Bernice Ofstedahl Connolly – Transcript of July 7, 2007 Interview

Introduction.  On July 7, 2007, Bernice (Ofstedahl) Connolly attended my Mom’s annual family reunion in Pleasanton, California.  I was able to do a taped oral family history interview with her that day.  After transcribing this conversation, I am amazed at how much information we got to in that one talk.  The conversation was originally recorded on a handheld tape cassette recorder.  I later took the tape to an audio store, and had it transferred to a digital format.  The audio recording registers at a little over forty-six minutes in length.

Bernice was the daughter of (John) Gerhard “Gee” Ofstedahl, an older brother to my grandfather, Carl Ofstedahl.  She was born in November, 1917 in Grafton, North Dakota – the second child and only daughter of Gee and his wife Blanche Conliff Ofstedahl.  At the time of her birth, her father was getting ready to or had likely just left for his service in World War I.  Gee and Blanche’s family remained in Grafton, North Dakota after his mother and siblings left for Minneapolis.  After a stint in Willow City, North Dakota ca 1925, they came to California – where all family members lived out their lives.  At different times she lived with or near her grandmother Anna Ofstedahl and great-grandmother Martha Markuson – as well as her own family – so she was uniquely positioned to be able to talk about them.

At the time of the interview in 2007, Bernice and my mother were the only remaining living grandchildren of Rev. John and Anna Markuson Ofstedahl.  Bernice died in 2016 at age ninety-eight – and as I transcribe this, Dotty Ofstedahl Laird is a few months short of her ninety-sixth birthday and is still living in Pleasanton, California.  On tape I asked Bernice about her family, her grandparents, her children and siblings – and more.  She was very helpful, and there is a lot of information packed in here.  There were a few times in the interview that she was very direct about a subject – like her calling one of her brothers a “playboy”, a sister-in-law “a pill”, or me mentioning a family member’s legal problems.  I should caution this was one conversation taken casually in an afternoon, and too much should not be read into these personal comments. 

The value of this interview is with the volume of family history information that was included.  I am sorry that it took a pandemic to get the time to transcribe this, thirteen years after it was recorded.  I had forgotten how much was in the interview, and as I write a digital history of the Rev. John Ofstedahl family, there are many nuggets in here that I am able to include.

I have done my best to be true to the actual words of the interview.  There are times I added a word that was inferred, or dropped a “like”, “well” or a false start.  The one sound effect that was hard to capture in a written transcript – describing the noise made by Martha Markuson when she was quietly reading the Bible – I have interpreted with a written effect.  With those very minor edits, this is a fairly complete transcript.  The family reunion was at a city park in Pleasanton, with a swimming facility nearby, so if you were listening to the actual recording you can hear the shouting and conversation of others in the background.  Bernice’s daughter Patty sat in for the interview, and when Patty added something , I included it in the transcript. 

NOTE: For this web page, I have inserted some images at the place in the interview that the images are about - the first ones being right below of the 2007 family reunion.  A few of these are also posted on the John Ofstedahl pages on this site.

John Laird, Santa Cruz, CA – JohnLaird9@aol.com  – Transcribed April, 2020

Below are two photos from the 2007 Ofstedahl Family Reunion at a park in Pleasanton, California, where the following interview with Bernice was taped. The photo at left is of my mother, Dorothy “Dotty” Ofstedahl Laird and Bernice Ofstedahl Connolly - at the time the only two surviving grandchildren of the Rev. John Ofstedahl. At the right is the group photo of all reunion attendees. Dotty and Bernie are center left seated - and to Bernice’s side is Marion Matson, who was a granddaughter of Andrew Ofstedahl. Right behind Marion is Bernice’s daughter Patty, and at the far left standing was Bernice’s son Peter.

The transcript of the interview/audio 46 minutes, 26 seconds/eleven pages of transcript:

John: . . . .Why don’t we start by asking you just a basic question. 

Bernice: Ok, Is this on now?

John: It’s on, it’s all set.  When were you born?

Bernice: I was born November 2, 1917 in Grafton, North Dakota.

John: How many brothers and sisters did you have?

