The
Unsung Hero
As I settle in to start this interview, I catch a glimpse
of my Mom. I can see she is slightly unsettled, she is not used to being the
center of attention and doesn’t desire the limelight in any form- ever. She
fiddles with the afghan on her lap from my couch. She crocheted that afghan
over twenty years ago, for her Mom, Grandma gave it to me when she moved into
her nursing home. I love this Afghan with its burnt orange, yellow and white
yarn in a diamond-like pattern. The colors scream 70’s! Her face, remarkably
youthful looking, resembles another I know very well. The point of her nose,
the curve of her mouth, her eyes of green sparkling from behind her horn-rimmed
glasses. Her straight hair hits just above her shoulders, dirty blond in color
only a very few silver hairs shimmering in the window light like highlights.
She catches my stare and smiles her goofy smile that shows she is slightly
uncomfortable and uncertain of what I am looking for today.
Debra K. Soderberg was born in a hospital in Wadena, MN on
November 2, 1952. She was the third and final girl born to a farmer and his
wife. They brought her home to Bluffton, MN were her two sisters, Sharon the
oldest by 6 years and Vickie only about a year older, were waiting for them. It
was a 2-story house with 3 bedrooms. No indoor plumbing so you know what that
means- outhouse! “It was a Two-Holer,” she says with the pride of someone with
a name brand purse or shoes! I guess that was a big deal. They had electricity
and a “party-line”
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phone system. The phone
line was attached to 2 or 3 house along the country road. Each house had their
own ring, when you heard your ring you answered. They had some very talkative
neighbors so occasionally if Grandpa needed to call the vet for one of the
livestock, he would have to pick up the phone and verbally interrupt the other
conversation to open up the line. I giggled, “So like when you or Dad would
pick up the phone when Ashley or I were on it to tell us to free up the line?”
“Yeah but these people were miles up or down the road, not anywhere near the
house!” On the farm, they had several animals: cows, pigs, chickens, 2
work-horses (emphasis was put on work- no riding allowed). They had their own
Bull, ducks/geese, and of course a couple dogs and LOTS of barn cats. The
infamous “Billy” the pet sheep was there too. I will tell that story soon.
As girls on the farm, their chores were mostly in the
house. Dusting, Sweeping, eventually vacuuming when vacuums became common place
in homes. In the Spring, they would help pick rocks out of the fields by hand
before the crops could be planted. Pull weeds in the household garden. Grandma
had a HUGE garden! She planted peas, carrots, squash, corn, radishes,
cucumbers, zucchini, rhubarb and much more. They did a lot of canning. They
grew alfalfa in the fields.
Deb attended a one room school house until Junior High.
She loved to read and spell. In fifth grade, she went to a spelling bee with
her teacher Mrs. Hagraty. The night before the event she spent over night at her
teacher’s house studying how to spell some of the tricky words. “The trick she
taught me to spell Lieutenant- “lie-U-ten-ant”. That always stuck with me!” She
didn’t make it pass the preliminaries but it is still one of her fondest
memories of her childhood. “I was just a kid from a little old one room school
house without a lot of in-house competition to be the
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best speller, but it
meant a lot to me to have my teacher believe in me. I was sad to think I may
have let her down.” Spelling was her favorite subject in school and English.
She however never really cared for literature comprehension- yet ironically
LOVED to read! “I just wanted to enjoy
it, not analyze it!” That was her favorite thing to do in her free time, next
to riding bikes and swinging, playing pretend in the hay mounds. They would
also play with the dogs and hunt for the kittens. I can remember one
Thanksgiving at my Aunt’s house. All the ladies were gathered around the
kitchen table cackling and telling stories. Grandma recalled when she would
send my Mom and her sisters out into the corn fields to find the kittens. She
got a gazing looking on her face as though she was looking longingly into the
simpler past getting sentimental, “All three of them always came back with ALL
those kittens.” We laughed so hard over
the tone of her sentiment, like she had hoped maybe one or more of either may
just get lost in the corn field. The men watching the football game were very
irritated with our loud, bursting laughter drowning out the calls of the game.
Back to the farm. They weren’t allowed to have many pets that didn’t serve a
purpose on the farm but there was “Billy” the sheep. They had gotten Billy from
a neighbor. He wasn’t used for wool or food- as far as my Mom knows anyway. Mom
was about 10yrs old when they had Billy and she enjoyed taunting him. Giggling
she recalls , “Billy was tied up to leash so he wouldn’t run away or get in the
fields. I would run up to him and stand just outside of his reach. Turning my
back to him I bent over and would shake my butt at him calling ‘Buck Billy,
Buck’. Well one time I just wasn’t far enough away and Billy bucked! I fell
face first into the mud covering my clothing!” She never taunted Ol’ Billy
again! She recalls Billy was gone shortly after that but isn’t sure if it was
because of his actions or because they were
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moving to a different
farm, also isn’t sure if Billy went to another farm or to the big farm in the
sky.
As
she got older, fun was dragging main street and hanging out with friends. She
had her own car when she got her license. A two-toned Chevy Malibu stick shift.
