by Cathy LaGrow
In fall 2013, just before Grandma turned 102, she and my cousin Dawn flew to Georgia to celebrate Brian’s son’s wedding with the extended Lee family. Shortly before taking that trip, Grandma had joined a local gym with plans to work out several times a week. She told me, “I want to keep up my strength.” During her first visit, she rode the exercise bike for fifteen minutes. “It was hard,” she said, “but I just kept my mind on something else.” She continues to manage her little apartment complex too.
Last year when Grandma was here in Oregon for a visit, I went by my mom’s apartment to pick her up. I noticed Grandma wasn’t wearing her eyeglasses, and I asked her where they were.
“Oh, I don’t need those anymore,” she said. “My vision has gotten better—I can see fine now. When I wear the glasses, it’s just to cover the bags under my eyes.”
It seems fitting that Grandma’s sight is better today than it’s been in years. After seeing so much of the hardness of life, she now savors each glimpse of its beauty.
Author’s Note
YOU MAY BE WONDERING: how does a person write a book that contains so many details from events that happened as many as one hundred years ago?
Beginning in early 2012, I exchanged dozens of pages of Q&As with Grandma and conducted hours of audio interviews with her. She proved to have an amazing memory (a trait she passed on to both of her daughters). Every time she supplied a story or detail from her childhood that I could check—such as the distance between two farms or the name of a neighbor—I found that she had been incredibly accurate.
Of course, I did double-check everything. A historical project like this requires a huge amount of research, and during the last two years I spent countless evenings and weekends tucked away in the library (away from my rampaging little boys), looking up obscure facts and writing scenes until the library staff turned out the lights. Any place in the narrative where I mention what the weather was like on a particular day, or describe the garments someone wore or the medicine they took, or what a building looked like, or what kind of birds were in the air or plants were on the ground, you can be sure that it was all researched.
In April 2013, my brand-new literary agent told me that in order to put the book together as quickly as possible—so that Grandma would have time to enjoy it—I’d need to get help from an experienced collaborator. Cindy Coloma (who, poignantly, had just had a baby) was hired, and we began to split the researching, writing, and editing duties.
Cindy and I have added historical details to the narrative. We’ve also extensively interviewed both of Grandma’s daughters—Ruth and my mother, Dianna—for details about their childhoods.
Brian supplied me with a copy of Betty Jane’s entire adoption file. It was a treasure trove, containing more than one hundred letters—hundreds of pages—of personal correspondence between Grandma and the House of Mercy, and between the HOM and Betty Jane’s adoptive parents, the Nordslettens.
All the scenes in this book came either from Grandma’s (or Ruth’s) recollections or from the adoption file letters.
Cindy and I did have to re-create conversations, especially in the early chapters of the book. In these cases, we made sure that the characters conveyed only things that were factual, and we kept the dialogue true to the personalities and views of the people conversing. Wherever we attributed feelings, thoughts, or words to a person long deceased, such as Miss Bragstad or Reverend Kraushaar, we did so after carefully reviewing their letters and talking to Grandma.
Ruth, Brian, and Teresa read all the chapters about the Lees and edited them for accuracy. Grandma reviewed the entire manuscript and made a few minor changes, but otherwise vetted everything in it.
This project has truly been a labor of love. At the same time, I approached it with some trepidation. After all, Grandma is a strong woman who is rightly protective of her life story. Also, because we live hundreds of miles apart, she wasn’t immediately available to review each chapter as I finished it. So when I finally flew to California with the first fourteen chapters for her to read, I gave her a highlighter and asked her to mark anything that wasn’t accurate. I braced myself, thinking I might have to make changes in every paragraph.
When she returned the manuscript, I discovered that she had changed three words. Then she told me she loved it and couldn’t wait to read the rest of it. That, to me, was the highest praise I could ever receive.
Acknowledgments
TO MINKA DISBROW, my beloved grandmother. Thank you for living a story that needed to be told, and for loving our family so well, for so long. Words cannot express how much I love and admire you, but here are 86,000 of them that sure tried.
Ruth Lee, you would be eternally dear to me just for the joy you’ve brought Grandma, but I’ve adored you from the moment we met. Thank you for being so generous with your story—and your life.
In so many ways this book would not exist without Brian Lee. Thank you for finding Grandma, for loving her, for wanting this book to happen. Thank you for your financial support; your tireless work to get me a hundred little details, at all hours; your commitment to accuracy. I only wish we’d known each other all along.
To my writing partner, Cindy Coloma. I could not have hoped for a more perfect person with whom to share this journey. Thank you for caring about this story, for talking me off a few ledges, for shouldering work when I couldn’t. Your abilities amaze me.
