

### Our Story

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#### From Australia to America

Philip Wik

Published by Philip Wik at Smashwords

Copyright 2016 Philip Wik

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

#### A Letter to My Children

Beloved Children,

You're just three and six years old now. But, when you get older, this book will help you appreciate your heritage.

_Our Story_ paints in broad strokes the history of your ancestors. It will bring smiles, tears, and perhaps some challenges. For, as you read these pages, you'll see what motivated our ancestors to start new lives in Australia and South Dakota. They left Europe not just to pursue adventure or advantage. And a desire to serve God shaped the choices they made.

Have you thought of the long army of ancestors at whose head you march? When you add two parents plus four grandparents plus eight great grandparents down to the twentieth generation, your ancestors number 2,097,150. Less than a thousand years ago, there were over two million of you—more than the population of Phoenix! The procession would be almost six hundred miles long. Picture that line. It has princes and plowmen, the haughty and the humble. These people form your army. You march at its head. You're the commander. Where will you lead? You cannot alter the past or effect what you inherit. But you can put good traits in positions of command and suppress bad traits. You can choose for your army advisors who're wise and brave instead of those who're mean and bad. As you read this book, you'll find such people who have modeled good and true values. With these values, you can lead your army. And you can lead it upward!

I look at the fading photographs of my ancestors, and see in them your bright eyes, your sunlit, flaxen curls, your joyous smile gilding your upturned features. It's at such times I want to know more about those days. What I'd give to see you cuddled on the laps of those who've left us while they tell us the old stories! We miss them and they will forever be enshrined in our hearts.

You come from good people. They were people of greatness that comes not from riches attained and offices held, but from the willingness to face adversity, to take responsibility, to stand fast in hard places. My father's name was Harold and my mother's name was Lucinda, and there is not a moment when my memory of them and my love for them does not overshadow everything I do. There is no height to which I have risen that is high enough to allow me to forget where I came from, where I stand, with my feet on the ground, just a man, at the mercy of God. I'm forever grateful to those men and women who went before me. They made the hard choices so that my life and the lives of my children would be easier. To them I say a heartfelt by utterly inadequate "thank you."

I love you more than tongue can tell!

I'll love you forever

I'll like you for always

As long as I'm living

My good boys you'll be

Your Daddy

#### Preface

Dear Reader,

This book describes my family's ancestry on my mother's side. The first volume of _Our Story_ describes my Swedish ancestry and the pioneering days in the United States Midwest. I also include in _Prairie Cookbook and Memories_ more recollections from those on my dad's side. The Australian side of the family is rich in primary material with letters, diaries, news clippings, articles, a 68-page _Reminiscences_ from Eliza Ann Dart (written about 1940), and the 176-page book _Happenings: Historic, Heroic, and Hereditary_ by Dr. Harold W. Dart (written about 1975). Few families have such a richly documented history that brings to life two great migrations from Europe, the Irish migration to Australia in the mid-nineteenth century and the northern European migration of the late nineteenth century to the Midwestern United States.

Weaving together both scholarship and experience, I hope my life's journey comes alive. I use genealogical records going back hundreds of years and also contemporary letters, diaries, and interviews. Other family names that are part of this narrative include Brown, Coughlin, Olson, Kirkpatrick, Logan, Dyas, Fielding, and many others.

Against a backdrop of world wars and depression and motivated by faith and adventure, this volume of _Our Story_ portrays a life journey that is unique and interesting.

I've tried to portray the fullness of the immigrant experience in which growth and regret are mingled. My goal is to neither glorify nor diminish those who came before me but to tell their story and our story as fairly and as clearly as possible. Like a message in a bottle thrown into the ocean, I can only wonder on what distant shore someone will read these words.

I end this preface by quoting the final words of my grandmother Emma Olson Wik in her memoir Sweden to America: A Story of Pioneering on the American Frontier, penned shortly before her death in 1945: "From here on, each of you can write a better family history. So I close with Joshua's words as he gave his last counsel to Israel: 'Ye know that not one thing has failed of all the good things which the Lord your God spake concerning you.' And, looking forward with the Psalmist, 'Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.'"

August, 2015

Scottsdale, Arizona

To Nancy, Zach, and Ben

With Love and Appreciation

and

To Dad and Mom

With Love and Gratitude

Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations.

Deuteronomy 32:7

### CHAPTER ONE

### OUR AUSTRALIAN ROOTS

I love a sun burnt country

A land of sweeping plains

Of rugged mountain ranges

Of drought and flooding rains.

I love her far horizons

I love her jeweled sea

Her beauty and her terror

The wide brown land for me.

"My Country" Dorothea MacKellar

#### Redland Bay, Queensland

I was born on March 9th, 1955 at the Brisbane Women's Hospital in Queensland, Australia to Harold and Lucinda Wik, who were staying on missionary furlough at the White home in Redland Bay. My brother Paul (age two), my grandmother Jane White, and my many Australian uncles and aunts welcomed me into this life.

I share a birth date with Leland Stanford, the founder of Stanford University who was born in 1824, and Bobby Fisher, the chess champion who was born in 1943. Dwight Eisenhower was the president of the United States, Brooklyn clinched the World Series, a gallon of gas cost twenty-three cents, and a first class postage stamp cost three cents. This was a year of crew cuts and ponytails, Lawrence Welk and the Mouseketeers, when Alfred Hitchcock presented on television and Peter Pan flew on Broadway. Dad was 38 and Mom was 36 years of age.

Queensland is Australia's second largest state, with about 22 percent of the nation's land. Most of that is without human presence—a push of outback and tropical wilderness carrying north across Capricorn to the Torres Strait. Queensland is so big and so empty in the middle that to venture there is to evoke the pioneering spirit. It's a country of wallabies and kangaroos, wild boars and lizards, waterholes given over to growths of hibiscuses ablaze in color, and termites in mounds taller than a man. It also has a large city, Brisbane, the capital and my city of birth. Queensland is the guardian of the Great Barrier Reef in the Coral Sea, to which tens of thousands of visitors are drawn each year.

In 1770, James Cook first charted Queensland's coast. In 1824, a penal colony from Sydney was established near Moreton Bay at a site where Brisbane was later settled and where my ancestors put down roots.

Between the Gold Coast and the bright lights of Brisbane are the Redlands, with its sand dunes, mangrove inlets, and forested islands teaming with bright-feathered parrots and lazy koalas. The Redlands of Moreton Bay derives its name from its rich, volcanic red soil. This soil has produced prize-winning fruit, vegetables, and flowers, from rainforest species to roses and orchids. This was the playground of my mother during her childhood.

#### Our Genealogy

My mother descended from four families for which there exists good documentation, the Dyas Family, Logans, Fieldings, and Whites. So as to understand the motivations and character of my ancestors, I'll outline some of their history.

#### Scotland

Scotland is a land of lochs and glens, crags, and castles. Our ancestors had a part in its colorful and clannish history, but much of that historic past is locked in obscurity. Many of the records of those who had immigrated to Ireland before 1844 were destroyed due to hostilities that erupted in Ireland in the nineteenth century.

There are few families that can be traced further back into the obscurities of Caledonian history than that of Kirkpatrick, for the surname, (a place name), indicates their Celtic origin. As far as I can tell, we did not descend from the Kirkpatrick Clan. However, through the Dyas line, we did descend from a common grandparent whose grand daughter was the wife of a Kirkpatrick, William of Malaga. And his granddaughter was Empress Eugenie of France.

#### Empress Eugenie of France

Dr. Harold Dart writes that my grandmother's grandmother Eliza Dart "could trace her ancestry back to the Stuart regime when the father of her grandmother Alice Clark and the grandmother of Empress Eugenie were cousins in Scotland." The Scottish cousin married William Kirkpatrick. He was a Scotsman by birth and an American by nationality of ambassadorial rank who was posted to Spain and lived in Granada. Their daughter Dona Maria Emmanuelle Kirkpatrick of Closeburn became the wife of a Spanish nobleman, the Countess of Montijo, Don Cyriano Palafox y Portocarrero (1785-1839), subsequently count of Montijo and grandee of Spain, in 1817. Their daughter Eugenie Ignace Augustine de Montijo was born at Granada on May 5, 1826. She spent her childhood in Madrid, but after 1834 she lived with her mother and sister chiefly in Paris. She became the wife of Louis Napoleon III, the last Empress of the French Court in 1853.

Eugenie was the mirror of fashion for all Europe. By her beauty, elegance, and charm, she contributed largely to the brilliancy of the imperial regime. Eugenie influenced the emperor to make serious political mistakes that led to his downfall. These included the attempt to make Maximilian emperor of Mexico and the disastrous Franco-German War. She was appointed Regent of France in 1859, 1865, and 1870. She was generally consulted on important questions. When the emperor vacillated between two lines of policy, she generally urged on him the bolder course, and disapproved of the emperor's liberal policy at the close of his reign.

When the end came, Eugenie was one of the very few who showed courage and calmness in face of the rising tide of revolution. She was forced to flee with her 14 year-old son and accept British protection, residing in Campden House, Chiselhurst, England. The ex-Empress found a faithful friend in Queen Victoria, whose own family bereavements deepened her sympathy with Eugenie. In 1879, her son was killed in the Zulu War, and in the following year she visited the spot and brought back the body to be interred beside that of his father. So well she was thought of that years later Prince Andrew named his daughter after Eugenie. Eugenie died in Madrid on July 11, 1920, while on a visit to the queen of Spain, who was her favorite goddaughter.

The descendants of these "Spanish" Kirkpatricks survive today and have recently bought the Kirkpatrick castle of Closeburn. In 2002, a Kirkpatrick descendent mentioned that her grandfather-- the father of her mother Jane Campbell Kirkpatrick-- got a free education in Scotland because of the relationship to Princess Eugenie.

Eugenie, in turn, through a succession of dukes, princes, and counts shares a common ancestor Eberhard IV "der Milde" Count von Württemberg (1364-1417) with Sir Winston Churchill. Lady Randolph Churchill, Winston's mother Jennie, was a friend to the princess. Churchill's ancestral home Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, inspired the song "Majesty" that was sung at my sister Anne's wedding. It reminds us that we are heirs of far more than this earth can offer:

Majesty, worship His majesty

Unto Jesus be all glory, power, and praise

Majesty, kingdom authority

Flows from His throne

Unto His own

His anthems raise.

Let us consider Dr. Dart's statement. First, it is true? Secondly, what does it mean? A cousin is the child of one's uncle or aunt. First cousin's have the same grandparents. Elvera Anderson's daughter Joanne is my cousin, as Elvera is the sister of my father Harold Wik. "As to 'cousinhood' as well as references to sisters and brothers in old documents, you have to be very careful,' Carl Smarling explains. "Just read Shakespeare and find the use of these words referring to just very close friends and companions. Tricky stuff. Even in US wills, these words do not necessarily connote true blood relationships all of the time. Remember the rule of family history—three distinct and independent documents for every relationship."

We fall a bit short if we wish to be scrupulous as to whether there is a relationship to the empress. I don't have the primary documents that prove births, marriages, and deaths that I have from the Wik line, and they may not exist. Nevertheless, I cannot dismiss the possibility entirely. Eliza Anne Dart wrote her _Reminiscences_ late in her life, between the ages of 77 and 84. She was passing on recollections told to her from her grandmother Eliza Dyas Logan. As is often true with the elderly, nostalgic recollection has burnished bright these early memories, and so there is probably some substance to them. "Her mother Alice Clark, whose father's mother was Empress Eugenie's cousin, was of Scottish descent (as was Empress Eugenie, Napoleon III's wife, last empress of France, on her mother's side)," Eliza writes.

Harold Dart, Eliza's grandson, recalls in his book _Happenings Historic Heroic and Hereditary_ his visit to England in 1975, while celebrating their 45th wedding anniversary. "We were visiting Windsor Castle with other tourists when, on a bedstead used by Their Imperial Majesties on a royal visit from France, we were confronted with the names of Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie. Frequently, these names had been on the lips of my parents and grandparents in childhood days. Their adventures had been the subject of conversation in the delightful setting of my grandparent's shingle-roofed home in the picturesque district of Brookfield, now a suburb of Brisbane, capital of the State of Queensland." Harold writes that his mother "could vividly recall her mother discussing with her in her childhood the critical days of the Prussian War with France, and being informed of Empress Eugenie being appointed Regent of France in the absence of the Emperor in 1870" and many other recollections. My grandmother and mother talked about this as well. So, we have two documents and a strong oral tradition. In totality, there is enough to give credence to this relationship.

#### Pope Clement VII

Before we look into Eugenie's maternal line of descent, let us briefly look at her paternal descent. Alessandro de Medici, first Duke of Florence, was an illegitimate son of Pope Clement VII by a Moorish mistress. "In the verdict upon the character of Pope Clement VII, almost all historians are agreed," The Catholic Encyclopedia entry states. "He was an Italian prince, a de'Medici, and a diplomat first, and a spiritual ruler afterwards." Not everybody accepts either Clement VII as Alessandro's father, or a Moor as his mother. If the Moorish mother part is correct, then this is a African descent in much of European royalty, (but not into our line in this case, which came through the maternal branch). Alessandro was killed in 1537. He had no children by his wife, Margaret, illegitimate daughter of Emperor Charles V. By an unknown mistress, Alessandro himself had an illegitimate son Giulio, through whom we can show the descent to Eugenie:

#### Make Sure

The progenitor of the Kirkpatricks (Kirk=church, Patrick=St. Patrick) from which Eugenie descended was Ivo (pronounced ewa). He had been instrumental in expelling the Vikings in the 1200s. As a result, the king granted lands in the area called Kirkpatrick Dumfrieshire. It was this Ivo whose son, of the same name, began the Closeburn branch. The Closeburn Kirkpatricks and Torthorwald Kirkpatricks were heavily involved in the Scottish wars of independence,

(Torthorwald is a Viking-derived name relating to Thor, the thunder god. There was a large Norse presence in this region, prevalent in place names such as Tynwald, Mouwald, and Thorthorwald. The Viking influence is evident on both sides our family.)

During the 1200s, Scotland became a province of England. Most of the revenue from this country went south making the English richer and the Scots poorer. Eventually the Scottish people had enough of being exploited. They became discontented. From this melting pot rose leaders such as William Wallace, portrayed in the movie Braveheart. Duncan Kirkpatrick of Torthorwald accompanied Wallace in the revolt. Duncan and Wallace were cousins through marriage. In 1305, the English executed Wallace for treason in London.

The other contender for the throne while Wallace was fighting his campaigns was Red Comyn. Bruce and Comyn could not agree on who would rule. Bruce being the strongest claimant with most following, he had the power to unite all the nobles. It was decided he would rule, while Comyn would receive more lands. A pact was drawn and they would confront the English to assert Bruce's kingship. Comyn apparently alerted the English and sold Bruce out. This resulted in his army being routed by the English in an ambush. Bruce had to go into hiding and his family was killed. Bruce's friend Roger Kirkpatrick of Closeburn took Bruce to places of refuge in his extensive lands. Meanwhile, Comyn began planning his coronation. He could not unite the nobles without Bruce. No one trusted him, so a meeting was arranged at a neutral place, Greyfriars Kirk in Dumfrieshire. Roger Kirkpatrick and a few others formed Bruce's entourage. Bruce passionately upbraided him for his treachery, a violent altercation ensued, Comyn gave him the lie, whereupon Roger drew his dagger and stabbed him. Hastening from the Church, he met his friends, who seeing him agitated and pale eagerly inquired the cause.

"I doubt," said he, "I have slain the Comyn."

"Doubt'st thou," said Kirkpatrick, "I mak sicker," and rushed into the Church.

In the meantime the followers of Comyn having taken alarm, rallied round their fallen chief, but Kirkpatrick burst through them, struck down and slew Sir Robert Comyn the uncle, and dispatched the Red Comyn with his dagger on February 10, 1306. Hence, the crest and motto of the family: I MAK SICKAR which means I Make Sure.

(This is excellent advice in my profession, data processing, where in the course of my career, I didn't "make sure", and suffered for it. For example, once I sent out a mailing of a half million letters that had the name of a family member from one family and a spouse from another family—which must have been a challenge to some already fragile marriages. As my wife's grandfather Harold Brown would say, "measure twice, cut once.")

There is a macabre postscript to this story. On the night of Comyn's death, a kinsman was keeping vigil over his body as he lay in state in the church he was killed in. It was customary to keep vigil over bodies since they were often looted. During his vigil, the kinsman heard a deep sobbing coming from inside the church, which was empty apart from him and the dead Comyn. With great astonishment, they heard a voice in distress exclaim, "How long, O Lord, shall vengeance be deferred?" and a response in a dreadful tone, "Endure with patience till the anniversary of this day shall return for the 52nd time. When fifty two summers have come and gone, then vengeance shall be satisfied."

Roger Kirkpatrick of Closeburn, who was involved in the slaying of John Red Comyn, was not alone in the killing, having a willing accomplice in James Lyndsay of Donrod. Roger had a son also Roger. This Roger was known locally as "Hoge", proving he must have captured public imagination enough to earn a nickname from locals . He was greatly involved in Scottish affairs of state, being made sheriff of Dumfrieshire by 1356.

One night in late 1357 an incident occurred at Caerlaveroch castle known as the Caerlaveroch murder. After a visit by his friend James Lyndsay of Dunrod, the same James Lyndsay sneaked back in the night and murdered Roger in his sleep, perhaps over a mutual love interest. James Lyndsay was the son of the original James Lyndsay, who helped murder Red Comyn. In his castle of Caerlaveroc Sir Roger Kirkpatrick was murdered, in fulfillment, as in that superstitious age was believed, of a prophecy of vengeance uttered by a spirit in the Grey Friars Church of Dumfries, after the slaughter of the Red Comyn. Whether this was the sins of the father visiting the son, the fact remains that 52 years after the slaying of the Comyn, the sons of the men involved were involved in another murder. Lyndsay was caught the same night he murdered Hoge, less than three miles from the murder scene. The king took a personal interest in Lyndsay's summary execution at Caerlaveroch. Roger was the first and last Kirkpatrick of Caerlaveroch.

The Kirkpatricks were staunch supporters of the Stuart kings. However, by the 1600s, people were realigning their political and religious loyalties. The Stuarts were Catholic. The Vatican was powerful more so than any king in Europe. They preached the divine right of kings, that kings had absolute rule over their subjects. While suiting the purposes of the royals, this meant normal folks got a raw deal. Many powerful men petitioned the king to break away from Rome unhappy at the power the Vatican held over their sovereignty in Scotland. The king would have none of it. Home rule became an issue. By now the reformation was well under way. Protesters, known as Protestants to the papal authority, had already deposed one king. The crown swayed from Catholic to Protestant, civil unrest was rife, and barbarities committed on both sides. At this time the present king James VII began to consolidate his supporters by giving them huge estates with hereditary titles. James Kirkpatrick became first Baronet of Closeburn in 1685. Within three years, in 1688, King James, who had returned to Catholicism, was deposed, (his supporters were known as Jacobites). William of Orange was crowned instead, and this led to rebellion once again.

#### Robert Kirkpatrick of Glenkiln

In 1745, the exiled Stuart kings made another attempted to gain the crown back. This was the Jacobite rebellion. Bonny prince Charles had landed expecting the Scottish nobles to rally to his call. He was mistaken. Scotland's nobles weren't interested in joining the rebellion. The new Hanoverian kings had treated them well. The Jacobites enjoyed initial success, but they were routed on Culloden Moor in 1746. Although most nobles kept out of the rebellion, the usual practice of sending a son to hedge their bets was still going on. One such man was Robert. The Jacobites had marched as far as Derby. On their retreat north, they had left Kirkpatrick in Dumfries to defend their march back to Scotland. Robert was captured and beheaded in 1747. His estates were forfeited and his family was forced to flee. The Closeburn family home burned down in 1748, destroying most of the family portraits and documents. Finally the estate was sold in 1778 for £500,000, a colossal sum in those days. The Kirkpatricks have since scattered to the furthest parts of the globe. One of the grandsons of Robert was William, becoming William Kirkpatrick of Malaga. This William's granddaughter Eugenie later married Napoleon III and became the Empress of France.

#### The Logans

Among those in Ireland who had gained territory were chieftains from Scotland. William de Logan and Walter de Logan, two Scottish knights fighting against John of England in Ulster, started the Logan's ancestral line. Walter de Logan was captain and keeper of Carrickfergus Castle on Belfast Lough. In 1213, the English besieged the castle. After stout resistance, the English took the castle and he became their prisoner.

My grandmother's mother was a Logan, and that is the middle name of Zachary, my first-born son. The Logan clan is of ancient Celtic origin, and their name is derived from the Gaelic word "Lagan" meaning low-lying land, a glen, dell, or hollow. The motto of the Logan crest, recorded in Edinburgh in 1672, is Hoc Majorum Virtus - This is the Virtue of Our Ancestors. The crest is a passion nail piercing a human heart. It alludes to the pilgrimage of Sir Robert Walter Logan to the Holy Land bearing the heart of King Robert the Bruce (1274-1329). Major G.J. N. Logan-Hume traces the record of the family back to 1150, in his book The History of the Logan Family (G. Waterson & Son, 1934). He points out that from 1200 for several centuries they were among the mostly distinguished knights and barons of their day and were famed for their steadfast courage and patriotism. Many were slain in battle against the English invaders.

During the reign of Henry VIII in the sixteenth century, Gaelic culture faced extinction due to the destruction of the monasteries and abbeys and the suppression of music and dance. The king granted many of his Irish supporters confiscated monastic property in an attempt to win their support. Our Logan ancestors left Scotland and settled in Ireland at this time.

In 1677, Mary, the daughter of the one destined to become James II, married William, Prince of Orange. William's marriage proved to be a move of excellent statecraft, for it strengthened his alliance with England and served as a rebuff to his enemy Louis XIV of France. When James I assumed the throne of England, he imposed religious changes, raised a large army, and garrisoned troops outside of London. These steps, as well as his intrigue with Louis XIV, united the nation against him. In 1688, William landed troops at Tor Bay in the south of England and found the nation waiting to welcome him. The Parliament decided to offer the crown to William and Mary. Thus, in January 1689, they were proclaimed joint sovereigns. In that same year, James II with the support of French and Irish troops tried to resist William. But with the ready supply of Loyalist troops, among them my ancestor, Robert Clark, William crossed to Ireland and at the historic battle of the Boyne defeated the former king and forced him to flee to France. Robert was rewarded for his part in the campaign by a grant of land on the borders of the Counties of Galway and Clare. It was known as "the Craig Lands," in memory his Scottish homeland.

Robert Clark's only daughter, Alice, married Thomas Dyas, a cotton merchant, who owned a number of looms. Thomas was a devout member of the Protestant Church and acted as curate to the local clergymen at Mount Shannon, a town that lies on the western shore of Lough Derg, on the northeast corner of Scarrif Bay, Ireland. In 1808, Eliza Dyas was born.

Attending the local parish church and living not far distant from the Clarks was the Logan family, also of Scottish descent. They were landowners and were wealthy enough to go to England to record their vote for Parliament. This suggests the Logans may have descended from the original de Logans who crossed from Galloway and Dumfrieshire or more probably from another branch of the Lanarkshire Logans who were granted property in the period of Henry VIII's reign.

