Preface

I never knew my Grandmother Kreie as she died about 9 years before I was born. I do not recall my mother, Marian Elizabeth Kreie Garrett, talking about her mother very much. There is a recollection of my mother wishing that her mother had lived to meet her husband whom she would meet later in 1938 and marry in 1939. Certainly, there was nothing to suggest anything other than love and respect for her mother.

I met Grandfather Kreie several times I am sure, including a visit to Pleasantville, Iowa, in the early 1950s. I suppose I would have been about 6-years-old at the time. The memory that persists is of being in the family's 1953 Chevrolet with my father driving and William Kreie sitting in the front seat. Dad slowed the car down, and my grandfather opened the passenger door and launched a wad of sputum to the side of the road that I presume related to the use of chewing tobacco.

My brother Kenneth, my mother, and I were on our way in the winter of 1954/1955 to see Grandfather Kreie when he was ill, but we never made it due to an automobile accident outside of Cascade, Iowa. My mother lost control of the car on a patch of ice, and the car ended upside down in the ditch. Amazingly, no one was hurt. There was a long bus ride home. Ken recalled that our father had waited in freezing temperatures for us to arrive on the bus. Dad later traveled to Cascade to retrieve the car, driving it back to Colfax, Iowa. The car's roof was caved in, but the car was subsequently repaired. I never did see my grandfather before he died in March 1955.

So my memories of Grandparents Kreie are almost nonexistent. I wish that I would have had more resources from which to draw for this sketch of their lives. I could imagine that they would have wished for that, too.