My Life in One Minute
The challenge was daunting, at least to me. One person would write, while the other dictated the highlights of his life in one minute. I chose to write, because I didn't think I could possibly summarize my life so succinctly, in a way that would be entertaining. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that the results were read aloud to the entire group as a way for us to get to know one another a little better.
Some condensed life stories were funny, in spots. Some were informative; I learned some things about certain people that I hadn't known before. Many were predictable--"I was born, I lived, I graduated, I got married, I work, I have children and grandchildren..." In a way, the vignettes reminded me of obituaries.
I still don't think I can summarize my life, thus far, in one minute's time but, maybe, I can condense it to the length of a blog. The real test is to make it interesting. Hmmm, here goes...
Grandpa Wegner often called me his "Georgia peach" because I was born in an army hospital in Georgia. I was only three months old when my parents moved back to northeastern Nebraska, so I really consider myself a Nebraska native. We lived in a miniscule trailer on the Vawser home-place until I was two, then we moved to a farm that was rented from a priest. When I was four, my folks made a radical decision to quit farming, move fifty miles away, and manage the old Oxnard Hotel in Norfolk. I lived there until I was nine, when we moved clear across the state to Fairbury, to the Hotel Mary-Etta. As I was growing up, I didn't know any other kids who lived in a hotel, or even in an apartment, so I always felt a little different from the other kids I knew. I was much too shy. Hotel living was always an adventure, though--but not much like anything I've ever seen portrayed on TV or in the movies. (My brother and sister and I were nothing like Zach and Cody, from the Disney channel's long-running sit-com about two boys who lived with their mother in a hotel.)
My first jobs were hotel jobs, for little or no pay--waiting tables, serving banquets, working at the front desk. When Mom and Dad opened a new restaurant, The Stable, I cleaned the restrooms there and changed the grease in the broaster. Then I went off to college at Concordia in Seward, just fifty miles from home. I stayed in a dorm while Mom, who was working on her teaching degree, drove back and forth to the same college three days a week. She often stopped in my dorm room to study or bring me something from home. All of my dorm mates called her Mom, too.
I don't remember a time when God and church were not important to me, but by the time I was twelve, I began to seek to know God even better. I committed my life to him as a young teen. I learned to play the guitar, and began to lead worship at church, accompany choir, and sing with a group of friends in local nursing homes. By the time I was fourteen, I knew I wanted to attend Concordia Teachers' College, but I definitely did NOT want to be a teacher. God had other plans.
I met Bill at a Methodist lay witness mission in January of my freshman year of college. He was studying electronic engineering at Milford Technical College, just twelve miles down the road from Seward. After that first weekend, I guess you could say that he pursued me relentlessly. He called and drove over to Seward every day. We were engaged by May, and married the following December, the same week Bill and Mom both graduated from college. Bill had a dream of moving to Michigan to help some friends who were starting a ministry there, so I fast-tracked my education, graduating with a degree in elementary education after only three intensive years of college.
We moved to Michigan the first week of July, 1976, during America's bicentennial celebration. We shared a moving van with some friends who had three young children and, ultimately, we ended up sharing a house with them, near Interlochen, for more than a year. Bill worked at a series of jobs during our six years in northern Michigan, first working for a company that assembled electronic equipment, then cutting down trees and working in a small sawmill. Later, he worked as the assistant manager of an ice hockey arena, followed by a job assembling and delivering office furniture. Eventually, he and a friend started a business building cabinets and remodeling homes.
I worked at an optical company for a year, packaging and mailing glasses. The office manager there was married to the principal of Trinity Lutheran School. When she found out that I had graduated from a Lutheran teachers' college, she insisted that I apply to teach at Trinity so I could use my education. That's how I ended up teaching kindergarten at Trinity for five years.
Although I grew up primarily in the Lutheran Church, I was never quite a typical Lutheran. When Bill and I were first married, we attended church every Sunday, but we made a point of visiting many different churches of many denominations and non-denominations. We were quite sure that we would be living in Lincoln only until I graduated, so it was a good chance for us to learn about many different churches. When we lived in Michigan, we attended the first service at the church where I taught kindergarten, went out for breakfast with friends at the local omelet shop, then attended a second worship service, usually at the Friends Church in Traverse City.
While in Michigan, we bought and remodeled our first house, socialized with many good friends, attended and led a series of Bible studies and prayer and praise groups, lived through a major car accident, learned to cross country ski, adopted Ramsey, our American Eskimo/Golden Retriever puppy, bought a new car, and went through fertility treatments. We learned to trust God for all things.
1982 was an eventful year for us. I finally became pregnant, and we decided to move back to Nebraska (not necessarily in that order.) We chose Gering, Bill's hometown, because he felt like he knew enough people in this area to provide a good network for him to start his own construction business. Erin was born in January of 1983, and Meagan was born three years later.
At first, Bill worked at the sugar factory, found a few remodeling and engineering jobs, and moonlighted as an evening DJ for a local Christian radio station. He bought his first cable system when Meagan was just a toddler. Since then, Bill's business has evolved into a company that offers internet services and technical support to other small cable companies throughout the U.S.
