Core of Conviction : My Story (9781101563571) Read online

  Still, the celestial fire of freedom was sparked within Melchior. He and Martha agreed that they wanted a better life for their five children; that was the most important thing. And if that meant crossing the ocean, traveling to what Norwegians were to call Vesterheim—the western home—well, that’s what they would do.

  Indeed, all across Europe, striving people—the “huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,” in the immortal words inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty—had the same idea of seeking a better life. They were coming to America.

  In 1857 Melchior sold the farm, along with everything else the family owned, to buy passage on a ship to journey across the Atlantic. There were five children: Gjertru, Halvor, Elin, Monsine, and Ingeborg Marie. But when the Monssons arrived at the dock, the captain looked at Halvor—my great-great-grandfather—and declared that he was an adult and would have to pay full fare. Halvor was only eleven, but, taking after his father, he was tall and looked much older. The Monssons didn’t have any extra money for the additional fare; they had spent everything they had on the tickets.

  It was a heart-wrenching dilemma. The farm had been sold; there was nothing anywhere in the Sogn region for the family to go back to. So Melchior made a painful decision. He told Halvor that he would have to walk back to the old village, hoping that someone would take him in so he wouldn’t starve. Someday, the father pledged, they would earn enough money to bring him to America. But not now.

  As a mother of five, I pause over that story, because it’s impossible for me to imagine being cruelly separated from one of our sons like that. The pain that Martha Monsson must have felt at that moment still lingers in my soul.

  But then, just at the moment when the ship was about to push off, the heart of the captain softened and he took pity on the Monssons, saying, “Oh, I guess the boat won’t sink if there’s one more on board. Hop on!” The boy-man scrambled onto the ship like a jackrabbit. Hallelujah! The family was reunited.

  Yet the Monssons’ arduous journey was just beginning. In those days, a passage across the Atlantic Ocean took at least two months. Arriving in Canada, the Monssons next had to spend six weeks traveling overland, carrying their belongings from Quebec all the way to Dane County, Wisconsin, where a Norwegian family was waiting to host them. When the Monsson family finally arrived, they dropped down in front of the house in sheer exhaustion. The welcoming family rushed out to give them milk and bread. Thinking back on this kindness, I recall the biblical injunction: Love the stranger, because you were once a stranger yourself. Miraculously, all seven Monssons had survived the long trip from Norway.

  Soon these strangers—or rather, these new Americans—were back on their feet, although fully aware that their trek was not over. They then chopped wood and built a simple wagon that could also be used as a raft to take them across the mighty Mississippi River. From De Soto, Wisconsin, they crossed the Father of Waters into Lansing, Iowa, where they looked forward to a homestead of their own. Soon the new “Iowegians”—that is, Iowans from Norway—had simplified their name to “Munson.”

  My goal here is not to tell the whole story of their remarkable lives, nor those of all my other ancestors. The saga of the Norwegian Americans was better told by the novelist Ole Edvart Rölvaag. In his many works, the most famous of which is Giants in the Earth, Rölvaag describes the heroism of those early pioneers, who survived snow, drought, hunger, and loneliness to achieve the upper-midwestern version of the American Dream.

  I am proud of my sturdy forebears. I took Norwegian in college but never had the time really to gain proficiency in the language; to this day, that’s a regret. One legacy, though, is the way I pronounce my vowels, like the O and A in “Minnesota,” which comes out as “Minne-so-oh-tuh-uh.” But to my mother, who sang Norwegian folk songs to us as kids way back when, I sound just fine.

  Of course, I realize that few people anywhere had it easy when they first came to America. Every family has great stories like mine—because back then, you didn’t make it if you couldn’t overcome adversity. Whether in a rural area, a small town, or a big city, every American can take pride in ancestors who possessed the grit and ambition to sacrifice much and to achieve much.

