I'm not sure that I have the exact order of things. Three more children were born to John and Lyda, but during the time that the family increased trouble also came in bunches. John got lead poisoning from operating a line o type machine and was unable to work for months. He had to keep a tube in his side to drain off fluid. There was no workman's compensation in those days so Lyda went to work. I don't know what she did and how she managed six kids while doing it but she was a remarkable woman and we survived as a family. Harry was probably 13 at this time and Mildred about 11. We always raised a big garden and kept a cow so we had a lot of our own food. I don't know whether they had their house paid or not but somehow things held together. When John was able to go to work again, he could not go back to the line o type machine. He had to do hard physical work to break adhesions that formed in his lung. He went to work in the plant that manufactured gas from coal. That gas served the same purpose as our natural gas today. He worked at this job for some time, I don't know how long but after some months he was able to go back to work on the newspaper. He was then foreman of the composing room, and I suppose, not exposed quite as much as when he was running the machine. Then the flu struck. It swept through the army camps killing soldiers by the thousands. Never again has influenza been so virile. It was especially severe for young men. Our family got it. One after another they were incapacitated. It was not a walking disease, when you were down you were down, help was impossible to get. Everybody else had it too, or were already taking care of those who had it. I was the last to get it and for several days I tried to take care of nine sick people. I was 7 years old and one of those needing care was a very small baby. I suppose I did about as well as any other 7 year old. Then I got it too. We were all down in bed and couldn't get up. Somehow the Red Cross managed to send a nurse for a few hours a day. She was an absolute angel and we pulled through although it was nip and tuck for Harry for a long time. As I said it was especially hard on young men.
After this things smoothed out again for a while. That was 1918. About 1920 the printers tried to negotiate a 44 hour week. The employers resisted and the printers were out on strike. The strike dragged on. I think it never was settled. Dad went to work for his brother Mace who was a construction contractor, mostly road building. It was a job but it kept him away from home all the time. It would be several weeks at a time that he didn't get home. Then he was offered an opportunity to run a weekly newspaper in Wagner, South Dakota, which he did. He remained there for less than a year and then went to work on a newspaper in Madison. I don't know just what he did there but he was gaining recognition for his writing skills. He remained at Madison for a couple of years and then accepted a position as publisher and editor of a weekly paper at Wentworth. He remained there about a year and then bought a newspaper at Ramona, South Dakota, which he published for four years. During this time he won awards as the best editorial writer in the state.
The family was thinning out. Harry left about 1919 to take a job as a mailer on a newspaper in Topeka, Kansas and later went to Chicago. He came home for a short time to help out on the Wentworth Paper. Mildred and Marion both married in 1928. Casper went to Chicago in 1927, I left for school in 1929 so from then on they had four children at home until the depression in 1933. In 1929 John sold his newspaper and went to work on a paper in Hayti, South Dakota. He must have stayed there a couple of years. The depression was deepening so he bought apiece of land in northern Wisconsin that winter and the family moved there. I don't know whether or not this was a wise move. The living was certainly primitive but everybody there was in the same boat, broke. John bought a few cows and they were able to sell a little cream. There was no work for a young, single man, what there was was given to men with families. This was the case everywhere. I was in Chicago and that was not a good place to be without a job so I headed for the bush with the family. We did whatever we could to make enough to keep a few groceries on the table and we never went hungry. We cut wood and sold it whenever we could find someone who needed it. Often we would have to barter it because there was no money. Sometimes we would get paid in cash so we could get a little gasoline for the car, which we used to pull a trailer to deliver the wood and the cream. No doubt we were poor but nobody told us so. We pitied people in the cities who couldn't take care of themselves. Later Harry also came to Wisconsin. He too was a victim of the "we are letting the single men go to be able to keep the men with families". About this time a construction job of some kind opened up and dad got a job on it. Harry, Dick and I all tried to get them to let one of us do the work even if the check went to the family. No soap, they would only hire the head of the family. So dad had to go out doing hard work in the cold while we stayed home.
Maybe this job for dad was a blessing in disguise. Shortly before this he had had a severe sickness. His weak lung was cutting up again. The family did not expect him to survive. The local doctor was sure that it was tuberculosis but when he sent test specimens for verification they came back negative so the doctor told him all he could recommend was to eat three square meals a day and go to work. Then some time later he went to work on the aforementioned job and as far as I know he never had trouble with the lung again.
I think that he really enjoyed that job. He stayed in what had been an old logging camp and quite a few of the men working there were about 70 years old, (dad was past 60), and had spent most of their life working in timber. Several of them had logged in the days when the virgin pine had been logged out. This seems impossible now that men who had logged the virgin forest were still alive but this was about 1933 or 34 and that was only 30 or 40 years after the peak of the pine days.
These men had spent a lifetime in the logging camp environment and knew how to live that way and make the best of it. After work, in the evening they would tell stories and sing songs and some of them played cards. It was a new way of life to dad and he always savored anything new. They told the stories and sang the songs of the timber days. Dad soaked it up like a sponge.
It was here that he got his inspiration for his "Flowing Chippewa" song. I never knew whether this song was wholly original or was an attempt on his part to save something of the culture of the woodlands. Perhaps it would suffice to say that the song was original and the songs sung by the workmen around the fire in the evening were his sources. Maybe some of my brothers and sisters, who were around him after his time in the woods, which I was not, will have more to say about this. The words of this song are included herein. I can't help on the music. I'm musically illiterate.
While on this job dad made a contact that led to me getting a job as a surveyor for the U.S. Forest Service. Shortly after Harry got a half time job, so things were looking up. Fortunately dad's job lasted only a few months at most, maybe weeks, but Harry and I were working and bringing in a little money. After about a year the Forest Service sent me to Michigan and then to Ohio. Harry and I had bought a sawmill and he was the sawyer. We worked it over and had just got it in really good shape when I left. Harry stayed on for another year or so and then was called back to his regular newspaper work in Chicago. This pretty much left Dick and Clarence to help things along.
Shortly after Harry left, the family moved to Bruce, Wisconsin where things were not so primitive, and bought a somewhat better farm. They remained there until mother died in 1953.
John gave up his home shortly after Lyda died. He spent this time as a welcome guest with his children and sometimes grandchildren. He was living with his daughter Elaine when he died in 1973, almost 99 years old. What a century he lived. When he was young there was no electricity, almost no running water, almost no residential plumbing, no telephone, radio, television. Work was done by muscles, man or horse. There were some steam engines and primitive railroads were being built. He lived to see by television a man walk on the moon.
John and Lyda were resourceful people. We had no money to waste for going to movies. Oh yeah, they had them when I was a boy, but I can remember seeing only one until I was probably 12 or 14 years old. Dad and mother would tell us stories at night. Dad had a great imagination. I recall one whole winter when he took us down the Mississippi River on a houseboat. Of course it was all imagination, but I still remember many of the events of that trip. We could hardly wait for the next night to find out what had happened. When we got to New Orleans we had a pretty thorough lesson of the geography of the Mississippi.
I now turn the narrative over to others. Several of these were written for Anita and Evan's 40th wedding anniversary so they are naturally slanted to Anita, but I'm sure that the readers will agree that they make interesting reading and are properly family history.
Thomas Richard Clough was reportedly the father of Mace Richard Clough, although I have not been able to verify this information.
He moved from Maine or Vermont to Canistoga, New York and then on to Warrenstown, Ohio where he was employed as a wheelwright. He ran a wagon train from Warrenstown to St. Louis. Thomas moved from Warrenstown to Joplin, Missouri (Jasper and Newton Counties) where he was a wagonmaster taking trains from Joplin through Kansas to Denver, Colorado.
It was January 27th, 1923. We were living in Wagner, South Dakota and my cousin, Ida Corey came over from where they lived across the street. My dad bundled me up and gave Ida a few coins to take me to the drug store for an ice cream soda. I was four and a half years old and Ida was about ten. I remember Ida had on a yellow stocking hat with a red tassel. It was several blocks to the drug store so it took us a while and when we got home Dad announced that while we were gone the doctor had brought me a new baby sister. We went up to the bedroom and sure enough, there was a new blue-eyed baby. "Her name is Doris Anita," my mother said. That was my first introduction to my sister Anita. I don't recollect a great deal about the next few years. Shortly after Anita was born we moved to Madison, South Dakota where Dad worked for the Madison newspapers. Sometime in 1924 we moved to Wentworth where Dad took over the operation of the Wentworth, paper. I started school in Wentworth in the fall of 1924. A year or so later, Dad bought the Ramona Times and we moved to Ramona. I have some recollections of Anita while in Ramona. I had another sister, Elaine, that fit between Anita and I so most of my playing was with my two younger sisters. Of course, we never got into any arguments or fights. I remember we had some chickens and Anita saw my mother set some hens to hatch out baby chicks. So Anita wanted to set, too. No one could convince her the she couldn't hatch out the eggs and I think our brother Cap finally gave her a hard boiled egg to set on. After a little while it was all cracked and she never did hatch any baby chickens. Another time she decided she wanted a "weigher" .We finally figured out she wanted a scale to weigh things on so Cap got some scraps of wood and made her a scale. She was, after all, the baby of the family so we spoiled her rotten.