I was mainly a stay-at-home Mom when our girls were little. I did the billing for the cable business, and taught art or music a couple of days a week in several rural elementary schools. When Meagan was in the first grade, I started subbing two or three days a week in the Gering schools. Eventually, I helped start a new preschool in our church, and taught there, at Faith Lutheran Preschool, for five years. I was the daycare director at Calvary Lutheran Church for a couple of stress-filled years. Now, I teach thirty-five four- and five-year-olds (in two classes) for the Gering Public Schools.
From the time I was a child, I've had a dream of doing foster care and adopting children. Bill was willing, although probably not quite as eager as I was. We first started the foster care/adoption process while we still lived in Michigan, but put those dreams aside when we moved to Nebraska and began to raise Erin and Meagan. We had begun to think again about adding to our family through adoption when Erin and Meagan were in grade school, but the time was just not right. My health was too fragile, and our house was too small. My health finally stabilized a few years after we bought our current house in 1994; we bought this house because it had more than enough space, inside and out, to allow us to add to our family. We spent many months researching adoption possibilities on the internet. We inquired about several children before we finally saw Victoria's picture on the Nebraska HHS website. She was a winsome four-year-old in need of a forever home. I wrote letters of application to adopt, and filled out mountains of paperwork. We had a home study completed. Bill and I took numerous classes to secure our foster care license, which was a prerequisite to adopting a child through HHS. We found out later that we were one of over a hundred applicants to adopt Victoria. She came to live with us in the fall of 2000, when Erin was a senior in high school.
As a result of the whole adoption process, we had our foster care license, so we welcomed several foster kids into our home over the next few years. Victoria loved having some temporary siblings close to her age. I met Levi, our last foster child, on his fourth birthday, when he came to visit my preschool room right before school started. By the end of September, he needed a short term foster home, so Bill and I took him in willingly; we knew that such kids are best placed with people they know and, as his teacher, I already knew him quite well. We know him even better now; he came for thirty days and never left.
Since then, Erin and Meagan have both graduated from college; they are both teachers. Meagan married our son-in-law, Andy, another teacher, four years ago. Their son, and our only grandson, Tobin, is a year old. Bill and I are kept busy raising Victoria and Levi; for us, an empty next is still at least ten years away.
So, there you have it. I was born, I've lived and graduated and worked, I'm happily married, I have children and a grandchild--but only by the grace of God. For in him we live and move and have our being. Acts 17: 28
(Perhaps I should send a copy of this blog to Uncle Lyle; he's been asking me for years to send him a synopsis of our lives to include in the Vawser family genealogy book. And I suppose, if they are feeling desperate, my children could use this information in an obituary someday--just don't leave out the important stuff!)
Some condensed life stories were funny, in spots. Some were informative; I learned some things about certain people that I hadn't known before. Many were predictable--"I was born, I lived, I graduated, I got married, I work, I have children and grandchildren..." In a way, the vignettes reminded me of obituaries.
I still don't think I can summarize my life, thus far, in one minute's time but, maybe, I can condense it to the length of a blog. The real test is to make it interesting. Hmmm, here goes...
Grandpa Wegner often called me his "Georgia peach" because I was born in an army hospital in Georgia. I was only three months old when my parents moved back to northeastern Nebraska, so I really consider myself a Nebraska native. We lived in a miniscule trailer on the Vawser home-place until I was two, then we moved to a farm that was rented from a priest. When I was four, my folks made a radical decision to quit farming, move fifty miles away, and manage the old Oxnard Hotel in Norfolk. I lived there until I was nine, when we moved clear across the state to Fairbury, to the Hotel Mary-Etta. As I was growing up, I didn't know any other kids who lived in a hotel, or even in an apartment, so I always felt a little different from the other kids I knew. I was much too shy. Hotel living was always an adventure, though--but not much like anything I've ever seen portrayed on TV or in the movies. (My brother and sister and I were nothing like Zach and Cody, from the Disney channel's long-running sit-com about two boys who lived with their mother in a hotel.)
My first jobs were hotel jobs, for little or no pay--waiting tables, serving banquets, working at the front desk. When Mom and Dad opened a new restaurant, The Stable, I cleaned the restrooms there and changed the grease in the broaster. Then I went off to college at Concordia in Seward, just fifty miles from home. I stayed in a dorm while Mom, who was working on her teaching degree, drove back and forth to the same college three days a week. She often stopped in my dorm room to study or bring me something from home. All of my dorm mates called her Mom, too.
I don't remember a time when God and church were not important to me, but by the time I was twelve, I began to seek to know God even better. I committed my life to him as a young teen. I learned to play the guitar, and began to lead worship at church, accompany choir, and sing with a group of friends in local nursing homes. By the time I was fourteen, I knew I wanted to attend Concordia Teachers' College, but I definitely did NOT want to be a teacher. God had other plans.