Dianna Disbrow Huhn. Thank you, Mom, for providing so many specifics for the Minneapolis and Oakland portions of this story, even the painful sections. And thanks for your unflagging encouragement and prayers during this whole journey.
To my first and best friends—my brothers, Gary Huhn and Grant Huhn. Thank you for sharing my life, for loving Grandma’s story, and for being my biggest fans, always.
Charles Lee, Debbie Lee, Mark Lee, Tim Lee, Carrie Lee, Jay Lee. Thank you for sharing your memories with me, and for being such an integral part of this story. And special thanks to Mark for verifying the technical aspects of the shuttle launch so I didn’t look like a clown.
Dawn Disbrow Medina. Thank you for patiently answering questions and filling me in on your years with Grandma. And thank you for faithfully watching over her, all these years.
Thanks to Teresa Lee for supporting this project—and Brian—in every way, for reading drafts and correcting errors, and for being such a sweetheart.
Jerry Huhn. I have no doubt that my stubborn ability to keep going with this project was due to years spent running wind sprints in the rain, under your expert coaching. Thank you for teaching me how to persevere, and for taking such loving care of my boys on several occasions so I could steal away and work.
Special thanks to both my parents for nurturing my love of reading early on, and therefore giving me the most enduring passion of my life.
To Janet Grant, my stalwart agent, who loved this story as much as I did, and who turned this dream into reality. Thanks for guiding me every step of the way.
To the entire Tyndale House team, who fell in love with Grandma’s story and poured their hearts into bringing it to the world, especially Sarah Atkinson, Kim Miller, and Bonne Steffen, our editors extraordinaire. You made our words clearer and better. And to our designer, Nicole Grimes, whose creativity made this book more beautiful than I could have dreamed.
To my author buddies, especially Karen Spears Zacharias, my first writing mentor, for providing encouragement and much-needed doses of reality; and to Billy Coffey, who read early versions of chapters and told me just to “jump” when I got scared. You both inspire me daily.
To all the brilliant writers whose words have made my life richer in a thousand ways, and especially Rick Bragg, who told me that this story would make a great book and that I should write it.
To Lavelle Huhn, Jason Dougherty, Catherine Huhn, and Samuel and Samantha Koch, who have made our family so much better.
Rodney Schoen. Thank you for giving us a glimpse into Grandma’s childhood with your persona
l photos, and for telling me more about Uncle’s family.
To all my friends, who tolerated my virtual disappearance during the last two years and cheered me on, especially Laurel Lundberg, Sunia Gibbs, Wendy Dillree, Karen Streelman, Kim Spalding, April White, Tami Richardson, Connie Helland, and Heidi Larson, who fed my family, cleaned my home, and killed house spiders so I could work in peace. And to Susan Askew, who would have loved all this more than anyone.
To my in-laws, Dave and Betty LaGrow, for entertaining and feeding my guys countless times while I was holed up working.
Thanks to the many people who assisted my research and answered my questions, including Marcia Sylvester, Zion Lutheran Church; Kathie Allstot, Riverside Cemetery; Pastor Joanne Nagele, Warner Lutheran; Ken Webb; Pam Videen, Minnesota Historical Society; L. J. Dean, National Railway Historical Society; William Brown, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Dale Kaiser, Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Diana Farmer, National Climatic Data Center; Gretchen Sharp, Aberdeen Public Schools Foundation; Jeannet Bouma, Community of Heerenveen; Mary T, Find a Grave.
Barbara Rolph, for checking (and correcting) our German phrases, and Janneke Jobsis-Brown, Annelien de Haan, and Bouk de Vries Jobsis, for setting our Dutch phrases right.
My deepest thanks, forever, to my husband, Dan, for loving me, for shouldering so much extra work, and for never once acting like this dream was crazy; and to my boys, Cameron and Connor, for giving up “Mommy time” during this project, and for being my joy. Home, for me, is wherever the three of you are.
And, above all, eternal thanks to God, whose book this really is.
About the Authors
CATHY LAGROW first fell in love with books as a young girl, when she often chose to lose herself in a story rather than play outside. That love has never waned. She estimates that she’s read more than two thousand books, and she habitually collects new titles much faster than she can read them.
Her previous writing endeavors include her blog, Windows and Paper Walls; a story for Chicken Soup for the Soul titled “A Good Mother”; and a weekly column for All the Church Ladies on a website created by journalist Karen Spears Zacharias.
In 2006, just after the birth of her first baby, Cathy and her family learned the secret her grandmother Minka Disbrow had been carrying for almost eighty years—that at age seventeen, she’d given up a baby for adoption. Cathy’s mother, Dianna, is Minka’s second child, born nearly eighteen years later. Cathy began working on The Waiting in early 2012.