John Logan married Lady Ann Fogerty. Her brothers were members of the legal profession. They were recognized as Irish aristocracy and were opposed to the marriage. Thomas and John were born. Ann died following the birth of her second son. John married again and three more children—William, Margaret, and Elizabeth—were added to his family as a result of his marriage to Margaret Deering, a dressmaker. Their oldest son Thomas married Eliza Dyas in 1828 at Mount Shannon, Count Clare. Thomas was a wealthy farmer and a Christian of kindly disposition. He brought his bride Eliza to their new home, a large stone house with a slate roof. Four children were born to them, including Eliza Amelia, my great-grandmother. (In the chart below, you will note some curiosities: A man who married two Logan sisters, and four Logan men who may have married two sets of sisters. A son Thomas Logan also married a Kilpatrick. I haven't determined if Jane shares a kinship to Eugenie's maternal line of descent to the Kirkpatricks of Closeburn.)

Thomas and Eliza Logan

Britain made life for Irish Catholic families intolerable. With the ending of the Stuart regime by the victory of William III (reigned 1689-1702) at the Battle of the Boyne, land rights were granted to more English and Scottish settlers. Much of the country over the years had been subdivided into smaller lots enabling landlords to multiply rents. When it was found that tillage didn't pay, landlords restored their lands to pastures. In certain cases, they tore down homes, causing great resentment.

#### The Potato Famine

The Logan emigration took place a decade before the great potato failure of 1847. But the preconditions that led to the great migration were already in place when John and Thomas Logan made the decision to leave their homeland for an uncertain future. The end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 was a watershed event that plunged Ireland and the rest of Europe into recession and accelerated the land evictions and emigration. The potato blight that later followed motivated other Logans in subsequent years to make the long, dangerous trip. Eliza's brother Robert later came to Australia. The other children went to Canada, where their descendents are still living today.

A priest, writing in 1846, described the horror: "I beheld with sorrow one wide waste of putrefying vegetables. The wretched people were seated on the fences of their decaying gardens, wringing their hands and bewailing bitterly the destruction that has left them foodless." A later writer told of "men and women and children dying by the roadside, their mouths green from the nettles and grass they had eaten in their overpowering hunger. Of others dropping dead after partaking of a meal of porridge, which proved too much for stomachs long without food. Of women carrying their dead husbands on their backs to the graveyards." An English visitor in 1847 writes: "Dogs feed on the dead, and rats are commonly known to tear people to pieces who, though still alive, are too weak to cry out." Other witnesses documented cases of frantic people eating diseased livestock and chickens, and even human flesh.

A fungus disease had struck the potato, which had been introduced into Ireland in the late sixteenth century and had become the staple food of most of the population. Within months, the stench of decaying, mushy tubers rose from fields across the land. Within a year, people were dying in great numbers. (My wife Nancy's ancestors came from County Roscommon in Western Ireland. The west of Ireland, with poor soil and overcrowding, was particularly hard hit. In 1841, the population was 253,591. In 1995, it was about 52,000.) Some simply walled themselves into their cottages and waited for the end. Many, weakened by hunger, succumbed to dysentery and typhus. Others crowded aboard "coffin" ships, seeking salvation abroad. In 1847 alone, 230,000 Irish left for North America or Australia. Of these, 40,000 of them died at sea.

The Logans were also victims to the tribalism that continues to this day. Lough Derg was predominately Catholic and the outlook for Protestant families was grim. The history of the suffering of Irish Protestants isn't as well known as the suffering of Irish Catholics. Yet, it was just as painful, motivating many families to forever leave their land of their fathers for an uncertain future far away.

On one occasion, Irishmen almost beat Thomas Logan to death with a shillelagh (an oak baton). Protestants, including the Logan family, would leave their homes in the evening and gather in the strongly built church. While the women and children were sleeping, the men, with loaded guns, took turns watching. They were often attacked and would pick up bullets from their beds that were fired hitting the opposite wall. Pits were dug just outside their door. The Logans were told those pits would be their graves. Professor Dart describes seeing these bullet holes that are in church walls to this day.

Winters were also bitter, drought a recurring feature of life, and hope for improvement in their situation appeared disheartening.

The Logans learned in the 1820s of free grants of land awaiting migrant settlers in New South Wales, Australia. Many from Ireland had successfully ventured to the Americas, Canada, and Australia and had done well from themselves.

#### The Logan Immigration

It took time and planning to sell their landed estates and dispose of their belongings. Thomas' father and family and his brother, John, had decided to accompany Thomas and his wife to Australia, twelve in all. In 1836, everything was completed, passages arranged, and sorrowful farewells made. Eliza, in particular, had to summon all the love, fortitude, and faith she possessed to leave her parents, brothers and sisters, and childhood friends and embark on the journey.

Lucinda, the second daughter of Thomas and Eliza Logan, remembers at age five her grandfather Thomas Dyas kneeling down in the mud commending his family to God's care. Lucinda, in her childish fancy, thought, "What a silly man to soil his clothes in the mud and wet his head and clothing." However, in her more mature years, she always considered that his prayers were answered richly and that they follow his family and descendants to the present day.

The Lady MacNaughton had been used to transport 305 convicts in irons in 1835. Little had been done to renovate her for her new role of carrying free settlers to Australia. Accommodations consisted of fifty berths in the male compartment and 112 berths in the female compartment. With the ship's company of thirty officers and men, there were 450 souls on board. Captain Hustwick wrote in his log: "No vessel has ever left Britain under such circumstances. The emigrants have been selected from the lowest of the low. They came on board in a filthy unwashed condition, and many of the women have been unprovided with a second change of clothing."

The ship sailed from Cork, Ireland, on November 4, 1836. The journey was by way of the Cape Horn of South Africa, as the Suez Canal wasn't opened until 1869. Food and water was severely rationed. Measles, whooping cough, scurvy, and ship's fever broke out. Medical skill and attention was inadequate. Disease and death raged during the four-month voyage of 12,000 miles.

"Typhoid fever broke out and the children got accustomed to funerals at sea (one of the saddest kinds of funerals I've witnessed)," Eliza Anne Dart writes. "Lucinda once got badly burned. When her Uncle John came to attend her wounds, she was so accustomed to seeing dead people, she would feign death, hoping he wouldn't dress her wounds." Harold Dart, Lucinda's grandson, writes: "One could only imagine the condition of those unfortunate travelers. The despair and absolute fear of mothers and young children separated from the support and comfort of a father's presence. The bitter heartache and recriminations that they had ever embarked on this journey of sorrow as loved ones were buried at sea, and the bravery of those who dared to encourage and cheer in the midst of what seemed to be an intolerable agony!"

The Logans weren't immune from the scourge of disease and death, though they possessed a religious faith that sustained them in their trials. Compared with some of their companions, their plight was minor—the death of their youngest child Elizabeth and the scalding of their second youngest child Lucinda. Fifty adults, including the surgeon and captain, died. Fifty-three children died during the voyage or in quarantine. In some cases whole families died. One broken hearted women, upon seeing her husband and family had all been victims of the disastrous journey, jumped overboard and drowned. She didn't have the heart to face life alone in a strange country.

The Lady MacNaughton hove to on February 27, 1837 at Spring Cove, near the quarantine station in Port Jackson, of what today is part of the Sydney harbor. The Logans asked about the land grants but found they couldn't get them. They had been discontinued in 1831, five years before they arrived.

The Industrial Revolution had created a new class of urban poor, hungry and bitter in back-alley hovels. Crime flourished in Georgian England, and the elite's reprisal—the iron fist of law—was vicious. The penalty for crime was often transport. Before transporting was abolished in 1868, 162,000 convicts had been sent to Australia. Sydney, a town of about 23,000, was still a convict settlement with about 3,500 convicts and 7,000 prisoners of the Crown. Just prior to the arrival of the Logans, the Chief Police Magistrate described the town as "a place where burglary and robbery are frequent. No town has such facility from 1834 to 1836 of eluding the police. Drunkenness, idleness, and carelessness afforded great opportunity and temptation day and night for a life of gross licentiousness." Thomas Logan supervised twelve convict settlements but resigned his position in 1838, in disgust over the harsh treatments the convicts were forced to bear.

#### Captain Patrick Logan

Some Australian relatives think there is a kinship tie to Captain Patrick Logan, the founder of Queensland, although I haven't been able to prove it. Patrick Logan was the youngest son of Abraham Logan by his second wife Janet Johnstone and was born in 1792, in East Renton, Berwickshire, Scotland. His father was a farmer and a landowner. Patrick married Letitia O'Beirne in the Church of St John, at Sligo. He had two children, a son, Robert Abraham Logan and a daughter, Letitia Bingham Logan. He served with the British in the Peninsular War in 1811-12 and also during the occupation of Paris after Waterloo until 1818. In 1825, he embarked for service in Australia, where he commanded a detachment of two companies at Moreton Bay. Patrick was Governor of the Convict Settlement and of the Moreton Bay Territory. He was a brutal disciplinarian, but perhaps no more so than was required by the exacting standards of the day. As an explorer, Captain Logan discovered the Logan and Albert Rivers and was the first to climb Mount Barney, 5,700 feet, then the highest altitude attained by a white man in Australia. In July 1839, while attempting to chart the Brisbane River, natives murdered him, perhaps for transgressing onto sacred tribal lands. The governor published an order deploring his fate and extolling the zeal of this bold soldier and brave explorer.

#### Pioneering in Australia

The first years for the Logan family were hard, in a country of animal and human peril. Aborigines, though often friendly, would spear an unwary colonist. Bushrangers, a terror to the country, would gallop by the Logan's ranch. Farming the wiry, inhospitable, snake-infested bush challenged the most intrepid, but they managed to cultivate corn, potatoes and millet and raise cattle.

Thomas and Eliza Logan had in all fourteen children, five of whom predeceased their father. Eliza Amelia, the daughter of Thomas Logan and Eliza Dyas and the mother of my grandmother, was born in April 1853.

John's second wife Margaret died on November 16, 1868. John left this world at the age of 95, on April 29, 1872. Both are buried in Oakhamton, West Maitland, New South Wales.

On Christmas day, 1874, Thomas spent the day with his family in Williamstown, New South Wales, and then Boxing Day with a neighbor. That evening he rode home to find his house in flames. Thomas rushed into the burning house to rescue deeds and valuables. His body was later found next to the chest he had brought from Ireland. Thomas was 72 years of age. Eliza, his widow, lived on among her children (George, Whitmore, Anne, Lavinia, Lucinda, Maria, Alfred, and Eliza) in Brookfield, Queensland until her death in 1883 at the age of 74 years.

#### The Fieldings

My grandmother's father was William Fielding (1852-1941), the son of William Fielding and Maryanne Wright. William was born in Hookway, near Crediton, in Devonshire, England. At the age of 15, in 1867, he joined the Royal Navy, sailing on the HMS Zealous, the flagship of the Pacific Fleet. The HMS Zealous was a British three-mast ironclad battleship of 6,100 tons launched in 1864. She was armed with twenty seven-inch guns and had a top speed of twelve knots. As a sailor, William saw action against pirates off the coast in the Caribbean and off the coast of Chile. "Cinda, I asked Frank about Grandfather and the sailing ship he sailed on," Aunt Ruth writes. "In those early years, there were no power-driven ships at all. It was all sailing, taking advantage of the wind—a cheap commodity. They had very tall sails and a square shape. Grandfather would have been adept at scaling those high sails and rigging. Unfortunately, one man was lost overboard and Grandfather never got over that. Their ship sailed from Vancouver to Valparaiso, which is half way down the Chile coast. The ship would call on Robinson Crusoe Island to shoot goats for fresh meat, because without refrigeration food was salted to keep it from rotting, and salted meat would become repulsive after awhile. Grandfather was a skilled marksman, and perhaps that is where our brother inherited his skill. Looking at the atlas, there is no Robinson Crusoe Island. However, I did find a Goat Island, so perhaps that is it." William would never eat crabs, because he once saw crabs devouring a corpse. Grandfather Fielding was so frugal, that he would pull wood from the fireplace to use later. One day, an ember from one of these logs burned down his house.

In March 1874, William left for Brisbane on the Juliet, landing in August. He started growing sugar cane in St. Lucia, in the Brisbane River Valley. In 1884, William started the first shop in Redland Bay known as the Pioneer Store. He dealt in general produce for eight years. William also started the bay's first Sunday school, in 1881. William married Eliza Amelia Logan, probably in 1880, the daughter of Thomas and Eliza Logan. They had four daughters. William Fielding was well off, and sent three of his daughters Lavinia, May, and Lucinda to England for a holiday. Jane got 700 pounds instead. (William later donated some land to build the Baptist Church.) Jane, by this time, was already married and had four children.

Jane also had a brother, William Thomas Fielding (1887-1905), who died in a shark attack in Redland Bay near Snipe Island. He was 18 years old. Inscribed in marble on a tall obelisk in the Serpentine Creek Road Cemetery at Redland Bay are these words: "In loving memory of Willie, only son of William and Eliza Fielding, who was drowned in Redland Bay while attempting to save the lives of others." Before retiring to bed, my grandmother would sometimes say to Willie's photography, "Goodnight Willie."

A Mr. Belcher owned the house at Redland Bay, which became home for the White family for the next seventy years. This man incurred large debts to William Fielding for food bought at his store. William bought the house and eventually bought the farm on which it was situated.

In a news article published in 1932 when he was 80, William was described as a man who "has been accustomed to hard work all of his life, and is hale and hearty, in full possession of his faculties. He does not smoke or drink." William was active in the Salvation Army and would carry the flag at the head of the march. A tradition was for him to distribute sweets to the children at Sunday school picnics. "Grandma Fielding was a dear, gracious lady," Mom writes. "She would come to our home, and I can see her now mending socks. On the way to school, we would drop in to see Grandma Fielding. She was always kind and would give us something to eat or a few pennies to spend." William Fielding died in 1941 at the age of 89. Eliza died in 1943 at the age of 90.

#### The Whites

The oldest known White ancestor is William (1769-1798). His great grandson was James, born in Lower Winchenden, Buckhamshire, in 1843. James' father Stephen was baptized in 1811 and died in 1869. Stephen's father was Joseph (1774-1862). James White is my mother's grandfather. He was a shepherd before sailing for Brisbane. James' family left England on the Golconda and arrived in Brisbane on February 16, 1865. They settled on the Pine River, north of Brisbane.

James came to Australia as a laborer and settled in North Pine in 1868. In that same year, James married Elizabeth Angelina Smith, a former English house servant. Elizabeth's father was from a wealthy English family and was a doctor, but was given a ticket of leave and a remittance to go to the colony, due to gambling. She died December 26, 1883, in childbirth with Ben. (Ben, who never married, was the last of the Logan siblings to die, in 1967.) My mother's dad was four-year old at the time. Grandma White used to look at the photo of Angelina and say, "Now there's a lady." James had enough schooling to read and write, and became Session Clerk for the North Pine Presbyterian Church. James married again to Catherine Reid (1854-1937), and had six more children (Ina, Carrie, George, Jim, Albert, and Norman)—seventeen in all.

World War I took its toll on the family. Two of his sons Frederick and Albert of the Queensland Mounted Infantry were killed on June 10, 1918 on the slopes of Gallipoli, Turkey, while Sergeant Fredrick was trying to save the life of his younger brother, Albert. They were buried near each other. (Grandfather Fielding would sometimes deliver remarks on April 25, Anzac Day, in memory of Australia's sons who fell in World War I.)

The family lived in the Pine Rivers district, and the Australian Paper Mills later acquired the property. The road leading to the APM factory is White's Road. James White and his wife Elizabeth Angelina are buried at the North Pine Cemetery in Lawnton. By 1989, James had 293 surviving descendants.

#### Francis White

Francis (Frank) White was born in Petrie in 1879, the middle son in a family of fourteen sons (George, Walter, Sam, Ben, Jim, Jack, Davy, Frank, Norman, Bill, Fred, Joe, Albert, Charlie) and three daughters (Ina, Lil, Carrie). His mother died when he was four years old.

Frank was a serious, studious boy and did well at school. As a boy, Frank worked as a farmhand near Beaudesert. The young men of the family were expected to find their own living by the time they were about fourteen, and young Frank was apprenticed to a churn-maker (for butter churns). However, times were hard and his boss went bankrupt, so Frank didn't complete his apprenticeship. He then became a fruit hawker in Brisbane with his brothers Ben and Jack. Frank saw a need for controlled ripening of bananas, as this hadn't been done before. While still in the fruit business, Frank met William Fielding who had a farm and a shop in Redland Bay. He fell in love with William's daughter, Jane. They were married in 1909 and brought a house in East Brisbane. Frank was offered a partner-salesman position in a furniture business in Brisbane. When the partnership went bankrupt, his house was sold to pay creditors. In 1913, with no money, no job, a wife and three children, he went down to Redland Bay to farm the property he named Mt. Carmel.

Frank and Jane White

#### Mt. Carmel Orchard

The Mt. Carmel Orchard property has the oldest pioneer house in Redland Bay, and was one of the first farms in the district. Aboriginal burial sites are on the property. The farm also has a permanent survey mark to mark one of John Oxley's survey points during the discovery of the Brisbane River in 1823. The name Mt. Carmel means "mountains of God and zenith of fruitfulness," and the orchard has lived up to its name with 100-year custard apple trees still bearing prolific fruit. Avocados were first introduced to the Australian public from this orchard in 1927, and new varieties of citrus fruit were bred here. The Eleanor Tangor has been acclaimed internationally for its excellence. Other fruits include mangoes, bananas, pecan nuts, and macadamia nut trees. Grandfather worked hard growing bananas, pineapples, oranges, and lemons. Frank became a supplier to the U.S. army during World War II.

Philip. Anne, and Paul holding Tim, 1965

Fruit was handpicked and packed in wooden half-bushel cases. The children would help pack the produce after school. Cases were made on the farm. Wood for the cases was imported but prepared at the local sawmill on Mill Road, Redland Bay. Each morning, cases of fruit and vegetables were transported (at first by horse-drawn cart) to the Redland Bay jetty where, it was shipped up the Brisbane River to the markets on Turbot Street where Frank sold fruit from a basket years earlier. Citrus fruit had to be treated for fruit flies at the government gassing station before been sent south on the train.

On a typical day, the Whites rose at dawn. The cows were milked, the milk was separated, and the cream churned into butter. The farm produced so much butter during World War II that it was made into soap. The milk was used for cooking and for feeding the calves. After breakfast, Frank led the family in daily prayers. Granddad and his farmhands would then work the property until 9 a.m., when grandmother would bring tea and sandwiches to the workers. Sunday was always a day of rest.

Frank used to spend his weekends preaching on street corners with the YMCA. We have a sermon notes on "The Rich Young Ruler" from Frank White from about 1920. "The salvation of the Lord is not secured by morality or good works or human merit, but by obeying the word of God in the Gospel." Frank said.

No works of merit now I plead

But Jesus take for all my need

The Christ who died by God was crowned

To save upon redemption ground.

"Those sins pointed out by Jesus referred to conduct of life, but the two greatest commandments of the law were: Thou shalt love the Lord the God with all thy heart, soul, and might, and Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. These two commandments go down to the very heart.

"May the Holy Spirit give us responsive hearts. Let us not turn into the dark and coldness, but come to the Savior with love and gratitude for his blood-bought gift of eternal life."

Uncle Frank writes that "each morning after breakfast, Dad would get up from the table and wash his hands, come back and take down the family Bible, read a portion, and then lead us in prayer. Of course, it was mother who taught us to kneel and pray before we go to bed at night."

The Tree of Life- the Avocado is a sixteen-minute movie produced by Uncle Hil in the early 1950s. A copy has been preserved in the National Archives in Canberra. It shows Uncle Hil planting a seed in the "nursery" and Uncle Frank grafting young plants. There's a shot of a tractor plowing a large acreage of dark, red soil. It shows Hil irrigating and Roly mowing, packing, and nailing down. Grandfather White appears briefly.

Chestnut, palm, fruit trees, and tropical gardens surrounded the pioneer homestead. The double story home had numerous bedrooms, bathrooms, and living rooms and an ornate fireplace made with handmade bricks. I was at the farm in 1960 for my first grade and again five years later when I was ten years old. I remember my fascination with the ruins of the 1928 Buick, which Uncle Hil whimsically gave me, the crab fishing and the capture of a small shark in the bay, the wind-up telephone and the kaleidoscopic-colored knit quilts, and the fruit packing with its interesting sights, sounds, and smells. (It's strange how our senses can awake our memory. When I smell crushed tomato leaves in my hands, I'm transported back forty years to Redland Bay where our tomato garden flourished.) When we went to the states, we would often correspond to Uncles and Aunts in Australia. "Hil and I were always delighted to be kept in touch with the children growing up with photographs and letters," Aunt Betsy writes. "Memories are very precious."

"As you know the old home has been sold," Mom wrote to me in 1999. "Now the owners are in the process of clearing the grounds. The big bulldozer has been on the job knocking over old landmarks like the lean-to where the Buick would sometimes stand, and other machinery near the hen house. Ruth called it the 'chook' house. The big mulberry tree near the house got pushed over too."

####

#### Jane White

When I was at Ivyland, I liked reading my grandmother Jane White's letters, written in an elegant, looping, Victorian script and always ending "Your loving Grandma". In a letter dated May 4, 1968, she writes: "Your welcome letter came yesterday, and thank you very much. I'm returning your photos. I think you've taken them very nicely. I used to take photos when I was a young girl, too. Then, we didn't have cameras like you have. I would have to have a cover over my head and everything would have to be so still. I think it's good for you to have a hobby, but I hope you don't neglect your studies. Uncle Hil was so pleased to see you and Paul, and we're pleased to have him home again."

Jane White

"When I was a young girl," Mom wrote, "several members of our family and mother were taken seriously ill. The doctors said that it was certain that my mother would die soon, so arrangements were made for the funeral. At the same time, the church met together and prayed earnestly for her. Previously, my mother had prayed that the Lord would spare her until her children came to years of understanding to make rightful and godly choices. The Lord heard her prayers. My Dad, a very godly and prayerful man, was standing by my mother's side as she came to consciousness. She said to him: 'I have heard the most beautiful singing and the sight was glorious and someone said these words: 'The eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms.' (Deut. 33:27) From that moment onwards, my mother began to improve and to regain her strength. She outlived my father by almost thirty years."

Grandma White died in 1980, at the age of 96, while my mother was at her bedside. "May I say as your father that one of the things that I have deeply respected about your mother has been the strong and consistent love and loyalty that she has shown toward her own mother-- and other members of her family but especially her mother-- all down through the years that I have known her," Dad wrote at the time. "Your mother is also a highly trained and competent registered nurse and it seems fitting to us that now at a time when her mother's need for loving, tender, nursing care is greater than ever, that Mom ought to be with her."

Grandmother was able to recognize Mom, but was not able to communicate except for a smile and a faint whisper of words. She asked, "Why have you come?" Mom had left Malaysia to be with grandmother and the rest of the family. "Mother, it has been a long time since I have seen you and I want to look after you." Grandma White smiled and was more than satisfied with her words. She gently slipped away five days later at about 2 a.m. on August 28. Mom writes "my brother-in-law Raymond held one hand and I gently held the other until she left us for the heavenly home. That last night was a benediction and will be remembered with tenderness. The presence of the Lord filled the room with His tenderness and calm." Dad wrote that "In today's mail, I got off a card to grandma. Grandma will not receive the card now, but she will get something much better—a glorious and abundant entrance into the presence of our Lord. Grandma has been promoted to higher service."

