Memorial Day - A Time To Remember

Across the Fence #496

When I think of Memorial Day, I associate it with remembering all the servicemen and women who have died. For the majority of Americans it will be a Monday holiday when they don’t have to work. It’s a time for family outings, cookouts, and relaxing. Some people will spend time in cemeteries planting flowers on family members graves.

This year I won’t be giving any speeches to groups on Memorial Day. For too many years I’ve been a speaker at Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day programs and have declined several invitations this year. This year I will accompany the Westby VFW on Monday morning as we go to cemeteries around the Westby area and do a rifle salute to those veterans who are no longer with us. It’s the least I can do to remember and honor fellow veterans.

Memorial Day has also been a time for us to remember family members by planting flowers. I learned the importance of that by accompanying my parents when I was young. It also helped me know and appreciate my ancestors.

Many years ago my mother wanted to go for a ride on Wang Road and the ridge where she grew up, and then down in the Kickapoo Valley area to Bloomingdale. She wanted to show us where she had gone to church when she was young. I’d never been to the Bloomingdale Church and cemetery before that time. This was before I became interested in genealogy and didn’t realize Bloomingdale’s importance to our family history.

My mother was still in good health at the time and could walk around. She wanted me to know where some of my ancestors were buried. She showed us an old tombstone. It contained names that I’d never heard of before. On one side it said Anne Pederson Korsveien (1802–1892). The other side of the tombstone had Agnethe Andersdatter Korsveien (1827-1912), Anne’s daughter. My mother said they were my great, great great, and great, great grandmothers on her father’s side (Oscar Hanson).

Since that time, we’ve visited the cemetery many times. It had been many years since anyone had left a flower there, so Linda and I bring flowers each year. If it wasn’t for the lives of these two women, I wouldn’t be here. Since that first visit to their graves, I’ve learned their story and they didn’t have an easy life. Annie and her family traveled from Norway to the Coon Prairie area in 1854, only to find out Annie’s husband, who had gone ahead to establish a home for them, had been killed by lightning a month earlier. That was a tough beginning to a new life in this country. I didn’t want them to be forgotten. The least we can do is remember them with a flower. 

This year I’ll also remember several friends and relatives who died recently. When you live in small town, rural America, you know a lot of people. That means you attend a lot of visitations and funerals. During a short period we lost nine friends and relatives. You not only know the person, but in most cases you know many of the family members. Some of them were from my parent’s generation, who I had known since I was young. But there was also Hjordis Helgestad, a classmate from high school, who was related to me. I was a pallbearer at her funeral. Death gets very personal when someone your age dies. It reminds us that we aren’t going to live forever and we better make good use of the time we have remaining. I’ll miss her this year during Westby’s Syttende Mai. We were always next to each other in the Heritage Tent. She did her Hardanger embroidery and I’d do Norwegian folk art wood carving. Norwegian heritage was important to both of us. Her father grew up on a neighboring farm to my maternal grandmother along Lake Mjøsa in Norway.

Another relative was Merlin Rudie, 90. My great grandfather and his grandfather were brothers. My great grandfather kept the Sherpe farm name from Norway and his grandfather dropped it and went by Hanson. Their father was Hans Hanson Skjerpe. Many from that first generation in America didn’t think they could use their Norwegian farm name here. It gets very confusing when searching for your ancestral line. Merlin’s wife, Lorraine, died three months earlier. 

Randolph (Rand) Constalie, 94, died. He shared many of his writings with me over the years. I had the pleasure of interviewing him a couple years ago for an Across the Fence video program on our local channel. He was a brilliant man, full of life, full of curiosity, and always searching for answers to life’s hard questions, right up to the end. He was a kindred spirit and I will miss him.

There was also Harlan Fremstad, who I have known since I was young. We are related to the Fremstad family. I sometimes think I’m related to half the people in the Westby area. 

Alden Olson, Mary Ann Ghelf, and Sherman Erickson were three more people we knew who died in April. Our long-time family friend, Lincoln Stafslien, died in January.  

This Memorial Day we’ll remember those people and all the other friends and relatives who went before them. They were part of our lives and part of who we are today.

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