Joy Neal Kidney's Blog, page 27

New Director for New Horizons Band, First Concert Open to the Public

Karla Killinger

“It’s the dawning of a New Horizon for Karla Killinger as she accepts the director position of New Horizons Band of Des Moines. This band has been performing for the past 20 years, sponsored by Rieman Music and under the baton of Ron Reickmann. Karla is honored to join this fine group.”

Ron Reickmann decked out for a Christmas concert.

So begins a Facebook posting by the band. “The idea for this New Horizons Band came from the New Horizons International Music Organization. New Horizons originated in 1991 in Rochester, NY, under the lead of Dr. Roy Ernst of Eastman School of Music. The motto of New Horizons is Music for Life. The benefits of participating in music are many. It offers intellectual challenge, socialization within a group, participation in events and continued learning.

Concert with a western theme.“There are more than 200 New Horizons musical organizations throughout the world. There are no tryouts or auditions, with ‘your best is good enough’. The band was designed to include those with little musical experience and those who stashed their instruments in their closets for ten to fifty years..“The Des Moines players are band directors, music teachers, doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, nurses, pastors, air traffic controllers, and many other professions.”—–Karla Killinger, a retired band and art teacher, is a third generation music educator. Her father was Karl Killinger..The first New Horizons Band Holiday Concert of the season is open to the public. This free concert is Thursday, November 30, 2023 @ 6:30PM at Immanuel United Methodist Church, 2900-49th Street, Des Moines..My husband, Guy Kidney, a retired air traffic controller, had played trumpet (and sometime flugelhorn) with the Des Moines New Horizons Band for a dozen years. They play mostly for retirement homes, Christmas concerts and spring concerts..An earlier story about the Des Moines group.

Norwegian Immigrant Stories by Ann Hanigan Kotz

When her husband, Kristoffer, dies from a burst appendix in Iowa in 1905, middle-aged Karoline Olsen, mother of six, must make the 145-mile trip from Cedar Falls to Soldier by horse-drawn wagon to bring his body home. With the corpse on fast-melting ice, Karoline struggles to make good time across the rolling prairie during an exceptionally hot summer, recalling the story of their rocky marriage that brought them from Norway to the New World. The young couple, ambitious and naïve, arrive in the United States in 1884 with hopes of establishing a farm among other Norwegian immigrants, but are met instead with a constant battle against disease, famine, and poverty.

A chronicle of the Olsens’ fight to survive in the undeveloped Midwest, to preserve tradition in a new context, and to protect their family from the ravages of pioneer living, The Journey of Karoline Olsen is the tale of a woman and a wife building the American Dream out of nothing but the dirt on which she stands.

My thoughts: This compelling novel, about Norwegian newlyweds who immigrate to the Midwest, explores their difficult marriage in a new land. If there’s really a purpose for everything, what about the calamities they face, what about his cruel words, especially his last words to her? Masterfully written.

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With her husband freshly buried, Karoline Olsen now shoulders the twin burdens of raising her large brood of children, including the one she carries in her belly, and managing a difficult farm life by herself in the Loess Hills. Spanning 1905 to 1933, the second installment of the Olsen series brings major world events—WWI, the Spanish flu, prohibition, suffrage, and the Great Depression—to Iowa, impacting the lives of the Soldier inhabitants, including the Olsens.

A continuing chronicle of the Olsen family’s survival, Sons and Daughters is the tale of a widowed woman fighting to preserve a legacy, carve her own path in the midst of tragedy and historic hardship, and guide six first-generation American children who are discovering their own identities in a rapidly changing world.

My thoughts: This historical novel is set in western Iowa after Norwegian immigrant Karoline Olsen is widowed. Expected to remarry to save her farm, she refuses since she has grown sons. Each of her seven children carries the realistic challenges of second generation immigrants’ expectations and prejudices, along with a story or two from early Iowa history. Some of the hard ones are shortages during the Great War, along with the draft and terrible losses, influenza quarantines, lost farms after the war, forced abortion, forced marriage, mental illness after a rape, loss of life and fortunes from the Stock Market Crash. Encouraging chapters included strong women, women suffrage, and a boy skipping school to watch Babe Ruth play baseball at Sioux City. The fascinating book is a mix of family stories and Iowa history.