Jane was buried next to her husband Frank, who died January 5, 1951, having lived a long, fulfilling life. "These are unusual days for you and in some ways you will be very lost after your long married life," my Mom wrote to "Dearest Mother Mine"—her mother at the time. "But do not be lonely because you have lots of children who love you. Moreover, Dad does not feel very far away and we could not wish him in a better place." There was a time of remembrance at the graveside, with the granite stone inscribed "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus." Then people started home, walking in the sunlight and gentle breeze of a summer day. The hours had been hours of reverence—and serenity. The last enemy is Death, but Death seems tangibly serene when it can be said of a woman: she ran the course, she kept the faith.

#### Lucinda White

My mother Lucinda was born on October 12, 1918, the second youngest a family of eight, including one set of twins.

Francis

Jane is holding Ruth

Joyce, Francis, Hil, Lucinda (holding the flower), Halley, Dick, Frank

"I was number seven in a family of eight born into a loving Christian family in the old historical home that still stands overlooking the bay," Mom writes. "My father was a business man before coming to Redland Bay, but he chose to find a better place for his growing family. My parents were careful to protect us and bring us up in a pleasant, safe environment.

"Ruth mentioned the struggle we had in those early days of wood stoves, no electricity, and horse and buggy. But the both of us concluded that in spite of this, we had a very happy childhood. We would watch the tides and possibly go swimming twice a day. Ruth and I would get up at 5 a.m. to play tennis on our own court. So it was no wonder we were called upon to play with adults in double sets." They would also toboggan down the hills near the bay on Hussein sacks.

"As a child, I admired my older brothers and sisters. Too young to attend school, I watched them as they faded into the distance, walking down White's Hill on their way to the Redland Bay State School two miles away. Then, in the afternoon, I would await for their return, especially my sister Francis. In turn, I attended the same school at the age of five—continuing on through high school.

The Lord, He is that doth go

before thee, He will be with thee

He will not fail thee, neither

forsake thee: fear not, neither

be dismayed. DEUT 31.2

L. White

Redland Bay 20.10.33

"Following my education there, I took a course in dress-making. I did well in the course, so much so that I was offered a job there to teach what I had learned from the McCabe Academy of Dresskeeping.

"My sister Francis, the sister I admired so much, had taken up nursing and had advanced to a responsible position. I was attracted to the nursing field. I was accepted into the nursing program, which began January 3rd 1942. The work at times was stressful but I will never regret the valuable lessons of life in having a caring heart for others. Sister Francis would encourage me when the going got tough. It was no light thing to be responsible for the lives of people and to be on hand to comfort those who needed comforting. My first course took four years and gained for me a diploma in general nursing and pediatrics. I went on to do obstetrics at the Woman's Hospital where I graduated." I was born in this same hospital on March 9, 1955.

"My nursing training continued, this time in the area of maternal and child welfare. I was responsible for my staff, and also taking care of the mothers before they went to the hospital and the mother and child when they left the hospital. Our staff also took care of older children from families that had parental problems. I was called sometimes to go to court on behalf of the children.

"These were depression years, but my father and mother with their strong faith in God spared us much of the heartache. Following breakfast, my father would read a portion from the word of God and then we knelt in prayer. I admired my father and as for my mother I adored her. She became a pattern of godly living for me—hard working, courageous, loving, and kind.

"At the age of four, I learned to read the New Testament. As I grew older, my mother instructed me to pray my way through the day.

Lucinda is on the second row, second from the right

"We had our jobs to do but we also knew how to play hard. During holiday times, we enjoyed sledding down the slopes leading to the water's edge. Swimming was a favorite sport. We had our own tennis court. The hours of fun in H20 bring back happy memories. While on summer holidays, we went swimming in the pubic baths, which we enclosed in protective wire against the sharks. The seriousness of everyday living by my parents was punctuated by outings here and there, either to the mountains or to the Golden Sands of the coast. To stay overnight at the beach was a special delight. My father and brothers would set up camp at a chosen spot. No matter if salty water, sand, and sunburn were the order of the day, it would still be such an enjoyable experience. Listening to the pounding of the waves on the shore would send me off to sleep—refreshed the next morning for new experiences. Living by the water has always been an attraction to me."

Lucinda is on the right

In June, 2007, mom's sister Halley died. Here is an e-mail from my mother sent to Halley a few days before she died that suggest the deep bonds of affection that bound their family together over the decades.

"Halley was the eldest member of our family of eight children. My father adored her and my mother dearly loved her. More than one person has said that she looks like our mother and this was more apparent as she grew older. Be that as it may, our Grandma Fielding took special delight in her first grandchild. In the lineup of the family, I was number seven.

"Memories of my big sister came into focus when I was very young. I admired my big sister. She set a good example of an industrious worker and saw to it that we helped with the household chores. Her place was at the end of the table nearest the kitchen so she could help with the serving of the meals. No wonder mother called her "the little red hen."

"Sunday was a very special day for us as a family. Father and mother loved the Lord and saw to it that we were brought up according to the Word of God.

"As the years went by, changes took place. At one time Halley was my Sunday school teacher and even now I remember her teaching from the book of Hebrews, which is the book that I've enjoyed studying and have been helped by the teaching.

"For many years, my sister worked as secretary for the manager at the Commercial Bank of Australia. The building was impressive and quite intimidating for a young country girl. From time to time I would visit my sister with a message from home. This made me feel so small going into such a grand building to meet my sister for a short while as we stood behind the glass window. She held that job for many years but the day came when she retired and that was February 9th in preparation for her marriage to Harold Nicholls- a Baptist minister on April 18th.

"Years later on that day in 1952 was our wedding day in Singapore. In 1994 on the same day our son Philip and Nancy his wife announced the birthday of their oldest son Zachary. From the earliest of days as far back as I can remember, we learned to pray. It is no wonder that our sister Halley was a good Christian example.

"She loved flowers and took pleasure in her own garden. She did beautiful needlework and had appreciation for the arts. I thank the Lord that Halley was such a loving, helpful caring sister and a mentor in so many ways. If I had a problem I would ask for her advice which she thoughtfully gave to me.

"She was a warrior in prayer and a student of the Word. Praise God we will meet again one day in the heavenly mansion where we will be with our Lord adoring and worshiping Him. He deserves all the praise we can give, and to my sister I say thank you for being such a kind and loving sister."

My sister Anne wrote this tribute relating to her trip with Mom to Australia: "September 2001 has always remained a very special memory for me as I think back on the kind and loving hospitality shown to me by my Aunt Halley, Uncle Harold, Ruth, Roslyn and Michael, and will never be forgotten."

Mom and Dad share with me childhood experiences frolicking in a barn. "Above the barn back at home was a large wooden shed where my father kept hay and boxes for fruit," Mom writes. "In the corner in a neat coil was a huge snake. We made a quick, silent retreat and called our father excitedly. My Dad wasn't too concerned and said it was a carpet snake and useful in keeping down the rats and mice. In the calmest way possible, my Dad grabbed the snake by the back of the neck transporting it to another place. Then from year to year, we would find the skin of the snake, reminding us that the creatures were alive and well.

"From inside the barn we would climb on top of the shed. There in mango season we would sit and eat the juicy luscious mangos until we had eaten more than enough."

Mom wrote this essay about her favorite toy. "The years have passed but I remember with great excitement the small airplane I received as a Christmas gift.

"Day after day and for long hours I played with my airplane until it became a very special part of my life. Most days before going to bed, I would place it on my night table. It's not surprising that one night I dreamed that my airplane took my flying high up into the sky. I jumped into the cockpit, played around with the controls, and before long I was up and away flying through the blue sky. For me, there was a wonderful sense of freedom as I rode on the puffy clouds leaving the ground behind. The country fields that looked like a patchwork quilt got smaller and smaller. Before long, my plane left the land behind and now I was flying very high over the sea until I was hid in the clouds alone, taking me to a distant land I had never seen before. This was more exciting than scary. Eventually, I landed on a soft patch of green grass, where people I had never seen before greeted me. They were friendly and wanted me to visit them in their home. We talked a long while and it seemed as though it was getting late. Moreover, I had an urge to return home again, knowing my parents would be concerned. In the midst of this dilemma, I woke up excited and wondered how this would be in real life.

"As the many months went by, my airplane got a little broken and crumpled, but whatever it was, it was still my favorite toy that I will not forget.

"Maybe, I will give my grandsons an airplane and hope that they too will have lots of fun and dream pleasant dreams as I did.

"My toy airplane was the best!"

Sure enough, for Christmas 2000, their grandparents gave Zachary and Benjamin new toy airplanes.

Uncle Francis (Frank) White's favorite toy was an air rifle and enjoyed collecting stamps. Because his twin sister was Frances, he was called Brother. For him, a perfect day as a child was swimming at high tide. The house was filled with music with a radio. His mother would sometimes play the pedal-organ for family sing-alongs. The family's first car as a Model T Ford. Frank's first car trip was going for a family photo in Brisbane, and his first plane trip was a World War I Gypsy Moth Biplane. He liked cricket and football in school and did well in English and History, with Shakespeare his favorite author and Oliver Cromwell his favorite historical figure. During World War II, Frank went on to serve as an officer on the Burma Road. One day, he was booked to fly from Australia for a three-month service leave, but was bumped from the flight by another officer. Later, he heard newspaper boys shouting, "Plane down in ocean!" The plane on which Uncle Frank was to fly crashed into the sea that same afternoon.

#### Christmas in Redland Bay

In 1998, my Mother painted a nostalgic word picture of Christmas in those early days: "Now as I reflect on the early days, the little girl within me comes alive, and it's as though it was yesterday that I remember those early carefree, happy days of Christmas. For me it was when we lived in the historic old home on the top of White's Hill on School of Arts Road in Queensland, Australia.

"Our place overlooked the beautiful Redland Bay with a string of islands and beyond that was the Pacific Ocean. On a stormy night, we could hear the waves pounding on the shore. Each morning, the sun would rise from the horizon casting a sparkling, dazzling path upon the bay. I never ceased to be fascinated by the ever-changing scene due to the moods of the sky and water.

"The old home still stands as a reminder of days gone by. Other buildings and farmlands have been sold for development, but Frank White's home on the crest of the hill known as White's Hill remains. But now that our property of about thirty acres has been sold, we know of great changes that are going on, with grand mansions being erected on our playground of years gone by.

"Although I've celebrated Christmas for many years in other countries, memories are precious. So in thought I'll return to the 'old home' so indelibly etched in my mind. My parents demonstrated the simplicity and beauty of the day. Now in thought I would like you to join in with us for the Christmas season.

"We were eight children excited with the expectations of the day. During the week my mother with the little help that we gave decorated the dining room. My father, a day or so before Christmas would go into the bush with his workmen to cut down a tree, which we decorated. This was a busy time. We took pleasure in making gifts for one another. On Christmas Eve, after we went to bed, gifts seemed to come from nowhere surrounding the tree to our delight as we met around the tree on Christmas morning.

"There was truly a happy and festive atmosphere. Led by my Dad, who had a good singing voice, we sang the well-known song, "O Come All Ye Faithful." Our dad would read the familiar Christmas story. And after a few words, we would take possession of our gifts. Then for the most part the younger members of the family were free for the day. I was number seven in line and would sit next to my mother at the table.

"While my mother and older sisters worked in the kitchen preparing the dinner, we would go to our own beach for a swim as our property ran down to the water's edge. Another tradition was to eat delicious watermelons as a snack mid-morning. Around 1 p.m., we all sat down to a sumptuous meal including the traditional plum pudding, and often the only reason we would take the plum pudding was hoping for some treasure that would appear. Sometimes, we would have an ice-cream cake. Remember, for us, it was summertime, not too far from the Tropic of Capricorn. I would be fascinated by greeting cards with pictures of snow and it wasn't until many years later and after our family had begun to disperse that I saw the white fluff for the first time. It was a very pleasant experience and I never cease to marvel at the wonders of God's handiwork.

"Later on in the afternoon, there was a height of excitement when our grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and others were invited for High Tea. And what a time of happy togetherness that was! Many a time, we would be left standing until the older folk had finished tasting all the special tasty foods that my mother had prepared. Even today others remind me of the Napoleon cake, fruit tarts, the Christmas cake cooked to perfection, and the dainty sandwiches and other items of food. It was a grand day!

"I cherish these precious memories and it seems but a little while when we were together. I remember with love and deep respect my father and mother who are now with the Lord. They taught us to love and obey God with whom they served. And so it is my desire to following the footsteps of those who have set a good pattern of living."

#### The Decision to Become a Missionary

My mother went to Brisbane State High School for nine years. She has a diploma in professional dressmaking, holds a triple certificate in nursing, and was an alumna of the Melbourne Bible Institute in Victoria. Mom did four years of nursing training at the Royal Brisbane Hospital, where her sister Francis was on staff and brother-in-law Kenneth was in residency. During World War II, Mom was in charge of Mothercraft Association of Queensland in Brisbane, a hostel for forty children and seven mothers, and having a staff of two trained sisters, nurse, cook, laundress, and twelve trainees. The hostel cared for children whose mothers were temporarily debarred by illness or accident, and it cared for mothers both before and after the baby's arrival.

Lucinda is on the left

Mom's parent and grandparents were dedicated Christians and prayer and reading the Bible was part of her daily life. Five of the eight White children became full-time workers for the Lord. Ruth, Joyce, and Frank were also missionaries to Japan, the Philippines, and China. A missionary conference that Mom and her sister Ruth attended challenged her to become a missionary. "Perhaps you would like to hear my Chinese name," Frank, who possibly influenced his younger sister to follow in his footsteps, wrote from China in 1939. "I only heard it myself this afternoon. It's Hua Te-yu. As you won't be any wiser, I'll let you into the secret. From now on I will be called the equivalent to Mr. Virtue Abundant White." In 1940, Frank wrote from Szechwan: "I often smile as I think of a prim and demur Chinese lady I collided with when our boat struck on the Yangtze rapids near Suifu. Her smile, when I attempted to say in my politest Chinese, 'I have grievously offended you,' made me look up my book at the first opportunity. I had thanked her for being 'of great assistance to me.' "

Mom went to mainland China under the China Inland Mission in May 1948 and Malaya in 1951. "It took courage for a young girl to say goodbye to family and friends to go to China in answer to God's call," Elvera Anderson writes. "It took courage and heartbreak to say goodbye to their children knowing that they wouldn't see them again for maybe two or three years." Eloise Nelson writes that "our first memory of Lucinda long ago—a light-hearted, full-of-fun person with a great sense of humor—a good counterpart for Harold's earnest, reflective demeanor." Harold and Lucinda On February 9, 1952, the same day that Queen Elizabeth II was crowned Queen of England, Mom married Dad in Singapore. On that day, my parents and all of Great Britain prayed for divine guidance for the years ahead.

### CHAPTER TWO

### OUR STORY GOES ON

#

This is my story, this is my song,

Praising my Savior all the day long;

This is my story, this is my song,

Praising my Savior all the day long.

"Blessed Assurance"

#### The Rest of the Story

Here is the rest of the story through the year 2000 with additional information on the deaths of my parents.

#### China

On May 1, 1946, Dad arrived in Shanghai and proceeded by rail to Chengchow, Honan province. He worked with a Mennonite relief organization on several agricultural projects, such as teaching students how to use tractors and raising milk cows. A Mennonite bulletin from 1947 describes Dad as "the fellow that eats and sleeps Chinese. Harold is our agricultural man. When he first arrived, he was assigned to the tractor project. Later, he was put on the agricultural and cotton loans. Now he is working on the heifer project." Uncle Frank White, an Australian army officer, worked with Dad in China when Dad was serving in the Friends ambulance unit. "Australia had sent some cows as a present to China as the Japs had left nothing," Frank writes. "One of the cows died and Harold who had a degree in animal husbandry was asked to go out with me to try and determine the cause of death—accident, exotic disease, or sabotage. To our horror and dismay, Chinese butchers had already skinning the cow with the carcass a welter of blood and gore lying on the raw side of the skin with the butchers hastily slicing off chunks of meat and packing it into buckets to sell to an unsuspecting public. To the best of my memory, we were unable to determine the cause of death."

My father (on the right) in China, 1947

In 1981, Dad got a letter from James Liu from the Hengyang, Hunan Province, the People's Republic of China. Lieu worked with Dad in the China Relied Unit, and he and his wife Hazel taught Dad Chinese. "When we saw you for the last time, that was in Shanghai," Lieu writes. "In 1951, we went back to Hengyang and continued to work in the orphanage. After the liberation, Hazel was asked to work in one of the hospitals and I was asked to teach in one of the high schools. We are not young any more. Hazel is 70 years old and I am 77 years old. We want to live for Jesus during the rest of our lives."

"In 1946, the United States sent General George C. Marshall to China to reconcile the Nationalists and the Communists," I write in my book How to Do Business With the People's Republic of China. "Marshall's efforts continued until 1947 when he announced abandonment of his mediation. The U.S. State Department ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from China. The civil war became more widespread. Battle raged not only for gaining territories but also for winning allegiance of populations. Within three year, the Communists forced the Kuomintang to set up a truncated regime on Taiwan. In January 1949, the Communists took Beijing without a fight." The Communist takeover of China forced Dad's evacuation back to Shanghai in 1948. "We received good treatment at the hands of the Communists," Dad wrote in 1947 from Kaifeng. "There is little doubt in my mind but that far reaching agrarian reforms are in order in China, and that the central government is failing in meeting the needs of the people. Nevertheless, resort to armed revolution and bloodshed as an accepted method in extending an economic or political ideology contrary to the prevailing one is, in my opinion, morally indefensible."

In 1979, Dad wrote that the "takeover was relatively bloodless as the Nationalist forces by then had little heart to resist the onslaught of the Communist armies. The CIM, which was the largest Protestant mission working in China, suffered no casualties as a result of the Communist takeover, though a number of the missionaries were held under house arrest, some like Arthur Miller for a few years." The Chinese, Dad notes, are "patient, resilient, hard-working people. Many have learned to live with little."

Dad was accepted into the China Inland Mission in February 1949, three months before China fell to the Communists. "We were happy to have an interview with you at our headquarter staff meeting yesterday, and after further prayer, we are prepared to accept your application and receive you as a member of the China Inland Mission", writes Bishop Frank Houghton, the general director. You can sense Dad's exaltation and excitement as he anticipates his adventure, in a letter written from Shanghai to Aunt Viola and Uncle Henry in February, 1949. "Greetings over the way and brace yourself for some news relative to my application to the China Inland Mission. Read—here it is... They have accepted me!" Dad ends the letter noting that "relations with my best girl are looking good. I'm now looking for the Lord to send her out to China." In March 1951, Dad left China and three months later went to Malaya, which was then a British colony.

In October 1948, Mom went to China under the China Inland Mission, later renamed the Overseas Missionary Fellowship. In 1949, Mom wrote that "I was walking to school alone and the hot morning sun was shining brightly. As I was nearing the market place, the familiar sound of a battle plane made my ears prick up. Immediately, there were loud reports of defensive ack-ack fire. In no time the street cleared. I saw a woman quickly dart across the street to collect her children who were unconcernedly continuing their game of marbles. On other occasions, I have watched the bombs dropping. They would come down with a thundering noise above the roar of the engines, thick volumes of dark smoke marking the spot where they had fallen." Mom saw "two large excavations where thirteen graves had been dislodged and large trees cut down" and also saw a plane crash. Mom supervised hospital wards and was also in charge of training Chinese girls. Mom and Dad met in a language school in Shanghai. They learned Mandarin and then later the Hakka dialect used by the Southern Chinese. On July 20th 1951, Dad was engaged to Mom.

My parent's letters, now fragile and yellowing after fifty years, evokes a romance conducted with a literary flair that has today all but vanished. "Leisurely, our boat cuts her way through the calm blue seas so that traveling becomes a delight," Mom wrote on June 23, 1951. "The scenery yesterday was a particular joy as we skirted by the islands at a very close distance. Much could be seen of the islanders in their huts surrounded by the coconut plantations while on the hill slopes farming seems to be the order of the day.

"Yesterday morning, my waking thoughts were of you and this continued throughout the whole day as I remembered your birthday. To say that I have missed you is putting it mildly. The Lord has been good to us in allowing us to have three weeks crammed full of happiness."

"Darling, you know that I would account it a small thing to circumvent the globe if that seemed necessary," Dad wrote shortly afterwards. "I trust that God will be directing you clearly in respect to the timing of your coming to this land.

Darling, I think that you will love living here in this land. I am really beginning to fall in love with the place. So do come soon my love to share the wonders of this land with me. It's God's mission field for us, and my heart is really not hankering after another."

"This is truly the happiest of all days for me," Mom wrote from Australia on July 20, 1951. "The Lord has been good in making it clear that you are His choice so that I need not hesitate longer in answering your question. How I would love to be with you at this moment while I whisper clearly in your ear "Yes." Harold, darling, I do belong to you and you belong to me because of Him.

"As long as I live, I will have a testimony to give concerning the Lord's guidance as He began to unite our hearts. I cannot help but love you and now long for the day when we will share each other in a more perfect way.

"Even while I write this letter, I am wearing the ring (precious to us both) which will continue to remind me that you are not very far away, at least in thoughts."

#### Malaya

Mom and Dad were married in Singapore at Bras Basah Road Gospel Hall on February 9th 1952, and had their honeymoon on the island of Penang off the coast of west Malaya. They inscribed on their rings "God with us". Aunt Grace wrote that "When Harold was serving the Lord in China, I recall receiving a letter from him telling us of a profound fact—the Lord had given him a promise of wife. It was a joy to meet this smiling, happy, intelligent Christian sister-in-law."

My cousin Ruth Nicholls gives us this picture when she was about five. Mom was about to get married. "The scene was the breakfast room at the Old House there at Redland Bay. This long narrow room with its cream wooden paneling had a distinct flavor of its own. Two adjacent walls were filled with a series of sliding windows, which added to the character. Grandma's sewing machine occupied the corner between the windows. Next to it was THE coach! Everyone's favorite! It was evening. The open windows captured the deep blackness of the night sky. Outside, the cicadas sang. A dog's bark echoed in the distance. That long table with its many chairs had been cleared. The vase of flowers—there was always a vase of flowers—like the tablecloth—had been safely stowed on the side board. Grandma's sewing machine, with its throttle-like spindle, was ready for action. My, how Grandma could make those treadles move! The sisters Halley, Frances, and Vin were there, as I recall. There was a sense of excitement, a sense of expectation.

"The door of the veranda creaked. Aunty 'Cindy entered. She was dressed in a long white dress, or was it cream? "Take care, take care!" Aunty Cinda held the skirt up tight. The fear of getting a soil mark was always a threat. The red earth was notorious! A sheet was spread on the table. Aunty 'Cinda still clutching the skirt, tried gracefully to first mount one of the chairs to clamber up onto the table. There she stood on display. She turned this way, then that. There were oohs! And ahhs! The Grandma began the job of pinning up the hem.

"Why have I remembered such an incident? Our family only made fleeting visits to the Old Home. Yet, of all my childhood experiences, it is one event that I recall. I suspect that t was the joy and the eager expectation of the moment, the special aura associated with such a unique occasion. The fun of it! Fancy being up on the table, slowly turning around being pinned up!"

In 1948, an emergency was declared because of the Communist insurgency, and was not to end until 1960. "Politically speaking, conditions in Malaya have markedly improved during the past two and a half years," Dad wrote in 1953. "Several thousands of the terrorists have been killed, captured, or surrendered the to the government forces. Perhaps the lowest point of civilian morale was at the time of the assassination of Governor Gurney near the gap on the road to Fraser's Hill." A half million Chinese were resettled to about 500 New Villages, and my parents worked in some of these towns.