Bernice: I had one older brother, Everett, and two younger brothers, John and Jim.  And there was a first baby that was named Arthur, that only lived for a few weeks.

John: Do you remember when Everett, Jim, and John were born?  Can you recall that?

Bernice: Their birthdates?  I was born in 1917.  Everett was born June 11, 1916.  John was three years later, July 20, 1919.  Jimmy was born May 24, and I I’m not sure if that was two or three years later.

John: Were they all born in Grafton?

Bernice: Yes, we were all born in Grafton, and we lived there until I was six.  And then we moved to Willow City, where my Dad had gone ahead of us.  He worked at a bank in Grafton, and I don’t know whether he thought he was going to do better in this Willow City.  But he went there with some other man, they were running a hotel.  I suppose they rented it.  And so we followed.  They ran this hotel for, oh gosh, probably a couple of years.  And during that time my Dad, also with another man, had a little restaurant in town, which the town was very small, I think population of five hundred, which included farms out around too.  They ran this little alcafe (?).  But I remember my mother working like a dog in that hotel.  It was across the street from a train depot.  And about the only people they had living there would be salesmen, travelling salesmen who would stop there.  There were probably ten rooms.  It wasn’t really big.  With a high school girl, she did with an old I think a gas wash machine out on the back porch, I remember the lid was like a three legged stool.  I don’t remember if it was gas, it was run by kerosene maybe.   She’d wash the sheets, pillow slips, and do all this laundry for the hotel.   And like I said with she and usually just a high school girl to help, kept these beds changed, furrows (?) cleaned, and rented, sometimes we would have quite a few salesmen and whatever living there.  And sometimes I remember not too many.  But she cooked meals and served meals, served dinner every noon as I recall.  They had school teachers and various local people come in and have their noon meals there.  Here she had all these four little kids.  I turned seven while we lived there.  So it was a rough life. [The 1925 North Dakota State census entry for the Gee and Blanche Ofstedahl family in Willow City is shown below.]

John: What was your Mom’s name before she got married.

Bernice: Blanche Edna Conliff.

John: Do you know how your parents met?

Bernice: I really don’t know how they met.  My mother was working for a milliner, making hats, in those days,  in Grafton.  Of course my Dad was working there.  So that’s where they met.  They were married in, I think, 1914.

John: So it was before he went to the war.  Before he went to World War I.

Bernice: Before he was on the Mexican border.  Yes. I believe that he went directly from that service to World War I army. [Information about Gerhard’s Mexican border and World War I service is shown on this website on the page of Ofstedahls in World War I.]

John: Did your Mom grow up in Grafton as well?

Bernice: No, I don’t know why she went to Grafton.  She went there as a young adult.  She may have gone there with this milliner.  Because my mother lived in Minneapolis and I know that she was working for a milliner in Minneapolis, and probably for some reason went to Grafton with that woman to make hats.

John: So you knew your grandmother in Grafton? Anna Ofstedahl.

Bernice: Grandma Ofstedahl, yes. 

John: What do you remember about her?

Bernice: When my folks were first married, they built a little house.  Two story, we called it the little white house.  That was next door to the parsonage.  My grandmother lived in the parsonage then.  And then for some reason, Grandma Ofstedahl went to Minneapolis, she and Great-grandma Markuson, went to Minneapolis.  Then we moved into the parsonage.  Where we lived in most of my memory.  My folks put in an inside bathroom, which there had never have been one.

John: Does that mean there’d been an outhouse before then?

Bernice: I guess so!

Patty: The crocks, the butter crocks.

Bernice: You used to buy butter, you know, I guess, in five pound crocks or whatever.  And of course we little kids had these little potty seats, with each our own crock, on what would be the service porch right behind the kitchen.  Rather than chasing upstairs all the time, in our one bathroom.  That was pretty good in those days, to have an inside bathroom, running water, upstairs.

John: It was probably horrible, not having one, given the winters that were there.

Bernice: In Willow City, they used those chamber pots under the bed, I remember those.  This high school girl, that was one of her jobs, to empty those every day and wash off these chamber pots.  So I suppose they did the same thing in Grafton.

