My mother's father was a cowboy. Lee Allison was respected
throughout western South Dakota for his incredible "horse
sense". His wife, Gladys, died after giving birth to my
mom and her twin brother in May of 1936. Lee's sons think the
local veterinarian who attended the birth may have given their
mom Gladys the wrong medicine. She hemorrhaged to death. There
was no way Lee could raise the newborn twins along with their
seven brothers and sisters.
A childless couple on vacation in western South Dakota were
told this sad story by their hosts and heard that the newborns
and seven other children were all going to be put up for adoption.
They immediately went to visit Mr. Allison to see if they could
adopt the newborns. Many other couples wanted just the boy or
just the girl. Gerrit and Johanna Vander Wolde were willing
to accept the twins together. Because of this, Lee picked the
Vander Woldes to take the twins and they went home with Gerrit
and Johanna Vander Wolde when they were six days old.
Even on his death bed, Lee talked about what a traumatic decision
that was. He was very nervous meeting my adult mother for the
first time wondering "what is she going to think…me
giving her away?" He shouldn't have worried. My mom thought
her adoption was the greatest possible act of love.
Gladys did not meet her father, brothers and sisters until she
was an adult when her adoptive parents connected them together.
It took ten years to meet all of them.
Her new parents, the Vander Woldes, lived in Colton, South Dakota
where Gerrit was serving the Reformed church. During the course
of Gerrit's career as a pastor, my mother Gladys also lived
in Doon, Iowa, Melvin, Iowa, Cochrane, Alberta, and Amherst,
South Dakota.
Gladys liked living in the Canadian Rockies best because you
had to make your own fun. She describes it as very much like
a Laura Ingalls Wilder childhood. She and her friends often
went ice skating on local ponds and played crack-the-whip. In
the summer, they would pick Saskatoon berries to make Saskatoon
jam and pie. Another highlight was going to Banff National Park
in Banff, Alberta.
Cochrane, Alberta was a settlement of first generation Dutch
people. Gerrit would often preach one sermon in Dutch, the next
one in English. Many of the first generation Dutch people there
lived in sod houses. When I was a child, my mother and father
took us to the little church in Cochrane to hear the last sermon
ever delivered there. It was interesting to see these Dutch
immigrant families, now on their third generation, living so
prosperously twenty to thirty years after their sod hut beginnings.
My mom and dad knew each other from attending the same church
together as children in Melvin, Iowa. In 1958, my mom happened
to be visiting a college friend at Iowa State and stopped in
my father's fledgling downtown Ames, Iowa store to say hi. He
asked her out and she knew on their very first date she was
going to marry him. That was in February and they were married
in August.
My mom supported my father as a teacher while he started his
next business. He grew the Ames Advertiser and Boone Shopping
News into very successful free community papers that were nationally
recognized on a consistent basis by peers in the industry.
My mom was the quintessential "woman behind the man"
helping my father launch his political career and seeing him
win every single one of his elections in the Iowa House and
Senate. My favorite saying of my mother's about her marriage
and her husband was "I respected him more each day I knew
him."
She was a terrific mother. She taught us to be lifelong learners,
politically active, and globally aware. One of the most wonderful
things about my mom is that she is a hopeless sap. Even she
laughs about it, saying she could cry over a treasurer's report.
She passed it on and now my sister, my children, and I are all
proud, hopeless saps too.
My mom was famous for the lunches she would make us as children,
especially her homemade malts. Kids I grew up with still talk
about those malts. She took enormous pride in her home and in
setting a beautiful table that silently communicated to all
present how much she cared for them.
Her husband, Rudy, died suddenly and unexpectedly on the tennis
court at age 45 of a heart attack.
Gladys was left a widow at age 40 with two teenage daughters
to finish raising to adulthood. The way my mother handled this
challenge is a well-known story in Ames. In 1977, when all women
were just starting to really enter the workforce, my mother
stepped in and took over running my father's businesses without
any prior paid work experience since being a teacher fifteen
years earlier.
To say she was successful is an understatement. My mother tripled
the revenues, became national president of her trade association,
was elected to the Ames city council, and eventually sold the
family business to a regional chain of newspapers headed by
NBC News President Michael Gartner.
Believing that moving makes you grow, my mom followed her heart
back out to the mountains -- settling into retirement first
in Monument, Colorado and now presently in Estes Park, Colorado.
She serves on the Estes Park Hospital Board of Trustees and
the local Rotary Foundation Board. She is cherished and active
with many new and old friends who delight in her table, her
warmth, and her conversation to this day.
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