In 1929, we moved to Hayti, South Dakota and it was in Hayti where Anita started school. Her first grade teacher was Ester Fisher. The school put on a kids program. Elaine and Anita were in the kiddie band and I was in the Glee Club. I am enclosing a picture of the three of us in our uniforms. The depression had hit pretty hard by late 1930 so Dad decided he would move the family somewhere where we could live off the land. He considered the Ozarks and northern Wisconsin. Finally, he took a trip to northern Wisconsin to look around. When he came back a week or so later, he told Mother to get things packed, he had bought forty acres in Winter, Wisconsin. It had a nice, cozy log cabin, was way back in the woods with a trout stream only a hundred yards from the house, about a mile from the Chippewa River with lots of berries and wood and just about every thing we needed. He told Mother we couldn't take much with us and to pack only what she felt she really needed. No electrical appliances as there was no electricity. We had a 1926 Baby Overland car and Dad bought a trailer, which we loaded with the necessities. Mother had a treadle sewing machine that she felt would come in handy so we managed to get that on the trailer. That was her "prize possession". (Raymond was not at home. I don't remember whether he had gone to Chicago to find work or ~ if he was still in a Citizens Military Training Camp in North Dakota. So, one morning late in September, Mother, Dad, Dick, Elaine, Anita and myself piled into the car along with suitcases and whatever else we could get in the car and with the trailer hooked behind, we headed for Wisconsin.
We only got as far as Canby, Minnesota that first day because in the afternoon it started to rain. A real down pour! The carburetor got wet and we were stalled. We had a piece of old carpeting tied over the loaded trailer which blew off and everything on the trailer got soaked. We just huddled together in the car all night. We were parked by what had been a dry gully but by morning it was a raging river! Soon a motor boat came down the river. By daylight the rain had stopped and we managed to get the carburetor dried out and were on our way again. We got as far as Granite Falls (there was a sharp, uphill grade with a railroad crossing and stop sign near the top). When Dad stopped for the stop sign, the brakes on the car wouldn't hold the trailer so it started pulling us backward down the hill. It jack-knifed and overturned, scattering our possessions through the ditch. Mother's sewing machine was a wreck. Dad arranged for some kind of room for us while he got a garage to come with the wrecker and get the trailer straightened out. Then everything was reloaded. The wrecker pulled the trailer up the hill where finally, sometime the next day, we hooked it to the car and were on our way again. It was the third day and we were only about one hundred miles on our way. From then on, we carried a couple of rocks in the car and when we would come to a fairly steep hill, Dick and I would get out and run along the sides of the car with our rocks ready to block the wheels if it started to roll backwards.
The rest of the trip through Minnesota was uneventful until we got to the Wisconsin line (Taylor Falls, Minnesota). The road seemed to go straight down to the St. Croix River and straight up the other side. Dad parked the car and trailer and walked down to a garage where he hired a wrecker to take the trailer down the hill and up the other side. As we drove the car down the hill in low gear we could see Wisconsin across the river. It was all trees and looked absolutely beautiful. At the top of the hill on the Wisconsin side we again hooked the trailer on and proceeded on our journey to our Wisconsin home. Just west of Barron, Wisconsin it was getting dark and some distance ahead we could see the lights of a car that seemed high above us. Fearing another steep grade, Dad pulled the car and trailer off on the side of the road and we parked for the night. In the morning the steep grade proved to be just a gradual incline for quite a distance and we were able to proceed. In Barron we had our first meal in Wisconsin. We then got back in the car to complete our journey to Winter and home. In Radisson we stopped for lunch and picked up a few groceries to take home. A couple of hours later we arrived at the road that led through a cranberry marsh and then about a mile back to our new home. It had been raining a lot and the road was muddy so Dad walked a little ways up the road to some neighbors house and in a short while Adrian Pearson returned with Dad and a team of horses to pull us through the mud. After awhile we rounded a bend in the road and Dad said, "there it is...our new home" .We pulled into the yard and as we piled out of the car, Adrian Pearson said, "Well folks, you're home." It had been quite a journey and I'm sure none of us have ever forgotten it.
There was a few acres of cleared meadow, a tiny log cabin (9' wide x 22' long), a log barn and a log chicken coop. Also, an outdoor toilet was behind the house. All around there was woods. Mother went immediately then back to the chicken coop that was full of chipmunks and I'm sure we all felt we had landed in heaven. There was a skylight in the roof of the house. Dad pushed it open with a broom to ventilate the house a bit and we began carrying things in where Mother arranged them as best she could. Th1s became the place where Dick, Ela1ne, An1ta and I would grow up and memories would form that we would keep forever. There had been a well on the place but it had caved in so for that first winter we had to go about three-fourths of a mile to Wing's spring and carry water home. Many times Elaine, Anita and I would take our little pails and go to the spring for water. Since we had moved there late in the fall we had no vegetables or any of the things that later we would raise for ourselves. Soon we found that we had good neighbors that shared what they had with us. The very first night that we were there, Harry Baker, whom we found was our closest neighbor came with his family through the woods with a sack of potatoes, some other vegetables and a one-forth of venison. The Harry Baker family consisted of Harry, his wife and two children, Virgil and Mary. Virgil was between Elaine and my age and Mary was between Elaine and Anita. They soon became our constant companions and just about everything we did, we did together. Virgil and Mary were almost like another brother and sister. Harry was an excellent woodsman, hunter, fisherman, etc., and taught us a lot about surviving off the land. He was also a great story teller and many evenings Virgil and Mary, Elaine, Anita and I would lie on the bed and listen to Harry Baker tell stories about the early logging camp days. He used the expression "by grab" a lot and sometimes we would try to keep track of the number of times he would say it.
School had already started when we arrived September 26, so Monday morning Mother packed our lunches and we went trudging off on the little path through the woods that led to Bakers and then out to a road that led to the place where we would catch the school bus about a quarter to seven every morning. The bus made two trips and we were always the first trip in the morning and the last trip at night because the other trip was shorter. Dick learned the first day that he already had what his class was studying the year before, so he dropped out of school for the year expecting to go back the following year... but he never did. Besides, Virgil and Mary, there were also Ruth, Telford and Merlin Fadness who caught the bus at that corner.
As I write, there are so many memories of the seven years we spent in Winter that they would fill several volumes so I won't attempt to recount them all.
Dad had less than $100 when we arrived at Winter, but we needed a cow so he bought a cow from some neighbor named Kies. Her name was Josephine and she became not only our mild cow and pet, but also our beast of burden. Dad made some shaves for the trailer and we would hook Josephine to the trailer and she would haul loads of wood or hay or whatever we had to haul. The first winter was pretty hard and put a large garden in. A large potato patch and about one-fourth acre of beans. Soon we were getting fresh vegetables from the garden. Then the berries began to come and we spent a lot of time picking them. We always had venison and we caught a lot of fish... we ate well.
Anita and I were very close and we had a sort of make-believe game we would play. I was "Bunny Kutch" and she was "Pokey" and I would make up stories to tell her about Bunny Kutch and Pokey. Sometimes I would say "Bunny Kutch gotta cry" and she would say "Poor Bunny Kutch." Then I would say "Tender me, tenderly, Tender Me" and she would pat my head and say "Tender me" .Dad also had a make-believe character named "Old Man Grouch" and often he would come in form the woods at night and say "I met "Old Man Grouch" today" , then he would have a story to tell about what "Old Man Grouch" had been doing. A year or so after we moved in there, some more families moved in along the road where we caught the bus. They were Kinsleys and Andrews, both fairly large families. Along the other road that we used to drive out to the bus stop, the McDermotts built a house. Mrs. McDermott had a son, Dick Brensan who was nearly totally deaf and about thirty years old. Otherwise there were no children there. Other memorable people from those years were "Gramps and Grandma Chambers" and Gramps Baker. They were Virgil and Mary's grandparents and many humorous stories could be told about them. Elaine remembers ~II Gramps Baker singing his song "Lather and Shave... lather and shave, lather and shave, lather and fizzle me beard". Then there was the time that Gramps Chambers was pounding on the door at 3:00 in the morning wanting someone to take Leela to the doctor. We asked him, "What's the matter? Is Mrs. Chambers sick?" And he replied, "Sick? Why she's been sick for 20 years!"
Then there was Earl Wing, who was shell-shocked as a result of World War I. He would tell stories, like the time he was on a ship and the crew mutinied and were going to throw him overboard so he threw the entire crew overboard and sailed the ship back to the port by himself. He told stories like that with a straight face and I think he actually believed they were true.
Then there were the Pearsons, the Sitters, the Barnabys, Stroufs, Grandpa and Grandma Olsen (the Fadness kids grandparents) the Imhoffs, Wileys and many others. All good neighbors, but quite a few with idiosyncrasies of various types.
Elaine, Anita and I would trudge off to school every morning. I had some high boots so I would go first and break the trail. Often the snow was hard enough so that we walked on top of it. We left home in the mornings before daylight in the winter, walked a mile and caught the school bus at a quarter of seven. In the spring when the snow would melt the creek would flood and cover the bridge. I would carry the girls across one at a time because they had no high boots. Elaine had a pair of red overshoes and Anita some brown ones but they weren't very high. Anita never complained but Elaine hated those overshoes. There was a row of mailboxes where we waited for the bus and a wooden package box. Elaine would leave her overshoes in the package box so she wouldn't have to wear them to school.
We had a half-grown puppy that we called Jenny and sometimes he would follow us to the bus. No matter how hard we tried to send him home he still followed. One morning he was hit by the bus and killed. We were all heart broken. The next day one of the boys in my class said they had some puppies and we could have one. Our folks said it was okay so the boy brought the puppy to school and we took him home on the bus. He was part poodle and part pooch so we said he was a poodle-pooch. He wasn't much bigger than my hand and for awhile actually slept in Mother's shoe. On the way home we passed Gramps Baker house and two of Harry Bakers brothers (George and Hank) were out in the yard. Of course they had to see the puppy and Hank asked what we were going to name him. I said I had thought about "Skeet" or "Snap" and Hank said, "That's it! Skeetersnap", so that was his name. He grew to be a fairly good-sized dog.