"One of my most poignant memories was to return one evening to hear that a seventeen year old girl, who was teaching me Hakka, had been strangled to death by the Communists," Dad writes. "Probably not because she taught us the language, but because she was friendly to the local government officer, and may not have cooperated in giving rice to the Communists." Dad writes in 1957 that "there were several round ups carried out by police and security forces during the year. As a result of one of those, our language teacher Mr. Phang was taken on January 5th, and required to live outside the district. Since the round ups, visiting in the homes have been more difficult and we have been less welcome. They appear to be afraid of us and may think we are part of the government." In another letter, Dad writes that "during the night of August 28th, four terrorists were shot and killed near the perimeter fence at Bukit Siput. We heard the shots at about 9:00 p.m." A news clipping confirms that "men of the 2/10 Gurkha Rifles last night killed four terrorists at Bukit Siput New Village" where we were living. Malaya obtained independence within the British Commonwealth in 1957.but not without bloodshed. "The 31st of August was a significant milestone in Malay's history as that date marked the birth of independent Malaya," Dad wrote at the time. My parents had a strong sense of history and were present at the creation of both the People's Republic of China and Malaysia.

My brother Paul has the pointer while I gaze at the neighbor's cat

I was born on furlough in Australia on March 9, 1955, and was only two weeks old when the family made the crossing by ocean liner to San Francisco, the ship's youngest passenger. "So far, we've had very comfortable sailing," Dad writes in a letter dated March 28, 1955. "The sea has been very smooth. The SS Orion is a British ship of 24,000 tons and 1,400 passengers. We are located on the H deck, which is about the water line. We brought a basket along for Philip and Paul sleeps on one bottom berth and Lucinda on the other. Little Philip has been a pretty good boy on the trip. We have been having calm sailing weather, at most there has been a mile roll of the ship. Lucinda and Philip have been sleeping on deck part of the time."

My parents spent a few weeks at the farm in South Dakota. "Philip was a baby and Paul was an ambitious two year old," Aunt Grace writes. On another occasion at the farm, Mom and Anne saved the garden by picking worms of the vegetation, Paul drove a temperamental truck into a ditch, and I painted a shed.

Mom and I in South Dakota

On the trip back to Malaya, we sailed on the majestic 80,000 ton RMS Queen Mary, which is today permanently berthed in Long Beach, California. In a letter from Newington Green, London in October 1955, Dad wrote that "we traveled tourist class on the Queen Mary. We were on D Deck and traveled in comfort in a four berth cabin. "Of London, Dad wrote from Newington Green that "the weather here has been dry and there has been a great deal of fog. The sun here seems to shine through the fog with about the same degree of brightness as the moon at home. It appears as a blood red ball through the fog. I've been impressed with both the compactness and the vastness of the city. A bomb or mine had dropped very near the CIM home here destroying buildings on three sides, but the property here stood intact apart from its shattered windows, Today, we visited St. Paul's Cathedral—a huge building with a high dome—has been used as a center of worship for 1,300 years. We also saw the outside of some other places of note, including Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, the Parliament buildings, Big Ben, and Hyde Park." Apart from land travel in Australia and the United States, we traveled around the world by ship.

On the Queen Mary

My consciousness dawned in the small Chinese village of Bukit Siput, a village of about 2,000 Hakka-speaking people three miles from Segamat in Jahore State, about halfway between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. My parents describe the village in 1956 letter: "The tropical scenery, with an abundance of luscious, green foliage, the rubber trees, the palm oil plantations, and the road signs had not changed. A number of the signs declared that it was unlawful to carry food on that stretch of road. At the gates of the barbed wire perimeter fence were guards on duty to check on those who passed through. Along the village street, the children played. The women were occupied in various ways. Some were washing clothes, others were buying vegetables for the midday meal, while others sat nursing a baby. There were many rubber tappers to be seen. We live in a shop house on the street of the village. The house has a cement floor and the front door open out to the sidewalk. We are glad for the upstairs which gives us added room, but miss a proper yard for the children to play in. Near the village gate is a large temple that appears to be well patronized. I hear a sound tonight that grieves my heart. It is the "bing bong" of the drums as the Buddhist priests perform a ceremony over the body of a woman who died yesterday."

Among my earliest memories are music from the wind-up record player: "How Much is That Doggy in the Window?" and Walt Disney's "Paul Bunyan." We lived there for almost five years in a two-story house with a kitchen and six rooms. "The children seemed to adjust to the village life without too much difficulty," Dad wrote in a letter to Mom. "Philip is enjoying his new tricycle. They are running outside a fair bit. I've been changing Philip at night as he still wets. I painted their throats one night before retiring, but they made so much fuss about it, that I haven't been carrying on since. Did you want me to start with the (whip) worm treatment?" I was a sickly infant, as my mother's diary from 1956 suggests:

"Friday, May 4th. Bubba woke up at 4 a.m. Gave him a bottle.

"Saturday, May 5th. Philip not well. Took him to the clinic at Tana Rata. Had temperature of 104.6. The both of us looked after him. Had little sleep.

"Sunday, May 6th. Philip on sulp. tabs. Still very sick. Temp. raging again at night.

"Monday, May 7th. Bubba still has a temp. Unable to roll or stand up. Looks knocked out.

"Tuesday, May 8th. Seen again by doctor. Said we should take him to the hospital for blood tests, etc.

"Thursday, May 20th. Bubba slept well and so did we."

In a March, 1957 circular, my parents wrote that "we have had a distressing time with Philip of late. For about three months, he has had one bout of sickness after another. The cutting of his tooth seemed to lower his resistance to the many germs that are floating around. We are so thankful to the Lord that he is fit again."

By the time I was a toddler, through God's grace and my mother's medical skills, my constitution had improved. I spent my waking hours following my older brother Paul into all kinds of adventures and mischief.

#### Grade School

I began school at first grade five years later on another furlough in Australia. I went to Redland Bay State School, the same school my mother attended as a child, where I learned "This Old Man" and "Here We Go Looby Loo."

The next three grades were at Chefoo, a boarding school primarily for missionary kids in Cameroon Highlands, the central hills of Malaysia, about four hours drive from where Mom and Dad lived. (Chefoo was named after a city of 100,000 on the coast of China where the boarding school was first established about 120 years ago. Dad accompanied 55 cows and other relief to China's Chefoo in north Shantung in 1947 and reported that "it has an excellent harbor and the city nestles down along the sea coast. On the other side, there are hills that rise up to about 1,000 feet above sea level.") Diesel yellow-roofed Mercedes Benz taxis would take us to the school but not before negotiating countless fantastic hairpin curves. The verse "I shall lift up my eyes until the hills" had a special poignancy to me, as Mom and Dad would give me a final hug and then leave around the playing field under the ridge to vanish. There was loneliness and homesickness. But the friendships would come and the adventures and the lasting memories. There were about 50 children at the school, between the ages of five and ten. Chefoo, patterned on the English boarding school system with its emphasis on reading, mathematics, and memorization, gave us strong academic skills.

Some Chefoo alumni challenge this assessment. My brother Paul would have preferred home schooling, and many parents objected to the lack of report cards. Paul took after his grandfather N.O. Wik in his mechanical knack. While other children would take a teddy bear to bed, Paul would often take under the covers a half-dissected clock or camera, entrails dangling. Mom was always taking out screws and bolts from his laundry. In Ivyland, perhaps in despair of his academic progress, the Grays gave Paul a workshop in the basement of the mansion that was filled with humming instruments and bubbling liquids. After graduating from LeTourneau College in Texas in 1975, Paul went on to a successful career as a semi-conductor engineer for Intel and other companies. In a 1966 letter, Mom writes that the "teachers at Chefoo are fine and are doing their best for the children but the Churchville school our children attended in Ivyland is hard to beat. This is a difficulty at Chefoo and quite an assignment for the teachers because the children come from a mixture of countries and the teachers themselves are English-trained. I mentioned this to my sister who was teaching in India that it would be an advantage to have American and Australian teachers on the staff."

We nevertheless liked being around kids our own age and background. My brother Tim's favorite memory of Chefoo was Sports Day, where he jumped four feet on the high jump. "I jumped seven feet on the long jump," Tim writes in 1967. "I rand in a race and won it." Chefoo also left me with a life-long accent that can only be described as a hybrid of English, Australian, and South African. (The accent of mother and my relatives in Brisbane is more British than the classic Australian cockney accent that was derived from the early settlers, who were mostly convicts from London east-side.) On Sundays, we walked about a mile to All Souls, of the Church of England, where I came to appreciate a tradition that was different from my Low Baptist heritage. Slims, a nearby school for middle and high-school children of British military personnel, also provided worshipers to All Souls. (That school is today a training center for a Malaysian commando unit.) At an elevation of about 5,000 feet, the average temperature was a salubrious 70 degrees. Sometimes, misty clouds would sweep through the school. We felt none of the heat and humidity of the plains where my parents toiled.

Four-fifth of Malaysia, about the size of Florida, is covered by tropical forest covering mountains up to 7,000 feet high. This jungle is inhabited by tigers, elephants, bison, monkeys, gibbons, deer and bear, and is alive with all manner of insects, including malaria-bearing mosquitoes (we would always sleep under nets), bloodsucking leeches, pythons, and multi-colored birds, where orchids and rhododendron flourish. As a boy, I liked nothing better than to "jungle bash"—hike through these sometimes treacherous, always beautiful jungles. The hazards of jungle living was starkly demonstrated when a fellow student Peter Cox almost lost his life to a viper bite. Once, I threw a rock at a hornet's nest. As I raced over the playing field followed by an angry swarm, I thought that might not have been the best idea. I went to bed that night with a throbbing head and new wisdom. While visiting my parents in Malaysia with sister Anne in the summer of 1972, I described the mountain jungle to Grandmother White. "What I enjoyed most about the Highlands is the landscape and the atmosphere," I wrote. "Thick, indolent sunshine, a heavy gold light balancing the green and black jungle shadows—great lazy black butterflies and the scent of unseen flowers and a sweet afternoon languor."

Chefoo exists now only in fond memories: our little gardens where we cultivated mainly mud; our go-cart, the Silver Streak; King, the Alsatian, who was eaten by a tiger ("Does anybody remember the tiger at the padang in Tanah Rata that a park ranger had shot?" Bill Hanna writes. "Its head was propped up on a chair, and all us kids were admiring it. Suddenly it rolled off the chair but looked like it was rolling over the get up. Scare the wits out of us!") ; the bamboo strands and the Rajah Brooke butterflies; the jungle jim and sandpit; allowance day; marmite sandwiches and milk at "tea" time; building dams in the stream that wended through the property; sports day on the ridge (Leo forever!); looking for bullets in the Gurka military base nearby (I once found a revolver that the teachers inexplicably confiscated).

And so the memories that bless and burn keep tumbling out.

I wrote to a Chefoo newsgroup that "my memories of Chefoo are positive, and I feel that I've lived a childhood of incredible adventure and privilege. But in these sunlit gardens of youth, there were snakes and shadows and sadness." There was in my view an excess of collective punishment and sometimes cruel teachers. One such incident occurred perhaps around 1963. David Houliston, who is several grades ahead of me, picks up the story. "About that time, we visited the ridge with a lady teacher. We asked if we could go and explore—which we did. Only problem was that we got lost! I suggested we follow the sun and strike out due east—as that would bring us back down to the school. Which it did. Once back, there was a big hoo-hah. The smaller kids were queued up outside the headmaster's door and whacked with a sneaker. We older boys were not beaten—this is where the psychological stuff comes in. We had to wait to be called to go to Fred Collard's office. The first victim reported back that we would be reduced to tears—there was no possibility of holding out. Sure enough, we were shown in the Bible about how much God hates sin and that we should repent. We were then ordered to write "confessions" that would be sent to our parents (they never were)—which we did in our now blubbery state." I was one of the little boys in that party, and so I was duly thrashed. With my over-active imagination, I wondered who would get us first—the tigers or the head hunters. I was also spanked for not eating rhubarb—and to this day I will not eat rhubarb. The punishment generally for talking after lights out was to stand outside the dorm memorizing a time tables. Needless to say, I had mastered the entire times table by fourth grade.

In April 2001, Dave and Fred again met in England, and this reunion perhaps is a fitting coda to our Chefoo experience. "The reason for our meeting is that I had written him a letter telling him about the hurt I felt he had caused me by wrongly punishing me at Chefoo School when I was 12 years old. I received a Zooty cartoon postcard from him saying that he apologized if he had misjudged me in the past and suggested we meet. He drives me to his house and after a cup of tea Fred and I set off for the pub for a lunch and a chat. Over the superb meal, we talk about Chefoo, about our families, and every now and then we touch on the more emotional issues that I had brought up in my letter. It is obviously not that easy for either of us—we both feel a bit nervous about it but at the same time don't want to avoid it. He doesn't remember the particular incident I was referring to although he does remember some of the incidents that happened around the same time. He says he's glad I was open enough to write to him and was only sorry it had taken so long for us to come to talk about it. I begin to feel as if it was I who had misjudged. I also realize that he had not been at Chefoo very long when this happened. So what really happened to me emotionally when I was 12 years old? Time shifts things and makes a mystery of things.

"Strangely, I'm not surprised that Fred is so open to hearing the way I feel. That's why I felt OK about writing to him. This is the intuition that I remember I had back in 1963. So the 12 year old me was right in that respect.

"Well, three cheers for Uncle Fred! Who else would have been so gracious? And three cheers for the 12 year old me! You did just great, kid!"

One morning, a teacher told us at breakfast that the BBC had said that Kennedy had been killed. I didn't know who Kennedy was, and why the teachers were sad. (Nancy's family had just bought a TV, and Nancy remembers the non-stop coverage and frequent tears, and with it a pall that seemed to fill their world.) Elsie had seen the president moments before his assassination, and describes the epochal event in her 1963 Christmas letter.

"It was an unusually lovely morning. It had rained earlier and the air was crisp and sparkling—like a whiff of champagne. The fall colors were bright—at Lee Park along Turtle where I had gone to wave my welcome, the yellow leaves drifted downward from time to time on the sun-flecked lawn. Promptly at 12:10 the party came by...the motor escort – the president's car, with JFK looking our way with a smile, and Jackie in a pink suit leaning forward looking at the people on the strip that divided the highway... the car with Lyndon Johnson... Senator Yarborough – other I didn't recognize, two large buses for the press, one marked White House Press Corps.

"Almost before we had time to react, it was gone. One awe-struck teenager remarked, 'And to think I actually saw them.' Wanting to share a bit more of this historic event, I decided to go to the airport—have lunch there a wait for the presidential party to return for the take-off at 2:45 p.m. For many of us there, the news struck like a thunderclap – a couple of passengers had transistor radios; they were surrounded by a group that seemed to be struck dumb... rumor multiplied, the president and the governor had been shot... some Negro had gone berserk...the governor was dead...shot in the head...Parkland Hospital. Unable to hear for myself and there was no TV around, I dashed home, only to hear as soon as I entered the door—the President is dead...Ray was sobbing in pain and fury... and I knew such pain and desolation such as I've never known before. It was like the pain when mother died, but with a different dimension.

"Now this isn't much of a Christmas letter, is it? But we shall be remembering Another Young Man—who died young and whose years of active service were few...but who left the world a better place in which to live.

"May your Christmas be happy."

#### Missionary Work

In the early 50s, my parents worked within the villages. "My first serious efforts in attempting colportage work began in March 1958," Dad writes. "Leaving my wife and family in the village where we resided, I made a trip covering several days to some neighboring towns. I loaded a supply of around 150 copies of Dengta magazine into my rather old but still usable Hillman car and started off. In due time, I arrived at the town of Tangkak about twenty miles away and prepared to go to work. I then noticed to my chagrin that I left my tract bag behind. As it was too far to go back after it, I decided to use my brief case instead to hold the literature that I was getting out. I slipped a belt through the handle of the brief case and slung it over my shoulder. With some fear and trepidation, I went to work systematically contacting the shopkeepers. By evening, I had sold around 40 copies of Dengta and a number of scripture portions. This day was one of the highlights of my missionary experience as I realized that I was at last finding my niche in missionary work." During the late 1950s and the early 1960s, Dad investigated service on other missionary fields, in Argentina, Chile, Indonesia, Viet Nam, Taiwan, Laos, and Cambodia. In a letter from 1960, Dad wrote to the New Testament Missionary Union in Argentina of his interest in "the city of Buenos Aires and the surrounding grain and grassland area" that reminded him of the Dakota prairie.

But Dad continued to work as a colporteur—selling Christian magazines to Hindu and Chinese villagers throughout Western Malaysia. "My records show that in the twelve month period from August 1, 1967 to August 1, 1968, I sold approximately 15,697 single copies of Dengta, for which I collected approximately $3,909.15. (This was the Malaysian dollar, worth at the time about thirty US cents.) Total receipts during the period came to $7,546.02, traveling by car 8,121 miles through ten different states. "Last week, the Lord gave a solid but good week of colportage work," Dad wrote in a typical letter from May 1964. "I drove across the state of Pahang to Kuantan, the present capital of Pahang, where I finished out the day and worked there the following two days. I then drove north up the east coast of Malaya to Kota Bharu near the Thai border. This was a further journey of 230 miles. I worked through until about 10:30 there that night, and the next day worked my way back to Kuantan. I made the return trip to Rawang on Saturday. A total of 510 single copies of Dengta were sold on the trip and 33 people took a year's subscription. I also sold 19 English New Testaments and around 160 scripture portions. The trip covered 841 miles of travel." Dad also worked hard to make the Christian Training Center at Rawang self-sufficient, mainly through egg production, but also with pigs and vegetables.

Tim, Anne

Philip, Paul

In 1964, Mom wrote to Aunt Elsie that I write a thank-you for the Johnson's Christmas presents. "Philip was eager and enthusiastic about it even with the drawing of Tigger, who is a wonderful pet. I am afraid that Tigger looks more like a tiger—but never mind because Philip has a heart to try his hand at drawing." I reported to "Auntie Elsie" that "we had a good Christmas. I liked my presents. Thank you for the records. We like to listen to them. The record player is working. Hope that you and Uncle Ray are well. Love Philip." I still have some of the books and Jack and Jill magazines that the Johnsons sent us.

Mom conducted seminars and correspondence courses, and was a visitation team leader for Emmanuel Evangelical Free Church. She had a busy schedule of counseling and women and young people's meetings. In the same letter from 1964, Dad comments that Mom "had a DVBS for English speaking children here, April 28-May 1st. On the last day, those who wished to make a commitment to Christ were invited to return and a number did so and were personally counseled and prayed with."

On longer trips, Dad wrote letters back to Mom, with nice words for us kids as well. "Hello Paul, Philip, Anne, and Timmy," he wrote in 1961. "Daddy thinks about you often and remembers to pray for you each day. Daddy has a quiet place to pray out in the car and is able to spend about an hour each day out there reading the Bible and praying. God is very great and wise and He can help us. We should learn to talk to him in prayer much as you would talk to mummy or daddy. Only remember that God is very much greater than daddy or mummy." Dad enclosed a stick of gum for Paul as a reward for memorizing Acts 4:12 ("Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.")

Both Mom and Dad greatly respected honest toil. On the back of a snapshot of my father from the early 1960s, Mom wrote: "Dad is almost hidden by the Dengta magazines. It's a pile to get out. Dad is not afraid of work. He is a good example to us all."

Every four years, my parents would return to the states and sometimes to Australia for furlough. Mom and Dad would usually fly to Los Angeles and then drive across country, visiting with the relatives often on family reunions. We would stay on the Ivyland estate in the "Gate House" facing Jacksonville Road. On occasion, we would visit other churches that were supporting my parents, would sometimes have to sing in Chinese. This is an example of the transliteration of Acts 4:12 that we would try to sing:

Choo liao Yeh-su e-wai, choo liao Yeh-su e-wai

Mey-yu bish –d joe fa, mey-yu bief-d joe-fa

Yin-way dzai ten sha run gen

Yin-way dzai ten sh ren shun

Bey-yu tz'u sha bieh min

K'o cow jaw deh joe.

#### Retirement

Towards the end of their time in Malaysia, my parents helped the boat people that fled Viet Nam after the war came to an end. After about 70 years of combined service, they returned by way of Athens, Jerusalem, and Amsterdam to retire in the United States on May 17, 1982. "At Singapore, we changed planes for the flight to Athens where we spent four days," my parents wrote in a circular shortly after their trip. "The main tourist attraction there is the Acropolis. Nearby was Mars Hill, which we climbed and read Paul's sermon as recorded in Acts 17:22-34. We also visited the National Archeological Museum at Athens and took a bus trip to Delphi, a round trip of about 200 miles. On May 3, we flew to Tel Aviv and when the plane touched down many passengers clapped their hands. The next day, we took a guided walking tour outside the walls of the old city. On two occasions, we walked completely around the old walls. This takes about 45 minutes. On Sunday morning, we joined a large group of Christian worshipers at the Garden Tomb for a Sunday morning service, and were thankful that the tomb in which our Lord was laid is empty. Christ is risen! While we remained based at Jerusalem during our stay in Israel, we were able to visit such places as Bethlehem, Jericho, Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, and Masada by the Dead Sea. While we did not need to visit Israel to validate our Christian faith, the trip did add to our understanding of our Judeo-Christian heritage." Mom and Dad later flew on to Amsterdam where they visited famous masterpieces in the National Art Museum and marveled at the beautiful tulip fields. I'm so glad that Mom and Dad were able to visit Israel as it puts a fitting cap on their many years of Christian service. "Truly goodness and mercy have been following us a family and will continue to do so," they wrote in their last letter from Malaysia, dated April 25th. Thirteen days earlier, Paul and Joyce sent them a telegram informing them of their new grandchild: "PETER NATHANIAL BORN 723 AM APRIL 12 9 LBS 8 OZ 21-1/2 INCHES ALL ARE WELL LOVE PAUL AND JOYCE". My parents noted in a letter to me that "we appreciate Joyce with her talents and high aspirations. She has put a lot of sparkle into our family."

My parents in their 80s lived active lives in Roslyn, a suburb north of Philadelphia, residing at their home at 1561 Birchwood Avenue. The death of Grandma left Mom money to buy the home. They paid $49,000 for the left side of the 25 year-old ranch duplex, on a lot 39 by 110 feet. Twenty years later, the other side of the duplex sold for about $150,000. Mom enjoys walking to Willow Grove Mall a few blocks away where she can greet a dozen or so of the regulars while Dad likes tending his garden in the back yard of tomatoes and lettuce. He also likes the routine, exercise, augmentation of income, and occasional opportunities for witnessing by working part-time removing trash from some local strip-malls. "Spud, I think you're the only in the family who is still working," Uncle Reyn wrote Dad in 1994. "The rest of us are unemployed and on welfare, all waiting for a raise in Social Security." Ten years later, Dad was still toiling at his jobs at Regents Park and elsewhere. Mom and Dad are both involved in Berachah in Cheltenham, their local church, and the lives of their four children and seven grandchildren. (My sister Anne Birch and her family and brothers Paul and his family and Tim live in the area, all within about an hour of each other.)

