Well, at high school I still liked Home Ec. a lot so I did that and I played basketball – not on a team per se but I liked some of those sports, and of course in Wisconsin you learned how to ice skate and it was outside, so…that was some things that we did.

And, because I was interested in Home Ec. I did come to Heidelberg in Tiffin, Ohio, and that is our church related school and so that was kind of a jolt for my parents because I was, ah, an only child and now I was going to go off to this far away school and I did.

I graduated and later on I just stayed in Ohio since I was very homesick when I was growing up . I’ve always had family relations close, and so when I finally decided, okay I was big and I didn’t need to be so homesick anymore I thought, “I can’t go back to Wisconsin,” so that was one thing that my mother always enjoyed, was coming to Ohio.

To come on the turnpike was a big endeavor and I never realized how that affected their lives until maybe four years ago when our son got married and he moved from Ohio to Phoenix, Arizona and I said something to my dad and he said, “Well, it’s no different than when you decided you were staying in Ohio,” and I said, “Oh, I thought you liked it that I stayed in Ohio?” and he said, “Well, we did but you know, the times were different and it was a long ways,” and it was. It’s like a 12-hour trip by car. So, I guess what comes around goes around or however that goes because then I’m thinking, “Oh…I never thought of how he felt about it, it was only kind of how I felt,” but now because I am saying this about our son it was a little different, so…


And it was a good experience, and then my mother, she was very busy. She still tried to do things when they came here.

They would be here maybe 15 years in Ohio now. I bought a house for them and we had to – they never saw it and they moved and, ah, but I gave them a video tape and it was before the videos. So I had to have a friend come and video the inside of it and - my father is a very good construction person because of his job background. I worried that that wasn’t going to be an acceptable house, but you know I thought it was and it was close to where I lived but a little far so they could still be independent.

So they rented a VCR so they could see the picture. So, they came unseen and moved into this house, and when they did move they were on a van that had to do with a Green Bay Packer who had been transferred from the Packers to the Browns, so they were just the added on part on to it. So that was kind of an interesting little tidbit. And so, they’ve lived, you know, in this Ohio area 15 years now.

And, my mother liked to go to the – like they have an extension group here, so she would go to that, and they did their own church things, and she had brothers and sisters who would visit from Wisconsin down to Ohio, and then as her health deteriorated we saw that, you know, she needed more assistance and that sort of thing, so at age 92 she had to have her leg amputated which was kind of a traumatic experience, not only for my father who had been married to her for 65 years, but also to us to make that decision to have to do that.

So, that’s kind of why we were already living here at the Heritage; my mother and dad, so that just was another part of the life. You assume at that age you have these health issues and things that have to be, and for 22 days she was up in Toledo at Saint V’s and we stayed there; my father and I, and, um, brought her back and she lived for maybe six or eight months after that.

But with their relationship all these years it’s always been nice because, you know, they were close to each other even when they were in the nursing facility here. My father could go anytime day or night over there to visit her. She was kind of a demanding lady, you know, but she never complained. She never complained.