In the winter of 1912, the Glaubitz family in the Pipe Lake community in Northwestern Wisconsin received unwelcome news.  Joanna, age 47 had a cancerous stomach tumor.  Her husband August was 54.  They had six living children.  Their oldest daughter, Ida, was expecting her third child.  There were no hospitals in the area.   Plans were being made to take the train to the Twin Cities, 90 miles to the southwest.

On February 29 a snowstorm hit.  At the same time Joanna started having some familiar pains.  If they did not know before, they realized now that her tumor was a baby getting ready to be born.  Bruno, their oldest son, rode a horse along the circuitous road into Turtle Lake to fetch Doc Tanner.  Tanner hitched his horse to a buggy or sleigh and followed Bruno to the Glaubitz homestead.  With the help of the good doctor Joanna gave birth to a daughter, a seventh child, on March 1.  The storm was so severe that Doc Tanner had to stay overnight.

Because they hadn’t been expecting anymore children, after Edna was born in 1904, they had no baby clothes.  Second oldest daughter, Elsa, hurriedly sowed some diapers.  Soon they also learned that Ida had given birth to her third son on February 28.  Mom and cousin Bernard Hansen were baptized on the same day in May at Christ Lutheran Church, Pipe Lake.

Today our mother, that is Laurin’s, mine and Wayne’s mother, Esther, would have been 106.  Incidentally, our dad, Victor, was born on April 28 of the same year.