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Ann Hanigan Kotz is a retired teacher who resides in Adel, Iowa, with her husband, John. She was born and raised in Denison, Iowa, on a farm southwest of town with her parents and five siblings. As a girl, she spent her summers reading at the Carnegie Library and spent time with her maternal grandparents, Glenn and Alice Olson, on their farm, visiting other Norwegian families in the Loess Hills area. Ann remembers well her grandparents taking her to Soldier, Iowa, to visit her great-grandfather, Tingvald Olson. The smell of his pipe and the sound of his fiddle found their way into this story.

Ann holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Northern Iowa and a Master of Arts in Education from Viterbo University. She began a career in education in 1988 and taught high school English for 33 years, later teaching college-level classes to high school students who themselves wanted to become teachers.

As a teacher, Ann is passionate about helping students become better writers and readers. She credits her own writing ability to both studying and teaching the craft and considers education to be one of the most honorable professions.

Here is her website.

Granddaughter Authors

After deciding that “granddaughter” would be part of the subtitle for What Leora Never Knew, I began to notice some of my favorite books which are authored by the main characters’ granddaughters.

Three Little Things

by Patti Stockdale

Written as historical fiction, Three Little Things is set during World War I, filled with a fetching cast of characters and borne along by the author’s entertaining sense of humor. The narration reminds us that many folks were suspicious of people with German ancestry during the war, even though they were American citizens and even using the common term “gesundheit,” and that children of German immigrants were drafted to fight against their parents’ former countrymen.

Young Iowa men were trained into soldiering, where there were still rivalries–some about girls back home, some about German sympathies–and sent across to fight the Kaiser’s troops in France. Some didn’t return home, some came back with broken bodies. There is a compelling scene with wounded veterans in a local hospital, at least one scarred on the inside and fighting his own private battle.

This winsome story also carries themes of acceptance, forgiveness, strangers becoming friends, reframing troubles from the past, and reveals a nickname for someone named Shamrock. An engaging story on many levels.

Here’s Patti’s website

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Augusta

by Celia Ryker

Raised on a hard-knock farm in Arkansas and married off to the father of one of her classmates at the age of thirteen, Augusta was not set up for a life of bliss. Then, abandoned by her second husband in 1920s Detroit, with four children to provide for, she is forced into a decision that will haunt her forever.

From the author of Walking Home: Trail Stories, Celia Ryker’s AUGUSTA is historical fiction based on the true story of her grandmother, a woman who lived on a lake and taught her how to catch snakes; a woman who fled the hardships of the Ozarks at the turn of the twentieth century for a new city, and a chance at a better life.

My thoughts: Tired was indeed a woman’s lot in life, when she married at 13, was left by two husbands with several children, and trying to make ends meet during the 1920s. This gritty story is based on the life of the author’s grandmother, Augusta. Much of the early dialogue is in dialect, and later a couple of characters use crude language. I especially enjoyed the Author’s Note at the end, where readers learn which of Augusta’s children is the author’s parent, and how she learned so many details of her grandmother’s difficult life.

Celia Ryker’s website.

A Musical Saw, My Strangest Experience

Before Dan was born in 1974, I worked in the Office of Revisor of Statutes at the Colorado State Capitol in Denver. I was used to hallways of senators and representatives wearing boots and vests and cowboy hats. But I was surprised at at least one form of entertainment in the rotunda one day–a musical saw.

I was drawn by the eerie euphony of the saw. Could my baby–due in a few months–(we didn’t know whether we’d have a boy or girl) hear the music? He or she squirmed and danced the entire time!

