The glue of the family, that is the best way I can summarize who my gram was. She had a great love for all thing’s family, both past and present. In my youth I had always felt that the “Oase” family was the close net and loving side of my family but as I grew, I later found that it was Gram who held this family nearest to her heart. She shared her sweet sense of what it means to be a family with each of us. She loved to tell stories of her youth and her relationship with her own grandparents. This later led her to discover where they came from as well as finding our connection to the Mayflower, the Revolutionary War, and the stories that came between. So connecting with grams childhood while I visited the city of her birth seemed a fitting to tribute to the sweet memory of Gram.

Born in St. Paul Minnesota in March of 1923 to George and Alice Larson, Verna Mae was the eldest daughter of 3 children. Alice Neville, her mother, fell in love with George Larson, a handsome Swedish man, who had come to the town of Zap, North Dakota in 1922 to play baseball. Alice’s dad had started a baseball league in Zap, the locals against the Indians, and recruited players from neighboring towns to play. Little did he know that one of those players would steal his daughters heart and later move to St. Paul, Minnesota, where George’s parents lived, to settle down and raise a family.

Gram often told us of the striking difference between her two sets of grandparents. The Larson’s of St Paul being staunch Christians who believed that nothing was of greater significance than the bible. They were serious people who believed that card playing, and dancing were sins. Her Neville grandparents,however, did just that. They had a lot of friends who would stop by for a game of cards or would sometimes would clear the living space of its furniture so that grandpa could play a jig while the people danced. I believe this dichotomy formed my grandmother to be courteous and considerate as well as fun loving and accepting of people’s differences. An early lesson in humanness.

Unlike my grandfather Vernon, whose life in St Paul was stable due to living on a farm, gram was bounced around a bit. She was born in Mounds Park Hospital, as had gramps, so I went in search of its location however to no avail. It had been turned into a Sanitarium and then later destroyed. I had visited Zap where Gram had spent a couple of years with her grandparents while her father George looked for work. Times were tough and at least in Zap she could attend school uninterrupted. She skipped a couple of grades as she was an avid reader and outpaced the children in her age.

During the depression times were tough for the Larson family. Their home was small, and grams dad George would often walk the railroad tracks in search of pieces of dropped coal to keep the family warm. I followed those railroad tracks until I found the high school where my grandparents met. It was the stories of her high school years that I remember the most. Her time in St Paul Park. Like the time that she thought that she was all that in her new white bathing suit, until she went swimming at the local lake, only to find that the best-looking boy on the beach said that her suit was see through after it got wet. Or when she got a beautiful pair of silver slippers for prom but they were too big so she stuffed paper in the toes and arches, and after a night of dancing kicked them off in the car and lost one somewhere on the ride home.

The railroad tracks, the high school, the little downtown that she frequented with my gramps and her friends. The places that Gram remembered so fondly. It was easy to imagine as she had a great way of telling stories. She could twist her lips, or twerk an eye, and her lively inflection would bring the story to life. You would find yourself giggling right along with her at the image of her embarrassment or awkwardness. Life’s follies make us human and she was never afraid to show you her humanness. That was part of her glue. The other, her dedication to us. Her open arms no matter how you failed or soared. Her remembrance of the past while appreciating the family of today. But mostly her ability to love despite our differences and laugh at our own mistakes. May we all find such peace in our souls. Thanks Gram.