Bernard Kenneth Wallin Ken Wallin was born in Stanton, Iowa on 23 Mar 1913 to a good-looking couple named Minnie Mae Pansy Roll and Rudolph Bernard Wallin. It had been a "shotgun" wedding, so there was some shame attached to it (back in those days). He was the grandson of the wealthy merchant Klaes Henrik Wallin, owner of the local hardware store. He had an unremarkable childhood, except for trips to the bars to retrieve his alcoholic father, Rudy. He was moderately gifted and was offered college educations by his uncles, who were professors at Augustana and University of Colorado. Choosing instead to ride the railroad cars with cows going to the stockyards, Ken fell in love with Chicago. His mother's aunt, Eva Foy, helped him get a job in the steel mills of Gary, Indiana, and he rode the train back to Stanton on the same day as a cute young girl named Adelaide. They had met briefly when he worked in the ice cream shop in Red Oak.
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Marjorie Adelaide Axelson Adelaide Axelson was born in Red Oak, IA on 26 Sep 1915. Her parents, Clara Mathilda Sanderson and Johann Albert Edward Axelson, were grindingly poor, living on a farm where they raised their own food. Since Adelaide was born late in life - nine years younger than the nearest sibling - her father was forty-eight and was nearing retirement. He was a circuit-riding preacher in the Swedish Covenant Church and was gone for weeks at a time. Her mother died when she was sixteen, in the depth of the Depression. Her older brother, Al, had moved to the farm with his wife and three children. Two of her older brothers, Paul and Iver, had moved to California to seek jobs. Her sister, Evie, had married and was in Chicago. Her older brother, Joe, was a successful coach at Clinton High School, Clinton Illinois. Adelaide secured a spot in Henrotin Hospital in Chicago and studied to be a nurse while working full time there. She rode the train back to Red Oak on the same day as Ken.
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