John: It sounds like you remember your grandmother’s mother as well.

Bernice: I remember her mostly in Minneapolis.  Because I later when down to Minneapolis.  But what I remember about in Grafton is my Dad had a sister Amy that died fairly young, maybe eighteen, I don’t know exactly. 

John: Yes, exactly.

Bernice: She was young. They had the funeral of course in the parlor of the parsonage.  And we kids were allowed to go in and see her in the casket.  And I remember a wreath around the top of casket or something.  Then of course we were sent on out to play.  And we went down to this dirt road which ran across the side of our property, and actually was what we took to town, this dirt road.  And we’d go stand in the middle of that dirt road and we looked and we’d say, I see her soul.  We were told of course Amy had a soul.  We pretended we could see her soul going up to heaven.  But I don’t remember too much about Grafton.  I went to the first grade there.

Patty: You said that you could stand in that road and see off forever.  And it was flat and there was nothing else.

Bernice: It was flat country.  I don’t remember that so much.

John: Do you remember anything else about your grandmother and great-grandmother?

Bernice: I went to Minneapolis from Willow City, when I was seven.  Because I had earaches.  Grandma Ofstedahl came on the train to Willow City, and took me back to Minneapolis and I lived mostly with my Grandma Conliff, and Aunt Charlotte, who was my mother’s sister.  And I had my tonsils out.  So I stayed then in Minneapolis until the following Christmas, shortly after Christmas, that they came through Minneapolis and got me and we came to California.  I spent quite a bit of time then with Grandma Ofstedahl, and Great grandma Markuson, and Borghild.  I would go over and spend a few days with them.  They lived fairly close to each other.  I suppose we took the street car back and forth.   And so I did spend quite a little bit of time.  I remember that they always shook.  Way back as far as I can remember, Grandma Ofstedahl had that tremor and so did great-grandma.  We’ve wondered since if they had Parkinson’s.  But I don’t believe so, because it never got any worse.  It’s probably what they call a familial tremor.  They eventually then came out to California before we did.

John: Your Great-grandmother Markuson actually was born in Norway.  Did you ever detect a Norwegian accent with her?

Bernice: Oh, yes.  Oh they spoke Norwegian to each other.

John: Oh, really.

Bernice: Oh yes, all the time.  I don’t think Grandma Ofstedahl spoke to her mother in English at all.  I don’t recall.

John: That’s very interesting.

Bernice: I don’t recall having her doing that.  (To Patty) . . .You want me to tell about the wisteria vine?

Patty: No, the bible.  The reading in Norwegian, the bible . . .

Bernice: Oh, when they lived in Glendale, they came to Glendale.  Probably was 1924.  And where they lived was in a walnut orchard, all these walnut trees.  And Greatgrandma would go around with her little cane and a little bag, and pick up walnuts off the ground.  But then she’d sit under a shade tree in the backyard with her Bible.  And she’d read it, just kind of in a whisper (makes noises of what it was like – a soft bzz – bzz - bzz).  My mother told me that she had read the Bible through thirty some times.

Patty: In Norwegian.

Bernice: in Norwegian, of course. And she lived until . . .

John: about 1931. . .

Bernice: I brought a picture one time, a little newspaper clipping, did you get that? 

John: I’m not sure I did, we’ll have to figure out how to get that.

Bernice: I hope it didn’t get lost.  I should have made a copy.  It was a newspaper picture.  She was 96, of her going into Glendale and voting for Hoover.  And it was so unusual for a person that age to be voting, that she got a notice in the paper.

John: How interesting.  That would have been 1928.

Bernice: I brought that clipping, and I remember laying it on the table with some other things, I was hoping it didn’t get lost. Of course I hadn’t made a copy of it.  If you run across it.  I would like a copy.

John: I don’t recall it having it.  But maybe if it’s something you collected, we’ll look. But that doesn’t matter.  Now that I know we could even get it out of the newspaper.  Do you think it was the Glendale newspaper?

Bernice: Yes, one of the Glendale newspapers.

John: Oh good, then we’ll figure out how to do it.

