Blog

The Book

When my Mom was nearing the end of her life, she told me, “maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but your first grade teacher told me that she didn’t believe you would ever amount to anything”.  My Mom set out to do change that outlook, and in the summer would take me and my brother Dan to the library every week to check out some books to read.  I not only loved reading, but in the basement of the library was the Brown County museum. This was full of artifacts from the Sioux uprising, and a trip to the library was not complete without a visit to the museum.  It was in a glass case in the museum that I saw my first copy of the book  “Nue Ulm”.

Some years later, as a teen ager, I got summer jobs mowing lawns for people. One of my clients was an elderly lady named Mrs. Hermerding. One day she asked me to help her clean her basement. While cleaning the basement, I came across the only other copy of the book “Neu Ulm”, that I have ever seen. It was written in the old German script and published in 1917. I asked her if I could take it home and read it. Her reply was that I should just keep it, she was just glad someone would want it. From that moment, it was my dream to translate the book and make its story available in English.

I went on to work nights as a welder while I took classes during the day at Mankato State University, and graduated with a BS in 1976 with majors in Computer Science, Mathematics and Business.  I went on to work for Sperry Univac . I went on to earn my MS from the College of St. Thomas in 1988 with a major in Software Engineering.  During these years the book sat in a box,  waiting for me to find the time to work on the translation.

After completing my MS studies, I dug into the translation project.  At that time the word processing software was still not very good, and could not handle large documents, with more than a couple pictures. Eventually the technology advanced and I was able to complete the translation and seek a publisher.