Others are also writing about those great days so I will shorten this part and get on with Evan and my memories about him. Someone will surely mention the time Elaine was looking dreamily out the window and said, "I for one see a buffalo." Nobody forgot that for some reason. I graduated from Winter High School in 1936. In the spring of 1937, Dick and I spent three months in a camp at Upsar, Wisconsin. In the fall of 1937 we moved to Bruce, Wisconsin where Dad was employed at the newspaper office. Elaine and Anita continued their schooling in Bruce. In November of 1940, I joined the Marines and II was sent to Shangha1. I left home alone and d1dn't know a soul. I went by tra1n from Minneapolis to San Diego, California. I met a couple of other ones going in the Marines who boarded the train in Texas and of course made more friends in boot camp (some who went to Shanghai when I did).
On our arrival in Shanghai, I was assigned to Camp B, 1st squad, 1st platoon and it was there that I met Evan Bunn. He had been there for six months or so already. Others in our squad were Ceto Sillman, Bill Horne, James Pountaine, Frank Reidel and Beekley Swan. Evan and I soon became best of friends. He was a first class Marine and taught me many things that would have taken me much longer to learn without him. I guess he knew the best and easiest way to do everything. Everyone liked Evan and through the years since, he never changes...same old Bunn.
Peace-time duty for the Marines in Shanghai was really great. We didn't get much pay but the exchange of American money for Chinese money went up to $54 for $1 and a Chinese dollar would buy about as much as one of ours would in this country. Each squad had a room-boy that took care of all our needs. Our room-boy's name was Wamba, which in Chinese means turtle. He would see to it that we always had fresh, clean clothes, go out and get sandwiches for us, or whatever we asked of him. It cost us each 15 Chinese dollars a month for his services, which was about thirty cents American money. We could get a hair-cut for about three cents, go to a movie for about the same cost. We stood two four-hour watches every third day. The rest of the time we pretty much could come and go on liberty. Most of our liberties were spent at the fourth Marine Club which had a vast variety of things to do. Usually we sat around eating and drinking and visiting our buddies.
Evan had done some boxing and had the nick-name Bearcat Bunn. I don't remember his ever getting in a fight as many did. Although he tells me he did have a fight with a fellow named Charlie Hasslet, probably before I got there. All in all he was a pretty peaceful sort of guy.
In Shanghai there is a river or creek they call SooChow Creek. Much of our guard duty was at bridges across SooChow Creek. One day a stray dog wandered into our barracks. It was a bull-dog type. We fed him and he stayed and we made him our mascot. We named him SooChow. Somehow when we left Shanghai at the start of World War II, a fellow in our company named Bob Snyder smuggled SooChow onto the ship and he went with us to the Philippines. By some miracle SooChow survived the war and the prison camp and was brought back to America at the end of the war. In Shanghai, as our mascot, he wore a vest with sergeant's stripes. When he got to the United States, the Marine commander promoted him to major, retired him and assigned a man to take care of him until he eventually died.
The Marines were pulled out of China and sent to the Philippines, arriving at Olongpo only two days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. We were attacked the same day and on that very first day, two very good friends of mine were killed. We remained on Baaton for awhile and were then transferred to Corregidor. Evan and I were sent to different areas so I saw very little of him for the remainder of the time until we were taken prisoner. I found him again after we were captured and we were together most of the time from then on. After we were captured we remained a few days on Corregidor and were then transferred to a concentration camp at Cabanatuan. They took us on a boat to the Mainland and unloaded into water up to our necks. We waded into shore and were then loaded on a train. We were loaded one hundred men to a box-car and it was so crowded you couldn't even move an arm. I don't know how far we were transported by train, but after several hours we were unloaded and began the long march to Cabanatuan. The same route as the much publicized Baatan death march and the same conditions. We were given no food and stopped only once for water. Any man that fell by the wayside was immediately shot or bayoneted... and many fell. Several hours later we arrived at Cabanatuan. There we were given a little rice and some water and assigned to a barracks. There were thousands of men from Baatan there already and many, many died. Malaria, dysentery, berri-berri, pellagra and starvation was everywhere and hundreds were dying all around. Frequently the Japanese made up work details to send out to various parts of the Philippines. Evan and I got on the first work detail we could. We were sure anything was better than Cabanatuan.
We were taken to Manila and loaded on a ship. They put us in holds below the deck, again so crowded we couldn't move. If I remember correctly, we were on the ship for about seven days. Our destination was the island of Palawan, just north of Basneo and practically on the equator. There were three hundred men on the work detail and we were sent there to build an airfield for the Japanese. We had to start from scratch, working with very crude tools and nothing to wear except a "G-String". There was a lot of corral which cut our feet so we made some clackers with pieces of board to wear on our feet. The temperatures were usually 120° to 130° and with no protection from the sun, we burned so badly that many men lost their skin and flesh clear to the bone. If we were able to work twelve-hour days, we were given three rice balls a day. If we became too sick with Malaria or other diseases they would put you on what they called light-duty which usually meant to work with a little hand sickle cutting grass, brush, etc. On light duty you got only one rice ball a day, so knowing how important food was to us we would go to work sometimes very sick to get our three rice balls. Nobody could have survived on one, so we formed what we called "clicks". Any bananas or other fruit we could smuggle in from the airfields (at great risk) we would share. We shared all our food as equally as possible. But most important, we furnished each other with moral and emotional support. There were five men in our "click"... Evan and I, Will Smith, Glen McDole and Roy Henderson. There is not the smallest doubt that any of us would have survived without the others. We slept in long rows on bamboo slats. There was a veranda that ran the full length of the building. Evenings we would sit out on the veranda and talk. Within our click we learned all about each other. We knew each other like no one else ever could. Much of our talk was about food because that was always foremost in our minds. We always talked about our families and home life, our girlfriends back home, and our hopes for the future. We talked about everything. Sometimes we would sing and others from other clicks would come and join in. We survived a day or so at a time. We would each pick a date when we thought the war would be over, always only a few days away or a week or so. One would say we'll be out of here by the third, another said the fifth, and so on. Then we'd live for that first day, when that had passed we'd say, "Well Bunn, it wasn't your day. Must be Henderson's." So we lived it a day or two at a time and actually managed to enjoy ourselves.
I remember one night everyone was just about asleep and a fellow down the line named Lito hollered out, "Hey Bunn, a mouse just ran over me." Evan said, "We'll catch it." Things had just begun to get quiet again when Lito hollered, "I got him, Bunn! I got him! Now, what'll I do with it?" Everyone roared with laughter.
Although it was rough on Palawan and there was a lot of malaria, etc., men were not dying. Sometimes someone would become so sick that the Japanese took him out and sent him somewhere. We didn't know where. Evan became sick with Malaria, sicker and sicker! He would get chills so bad, I had gotten up what blankets I could find and covered him. Then the fever would take over and he was literally burning up. The doctors had a small amount of quinine, which helped, but he continued to get worse. He couldn't eat at all so the rest of the click was surviving on his ration of rice. His temperature rose to 108.6°, which the American doctors told us was the highest human temperature ever recorded in the Philippines. Finally, his condition was so bad that the Japanese took him away and although we didn't know it at the time, he was taken to Billibed Prison in Manila, which the Japanese had converted to the main hospital camp.
Several months later the airfield was nearly completed so the Japs decided to send half the men back to Cabanatuan. We were picked at random and Roy Henderson and I were sent back. Smith and McDole remained on Palawan to finish up the ramps for the airfield.
We learned later that when the Americans began bombing Palawan, the Japanese herded the one hundred fifty Americans into air raid shelters and then poured gasoline on them and set them on fire. As the men poured out of the burning shelters they were bayoneted or machine-gunned down. Somehow, about half o dozen did manage to escape and Smith and McDole were among them. The story of how they escaped was written up in a magazine and they each had an unbelievable story to tell. Henderson died several years ago but we have all kept in close touch over the last forty years. The five of us got together in Texas shortly before Henderson died.
I was taken from Palawan to Cabanatuan. On the way back we stopped over night at Billibed Hospital Camp. There I was told by Joe Calkins, who knew Evan from Chetek, Wisconsin that Evan died there the same night he was brought in. I had lost many friends during the war and the prison camp days, but to hear Evan was gone was nearly more than I could handle. Joe told me Evan's marker was out in the graveyard, so I went to look at it. Tears flowed from my eyes like they never had flowed before.
The next day we went to Cabanatuan. When we got there I was assigned to Barracks 117. The sergeant said to pick a spot wherever you could find one. The bamboo slats here were double-deckered and I found one on the lower deck. Somewhere I had found a wooden box and made a case to carry my mess gear in. I sat down and started to open it and someone above me gave me a little peck on the head. I looked up and believe it or not, there was Evan Frank Bunn! What a reunion we had! Apparently when Evan got to Billibed he was put to bed and a name plate put on the bed. During the night the Japs put together a detail to take to Cabanatuan and Evan got up and went with them. Later on, a very sick man was brought in, put in Evan's bed and died in the night. With Evan's nameplate on the bed, they thought it was Evan and buried him with Evan's name on the marker. Later, when the Americans took over the Philippines, Evan's brother Ned saw the marker and took a picture of it.
The Japs were moving many prisoners from the Philippines to Japan so Evan and I were off once again. When we arrived in Japan we were sent to Hatachi to work in a copper mine. After several months we were divided into two groups. I went to an inland city called Ashio and Evan was sent north to Mitzojima. Once again we were separated. We didn't see each other again until the war ended. We met in Yokahama, September 5th after the war. The Americans were flying many men home and we were called for a flight back, but a new fourth Marine regiment had been formed and they were giving a party for the old fourth Marines. Evan and I decided to go to the party and consequently were brought back to the United States on a ship.
Evan got a job on the ship working in the galley and kept me well supplied with food. When I left Japan I weighed 104 pounds. By the time we got back to the good old U.S.A.. I was at 186 pounds of rather unhealthy fat and Evan about the same.
