The Power of Testimony

THE TIME MOM MET HITLER . . .
of Hormel’s principal competitor, Swift Foods, handed him a
blank check—​literally: a signed check with no amount written
in—​ and told A.L. that anything he needed was his.
At the same time A.L. was reeling from the financial blow,
it became apparent that Lena was seriously ill. The word cancer
was scarcely used around the household, and of course, never
in front of the children. However, it was cancer—​lung cancer
(though my grandmother did not smoke)—​and it weakened
her inexorably during that dire summer of 1921. In the end,
though, the truth could not be kept from the children, and A.L.
took them to the apple orchard and laid it all out before them.
According to Dad, “Apple Orchard,” a section of one of his
longer poems, Burr Oaks, is an accurate rendition of the event.
The beauty of the sun shining through the white-​and-​pink apple
blossoms contrasts, both in the poem and in Dad’s telling, with
the ache of what needed to be told.
Dad was seventeen. Having just graduated from Austin
High School, he decided to postpone his departure for the
University of Minnesota to assist with his mother’s care and his
sister’s comforting. My grandmother was a believer in the power
of prayer, and my father, his father, and she spent many hours
together, praying. Other times, Dad read to her from uplifting
books. He nursed her with tender bites of food when she could
eat, and with drinks of tea or lemonade. He also managed and
monitored visitations from other ladies of the town. Sometimes
Lena was simply too weak to accept a visit, and Dad acted as her
secretary, politely offering apologies on her behalf.
Eventually, there came a time when prayer and local doctoring
were of no avail, and the family accompanied Lena to
Chicago to have what was then a last-​ resort therapy employing
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