Bernice: It would have been whatever year was the election for Hoover.

John: 1928.

Bernice. Yes

John: She would have been 96.

[NOTE: In June 2022, after a pandemic shutdown, I was able to order the article referenced above from the Glendale Library. It was in the Glendale New Press of Wednesday, November 7, 1928. Martha Markuson was listed as age 92. She was shown at the home of her daughter Anna in Glendale.]

Bernice: Yes, and how long did she live?

John: 1931. So I think she was 99 or close to it. [John’s editorial note much later: Martha Reppen Markuson was born in December 1836.  In 1928 she could have been 92, and she died in May 1931, not quite ninety-five.]

Bernice: Oh, she lived three years after that.  That I don’t recall.

John:  I have an obituary for her somewhere that someone gave me a copy of.

Bernice: When we came to California on the train, shortly after Christmas, and I don’t remember the exact days.  We left Minnesota, quite a blizzard was going on.  Because the train passed my Grandmother Confliff’s home.  It came out from under a tunnel right across the street from the duplex where she lived.  And I remember there being a blizzard and all this snow.  So we arrived three days later in Old Union Station downtown LA.  And my Aunt Jessie, who is my mother’s sister, met us at the train station, and we walked, all these four little kids, all bundled up in our winter clothes we left Minnesota in.  And the red car had that tunnel then went to the subway station, and took the red car out to Glendale.  And all we knew is we get off at Sonora, and  walk south until we get to #604, which was my grandmother’s address.  We had suitcases, and overcoats, we must have been a sight.

John: But that’s how you arrived in California.

Bernice: Yeah, we did.

John: And what about your uncles?  What do you remember, what do you remember about Elmer?

Bernice: Elmer used to, I don’t know where he lived.  He did not live with us.  But it seemed like in Grafton he was there quite a bit. And he had an old model T Ford, and my mother laughed, she said it would sit out in the yard and get buried in snow all winter.  And when spring came, he’d go out and crank it, it would start he could get in it and drive.  (Laughter)  She thought that was pretty amazing.  And of course Uncle Elmer had one leg, because he had lost his leg in the war.  Of course, we kids thought he was great, because he could stand on just his crutches and put his other foot up on the kitchen cabinet in our kitchen.  Free standing on only  crutches, with his one leg up, the kids think that’s great.  I just remember him being with us quite a bit.  And I can remember Uncle Leddy, who was their other brother, being there some, because he used to tease me about my freckles.  That’s about all I remember of him being there.

John: But he lived for awhile with your grandmother.

Bernice: I think he did, yes, probably when we were living in what they call the little house next door before we moved into the parsonage.

John: Could you describe the parsonage?  What was it like?  What’d look it like outside and what was it like in inside?

Bernice: It was a big old house.  Painted roof.  I remember it being white with green trim.  And a wide porch across the front and down one side.  It had a vestibule in the front door, this little area that you walked into.

John: Where you could put your boots and coats and hats . . .

Bernice: Where you could put your boots and in summer it was kids you could where you could take off your muddy shoes.  It seemed to me that there was some stained glass, or frosted glass on each side, because I remember that kind of an amber color coming in.  And inside of that, if you went straight ahead, you’d go up the stairs to the second floor, or to the left you went into a parlor.  Which was taboo to our kids most of the time.

John: Because if was considered the nice room, that you couldn’t go knock things over in.

Bernice: That’s right.  I think to the right of the stairs there must have been a passage way to go back to the living room, which was a large room that went clear through the house from one side to the other.  And as you faced the house on the left side there was what they called a sun porch that was closed in with windows, a lot of windows all the way around.  Straight ahead to the left was a dining room with our dining room furniture and a big round table.   Off to the right was a kitchen, with kitchen cabinets.  There was a pump over the sink, I don’t think we had running water, maybe at first, but I can remember that still being there.

John: So you could pump from the well.

Bernice: Yes.

John: That’s a good question.  I was in Grafton ten years ago but I didn’t know which house it was, so I didn’t know to look to see.

Patty: What was the church, Mom.