In High school, she went to school for half the day and then went to work at
the Todd-Wadena Electrical Co-Op. There she learned clerical skills and
customer service. The income she made there was hers to keep. She used it for
gas in the car, clothing and entertainment. Her heart was fond of Davy jones in
the Monkees, and Paul McCartney of the Beatles. In 1970 she graduated from
Wadena High School. She continues to work at the electrical Co-Op for a couple
more years. She remembers making great money there, more than some of the men
in town were making at their various jobs. “Back then”, she starts, “It was
thought that work experience was just as valuable as further education, so
college wasn’t really a serious thought!” If she would have gone to college,
she thinks she would have majored in English to be an English teacher- “Not
Literature”, she is sure to mention, “but sentence structure, verb and nouns,
spelling and so on.” Or she thought of being a Nurse, she enjoyed helping
people. A couple years after graduation she decided to leave her solid job and
move to the cities due to an increase in emotional stress at her job caused by
her “creepy” boss.
In
Minneapolis, she moved to an All-Girls boarding house, she believes the name
was “ Paige Manor for Girls. It was a dormitory style complex with a common
living and kitchen area, and bathrooms. The rooms were single or double- she
had a double with a roommate name Judy Rooney.
“She loved popcorn, always had big brown paper bag of popcorn!” Her job
was at the IDS Tower downtown. She worked at IDS Leasing doing clerical work.
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She worked a few other clerical jobs
in the Cities and then settled in at Benson-Quinn Grain Exchange. Working there
for several years while living at Polynesian Village in New Brighton, MN and
selling Avon on the side to residents. That is where she met her future
Husband, Ron Payne. She saw him as a goofy, talkative and kind person. They had
lots of fun together. They got engaged and started to not only plan a wedding
but build a house in Apple Valley, MN simultaneously. They married on October
29th, 1977 on a Saturday. “The weather was crappy,” she recalls. Her
dress was everything she wanted it to be- she knew the moment she saw it in a
Bridal magazine! Her mom was not as impressed stating, “ Well it certainly doesn’t
make you look slim.” Mom smiles and chuckles a little. I can remember looking
at their wedding album as a kid and being in awe of her dress. It was a soft
white with a cathedral length train and the vail went just pass the end of the
train with lace applicates that matched the lace on her dress. It had full
length sleeves with lace at the fitted cuffs and shoulder. It was and Empress
waist and flowing satin dress. The Bridesmaids were wearing burnt orange gowns.
My Dad’s tuxedo was brown with a peach colored dress shirt the had understated
ruffles at the cuffs and along the buttons. He wore a brown bowtie. It was all
very trendy for the times. The most memorable moment was at the end when they
were leaving the church to head to the car. They had guests throwing rice in
the air and a distant relative ran up and stuffed a handful down the front of
her dress. “It was very irritating and uncomfortable”, she recalls.
They
settled in Apple Valley and started a family a few years later. First daughter
was born August of 1981 after many hours of labor naturally with no meds. They
were expecting a boy, “Ultrasounds were not common in the early 1980’s so we
did the Draino test at home. It was thought to be very accurate!” Ha, proved
that theory wrong! In 1983, they decided
they
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wanted to expand the
family again so they set out to build a house in Burnsville. They moved there
in the Fall of 1983. In summer of 1984 they were blessed with another little
girl. “This time she was supposed to be a boy by ultrasound! When Ashley was
born the doctor laughed, ‘This one is too pretty to be a boy’ thankfully we
were prepared with a girl name!” The highlight of Deb’s life is being a Mom.
She stayed home to raise us until 1994. She loved helping her girls grow and
learn new things. Watching them play and discover was amazing. It was all she
wanted it to be and more. But it was still hard to leave the financial
stability of working and progressing in her career. She made that sacrifice
without looking back, no major regrets. Until it came to deciding what she
could do for work 13yrs later.
In
1994, she applied for a job as a Health Assistant/Educational Assistant in
school district #191. She was very excited about this because it meant finally
being able to nearly have her dream job of being a nurse and a teacher all in
one! It was also a confidence booster when not one but two Junior Highs wanted
her and where willing to fight for her. Also of appeal, the hours where very
similar to her kids school hours so she would be home when they were and still
able to be “Taxi Mom” for their bustling social lives. At her job, she works
with students that have physical and mental disabilities. Again doing what she
enjoys most- watching kids learn to do things for their selves for the first
time. She finds this very rewarding and exhausting at the same time. “Every little thing you can help these kids
achieve. They may have no voice or can’t walk but their brains are surely
working!” Her face lights up like the sun when talking about this or the growth
of her own children. It is obvious this is a driving force in her life and one
she finds very rewarding.
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Along
with becoming a Mother herself, finding out she was going to be a Nana has been
one of the most pivotal moments in her life. Just like her job- teaching and
watching these babies grow into “humans” is so inspiring for her. She would do
anything for anyone of her Grandsons-four of them so far in total, a fifth is
due this coming July (gender unknown at this point but you can tell Deb is
itching for a granddaughter!)
This
small-town farm girl appears to have achieved all she set out to do! As our
interview concludes, I can see her face start to relax a little bit. She looks
to me, “That wasn’t so bad!” She is very happy to have been a “taxi mom”
carting her children and their friends to wherever their hearts desire. Her
children ARE her heart and life and their success and happiness is her hero
song. All the nursing, teaching, and loving has paid off! Mom this is your
song- the laughter and the cries, the screams and the silence, the slamming
doors and hugs and kisses galore! You are my hero, Mom!
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