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Show Later he taught penmanship part time in little Decorah College, a Lutheran school in Northern Iowa. But it was an uphill struggle. And he worried about his parents. Their ship supply shop was not thriving. jaloor Necessities of part time and full time vmuin. interrupted his graduate work. Sometimes he despaired in his lonely labors. Once his impulsive nature almost ended his medical studies at the University of Iowa. As I mentioned, Father could feel fiery rages. Usually he grew wrathful at injustices and slights to himself or to others close to him. His temper brought him near expulsion from medical college because he took part in destructive violence. As he told the tale to me years later, some engineering students resumed an old feud with the "medics" by taunting them. Father did not recognize the insults as customary. Being older and brawnier than most of the other medical students, he led a reprisal on the engineers in the auditorium balcony while people were assembling for a convocation. "Iron fist they used to call me," Father related with mingled sheepishness and pride. I could well believe him for he had massive shoulders and powerful hands. A score or so of young men battled fiercely up there in the balcony. Some seats got broken and fragments were tossed over the railing into portions of the audience already seated below. Father told me with a mixture of shame and guilty pride that he and a couple of other medics put several engineers in the university infirmary with minor injuries. He had to eat humble pie in a grim session with administrators and pledge good conduct before they let him continue. He needed to alternate work and study -until he was 36--double the age he was when he came to America-to earn his Doctor of Medicine diploma. In high spirits but with a flat purse he went to St. Ansgar to practice medicine. He chose the town because it was a growing community of Norwegian and Danish Luther- |