To Build a Ship in Southern Minnesota

The large garage door rose slowly as the doctor maneuvered his Cadillac from the narrow alley into the space behind his downtown office.  His friends, newly married and new to the southern Minnesota community of twenty-two thousand, waited in anticipation for what he had to show them.  There in the  garage rested a long, mostly-finished keel of fine planks laminated together.   Tall, burly and balding, Dr. Daniel Halverson was building a boat from scratch and intended to eventually sail it to Norway, starting from the harbor in Duluth. 

To build a seaworthy ship in the center of the United States certainly demanded a dream and a commitment.  Dr. Dan had that, to be sure.  In the three years the young couple, Joe and Marilyn Vold, interacted with him and his family, he influenced them in many ways and his dream to complete a boat helped them build a metaphorical boat that sails surely even today.  The town was Owatonna, the place where their first son, Jonathan Andrew was born.  Dr. Dan delivered him.  And saved his life.

“Pennies from heaven!” had been a refrain  the couple heard  more than once from Dr. Dan’s wife, Maxine.  She was a pretty, smiling dark-haired woman raising their three children and presiding over their fine white-pillared house with a port cochere on the side and two dishwashers in the kitchen – “That way, I can just set the table from one dishwasher while putting dirty dishes in the other!” exclaimed Maxine.   She was also active in a number of community organizations.  But most important to Dan and Maxine was their church, St. John Lutheran, located about a mile from their house.   It was a former German Lutheran church, and just a few blocks from another large American Lutheran church composed of many Norwegian-background families.  Why the Halversons chose to be members of St. John after moving to Owatonna and starting his medical practice is uncertain.  They had met at St. Olaf College, not so very far from that city – well, pretty much half way between Owatonna and the Twin Cities.  Dr. Dan was chairman of the music committee at St. John, and the large church had recently acquired a huge pipe organ.  The only organist, however, was the church secretary who really did not want to take on the responsibility of playing the organ every Sunday – and on the radio, yet, for the weekly worship service that was broadcast.

The Volds were married August 25, 1961 in a Minneapolis suburb.  Just a few weeks before that, Joe had gotten his first “real” job, as a Dun and Bradstreet reporter assigned to the southeast corner of the state.  Although Marilyn did not want to leave her position as parish worker at St. Philip’s Lutheran in Fridley after being there only a year, it seemed imperative that Joe be located centrally for his traveling job, and that  location was Owatonna, sort of  between Rochester, Waseca, Blue Earth, Albert Lea and Austin.   Joe settled into the small apartment they had found above a print shop on the Straight River (and on the train tracks cutting through town from north and south) and Marilyn finished her contract at St. Philip’s, bunking with her college roommate in St. Paul for a week.  The bride and groom were glad to get together again in September to set up housekeeping in earnest.

Meanwhile, Marilyn had sent a letter to churches in the Owatonna area, asking if there were any openings for a church organist.  The response from Dr. Dan was immediate and gratifying, and the couple became “pennies from heaven!” for the music committee as well as the youth committee; they were quickly recruited to be sponsors for the Luther League because after all, they were young, they were new church college graduates, and why not?

That wasn’t the limit of the relationship with the Halversons, however.  A Great Books club was being started by them, and Joe and Marilyn joined in.  They met twice a month and had spirited discussions on ancient and more contemporary authors.  Maxine invited Marilyn to join American Association of University Women and soon they were a part of a quintet singing for various programs around the town.  Beyond that, the Volds enjoyed dinners at the Halversons home and even hosted them in the small house across town they soon moved into.

Before moving to that house, however, the little apartment on Bridge Street was a crucible for their first months of marriage.  Another newlywed couple lived in the other apartment.  One Saturday night when Marilyn was practicing the organ at St. John, the young man and two of his friends went out to get more beer.  They drove to the end of the block and made a u-turn to head toward downtown.  As they approached the tracks a train whistle was heard and the crossing gates began to come down.  But not before the neighbor decided to try and beat the train.  He lost.  The three men and the crumpled car were pushed into the Straight River.  Joe called the church and Pastor Ackerman hollered up at Marilyn working at the organ in the balcony: “There’s been an accident!  Joe called to tell you not to come home yet.”

