Tribute to Mom

1. Daughter of a high Danish official.

Mom was the daughter of the Auditor General of Denmark. While he worked to keep Denmark from imploding, she worked for the Danish underground, resisting the German occupation of her homeland. She was a courier, transporting secret messages.

2. Almost captured.

As a courier, she almost ended her life in a Nazi concentration camp. One rule of the occupation was that any Dane had to give up his or her seat on a train to any German soldier. One day, on a train, a German soldier demanded her seat. With more pluck than good sense, she refused. Outnumbered, he went for other soldiers to help him to arrest her.

She and her underground partner ran through the train in the opposite direction. They cried out as they ran that the Germans were after them. The crowd in the train opened up to let them through quickly, then closed behind them, becoming a human blockade to the Germans giving chase. She got off the train without getting arrested. And here I am to tell the tale.

3. The hardness of times.

Times were hard under occupation. Mom described getting an apple and eating it all, even the seeds.

4. A royal ball.

The war ended. Dad, the Army Air Corps hero, was part of a flying tour of Europe, an American goodwill team celebrating the Allied victory. Mom met Dad at a ball hosted by the King of Denmark.

It was a long-distance relationship. Dad would send her letters and gifts. Mom would write back. One day, a friend of hers mentioned how crazy boys were about her. Just at that time, an emissary that Dad had sent with a gift to her recognized her and approached. "What is your name?" he asked. She ignored him, determined to show her friend how little she cared that, after all, the boys were crazy about her. The man followed her as she walked away from him, still ignoring him. Then he touched her to get her attention. She elbowed him hard in the ribs. Finally, he pleaded, "Please, are you Dorit Valbjorn?" That got her attention. The episode probably got Dad’s attention, too.

They were married in Wisconsin. Dad’s father, a Lutheran minister, performed the ceremony.

5. Not designed for domestic science.

Mom, as I said, was the daughter of the Auditor General of Denmark. Her mother did not make her learned in cooking or housekeeping. Rather than cook, Mom and Dad ate at the base Officer’s Club. And that was how they exhausted Dad’s savings from World War II.

Then she learned to cook. She learned pretty well.

6. The doctor learns a lesson.

When it was time for Peter and me to be born, the hospital staff asked her if she would accept an African American doctor to deliver her baby. (This was before ultrasounds; until Peter came out and they heard a second baby’s heartbeat, they had no idea that she was pregnant with twins).. Apparently, the race of the doctor was an issue in those times. But not for Mom. She had no problem with an African American doctor delivering her baby.

Peter came out, a boy. The doctor, sensing that Mom might have wanted at least one daughter, told her "The next one will be a girl." When I came out, I urinated on his hand. Mom said, "That’s what you get for calling him a girl!"

7. Denmark.

When Erik was about three and Peter and I were around one-or-two, Dad was transferred to Greenland, and his family could not be with him. Mom spent the year alone with us.

Which after-the-fact seemed silly to her. In 1963, when Dad was transferred to Korea and we could not follow him, she packed us off to Denmark. We spent a year there. We children learned the Danish language, met our Danish relatives, went to a Danish school, ate Danish food, and found Danish friends.

8. Career.

In Oklahoma, where we landed around 1965-1966, Mom enjoyed life as an officer’s wife. She was a very good golfer.

But by the time the family arrived in San Bernardino, she decided that she needed to complete her education and get a job.

She wanted to be a lawyer, but she thought that being a teacher would be more practical. She worked hard. She studied into the early morning hours and got, I think, almost all As at UCR. Sometimes she studied so hard that she was not as available to me as I might have wanted as an young teenager. Not that it harmed me at all. She graduated with high grades and won entry into the honorable fraternity Phi Beta Kappa.

Mom got a job working for Dale Chilson at Grand Terrace Junior High, teaching English. She was an enthusiastic teacher, a hard worker. She would cut out – whatever – construction-paper leaves or whatnot, and she would post them on her classroom wall, each bearing a student’s name.

Later, she followed Dale Chilson to Colton Junior High.

She was overjoyed to teach, and she was overjoyed with her students. And she was overjoyed with her colleagues. She told cheerful stories to her family about work.

She learned to diagnose learning disabilities, especially dyslexia. Once dyslexia was diagnosed, it was often possible to advance a student many grade levels in a short time. This made many of these dyslexic students very glad. Suddenly they were doing what they thought they never could do, and they were doing it well. Mom was very pleased when she could improve a student’s life like that.

He last year of teaching was the hardest. Probably her brain cancer was interfering with her ability to teach, even before the symptoms became so obvious that she sought medical attention.

9. Communion.

When she was in the hospital, a minister gave her communion. The tiny amount of wine elated her. She thought that it was because of the alcohol; I think that it was something else. She asked for more alcohol, but apart from the sacrament, it only gave her pain in her wounded, post-surgery brain.

10. Death at home.

It became clear that the surgery would not save her. We brought her home to die in familiar surroundings. She could not speak, but her eyes showed her excitement to be home again.