Parenting Science says that “in the last trimester of pregnancy, babies become increasingly capable of hearing a range of musical tones, and studies confirm that babies react — in the womb — to the sounds they hear.” I can certainly attest to that.

“Somewhere Over the Rainbow” played on a musical saw.

This is just mesmerizing.

I don’t remember allowing boots in the house!

Did it help Dan become musical? He didn’t play a musical saw but he took piano lessons during grade school, then was in nearly every chorus or choir his high school offered.

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By the way, there’s even a website called Saw Notes for enthusiasts.

Three Christmas-Themed Books to Savor and to Gift

Yuletide Blessings: Christmas Stories that Warm the Heart

by Nan Corbitt Allen

This little attractive book is so rich with stories! It would be a welcome gift, but get one for yourself as well. It is divided into six sections, from “The Read Christmas Story,” “Myths and Legends,” “Stories Behind the Carols,” “Tales of Yore,” and “Classic Holiday Shows” to space for you to record a Christmas story of your own. There’s even a bibliography.

 

 

Characters of Christmas

by Daniel Darling

With all of human history funneled toward the birth of Christ, this book takes you through each character affected by that birth–Mary and Joseph, yes, but also the angels, the inkeeper, the wise men. Imagine what it was like for each person named in the accounts of the entrance of God himself on the human scene. Of the One whose birth can change your trajectory.

Also included are the stories of four women included in the ancestry of Christ– the forgotten, the exploited. The slim but important book also has notes on each chapter.

Daniel Darling has also written these books: The Characters of Easter and The Characters of Creation.

Experiencing Christmas

by Lee Warren

A thoughtful way for a family to keep mind that Christmas is more than giving and getting gifts. Each day has a theme verse, with a related time of family devotion. In a section called “Going Deeper” for families with older children, the author gives the Old Testament history behind the verse.

Each day includes two suggested prayers, also depending on the ages of the children. Some include the verses to Christmas hymns and songs. In the section called Living the Experience, there are discussion questions, and suggestions for family activities.

Find it here.

A What Canal???

Pain sent me to the dentist a week before my last out-of-town book talk. I resolved not to miss talking about Grandma Leora’s stories in the town where many of them happened. And I was determined to enjoy it.

Wait and see, he said. Call me if it worsens.

I got through the weekend. It worsened. Root canal, he says.

Yikes, but what did they do before root canals were common? Grandma Leora kept a sort of diary on a Seasons Greetings calendar pad in 1945, which was the year Danny Wilson was Missing in Action that February and Junior Wilson was killed in training in August. Those were short but difficult notes. Dale Wilson was still Missing in Action after two years.

Leora also recorded the weather and other happenings–“Dad to dentist” October 16.

November 8 – Outhouse delivered

November 21 – Granddaughter Donna born in Perry. After Junior was killed in August, Wilsons’ oldest son Delbert moved his little family back to Iowa, and in with his folks at the Perry acreage. Little Leora Darlene was just over a year old and his wife Evelyn was expecting this one. Delbert visited his wife and new baby in the hospital every day until they came home December 1.

November 26 – Dad got a tooth pulled.

December 16 – Delbert and Clabe started wiring the house. Both Clabe and Leora had toothaches. Clabe had a tooth pulled on the 18th.

Leora’s jaw swelled on the 20th. The next day, “dentist opened my tooth, pull next week.” Sleet and snow.

This was the year they had bacon and eggs for Christmas dinner.

Leora had two teeth pulled on the 28th, the same day Clabe purchased a young Guernsey bull. It was delivered the next day.

Leora eventually needed a full set of dentures, something you rarely hear of anymore. I’m thankful for dentists who can save my aching tooth, instead of just pulling it.

Lt. Daniel S. Wilson’s Three Burials

In researching what happened to the three Wilson brothers who lost their lives during World War II, I knew there was a cross for Daniel S. Wilson in a military cemetery in France. But I wasn’t the only one to wonder whether he was actually buried there. 

