The Beginnings

I was raised in a very rural area in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, 17 miles south of Houghton and Hancock, out in the sticks, not far from Lake Superior. My dad died when I was two and a half months old, leaving Mom with six kids, with my oldest sister age 16.

We were raised on welfare until I was 17, as there were scant opportunities for work for Mom in the area. We owned our own home, a 24’ x 24’ story and a half structure, located on a 40 acre parcel. Our property was comprised primarily of scrub soft maple and aspen that sprouted after the big forest fires of the early 1900’s after the mighty White Pine were logged. We had no phone, no TV, and heated the house with two wood stoves. We got an indoor toilet when I was 6, but no indoor shower or bath. We warmed the sauna every Saturday and took a bath whether we needed it or not. (I am of Finnish descent, as all of my grandparents immigrated from Finland around 1900. My paternal grandfather, John Carl Drugge (the Swedish version, or Trykke in Finnish) first came to the US in 1888, and somewhere along the line changed his name to Olson. (Oh, by the way, I don’t advise jumping into the snow after getting heated up in a sauna. It is not so bad in the snow, but once the snow stuck to your body melts when you get back in the sauna - Yaowwww!)

Family, December, 1944                       February 5, 1950              Family, other than Ruth

The Importance of Education: The Huge Potential in All of Us (biography continued)