  One great source of strength for many of the early pioneers was faith. As the psalmist tells us, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth him out of them all.” Most of the Norwegians were Lutherans; their faith in God was indeed a mighty fortress. Bolstered by their beliefs, the Munsons, Ambles, Johnsons, and Thompsons smoothed the path for those that followed.

  Through the hard times and the good, those early Iowans always worked purposefully. They planned for success, never for failure, and that faith in success kept them going. The first permanent settlement in what is now Black Hawk County began in 1845. The early settlers grew corn and wheat; they also harvested honey and syrup. The very next year, they built a school, because they knew that education was important for their young people. No bureaucrat in Des Moines or Washington, D.C., had to tell them that truth; they simply knew the value not only of reading, writing, and arithmetic but also of learning civic republicanism. And of course, they knew the supreme importance of reading and knowing the Bible.

  Indeed, within a few years, the pioneers had created a functioning government. The first taxes were levied in 1853; the county collected a grand total of $873.08. As a former tax lawyer—and always a thrifty taxpayer—I appreciate that sort of precision when it comes to using other people’s money, down to the penny. By contrast, in today’s Washington, a billion dollars is counted as a mere rounding error. Good government should be a closely monitored tool for the people, of course, not a plaything for the powerful elite. Two years later, in 1855, Waterloo was designated the Black Hawk County seat, the home of courts and public administration.

  These details of self-government are important, because we should understand that the early settlers were seeking freedom and order, not anarchy. As soon as they could, they established representative institutions to provide the responsible order that promotes both liberty and prosperity. They knew that they needed some government out there on the frontier, just not too much. And in their desire to keep government limited, they insisted that it be kept close to them, so that the humblest citizen could know that public servants were truly serving the public.

  Yes, these new Americans loved their new country and were eager to be part of its institutions. Indeed, as the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville observed in the early nineteenth century, Americans were not only joiners but also builders and creators. Every little Iowa town soon had not only schools but also libraries, auditoriums, and civic associations. Back in places such as Sogndal, people had been regarded by their rulers as merely peasants. Here in America, they were independent and proud citizens.

  And that pride manifested itself in patriotism. When the bugle sounded, Iowans answered the call. That same great-great-grandfather Halvor Munson—the tall one who almost didn’t get to leave Norway—was fifteen when the Civil War broke out. Halvor rushed to enlist, and because he was big, it was easy for him to join the army. The young soldier was sent west, spending the war years guarding U.S. forts out on the frontier.

  After the war, Halvor was demobilized and ended up coming home on a river raft. And who else was on the raft? None other than Jesse James and his gang. That notorious criminal crew, in fact, invited Halvor to join them; he declined. Yet he did agree to play poker with James and his gang, and he won, of all things, a farm in Iola, Kansas. Who knew that you could win at poker with Jesse James and live? For a while, Halvor traveled back and forth between Kansas and Iowa, but Iowa was always his home. A true patriot, rightly proud of his military service, Halvor carried Old Glory in Fourth of July parades for many years thereafter. Once I counted two dozen Munsons who served during the Civil War—I claim them all!

  They were good people, these folks—the Munsons, Ambles
, Johnsons, and Thompsons—but they were never rich. That’s what Waterloo was like: a town of workers. Iowa started out as a farm state where people mostly grew and ate their own food, but in the late nineteenth century, a new kind of economy was emerging. The big cities in the East were filling up with immigrant workers and their families, and all were hungry for food grown in the Midwest.

  So as America grew, Iowa and the Midwest became export oriented, and the region prospered along with the nation as a whole. Rail lines snaked through the land, carrying foodstuffs back to the East and returning with consumer products from, perhaps, the Sears Roebuck catalog.

  Indeed, my mother taught us that Iowa was the proud breadbasket of the world. Our whole family loved the Hawkeye State; we were schooled in the virtues of our hardworking heritage and equally determined, in our own time, to make future generations proud of us.

