She wasn't overly impressed with his dancing abilities, but discovered that he drove through her home town on weekends. Voila! A free ride home! Noel warned her that he was going to marry her some day, but she knew that would never happen.

One thing led to another - on their first "real date" Jan had tickets for the Shrine circus so it was her treat. Unfortunately, the tickets were general admission and there was no where to sit so Noel got stuck buying movie tickets to see "The Ten Commandments". From then on, they were inseparable. When Noel first met Jan's parents, they had just completed installing new linoleum in the kitchen. His compliment on the appearance was misunderstood - they thought he said something insulting so it took a while to get back into their good graces. They also thought he had a funny last name! Although Jan's Sauk Centre home and Noel's Battle Lake home were 70 miles apart, Noel had many relatives around Sauk Centre. Shortly after they started dating, Noel's aunt Thilda called Noel's mother to let her know that Jan was OK in words to the effect of, "She's alright, not only is she a Norwegian, but she is also a Lutheran!"

Jan was making $1.35 an hour working for Minneapolis Gas Company which was more than the $1.25 an hour Noel was making with Thermo King. Noel quickly applied for work at the gas company also and soon became an apprentice gas fitter. He went back to the University on a part time basis.

On January 4, 1958 - one year after they first dated - they eloped to Iowa and got married in The Little Brown Church in The Vale. It wasn't because they thought Jan's folks would object, but that they thought they really couldn't afford to have a big wedding. Her parents were soon reconciled to the lack of a "proper" wedding and gave their blessing to the match. In over 40 years, there has never been a cross word between Jan's folks and Noel.

Shortly after the wedding, Noel was installing a refrigerator in a second story apartment when his helper slipped going up the stairway and the sudden pull of the toppling refrigerator caused one of his lungs to hemorrhage. It was quickly discovered that the tear in his lung opened up a cyst in the lung which contained inactive tuberculosis. Consequently, he spent 10 months in a Sanitarium, underwent lung surgery to remove the affected lung tissue, and then underwent chemotherapy to kill any remaining TB germs. The army determined that the TB infection had probably been contracted during his army duty in Germany. It is more likely that the TB was contracted from his father at an early age and then encapsulated.

<<page 2    |   page 4>>