I met Bill at a Methodist lay witness mission in January of my freshman year of college. He was studying electronic engineering at Milford Technical College, just twelve miles down the road from Seward. After that first weekend, I guess you could say that he pursued me relentlessly. He called and drove over to Seward every day. We were engaged by May, and married the following December, the same week Bill and Mom both graduated from college. Bill had a dream of moving to Michigan to help some friends who were starting a ministry there, so I fast-tracked my education, graduating with a degree in elementary education after only three intensive years of college.
We moved to Michigan the first week of July, 1976, during America's bicentennial celebration. We shared a moving van with some friends who had three young children and, ultimately, we ended up sharing a house with them, near Interlochen, for more than a year. Bill worked at a series of jobs during our six years in northern Michigan, first working for a company that assembled electronic equipment, then cutting down trees and working in a small sawmill. Later, he worked as the assistant manager of an ice hockey arena, followed by a job assembling and delivering office furniture. Eventually, he and a friend started a business building cabinets and remodeling homes.
I worked at an optical company for a year, packaging and mailing glasses. The office manager there was married to the principal of Trinity Lutheran School. When she found out that I had graduated from a Lutheran teachers' college, she insisted that I apply to teach at Trinity so I could use my education. That's how I ended up teaching kindergarten at Trinity for five years.
Although I grew up primarily in the Lutheran Church, I was never quite a typical Lutheran. When Bill and I were first married, we attended church every Sunday, but we made a point of visiting many different churches of many denominations and non-denominations. We were quite sure that we would be living in Lincoln only until I graduated, so it was a good chance for us to learn about many different churches. When we lived in Michigan, we attended the first service at the church where I taught kindergarten, went out for breakfast with friends at the local omelet shop, then attended a second worship service, usually at the Friends Church in Traverse City.
While in Michigan, we bought and remodeled our first house, socialized with many good friends, attended and led a series of Bible studies and prayer and praise groups, lived through a major car accident, learned to cross country ski, adopted Ramsey, our American Eskimo/Golden Retriever puppy, bought a new car, and went through fertility treatments. We learned to trust God for all things.
1982 was an eventful year for us. I finally became pregnant, and we decided to move back to Nebraska (not necessarily in that order.) We chose Gering, Bill's hometown, because he felt like he knew enough people in this area to provide a good network for him to start his own construction business. Erin was born in January of 1983, and Meagan was born three years later.
At first, Bill worked at the sugar factory, found a few remodeling and engineering jobs, and moonlighted as an evening DJ for a local Christian radio station. He bought his first cable system when Meagan was just a toddler. Since then, Bill's business has evolved into a company that offers internet services and technical support to other small cable companies throughout the U.S.
I was mainly a stay-at-home Mom when our girls were little. I did the billing for the cable business, and taught art or music a couple of days a week in several rural elementary schools. When Meagan was in the first grade, I started subbing two or three days a week in the Gering schools. Eventually, I helped start a new preschool in our church, and taught there, at Faith Lutheran Preschool, for five years. I was the daycare director at Calvary Lutheran Church for a couple of stress-filled years. Now, I teach thirty-five four- and five-year-olds (in two classes) for the Gering Public Schools.
From the time I was a child, I've had a dream of doing foster care and adopting children. Bill was willing, although probably not quite as eager as I was. We first started the foster care/adoption process while we still lived in Michigan, but put those dreams aside when we moved to Nebraska and began to raise Erin and Meagan. We had begun to think again about adding to our family through adoption when Erin and Meagan were in grade school, but the time was just not right. My health was too fragile, and our house was too small. My health finally stabilized a few years after we bought our current house in 1994; we bought this house because it had more than enough space, inside and out, to allow us to add to our family. We spent many months researching adoption possibilities on the internet. We inquired about several children before we finally saw Victoria's picture on the Nebraska HHS website. She was a winsome four-year-old in need of a forever home. I wrote letters of application to adopt, and filled out mountains of paperwork. We had a home study completed. Bill and I took numerous classes to secure our foster care license, which was a prerequisite to adopting a child through HHS. We found out later that we were one of over a hundred applicants to adopt Victoria. She came to live with us in the fall of 2000, when Erin was a senior in high school.
As a result of the whole adoption process, we had our foster care license, so we welcomed several foster kids into our home over the next few years. Victoria loved having some temporary siblings close to her age. I met Levi, our last foster child, on his fourth birthday, when he came to visit my preschool room right before school started. By the end of September, he needed a short term foster home, so Bill and I took him in willingly; we knew that such kids are best placed with people they know and, as his teacher, I already knew him quite well. We know him even better now; he came for thirty days and never left.
Since then, Erin and Meagan have both graduated from college; they are both teachers. Meagan married our son-in-law, Andy, another teacher, four years ago. Their son, and our only grandson, Tobin, is a year old. Bill and I are kept busy raising Victoria and Levi; for us, an empty next is still at least ten years away.
So, there you have it. I was born, I've lived and graduated and worked, I'm happily married, I have children and a grandchild--but only by the grace of God. For in him we live and move and have our being. Acts 17: 28
(Perhaps I should send a copy of this blog to Uncle Lyle; he's been asking me for years to send him a synopsis of our lives to include in the Vawser family genealogy book. And I suppose, if they are feeling desperate, my children could use this information in an obituary someday--just don't leave out the important stuff!)
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