Bernice: Just a minute, I would like to talk about the electricity I would like to remember.  I remember it only in the kitchen.  But cords came down the wall.  And then there was a white, I don’t know what you’d call it, material, porcelain or something, a little gadget where you could turn the lights on and off.  Not inside the wall, the wires of course had been added.  Then upstairs, there was a stairway that went from between the kitchen and the dining room to the upstairs hall also.

John: So there were two, one from when you came in the front door and . . .

Bernice: And one from up from the kitchen that also went out to what would be a service porch, and beyond what would be the service porch.  There was a shed, an inside shed, I think it might have had dirt floors even.

John: But you could have lumber for firewood or stuff like that.

Bernice: Whatever they had out there.

John: How many bedrooms upstairs?

Bernice: Upstairs, there was I think four.  There was a big front bedroom that was my folks.  On one side there was a smaller room, which was mine.  Then right behind my folks’ bedroom there was where the bedroom was.  And then there was another bedroom toward the back. That’s the only ones I remember.  The one towards the back was rather large, and all the boys were in there.  Must have been another one, a small room, because we always had a live-in high school girl.

John: Did you ever hear the story about your grandfather dying?

Bernice: Oh yes, but I never knew him, my mother did not know him, had never met him.

John: Oh, that’s right, because she married your Dad three years after he died.

Bernice: Yes.

John: So what did you hear about his death?

Bernice: Well my mother had told me the story years later.  That he had been very sick. Had the flu, I suppose, whatever they called it then.  And Grandma had stayed up many nights and days watching him, taking care of him and she fell asleep.  And he got up and walked out.  And she wasn’t aware that it happened, is the way I was told the story.  And of course immediately as she woke up, and discovered he was missing, they started a search party.  And it was quite a while before he was found in the well.  Then it was too late to save him.  That’s the story I was told.  You had a few more details.

John: But it’s very similar.

John: What about Aunt Borghild, you must have known her very well.

Bernice: In Minneapolis.  She was living there with Grandma Ofstedahl and Great-grandma Markuson.  Borghild was living there also. She was working.

John: Do you recall what she did for work?

Bernice: No I don’t.  If I heard it didn’t register.

John: What do you remember about her?

Bernice: I remember I liked her a lot because she was young, she was fun, she would do things.  She’d take me to the movies at night and then buy me an ice cream soda afterwards.  That’s pretty much what I remember of her.  She was a great sport.

John: Was she living with your grandmother and great-grandmother when you came out to California, or did she come out later?

Bernice: They had come out before us.  Peg got married.  We called her Peg.  Borghild got married.  I don’t remember if she got married before or after.  She must have got married before they came to California.  Because we had been out here, we came January 1, they came the following winter.  And they had the baby then.  Betty Lou was born in August.  I always remember her birthday, August 14.  The girls were surprised that for some reason it stuck in my mind.  But they came out the following winter.  And I always heard the story.  They were driving to California in an old, I don’t know it was a Model T, certainly it wasn’t a very elaborate car.  And they came through the Black Hills of South Dakota.  They just had terrible time, and the cold and snow, getting through those awful roads and everything, with this little baby.  And they got to Cheyenne Wyoming where Glen, her husband, of course his father lived there.  His father worked for the railroad at the time.  So he just took their car and sold it and bought railroad tickets for them come the rest of the way.  (Laughter) He said with that baby you’re not going to drive any more. 

John: And then you knew Borghild, or Peg, and Glen, and Betty Lou and Dick when they were in California?

Bernice: Oh yeah, I used to see them a lot.  In fact, I babysat those kids often until they were too big for a babysitter. They lived in Glendale for a while right near Grandma Ofstedahl.  They actually lived in Burbank for a while, walking distance from my house when I was in my teens.  That’s when I used to babysit for them a lot, until they grew up.

John: And did you know my grandfather Carl at all?

Bernice: No.  I only met him.  He was down a few times.  He came for my Dad’s funeral.  Maybe another time or two.  I don’t recall.  I only knew about him, of course.  We always knew Dorothy and Lois, and Carl and Josephine, were our relatives, and we knew that.