The casualty documents in his 293 File were so thorough, so well maintained, that we were reassured his remains are indeed those buried under the cross with his name on it. 

Schwanberg, Austria

In late November, 1945, a British Graves Registration Team at Klagenfurt, Austria, first learned about where Lt. Daniel S. Wilson was buried, from captured Dulag-Luft (German) Reports. The British reported it to Headquarters, Graves Registration Service, Germany zone, along with other American losses. “Cemetery SCHWANBERG, the uppermost line; entrance on the left side. The grave is adorned.”

Dan’s parents didn’t know that an American Investigating Team interviewed officials in the Alpine village of Schwanberg, Austria. 

His plane had hit a pole and crashed about two kilometers south of the railroad station at Schwanberg, Austria, in a forest along Sulm Creek in the snowy forested foothills of the Alps February 19, 1945. According to his casualty records, the dead American “Flying Lieutenant” found in the wreck was identified by his tags as Daniel S. Wilson. Wehrmacht soldiers kept the tags but turned the body over to village officials.

 The next day, a man shoveled a grave at the edge of the Schwanberg cemetery, where Daniel S. Wilson was buried in a pine box provided by the village. The local Roman Catholic priest held a service, secretly, according to the documents. Attending were the bergermeister, the chief of police, and the grave digger.

Someone fashioned a wooden cross for the new grave–in the uppermost lines, entrance on the left side–marked “Daniel S. Wilson  19.2.1945.”

Unknown X-7341 is Reburied in a Temporary Cemetery, St. Avold, France

It had been over a year since the end of the war, and at least eight months since Clabe and Leora Wilson were notified that their son Dan’s grave had been located in Austria.

Here is information the Wilson family never learned about until my request for Daniel S. Wilson’s 293 File:

August 22, 1946, seven pages of “Report of Investigation Areas Search” were completed for “Unknown X-7341.” This unknown was believed to be Daniel Wilson, but because his identification tags were not with the body, positive identification could not be made. Chief of Police Franz Mueller and Bergermeister Hermann were interviewed for the report.

Unknown X-7341 was also disinterred that day from the Schwanberg cemetery, to be reburied in the new U.S. Military Cemetery at St. Avold, France.

St. Avold U.S. Military Cemetery, France. A-60927 A.C. War Theatre #12 (France) – CEMETERIES. 10×10 print rec’d 18 October 1946 from The American Battle Monuments Commission, Washington D.C. Copied 18 ct 1946. Released, 22 Oct 1946, JIA.

On September 9, 1946, at St. Avold, France, at 3:00, in the afternoon, Lt. Daniel S. Wilson, formerly Unknown X-7341, was reburied between Unknown X-7330 and Unknown X-7318. Chaplain H.M. Trebaol conducted the service.

Lorraine American Cemetery, St. Avold, France

Dan Wilson’s remains were disinterred from the temporary cemetery April 23, 1948, and placed in a casket April 29 by Embalmer Elijah H. Fields, with 1st. Lt. James C. Anderson verifying all markings, tags, and plates. The body was complete, skull fractured, disarticulated, in final stage of decomposition. Report of Burial found with remains as “Unknown X-7341” – W0058 marked on wool drawers. (W0058 was the initial and last four digits of Dan Wilson’s military number.)

A letter dated March 2, 1949, from Major General Thomas B. Larkin, the Quartermaster General, informed Leora Wilson that the remains of her loved one had been permanently interred “side by side with comrades who also gave their lives for their country. Customary military funeral services were conducted over the grave at the time of burial.”

Lorraine American Cemetery covers more than 113 acres and contains the largest number of graves of our military dead of WWII in Europe, a total of 10,489. The cemetery was dedicated in 1960.

Doris (Wilson) Neal with sister Darlene (Wilson) Scar, Lorraine American Cemetery, St. Avold, France. Oct. 9, 1997

The first family members to pay respects at Danny Wilson’s grave didn’t happen until October 1997, when his sisters, Doris Wilson Neal and Darlene Wilson Scar, accompanied by my husband and me, made the journey.

