By Tim Olson
From Tim:
A special welcome to all my Olson and Brewer relatives, friends and followers of the NESTER. Ida Brewer, not Ida Olson, wife of Rev. Roy E. Olson and mother of four sons, is the focus of this post. Although she left us almost thirty years ago at age 87, many of us remember her well, grandchildren remember experiences with her and a few great-grandchildren may have heard stories about her. But Ida Brewer? That’s not Norwegian! That’s English and and maybe her dad’s ancestors brewed beer! Ida’s mother’s maiden name was Wichmann. That’s not Norwegian! Her mother’s ancestors were gardeners in Germany and ate turnips and sausage – not lutefisk!
An old idiom meant as a complement says, “What you see is what you get.” With Ida Olson, the pastor’s wife, members of several Lutheran churches “saw” what they expected to “see” and not who she “was”! Do read on . . . Meet Ida Brewer!
Born on December 28, 1901 in southern Minnesota, we meet her as a child with her mother, Martha, standing behind her. Is Ida already reading? Not likely but I wouldn’t be surprised! She will be an avid reader all her life. Homer’s Iliad, Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Goethe’s Faust are in her future! First, she will learn to be a farm girl with eggs to gather, ducklings to mother, a vegetable garden to tend and meals to prepare over a wood stove.
Ida always referred to the farmhouse on a quarter section farm in Minnesota as “HOME.” She wrote a letter to the her sons that regardless of where she and Dad lived, the home pictured above where she grew up would always be her “HOME”. In the letter she apologized to us that that we grew up without having a “home place”. We lived in the parsonages of churches that Dad served. Like Dad, Ida had an adventurous spirit; she also had a foundation.
The farm was the “Home Place” and pictured above is the “Home Church” in Conger Minnesota. No, not Norwegian, a German Lutheran church. Was the service in German? Maybe. The pastor confirmed Ida in March 1914 and she holds her confirmation gift, a “Kirchen – Gesangbuch (Church Hymnal). I doubt that the pastor knew that Ida had difficulty carrying a tune, but she knew the words of all the hymns and sang them with a full voice. From her childhood to her death, the church was part of her life. Ida, however, didn’t talk much about theology, she preferred the stories.
Ida finishes eighth grade in a country school and is the only student in her class to continue her education at Alden High School. No School bus on a plowed road in winter for Ida. This well under five foot girl drives a horse and buggy the seven miles to school and home every day – through harsh winters! Sometimes Ida boards in town during the worst weather times. She studies hard and gets excellent grades.
She has some time off from her classes when the principal suspends her for organizing a dance!
When she graduates, she is the only student in her class to continue her education at the University level.
Ida, with her father’s encouragement, enrolls at the University of Minnesota in the twin cities. She has now reached her full height of maybe a bit more than four feet ten inches. She soon makes friends with other students and they give her a nickname, “PeeWee”. She chooses a double major, English Literature and German. Now she is reading Shakespeare, Homer and Goethe and studying German right after World War I. A German girl studying German in a setting dominated by men. Her profs recognized her scholarship.
Like religion, she keeps her counsel about how her four years at the university influenced her thinking. Certainly the challenges existed and certainly she thrived during her years at the university.
She made plans to become a high school teacher.
After graduation, Ida fulfills one of her dreams and becomes a high school teacher in Fessenden North Dakota. Margarethe Erdahl Shank, a student of Ida’s and later an English professor at Arizona State University, remembers Ida in her book, COFFEE TRAIN, “Miss Brewer picked up her teaching notes and went back to Minnesota for a summer’s vacation, but not without leaving an abiding sense of beauty in our memories. For with this small, gentle teacher we had stormed the citadels of power with Sir Walter Scott; we had heard the clash of arms and the tumble of chariots on the plains of Troy.”
“Write me this summer,” she had said; and she would never know how many letters I had torn up to start again; for the idols of one’s youth are like the gods of old,” . . . “MissBrewer, teaching us composition and literature, also taught us to honor words as the sound of the man race in its slow ascent up the ladder of knowledge.”
Ida had another dream to fulfill. Riding in a bus going home for the summer, in her lap she had a scholarship offer from Columbia University in New York to do graduate study in the literature of Goethe. On the bus a handsome, lanky young man kept looking her way and captured her attention.
Ida Brewer didn’t walk through the entrance door to Columbia University, she married her preacher man, walked through the doors of a parsonage and became Ida Olson, a Norwegian minister’s wife.
I still wonder why she did that. Like some other topics, she kept her counsel. And on second thought, it worked well for my brothers and me!
CREDITS:
Writer: Tim Olson
Graphic Designer: Tim Olson
Editors: Lorelie & Tim Olson
NESTER url: https://notesfromanester.com
To view and read “Olson Family Scrapbook – Roy & Ida – Love at First Sight” – click here
Hi Tim – Great pictures, a great piece of writing about your mom. I wish I pictures and knowledge of my mom growing up.
Really enjoyed it and that for sharing
What a wonderful story !
Thank you, Tim and Lorelie. I had not seen many of those pictures. In line with the German girl marries a Norwegian pastor after being raised in a German Lutheran community, I recall Mom telling of an experience shortly after her marriage. They were visiting a classmate of Dads, who was unaware of Moms’ heritage. The two pastors discussed difficulties faced as first-time pastors. Dads’ classmate said it had been difficult when one of their fine Norwegian girls was in a mixed marriage. After Dad asking about various possibilities and the response was no to several. The marriage was to man of German descent. Mom told me her private thought was, “what have I gotten into now.” Somehow, she balanced all that Norwegian stuff so that I always knew i had a German heritage.