  But first the crops and the livestock had to be processed—transformed into bread and meat. Iowans raised millions of hogs on their farms; the animals were then taken by rail to slaughterhouses in cities such as Waterloo. And there, on the banks of the Cedar River, the Rath Packing Company stood guard over the growing metropolis. Rath, founded in 1891, grew into a huge complex, a maze of red-brick buildings running a half mile along the waterfront; it was said to be the largest single meatpacker in the world.

  It was rough work—dangerous, heavy machinery clanking and whirling around as workers cut the carcasses into ham, sausage, bacon, and lard. Nothing was wasted. They used the hides for leather and the hair for upholstery or insulation; the bones, hooves, and horns were boiled down into gelatin. They used, according to the old joke, “everything but the squeal.” And then from that food factory, the Illinois Central Railroad carried these pork products to Chicago and beyond.

  Yes, it was rough work, but it provided a living for thousands. In its heyday, Rath was a place where men could work for a lifetime and support a large family. One of my grandfathers, my mother’s father, worked at Rath for years. In fact, he died inside the plant of a heart attack, just as he was pulling on his boots at the beginning of a shift.

  Women worked there too. My grandfather’s widow labored at the same plant for many years after his death. It’s hard for me to imagine what it must have been like to go work every morning in the place where her husband had passed away. My grandmother was a tiny little woman, but she moved around huge trays of bacon—that was her job, and she did it.

  In 1948 a major strike changed everything, and in the next few decades the plant began to decline. In 1980 the company, in desperation, turned the factory over to the union; in 1985, after a few more faltering years, the plant closed for good. At present, the city of Waterloo owns the plant, which is included on the National Register of Historic Places. Today there is no bustle and no jobs—just empty buildings holding powerful memories within their age-stained walls. Indeed, across America, we now see far too many sad and forlorn sites, all of which could tell similar tales of faded industrial greatness. Very sad.

  In those meatpacking days, Waterloo was a tough town full of tough men. Tough men who never ran from a fight. And when the real fight came, Waterloo men were ready.

  So we come to the legendary Sullivan brothers, Waterloo men whose heroic spirit abides with us to this day. My father always spoke with pride when he told us the story of the courage and sacrifice of this marvelous family.

  Back in the 1930s, many members of the Sullivan clan worked at Rath. But when a friend of the family’s died at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the five Sullivan brothers—Albert, Francis, George, Joseph, and Madison—all enlisted in the navy. But they joined under one condition: that they be allowed to serve together. One of the brothers wrote, “We will make a team together that can’t be beat.”

  So they all served on the USS Juneau, a light cruiser fighting in the Pacific. In November 1942, a Japanese torpedo struck their ship. Almost the entire crew died, including all five Sullivans.

  Hollywood made a movie about their lives, including scenes in Waterloo as the five sons were growing to manhood. Watching the film on TV years later, I still remember the scene inside the Sullivan household, as a little flag featuring five blue stars rests in the window, signifying the five sons away in military service. Then comes the fateful knock on the door. The women at home know what it means—bad news from Uncle Sam. “Which one?” they ask. And the representative from the Navy Department answers grimly, “All of them.” At the end of the movie, we see the five Sullivans striding into heaven, trailing clouds of glory on their path to the Almighty. The Sullivans were home.

  Most remarkably, the rest of the Sullivan family—their five blue stars now turned to gold—became active in war-bond drives, raising money for the ships and other weaponry needed to avenge their sons’ deaths and win the war. Two navy ships since then have been named The Sullivans; in Waterloo today, the Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center dominates the downtown.

  Five children taken away. It’s hard enough for me to picture Martha Monsson thinking she would be separated from one child, Halvor, on that dock in Norway. Now to think of all five gone. As the mother of five healthy biological children, I have had occasion to reflect on what it would mean to lose any one of them, let alone five. Others have faced that same sort of painful reality, of course, and sought to make sense of such loss.