John: Also, did you ever know any cousins from the John Ofstedahl family?  Were they ever in touch with other Ofstedahls that you remember?

Bernice: No.

John: Just checking, because there was Andreas who I know came to Grafton for the funeral.

Bernice: There was another Ofstedahl.  Remember, Anna Ofstedahl, our grandmother.  Didn’t the two sisters marry two brothers? 

John: Exactly.  Exactly, that’s where Andreas was.

Bernice: I think they were the couple that maybe were out here and we used to go over once in a while to visit them.  And a time or two for dinner when we were little kids.  But I couldn’t swear to the relationship.

John: You talked about your Dad and Mom as far as the hotel.  What after that?

Bernice: They sold that, why I shouldn’t say sold it, whatever they walked away from it, probably.  (Laughter) I can remember my mother saving money.  She’d pin it in her corset, because she was determined she wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life there.  I can remember her having a little purse pinned to the inside of her corset.  So we came to California, and lived in Glendale for a while in a little tiny cottage for the first winter.  And we kids went to school at the Eugene Field School on Central and Glendale, it’s still there. And went to the Methodist church, which was right there on the corner. We just lived there about a year, maybe into the next school year.  Then we moved to West Burbank and we had to finish the following school year on the street car because we probably moved in May or so, and so we had to commute on the old red car over old Glen Oaks Boulevard.  The street car ran for a long time over to Ben Mar (?) Hills in Burbank, West Burbank.  And we lived there for a long time.

John: Did you ever go back to North Dakota?

Bernice:   I didn’t, no.  My mother went back.  My brother Everett, when he got married, he and Leona, they took a trip back to pick up a new car.  They took my mother with them.  And they went through Grafton.  They had a picture of my mother in front of that old parsonage.  I  don’t know whatever happened.  I asked Larry if he still has some old pictures.  He didn’t seem too sure what he had.  Maybe I’ll ask him again, to look and see if he has any of those pictures from that trip.  At my brother’s funeral, they had dragged out a lot old snapshots and they had me looking at them, and I remember that one being in the group.  That would be a good picture to have.

Patty: That was part of some of the pictures that disappeared.  He doesn’t know what happened.

John: Sometimes they get passed down and you don’t know who got them.

Bernice describes her parents and siblings below - here is a photo of them - which was colorized. This photo is undated, but the youngest child, Jim, was born in 1922 and Blanche died in 1943. It is likely that this photo was in the late 1930’s.

Bernice: Well, my brother married a second time, and she was a kind of a non-caring kind of person,  I’m just afraid she might just have just tossed out some things when he passed away that didn’t interest her.

John: How long have your brothers been gone?

Bernice: I can’t remember dates.  Jimmy died first, being the youngest.  But he lived a hard life.  Jimmy was kind of a drinker and a playboy.

John: Was it our here in California he died?

Bernice: Yes.

John: Did he ever marry?

Bernice: Oh yes.  He married Alice, and he had Sally (Asks Patty) and Beverly?  Ginger?  No he married Sally.  Sally was his wife.  (Patty helps).

Patty: No, Alice – Jimmy and Alice.

Bernice: OK. Then they had Beverly and David.  I’m thinking the great-grandchildren. 

Patty: He had David, Soapy – same – Sally and Ginger was the baby.

John: Did you say David had a nickname?

Bernice: Soapy.  Because the kids tacked that on him when he was in school.  Because Ofstedahl was too hard to say.  And right then Oxydal was a real popular soap.

John: That’s funny, that’s what my Grandmother was called when she taught, when I was a kid and went there, Mrs. Oxydal.

Bernice: So they just called him Soapy.  In fact, I am still in touch with a woman that her son and Soapy were close friends and she still calls him Soapy.

John: What happened to Everett?

Bernice: Well, he moved to Palm Springs.  His wife died, Leona.  Then he remarried this Myrna, her name was.  I don’t mind going on record as saying that we thought she was kind of a pill.  (Laughter) Self-centered, because he was not well.  She had this fancy job that she liked.  She could very well have stayed home and taken care of him.  They lived in a mobile home down in Cathedral City.  He had a problem he described it to me one time that in the back of his head, like at the brain stem, like a clot.  He was told that if that ever ruptured he it would be curtains.  I have an idea that that’s what happened, that he died then.

