From there we moved to Pemberville, Ohio. A very German community. About 90 percent German Lutheran. Everybody in the church was related.

There was one family named Dierksheide. When we moved to that parish I think there were something like 14 families with that name, but you could figure that anybody else was somehow related to them. One thing that was ironic about the churches in moving was no matter where you moved you always found somebody that knew somebody from the church before, or was maybe related or had a cousin at the church before. Even though there was a distance there were connections.

Anyway, we moved to Pemberville and that’s where I went to high school. Eastwood was a consolidated school, and Dad spent 10 years in Rochester which was the name of the little burb outside of Pemberville. My sister ended up marrying a Dierksheide from the congregation and I ended up marrying a Hummel from the congregation and they were all interrelated anyway. So, after 10 years and marrying off two daughters dad figured maybe he better move on, but it was a real good time. It was a good – Dad didn’t have any bad. There were always some trials but Dad didn’t have any bad entire experiences.

Mom and I are too much alike. Mom was never one to go anywhere. Whenever Dad had to go between churches, even though I was in school and stuff I would generally go with him. He would be traveling on probably 40 miles of road with nothing. We’re talking before cell phones, before CDs. He was traveling on State roads that were dirt roads. If something happens you are stuck until somebody comes through, and so they always felt it was safer for two people than for one. That way you didn’t have to worry so much about him maybe falling asleep at the wheel. So, Dad and I did get to be very close because we’d do the fishing trips together.

We did a lot of driving back and forth because we’d have to do Catechism classes or have to do funeral services or some kind of services at each church. You’d have to do three services every Sunday, which we all went to, and during Lent you would have three services every Wednesday.

God forbid when you got to Holy week with Good Friday, Monday, Thursday and Easter, because you were so sick of going to church. All you wanted to do was collapse after Easter because you’d been to three service at least and forever, you could ask Dad for some reason, there was always a funeral during Holy week. Always.

So from Pemberville I got married and my sister got married.

She probably had it rougher than I did except – everybody was accepted by then. There really wasn’t a problem. My sister had this humongous wedding because she happened to get married on my parent’s 25th wedding anniversary and so the church threw a surprise party for my parents for their 25th wedding anniversary. Along with her wedding and we had about 50 out-of-town relatives coming in, and of course, my parents weren’t supposed to know anything about the surprise party.

On top of it, my father as a surprise during my sister’s wedding, my mother and dad redid their vows and he presented her with new rings and she didn’t know any of that was going to happen. So I mean, it was just one big set of surprises going on that you kinda had to stop and figure out who you could talk to about which one because you were trying to keep surprises from various people.

I had some bad experiences, and I am going to try to get through this. I have a problem with depression (crying).

I met a boy in high school and we instantly fell in love. He came from kind of a broken home and a broken family. We became engaged in my senior year of high school, which my mother just had a coronary occlusion over. He bought me a beautiful ring that she refused to let me wear until after graduation. I can understand that now but at the time I thought that was the worst thing. I wasn’t one that wanted to go to college. My goal in life was to grow up and be a mommy and have kids and that sort of thing. And, my friend Bill, decided to enlist in the Navy.

He also had decided that he wanted to follow in Dad’s footsteps and go into the seminary, and he had never been involved in the church but he became Lutheran. He and Dad were extremely close. While he was in the service he became ill. They thought it was something simple, a middle ear infection.

He was in the hospital in Florida where he was stationed and I got a call that he had gone into cardiac arrest and they were – in those days they didn’t have life flight, but they were life flighting him to Queens, New York to see what was going on.

By then I was working. I had a job as a secretary at Fostoria Hospital, so I had some medical knowledge. My dad was at a convention when it happened and I told my mother that I had to go to New York, and amazingly she didn’t stop me. She bought the ticket and stuck me on a plane. So, I was 17 years old headed off to New York City all by myself.

I got there and they diagnosed a brain tumor. They tried to operate and they weren’t successful and they didn’t have things like the treatments they do today. They had some, and they started chemo and he just couldn’t endure that and went into a coma. They eventually transferred him to Cleveland to a VA hospital where he died.

The unfortunate part about this story is that our wedding invitations had already been mailed out. I’d had two showers. Everything was packed. I was leaving and going to Florida straight from the wedding. I had a wedding gown. I had all my bridesmaids, the flowers were ordered, the cake was ordered, the wedding bands were sitting there. We had the license, everything was done. Instead of going to New York he was supposed to be coming home that weekend and getting married. It never happened and I’ve never gotten over it.