  I learned of a letter written by Abraham Lincoln to a Mrs. Bixby in 1864, after the president saw a military report that all five of her sons had died fighting in the Civil War. “I pray,” Lincoln wrote, “that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.”

  Later it was discovered that three of Mrs. Bixby’s sons were only missing, not dead. But the Sullivans were real. All five gone. Their sacrifice was a demonstration of the Holy Scriptures: “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Sometimes, I have realized, no matter what the risk, no matter what the odds, it is necessary to fight. And to take comfort in the faith that a grateful nation, and a Heavenly Father, judges our sacrifice worthy.

  As a kid in the living room listening to the grownups talk about World War II, I heard nightmarish tales of death camps in Europe, where millions of Jews had been killed. I remember thinking to myself, How could people be so cruel, so horrible? In my young mind, I could not plumb the depths of absolute evil; only years later could I fathom the full extent of the Holocaust. Then and now, we must ask ourselves: Are we ready to confront evil? Will we seek to look the other way, or will we stand up and fight? These are enduring questions for Americans to answer.

  In the fifties and sixties, every adult had a World War II memory. Some were tragic, but others were poignant and sweet. My grandmother recalled receiving a Western Union telegram telling her that her son would soon be in New York City, as he was being shipped overseas to the battlefront. She always kept her spare change in a big glass jar, and when she received the telegram, she scraped together nickels and dimes to buy a train ticket to New York, fearful that it might be the last time she would see him. Happily, her son came back home.

  World War II was only history to me, but my parents lived through it.

  My mother was born in Mason City, Iowa, in 1931. Yes, that was the hometown of Meredith Willson, the creator of The Music Man, who modeled his fictional “River City” after Mason City. And yes, one of my aunts was named Marian and worked as a librarian, just like the famous character in the famous musical. But for the family, Mason City was a hardscrabble place. Marian’s father, my grandfather, was an alcoholic who lost his butcher shop during the Depression; for a time his wife, my grandmother, worked as a cleaning lady for that same library. Indeed, back then, the Johnson family survived on food scraps such as neck-bone soup. That was the way it was ba
ck then.

  And that’s how my mother, Arlene Jean Johnson, the seventh and youngest child, grew up. When she was still in elementary school, the Johnsons moved to Waterloo, where things were a little better—but only a little. Jean, as she was called, grew up in a one-bedroom house with no indoor plumbing. The boys in the family, my uncles, had no choice but to leave home at age twelve or so, dropping out of school and looking for work. My mom and her two sisters, Marian and Bonnie, had to share a double bed, even as late as high school. They would steal each other’s bobby pins so they could pin their hair up nicely to look pretty for class.

  My mother got a big break in life when a Lutheran couple, O. K. and Malina Story, who did not themselves have children, fell in love with her. And why not? Jean was sweet and demure, a good little Norwegian girl, all blue eyes and yellow hair. So she stayed with them on their farm during summers, becoming an unofficial foster child. Jean helped out by working in the family’s kitchen, but then she was given a special opportunity: The Storys arranged for her to attend Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. Thanks to their Christian love and good-hearted charity—the Storys were a blessing, a true “point of light”—Jean was assured a better future.

  If little Jean was adorable, teenage Jean was beautiful—slim and cute, like a model or a movie star. Boys at East High School liked her; she always had dates. But there was one boy she really liked.

  That was David John Amble, born on a Minnesota farm in 1929, just days before the stock-market crash and the beginning of the Depression. When he was a baby, the family house burned down and the Ambles lost everything. These were hard times; nobody had much to spare. So the Ambles moved to Waterloo, where David’s father got a job at the Illinois Central rail yard, while his mother found work as a commercial seamstress sewing upholstery. I grew up visiting that old house they lived in, over on Lafayette Street; to say it was modest would be an understatement. The Ambles always had to scrimp, living on the first floor of their house with its one bedroom; they rented out the second floor. My dad too went to East High School, and he and Jean were soon an item.