Working, earning a living...and getting married again...

My job at Doerfer Engineering was very interesting. It was a challenge, and one that I welcomed. Most of the people I worked with were very nice to me, and it became just a daily fact that I got up and went to work, rather than working in my home. 

My parents wanted me to come see them that fall, but I told them I needed to make this decision on my own, without pressure from anyone. Vern did take the kids down to see my folks, though, and below is a photo from one of those visits...

Here are Vern and Doug on a visit to see my mother (who is once again, in her robe!)

David had gone back to college to get his masters degree, so he was living in Ames. He came to visit me before Christmas Day, but spent the holiday with his mother and other family members. He did give me a beautiful art book for Christmas - about Leonardo DaVinci. We made plans to get married right after Christmas, and had hoped it could happen on New Year's Day, but the minister at Memorial Lutheran Church in Ames wanted to wait until the 2nd, so that was the day of our wedding. It was pretty simple. We had David's cousin Merlyn Chase and his wife Colleen stand up with us. Some of the Ruebers came for the ceremony, and a brief gathering at the trailer David had been living in off campus. Then, David and I left for a 'honeymoon' trip to Minneapolis. 

We stopped at the Blue Lagoon Motel in Ventura, right on Clear Lake, for our wedding night. There were ice boat races going on at the lake, and we could watch some of those while we ate our dinner at the restaurant near the motel. The next morning, I made a Schwarzwalder Kirsch Torte - German Chocolate-Cherry Cake, (whipped the cream at the motel and put the cake together in our motel room) and I sent that with David when he stopped to see his 'second' mother, Alitza Boehnke and Lawrence to tell them about his marriage. (That couple lived next to the parsonage at the church where David's father Art was minister when he became ill with leukemia and died within weeks of the diagnosis. David was 14 at that time, and the Boehnkes had been very good family friends. Alitza sort of took David 'under her arm' and gave him some emotional support after that tragedy. Of course, when Art died, the family had to move from the parsonage to allow a new minister to live there. One of their congregation's members rented them a house on Clear Lake, very near to the elementary school, and that was where David's mother started teaching first grade to support her five kids (David was the second oldest). When the state changed the law making it necessary to have a four-year college degree in order to teach, Ann Rueber and her family moved to Cedar Falls to finish her degree. The family lived in college housing on campus, but by that time the only child left at home was Joel. Lois was married, David was in college at Ames, Madelyn was at Valparaiso University in Indiana, and Mark was attending Lake Forest Academy near Chicago. After Ann graduated with her bachelors degree in education, she bought the house next door to our house on West 7th Street.)

After visiting a short time with Alitza and Lawrence, David and I drove on to Minneapolis. We went ice skating the first evening we were in the Twin Cities. Unfortunately, the ice rink had some clumps of frozen dirt sticking up, and I caught my skate on one of them, and fell onto my knees, injuring my right knee. We went to our motel, and by morning, I wasn't able to bend my knee and my knee joint was swollen to about twice normal size. But, we still did some sight-seeing, including looking at the beautiful stained glass windows in a Catholic cathedral in south Minneapolis. I'm sure I looked like some kind of invalid climbing all those stairs up to the sanctuary, since I couldn't bend one knee at all...

We stayed a couple of days in the cities, and then David took me back to my apartment before he headed back to school at Ames. I stayed at my job for a couple more months, and David put our names on the list for married student housing on the campus at Iowa State University. Iowa State was on the quarter system, so when the next quarter was to start, I quit my job and moved to Ames. I got a job at the office of the Landscape Architecture department, and began working. 

I took a couple of classes while I was in Ames, and got my course work caught up so I could work on degrees in Art Education/English. 

After David got his masters degree in the spring of 1977, he applied for and got the job as assistant farm superintendent at the agriculture research farm in Kanawha, about 70 miles north of Ames. 

We bought a little Victorian house in Kanawha, and I applied for and got a job as a typist at The Kanawha Reporter. I tried to get down to see my kids in Cedar Falls every few weeks, and was able to do that much of the time.

We didn't own a camera then, so there are few photos of us other than at family gatherings, and I will post some of those as I go along.

To be continued...