Fortunate Son

In many ways I was the most fortunate of the six Strand children. Despite his rather crusty personality and his ability to convey intense disapproval, uncle Carl was underneath a considerate person and both Vincent and I benefited from the money we earned working for him in the summers we were on the farm. On the whole Vincent got along better with my namesake uncle than I did. I think though that I didn’t have quite the averse reaction to him as for example Verner did.

Relative to Clarice I had a somewhat more relaxed view of the future — perhaps because I was a male I was less restricted in employment opportunities than she. Thus when it didn’t seem feasible to go away to school after my initial year at junior college, and because a course in organic chemistry and in quantitative analysis had been added to the curriculum there, I felt reasonably content to take the path of least resistance and take a second year at the junior college. Following this the scholarship I got to SUI enabled me to go to school there and complete my engineering training. Then with WWII going on it was rather easy for me to secure employment in comparison to Clarice’s difficulties.

Vivian followed Clarice’s footsteps and attended the University of Dubuque — in contrast to Clarice however, teachers were in short supply when she finished school and she was immediately employed (even as I seem to recall before the normal time of completion of her fourth year of college).

Vincent was young enough so that it was inevitable that he would become involved in military service in the war, but he was shortly in a program in meteorology at the University of Wisconsin. The academic training he received in the program eventually served him in good stead when he returned to school after his discharge at Iowa State College.

Verner suffered the most from being in the military perhaps because of the intensity of his reactions, which were more extreme than those of Vincent for example. But in the end his experience in the military gave him the advantages afforded him as a veteran.

Finally Marold was hardly affected by the Depression at all. By the time he was of high school age, the war was almost over. My parents moved back to the little brown house so he was out from under the potential supervision of my uncle Carl. Economic conditions in the family were much improved and considering he was the only child still to be cared for he pretty much had his choice of his college education. He was however eventually involved in the military service which I had escaped.

During my senior year at Iowa I considered enrolling in a meteorology program in the Navy. I had the paperwork pretty much complete but I hesitated to go ahead with the possibility as I had already been offered a position with Shell. As I recall I would have received a commission as an ensign when I enrolled. One day I mentioned this tentative plan to one of my chemical engineering professors. His immediate comment was “Why would you want to do that?” I guess that was the deciding factor for me in the situation.