That was only fuel for the fire.  How could a person calmly practice knowing – or not knowing – what had transpired?  She headed across town, taking a detour around the scene of the crash.  Crowds were gathered on the riverbank and along the street.  Marilyn wandered through the small huddles of horrified onlookers, searching for her husband.  Was he part of the tragedy?  She didn’t know.  Finally, though, they found each other and collapsed in grief for their new friends and neighbors.  The triple funeral the next week was incredibly sad: young lives, so senselessly snuffed out; one couple not married but pregnant. 

Not long after that Joe and Marilyn learned that they were expecting a child.  They continued spending time with the church youth, and one event was tobaggoning.  Shortly after that seemingly innocuous activity, they lost the baby.  Dr. Dan assured them that they would be able to have another, even as he mourned with them over the miscarriage.

With renewed joy, by spring of 1962 the couple knew a baby was again on the way.  By then they  were in the little house on Mineral Springs Road, way on the east side of town.  The owners were an elderly couple living next door, who told them of the Mineral Springs “legend” – how two brothers came looking for a place to build a hospital, and finding the hot springs at the end of their road, decided that is where their hospital should be.  But the town fathers would have no part of it; “Owatonna already has a hospital!”  And so, the Mayo brothers took their dream forty miles east and set up shop in Rochester.  The rest is history!

The morning of November twelfth dawned and the baby, already overdue two weeks, was ready to be born.  Joe took Marilyn to the hospital – and headed to St. Paul for a Dun and Bradstreet meeting.  He didn’t return until late afternoon, but no baby had yet appeared.  Labor intensified through the evening.  Maxine Halvorson couldn’t stop pacing; her husband should have been home hours ago.  She sensed problems, and sat down at her piano and played a hymn about fighting and winning the battle.  Her tears flowed.  Suddenly, at 11:33 p.m., she felt a wind blow through their house, and a sense of divine peace came over her.  She knew with certainty that a life-and-death battle had been fought and won.

It was true.  The baby had refused to come down the birth canal, and finally Dr. Dan went in with instruments to pull the child through.  His umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck three times and he was blue.  Quick work and timing saved the child, and Jonathan took his first squalling breath.  A new and precious ship was launched on the sea of life, aided by a big Norwegian doctor who believed in dreams and ships and making big plans for journeys.

Hanging from the center of the rafters in every church in Norway, in the old days, was a model of a ship.   That main gathering place of every church building is still called the “nave”, which means “ship”, because of the shape most churches had.  Through the centuries the church itself has been called a “ship”.  Both literally and figuratively, many years later, Marilyn recalled and sang “Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me” as she was struggling to reach a barnacled shoal in a wide bay of the Mexican coast.  That hymn surely talks of the church, and we, the individuals as part of it, as a ship, a vessel being piloted over “tempestuous seas”: “unknown waves before me roll, hiding rock and treach’rous shoal; chart and compass come from thee.  Jesus, Savior, pilot me.”  So it is perfectly in order to refer to a new baby in the church as a ship beginning a portentous expedition. 

Years later, the Halvorsons did set sail in their “Kon Tiki” from Duluth, and crossed the Atlantic to their beloved fatherland of Norway.  Years later, including now, Jonathan Andrew Vold continues his journey as an attorney, poet, father to Kirsten and Andrew, and beloved son.  He lives much closer to a body of water – Lake Michigan – that could take the launching of a seagoing vessel.  For now, he is content to kayak along the shore and spot myriads of birds for his photography and poetry books.  Dr. Dan would have appreciated knowing him and how he affected one of the many babies he delivered.