Irene Peterson Sandberg (1909-1980)

Irene was the fourth child of Otto and Hulda Peterson, born December 15, 1909. She married LaVerne S. Sandberg May 25, 1934. They lived in an apartment near Midway Hospital in St. Paul and then in one in South St. Paul before moving to Grantsburg in 1942. Irene was a school teacher for many years teaching lower grades and first grade at Nelson School in Alpha her last years of teaching. LaVerne did traffic managing for Noble trucking in South St. Paul and took over farming with his Dad, Fred, on the home farm when they moved to Grantsburg.

Irene was sick several years and had several surgeries for bowel cancer and complications while the children were young but she made a total recovery.

Irene loved teaching school and Sunday School classes. She was a good cook and did a lot of entertaining at the farm, especially family gatherings of her sisters and brothers and their families, most of whom lived near Grantsburg. She was a member of Wood River Baptist Church and later Grace Baptist in Grantsburg.

When LaVerne died she moved into a new mobile home brought to the farm and enjoyed having the grandchildren nearby. Joy once asked her to write down some stories from her childhood. She didn’t write much but here is some of what she did.

Well, Joy. So you want me to write something about myself when I was a girl. Where should I begin? You know, I’m pretty old now. At Christmas time I will be seventy years old. I’m sure that to you that seems really ancient, but you know, I don’t really feel too much different from the little girl in the early nineteen hundreds.

I was born December 15, 1909 in the farmhouse where my mother and father and two older sisters and one brother lived. It was the day of my grandmother’s funeral (my dad’s mother), a snowy windy winter day. My mother had been to the funeral and I arrived shortly after she came home. My grandfather (dad’s father) had passed away about two years before so now my mother and father were alone in this home with their four children, Annie 3 ½, Othelia, 2 ½, Rudolph 1 ½ and me, the baby.

I’m sure my mother had her hands full. It was the custom of the time for families to have “hired girls” and “hired men” to help with the housework and chores. During my early years we always had them in our home. My mother helped with the outside chores, too. I think she liked to get out of the house for a while each day.

I’m not sure how far back I can remember. When I was one-and-a-half years old, my family made a trip to Canada by train to see my mother’s folks. They used to live in the Wood River area so my mother grew up here but after she married her whole family moved to Canada. So we really had no close relatives nearby. How I envied other boys and girls who had grandmas, grandpas, aunts, and uncles and we had none. When we went to Canada by train we rode for a long time on the train to Lethbridge, Canada. Trains were slow then. We were very tired of riding, so when we stopped to change trains we four children were allowed to run in an empty boxcar to relieve some of our energy. It seems to me I can remember running back and forth and enjoying it so much. Perhaps I do remember but perhaps it seems so real because I have been told about it so many times.