My father departed from the Born tradition of farming by going into the Lutheran ministry. In the late forties, he heard the call of God on the North Dakota grain fields and went away to the seminary of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod in Springfield, Illinois.

After graduating in 1953 and being called to pastor a church in Marion, Kansas, he met Alberta Schaaf who lived in nearby Wichita.

She was from German immigrant stock just as he was—her grandparents on both sides had come to America from Germany about the same time as my father's grandparents. Her father's father had emigrated from the Rhineland Pfalz and her mother's father had come from the Danzig area of West Prussia.

Clarence and Alberta were married in 1954. I am their oldest son, one of four boys they raised. Though I was born in Wisconsin during a brief pastorship my father served there, my earliest memories are of Holton, Kansas, where my father was pastor of the Lutheran church from 1957 to 1960.