We docked in Oakland. California where we were given some physical exams and within a few days were on a train headed for Chicago. We were taken to Great Lakes Navel Hospital and kept for awhile. We had some time off when we could go into Chicago so Evan and I bought a car and along with a number of others we'd drive down to my brother Cap's place. After all of the tests etc., at the navel hospital, we were allowed to go home on a 90-day furlough. Evans father had died and his mother and two sisters were living in Iron Mountain. Michigan. We went first to my home and later went to see them.
Evan had heard me talk so much about my two sisters that he had his mind made up to marry one of them. Elaine had already married, but Evan and Anita hit it off so well from the start that it didn't take them too long to decide to get married. I feel of all the things I've done in my lifetime, getting Evan and Anita together turned out the best of all.
As with my memories of Anita, much of my memories of Evan had to be skimmed over or omitted...oh how many volumes a lifetime would fill.
It is now forty years later and instead of just Evan and Anita the family now numbers sixty-three and growing. What a beautiful wonderful family, all raised with love and Christianity, which are all so very close to one another.
And there is one thing I know and have always known that if everyone close in this world fails me. I will always be able to count on Evan Bunn.
PROLOGUE
Having been asked by some of my children to write down some of the interesting things that have happened during our lifetimes, I here attempted to do so. First, a little background.
Grandma and Grandpa Clough
John Casper Clough was born in Manhattan, Kansas on July 7, 1874. He was the youngest of four children, namely Ernest, Mace, Carolyn and John. His father was killed by a runaway team while he was freighting supplies to Arizona. At one point in his life, Dad taught at an Indian boy's school in Nebraska. At the time he met Lyda in Omaha he was sign painting with his brother Mace and Mace's two sons, Kenneth and Caroll.
Lyda Ethel Corey was one of four children born to Warren and Martha Corey. She had two brothers, Clarence and Lorenzo Ennis (L.E.) and one sister, Helen. Warren Corey was a Civil War Veteran who was captured and sent to Andersonville Prison. His health was very poor after his prison experience and he died young, leaving his wife to raise their children. Grandma Corey did copying (this was before typewriters) and needlework to support her children. Mother's life was a hard one. She was visiting friends in Omaha when she was introduced to John Clough by a mutual friend.
Dad decided almost immediately that Lyda was the girl he wanted to marry. Mother returned to Wagner, South Dakota and taught school, but she and Dad kept up a correspondence, which led to their marriage June 17, 1901.
When Mildred was a small baby and Harry was about two years old, Dad filed a claim on a homestead in Murdo, South Dakota. Uncle Clarence Corey had filed on a home-stead about a mile away and was living there with his wife Jessie. Dad returned to Omaha to continue working, but to hold the claim, someone had to live on it. So mother took Harry and Mildred and started the long trip to Murdo. They crossed the Platte River on a ferry boat, and on reaching the South Dakota side, they spent the night in a dugout. The next day they took a stagecoach to Murdo where Uncle Clarence met them and took them to their homestead. Mother spent six months there and then Dad joined her. At night when they let the bed down they had to put their table and the boxes used for chairs outdoors.
Through the years, Dad worked in newspaper work in many towns in South Dakota. At one period in his life he felt a calling to become a minister. He joined the Methodist church and soon began to preach. While in Newell in 1911, a little girl joined Sunday school. Her name was Lois Gillett. Missing her one Sunday, he asked her the following Sunday where she had been the week before. She said, "I went to my own church." Questioning her further, he found that her family belonged to the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church. Dad had always been eager to learn about things he didn't know, so he talked to Dr. Gillett who was the town dentist. Soon he realized he was in the wrong church. He became a Christian in the Church of the First Born where our children have been raised and are also raising their children.
I, Doris Anita Clough, was seven years old when I traveled with my parents, John and Lyda to Winter, Wisconsin from Hayti, South Dakota. The year was 1930, the month was September. The family, including two older brothers and an older sister was moving because Dad Clough had lost his job publishing the local newspaper in Hayti. The owner of the paper was returning to run it himself. The Great Depression had hit the country the previous year and people's lives were being disrupted and changed all over the world. I was born on January 27, 1923 in Wagner, South Dakota (Charles Mix County). I was born in her maternal grandmother's home where the family had stopped briefly for my birth. Soon after we moved on and lived in several small towns. The first one I remember is Ramona, South Dakota. I was four years old when the family moved to Ramona. Two memories stand out while living in this town. The first was when I told my mother I was going to run away, then preceded to crawl behind the couch and fall asleep. When Mother missed me, she got the whole family out to look for me. When I couldn't be found it was feared I had wandered into a large slough close by and drowned. The police were called and nearly all the town was looking for me when Raymond found me safe and sound, sleeping behind the couch. I was the only member of the family not greatly upset.
The other incident was when I was on an errand to the store for my mother. I cut across a vacant lot, fell, and a large weed poked a hole by the corner of my eye. The mark remains yet today. When I was six the family moved to Hayti where I went to first grade. Two weeks after I started second grade, the family left for Winter, where I spent my childhood.
When Dad lost his job, the question was, "What now?" Jobs became almost impossible to find. Dad and Mother were no longer young, Dad being fifty-six and Mother nearly fifty-two, but something had to be done as they still had four children going to school. Dick was sixteen, a senior in high school. Clarence at twelve was in seventh grade, Elaine was in fifth grade and I was starting second grade.
Mother was born in Wisconsin and remembered it as a "land of plenty". One day while looking through a paper she came across and advertisement for a "tax forty" in Winter, Wisconsin. A "tax forty" was forty acres of land being sold for taxes because the owner was not able to pay them. Mother was elated and said "at least we can raise food and won't starve." She was right.
Dad made a trip to look at the land and bought it for $1000. He deposited his last $100 in the Winter State Bank. Raymond accompanied Dad and then went on to Chicago where Harry and Cap, the two older brothers were working. Cap was working for Wilson Brothers Meat Packing Plant. They sent Raymond to R.C.A. and Coyne Electric schools where he had been promised a job when he graduated.
Dad returned to Hayti where the family sold the furniture from their nine room "modern" home to have money to make the trip to Wisconsin. Boy, "modern" was having electricity and running water on three floors and a furnace in the basement. Many homes did not have these in 1930.
The sale was held and the family went to Mildred and Joel's home to spend the night and to say good-bye to the oldest daughter, Mildred, her husband and two year old daughter Helen. Shortly before they had made a trip to Gann Valley to Marion and Floyd Abernathey's where they said good-bye to their second daughter and her two little girls, Dorothy and Leona.
Now they were off! Mildred had packed nearly enough food to make the whole trip. Fried chicken, bread, butter, cakes, etc. were all packed in the big wash boiler which was secured to the runn1ng board of the Baby Overland. A small tra1ler pulled J by the car held the big cook stove, treadle sewing machine, electric washing machine, (this was never used because the new home had no electricity), two beds, one chest of drawers, dishes, pans and clothing. The trailer was much heavier than the car.
The rain began! And it rained, and rained and rained. Almost the entire trip it rained. Everything in the trailer became wet. The food in the boil became wet. The picnics along the road were not as much fun as been envisioned because everything was wet! However, since the children had done little traveling, everything was exciting. After four days they reached St. Paul, Minnesota. While Dad went to a grocery to purchase food, the family got out to stretch their legs. A man carrying several pieces of baggage stopped and told Dick he would give him twenty-five cents to carry his suitcase a few blocks to the train depot. How exciting that was as twenty-five cents was a lot of money in those days!
The rain continued. The dirt road became mud. At Taylor's Falls the little Overland couldn't pull the heavily loaded trailer up the long hill. Both car and trailer rolled backward. Mother panicked and jumped out of the car calling to us children to jump too. We didn't because Dad told us to sit still. Mother injured her knee in the jump. A farmer nearby was making money on hauling cars up the hill. He made another ten dollars off of us. The trailer had tipped over and everything was muddy, but we soon had it reloaded and were on our way. At Barron, Wisconsin we ran out of money with about one hundred miles yet to go. What to do! Dad talked to the newspaper editor and he trusted us enough to cash a check for $10 drawn on the Winter State Bank, and so the trip continued.
We arrived at Winter, a town of a little over one hundred people, in the late afternoon. We stopped at a store and bought enough food to see us through a few days. Then continued on the last five miles to our new home. We reached the turn off a mile from home to find a sea of mud. There was no way we could drive through it. We got the nearest neighbor to hitch up his horses and pull us through. There was a two room log cabin with a well close by. The water was brought up with a pail tied to a rope that was pulled up hand over hand. A log barn and chicken house were nearby. That was all. There were two small meadows, enough to feed a cow through winter.
"Well, how do you like your new home?" Mother asked Elaine and I. I said, "I guess it's all right, but where is the bathroom?" It was there all right, only you didn't bathe in it. It was a little square building at the end of a short path at the back of the house. Directly behind this small building was a swamp with heavy brush. Many times during the following years we were to hear a blood curdling sound from this swamp that sounded like a woman screaming. It was a lynx.
Dick could not find enough subjects in school that he hadn't already taken to fill his schedule so the school suggested he wait until the next year to finish his senior year. He was only sixteen and young for his grade. He never did finish, but Clarence, Elaine and I started school the next day.
I enjoyed school very much. I quickly made friends and did well in my classes. Mary Baker lived a half mile away through the woods and she was in my grade. We became very close friends. Instead of walking down the muddy road we had come in on, we walked through the woods so we could meet other children and catch the school bus with them. It was a walk and was a much more pleasant walk with friends. There was Mary Baker and her brother Virgil who was in Elaine's class. Phoebe Hilliard and Merlin Fadness were also Elaine's age. Telford Fadness was Clarence's age and Ruth Fadness was in high school.
Near home was a small stream with a log bridge across it. Soon after moving to the new home, Elaine was coming home from school alone. Two little animals newly born caught her eye. Thinking they were puppies she called to them. They quickly disappeared. Dad was almost sure they were wolf puppies and I shudder to think what would have happened if she had touched one.
