Climbing the Mountain page 8 Reminiscences of Margaret Wuerflein Klammer (1891-1985) Written in 1976, her 85th year Go to Beginning Go to Ending Return to Home page

Well, let's move on to something else. Life is made up of a lot of little things that count. A day in a mother's life is made up of little deeds all for the benefit of her family, and the bigger the family, the more little things there are to do. A mother's work is never done. She is on call all hours of the day and night, at least my days were like that. I never had time to go get an outside job like so many mothers do. Even the ministers' wives hold full time jobs. The men go to their plush offices and have a secretary make their appointments and answer the phone. Years ago the office was in the home and the wife had to do a lot of those things, besides taking care of her family and entertaining visiting pastors and dignitaries. With all this work she had to look presentable at all times. Times sure have changed in the ministry. Years ago the ministers were the lowest paid men and often times it was a struggle to make ends meet. We had married in June, 1913 and in August of 1914 the first World War broke out in Europe and the Kaiser was blamed for it. The heir to the Austrian throne was assassinated in Yugoslavia and since the Germans and Austrians had a treaty to help each other out in time of war, that's the way it started. Britain became involved, also France, and through propaganda they got the USA involved in 1917. We had sent war material to Britain so the German subs sank the Lusitania, that had a few American citizens aboard. The US had no army and so it took a while to get men together to go to war. 'Doughboys' they were called. The Germans were hated on all sides. They called them 'Huns." In this country it was really bad, especially for the churches. They were not allowed to hold German services in most places and there were spies out who watched. If they found anyone who said anything in defense of Germany they were fined. The ministers especially were persecuted. Some were even tarred and feathered. Some had to flee by night to get away. This was America at that time! Here I want to tell a story that is really funny; Pastor Klammer helped with the bookkeeping at Immanuel Hospital in Mankato and would go once a week up there from Rapidan. Now it happened it was St. Patrick's Day and the nurses had a little party and used little flags of all nations for decorations. After the party they gave Pastor Klammer a few to take home to the children, but, instead, he stuck them in the window of his study, which happened to face the street and could easily be seen from the sidewalk by passersby. Now there was an Irish school teacher who passed by every day on her way to school. Well, one day our doctor, who was one of the spies, stopped by to investigate the report that we had a German flag in our win- dow. We were dumbfounded and told him to look them over. We all had a good laugh, because they were Irish flags with a sham- rock on them! The doctor thought it would teach the people a lesson and put a little story about it in the newspaper, about