John: What kids did Everett have?

Bernice: Everett had Linda and Larry.  Linda never married.  I don’t hear from her.  I send her a Christmas card and I near ever hear anything back.  I have asked Larry how she is and he doesn’t respond.  Larry had two sons, they were both in the military.  And now I believe they were both married and have children.  They have children.  A daughter.

John: I heard from the daughter once.  I heard from her once.

Bernice: What was her name? Addie.  He had two boys and the girl.  I haven’t seen her since they were little kids.  John had two girls, Diane and Ellen Lee.  Ellen lives down in Laguna Beach with her husband Mike Mahoney.  Diane lives up at Grass Valley.  And she and Susan don’t seem to quite get together.  I think they exchanged emails maybe.

John: Two of the people here are from Grass Valley.  We should tell them that.

Patty: That’s what they are saying.

Bernice: They are aware.  They have each other’s addresses.

Patty: As a matter of fact, Susan told me today that it’s on her shoulders now, she owes Diane a call.

Bernice: Because she did get an email.  Doris told me, I talked to Doris who was John’s wife, she’s still living, that she had talked to Susan.  I don’t know what was the occasion.  And Susan said well, yes, she did talk to her one time.  Doris recently in March fell and broke her hip and her arm and she is having a hard time.   

John: Where does she live, what city?

Bernice: In Sunland.   And Diane and Bill, and Ellen and Mike, live down at Laguna.  They all have a couple of kids apiece, and a few grandchildren.  So the family goes on.

John: I didn’t ask you about your own family.  When you met Bob, or how you met your husband?

Bernice: My husband also happened to be from Minnesota, but that was just a coincidence.  He worked for my uncle, who was Peg’s husband, Peg and Glen Landes.  He worked for them in a linoleum store, over in Glendale.  I just met him through them.  My brother John also worked for them.  I met Bob at a party up at Peg and Glen’s house one time.  We just started dating, and eventually got married.  And then eventually when Glen was ready to retire, he sold his store to John.  John operated it over in another location, over in Pacific in Glendale, for years and years.  Then John’s son-in-law, Diane’s husband . . .

Patty: Bill.

Bernice: Bill.  Learned the business.   So that’s why he opened a store doing the same thing up in Grass Valley, and has taught the business to his son.  So it’s an ongoing thing.

John: Even though they are sitting here, how many kids do you have?

Bernice:  How many kids? Well, I have three, (laughter) I have Patty and Mike.  And then Peter, he was kind of an afterthought.  (Patty says something) He’s fourteen years younger than Patty, and eleven years younger than Mike.

John: Where does Mike Live?

Bernice: Mike lives in Granada Hills.  He has three kids, and five grandchildren.

John: How many times are you a great-grandmother?

Bernice: Eight. (Laughter) And I was telling Dotty and the girls I have such a mixed up family because Patty got married quite young and had four little kids right close together.  And then Pete was five years old, he was the ring bearer when she got married.  Because she got married early and Peter didn’t get married until he in his forties, he has this little four year old and Patty’s oldest is forty-six.  So I have grandchildren four and forty-six, and in between.  But I have great-grandchildren.  Patty has a grandchild that’s twenty-three and married.  There’s eight, a total of eight great grandchildren.

John: So you have a grandchild, Patty, that’s married?

Patty: Yes.

Bernice:   Yes, she does.  She could get be a great-grandmother if we could ever get Laura to produce.

John: Then you’d be a great-great-grandmother.

Bernice: Yes, I’d be a great-great.

Patty: I think they have other plans.

Bernice: I think so. But then you never know. 

John: So did you hear any other stories that were Ofstedahl stories or Norwegian stories that you remember?

Bernice: I don’t know about Norwegian stories.

John: Did you meet any of your grandmother’s family other than her mother?

Bernice: Well yes, I read everything you gave me.  (Laughter) But I don’t remember it.  In fact, the day you gave it to me, I guess we had gone up to Trimble Lake, or someplace we were.  And it was a long drive home, I sat in the back seat and read that whole thing.

