The
Unsung Hero
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. I love this
Afghan with its burnt orange, yellow and white yarn in a diamond-like pattern.
The colors scream the 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 purple wire-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. I can see the
lines around her mouth from a life of joy. The furrows in her brow from years
of strength and worry for her loved ones. 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 houses 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 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, and eventually vacuuming when vacuums became
commonplace in homes. In the spring, they would help pick rocks out of the
fields by hand before the crops could be planted. Pulling weeds in the
household garden was a big job. 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 overnight 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 past 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, swinging, and
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. As if 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 a 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. 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! This was a very humbling experience for my hero.
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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 continued 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. Life
on the farm had prepared her for the adversity and hard work ahead for her.
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 common
living, kitchen and bathroom areas. 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 putting her clerical skills to use.
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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. “He was goofy
and talkative. We had a lot of fun together!” They got engaged and started to
not only plan a wedding but build a house in Apple Valley, MN simultaneously. A
combination some would shy away from but they handled with ease!
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. She was the most beautiful bride in the world to me!
Her gown was a soft white with a cathedral length train and the veil went just
past the end of the train with lace appliques that matched the lace on her
dress. It had full length sleeves with lace at the fitted cuffs and shoulders.
It had an Empress waist and flowing satin dress. The Bridesmaids were wearing
burnt orange gowns. 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.
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They
settled in Apple Valley and started a family a few years later. The first
daughter was born August of 1981 after many hours of labor naturally with no
meds. Another example of her superhero strength. 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!” The Draino test required you to collect your
first morning urine and add it to a glass jar with Crystal Draino. This needed
to be done outside. The extremely caustic and smelly concoction is supposed to
change to a brownish color if it’s a bouncing baby boy or have no color change
for a baby girl. “Ha, proved that theory wrong!”
In 1983, they decided they 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 the summer of 1984 they were blessed with another
little girl. “This time she was supposed to be a boy per the 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 bravely stayed home to raise us until 1994. She loved helping her girls
grow and learn new things. “Watching you girls play and discover was amazing.”
It was all she wanted it to be and more. 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 thirteen years later.
In
1994, she fearlessly 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,
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the hours where very like
her kids’ school hours. 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 physically exhausting at the same time. “Every little thing you can help these kids
achieve is amazing! They may have no voice or are unable to 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. This is her super power.
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. The strength she gained
from hard work on the farm helped her overcome the odds against her rejoining
the workforce after so many years of absence. 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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