My story began on August 9, 1958, at the Virginia Municipal Hospital in Virginia, Minnesota. Virginia was about sixteen miles from our hometown of Aurora, but it was a larger town and the nearest place where a maternity ward was. Like most newborns, I didn't know much about the world yet, but I was already joining quite a crew. I met my parents at 9:15 PM at 8 lbs 10 1/2 oz, dripping wet. In fact, the birth announcement mentioned my father now having enough for a basketball team.
Waiting for me at home were four older brothers. John was ten years older than I was, Dave eight, Tom five, and Chuck four. Yes, five boys in total. Along with my mom and dad, that made for a lively household.
Our family lived in Aurora in a fairly conservative but comfortable home. My dad had the house built specifically for our family. 720 Arrowhead Street. It was a 1500 square foot rambler-style home with three bedrooms and one bathroom on the main floor. The basement had been finished as well and included another area with bunk beds, where my older brothers John and Dave stayed, and there was a bathroom/utility room down there too. With that many boys in the house, the extra space probably helped keep the peace.
Because my mom now had five boys to manage, including a newborn, my cousin Mary Lou came to stay with us for a while during the summer of 1958 to help out. Looking back, that was probably a lifesaver for my mom.
Aurora turned out to be a wonderful place to grow up. Our neighborhood was called Sunset Acres, and it seemed like it was full of kids everywhere you looked. It was a newer neighborhood at the time, and families with children seemed to fill nearly every home.
Our neighborhood felt like it had its own little ecosystem of kids. On any given summer day, you could look outside and see bikes scattered across lawns, baseball games starting up in the street, or groups of kids running between houses. Our place often became the gathering spot. My mom would make big pitchers of Kool-Aid, and before long there would be kids everywhere, running through the yard, playing games, and just enjoying the freedom that kids had in those days.
My best friend was Carl. He lived in the house next door with a vacant lot between us. My earliest memories are with him and the nearly indestructible Tonka trucks made of heavy-gauge steel. We played together, rode bikes together, and often had meals together. We were inseparable back then. When we moved in 1968, I only saw him one other time on a trip to Boundary Waters Canoe Area. I do have a very graphic memory of an experience we shared in the space between our houses. There were a couple of trees to climb, and back then we pounded large nails into the tree to use as footholds. About 10 feet up, one of my nails gave out, and I fell down, ripping my shirt and the front of my body. My shirt was in bloody shreds, and I had skin flapping around on my stomach. I knew my mom would not be happy, so I did what any 8-year-old would do: I hid in our backyard. Carl “told” on me, and Mom found me and patched me up with tape and gauze. No trips to Urgent Care back then.
Behind our house stretched a forest that, to an eight-year-old boy, felt as vast and mysterious as the wilderness itself. It wasn’t just a patch of woods—it was our kingdom, our frontier, and our greatest playground. Every towering tree became the wall of a hidden fortress, every fallen log a bridge across a raging river, and every winding trail a path leading to secret discoveries. We built forts from branches, climbed trees to keep watch over our imaginary kingdom, searched for animal tracks, and waged epic battles with nothing more than sticks that instantly transformed into swords, rifles, or explorer’s walking staffs. Some days we were pioneers blazing new territory. Other days we were soldiers, mountain men, or treasure hunters convinced that the next hill or thicket concealed something no one had ever found before. Hours slipped away without us ever glancing at a clock because our imaginations supplied everything we needed for another adventure. Between the sprawling backyard, the open front yard, and the enchanted woods just beyond our back door, childhood offered an endless invitation to explore, create, and believe that anything was possible.
Late evenings often brought everyone back inside, and family life had its own rhythm. One of my favorite memories was Sunday nights. When we finished dinner we would gather around the TV in the utility room and watch the lineup together that included Wonderful World of Disney, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, and Bonanza. My oldest brother John was born with polio and my mother would help him with exercises to strengthen the muscles in his legs while laying prone on some special equipment in this room. It was simple, but it felt like an event every week, and everyone sat together to watch.
Inside the house, life with four brothers meant that sleeping arrangements sometimes changed. The room my parents slept in was 11’x12’. The two other bedrooms were 10’x10’ and 8’x9. Tiny by today’s standards. At different times I shared a room with Tom or Chuck, and occasionally I even had a room to myself, depending on how things were arranged. With that many boys under one roof, there was always noise, energy, and usually some kind of game going on. There was no end of roughhousing. One game involved playing football on your knees in a bedroom with the lights off and pitch black. The object was to get from one end of the room to score a touchdown without losing a tooth. Being the smallest I didn't fare well.
Sports were a big part of my early life as well. Whether it was baseball in the yard, football in the street, or whatever game we could invent, we were almost always outside doing something active. It seemed like sports were always being played somewhere nearby. Like a lot of kids with older siblings, I became much better than my friends at athletics because I was always being pushed by, mainly, my two older brothers. I also first became interested in lifting weights because, well, my brothers were lifting weights.
Another special part of our family life was the cabin my dad built. On many weekends we would head there and spend time away from town. This retreat on Bass Lake would become the setting for many memories of its own, and it deserved its own chapter.
Those first ten years in Aurora gave me more than childhood memories. They gave me the raw materials that would shape everything that came afterward: family, friendship, faith, adventure, competition, imagination, and an appreciation for simple living. But if there was one person who held all of those pieces together, it was my mom. Behind every scraped knee, every baseball game, every weekend at the cabin, and every memory of home stood a woman whose steady love made all of it possible.