On February 10th 2002, we honored their fifty years of marriage with a dinner of baked sugar-cured ham and chicken marsala at Williamson Restaurant in Horsham. Sister-in-law Joyce did much of the planning and constructed a beautiful album of photographs and letters from friends and relatives. "In a time where so much is expendable, it's wonderful to look to something that has stood the test of time," I wrote for my family. "Your fidelity through five decades is a model to Nancy and me. And, someday, Zachary and Benjamin will also look to your example with appreciation. Your life's journey has taken you to distant lands and fantastic adventures. But, through it all, your love for each other as endured. And from your commitment to each other has come your love for us, and I remember with fondness your tender words and actions over the years. Bukit Sepit. Rawang. Chefoo. What memories those names evoke! Ivyland. Chicago. Scottsdale. Although separated by many miles, your love for us has never wavered. And so it is therefore right that we honor and celebrate fifty amazing years of marriage. Nancy, Zachary, and Benjamin also join me in expressing their love for you and in rejoicing in this celebration."

#### Ivyland

In 1965, we left Malaysia for Australia by the ocean liner Oranje. Tangerine and blue paper streamers between us and those on the dock stretched and snapped as the ship pulled away. After my parent's furlough, my parents left Paul and me at a home for missionary kids in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The law office of Grubb & Guest had my parents transfer guardianships to the Grays in the Orphan's Court of Philadelphia County, "wherefore petitioners pray your Honorable Court to enter a Decree appointing the said Kenneth T. Gray as guardian of the persons of Philip G. Wik and Paul R. Wik." The sign facing Jacksonville Road read Happy Hollow Farm, but no one called it that, especially after a neighborhood kid painted one day over the word Hollow, as if the farm was an institution for the differently abled.

We called it "Ivyland", after the name of the small town where we got our mail. The borough of Ivyland takes on aspects of a Victorian painting at Christmas time, with streets lit by luminaries, and skating and caroling. Andrew Wyeth, one of the best-known painters from Pennsylvania, captured the mood of Bucks County in many of his tempera paintings with its frosty, pale, slanting three in the afternoon late fall or early spring lights and textures, sycamore trees, and ancient barns. The boarding home was a colonial-era Georgian mansion on a country farm of about thirty acres. The walls were white with the classic green shutters that are familiar to many colonial homes in Bucks County. It had a two-acre lake fed by a stream that bisected the property, a large red barn with pigeons cooing in the rafters, horses and pastures, and between ten and fifteen other MKs. We went to the local public schools, and I graduated in 1973 from Council Rock High School, in Newtown. Although I was in the choir and the drama club (I was Edward in Charles Dicken's Christmas Carol), most of my extracurricular activities revolved around Ivyland, with my five-mile paper route and eight pet rabbits.

"I do not think you will have to do much to prepare the children for the new adjustment," Kenneth Gray wrote to my parents in 1965. "We have animals (ten rabbits, six horses, chickens, ducks, goats, and cats) down here, and the barn and the family are usually sufficient drawing cards for the kids to spend a good deal of their free time down here. We've yet to see a child really homesick, for there is almost too much life throbbing around here for them to be lonely for more than an occasional moment.

"There have been trips to the shore, with hilarious times of riding the breakers or sunning on the sand—drinking in the beauty of the riot of color that is Longwood Gardens-- fountains, colored lights, and gorgeous flowers everywhere. Other times, we have gone to Philadelphia, and push buttons in the Benjamin Franklin museum, where there is a seemingly endless array of electrical gadgets to demonstrate some principle or other. All these activities afford wonderful opportunities to get to know the kids better, hearing their chatter and enjoying their enthusiasm.

"Your enthusiasm for the place is the best preparation that you can possibly give your kids. Keep in mind that the sacrifice is on your part far more than on theirs. Our family is very happy, and the kids adjust to life here at home in a wonderful way. You are the ones who take the gaff, and, believe me, we feel for you, but our field experience helps us to know that there is no real alternative worth considering. We have also had enough experience here at home to realize that the educating of children all the way through high school on the field is not without very serious problems for the children when they come home to the States for further education."

My brother Paul and I in Ivyland in 1966 with our dog Dale.

We seemed to have adapted well to our new surroundings, as we read in a letter from Maybeth Gray to Aunt Elsie in 1967: "Paul and Philip both seem happily settled in. They obviously have a good time. The snow and ice-skating has been sheer joy to them, and it's fun to see them laughing and shouting as they toboggan or skate or build snow forts. I was measuring and weighing Philip this evening—a ritual we go through on the night I wash their hair and he really is gaining and getting taller—at least an inch taller than last September and several pounds heavier too. He weighs 72 pounds now . . . Best wishes to you and your work and thank you so much for all your interest in the Wik boys. You have been so good to them and I know they really appreciate it."

Christmas in Ivyland was special. Presents piled high around the towering Christmas tree. Outside, neighbors cut figure eights with us on the ice to the music of Broadway tunes, Strauss waltzes, and Gilbert and Sullivan:

My good little butter cup

My dear little butter cup

I earned a few battle wounds playing ice hockey, including stitches in my chin and a gouge in my leg.

To get a flavor of the holidays, here are excerpts from letters I wrote in 1970, 1971, and 1972:

"Two weeks ago, we decorated our ten foot evergreen tree with lights, tinsel, and colored balls," I wrote in 1970. "A small layer of icy snow is on the ground with periodic flurries helps set the Christmas scene. We have had great fun sledding on the hills. The ice isn't strong enough to skate on yet. Many people are home for the holidays from college. For Christmas, we had about 40 people eating here. My favorite gifts were the presents you gave me—clothes, games, gloves, a radio, and a book about a lioness called Born Free.

"Thank you so much for the gift of the art supplies," I wrote in 1971. "We didn't get any snow this Christmas. As a matter of fact, the temperature is about fifty degrees. We did the play The Christmas Carol at the intermediate school in Newtown. On Wednesday night, we put on the lay for the public. On Christmas Eve, we went to a candlelight service at church. When we came home, we opened our stockings. On Christmas day after diner, we opened our presents. I received many things but I especially liked the paint supplies you sent me."

"I hope you had a merry Christmas in Malaysia," I wrote in 1972. "On the 16th, the concert choir (in which I sing baritone) put on a Christmas concert. All the Christmas trimmings this year were homemade. Frankly, the result was a mess. Naturally, everyone likes their own creation of half-baked ginger-bread men, fermenting cherries, and roasted popcorn. Periodically, groups of carol singers would start to howl in front of our house. Once, a group of seven came caroling on horses. We woke up early on Christmas morning, ate breakfast, had our devotions, and opened our presents. At about four o'clock in the afternoon, we ate the annual Christmas bird. The Christmas in Ivyland, although quite enjoyable, is but a glimmer of the grand Christmas we had in August in Malaysia together!"

The Grays retired in 1971 to Stroud, Canada. In April, 1973, Ken lifted the oxygen mask off his face and said to Maybeth "Now I'm going home." There was no funeral as Ken had made arrangements to donate his body to science, but there was a memorial service. In a letter to my parents at the time, I wrote "I shall always remember Uncle Ken for his dynamic, caring personality spiced with a pinch of whimsy. I shall never forget how he helped me countless times in school—on my science projects, on reports, and at home—weeding, seeding the corn, mowing, racking leaves. The fun we had in the snow on Christmas day, reading Dickens around the cackling fire at night, going to Canada's Expo, New Hampshire's White Hills, the New Jersey shore, Longwood Gardens, and the operettas in Philadelphia shall always remain in my memory, and I will feel a loss."

In 1987, an Ivyland Alumni Fred Fry passed on Maybeth Gray's address. (Leslie Lyle, Maybeth's brother, was a missionary who traveled with Dad from Shanghai to Hong Kong.) "You get the sense from Fred's letter that Ivyland casts long shadows over the lives of those who lived there," I wrote to Maybeth. "That's certainly true with me. On balance, however, I think the Ivyland experience was good for me. I probably wasn't the easiest person to manage, and it must have been hard to run things-- taking care of a dozen kids with different abilities, ages, temperaments, and backgrounds, the mansion, and the farm. This is a roundabout way of saying 'thank you' for your contribution in raising me during my formative years.

"As time goes by, the past recedes into a misty nostalgia bringing back a collage of associations. Do you remember these snapshots from the past?

Sledding on the hill by the Big House

Canoeing, fishing, swimming, skating

Our pet cats, rabbits, and horses

Our dogs Dale (beagle), Rufus (Irish setter), and Friskie (mixed)

Building elaborate hay tunnels on the second floor of the barn

Chicken picking under a full moon

Uncle Ken playing "Red River Valley" on the living room piano

The mountain of presents around the fifteen-foot Christmas tree

The Gate House, where we would stay during furloughs

Dorney Park with its rickety wooden roller coaster

Salty breezes and taffy on Ocean City's boardwalk

Sipping a malt at the Tanner Brothers Farm Store in Northampton

Strawberry and cherry picking on a blue and gold autumn day

Annual trips to downtown Philadelphia to see Gilbert & Sullivan

The Philadelphia Zoo and museums

Marcia Haynes, David Cox, Beth Carlson, David Almond

Canada geese swooping down over the lake in autumn

Summer vacations in Franconia Notch, New Hampshire

I'm sure we could go on forever."

"What a surprise!" Maybeth wrote. "A delightful surprise! After these 16 or more years, it was just great to hear from you and get caught up on your life history so far!"

In the summer of 1972, my sister and I visited my parents in Malaysia. We visited many familiar places of our childhood, including Rawang, Chefoo, and Port Dickson. On the flight from Singapore to Bahrain, the British Caledonian Boeing 707 with its 197 passengers had to make an emergency landing at Changi airport because of a fuel line rupture. We spent a few days at the swank Imperial Hotel, before flying on to London. We visited Westminster Abbey, St. Mary's, Number Ten Downing Street, The Mall, Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, and took a trip down the Thames before flying on to Philadelphia. In all, I've lived in Malaysia with my parents for just under nine years.

The mission sold Ivyland in 1982. The grounds have been subdivided, the barn razed, and the mansion remodeled. "It's in a state of decay, with the old marble mantels long gone, paint peeling, extensive water damage, and an overall look of faded grandeur," I wrote in 1993, before the remodeling began in earnest. "The lake hasn't been maintained and is half empty. A paved road called Gwyn Lynn Drive meanders through the old horse pastures, now replaced by ten homes selling for $450,000 each. (The Big House is now 148 Gwyn Lynn Drive, but the entire property was 186 and then later 657 Jacksonville Road during my time.) The mansion is on one acre and an additional twelve acres of wetlands were sold to a doctor's group for $350,000. (In the mid-50s, the OMF bought the farm for about $60,000 and by the mid-70 it was appraised for under $150,000.) Brambles and poison ivy cover the lawn. (When I had just arrived in Ivyland at the age of ten, I made the mistake of confusing the Malaysian vines with Pennsylvanian vines, and made good use of calamine lotion. I thought we should modify the name Ivyland by the word Poison!) Most of the old trees still exist and I could still see some of the remains of my old tree houses."

I enjoyed climbing some of the two-hundred year trees. A row of mature oaks, pines, sycamores, and spruces mark the path of the original gravel road that now runs through the back yards of the houses that were built in the 1990s. I climbed some of these trees. The lake is now called Spring Mill Pond and no doubt it will someday be but a marsh. But, when I was a kid, it was perhaps six feet higher and far broader and wider, maintained by an input pipe from a dam at the far end of the property that has since washed away. What memories we have of that lake! I learned to swim in that lake and we had a diving board, dock from which to fish for Sunnies, home-made rafts, and canoes. The bottom of the lake was black goop and yellow algae spread across the lake as the summer months went by. But we still loved that lake with its willow trees and painted turtles. In contrast to the almost impassable brambles of today, a dozen horses would keep the pastures surrounding the lake trimmed to look like a park. In the winter time, we would sled down the hills from Almshouse Road toward the lake or skate and play ice-hockey with the kids from Traymore. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that sometimes hundreds of people would crowd that lake in the winter, while music played from loud-speakers throughout the day.

Towards Hunt Drive was the remains of an ancient carriage house. I used to find weathered nails amid the brick. When I went to Churchville Elementary, I would wait for the school bus at Hunt Drive and North Traymore Avenue. But for middle and high school, we would trek through the fall leaves to the end of the lane on Jacksonville Road. Two white stone pillars that no longer exist marked the entrance of our property. Moving leftward was the garden where we weeded carrots and cabbage, the 1950s era ranch called the Canfield House, a shed for tractors and plows, a gasoline fuel pump, and a large sixty-foot-high L-shaped barn. It was brown stone with red wooden walls trimmed in white and with massive interior beams. Further in the back was a pen for chick. At the bottom level of the barn were workshops, stalls for the horses, pens for the chickens, and cages for my rabbits. On the top level was bales of hay. Paul would drive the tractor that pulled the carts up the dirt ramp. We would often arrange these bales into tunnels, sometimes going down thirty feet. We used to play kick the can near the manure pile that was behind the barn. There was also more farm land for corn and potatoes. Continuing our walk in memory was the two-story brick Lane House, which was also of colonial-era vintage. We would stay here on furlough. Today, it has been resurfaced with brown-stone, but the walls used to be white plaster.

The gravel path ended in a circle around the Big House. The only other structures was a horse shed behind the barbed wire and a crumbling smoke house below the lake that is still a home to suckers and toads. I would mow this lawn and join the others in raking the fall leaves. Next to the dock with a diving board below the large Eastern White Pine that still exists were several picnic tables and canoes.

As we open the door to the Big House, we would see a couch with perhaps the Daily Courier, Christian Science Monitor, and back editions of Popular Mechanics. To the left was the living room with its high ceilings, fireplace, many books, and a grand piano. Here is where we would celebrate Christmas. On the other side was the dining room with the marble fireplace. At Christmas time, Maybeth would thread the many cards together to deck the room. We would find letters from our parents and also lists of chores that would be posted each day on the bulletin board, such as "Pots & Pans" or the much dreaded "Eggs". A staircase ascended to the rooms above.

I was adept at sliding down the banisters from my room on the top floor near the roof floor by floor. Moving past the dining room was the powder room – a room that probably hasn't changed much over the years—and the kitchen—a room that has probably changed a great deal. Ken would snip our hair here while Maybeth and Pat would bake the pies or mix the ice-tea. I remember the distinctive bang! of the screen door when I came in with by school books each days. Stairs for the servants would ascend from one side of the kitchen. On the other side, Dale, our friendly, corpulent beagle, would gaze into the fireplace. My bedroom was always on the top floor, while the girls enjoyed slightly more opulence in the floor beneath. In the back was a walk in freezer—an entire room kept to negative ten degrees. We also had shelves where we could keep our things, such as boots, gloves, and school books.

I enjoyed taking black and white pictures with my twin lens Yashika camera. But perhaps my favorite pastime was biking. I bought a red three-speed Schwinn and put it to good use, making money by distributing The Daily Intelligencer for a few years. I especially enjoyed going on bike hikes, sometimes as far away as New Hope and New Jersey. I bought quite a number of antiques at the flea markets in Lahaska and that honed my interest in American history. I biked with David Cox (whose father worked for twenty-one years among the Mien (Yao) of North Thailand after fighting piracy as a chief officer in the British Navy along the China coast before he joining the CIM). But generally I traveled alone, usually on the back roads that even today retain their verdant beauty. Sometimes, I just had to leave what my brother Tim calls "a feudalistic dreamland" with its weeding and its rules and peddle furiously with the brisk autumn wind in my face through flurries of gold and red leaves down the curving Dark Hollow Road to the Neshaminy Creek.

It is hard to believe that as I write this in 2015, some Ivyland alumni are now in their seventies. "I personally like it when my kids put my wheelchair close to the fire with my dentures close by so that I can munch on health snacks that Anne finds in Prevention Magazine," Fred Fry writes, with tongue firmly in cheek. "As my head droops in exhaustion, usually about 6:30 or so, I drift off into my memories. Many of my fondest are from that era so many years ago in the big white house...or was it grey...with the Whites...or was it the Grays...? " "Someone could, and should, write a book about Ivyland," Fred continues "Is that native Bucks County resident, James Michener, still in business? Who built that big white house? Who lived in it between 1790 and 1958? Our era would occupy many chapters. Who took the marble mantles? Where did all the wood and stone from the barn go? Do the current occupants of those $450,000 homes even know that there was a time when an old John Deere tractor would drag a line of sleds through the snow on the sites where they now watch Oprah and water their petunias?

"I wonder if on some quiet mornings, their eyes play tricks on them and they think they see silent, misty figures up in the trees, riding horses, fishing off the dock, taking out the garbage, ice skating to the amplified Strauss waltzes, playing tackle football, painting shutters, doing dishes, putting together jigsaw puzzles, swimming, studying, driving trash to the dump in the cut-off Chevy, feeding a roly-poly beagle, playing capture-the-flag in the barn, walking the quarter mile to the bus stop at 6:45, gazing longingly at Bobbie Arbor, mowing the lawn a stocky balding bespectacled man doing his accounts at his desk in the hall, a woman in her mid-twenties doing laundry, a lady with her graying hair in a bun reading stories to her own infant daughter, spreading manure behind that same John Deere, celebrating twenty to thirty birthdays a year, stringing barbed wire and yes—slaughtering, picking, and gutting chickens. I wonder.

"If there were, they'd all have names that are very real—Maybeth and Ken, Bob, Peter, Bill, David, Wendy, Pierre, John and Josie, Ian, Doris, Ruth, Pat, John,

Esther, Anne, Miriam, Marcia, Paul, Beth, Sue, Timothy, Pam, Margaret, David, James, Ralph, Kathryn, Ian, Sylvia, Rachel, and many, many more."

"I loved the picture of your two little boys," Maybeth wrote to me in January 1997. "I bet they are going to have a lot of fun playing together as the baby gets a bit older. Enjoy your children while they are young, for they do grow up so fast and before you know it they are leaving home. I'm fine as I go into my 84th year with no aches or pains, and just very thankful to God for good health. I do tire more easily though and am ready to go to bed when the time comes. It has been nice to hear from quite a number of our Ivyland gang and learn more of what they are doing. But I must stop. I did want to thank you so much for your newsletter and the picture of your darling boys. God bless you in the year 1997. Much love to you both and the boys. Love in Christ. Maybeth Gray."

Three months later, I got a letter from John Cox. "I assume you will have heard about Maybeth Gray's death on April 12," he wrote. "Your letter was the first I heard of this and of course I feel a great deal of sadness," I wrote back. " My most recent letter was from January of this year, which I've enclosed. I was glad to have renewed our relationship over the past few years, giving me the chance to express my gratitude for her role in shaping my character and interests. Only last week I came across a paper Aunt Maybeth typed for me when I was in fifth grade. It says much for her as a Christian and a person that she is remembered fondly by so many people despite the passage of time—in my case about a quarter of a century. As one of the little boys, I only vaguely remember you. I of course recall Elizabeth and Peter, and I thought of David as one of my best friends. The shadows of Ivyland are long. And in the lingering gloaming, lights and shadows play in the kaleidoscope of memory: Uncle Ken reading "The Christmas Carol" by the fire and playing "Red River Valley" on the grand piano. Aunt Maybeth, much like the card she sent me, looking past her African Violets over the sloping green, watching us swim or play...chicken picking in the morning and an operetta in the evening...bike hikes and vacations, the barn and the lake... lots of work, lots of animals, lots of fun, some tears, but much joy as well."

"She died on Saturday in her sleep, peacefully and without pain," John wrote. "I called a travel agent on Monday and explained the circumstances, requesting bereavement fare. She asked Maybeth's relationship to me, and I said she was my foster mother. The agent said, "Let's just make that "mother," so I didn't argue with her.

"People in Vancouver were extraordinarily kind. Pam, Esther, and I borrowed a pick-up truck from someone at Clarendon Court (where Maybeth had lived) and ran errands with it. One of them involved making photocopied enlargements of photographs that were to be displayed at the reception following the memorial service. One of these was in color, and we were unsure how to use to color copier at the little shop where we were doing the copying. The proprietor came over to help us and paused when she saw the picture. "I know that woman," she said. Esther told her that it was her mother and that she had just died and why were making the copies. The woman gulped and showed us what we needed to do. When we went to pay for the copies the woman told Esther that she recently had cancer and chemotherapy. "Your mother was so kind to me," she said. "No one else was such a comfort to me." This from a complete stranger at a shop we just happened to walk into! Esther burst into tears, and the woman became very apologetic, but none of us could explain that the tears were not so much for sorrow as for this chance encounter with evidence of Maybeth's unfailing goodness to everyone she met. What an amazing legacy.

"The memorial service was wonderful. We sang "I Sought the Lord and Afterward I Knew" and Pam played "Amazing Grace" very impressively on her violin, beautifully accompanied by a pianist from the church. Ian delivered a wonderful eulogy. And at the end of the service, we sang "How Firm a Foundation" to a traditional American melody (rather than Adeste Fidelis) that I remembered singing with Ken around the piano at Ivyland and that I have heard many times as one of the airs that Aaron Copeland weaves into "Appalachian Spring." We sang all six stanzas, but for the last two Pam grabbed her violin and played along by ear, inventing descants and harmony as she went. Those of us sitting at the front had been doing pretty well for the first four stanzas but we all fell silent when Pam's violin began to sing.

"It was an utterly satisfying trip, and I was glad I was able to make it. It was sad of course and I still feel sad at the loss of Maybeth, but it was triumphant and happy at the same time. Being whom I am and doing what I do, I inevitably think of something from Shakespeare at this juncture, so I'll close with Prospero's loving praise of Miranda in The Tempest, because it applies so perfectly to Maybeth: "She will outstrip all praise and make it halt behind her."

#### Wheaton College

In January 1974, I entered Wheaton College in Illinois, majoring in Political Science. The competition for grades was fierce, but I had good instructors who took me to a higher level. Wheaton Record advisor Paul Fromer, Political Science Professor Dr. Mark Amstutz, Literature Professor Helen deVette, and ROTC Director Colonel Charles Wallis come to mind. My overall assessment of Wheaton is positive. It had a blend of piety and brainpower that I needed at that time in my life. Perhaps its most famous graduate was evangelist Billy Graham, who earned an AB in anthropology in 1943 and is my mother's age. Wheaton is generally recognized for its selectivity, intellectual stature, National Merit Scholars, high average SAT scores (about 200 points over the national average), and its high proportion of graduates that attain doctoral degrees. It also has an impressive collection on the works of C.S. Lewis, JRR Tolkien, and other Christian writers. On the other hand, Wheaton does reside in the heart of DuPage, one of the most Republican counties in the United States, and that shapes the sometimes rigid politics of most of the students that go there.

In my senior year, I was the assistant editor of the college paper The Wheaton Record, got first places in the poetry and short story annual literary competition, won several national literary contests, a third prize (a gold watch) in a contest sponsored by the Soviet Union, and was president of Pi Gamma Mu, the Wheaton chapter of the National Social Science Honor Society. Wheaton above all taught me to write and to overcome all things. During the school year and also the summers, I worked on the campus as a boiler-room engineer, which involved monitoring electrical, chemical, and natural gas systems and the three 500 horsepower gas boilers. I graduated with honors in May 1977. In my swan-song column in the papers, I wrote "Now I leave Wheaton. But I go forgetting no one, remembering everything, including the words of Prince von Metternich of Austria: 'Because I know what I want and what others are capable of, I am prepared.'" As it turned out, I was at that point far from prepared.

