Origins

Please click on the slide show under "Related Links" titled MARGRATEN Netherlands American Cemetery Slide Show . It is a moving tribute to my father's recent visit with my brother Gil to find the graves of our father's fellow airmen and friends lost during the War.

As Jim and the three other crewmen sat for those three or four hours on the shores of the Maas Canal, Jim doesn’t specifically recall all that went through his mind. After all, that was 66 years ago. Soon Jim and the others would be loaded onto trucks and transferred to an interrogation point. Jim did think of his parents, Omer and Olive Hoel, living in Evanston, Illinois, and worried about them receiving the “missing in action” telegram and how long it would be before they learned that he had survived, if he did.

Jim might have thought of his grand-father, Olaf Hoel, the first of our family to set foot on these shores in July of 1868. Born in Tonset, Norway in 1841, Olaf was the eighth of ten children and he had come through New York Harbor, no less excited, I’m sure, than my father, when many years later, he was to return from the War, through the Harbor.

Starting with the invasion of Norway three years earlier on April, 9, 194o, the country remained under both the military occupation of German forces and civil rule of a German commissioner. Norway’s occupation by Nazi Germany ended on May 18, 1945, after the surrender of German forces in Europe. This period of occupation had a significant impact on Norwegian society, and it was years until Norway considered itself as having passed on and into the "post-war era."

Olaf Hoel made his way to the Midwest, where on July 16, 1876, he was ordained a minister at Washington Prairie near Decorah, Iowa. In August of that year, Olaf moved to Canby, Minnesota where he became the Pastor for the St. Stephens Congregation of Canby. For the next 36 years, he served this congregation and was the “area’s pioneer pastor” as well. Reverend Hoel eventually served 11 churches in his circuit ministry and was increasingly called upon to minister to Norwegian settlers spread over a wider and wider area. In a 1928 letter, Reverend Hoel describes the challenges of a circuit ministry:

“The parishioners were found in a radius of seventy miles, so a great deal of traveling had to be done. This we did with a pony and a little open buggy. There were no roads, but by aid of a compass we were able to find our way over the prairies. By starting at daybreak, we often did not reach our destination until in the middle of the night. Many were the times the way had to be fought through prairie fires and snowstorms......We speak of tiresome rides nowadays, but few can imagine how tedious and lonesome the trips over the prairie were – no roads and seldom, if ever, meeting a person on an entire trip.”

On August 19, 1876, Olaf Hoel married Mary Lund of Canby. They brought 8 children into the world, the youngest of whom was Omer, Jim's father. The children were born before Olaf moved to Canby but it was in Canby that Reverend and Mary Hoel have left a legacy that my family cherishes today. Mary’s brothers built a home and sold it to Olaf in 1903. As described at the time, it was “one of the best resident properties in Canby and had, without a doubt, the finest surroundings.” The “49 day wonder” Victorian home was built in 1891 and eventually enlivened with decorative balconies, a turret and gingerbread trim. The home remained in the family for the next half century and when finally sold went somewhat into disrepair.

But in 1976, the town of Canby recognized the potential and looked “into the possibility of starting a Canby Museum” with the Lund-Hoel House. The town purchased the home and over the years to follow was able to retrieve, from members of the Lund and Hoel families, most of the items and furnishings that were in the home at the turn of the century, including Olaf's Bible and his daughter Nella Hoel's “prized Everett upright piano.” Eventually, the home looked as it had when Olaf’s family first resided there.

The “Lund-Hoel House” is now a museum on the National Register of Historic Homes. In 1991, Jim’s father, Omer, the last remaining child of Olaf and 97 years old at the time, visited Canby to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Lund-Hoel House. After walking through the home and directing the rearrangement of furniture so that it was “the way it was then,” Omer sat under a broad chestnut tree in the back yard surrounded by most of the residents of Canby and told stories of his life in this home.

As Omer, my grandfather, spoke, I glanced over at my father who used to run around the stone fence surrounding the home when he was a boy and I thought of the challenges that my great grandfather, grandfather and father had survived and overcome so that I could be there that day. I was reminded then, and often since my father’s watch appeared, of a quote I heard once from a now forgotten source, “You’ll never untangle the circumstances that brought you to this moment.” Perhaps not, but how fortunate we are for those things like the discovery of my father’s watch and the Lund-Hoel House that keep looping us back to the past so that we might discover stories that enrich our lives and strengthen us today.

Jim was born in Canby on September 2, 1922 and moved to Evanston, Illinois in 1932 where he remained until he entered the War.

Tomorrow – Moving into the German Prison of War System