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UTAH PRESS ASSOCIATION than they'd been told by the missionary who espoused a religious doctrine which they'd embraced. With scarcely a pause in New York City, they continued their westward journey to Utah, forever leaving behind their home in Ystad, a Baltic seacoast community on the southern-most tip of Sweden. That they were immigrants did not make the Rasmusons unique; many of their countrymen were doing likewise. Nor was it unusual that Nils and Kerstin's two sons, both in their teens, had no knowledge of the customs, life-style, history and language of the far-Western state to which they'd moved. Most foreign-born newcomers were in that position. What would distinguish them in future years was that they'd swiftly overcome that handicap and go on to achieve success in journalism, where a grasp of all those things is necessary. One of the boys, Nils Gunnar, had preceded the family to the United States in 1905, when he was 16. He'd settled in Pleasant Grove, home of Jens Monson, the missionary they'd known in Sweden. His letters enthusiastically encouraged the family to follow, so a year later, his parents, his sister, Anna, and his brother, Ernest Rasmus, bid farewell to the land of their birth and embarked on a trans-Atlantic ship, which was then the only link between the Old World and the New. When they arrived, Anna was 20 years old; Gunnar 17, and Ernest not yet 15. All had completed the common schools of their homeland. Not long thereafter, on January 1, 1908, their 55-year old father died and, predictably, Kerstin and her children thereafter struggled through much financial adversity. Both Gunnar and Ernest literally returned to the classroom in order to learn English, starting on the elementary level. They were apt students and moved rapidly to the point where they could begin studies at Pleasant Grove High School. It's indicative of their compelling desire to achieve in this new country that Gunnar was a speaker at commencement exercises of his class and Ernest was the valedictorian a year later. Anna would demonstrate similar determination by returning to school at 36 years of age and becoming a Registered Nurse. 602 |