#### Manhattan

Although I was accepted to the American Graduate School of International Management in Arizona and the University of Denver's Graduate School of International Studies, I had no clear idea what I would do after getting an advanced degree. Also, I didn't like the notion of taking on more debt. So, after completing a four-week summer course in publishing at the University of Denver, I flew to New York City to find work in journalism. For seven months, I looked for work. I lived frugally in room 809 at the George Washington Hotel on 23rd and Lexington Avenue near Gramercy Park, and, for a short time, went on welfare. On my first night at the hotel, I watched a mob marching below my window shout "Johns go home!" and cocaine ("snow") vendors were on my doorstep. By the time I got my first job in January 1978, my unemployment insurance of $59 dollars a week from working at Wheaton had run out, and so had my savings. "I had hoped that this letter would be the one that would report that I found work," I write in September, 1977. "Unfortunately, not so. I'm learning to have a high tolerance for frustration." I mention that in the space of two hours, I saw a car hit a man and someone snatch a purse from a woman. A month later, I got a job selling l advertising space sales on commission for the Teamsters on Fifth Avenue a few blocks from the Empire State Building. I told Aunt Elsie somewhat prematurely that I was giving advanced warning to jungle that I would succeed. "OK, OK . . . but don't underestimate it yourself," she wrote. "It has doubtless destroyed more men and women than have conquered it. So beware, beware!" But I made no sales and so I started to root around for another job.

#### Career

My first post-college job was as a computer operator at United States Surgical Corporation in Stamford, Connecticut that I got through an ad in The New York Times. I lasted under two months. In Manhattan, I met a college friend who was about to enter seminary after working for Tyndale Publishing, in Carol Stream, Illinois. That job fell through, but I was able to find another job in the area at Four-Way Systems, a subsidiary of the Christian Service Brigade. My starting salary was $7,000 a year—but it jumped $3,000 after my boss saw me toiling at the local McDonalds during the night shift so I could meet my rent.

I used to enjoy working late at night at the CSB office without any distractions. One night, I rounded the corner for the office and lo! there was a computer operator as naked as the day he was born about to hop on the photocopying machine. "Sorry!" he gasped.

Three years later, I started work as a computer programmer at the First National Bank of Chicago's Credit Card Division in Elgin, a town of 70,000 people about 38 miles west of Chicago on the Fox River that at one time manufactured watches and clocks. My salary went from $11,000 to $19,500. The project manager looked a bit like Morticia in the 1960s sit-com "The Adams Family", with blue sage suit, padded shoulders, long black hair, and a vitriolic disposition, so I tried to keep a low profile. Her boss had an even more vitriolic disposition, and in 1989 she was fired. I never was a distinguished performer, but I did get some promotions. "Because of his continued commitment to the goals of the corporation, I am recommending the promotion," writes my manager in 1989. "Phil is organized, hardworking, and conscientious," writes another manager. "We wish to commend you for approving yourself as 'an extremely hard worker with an exceptionally good work attitude'," my parents wrote to me in 1982. My main goal was to maintain a flow of stable income that would help fund my real estate while allowing me to take some risks in other areas. Much of the programming I did is now obsolete or is done in India, with my main languages being PL/1 and CICS. I resigned in 1997 and at a good time. For, after First Chicago's merger with Banc One in 1998, almost every programmer at that location was "right sized".

My income gave me the capital to buy my first property in 1983. The spark for buying the property was a fire in the apartment complex where I was living that took the life of a seven-month-old girl in the unit beneath me and left the father critically injured. My cat Rex woke me up at about two a.m. and I remember the utter horror of the moment when I saw billowing clouds of orange come towards me from the first floor, a horror that was compounded when I had to fight through thick, black smoke in an apartment that had no sprinklers or alarms. Little Jaclyn Wallace's clothes, toys, and crib lay twisted in a puddle of soot and glass.

At the intersection of Dundee Avenue and Seneca Street near Summit Street in Elgin was a sixty-year-old two-story flat-roofed red brick building that contained two stores and also a smaller two-story house on 11,500 square feet of land. I paid $76,000 for the property with an interest rate of 13.5 percent in October, 1983. I was scared when I bought it, but was reassured somewhat by the favorable commercial location—there was a constant stream of cars past the stores. I correctly intuited that I would never have a problem getting leases. On one side was Ray's Tattoos and Roll-N-Donuts and on the other side was Harry ThieI's Dundee Avenue Auto Body Rebuilders, so it was perhaps not a place where gracious living was a way of life. I owned 434/468/438 Dundee Avenue for seven years until Elgin razed them in the name of urban renewal. The idea was to replace the six acres of houses and stores with a 65,000 square-foot shopping center. City documents described the area as "visually blighted", but I liked it for its ethnic vitality. My tenants were African-American, Hispanic, and Laotian.

Some postcards from that front: Two FBI agents came up to my office and showed me a photograph of a murderer with some fingers missing, asking me if he was my tenant. My answer: Maybe. Once, I called the police after someone started shooting from one of my apartment windows. They declined to come until someone had been shot. Across the street from my house next to the liquor store was a black social club where the thrum of disco would continue from Saturday afternoon into Sunday morning. Fist fights would spill out into the street and there was an occasional knifing. One day, a photograph of my stores appeared on the front page of the Daily Courier News showing inspectors removing raccoon road-kill from one of my stores. "Conservation officer Kevin Stover removes frozen raccoons from the HG Fish Market in Elgin as manager Tommie Former looks on," reads the caption to the photograph. I'm not a social animal, but I have learned to observe people, to size them up, and deal with them with tact, confidence, and humor—bankers and lawyers as well as the Latin Kings and the Black Gangster Disciples. Elgin was my finishing school.

After the condemnation, I bought a large wooden house with a wrap-around veranda and fruit trees on the main lake in Lake in the Hills, a small town between Elgin and Crystal Lake. The lake was about a mile long, and I enjoyed my thirteen-foot sailboat and silver steel rowboat. I liked skating in the winter, but the ice seemed a lot harder than I remembered from my Ivyland days. When I bought the house, it had a postcard-like country charm—of flocks of trumpeting geese skimming the lake and the smell of burning leaves wafting through the pines in the crisp eventide of autumn. But all of that has now changed. Many of the surrounding cow pastures have since turned into cookie-cutter developments and the village no longer allows leaf burning.

In 1984, Prentice-Hall published my first book How To Do Business With the People's Republic of China, with 336 pages. My publisher told me that this book accompanied President Reagan's staff when he went to China and got generally good reviews. Cornell University, for example, said it was "an excellent choice for public, business, and commercial libraries". Business Book Review listed it as one of their top ten best written and useful books. In 1987, Prentice-Hall published my second book, the 297-page How to Buy and Manage Income Property. The columnist Edith Lank said that this book "will be absolutely tops, an excellent introduction to the field. She said "My work as a syndicated columnist brings me many readers' letters every day, and their main concern these days is real estate investment. The interest is fueled by those snake-oil salesmen on late-night cable TV who pitch expensive real estate seminars and home-study courses. I would be happy to recommend this book as an antidote to the current hysteria. It's a readable, authoritative guide to the basics of investing and management." Neither book made me a lot of money, but the discipline of writing about ten pages each night for two years honed my thinking and kept me off the streets.

The 1980s began and ended with family weddings. My older brother married Joyce Hamilton on May 24th, 1980. Paul adopted Joyce's son Timothy David, who went on to achieve distinction as a high-ranking Navy submariner. My younger sister Anne married Wayne Birch, a successful computer executive, on November 18, 1989. With her two BS degrees, Anne is the most educated of the siblings in our family.

Flowers Left Behind

I was fortunate to be near an uncle and aunt and cousins that provided a gracious home away from home. Uncle Ivar and Aunt Elvera lived during my college years in a cottage in Gages Lake and then retired in 1979 to The Holmstad in Batavia, a town fifteen miles to the south of Elgin. With his gentle erudition and broad interests (racing pigeons, bantam chickens, stamps, ham radio, Lincoln histories, rabbits, accounting, and theology), Uncle Ivar reminded me of Kenneth Gray from Ivyland. Joanne and Vern Hultgren bought a funeral home in Wheaton across from the public library where I spent many golden hours during my college days. They facilitated my trip to Sweden in 1991 and invited me to their October family reunions in Sister Bay, Door County. LeRoy and Eloise Nelson live in North Park, Chicago, a community that still has an ethnic Scandinavian ambiance. Some of the cousins are fluent in Swedish and often visit the old country. During the holidays, their homes are an oases of Currier & Ives beauty, sweet with the scent of Swedish pastries and twinkling candles. It was a joy to grow up with their children and get to know their beautiful grandchildren. In a letter that Eloise and LeRoy wrote for my parent's 50th wedding anniversary, they remembered "the many years Philip was in the Chicago area and joined us for Christmases (and brought unusual and original gifts), Thanksgiving (and brought a good appetite), for summer days at Gages Lake, and for many other happy times. Then his marriage to Nancy, the birth of their sons, and their joining us for weekends in Door County every October." My cousin's attachment to their Swedish heritage no doubt fueled my own interest in my heritage. They provided a morale-boosting environment for me much along the same lines as Aunt Lillian and cousins Gordon and Dee Stewart provided for my sister Anne in South Dakota, and Aunt Elsie and Uncle Ray provided for my brothers Paul and Timothy in Texas during their college years.

Aunt Elvera died in her sleep in her apartment on November 7th, 2004 at the age of 97, leaving behind three children, nine grandchildren, 22 great-grandchildren, and four siblings. I flew in from Phoenix to Chicago on short notice, but it was a trip I had to make. The Andersons and their children were a positive model of how to how to be a good dad and how to live a quiet faith. My trip to Chicago was a poignant time of remembrance. While I was there, I had the opportunity to walk through the Wheaton College campus, visit the empty lot on Dundee Avenue that was soon to become a medical center, and walk along side the lake near my former home in Lake in the Hills. So many memories were aroused in these few hours. But it was especially nice to see many of my cousins and their children after so many years. Granddaughters Sandy Nelson Brown, Steffi Nelson Magnuson, Tami Moore, and Julie Riley shared their memories, and it must have been difficult to do so. As Steffi said, Aunt Elvera "was the most special Nana we could have." I don't think I was able to sing too well when the others started to sing "When We All Get To Heaven" and "Day By Day." Aunt Elvera lived a blessed life and touched so many lives including mine. The joy of her Lord was her strength, and I will always remember her beautiful smile, bright eyes, and calm and loving words. Later that day, the coffin was taken to the Wheaton Cemetery, where she rests next to her husband Ivar of 63 years under a stone with the words "Justified By Faith." It was a day much like that day 86 years before when her father was buried—a bit cold and sad but still bright and full of promise. When Aunt Elvera died, a nurse left on her empty bed in the Holmstad a single white rose—a lovely reminder of the legacy that my uncles and aunts have left to me in different ways, a legacy that shapes my life and the lives of so many others.

#### Nancy

World War I was a watershed for this nation's social development. Increased mobility and modernity, but also disillusionment, materialism, urbanization, immorality, and racketeering began to shape the cultural landscape. With the Volstead Act of 1919, the Noble Experiment of prohibition began. And with it came bootleggers and speakeasies and bullet-plated cars roaring through the Chicago loop, tommy guns blazing. In Chicago, John Torrio, the chairman of the Chicago syndicate, killed his uncle Big Jim Colosimo, to gain control of his empire of brothels, gambling parlors, and 700 hoodlums. His partner, Al ("Scarface") Capone, would orchestrate the 1929 St. Valentine's Day massacre to dominate the underworld.

The poet Carl Sandburg described Chicago as "stormy, husky, brawling" and "proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning." He could have been describing Nancy's great-uncle John Joseph ("Bathhouse") Coughlin (1860-1938), who ran the first ward for four decades. (I haven't yet been able to prove the link between Nancy's great-grandfather and one of the four sons of Michael. But the story has been passed down and the family resemblance to Bathhouse John is also striking.)

Michael Coughlin, his father, had come from County Roscommon, Ireland in 1857 at the age of 13. A year later, he married a Johanna Hanley, a colleen from County Limerick. Michael was prudent and industrious and on the way to becoming a rich man when the Chicago fire of 1871 wiped out the store and the family home. In newspaper stories of later years commemorating the holocaust of 1871, Bathhouse was quoted: "Why, money didn't mean anything to me. I'm glad that fire came along and burned the store. Say, if not for that bonfire I might have been a rich man's son and gone to Yale—and never amounted to nothing!"

John was called "Bathhouse" because he once worked as head rubber at the Palmer House and later bought a bathhouse on East Madison Street. He was a chesty six-footer with a handlebar moustache and billiard-table green suits, known for his good nature and love of verse.

On with the dance,

Let the orgy be perfectly proper

Don't drink, smoke, or spit on the floor

And, say, keep you eye on the copper.

Well, it isn't Shakespeare.

In 1893, the Bath was elected to the city council, a notorious band of crooks whose capacity for graft was legendary. He built an organization of saloonkeepers, gamblers, pimps, pickpockets, and brothel owners that would help him and his associate, Michael ("Hinky Dink") Kenna, hold their seats in city hall through Democratic and Republican administrations. Coughlin once accused a Civic Federation leader of libeling him after a particularly damaging report denouncing him as a crook. "You said I was born in Waukegan. That ain't true and I demand a retraction," he insisted, with Kenna at his side. On election day, Coughlin and Kenna filled up shabby bathhouses with derelicts, plied them with liquor, money, food, and women, and marched them out to vote the straight ticket. When their protégée Big Jim was murdered, Bathhouse knelt at his bier and recited the Catholic prayer for the dead. Coughlin kept his seat until his death in 1936, operating out of Capone's Lexington Hotel. (A Mary Coughlin married Al Capone, but she isn't related to our family.) Bathhouse John's most memorable legislation was a law requiring 12-foot walls around Chicago's cemeteries.

Once the mayor asked Kenna: "Tell me Mike, do you think John is crazy or just full of dope?"

Kenna answered, "No, John ain't dotty and he ain't full of dope. To tell you th' God's truth, Mr. Mayor, they ain't found a name for it yet."

#### Joyce Coughlin

Nancy's mother Joyce is the youngest child of Harold and Ella Brown. Harold was born in the coastal city of Malmo, Sweden, in 1892. He and his brother Ovie immigrated to this country in 1908, leaving in the old country his sister Anna and brothers Edwin and Wilhelm. Harold at first worked in Hammond, Indiana, and then later as an ice man—conveying blocks of ice in his horse and buggy. He eventually established a coal and oil distribution business in Chicago. Harold named his red coal trucks after his grandsons and his pleasure boat "Joycee" after Joyce. In 1929, they bought their house in Sister Bay, in Door County, Wisconsin, and in the early 1940s, they retired. Harold and Ella enjoyed watching their grandchildren play Frisbee or ride motor scooters on their park-like lawn surrounded by lilac bushes and white birches. Grandma Brown would sometimes tie a milk carton around the children's waist so they could pick raspberries and other fruits. "I was particularly guided by my grandparents," Nancy writes. "They modeled love and grace and taught me that God's faithfulness is great." Nancy's grandparents didn't just talk the talk; they walked the walk.

On Nancy's 35th birthday, I commissioned a Door County artist Kari Anderson to paint her grandparents house, a watercolor painting of the two story frame house that is in our dining room today. I wanted it to be a surprise, so we drove the back roads of Door County to the studio. Concerned that the surprise might not be quite what she wanted, Nancy asked, "You didn't get me a horse?"

Harold and Ella Brown

From Joyce, Nancy inherited her Baptist faith, exemplary cooking skills, sensitivity towards others, and love for children. Joyce and I are both half-Swedish in our ancestry, and perhaps our little club helps moderate the unrelenting veneration of all things Irish in that part of Chicago.

#### John Coughlin

John Edward William was born in 1934, the son of a Chicago policeman John James Joseph (1909-1975) and the grandson of John Coughlin, who died in the 1940s and was the sheriff in Freeport, Illinois. John won seven department commendations, two department credible mentions, 21 honorable mentions, and was promoted from probationary patrolman to patrolman first class by an act of the city council for successfully apprehending and prosecuting a serial rapist. He was a detective, sergeant of police (during the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention riots), and, from 1986 through 1990, a lieutenant of police. After his retirement in 1990, John was a potentate of the Chicago Medinah Temple with 10,500 active members. He earned one million dollars for the temple budget and prepared the $20 million budget proposal as a member of the Board of Governors of the Shriners' Hospital for Children.

Nancy was born at 5:20 p.m., July 7th, 1958, at Augustana Hospital in Chicago, nine pounds four ounces and 21 inches. John wrote to his wife on a card, "To the most wonderful wife and beautiful daughter. With all my love, Daddy."

"As a child, I was always proud to say that my Dad was a policeman," Nancy said at the service. Because of his work schedule, he could attend many of their school functions. John loved Chicago sports, and passed on that love to our boys. (One of Zachary's proudest possessions is a Note Dame football that "Papa" gave him.) He also loved restaurants. "Even as little girls, our Dad always took us to the nicest places to eat. John liked music and singing, and, as Nancy noted, "the 'Notre Dame Fight Song' was a lullaby to me and my sisters."

Nancy

"In April, we went to Chicago to spend Easter with Nancy's family," we write in our 2003 Christmas letter. "It was during this visit that we first learned that Nancy's Dad John Coughlin was sick. Four days after returning to Scottsdale, we found out that her Dad had taken a turn for the worse. Over the phone, Nancy told John that she loved him and was proud to be his daughter. Nancy made plans to return to Chicago, but he succumbed to colon cancer at the age of 68 the day before she arrived."

An American flag draped John's wooden casket to salute his service as an army infantryman. John rested under a gold Irish cross and a drawer with school pictures of our children. At the funeral, Nancy spoke fondly of her love for her Dad. "On July 6th, 1958, John Coughlin turned 24 years," she said. "On July 7th, 1958, I was born." From that day to this, he has been loved and respected by me."

John was buried in Acacia Park Cemetery in Chicago.

#### Marriage

I started to attend Willow Creek Community Church in 1985. This church, located in South Barrington about a half-hour away, had at the time about 5,000 attending each week. This attendance would increase to about 15,000 by the time we left for Scottsdale. This church had an active young people's group, so it was to my liking. There were more than 1,000 people in Focus, the above 30 year olds. It was broken down into smaller teams. One such team was called Badlands. We would deepen friendships by going bowling, camping, or sitting together at the Wednesday night New Community services. A typical outing was a rafting trip we took on Memorial Day, 1991, to the Wolf River in northern Wisconsin. "About 15 of us were at the camp, about 300 miles to the north," I wrote to Mom and Dad. "We carpooled up, and arrived at three in the morning because we got lost. The camp was heavily wooded, with the barest of amenities. I spent a surprisingly good night sleeping in a puddle of water. The next day, most of us rafted down the Wolf River. The sun was out for the most part, but the river was swollen from the previous night's rain. The rapids were quite treacherous, and it took no small effort to avoid hitting submerged tree stumps and boulders. Sometimes, the water dropped or rose a dozen feet in a churning, boiling spray. The trip down the river was about 12 miles and took several hours. The next day we struck camp. Before leaving, we hiked about a dozen miles through the tick-infested woods." In the same month, I met Nancy at a roller skating event, and then lived happily ever after.

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies,

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect of her eyes.

Nancy grew up in Chicago, and worked in several day care centers. I wrote to Mom and Dad that she is "extremely personable and cheery and is also a wonderful cook." Nancy eventually started her own child-care business from her Wheeling townhouse, and then was a nanny to wealthy families who lived on Chicago's affluent North Shore. We first met at a roller skating and pizza party. On February 2, 1992, Nancy agreed to go to a Sunday buffet at the Barn of Barrington restaurant in South Barrington. As we went out together on other activities—movies and museums, and long walks through the forest preserves and along the beaches of Lake Michigan—we found that we had a lot in common, enough so to ignite the spark of romance. Nancy's mother's family were Swedish Baptists. They spent many happy summers in Door County, Wisconsin. I fell in love with Nancy's beauty and vivacious personality, and was impressed by the fact that she loved children and was doing well in her own business. On April 4, I told Nancy that "I think I'm falling in love with you." And, on June 6, at Schulien's Restaurant in Chicago where a magician made the diamond ring materialize in a magic trick, Nancy said "yes! yes! yes!" to my proposal of marriage. We later went "up the tower" at Wheaton College's Blanchard Tower. We pulled the rope that rang the bell and added our names to the graffiti on the wall.

On a clear spring day on April 10, 1993, on the day before Easter Sunday, Pastor John Wendel married us at Forest Glen Baptist Church at Foster and Elston Avenue. (Nancy's grandparents Harold and Ella Brown were charter members of the church that was founded in 1943.) Both families were well represented in the wedding parties, with Nancy's Dad walking with her down the aisle and my Dad making some remarks. The service ended with the congregation singing "Blest Be The Ties That Bind", a hymn with elegiac resonance that has marked through the years the sorrow of separation:

When we asunder part,

It gives us inward pain,

But we shall still be joined in heart,

And hope to meet again.

As we left the church for the reception at Fountain Blue Restaurant in a black 1941 Buick, hundreds of black and white balloons filled the bright blue sky.

Since we got married, we try to capture the highlights of the year into our annual Christmas letter. Here are excerpts from our letters that will bring us up to date. It italics are additional events that were not included in our Christmas letter.

I've also included excerpts from my journals through those years, a habit that I started in 1989 and continue to this day. While I'm not aware of many men who keep diaries, some of the best diarists were men, such as H. L. Mencken, the journalist, Clifford Odets, the playwright, and many presidents. In fact, Americans were diarists before they were Americans. Mom kept a diary most of her life, and I regret not starting my diary writing earlier in my life. It has been said that journals are a safe place where you can relate to yourself without blushing. At times, it has helped me articulate and thereby resolve hard problems and make sound decisions. I've filled some of my daily postcards to myself with colored pen sketches and idle philosophical or poetical musings. I find that keeping a diary and occasionally sketching a scene has taught me to see and really observe the minutia of life than enriches my memories. It also somehow puts the frettings of the moment into a longer perspective, and that has also taught me not to worry so much. I think of diaries as kind of a mental playpen. There are times when I've had to wait for Nancy, for the children, or for something or someone else. At such times, the hours melts as I happily sketch or write. Keeping a diary has brought be much pleasure, and I can only agree with actress Mae West's observation: "Keep a diary and someday it'll keep you."

####

#### 1993

In April, we were married at Forest Glen Church in Chicago. We had a wonderful honeymoon in Florida, and on a cruise through the Caribbean on the SS Norway.

In June, we were thrilled to find out that we were going to be parents in February, 1994. Nancy and our baby-to-be are both doing well.

Philip continues to work at First Card. Nancy still enjoys caring for children as a day care provider.

Rex, our Persian cat, is playful and cherished.

We enjoyed our two trips to Door County, Wisconsin, where Nancy has memories going back to her childhood, and one trip to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where Philip grew up and his parents, brother, and sister and family live.

We attend Willow Creek Church regularly and visit Forest Glen Church monthly.

Our marriage at on April 10th was the culmination of months of planning. We had two entrees—London Broil at thirty-two dollars a plate and Chicken Kiev at $30.50. It was the most expensive meal I never ate. We were too busy visiting the other guests. Joyce, my sister-in-law, sang a solo "Heirlooms" at the wedding. Dad also said some appropriate words at the wedding as well. We had a wonderful trip on the S/S Norway—what once used to be the S/S France. I especially enjoyed snorkeling in Bermuda. Captain Gier Lokoen presented us with a certificate celebrating our honeymoon "at sea in the Viking tradition." I think that referred to a bottle of wine they gave us. After we returned to Miami, we enjoyed Wolfi Cohen's Rascal House as well as Universal Studios, and the light show at Epcot. Several months after returning from our honeymoon, Nancy found that she was pregnant to our mutual joy. "We were delighted to hear of your family news concerning "Baby Roo," Mom wrote in a card on June 12, 1993. "Since then, we have been remembering the "little one" in prayer and trust that all will be well."