John: There were so many sisters and brothers of your grandmother.

Bernice:  Well, our grandfather, my grandfather, your great, that was a big family too, wasn’t it?.  All ministers or almost all. 

John: They were either ministers or farmers, there was nothing in between.  You know when I went into the Norwegian-American Historical Association in Northfield, which is located at St. Olaf College, I told them that I was researching the Ofstedahl family and the researcher said “Oh, the pastoral family”.  That was his immediate response to me, so he just knew.

Patty: Pastors.  They were all pastors.

Bernice: Do you remember hearing from a lady that lived down at the coast, Huntington Beach or some place.  She called me one time, oh this was several years ago.  And I think she’d been in touch with you.  She was a cousin someplace.  She said, I don’t know whether it would have been her father, or her grandfather I guess.  He was the one that was not a minister.

John: Yes, and she was supposed to come today.  That’s Andrew, and he was originally in Aberdeen and then went across into Dickey County in North Dakota. 

Patty: Was that the woman who was supposed to come, that lived in Minneapolis?

John:  Yes.  Marian.  She was supposed to come today.  She said she would come.  She’s living in Vacaville half the year with her daughter there.  She used to live down in southern California.  So I think she splits time between her daughters.

Patty: I have a question.  This is the Ofstedahl family.  What about the adopted son, who was an Ofstedahl?  Who is that again?

Bernice: Oh, Gary?  Leddie adopted Gary.  And I used to be in touch with him quite a bit.  His mother lived there in Sun City for a while.  She was quite elderly.  Bob and I used to go over and see her.  He always kind of liked old people.  He’d a kick out of them. She was quite a card anyway.  She was ninety.  She still died her hair red and so forth.  She was quite a character.

John: This is Leddie’s wife?

Bernice: Yes, Gary’s mother, adopted mother.  We would take her, take her produce out of the garden. Then they moved her up to Cherry Hills Club, which is a retirement place there in Sun  City.  And all of a sudden a week later, she just died.  Very suddenly.  They don’t know what happened.  Maybe the heat or something.  She sat out.  She had been given a lot of cards from different people, they send a card welcome to the club and all this.  She sat out on a porch and was reading them.  When she was found, she was sitting there.  Maybe she was in the sun.  She may have gone out it was shady and then . . .

John: Gary’s son, who lives in this city, that we’re in right now.  But he got into trouble.

Bernice: Oh, did he.

John: Securities fraud at the height of the Silicon Valley stuff.  If you go on line and search Ofstedahl, the stories of that will pop up.

Bernice: Oh I see.

John: Actually you should tell the story of (to Patty) just for a moment while we’ve got it about how you knew Tom but didn’t know that each of your mothers were cousins.

Patty: It became kind of just a momentary comment that Mom made to me on a telephone conversation, that she had recently reconnected with her cousin Dotty and that Dotty’s son lived in Mariposa.  So it took a little bit of back and forth with Mom to find out who this person was.  Then I knew who he was because my husband and some friends used go to him as customers all the time.  But how I presented myself to Tom, which turned out he took kind of an offense to but I thought it was cute at the time . . .

John: I think it’s funny.

Patty: I went in and stood at this auto parts counter, and was waiting my turn to be waited on and it was a little while because he was busy.  So I reached over and grabbed a piece of scratch paper and wrote down on the scratch paper the name of Ofstedahl.  And then when Tom finally eventually turned to me and asked if he could help me, I turned this paper around and asked if this meant anything to him and I was expecting him to kind of half laugh and make a little bit of a light of it.  And he turned ugly and mean and wants to know how come I want to know all about that.  And then eventually the reason he was so upset is that he figured the only people that knew that name was the bank.  (Laughter) And he wanted to know what they were doing there.  What they were investigating?

Bernice:  He wasn’t concerned about the family connection, he was worried about how much they found out.

John: Well, you’ve been very patient.  Is there anything else you want to talk about before we turn the recorder off?

Bernice:  I don’t recall , I just think being an Ofstedahl . . . (tape ends).