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Show He had another reason and of course Mother joined him wistfully in this. My sister El Vera had been born with a defect in her eyelids. Father would seek the aid of a famous plastic surgeon in Denmark. Her flaw was small but they did not wish their daughter to carry the handicap all her life, even if it was a slight disfigurement. When I was two and El Vera six, Father decided to scrape his slender resources together and take his little family to Europe. Things happened swiftly when Father made up his mind. Mother usually supported him enthusiastically. In less than a month we sailed out of New York Harbor, reversing the voyage he'd made from Scandinavia in his teens. It probably was not by chance that we sailed in the steamship j>^. Olaf. Father must have planned it that way. We pilgrims from St. Ansgar, Iowa, a town named for the missionary who first carried Christ's message to the heathen Northmen, voyaged in a ship named for the first Norse king converted to Christianity. Father relished enriching our lives with important points of history vividly illustrated. And the fares were lower on a Norwegian ship. He had to save money because he wouldn't earn any fees for at least two years. |