Diary: Tuesday, August 24th. "Went to Anne & Wayne with Mom & Dad to watch David for a while. Watched new footage of wedding & Anne & Wayne's wedding. After Wayne left, we took off, visiting Churchville Elementary School (I spent grades 5 & 6 there), Council Rock JH (7,8), and CRHS (9-12). Drove past Ivyland down Dark Hollow for about a mile & then took Old York Road to Peddler's Village. Had a hoagie at The Spotted Hog. Returned 3:30. Dad went to a church board meeting."

####

#### 1994

As the Thanksgiving holiday passes and we look forward to Christmas, it's a good time to reflect on our many blessings.

First and foremost, we welcomed the arrival of our dear son, Zachary Jonathan Logan, on February 9. He weighed in at just over six pounds, but now tips the scale at more than 22 pounds. Zachary is a healthy, curious baby with sparkling, brown eyes and an enthusiastic smile. He has brought so much happiness into our lives.

This has been a relational year. In June, we attended the Wik reunion in Phoenix and then went on to California where we drove up the coast from LA to San Francisco. In September, Nancy took the baby to meet his cousins David and Jennifer Birch in Pennsylvania and enjoyed visiting Grandpa and Grandma Wik.

For both sides of our family, Door County, Wisconsin is a special place of fond memories. In May, Zachary and Nancy and her sisters Kristin and Kara spent an enjoyable week in Sister Bay. In October, we enjoyed the fall colors in Door County with Philip's cousins.

Philip still works at First Chicago. Nancy with Zachary enjoys caring for a five-year-old twice each week about an hour away. This is great for Zachary because he likes playing with other children.

"This past year has been so different for you," Mom wrote to me on my birthday. " We thank the Lord for Nancy and baby Zachary who are now present to enlarge your horizons, enrich your life, and give you cheer along the way." The baby announcement card had a drawing of a big cat holding a baby cat and read: "I'M A BOY! I don't know what that means—but that way my folks are carrying on, it must be something special!" In their Christmas card that year, Mom and Dad wrote that "Our lives have been enriched by the arrival of two grandchildren this year. Zachary Wik was born February 9th to our second son Philip and Nancy. We attended Zachary's dedication on April 16 at Forest Glen Baptist Church in Chicago where Philip and Nancy were married. We rejoiced with Wayne and our daughter Anne on the safe arrival of Jennifer on March 20th."

1994 was our first introduction to Phoenix. Paul and Joyce hosted the Wik Family Reunion in Tempe with about 50 relatives. We enjoyed the shops, entertaining, and dining at Arizona Center, close to where I got my first job at Arizona Public Service, the electrical utility. We stayed at Fiesta Inn, a Frank Lloyd Wright inspired resort on 33 areas in the heart of Phoenix.

"In October, we spent a warm, golden weekend in Door County, Wisconsin for the annual Anderson family reunion, with all 37 of us present," the Nelsons write in their Christmas letter.

Dominating the national headlines was the OJ trial, and that may very well have been one of Zachary's earliest words.

Diary: "Wednesday, February 9th. Woke up at 3 a.m. & couldn't fall back to sleep. N's contractions had diminished so I went to work. Several inches of snow had fallen during the night, so the roads were not too good. The day changed to clear & sunny. N. called me at 10:30. Drove to the hospital at11:45. N. on potasin. Epidural. N. in extreme pain, but was able to sleep for a few hours. Zachary was born 11:32 p.m. 6 lbs 3 oz. 20 ½ inches long."

####

#### 1995

The Lord has given us another year filled with blessings.

The greatest of these has been seeing life through the eyes of our 22 month old son, Zachary. He approaches everything he does with enthusiasm and joy. Zachary's favorite toys are cars, building blocks, and anything that has to do with Barney the dinosaur. He also enjoys activities outside the house. Besides a weekly "Mom and Tots" group, we've had fun at the zoo, library, swimming pool, and circus. Zachary is also crazy about his dad. "Da-dee" was his first word and still is his favorite word.

Our relational experiences this year have been many. In April, we celebrated "Gramma" Coughlin's birthday in Door County with Nancy's family. Nancy and Philip continued on to Lake Geneva to celebrate our second wedding anniversary. In June, we visited Baltimore, the White House in Washington, D.C., and Grandpa and Grandma Wik in Pennsylvania. In August, we enjoyed roasted corn and bratwurst at the Wisconsin State Fair in Milwaukee. In October, we again returned to Door County to enjoy the autumn colors with Nancy's family and Philip's cousins.

We're looking forward to what certainly will be the highlight of the year—the marriage of Nancy's sister Kristin to John O'Shea on December 16 at Forest Glen Church in Chicago.

"I spent most of Saturday in Northbrook about an hour away on disaster recovery," I wrote to my parents in March, 1995. "I would like to transfer to another group that doesn't have as much family disruptions. Zachary is in the 75th percentile in both height and weight and now weighs more than 25 pounds. He is very active and is getting better sleeping through the night and sitting in a car. To celebrate our wedding anniversary, Nancy and I are planning a trip to Door County and Lake Geneva." We visited the Fontana Spa at the Abbey on Lake Geneva. While we prattled about our pleasant time while cruising through Lake Geneva, a policeman pulled us over and gave us a ticket. In June, we visited Mom and Dad in Pennsylvania and also saw Washington, DC. Mom and Dad wrote to Reyn and Helen that "we were impressed with all the energy and go in Zachary who was one year old."

Diary: "Thursday, March 9th. 40th birthday! N. got me a balloon trip. Seafood (swordfish, scampi, shrimp) at Harry G's near the Alumni Club. Call & card from parents and Z. Dentist. Need to get a filling replaced in three weeks. Got Rex's cat-mitt in the mail. Watched Lawrence Welk on TV. Warming weather in the 60s."

#### 1996

Christmas for the Wiks this year came early with the arrival of Benjamin on August 3. Our dear son arrived in good health ten days ahead of time, weighing 8 lbs. 11 oz. Benjamin is a happy, sweet-natured baby with sparkling, blue eyes. Today, he weighs almost fifteen pounds and is starting to roll over.

Zachary at 2 ½ is a boy on the go, endlessly curious and energetic. He can recite all the letters of the alphabet and really enjoys picture books. Zachary also likes parks, zoos, and his friends at church.

Our boys are the delight of our life.

We have been involved in helping to launch a new church, Springbrook Community Church. About 200 people meet in the elementary school that our children will someday attend. Nancy enjoys baking brownies to welcome guests, and is also involved in the children's ministry. Philip also helps out where needs arise. We feel blessed to have made so many good friends.

In April, we joined Philip's Mom and sister and her family at Disney World. There was much to see at Epcot, MGM, and Universal Studios.

In August, Mom flew in to meet her newest grandson. Mom and Dad came in two months later for Benjamin's dedication.

In October, we drove to Door County, Wisconsin to enjoy the Autumn colors, a quilt of crimson and gold. Zachary enjoyed playing with his Hultgren and Anderson cousins.

We had a festive Thanksgiving with Nancy's family. There's so much for which we are thankful.

We were so happy to welcome our dear boy Ben into our home in August. After enjoying a jumbo shrimp dinner at Floyds Restaurant, Benjamin decided to make his appearance—about ten days early.

In 1996, we were one of the fifteen founding couples that helped launch Scottsdale Community Church. Towards the end of the year, about 170 people were attending the morning service each week. In 2005, Springbrook was making plans to open a $4.5 million church in Algonquin.

On May 11, Uncle Ivar Anderson died. I had many good memories visiting Uncle Ivar and Aunt Elvera at their home in Gages Lake, and the later on at The Holmstad in Batavia. I remember him as a caring, gentle, well-read and well-spoken man with a love for others and a love for God. The bulletin at his funeral quoted Romans 8:38-39: "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is Christ Jesus our Lord."

I had my 15th year anniversary working at the First National Bank of Chicago.

In June, my parents drove to Rapid City, South Dakota, for the family reunion, with about 100 relatives and friends in attendance.

Diary: "Friday, August 2nd. N & Z to Floyds for shrimp. Shopped at Spring Hill Mall. At 11, N. started to experience contractions 5-8 minutes apart. Left at 1:40. Went through five red lights. In emergency section at 2:30 a.m. Epidural. Z. upset. John & Susan arrive, who look after Z. Z. falls asleep at about 4. Benjamin born at 8:29. 8 lbs 11 oz. 21 inches."

####

#### 1997

WHAT A YEAR!

In February, we celebrated Zachary's third birthday at an indoor water park at the Wisconsin Dells. In March, Nancy's Dad had successful bypass heart surgery. And after what seemed like a very long winter, we looked forward to our April vacation out west.

We enjoyed San Diego's Sea World and beaches. But Arizona, with its natural beauty, blue skies, and mild winters, was a place we wanted to call home.

After considering several career opportunities in the Phoenix area, Philip accepted a consulting position with Interim Technology. Philip looks forward to using his 17 years of computer experience from the First National Bank of Chicago.

In June, we put our house on the market. In July, Nancy flew to Phoenix for a long weekend. After looking at more than twenty houses, we found a house in Scottsdale that was right for all of us with its large rooms, citrus trees, and swimming pool.

In August, we celebrated Benjamin's first birthday at Chuck E. Cheese, a favorite place for both of our boys. Although we weren't able to go to Door County's October festival, we had a wonderful time with Aunt Elvera, the Hultgrens, and the Nelsons at Chip and Tami's new home.

Before we left for Arizona in September, Philip and Benjamin spent a few days in Philadelphia with Philip's family.

The boys have adapted well to the move. Zach wakes up each morning asking if it's Sunday. He loves Sunday school at Scottsdale Bible Church. Benjamin can walk and run, and enjoys exploring the many parks and fun places with Zachary.

It's great to have Philip's brother Paul and family (Joyce, Peter, and Rebekah) about thirty minutes away.

In January 1997, I broached the idea of positioning ourselves for retirement by moving to a warmer clime. "Don't say it if you don't mean it!" was Nancy's response. We thought about San Diego, having enjoyed some vacations in that area as well as the mild weather. But on all other categories that we considered important, Phoenix won. Several factors meshed to shape our decision to move from Chicago to Arizona. We enjoyed the beauty and wildlife of 313 Pheasant Trail and the vitality of Chicago, with its sports, museums, and restaurants. But we began to question whether the schools in Lake in the Hills could provide the best environment for our children. Nancy was feeling estranged from the neighbors and some of her family. We had also experienced brutal winters, that brought with it sickness and car accidents. We had talked about retiring to the southwest. But it became clear to us that it was better to move now when the children were small and didn't have many friends. Finally, I had worked for the bank for 17 years. The transition of computers from the mainframe to the client/server paradigm could make me a dinosaur unless I reinvented. Thus, there were many reasons to move, and so we did.

Ben and I visited Mom and Dad in September. In their Christmas letter, my parents wrote that "Benjamin at that time was just beginning to walk and was full of energy." In Pennsylvania, Dad was anxious to show me Whitemarch Memorial Park near Ambler north of Philadelphia, where they had bought their grave sites. It was a place of natural beauty and serenity with mature trees and ponds. At one point, a red fox trotted past us over the green meadow.

We spent the remaining months getting acclimated to the area and also buying furniture. But we did have time to go to some neighborhood potlucks and walk the Arizona Trail at the Phoenix Zoo.

Diary: "Thursday, September 19th. At about three, we taxi to O'Hare after farewells to Joyce & John & Kristin. Watched "Speed 2" on the plane. Rex was the best-behaved boy. Picked up by Joyce. Paul still in Switzerland/Germany. To Days Inn in Scottsdale. B. has a nasty bang on his head. Temp. above 100—about 60 in Chicago."

####

#### 1998

After our Thanksgiving feast with Philip's family, we wrote on pieces of paper some of the things for which we are thankful. Nancy passed around a "thankful" jar that she had made at her Making Our Mothering Significant (MOMS) group from Scottsdale Bible Church. As we read each comment from the jar, it brought to mind the blessings from this last year.

We are thankful for our family.

Ben, age two, is an active boy who loves playing with crayons and toy cards.

Zach, age four, looks forward to his Play and Learning School (PALS) that he attends three days a week. He also loves his "Dalmatians" Sunday School class at Scottsdale Bible Church. They're both at a great age. But what age isn't great?

Besides her many home responsibilities, Nancy is active in a book club and women's ministries at church.

Philip consults for American Express.

In March, we said good bye to Rex, our beloved Persian cat, who died at the age of 17. We cherish his memory.

We are thankful for our extended family.

In April and October, Nancy's father John spent a few days with us. We enjoyed seeing the red rocks of Sedona together. Zach was proud to watch Papa share about being a policeman at school.

In June, the family enjoyed the Wik family reunion at Pleasanton, California, where we realized how much familiar and new faces mean to us. In November, Philip's parents spent Thanksgiving week with their two Arizona sons and families.

In July, Nancy took the boys on a ten-day vacation to Chicago. They liked meeting with family and friends from church. In August, Nancy flew out again to Chicago for a shorter but equally memorable visit.

We are thankful for fun.

A highlight of this year was our trip to California, where we attended not only the family reunion, but also walked along Pier 39 in San Francisco, watched the boys play in the surf of the Pacific Ocean, and enjoyed Farmer's Market, LA. Zach and Ben loved seeing their favorite characters at Disney Land, Anaheim. In Scottsdale, we enjoy biking and hiking amid the beauty of the many parks and greenbelts that surround us.

The boys enjoyed The Happiest Place on Earth.

Zach, at age four, went to pre-school—Play and Learn School. A teacher asked us with some astonishment, "Do you know that Zachary can read?"

We enjoyed spending more time with my brother Paul and his family. Paul's son Tim married Holly. Peter, at 16, enjoyed his '91 Dodge Shadow. Rebekah sang in the Phoenix Girl's Choir Tour Choir. Joyce helped out at Out of Africa, a local wild cat preserve.

In 1998, Uncle Milton died at the age of 93. Family members performed the service, as was his wish. Milton was laid to rest in an oak coffin with engravings of the Lord's Supper and the cross on the dies. "I thought he looked much younger than his 93 years, so beautifully serene and at peace," Aunt Grace writes. "His body is now back home at the Millard Cemetery." In an earlier reunion, Uncle Milton held Zachary on his lap—the youngest Wik and the oldest Wik in that blessed moment of time.

We were sad to hear of the accidental drowning of the Anderson's nine year-old great grandson Jake Anderson in August. We knew him and his parents Kurt and Barb from the annual Door County reunion, and he always seemed to me to be caring, energetic, understanding, and gentle. "The committal service was in a place as close as possible to the spot where Jake drowned," Aunt Elvera wrote. "Relatives and close friends followed through the woods and up and over the high embankment. Kurt has made a five-half foot cross on which he had painted the date of Jake's birth and date of death on the cross bar and then the words "We love you" on the straight part. Little Karli sent a message to Jake. She had a big helium-filled balloon with the words "I love you." She let it go and we watched it go high into the heavens and it sailed away as far as the eye could see. Kurt put a small boat in the water that was filled with some of Jake's favorite things and we watched it sail downstream. The Kurt, brushing away his tears, turned toward us and said, "I want to say something that I know for sure", and pointed heavenward. "I know where Jake is."

Diary: "Monday, March 2nd. Rex 1981-1998. Rex collapsed after drinking some water in the bathroom. He spent the night on his side breathing shallowly under a blanket. N. called me at 1 to say that Rex had died. I went home to dig a grave under the grape fruit tree in the corner of the lot, wrapped him in a blue knitted pillow case with a toy that he used to race after as a kitten. We put 17 daisies on his grave, one for each year he lived. The children don't seem to understand that Rex has died, but it has affected me. He was my friend—sometimes my only friend—through some hard times in my life, and I will miss his fidelity and affection."

Rex and friend in 1986

#### 1999

The orange and the palm trees sway,

There's never been such a day,

But it's December the 24th,

And I'm dreaming to be up north.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

Just like the ones I used to know,

Where to treetops glisten and the children listen,

To hear sleigh bells in the snow.

It's hard to believe that we're going into our third year here in the sunshine of Scottsdale. We love it! But warm memories of you "where the treetops glisten" lingers in our hearts. We love you and miss you.

1999 has been a year of growth and grace.

Ben at three brings joys to whomever he meets. He amazes his teachers and classmates in his Play and Learning School (PALS) with his love for letters and numbers. In January, Ben enjoyed his first roller coaster ride with Aunt Kara, Zach, and Nancy at Knotts Berry Farm in California.

Zach, now five, runs to see what new things Mrs. Anderson will teach him and his friends at Cochise kindergarten. He loves reading, animals ("all of them"), and getting and sending e-mails. Philip and Zachary spent a few days in Philadelphia with Philip's family in August, where Zachary enjoyed the Philadelphia Zoo with its many interesting and exotic birds and animals.

Nancy treasures her involvement in Zach's class, the PTA, and Sunday school at Scottsdale Bible Church. On August 10th, she was thrilled to be with her sister Kristin for the birth of Grace Elizabeth O'Shea in Chicago. In November, it was fun to have "Gracie", Kristin, and John for a visit.

Philip, a systems developer for Wells Fargo Bank, likes researching family history in his spare time.

We've seen illness, unemployment, and the loss of loved ones. Yet, despite the challenges of this year, we've felt God's grace. And so, knowing that the future is as bright as His promises, we'll greet the new century with confidence.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

With every Christmas card I write

May your days be merry and bright

And may all your Christmases be white!

In our first full year in Arizona, we enjoyed the pleasures of desert living. Paul, my brother, and Joyce put their home at 2331 East Tahitian Way in Gilbert up for sale and move back to Pennsylvania. They loved their home with the hand painted mural on the swimming pool war, gazebo, pool, and oak stairway. But jobs for semiconductor control engineers dried up and Paul had to look for work elsewhere. He started work in CFM Technologies as a senior product engineer, in Exton. I went through three jobs in this year of transition. I started work at Wells Fargo after totaling my car in their parking lot. The kids enjoyed the Sugar Bowl in downtown Scottsdale and I enjoyed the art museum in downtown Phoenix. The highlight of the year for the children was probably visiting Knottsberry Farm in California.

In April, Mom flew to Australia to visit friends and family in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Here is a prose poem Dad wrote of this occasion:

Hey Dad, where is Mom today?

Well, son, listen well and I will tell you.

Your Mom, like a dove, has taken flight.

And where did she fly? dear Dad, please tell.

It was to the land of her birth, my son.

It is a land far far away

Where our night is day and day is night.

But Dad—will she come back again?

Ah, yes, the news is good, my son.

And when, I pray, will she return?

In God's appointed time, my son.

And then, dear Dad, will all be just the same?

Not quite, my son, for then you see

We shall all be just a little bit older,

A little bit wiser and we trust

A little more like Jesus.

So, in balance, my son

The flight of my dove

To a land far away

We will reckon as gain—not loss.

Diary: "December 23rd. Went to see the zoo light last night. Many bushes and trees decked in pretty lights, including lights that synchronized with music & moving lights of moving animals and birds. Paul flies in tonight. In contact with Minneapolis office where it is -35 chill factor. Nancy's Aunt Pearl is close to death. Banc One stock down 35 percent this year."

#### 2000

This land is your land

This land is my land

From California

To the New York islands

To the redwood forests

To the Gulf Stream waters

This land was made for you and me.

In July, we attended our family reunion in Baltimore. Our son Zachary, age six, sang Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" to an audience of relatives from around the country. It brought to mind the blessings of living in this beautiful country.

I've roamed and rambled

And I followed my footsteps

To the sparkling sands of

Her diamond deserts

And all around me

A voice was sounding

This land was made for you and me.

And it's in the "diamond deserts" of Arizona that we again recall with fondness this last year.

This has been a year of new beginnings.

After three years of consulting, Philip joined Wells Fargo as a Systems Engineer.

Nancy also started work as a Noon Aide at Cochise Elementary School. When Zachary heard that Nancy would be working at his school, he said "Mom, that's great!. And the good news is, now you get to wear a whistle!" Nancy especially appreciates the deep friendships that she has developed within our neighborhood.

Zach started first grade. Mrs. Kennedy is his new "best teacher I've ever had!" Zach is also doing well in Awana at Scottsdale Bible Church, and in karate, where he has gotten his third belt, an orange-white belt.

Benjamin, age four, started school, a pre-k program that he attends five days a week at Cochise. Ben's favorite hobby is writing e-mails on the family computer. Both our boys are avid readers. They love taking turns reading bedtime stories to us.

This has also been a year of adventure "from California to the New York islands."

In June, Nancy took our boys to Carlsbad, California, where they enjoyed playing at Legoland and seeing Shamu and the shows at SeaWorld.

After our family reunion in Baltimore, we enjoyed a week in the Poconos of Pennsylvania. Among our highlights was a trip we took to Manhattan, where we climbed the Empire State Building. Zach was excited to be the first to see the Statue of Liberty. Ben liked riding the subways.

In August, Nancy and Zach celebrated Gracie O'Shea's first birthday in Chicago. One month later, Nancy flew back to Chicago to celebrate her friend Dana Thielman's marriage to Matt Wolze.

In November, Philip went to Philadelphia to spend a few days with his parents. It was good to see his brothers and sister and their families who live in the area.

It has been fun to have family visit us through the year. We're thrilled to have watched Gracie go from a tiny baby to a fun-loving toddler during our many visits.

May the joy and beauty of Christmas be yours as we remember that "this land was made for you and me."

In January, Paul and Joyce and family moved into their home in Pennsylvania. "During the first three weeks, we experienced six snowstorms," Joyce writes. "Due to the impassability of our driveway, it took the moving men, assisted by Paul and Peter, fourteen hours to move our belongings into the house."

"I love you Dad," Zach wrote to me on my birthday in March. "I love you for 10,000 years." "The years do rush by, but in a very methodical way," my parents wrote to me on the same day. "We will be thinking of you on your birthday and thankful too to God for his ongoing goodness to you and yours down through the years."

Anne and Wayne Birch did an expert job in organizing the Wik reunion in Baltimore in July. On Friday, we had a buffet at Snyder's Willow Grove Inn, on Saturday we visited the Inner Harbor and later had a program, and on Sunday we had a devotional service at the Marriott.

In New York City, we made it to the 86th floor and were rewarded with 25 mile views of the island and New Jersey. In the background of a photograph of our family on the top of the Empire State Building were the World Trade Towers. Who would have guessed that only a year later, they would be no more? We stopped by the George Washington Hotel, now a college dorm, where I had stayed twenty years earlier. We finished the day with a sandwich at Stage Deli.

Ben started pre-school. "Ben is a delightful student and s progressing beautifully in the Best Pals Pre-K class," the teacher wrote. Teachers also appreciated Zach's enthusiasm for first grade.

In November, Dad, Tim, and I went to Abington to watch George W. Bush give a speech in front of the Keswick Theatre in Abington.

We all stayed up on New Year's Eve to watch 200,000 people celebrate the new millennium in Tempe on television. Each one of us wrote a wish for the coming year. Ben drew some of his favorite letters. Zach said: "I love Mom and Dad and Benj." Mom wrote: "I wish for health, happiness, and more patience for and towards my family, so we may enjoy vacations, day to day experiences, and especially time spent with each other." My wish was that "my boys will always love God, us, and learning, and that my boys and Nancy will always be happy, content, curious, healthy, and safe."

