The main event at Fair Oaks Lodge this week was the Valentine Party on Friday. Those lively Motley Vagabonds played until 3 p.m., when the 2010 Fair Oaks Lodge king and queen were crowned. King Vincent Hendrics and Queen Maxine Bailey will reign for the next year.
Lorraine Schwartz was born north or Wadena in 1941 to Vincent and Catherine Schwartz. She knew from square one that her interests lie in making life better for the aged, the handicapped and the hurting.
After high school Lorraine first found work in the nine-resident Getzky Nursing Home in Wadena as a nurse aide. She met Robert (Bob) Brill while they were both on wheels at the Schwartz Roller Skating Rink. Bob did a hitch in Okinawa.
After they were married in 1959, Lorraine worked as a nurse in the Elder's Home and Bob was a welder in New York Mills.
Their next move was to the land of red earth and mammoth machinery for the Iron Range Fabricators near Hoyt Lakes. Lorraine was relieved to find the water wasn't red. Again, Bob was a welder. They have four children, with a daughter and pair of twins born in one year. They were here almost 20 years.
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A search for a warmer, drier climate led Bob and Lorraine to Las Vegas. For the next 11 years he took another job as a welder and Lorraine worked for a concern called My Home Care. There were five residents.
Over the years Lorraine was never sure whether she found nursing jobs, or nursing jobs found her. Either way, it is the kind of life she planned for herself.
When his family moved back to Wadena, major health problems made it imperative, if Bob was to have any measure of an enjoyable life, that he remain in the climate that agreed with him.
What with health issues of her own, Lorraine decided to come back to where she grew up; where she knew she could live, and life in a city wasn't it. What with several available communication systems, family keeping in touch isn't a problem.
It is at this point in the interview that Lorraine tells me this is it -- she has run out of story material. Horrors! What if she has already babbled too much and there will be no room for it?
What Lorraine doesn't know is that I plan on hearing another piece or two of community interest from story-tellers they don't realize they possess. The local newspaper is a prime tool for letting folks far beyond the confines of Wadena know what's cookin' back home, or to dust off memories, like thoughts of old District 53. District 53 clung to that patch of real estate north of Wadena as long as she could, until 1941, when only five pupils wasn't enough. Lorraine feels sure she was the last one out the door.
Life being the unpredictable quotient it is, instead of being hauled off to become part of an ignominious land fill somewhere, little District 53 dragged her feet, she had more to say. The Wadena Historical Society agreed with her, wouldn't you know it?
Instead of oblivion, District 53 was marched into Wadena to the north end of the Wadena County Fairgrounds, where once each year little kids of yore can still come to find their names scribbled in text books; set their breeches down in the same old desks.
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Now, Lorraine, I will let you rest, and thank you for an interesting story.