Cathy has been married to her high school sweetheart, Dan, for almost twenty-five years. She is a licensed, nonpracticing US Customs broker and a piano teacher. She lives in Oregon, where she’s often found in the kitchen baking or curled up in a chair reading. An avid runner, she sometimes runs literal circles around her two small boys at the neighborhood park. Nearly everything fascinates her.
This is Cathy’s debut book.
CINDY COLOMA is a national bestselling author who has written twelve novels, including: Beautiful (2010 Christy Award finalist for Young Adults and 2011 Revolve Young Adult Tour featured book); The Salt Garden (one of Library Journal’s best genre books in 2004); Song of the Brokenhearted (2013 ECPA bestseller with coauthor Sheila Walsh); Orchid House (2008 ECPA bestseller); and Winter Passing (2001 Christy Award finalist and Romantic Times Top Pick).
Cindy has collaborated on fiction projects with bestselling author, singer, and speaker Sheila Walsh, and as a ghostwriter with a former federal prosecutor and TV legal-news analyst.
Her nonfiction projects include collaborations on memoirs such as The Waiting (May 2014, Tyndale Momentum) and It’s a Wild Life: How My Life Became a Zoo (June 2014, Medallion Press), a book about an exotic animal zoo in Michigan, and the Nat Geo Wild television program. Cindy developed and wrote the nonfiction book Renting Lacy: A Story of America’s Prostituted Children (coauthored with former Congresswoman Linda Smith) and has also written over one hundred published articles.
Cindy is a speaker, book doctor, and writing coach. She’s spoken at such events and conferences as the World Book Fair in Frankfurt, Germany; Simpson University Faculty Retreat; LittWorld in Tagaytay, Philippines; and many others. In her local area, she has co-led a writers’ group for sixteen years.
With five children ranging in age from their early twenties to a baby boy, Cindy’s life is always full of laughter, joy, and toys to trip over. She can’t own enough books or watch enough movies, has more travel dreams than possible for a human (including underwater and outer-space itineraries), but loves home best of all. She and her extended family have lived in the Redding, California, area for over thirty-five years.
ABOVE
Uncle’s house, where Minka grew up (Jennie on left, Uncle on right)
MIDDLE
Jane (L) and Minka (R), around 1917
BELOW
Uncle at Scatterwood Lake—where, years later, Minka would attend the sewing class picnic
ABOVE
Reverend Kraushaar’s letter to the Lutheran House of Mercy on Minka’s behalf (1929)
MIDDLE
The only picture that exists of seventeen-year-old Minka and Betty Jane
Minka’s inscription on the back of the photo: “Sweetest little girl in the world—Betty J”
BELOW
One of the many letters Minka wrote asking after Betty Jane
ABOVE
Minka in Victoriaville, Canada, on a 1941 visit to Roy
MIDDLE
Roy mailed this photo to Minka in 1943, after he’d transferred from the RAF to the US Army Air Force.
Jennie and her grandchildren Dianna and Donnie (1951)
BELOW
Roy, Minka, and their daughter, Dianna (1947)
ABOVE BACKGROUND
Ruth on a parade float for “Hospital Days” in Viroqua, Wisconsin (1948)
ABOVE INSET
Ruth at age twelve
BELOW BACKGROUND
Ruth and Charles on their wedding day: September 24, 1948
BELOW INSET
Ruth (“Betty Jane”) with her adoptive parents, Olava and Peder Nordsletten
ABOVE
Mark Lee floating above Earth during NASA’s Space Shuttle Discovery STS-64 mission, September 1994
MIDDLE
Ruth and Charles with son Brian (center) at his West Point graduation in 1981
BELOW
The Lee family gathers for Charles’s eightieth birthday party in 2008.
ABOVE
Minka at the Portland, Oregon, rose gardens with (L to R) grandson Gary; sister, Jane; daughter Dianna; and grandson Grant (1993)
MIDDLE
Minka with the flowers she tends at her apartment building; taken in March 2006, just two month before she would pray to see Betty Jane again
BELOW BACKGROUND
Minka and granddaughter Cathy (author of The Waiting) in 1995
BELOW INSET
The last photo taken of Minka and her sister, Jane, together (1999)
ABOVE
On August 18, 2006, Minka and her long-lost daughter were reunited—after nearly eight decades of waiting.
BELOW
Minka with her two daughters (Ruth and Dianna), together for the first time
ABOVE
Minka and Ruth today
MIDDLE
Celebrating birthdays . . . together at last
BELOW
Four generations united for the college graduation and Army commission of Taylor Lee (Ruth’s grandson): (L to R) Taylor, Minka, Ruth, and Brian Lee (Ruth’s son).
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