Diary: "Sunday, November 12th. Walked mall with mom. Mom wrote an airplane story for the boys and bought toys for them also. Had lasagna at Anne's. After church at Berachah, we want to Paul & Joyce's home in Downingtown about 45 minutes away. On Monday, we went to Peddler's Village & also to streets around Ivyland. Fall leaves were beautiful. Went standby back to Phoenix by way of Denver. Snow is on the ground in Colorado. No one knows who is the prez. Florida is still in dispute."

Ben and Zach

#### The Note on the Sugar Bowl

In my fishing expedition to the family, among the questions that I asked was what I call my "sugar bowl question." If you had to write a note—one note—and leave it propped against the sugar bowl on your kitchen table for future generations to read, what would you say in the note?

Dad wrote:

Press the battle. Follow the Lamb.

Run with faith with patience the race that God has set for you.

Keep looking to Jesus who has saved you and called you.

Finish the earthly course with joy,

In God's appointed time and way,

Having finished the work God sent you to do.

Mom wrote:

It is wonderful to KNOW Him. There is no disappointment with Jesus as Lord of our life. I LOVE YOU!

Aunt Viola Bossman wrote:

Life has been good. I hope yours will always be.

Eloise Nelson wrote:

Become involved. The more activities you participate in, sacred and secular, the richer your life will be and the more opportunities you will have to share your Christian faith.

Aunt Grace Wik wrote:

We have all been blessed by having a Christian heritage—one that is real and lasting as the generations go on.

Joyce Wik wrote:

I once saw a marquee that read, "A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are for." Live fully the abundant life God has given you. Make wise choices, but never allow caution to keep you from the high seas."

Anne Wik Birch wrote:

If I were to leave a single note to my ancestors, it would be a poem from Aunt Joyce:

He chose this path for thee

No feeble chance nor hard, relentless fate

But Love. He knew the way was heard and relentless,

Knew how thy heart would often sink with fear,

But tenderly He whispers, "Child I see

This path is best for thee."

####

#### In Memory Yet Green

I cannot end this book without recognizing the enduring impact of my uncles and aunts from both sides of the ocean on my life. My 2006 appreciation of David Wik who died too young represents that.

I also want to acknowledge with deep love my appreciation to my parents Harold and Lucinda Wik in the remaining two essays.

David Wik: 1911 - 1928

My grandparents Nicholas and Emma had eleven children. Victor, Lillian, Elsie, Milton, Elvera, Reyn, Viola, Slim, my Dad, and Nick have all enriched my life by their example. But I want to say a few words about David.

This snapshot was probably taken in 1927, a year before he died. He is 15 year old, three years older than Zach, my oldest son, is today. David is in his Sunday best in front of a rippling lake, probably on the day that he graduated from high school. This picture haunts me as I know that he is more than a leaf from the family tree that fluttered to the earth too soon long ago.

David was born in 1911, five years before Dad was born. His middle name was Emerson, after the 19th century writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. Shortly after Aunt Elvera's fourth birthday, her Dad said, "I've a really nice surprise for you!" Elvera recounts that her Dad "carried me into their bedroom, and there in the bedroom beside my mother was a little bundle. Mother took off the blanket, and there was a surprise—a tiny baby-- a brand new baby brother whom they named David. That surprise later proved to be the best one I've ever had because as we grew up together, he was a very special pal, my constant companion, and my best friend."

In the front of his book Elements of Arithmetic are these words: "David Wik, Millard, 7 years old when got this book. Birthday, October 18, 1918." He put it to good use, working out many of the problems.

Aunt Viola writes that "I don't know another kid who enjoyed studying the statistics at the back of his Geography book, comparing populations and areas and the like. It didn't look like fun to me. One sometimes hears of a student skipping a grade, but David skipped two grades and that's different. He had no trouble going on to the higher grades. " David began high school at the age of eleven. In an essay "Why I am a Freshman" for which he got a grade of excellent, David wrote that "A person who goes to high-school learns how to become a better citizen and learns more about the world in which he lives." Viola writes that "someone remarked about the strangeness of seeing the littlest kid in the class (he was still in short pants) at the board explaining an algebra problem as he did in Faulkton High.

David welcomed challenges. He sometimes stayed after school working out puzzles with the principal. " In 1927, David was the class valedictorian—first in his high school class. Reyn, who would get a doctorate from the University of Minnesota in 1949, was second in his class. Both boys spoke at commencement in the American Legion Hall in Faulkton. That winter, David caught pneumonia and went to St. Paul for an operation. He seemed to be recovering. And so he began South Dakota State College at Brookings in the fall of 1928. Elvera writes that soon kids in his class were saying, "Here comes the trigonometry shark!" But, as David's obituary notes, "he was suddenly taken ill in school and careful examination revealed a condition of severe toxemia for which the doctors could do nothing." He died one week later.

David's mother Emma writes that "in his last night, he told the nurse he saw the streets of gold. We felt very near to heaven and as we softly sang Yes, we'll gather at the river, the beautiful, the beautiful river; gather with the saints at the river that flows by the throne of God. Elsie had come from St. Paul, Reynold, Elvera, Uncle John and Rev. Skoglund from Norbeck. David recognized them all." David would have been 95 years old today, but he now sleeps under a flat granite stone in the hallowed ground of the Millard Cemetery.

Three themes weave through the tapestry of David's short life— courage, education, and family. When I think of courage, I think first of Uncle Milton and Aunt Grace who've maintained the farm over the decades in the face of staggering challenges. Life on the farm wasn't always green pastures and still waters. Fire, blizzards, drought, dust storms, accidents, and sickness took a heavy toll. Sometimes, it was a miracle that some family members survived those days. In one incident, it was only the hunch of a neighbor that spared twenty-four year old Elvera, who was trapped at the school house, from a tragic death.

I think, also, of Lillian, who, when she was four, was trying to help her Mom get some water from the well by the store. She tumbled down the well and Lillian clung to a rock on the side of the well, with six feet of water beneath her, until she was rescued. If the rock had been a bit more slippery or if the neighbor who heard her cry was a few more feet away, life for many people in this room and elsewhere would be different.

The words from Joshua I:9 "Be strong and of good courage" must have also helped Uncle Nick as he flew B-17s for the 92nd Bomber Squadron in World War II. Among his medals was the Distinguished Flying Cross "for heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flight." Elsie writes that when Nick "first arrived in England, air losses were heavy. Only 25 percent finished their allotted number of missions (at that time I think 25). He did mention that once over Berlin two Superfortresses collided and going down knocked another Fort out."

But there's also another kind of courage than flying through flak. Dad's decision to be a conscientious objector during World War II was also courageous in the context of those times. His refusal to bear arms was a choice that would take him to the interior of China and then to Malaya. Non-conformity in matters of conscience is a Wik tradition going back to the days of David's grandfather N. P. Wik in Sweden in the 1880s-- to follow your conscience no matter the consequences and to "Dare to be a Daniel," a song that David must have sung in Sunday school as a boy:

Dare to be a Daniel,

Dare to stand alone!

Dare to have a purpose firm!

Dare to make it known.

But the courage that David faced in his last week of life was of a different kind. We, as Shakespeare said, "must endure our going forth even as our coming." David, in his last days, faced his going forth bravely and without regret. His obituary notes that "he was confident and happy that God's arms of love were about him." Despite the brevity of his life, David placed his confidence in the One who said "I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."

In November, 1979, I was distressed to find out that Aunt Elsie was dying. She wrote that "the prospect of death doesn't distress me, but the prospect of becoming a helpless invalid does. Therefore, should this rare cancer speed up the inevitable a bit, I would think I'd be grateful. If you find this hard to accept, it may be because you don't have to face the alternatives." I responded with a Hallmark card, for which she rebuked me, insisting that I report the minutia of my life. The last letter I got from her just before she died was no different from the many other letters I had gotten from her in earlier years, filled with warmth, wisdom, and clarity of thought. "I miss her generous compliments," Elvera wrote in a poem shortly after Elsie's death:

She always seemed to know

When I needed some encouragement,

she was so quick to show

How much she cared and sympathized.

When I was feeling sad

She'd send a gift or letter

that was sure to make me glad.

So Elsie, dear, I have you yet.

We're never far apart

I have you still in memory

enshrined within my heart!

Elsie, like David, also faced death with courage, and that's an enduring lesson to me.

David had an insatiable thirst for knowledge. His love for learning comes mostly from his mother Emma, who prized scholarship. Emma not only raised eleven children but saw them all off to college. What makes her achievement even more astonishing is that her children attained higher education during the Great Depression, a time when the farm had seven consecutive years of crop failures, a time when hogs sold for two cents a pound and cattle for fifteen dollars a head. Cash was scarce but the drive to excel abounded. Elsie, for example, went through high school and college in six years and then got a graduate degree. Reyn also got a graduate degree and then an honorary degree, as did Victor. Reyn writes that "Mother had taught school and had great faith in education. She said she probably wouldn't leave very much in her estate. But if one received a good education, this could never be taken away by anyone." Reyn, Viola, Lillian, Elsie, and Josie Wik taught school in Orleans where the Wik kids learned their three Rs. Wiks have also taught at elementary and high schools, universities and seminaries around the world. We must learn. Elsie once told me that "Victor's mind was so open that he didn't know when to close it," and I'm impressed by how many Wiks have made curiosity a lifelong habit and teaching their profession.

Dad would sometimes say "the good is the enemy of the best" and I tell my boys to always try to do their very best. This commitment to education thrived in other branches of the family tree. Samuel and Anna Molberg, for example, hired people to take the place of their children on the farm so that their kids could get a better education. Reyn, Elsie, Elvera, Viola, and my parents have all nurtured my interest in our family's history. They realize that our education doesn't end with a piece of paper or even start with a piece of paper. N.P. Wik was entirely self-educated. From books that his Dad had given him when he was twelve, he learned astronomy and geology. N.P. also had a detailed command of the Bible. His memoirs refer to the writings of Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher, and Ira Sankey, who wrote "The Ninety and Nine" and other hymns, suggesting that he was aware of what was going on outside of Sweden.

A good education isn't a refuge from life, nor is it just a season in our life when we prepare for life. It's the core of our life, no less so than our faith and our family.

Our final theme is family. When I think of family, I think first of my family, Nancy, Zach, and Ben, and I'm so grateful in how they've brought sparkle to my life. In old snapshots of my father and my uncles, I see my boys' bright eyes and joyous smiles. I think too of my parents.

There isn't a moment when my memory of my parents doesn't overshadow everything I do. Their love and their prayers bridged the years and the miles and that made all of the difference. We're grateful for their affection for our family. We like our frequent telephone chats in which they share word snapshots of their grandchildren and our relatives, interrupted only by the chimes of their living room's grandfather clock. I admire their steadfast faith, their gentleness and their guidance, their work ethic, and their fidelity to each other. "You're the center and the compass of our lives," Mom said from her sickbed last year, and they close every telephone call to us with a cheery "We love you dearly." Long before I knew they were missionaries, I knew them only as my Mom and my Dad, and that's how I see them now.

I also admire their abilities that somehow skipped me, such as their gift for speaking, their gift for singing, and to my boys' chagrin, their gift for sports, for it wasn't so far from here where Dad triumphed on the sports field, winning in his senior year in high school letters in football, basketball, and track. In a letter to Uncle Ivar when Dad was 13. Aunt Elvera wrote that "the track meet Sunday was very exciting. We were all hoping that the Millard School would win the trophy and, much to our joy, it did. Harold did especially well. He won five firsts—75 yard, broad jump, running broad jump, sack race, and potato race. That little kid can surely jump. He jumped 15 feet three inches. Everyone was raving about him and I'll admit I was quite proud of him."

And then there's my larger family of uncles and aunts. In my mind's eye, I see the family at work and at play on the farm. "If the walls could talk" goes the saying, and what stories this home could tell. The Millard home, now almost a century old, must have seen its full share of drama-- of fun and frolic and of birthdays and holidays as the seasons changed and the years rolled on. Here, in the southwest corner of the first floor, my Dad and several of my uncles and aunts were born. In the library, Reyn and David would spread out The Minnesota Star to see if the Washington Senators had beaten the St. Louis Cardinals while perhaps in the living room Lillian played on the organ and Victor strummed his Dad's guitar and smell of corn bread drifted from the bustling kitchen. And it was in a small room on the second floor where Elvera at the age of twelve knelt by her cot and prayed that Jesus would come into her heart.

The world has turned over many times since I first made my noisy appearance at the homestead when I was less than one month old. But Millard will always be a special place to me. The death of Nicholas in 1918 coincided with the greatest natural disaster that has struck the United States, the Spanish Flu epidemic that took the lives of a half million Americans. Grandfather's death put a shadow over the family for years. My memories of Uncle Slim open a small but significant window to what my grandfather was like. In a family of good singers, Slim was especially gifted, and his rendition of How Great Thou Art decades ago still stands in my memory. Emma, his mother, felt that Slim's zest for life and talent for music was most like her husband Nicholas. With Nicholas' death at the age of 43, the family now had to pull together. Victor and Milton took care of the farm and 14 year-old Elsie managed the store. "From now on," Emma writes, "it was farming and schooling and teaching to help each other along." Lillian came home from Bethel Academy in St. Paul to help take care of Nicholas, who was born a month after his father died. So this was the source of the solidarity that the family has maintained over the decades and through great distances with letters and telephone calls and, since 1949 in Illinois, nineteen reunions at places such as Yellowstone, Oakland, and Baltimore.

Today, more than 1,000 descendents of N.P. Wik span North America. "Our dead live on while we remember them" Uncle Ray wrote in a poem. "They hover in all our loving 10 thoughts." At the 1994 reunion in Arizona, Joy and Ray Johnson, Jr. sang to the tune of "The MTA Song" that the legacy of those who've meant so much to us endures:

And the family lives on,

Yes, the family lives on,

Though we've lost some special ones

We'll stick together

And at our reunions

We'll have lots of fun!

"This morning's mail brought the enclosed letter from Lillian about Uncle Otto's death is Ipswich," Elsie wrote to me. "As we grow older, I think we accept death more—not only because it's inevitable but also because limitations to life become more acceptable. But that doesn't diminish the deep sadness and sense of loss when someone who has been part of one's life for so long as one remembers anything at all is suddenly no more."

Emerson, David's namesake, spins lines of gold in his essay Compensation. "We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. The death of a dear friend, wife, or brother, which seems nothing but privation, sometimes later assumes the aspects of a guide." Those in our family who've left us such as Uncle David are indeed our angels. They're part of us as we're part of them. And they continue to guide us in the steps we take on our life's journey.

In recalling her husband's death, Emma writes "Dear generous, warm-hearted Dad. Why didn't I realize before it was too late what a prince among men I had won? Children, take warning. Appreciate the fine traits and say the kind words of praise while the opportunity is yours." And that would be my challenge to you as well—to embrace a lifelong habit of gratitude, to say thank you, especially to the pioneering generation, while memory and opportunity are yet green. I'm forever grateful to those who went before me. They made the hard choices. They stood fast in hard places. They fought the fight. They kept the faith.

And so I look to Sweden, the land of our ancestors, for the right expression of gratitude. In 1991, I visited a large church in Dalarna to the south of the province of Jämtland, the childhood home of N.P. In the five hundred year old graveyard of the church Stora Tuna Kyrka, I saw these word on a wreath: "Tack for Allt!" Thanks for everything!

And so it's out of gratitude and out of love that I want to say tack for allt-- thanks for everything-- firstly, to my parents, and then to my uncles and to my aunts and their spouses and to my cousins and their spouses and to the many others who have touched my life.

Thank you Dad and Mom, my sister Anne, and my brothers Paul and Tim.

Thank you Uncle Victor, Aunt Virginia, Cousin Amy, and Aunt Irene.

Thank you Aunt Lillian, Uncle Albert, and cousins Gordon, David, Vonnie, Betty, and Roger.

Thank you Aunt Elsie, Uncle Ray, and cousins Elizabeth and Ray, Jr.

Thank you Uncle Milton, Aunt Grace and cousins Richard, Robert, and Marilyn.

Thank you Aunt Elvera, Uncle Ivar, and cousins Eloise, Joanne, and Bob.

Thank you Uncle Reyn, Aunt Helen and cousin Denis.

Thank you Aunt Viola, Uncle Henry, and cousins Luella and Barbara.

Thank you Uncle Slim, Aunt Marian, and cousins Terry, Ronald, and Bradley.

Thank you Uncle Nick, Aunt Betty and cousins Tom and Dale.

And, Uncle David, for your courage, for your love of learning, and for your family, I say a heartfelt but utterly inadequate thank you. We shall celebrate your life and cherish your memory until time and memory adjourn.

Lucinda Wik: 1918 - 2008

Silent night, holy night.

All is calm, all is bright.

On Christmas Eve two days ago, in the courtyard of our church, along with hundreds of others, I held a burning candle. In this twinkling sea of light, my thoughts went back three decades as we sang "Silent Night." My sister and I were visiting my parents on school break in Malaysia where my Mom and Dad were missionaries. In our Christmas in July, we had no evergreens. But we had gifts and food and love and laughter.

And I recall that we sang "Silent Night." That song reminds me that just as one baby can change a world, one person can make a difference.

"O death, where is thy sting?" My mother's long, meaningful life gives answer to that question that her life has touched so many people.

In April, mom suffered a stroke. She spoke only with great effort. To prompt conversation, Anne asked mom "Were you ever a tree climber?"

"Of course," mom replied. "The higher the better." And high aspirations have indeed marked mom's life-- vocationally, socially, and spiritually.

In the early years as a missionary, she wrote the following Life Goals.

"1. To get to know my God more and more.

2. Then to allow God to live His life through me to others for His glory."

One of her goals was to accept "the discipline of separation from the children." Tears of homesickness would scald my cheeks as I watched my parents leave me at the boarding school and home. It was only years later that I realized that my mother had the same tears. And so she dedicated the last quarter century of her life largely to her children with her loving counsel, her wise encouragement, and in her involvement in our lives and the lives of her grandchildren.

Among the last words mom spoke to me were these. "Ever since you were a baby, I have loved you. Good bye, dear Philip."

Mom lived for Jesus without condition, but she was my mother as well and that is how I shall always remember her.

Aglow with His spirit, my mother brought sparkle and joy to the lives of countless people in the nine decades of her life. It is perhaps appropriate that mom should leave us at this time when hope springs afresh, love flows from heart to heart, and joy leaps at every song.

Mom once said to me that three things he liked: cats, hard work, and music. And the music she liked the most was Christmas music. For many years, mom performed in the church's cantata and, in the last year of her life, she looked forward to seeing the Christmas pageant at Sight and Sound in Lancaster. Among the songs she sang was "Silent Night". For it puts into a few words the love of her life and the goal of her life.

Silent night, holy night

Song of God, loves pure light

Radiant beams from Thy holy face

With the dawn of redeeming grace

Jesus, Lord at thy birth

Jesus, Lord at thy birth

So, while I do miss Mom, I know she would not want me to be sad. And, if she were here, my mother would tell me and each of us that "all is calm, all is bright".

(My book, published in 2015, An Evening With Your Dad has a lengthy section on the death of my Mother and coming to terms with my grief.)

Harold Wik: 1916 - 2012

This holy week is a time of reflection. In this Lenten season of 2012, it's well that we reflect on the life of my Dad, Harold Wik.

"Keep looking up. God bless you. I love you. God loves you. God is with you, for you, in you, and by you. Blessed be the Lord and hallowed be his name."

These were the last words I heard from my father three days before he died.

My father's life's journey took him from a farm in South Dakota into the interior of China, the jungles of Malaysia, and then finally to Pennsylvania.

I see Dad as a layer cake, as a long distance runner, and as a shattered mirror.

Most people saw only the frosting—a devout Christian and a formal, hard working man of honor, dignity, and integrity. But let's cut the cake. The next layer was the theologian and the evangelist of the Good News to the peoples of distant lands. The next layer was the romantic deeply in love with Lucinda, who filled in the gaps of his life and who was the mother of his four children.

The next layer was the lonely introvert who preferred to memorize scripture rather than talk to adults or play with his children. But Dad was also a gentle, sweet man who always tried to do the right thing for his family and others. He was never malicious or raised his voice or committed an act of violence against another man.

The next layer was the anxious, insecure orphan living in the shadow of his ten aggressive, ambitious, outgoing siblings. That Dad never knew his father and spent his school years during the Great Depression are facts of his existence.

The last layer was a man of deep moral courage. It's a value that started early. On Dad's report card from grade school are these words: "Be willing to stand alone for frequently the crowd is wrong." Dad stood alone many times, most notably when he become a conscious objector in World War II. It was this crossroads decision that led him to Asia as a missionary for thirty years.

"Let us run with patience the race that is set before us." This verse from Hebrews 12 resonated with Dad who so much liked track. Dad was a lifelong athlete. He won many awards and three varsity letters in high school and jogged for most of his life. Dad ended his working career at the age of 90 but still kept walking a mile daily for four more years.

Thus it was always with my father who embraced life in the same way that he embraced sports—with conviction and with perseverance. "I have fought a good fight," the Apostle Paul said just before he was martyred. "I have finished my course, I have kept the faith" The same can be said for my father: He fought the good fight. He kept the faith.

When a runner breaks the ribbon, he keeps running on for a little while before he stops. Dad's missionary work didn't end with his retirement. He continued to fight the good fight with his prayers, his witness, and his example for the next quarter century at Berarchah Church, in Roslyn with his wife, family, and extended family, and then finally at Calvary Fellowship Homes.

"For now we see through a glass, darkly". What is a dark glass but a mirror that also reflects us? To understand my father is to see him in full, in all the shards of a shattered mirror and not as one small fragment. Who was Dad? He was both the legalistic Puritan and the pacifistic Quaker, dogmatic and tolerant, cruel and kind, indifferent and engaged, fearful and faithful, foolish and wise, both the cloistered monk and the globe-trotting adventurer.

To see my father as just one aspect is to miss the rich tapestry of his life through which runs a gold cord of uncompromising faith in Jesus. Just as life is a package, so too is Dad. And I accept him and I'm grateful for him without condition and with thanks to God. Perhaps those parts of his character that perplexed me, many of which God gave to him before he was born, were essential to his ministry and to his humanity. And so I am persuaded that Dad's final verdict can only be: "Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

"And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love." His life is defined in the lights and shadows of his personality and in his faith, in his hope, and in his love for his Savior.

Dad was aware of his limitations and put his trust in God to overcome those limitations. Perhaps he could distill his view of himself and his faith into that song that he heard on his mother's knee nine decades ago:

Jesus loves me

This I know

For the Bible tells me so

Little ones to him belong

For I am weak but He is strong

Dad, we love you and we will miss you.

#### Tomorrow

"True friends don't spend time gazing into each other's eyes," C.S. Lewis noted. "They may show great tenderness toward each other but the face in the same direction—toward common projects, goals, and, above all, towards a common Lord." I'm fond of this photograph of my parents gazing into the distance of the Straits of Malacca in 1972. With shoulders squared and confident of the future, they navigated life's journey together. Thus it has been with us and our ancestors and will be for those who follow after us. Hope is the greatest of gifts that we can give to ourselves.

What is our future?

The best of times were the early years," Nancy wrote in a wedding anniversary card early in our marriage. "When it was just the two of us, our love was new and our days were filled with excitement.

"The best of times are the precious present. Our kids are growing up and they fill each day with endless questions and joyful laughter. We have each other and life is good.

"The best of times will be our future. Watching our boys reach their goals, growing old together, rediscovering 'quiet' time together, traveling together.

"Spending my life with you by my side is the best of times—past, present, and future."

Fin