The first and most important thing to do was to find enough food for the family. Of course it was too late to put in a garden, but there were still many berries to pick. So we picked, ate and canned raspberries. Later, after the first frost, we picked cranberries in the cranberry bog. Cranberries are much sweeter after the first frost.
Dad began looking for a milk cow as soon as we arrived. He soon found one at Barnaby's. They were the best farmers in the area. Mr. Barnaby said, "you can go through my barn and pick any cow you want for $35." And that is how we got Josephine who became the "mother" of our "herd". She was a Guernsey, mild and gentle and gave a full pail of rich, creamy milk. We had cream for our cereal and cream for the berry shortcakes Mother made. We put cream in a two-quart jar and made buttermilk to drink and to make pancakes with. There was so much milk left after we drank all we wanted that we decided to buy a pig to feed it to. And so we got "Tilly". Tilly was a pet and we all loved her and petted and played with her. There were many chores for everyone on the new farm. Besides food we also needed fuel for the big cook stove to cook our meals and also for warmth as the nights were getting cool. Then, of course, there was money. The small bank account was getting smaller with buying food staples and tools for working on the place. Dad needed a scythe to cut hay for Josephine's winter feed. Saws and axes were needed to cut wood. The men must have overalls, mittens, caps, etc. for working outside, and Clarence, Elaine and I must have warm clothes to go to school. So money was definitely a problem.
One day when Dad was in the General Store, the owner, and elderly lady, said, "Why don't you pick Princess Pine? They are buying it in Chicago for Christmas decorations. I will buy all you pick and you can take it out in trade." So the whole family picked Princess Pine. My hands were too small to hold a whole bundle, so Dad would add mine to his and tie them together. I was so proud to be helping to earn the first money in or new home.
Winter set in cold and snowy. The snow was so deep it came up to my waist. Clarence went ahead and made a path for Elaine and I. Still, we seldom missed a day of school. We remained healthy and strong and happy. I was never unhappy. When I came in the door Mother would nearly always have something baked for a special treat. She'd say, "you kiddies are so cold. Sit right up here and have one of these cinnamon rolls and a cup of hot chocolate". When I was done and had changed into my play clothes I would run outside again to play. Always school clothes must be changed because we had so few and Mother washed in wash tubs with a washboard, heating the water in the boiler on the stove. All the water must be drawn from the well and carried to the house. She used a bar of Fels Naptha Soap and hung the dripping clothes on the line to dry. Never were clothes more beautifully clean.
But it was hard work.
One of our first sources of meat was Partridge and they made many a good meal. We had them fried, stewed and in meat pies. We also had fish as the Chippewa River was about a mile through the woods. As soon as the weather turned cold the neighbor men got together and went deer hunting. Dad only had a 22 rifle, which isn't suitable for hunting deer. So he was one of the men starting the deer toward those who were stationed to do the shooting as the deer came by. Soon the call came "Here they come!" Here they come!! For some reason no one shot so finally Dad felt he might as well try a shot as they were all getting away. He got the only venison that day. It wasn't long before Dad realized he would have to have a horse if he was going to get wood enough to burn. So he managed to buy old Nig, an old logging horse. He was too old to use in the woods, but he was well trained. Dad and Dick could cut and trim a tree and hook it to the logging chain, then say "Go home Nig" and he would take the log home while they cut the next tree. If the log would catch on something Nig would back up and turn until he got it loose and then go on. At home Mother would unhook the log, hook the chain in his harness and send him back to the woods. He was "worth his weight in gold. " Nig also made it possible for Dad and Dick to begin cutting pulp wood. Pulp wood was trees that were cut and peeled and shipped to paper mills.
A neighbor boy who was working with our men fell on a slippery log and cut a large gash on his knee. Because it was five miles to town and we had no car running, Dad stitched his knee with a common sewing needle and thread. I held the supplies for Dad and handed them to him while Dick wiped the perspiration from his face. Many were the happy days at Winter. I thank God for the wonderful parents who faced adversity and never let their children feel deprived.
The time came to leave Winter and move on. Mr. McConnell who was our school principal bought the newspaper at Bruce and asked Dad to work for him. I was fourteen years old and started high school in Bruce.
Life in Bruce was serene, but not particularly eventful until war was declared in Europe in 1939. Clarence enlisted in the United States Marines in November of 1940. It was sad to see him go. Clarence and I were the only children left at home and when he left, the house was really empty. Dick soon came home to help Dad farm. World War II seemed to last forever. In 1942, Clarence was taken prisoner by the Japanese and the worry about him was nearly unbearable.
The war ended with the dripping of the atomic bombs in August of 1945. Clarence was released from prison and returned to the United States. He arrived home October 16, bringing with him another ex-prisoner of war by the name of Evan Bunn. Clarence and Evan had bought a car together and neither could be parted from it.
To make a long story short, that's the way we met. Evan and I were married on November 10, 1945. By the way, November l0th is also the birthday of the United States Marines.
Evan was discharged from the Marines on May 29, 1946. We bought a small farm in Cheteck, Wisconsin and moved there July 16, 1946. Benny, Marcia and Susan were born while we lived there.
In December of 1950 we moved to Senator Wiley's farm in Cameron, Wisconsin. John T' was born in 1951.
February 1, 1952 we started farming for ourselves again on a rented place near Barron, Wisconsin. Mother died August 9, 1953. Bill was born in 1953. March 1, ~ 1954 we moved to Twin Lakes near Cheteck. Evan was working at Jerome's Turkey Farms to try to get enough money to keep the farm going, but there was never enough. Finally, in July, 1955, we decided we'd had enough and sold our cattle, machinery, etc. and moved to Hillsdale, Wisconsin. Jim was born here eight days after our arrival.
In 1956 we bought a home by Barron only to give it up a few months later, moving to New York state to dairy farm for Mr. Werblud. We lived in Meridale, New York at first and then in Merideth. Soon Evan got another job farming in Roxbury for Tom Hinckley. In April 1957 we returned to Wisconsin. We rented a home on Highway 8 near Cameron and Evan went back to work for Jerome's Turkey Farms. Patricia Elaine was born May 31, 1957.
The turkey plant had a lay-off every year and during this time Dick, who was working at a Hugo Mink ranch told Evan that his boss wanted to find someone to run his dairy farm for him. So it was that we came to Minnesota. We had wanted to be closer to our church so this move fitted our plans. We moved in February, 1959. When we came to Minnesota the ground was totally bare, no snow at all. This is rather unusual in Minnesota in February. We spent one and a half years on the farm. It was here that Pat fell through the hay shoot of the barn and fractured her skull. She spent eight days in St. John's Hospital in St. Paul. She spent her third birthday there. It was here too that Dory was born.
In July 1960 we left the farm. Dad got a job working for Remington Rand as a maintenance man. He had already taken a test for the Post Office (civil service) and in August he received word that he was accepted for the job in the Post Office. We are very grateful for this job. It brought us a good living while we were raising our children and has provided well for us in our retirement years.
After leaving the farm in Hugo, we had spent two weeks living with Sivert and Hazel Hendrickson while looking for a house. We finally found a house between Cambridge and North Branch and Evan drove fifty miles each way to work and back, worked twelve hours a day, and worked thirteen out of fourteen days. He had every other Sunday off and we drove to church fifty miles. The desire to get a place closer to work was very strong. Evan finally found a place near Forest Lake with a very old, dilapidated house. I was so worried about him possibly falling asleep at the wheel on his long drives that I was glad to move regardless of the state of the house. This home still meant a thirty mile drive to work, but has provided a wonderful atmosphere for the children. There was always something for them to do. With animals to raise, gardens to tend, canning and freezing, etc., etc., we never worried about keeping the children occupied.
We moved into the new home on January 1, 1961. On October 11, 1961 our oldest son Benny lost his life in a tragic accident. The sorrow this brought cannot be expressed in words. The children felt this loss as acutely as Evan did since he was their guide and example in so many ways and also their playmate and companion.
Three babies were born in this new home. Barbara in January of 1962, Tom, July 9, 1963 and Glen, July 8, 1966. Now our family was complete.
Grandma Donaldson (Bunn- she had remarried in 1946) died on Thanksgiving Day, 1967 leaving only one grandparent for our children, Grandpa Clough.
Evan had been having a lot of vascular trouble for a number of years and at times could scarcely make it to the mailbox. On February 8, 1968 he was feeling better than he had been feeling and he decided to go with Don Muonio, George Nelson and Jim Suko into our woods so they could get some fire wood. I was getting dinner when Don brought Evan home where he had fifteen year old John drive him to the hospital. He had had a heart attack. He spent one month in the hospital and three more months recovering. Fortunately, he had sick time and vacation time accumulated which gave us a pay-check during this hard time.
I will never forget the kindness of so many people during his heart attack recovery period. I remember the day I sent John and Bill to town with a propane gas tank to see if they could charge a tank of gas for the cook stove. They couldn't. So we were using our electric fry pan and coffee-pot, and getting along pretty well. The next day, Bisky Danielson, who worked with Evan and was in his car pool, stopped at the house to see how Evan was getting along. He handed me an envelope with a card and over $250 that his co-workers had collected. I broke down and cried, embarrassing John who said, "Momma, don't." Evan's health has continued to be a great concern and last December he spent a month in the hospital with a bad heart. We are all grateful that our wonderful husband, father and grandfather is still with us.
All in all, it's been a good forty years together. I have a wonderful family, which I love dearly. Thank you for the happy memories.
How many times I sang that song when I was growing up. Memories are much more than things we remember from our past. They tell the entire story of how we spent our lives. And although not all our memories are pleasant to remember, we tend to blot them out and concentrate on the happier times.
