Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

heavy with child; a daughter, Ledora May, was born in 1885. During the next twenty years Ida would
produce seven more children and selflessly devote herself to the upbringing of a happy, close and
high-spirited family.
Ron's grandfather was supposed to have owned a quarter of the state of Montana.
Here he is seen as he really was, a struggling veterinarian, pictured with his wife
and their first child (Ron's mother) at Tilden, Nebraska, around the late 1880s.
For a couple of years Lafe worked his father-in-law's farm, but a bitter family row developed when
DeWolfe indicated his intention to exclude his other children and leave the property solely to Ida
and Lafe. Rather than be the cause of strife in the family, Lafe moved out, opened a livery stable in
town on Second Street and established himself as a veterinarian. His business was a success
because he was well-liked and respected in the area, particularly after playing a starring role in a
local domestic drama which briefly held the town gossips in thrall. Ida's sister, who had also
moved to Burnett, woke up one morning to discover that her husband had left her and taken their
infant son with him to New York. Lafe immediately packed his bags, set off for New York by train,
tracked down the erring husband and returned to Burnett in triumph, his nephew in his arms.
When Ida gave birth to another daughter in 1886, it was a typically warm-hearted gesture that
prompted them to name the baby Toilie. A young man who used to hang around the livery stable
had been engaged to a girl called Toilie before he became mentally deranged; whenever he felt
'strange' he would always, for some reason, seek out Lafe and find reassurance from his
company. When he learned that Ida and Lafe had had another daughter, he shyly asked if they
would call her Toilie, after the sweetheart he knew he would never be able to marry. Years later the
irreverent Toilie would say 'I'm nuts because I was named by a crazy man' and shriek with laughter.
Toilie was still a baby when hard times hit Burnett. In January 1887 a catastrophic blizzard swept
across the plains west of the Mississippi, killing thousands of head of cattle; most of the local
ranchers were mined overnight. The farmers fared no better, for that terrible winter was followed by
a succession of blistering summers accompanied by plagues of grasshoppers which devastated
the already sparse crops. But at a point when many of the despairing townsfolk were talking about