Since then, Darlene’s son Dick Scar has been there, as well as one of my Neal cousins.

Every once in a while, I receives photos from folks from France who visit the grave, sometimes with school children to tell them about the Americans who lost their lives freeing their homeland from tyranny.

It is a comfort somehow to know the remains of Danny Wilson are cared for by the American Battle Monuments Commission, to know their journey from the snowy Alps of Austria to an American cemetery in France.

The complete story is part of What Leora Never Knew: A Granddaughter’s Quest for Answers.

Dan’s Autumn Artwork

I wonder how this black cat ended up with an extra leg. Dan Kidney, Age 6

His turkey does seem to need those “training feet.” This comes out every Thanksgiving.

NEWS FROM THE ART ROOM

The Rex Mathes Art department recognizes Dan Kidney for his fine painting used in the District Calendar! Although we’re a little late, you can see Dan’s work on the month of August [1985]. Dan did a watercolor painting of cornstalks last year. He is now in 5th grade, Mrs. Cornelissen’s room. Nice job Dan!

Ed Wong was Dan’s art teacher through Junior High. Dan was impressed that Mr. Wong played music while they were working on a project.

Dan’s proud parents had this one matted and framed.

Dan was awarded a class at the Des Moines Art Center one summer, but he switched from art to singing in high school, and eventually became a CPA.

Dad’s Massey Harris Tractor

Dad had a red Massey-Harris tractor for a long time, although we never thought about taking a photo of ours. I think Dad’s was a Model 44, and not as pristine as this one.

Whichever tractor did the cultivating, I remember my job once during lunch was to scrape off the cultivator sweeps or shovels, those diggers mounted onto the tractor.

Massey-Harris was started in Canada in 1891, merging the Massey and Harris manufacturing companies. In 1891, Massey merged with the A. Harris, Son & Co. Ltd. to become Massey-Harris Co. and became the largest agricultural equipment maker in the British Empire. In 1910, the company opened a factory in the United States, making it one of Canada’s first multinational firms.

In the 1930s, they introduced the first self-propelled combine harvester. Massey Harris also produced one of the world’s first four-wheel drive tractors.

From there, the history gets more complicated. You may read about it here. One interesting note: Raymond Massey, of the Massey manufacturing family, became a American film actor.

 

Winds of Change by Gail Kittleson

Gail Kittleson – Winds of Change

World War II stole her only son, and sickness took her husband. Her daughters and grandchildren live far away. Little is left for Dottie Kyle beyond cooking and cleaning at the local boarding house and a small town life that allows her to slip into a predictable routine.

Loneliness is Dottie’s constant companion.

Then along came Al Jensen.

About the Author: When Gail’s not steeped in World War II historical research, writing, or editing, you’ll find her reading for fun, gardening, or enjoying her grandchildren in Northern Iowa. She delights in interacting with readers who fall in love with her characters.

Women of the Heartland, Gail’s World War II series, highlights women of The Greatest Generation: These heroines make do with what life hands them and face great odds with integrity. No easy outs or pat answers for their struggles – it’s the thick of World war II. The same can be said of Dottie in In This Together, Gail’s first historical novel and of the women in her memoir, Catching Up With Daylight.

Gail Kittleson taught college expository writing and ESL before writing women’s historical fiction. From northern Iowa, she facilitates writing workshops and women’s retreats, and enjoys the Arizona Ponderosa forest in winter.

My thoughts: Gold Star mother Dottie Kyle has not only lost a son in the Second World War, she was widowed when her husband, a veteran of the first war, died. She takes a job that fills her time but the work and personalities are also wearing. There are changes afoot for several characters, especially for the cautious Dottie. A charming story of second chances, with captivating details that take readers back to the 1940s.

Here is Gail’s website.