I can truthfully say my childhood memories are basically very happy ones. But, being the two youngest members of a family of nine, Anita and I saw each of our older brothers and sisters grow up and leave home. As in most big families, the older kids looked after the younger ones. Cap was Anita's "big brother" and Raymond was mine. They fixed our plates for us at the table, cut our meat and spread our bread, etc. The saddest day came for us the day Cap left home. Harry was already in Chicago and Cap was going there to look for work. The folks drove all of us to Mildred and Joel's where Cap was to meet Joel's brothers and ride to Chicago with them. Anita and I were huddled together in the back seat of the car, looking out the window at Cap as he stood waving "good-bye" to our big brother. Only a short time later we were saying a sad "good-bye" to Raymond, as he too, left for Chicago.
One of my earliest memories of Anita takes me back almost sixty years ago. I was about 5 and Anita was about 3. A lady traveled from one small town to another putting on weddings. The small children in each town made up the wedding parties. I was a bridesmaid and wore a long pink dress. There was about five bridesmaids. Anita, at 3, was the youngest little girl and a little boy named Wayne Carmady was the youngest boy and ringbearer. He carried the ring on a white satin pillow. Anita wore the only short dress in the wedding party and carried a basket of flowers. Her dress was the prettiest dress I had ever seen. You'd have thought I would like my dress the best because it was long, but I didn't. Her dress was the prettiest shade of yellow with lots of ribbon on it. All through my growing up years yellow was my favorite color because of that dress. Oddly enough, I never buy anything in yellow, and I guess you could say pink is my favorite color now. But, I still remember Anita in that little yellow dress, carrying her basket of flowers. Everyone said that she and Wayne were the cutest ones in the whole "wedding". We were served cake and ice cream afterwards and I refused mine. I don't know why I did that, but I did.
When I was ten years old and in the fifth grade and Anita was 7 and a second grader, we moved from South Dakota to Winter, Wisconsin. We had always lived in a small town but this was out in the country. We had a wonderful childhood living right out in the woods. So many memories come rushing back.
One of my own very special memories occurred only a short time after we moved there. There were several ways we could walk home from the school bus line, but every way we had to cross a creek. The fall we moved there it had been very wet and rainy and the creeks were very high. No one had lived back in the woods where we now lived for several years and the closest neighbors lived at least a half to three or fourths mile away. This was pretty wild country and it was not unusual for us to hear Lynx or wild cats screaming in the night. Of course we never saw any of these wild animals, only heard them. Well, one day as I was walking home from school I noticed five little puppies drinking at the edge of the creek. They were so adorable but there was no sign of a mother anywhere around. I tried to get over to them but the creek was so h1gh and I d1dn't want to get my school shoes wet. Our house was only a short distance away and I ran up to get Dick, who was about sixteen years old, and not in school. We hurried back down to the creek but the puppies were gone. We thought it would be nice to have a puppy and we started inquiring about to see who owned them. Nobody did. We asked everyone. Our new neighbor and friend, Harry Baker told us those puppies had to have been wolf cubs and the mother was probably watching me from a hiding place in the brush nearby. If the creek hadn't been so high and I had gone over and picked one up she might have attacked me. I guess you could say I was lucky.
We loved living in the woods and we spent most of our summers in the berry patch. We picked every kind of wild berry that grew in that part of the country and Mother canned hundreds of quarts of berries every year. And of course, we ate all we wanted all summer long.
The years we lived at Winter were known as years of the great depression. But we certainly never suffered. We always had plenty to eat and we had a really good life. We relied on ourselves and each other for entertainment. Music was always a big thing in our home and we always sang together. Mother said she could always hear Anita and I singing long before she could see us, as we came home from school. And when we did the supper dishes we always sang together. I love remembering those happy times. I'm sure the rest of the family always did too. A lot of fun times were associated with the school. Winter High School was a twelve-grade school. The first six grades were downstairs and the seventh through twelfth was upstairs. Everything that went on at the school drew a pretty big crowd. They ran the school buses and everyone could ride them when there were any programs at school. One of the highlights of every school year was the Christmas program. They were especially well attended. All twelve grades participated and we would spend several weeks practicing and rehearsing for it. Usually the smaller children would perform first then the older grade children next, and finally, all the high school students. But the year I was a sophomore, Anita must have been a seventh grader, they decided to do something different. They took the book "Why the Chimes Rang" and had the entire twelve grades act it out. The high school English teacher had to choose someone to read the entire thing. Naturally she had to choose a really good reader. And from all the grades she chose Anita. I'm not sure whose decision it was but it was decided that Anita wouldn't read the whole thing, she'd memorize and narrate it. She was absolutely fantastic and we were all so proud of her. I really believe that was the best Christmas program our school ever had.
All through our childhood Clarence would walk ahead of Anita and I "blazing a trail" through heavily drifted snow for us to follow. But the year we had this great Christmas program was Clarence's last year. He graduated that spring and the following fall he and Dick went into the C.C. camp. Anita and I were the only ones at home now and home was a pretty lonely place. They were only gone a few months but shortly after they came home, Dick left for Maywood, Illinois where he had work with Davey Tree Surgery Company.
That summer I took a trip to visit my brothers in Chicago. Harry really showed me the town and I will always remember that fantastic trip. I was gone about six weeks, and when I came home the family was talking about moving to Bruce. Dad would be working there as a linotype operator for the local newspaper. Since I had spent most of my school years at Winter I would have liked to have graduated there. But in my senior year we moved to Bruce. This place was located in a "ghost town" called Appelonia. It was about a mile from Bruce but we had close neighbors and it had a feel of living right in town. I missed the woods, no berry patches around to while the time away in. But soon we made new friends and learned to like our new town and school. The first new friend we made lived less than a block away and rode his bike over to see us right after we moved in. The only problem was we couldn't tell if it was a girl or a boy! We thought if we asked it's name we would be able to tell but the name "Mately" didn't give us a clue. Eventually though our new friend appeared wearing a dress, and at least we knew.
A lot of the time after we moved to Bruce we were without a car. This didn't bother us very much since we lived only a mile from town and we'd always done a lot of walking. This was before the days when it was unsafe to accept rides from strangers and we often took rides with perfectly good results. One night Clarence, Anita, Dick (he had come home from his job in Maywood) Joe Garbitz and I had walked over to Margie Cooper's which was close to four miles away. We had gone swimming at Trails End, a 4-H camp close to Cooper's. One the way home, a couple of fellows who had been fishing stopped and offered us a ride. There were so many of us we were packed in like sardines! But we were tired and happy to get a ride. Anita climbed in first. I piled in and plopped on her lap. She began squirming around, "Elaine, get up", she kept whispering. I couldn't get up, packed into the car as we were, and I didn't want these men to hear her complaining when they had been kind enough to offer us a ride. But Anita kept squirming around and whispering "Elaine, get up." All I did was nudge her to be quiet. As we got out of the car at our driveway and thanked the men who gave us the lift Anita was still trying to get our attention. "I've been trying to tell you ever since we got in the car that I was sitting on their fishing tackle and it's hooked onto the seat of my pants." She turned around as she spoke and sure enough there was all their fishing tackle hooked onto her pants. The boys tried to unfasten it but to no avail. The only way to get it out was to cut a hole in the seat of her pants. I'm sure the kind men who gave us the ride always believed we rewarded their kindness by stealing their fishing tackle.
I graduated from high school in the spring of '38 and by this time the depression seemed pretty much over and although we never suffered greatly during this time, trouble of another kind was brewing and our family was to know the greatest anguish we had ever had to endure. Clarence enlisted in the Marines in the fall of 1940. I was working in Chicago at the time and Mother wrote such a heartbreaking letter that I decided to go home. I don't know what I thought I could do but somehow I felt we would all need to stick together at this time. Boys we had all known were either being drafted or enlisting and the news was not very good. Clarence didn't get to come home after boot camp and six weeks after he left home he was shipped to Shanghai, China. Anita graduated from high school the following spring and Harry gave her a bike for a graduation gift. That bike carried her many hundreds of miles over the next few years. And I bet if you asked her what was one of the most useful gifts she ever received she would list that bike very near at the top.
I was married that same summer and all of us were trying to carryon as though war was only a rumor and would never happen to us. That fall we thought they were pulling the Marines out of Shanghai and bringing them home. That's all we ever knew until late 1945. On December 7, 1941 the Japanese dropped a bomb on Pearl Harbor - and the United States was at war. Mother took the news very hard and by the end of the month we were afraid we might lose her. She was hospitalized with a severe diabetic attack.
Dick and Anita were the ones who were home during the war years and they both did everything they could to help Mother and Father through their terrible ordeal. Mother was never completely well and they took such good care of her. In April of '42 word came to the folks... Clarence was missing in action. "Missing in action" could mean any of a number of things. If there was one thing our family always tried hard to be, it was optimistic.
Although Mother worried constantly (I guess we all did really), it was hardest on her, and yet, none of us gave up hope. Anita gave as much of her time and energy to helping Mother as much as possible. But she also worked in town. She was very well thought of and knew about everyone in the surrounding territory. She always came home from work with news of what was going on to share with Mother. Dick and Anita were Mother's lifeline during this time and they kept home a lively, happy place to be, in spite of the worry and fear.
I had two babies by now. Sharon was born in May of '43 and Donny was born in July of '45. Shortly after Donny was born the news we all had so anxiously been waiting for came. The war was over!! I wish I could have been at the folk's place when the joyous news broke. But I guess Mother and Anita threw their arms around each other and wept for joy. Shortly came word that Clarence had been prisoner in Japan but was now on his way home. It had been a long forty months during which we knew nothing except that he was missing. And it was a long wait before he finally arrived home. But on the 17th of October, 1945 in the middle of the night I heard a knock at the door and a few minutes later I heard Harold say "I know who you are." He had never met Clarence before, but who else would appear at our door at 4:00 in the morning wearing a Marine's uniform? I dressed myself and the children and rode home with him. Harold stayed to do the chores and joined us later. That was a day to remember!
