{"id":88095,"date":"2020-09-15T00:04:15","date_gmt":"2020-09-15T06:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=88095"},"modified":"2020-09-15T22:17:41","modified_gmt":"2020-09-16T04:17:41","slug":"on-my-fathers-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2020\/09\/on-my-fathers-birthday.html","title":{"rendered":"On my father’s birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Detter,<\/a>
Sgt. Carl Peterson at Gmunden, Austria, ca. April 1945, by Theodor Detter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Today is my Dad\u2019s birthday \u2014 as I write, it\u2019s late (I\u2019ve had an exceptionally busy day), but it\u2019s still just barely the right date\u2013 and I try to post something about him every year on the anniversary of his birth and on the anniversary of his passing.\u00a0 I see it as a filial duty.\u00a0 Certainly it\u2019s an expression of my respect and love.\u00a0 When we chose something to inscribe on his grave marker in California, we went for the unadorned truth:\u00a0 It reads, simply, \u201cA Good Man.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

With his two sisters and his four brothers, he was born and raised on a farm outside of the tiny unincorporated community of Garske, Ramsey Country, North Dakota.\u00a0 His father had been born in Hoptrup, Haderslev, Denmark, but had emigrated to the United States with his parents as a baby.\u00a0 His mother came over as a late teen from a farm (still in the family) on the Kj\u00f8snesfjord, in J\u00f8lster, Sogn, Norway, directly adjacent to the modern\u00a0Jostedalsbreen nasjonalpark<\/i><\/a>, which encompasses the largest glacier on the European continent.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Kj\u00f8snesfjord<\/a>
Kj\u00f8snesfjorden i J\u00f8lster (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)
My grandmother grew up here, on a farm on the shore of the lake (to the lower left, just behind and below the house shown in this photo).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

His mother wanted him to become a Lutheran minister, but he never felt the \u201ccall.\u201d\u00a0 Instead, in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash and amid the Great Depression, he went to the North Dakota School of Forestry at Bottineau for a time.\u00a0 Then he followed his older brother out to the Los Angeles area in California, where he learned about paving and grading and construction in a greater metropolitan area that was just commencing its path to become the sprawling megalopolis that it is today.\u00a0 I\u2019m unsure of the details and the precise chronology, but he eventually joined Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s Civilian Conservation Corps and, ultimately, the United States Army\u2019s horse cavalry, serving in and around El Centro, on the border with Mexico.\u00a0 He was with the cavalry when World War II began, and he remained in the service \u201cfor the duration,\u201d finally being affiliated as a staff sergeant with the Eleventh Armored Division, a part of General George A. Patton\u2019s Third Army.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He was a man of considerable intellectual ability, but he never had the opportunity to finish a four-year college degree and neither he nor anybody else would have considered him an \u201cintellectual.\u201d\u00a0 (I don\u2019t believe that he would have valued the designation even slightly.\u00a0 And he was anything but a show-off.)\u00a0 Recognizing that intelligence, the wartime Army sent him to study German at the University of Chicago and, as one of the so-called \u201cRitchie Boys,\u201d<\/a> to the Military Intelligence Training Center at its secret Camp Ritchie facility in Maryland.\u00a0 At some point, he also got in some study at Pierce College in Los Angeles, but that obviously must have been after the war, as Pierce College was only founded in 1947.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A year or two later, he and one of his brothers founded a construction company and participated in the economic boom of the postwar Los Angeles area.\u00a0 That was how I knew him, growing up \u2014 a kind and soft-spoken man, modest, loyal to his family, quietly proud especially of his Norwegian roots, good-humored but with a serious side that had clearly been deeply affected by the horrible things that he had seen during the Second World War in England and on the European mainland.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I miss him deeply.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 Today is my Dad\u2019s birthday \u2014 as I write, it\u2019s late (I\u2019ve had an exceptionally busy day), but it\u2019s still just barely the right date\u2013 and I try to post something about him every year on the anniversary of his birth and on the anniversary of his passing.\u00a0 I see it as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16325,15568,3409,16343,5541,5550,16346,5523,5559,12376,16394,11953,16340,16322,2797,5538,16355,2286,11932,16373,16397,16367,16364,16376,16331,16370,16358,5346,2280,16349,8454,8451,16379,16385,2283,5496,11935,2532,16337,16334,14023,16352,5526,16361,7476,16388,16391,16328,11938,16382,5532],"class_list":["post-88095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-armored","tag-army","tag-austria","tag-border","tag-bottineau","tag-california","tag-camp-ritchie","tag-carl-peterson","tag-civilian-conservation-corps","tag-denmark","tag-detter","tag-division","tag-el-centro","tag-eleventh","tag-europe","tag-forestry","tag-fort-ritchie","tag-garske","tag-george","tag-glacier","tag-gmunden","tag-haderslev","tag-hoptrup","tag-horse-cavalry","tag-jolster","tag-jostedalsbreen","tag-kjosnesfjord","tag-los-angeles","tag-lutheran","tag-maryland","tag-mexican","tag-mexico","tag-military-intelligence","tag-military-intelligence-training-center","tag-north-dakota","tag-norway","tag-patton","tag-peterson","tag-pierce-college","tag-ramsey-county","tag-ritchie","tag-ritchie-boyes","tag-second-world-war","tag-sogn","tag-southern-california","tag-theo","tag-theodor","tag-third","tag-third-army","tag-university-of-chicago","tag-world-war-two"],"yoast_head":"\nOn 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