Circle of life

My grandmother, Julie Jeppesen was fiteenth of 16 children.  The townspeople  were so poor that her father, the shoemaker, got paid in fish, and Julie worked as a mother's helper at the age of 10. Her oldest brother inherited the shop, and most of the rest emigrated to the United States and Canada. Julie Jeppesen and her youngest sister, Helga, left their home town of Esbjerg, Denmark on a ship bound for the United States in 1912.  Helga was almost turned back for health reasons, but lived to reach her 90's. They said the sailors were very nice to them and let them come out on deck, even though they traveled by steerage.  They arrived in Ellis Island and traveled by train to Minneapolis, where they met their older sister, Christine.  She and her husband had preceeded them to Minnesota and sponsored them.

Julie went to work at the hospital laundry on Mounds Boulevard (which is no longer there), and later married a cousin, Walter Jeppesen, who was a second generation immigrant.  Their only child was my mother, Vera.  Walter was an electrician by trade. He wired his mother's house during the early days of electricity. During the depression he was a a self-taught elevator maintenance man, and  my grandparents moved out to Wayzata, which at that time was a rural area.  They kept a cow and chickens and gardened to stretch out grandpa's meager salary.  As was the custom during those days before anti-freeze, they kept their car up on blocks during the winter.

After Walter retired, I used to love to visit my grandparents in Daytona Beach, Florida.  There's a photo of me and my little sister in a wading pool. But Julie was homesick for her friends and family in Minnesota.  When Walter was diagnosed with bladder cancer, he agreed, "I guess the doctors in Minnesota are just as good."  They returned to Minneapolis and Julie lived there for the rest of her life.

Grandma was a pleasant woman who had many friends and was a great hostess.  She was also very astute and determined.  She invested her money wisely, and had some to hand down to further generations.  She was 97 when she died, not too many months after Helga.

Because jobs were scarce when she graduated from high school, Vera went to college to become a social worker.  She met my father, Bruce, at a political campaign.  He was getting his doctorate in Electrical Engineering at the University of Minnesota.  About a year and a half after I was born, we left for Utah State University in Logan, Utah, where I grew up. 

 Twenty two years of subzero winters convinced me to head to the University of Texas at Arlington.  I met my husband, George in Arlington, and swore I would never return to Minnesota.  But life has a funny way of throwing curve balls.  After working a few minimum wage jobs, I put out my resume, and lo and behold, Brainerd State Hospital was hiring master's degree psychologists.  So I followed grandmother's example and moved back to the frozen tundra.  Since I was pregnant at the time, George joked that I was "coming home to spawn"!  Our children were born here, and our son and his new bride have also settled down in Brainerd.