Clarence confided to me that he had brought his closest buddy home with him. "I brought him for Anita," he told me. I met the buddy a few minutes later and I couldn't help hoping it would work between him and Anita. He seemed like he belonged in our family. We had such a wonderful day that day. We laughed and talked and sang and ate. It was a day to remember and relive again and again.
As every member of our family came to know Evan Bunn, this buddy of Clarence's, they all said the same thing. If I could choose a mate for Anita from all the fellows I've ever known, it would be Evan. He and Anita were made for each other and it was the most romantic courtship I ever saw. They were married in November and I was delighted to be my sister's Matron of Honor.
They've had a wonderful forty years together. As in every life, there have been some heartaches, some pain. But there has been great joy and great blessings, too. They have had a lot of fun together and I've shared a lot of that with them. They would be the first to say that God has richly blessed them and their marriage. They've had some health problems, but still their health has been good enough that they could call it a blessing. They have a wonderful family, children and grand- children, as well as their fine children-in-law. But most of all they have the firm conviction that they have always striven to be obedient Christians and the best example to all of us that they could possibly be. I've always considered them more than a sister and brother-in-law, but my very dearest friends, someone I could count on to be there for me whenever I've needed them. I would very much like to be able to do as much for them. And as that song I started out with ends...
Note: Elaine told me at one time, to be sure to write in here that the first time Evan saw Anita, she was in a bathrobe. Clarence
I have been asked to write some of my past life of which I don't see of any interest... but here goes!
As my parents happened to be in South Bend, Indiana on a job for the government in a lens factory when I made the entry to this fabulous world and shrieked my head off. (Well, almost.) I received a hernia and also a ruptured navel. So enough of noise, we then moved to Ladysmith, Wisconsin where Dad was employed by the papermill. We must have stayed some time as both Evelyn and Ned were born there. I haven't any recollection of my life there, it is so hazy, I see no point writing something that might have happened somewhere else. Then we moved to Iron Mountain, Michigan. We lived in an unfinished house as I remember. It had no siding, just tar paper on the outside. We then went to Garden Village school where a bully always layed for me to whip me. But good old June, my older sister, always took care of him until one time Mom sent me to the store. No June, so as careful as I was, I got tracked and to my surprise (and the other fellows, too), I whipped him. Since that time Arnie and me were pals.
It seemed to me that I was always going to the river and walking and working in the woods. That to me was the best place to be. I spent my time climbing trees, bluffs, railroad trestles or tracking animals. Then we moved to what was called Breen Addition and we moved across the street from the Capital Theater. It was quite a challenge to sneak in but even that early in life, I always got caught. Why couldn't he catch me going in instead of coming out? He said, "Now you saw the picture, sweep the floor." It must of took three hours! I never tried that again. So another bully tacked me right on the front lawn. My dad must have talked to him because when I came out from under the bed, he was gone. So I felt real big and he was nowhere around. Then Dolly and June started piling on me. I took them both and all of a sudden this bully jumped on me. It was like putting a worm on a hook. I went wild! I must have got a good hold because my Dad lifted me off and I wouldn't let go. I told him if I did, he might come back so the kid promised to let me alone after that. This boy became one of my friends and he insisted on me joining the Boy Scouts. Marshall and I were a good team in all events. I had gotten up to Life Scout and it made me feel worthwhile. Then we moved three blocks east of the theater. I was about twelve years old then. This was a little house but we had a chicken farmer next door and a garage where I was able to get work on Saturdays. Then I guess I began selling papers, books, etc. It seemed I was always walking. I sure wanted a bike but I didn't know how to save. The little money I had went in the bank. Then the bank folded and I lost my money. As I think of it now, I had enough ($300) to buy a bike but Dad said, "Save for future education." I remember when the chicken farmer sold out and dressed out his hens, I had a chance to help out. We got the giblets and was that a treat... my first job! So when the Smallis left, the Sodevmarks moved in and they had two or three girls, no boys. What a bummer that was. The oldest, Rita, always leaned on the gate of her yard until I would invite her over. Then she would come over and play. Of course, she couldn't jump from one limb to another. (I may have thought I was like Tarzan, but Rita was definitely not Jane) We had a vacant lot between our homes so we had holes all over it. Then I met up with Buzz Thompson where my Dad fixed guns for his Dad. Also, he had a still. I used to stay there summers to hoe corn and potatoes when I wasn't spending my summers with the relatives in Chetek, Wisconsin. The most fun times are when I stayed with Uncle Haps. His children were of the same ages, Clifford was the oldest, he was ten months younger. At gatherings the older people got Cliff and I in a wrestling match. I was always close. Then we were always running, it seemed that I would rather run than walk. Clifford and I went to the neighbors to get water and Cliff was in the lead when he hit the barbed wire and had a nasty scar on his cheek. I remember one summer when I was in Charles City, Iowa staying with Uncle Clifford, it was my job to watch the gates at threshing time but I had other things like petting horses and the hogs got into the corn. Grandpa boxed my ears and gave me a tongue lashing I never forgot. But we got the hogs out. Then one Sunday I went to the neighbors and before the day was over my thumb was shorter. It seems that things always went wrong for me. I know I was always warned about things but circumstances always made me forget. Like the one time I was told to leave the big door on the barn alone but when we were going to leave I left my jacket in the barn so I ran down to get it when the barn door came down on top of me. Somehow I got out al right. Another time in Iowa I was told to leave the sows alone but I just wanted to be friendly with the little pigs and the old sow put me up the wall of the old log house where my Dad was born. I was nine years old at the time. Getting back to events, after Buzz Thompson talked me into running away, we hopped a freight at Pimline and landed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We were taken off the train by a switchman and placed with authorities and wound up in the detention home for boys. We had to make our own beds, clean (sweep and scrub) our rooms, go to school and work on some kind of craft. They thought I should be a carpenter but I couldn't saw a board straight. We stayed there two weeks in November. One of the days was my birthday. On the next May 8, Harry Kerns talked me into going. Then we went west. On the road we hitch-hiked. It took us a, week to get to Barron, Wisconsin. Aunt Olive made us sit down and write letters home. Harry's folks told him to get home in three days or the sheriff would pick him up. My folks were glad to know I was safe and wished me well. That was the beginning of another life.
I stayed all summer with Aunt Olive and Uncle Glen Hoeft. In September I hired out to Clarence Christophenson in Sand Creek, Wisconsin. The mother had just died and the father was old. One brother, Conrad, was injured when he slipped on the ice pulling Clarence's car with a team of horses. Also, there was a girl (my age) named Pearl. She was Christophenson's daughter. She sure could cook. It wasn't what it was, it was the volume. I sure could eat. Many people marveled at the capacity. Then it was the outing with the dog and gun. I was in the woods every chance I got. The people were all Norwegians. I remember Pete's boys started school and didn't know any English. I worked for Henry Thompson for awhile and gained a whole lot of knowledge. Then with Jessie Larson, when Goldie of whom is my cousin (Aunt Olive's oldest girl). They lived in Burnett, Wisconsin. I stayed a year with them, at which time Dolly came to visit me. I tried cheese factory work but it was too confining. I wanted the outdoors, so I went to Watertown, Wisconsin with Bill Bock, stayed a year then back to Burnett and Alfred Luebkie. I stayed there until I left for the service. Rudolf was the boy. He had ahead injury in his youth. At the time, he was thirty-nine and his sister was forty-four. She always wanted me to take her to the show. Once I let her take. It seemed my mother was younger than she was but Alma though I was okay. I left the farm and went to Milwaukee, Wisconsin and stayed with my Aunt Ethel Gilette and Uncle Cecil. I went to enlist in the service and had to get a co-signer. No one would sign so I had to work until I was twenty-one years old. I enjoyed the family. I took the kids to the show every Saturday or Sunday. Then I had a chance to visit Dolly and John. I worked in a meat plant or butcher shop. I skinned cows, loaded coolers and cleaned up. I enjoyed some of it. Then the time came when I enlisted and I went to Chicago on a trial run. I could not read most of the numbers on the color chart but made it all right. The next two weeks were different. I then decided I had made a mistake. We had to wait until sixty men were present to establish a platoon. It seemed there would never be that many guys as dumb as I was, but then we made it and two more platoons since I went in. You see, they start in January with 111 and I was 1167. They had sixty-nine enlisted platoons in 1939. I felt that as I had to stay four years, I would try to make the best of it. I guess I wrote letters home. Then I got one from Uncle Bennie asking me to stay in the States until he could contact me. So when boot camp was over we had options on placements the platoon leader and the sea scouts tried to get me to stay. I volunteered for Hothorn, Nevada and got it until some of the boys got fixed with misconduct and myself and four others were sent to China. I was picked for M.P. (Military Police) on the ship before I landed. Then I contacted impetigo and had to go to the hospital. I went to the M.P.'s for four months and didn't like it. They had only one people to pick on and I had different feelings. I volunteered for Warden jobs so I could be easier on the prisoners. I then went to B. Company, First Battalion. Then I met Clarence Clough who became my brother-in-law and very best friend. We have had some good times but to live next to boys who are wrecking their health and not be able to do anything about it. I guess I have to be thankful I was a health nut. I felt that since this body was to last a lifetime I had better take care of it. I then applied for a driver's license and got it so I drove truck to change the guard.
Then I went to D. Company. There I was with Charlie Snyder who I met on the boat coming over to China. He was in the 68th Platoon and was quite a joker. I had to watch him all the time. I had a lot of friends. Some made it back and a lot never did. I was with the 4th Marines when they evacuated Shanghai, China. We landed in Olongapo, P.I. on December 2, 1941 and established our camp. A few days later war was declared and we all manned our posts. As I was in a light machine gun company I had to go in the crows nest of Old Iron Sides Admiral Perry's flagship. It seemed totally hopeless as the planes came over and we had only 30 caliber bullets. When we got some 50 caliber bullets we had them evened out. It gave a person a different outlook on things with an even keel. It has been some experience when we started over the hill enroute to Corregidor. Once there it didn't take long to realize that this was the last stop. Then the planes came over. The sky was black with planes. I had a 50-caliber machine gun. Some of the planes went down but some of the guns and guys were knocked out. I was lucky. Nothing too serious until we got to our defense area. We were under the big tunnel and the U.S. put an 8-inch rifle on the hill to shoot at many. When the Japs got the big gun, the U.S. planted a Pom Pom gun. It is an 8-barrel gun, 4 inch. Then the shells started dropping again. It was all we could do to keep our sanity and find something to do. It was a work detail that we were building gun emplacements along the beach and had two guns (machine 30 caliber) in when the air raid horn sounded. Looking up we located the planes and they were overhead of us when I saw the bottom bay open and silver bombs come down. I dove into the first gun emplacement and something told me to get out, so I dove in the next on. Then the bombs hit. When it was over we looked for Gun 111 and there was no trace of it. I got hurt that time but thought nothing of it. Then the same bombs dropped on a land mine field and caught the grass on fire, so we went to put out the fire. That's when I got an award for a silver star, also a purple heart. It was a short while later that the Japs overtook us and our commander surrendered the island so the fighting was over for us... so we thought. Another war was to begin, the battle of survival. I suppose it is a good thing that we are not aware of any more than the day we live as I think we couldn't take it if we knew the days came and went as we were trying to adapt to our environment. Boyd Gallatte got mountain fever or Rheumatic fever and all his joints swelled so he couldn't move. Then his buddy took care of him until he also got sick, and then I took care of Jim. I learned fast what I had to do and did it. I used two towels tied together to lift him to wash and wipe him. If I didn't wash him everyday he would stink to heights above. When he was getting better, we went to Palawan, P.I. (north of Bornea) to build an airfield out of banana groves and Jungle. It was, there that I contacted malaria. I had high fever so that the doctor and his helper sponged me until my temperature went down. After that, it was one day to work and one day sick, so the (the Japs) took me to Bilibed, Manila for the quinine treatment which consisted of 25cc, three times daily in the vein for three weeks. Then we went to Cabanatuan. There, after a time, Clarence Clough and Roy Henderson came and we were together again. So of the five of us that were together in Palawan, Rufus Smith and Glenn McDale were left and later had some great experiences and we then went to Japan where Clarence and I were in the copper mine at Matesishima for four months. Then I went to Hatashie until the end. At this time I have had some great trials and trauma of which I tried to keep myself going, even when I couldn't walk and the Jap doctor went to Tokyo to get medicine. The most excitement was when the Navy planes flew over our camp and dropped sea bags with food, cigarettes, soap, etc. Then we went to Tokyo to get back to our own people. It was there I started the long road taking on pounds. I had been so long without a meal that I had a hard time getting satisfied. I could get full and not satisfied so I volunteered for ship's helper and the cooks took good care of me. I went from 120 pounds to 216 pounds in thirty days. Then came the ordeal of my life. What was I to do or become? I tried to perform the duties of the Marines so hoping I could stay in and go for thirty years. But it was, at times, impossible so I had to give it up. I thought I could come back and get lost, but Clarence Clough had other plans. How God works in man is something to behold. First Clarence bought a car. He didn't have enough money so I became his partner. We then drove to his home in Bruce, Wisconsin. Then we went to my folks in Iron Mountain, Michigan. It was two or three days with the Cloughs that I had the feeling of importance or as one of the family. So Clarence and his mother and I went to see my folks. I had learned later that my father had died the same day I was taken prisoner, so my mother was very disappointing to me and my thoughts were of going back in the service when Clarence sat and talked about things that I wasn't aware of. Before much time went by I had committed myself to a great ordeal and then another phase in my life began. I sure didn't know what life was all about. We got married and things began to happen. First, it was hard for me to adapt to our new life. For about a year I came and went at will and my bride had a lot to put up with, but God made her strong and she was able to cope with me. But when our first boy came into our lives, that was the most anyone can get out of life. The thought came to me that the doctors at Guam told me that I only eight years left to live. So I tried to get a lot done and leave something for my wife and boy. Then as time went, so did the eight years and now I have survived forty years and eleven children of which Bennie is awaiting me in Heaven. The rest are well adjusted and on their own and have families, except the two youngest boys and they are going to school to better their lot. I have gone through many years of pain and frustrations so I tried to teach the boys at an early age to be self-sufficient so they could take their responsibilities when they came up. I don't know how the boys and girls feel about the way I raised them, but it was my best and I prayed a lot to God for guidance. I sure am proud of my family and still feel that they are the best in the world. I pray now as always that God's Will will be done and that it will be for the betterment of my family. I so have wanted the best for them, but as I remember back, I didn't do it.
So with lots of loving respect, I leave you all in God's hands.
Evan
I asked Bill Bunn to write something about how they built the church at Minneapolis. This feat seemed marvelous to me. It was done almost completely by volunteer labor. It is not a small structure and anyone can see that the workmanship was beautifully done. I was impressed and I'm sure many others will find Bill's account interesting.
Construction of the Church at Minneapolis
In March of 1984 the congregation decided to look into the possibility and probability of building a new church building. A committee was selected to put together the size and cost estimates, and to begin looking for possible building sites. The reports from these members came back reasonably acceptable. The congregation decided to proceed with a market evaluation of our present building. The results of this information were that if we wanted to sell within a reasonably short time (one year or less) we should list at one price; if we wanted more time, list at a higher price. Seeing as how we had no building plans, no building site, and basically no money, we sure were in no hurry to sell our building. The congregation authorized the elected members to list the building, prepare plans and present building sites. The building went on the market in November of 1984 at the higher price; and so began efforts of the result that we all are so thankful for now.
Our building was sold and we were out of it by the middle of July, 1985. We started renting school buildings to hold our meetings in and continued this until we moved into our own twenty-eight months later. The building committee and Board of Trustees met many times with several architects, suppliers, subcontractors and so forth. I would like to add here that a building committee of seven members was chosen by the congregation. I remember well the first meeting we had. I think we were all overwhelmed by the enormity of this project. I know I was. But here again, we experienced the blessing of God. Our dear preacher, Gordon, had retired not long before this from the 3M Company and was willing to help and guide us in all matters. He became a regular pillar in our meetings. I don't want it to sound like seven or eight men were responsible for this structure being built. They're not. It was a one-minded effort by the entire congregation and all hands were needed, and by the grace of God it was a success.
We began construction on a site in Minnetonka in July of 1986. I recall a comment made by an excavator to one of the older Christians. He said the older ones were crazy, that for the first three weeks everyone would be out getting in each other's way, then after that there would be a half dozen or so older guys trying to finish the project. This happens often in the world; this man had seen it many times. This same man was back towards the end of our project doing some grading work for our parking lot, with a different mind. I believe he was amazed, as were many that we dealt with. By the end of July we were ready to start pouring footings. As I recall, we poured one hundred twenty-eight yards of concrete. This building is masonry with steel structure. The foundation went in quite fast as we have many masons in the congregation. Starting here with the foundation, this building was over-built, as the building inspectors said. After the foundation was in, we installed the support steel for the main floor, and the pre-stressed concrete plank for the main floor was installed by the supplier. The fall weather was still holding so we decided to put brick on the basement walls that were exposed. We also put in the block for the stair wells. Before cold weather hit, we polyed the main floor and covered it with hay to keep the basement from freezing. We had a mild winter that year and in March of 1987 we began construction again. After a time off the Christians were as eager and diligent as ever. Blocks, bricks, steel, sheet rock, plumbing, electrical, heating, and many other things were going on and in. As we were to host the national Christmas meetings in December, we had to make a decision whether to try to rent a facility or to try to have our own building completed in time. The Christians decided that to have the meetings in our own building would be a good incentive to complete it. All hands were still coming forward to do whatever they could do, from the older ones that showed us younger ones how to work, to the children who so willingly did what they could. It's hard to try to think of individual events of special interest because the entire project was an amazing, special time for all of us. There were times when my faith was more lacking and the older Christians would encourage me to remember that all things are possible with God. I know that and have experienced His love and power. I believe He even worked in the hearts of those on the outside; many of them were a great help to us.
We moved into the main floor and began holding meetings around November l5th, 1987. We still had much work and expense to go into the basement. The Christians continued to sacrifice their time and means, and two or three days before the meetings began we had that last service for two of our traveling companions, Bob Stewart and Art Hiivala. On that same day we received the final inspections needed, so we could use the entire building. This was around the 2Oth of December, 1987.
The building will legally seat one thousand eighty people in the sanctuary and balcony with dining seating of about three hundred seventy five. I marvel yet, how well the construction went, but I shouldn't because I know that with God, all things are possible.
I think the following two poems were written by Beverly Sterud Thoreson for John and Lyda's Golden Wedding Anniversary.
Raymond B. Clough
If my memory serves me right, this was written by John Clough with his students when, he was teaching at a school for Indian children in Oklahoma.
Raymond B. Clough
This is the scientific agriculturist proprogating has maze to provide sustainance for the chanticleer whose matutinal manipulations aroused from a somnolent condition the sacerdotal personage whose hirsute appendages were respectfully abridged and removed that officiated at the matrimonial ceremony of the dilapidated tatterdemalion that vociferously osculated the useful specimen of femininity all forsaken and solitary that successfully extracted the lacteal fluid from the mammory glands of the bovine with the corrugated and irregularity contracted frontal excretions that perpendicularity elevated the misguided canine that harassed and intimidated the enterprising feline that victoriously captured the depredating rodent that consumed for its' nutrition the fermented saccharin preparation deposited for future reference in the habitable domicile fabricated by Jack.
This is one of the stories (poems) that John Clough told us when we were k