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Lindsborg was their home and Bethany was their life!
Lindsborg was their home and Bethany was their life!
The Bethany Artist & the Bethany Scientist: Lydia & Emil
What they left behind:
- Hers were the art work, the late 19th century and early 20th century Bethany College photographs, the Swedish and Scandinavian handwork, the Bethany Campus Association first landscape projects, and, with the Class of 1917, "The Gateway" to Bethany;
- His were his service to Lindsborg and his 67 years at Bethany College, the development of the College Museum, his part in the 1903 Bethany College Cheer of "Rockar Stockar," still used today;*
- Theirs were the Swedish Collections, the Swedish Homestead, the Deere Home, and most importantly, "their love" for Bethany College and her students.
Newlyweds, 1916
Wedding Photograph of Lydia Sohlberg and Emil O. Deere
At 43, my great grandaunt Lydia (1873-1943) married my great granduncle Emil, 39, (1877-1966) on August 9, 1916 in San Jose, California where her cousin Dr. H. C. Vetterling lived and gave her away. Honeymooning in the San Francisco Bay Area, the couple enjoyed touring the universities of Stanford and Berkeley, and what remained of the 1915 San Francisco World's Fair, called the Panama Pacific International Exposition, and other sights the area had to offer.
They did not have children, but what they did share together was a great love for the College, its student body, its founding church, and its community, and to these, in their individual ways as well as jointly, they devoted their time and energy. This was to be their family and the many subjects of Lydia' photographs.
Old Main, their living quarters for 20 years. Photograph by Lydia Sohlberg Deere.
I did not know my Aunt Lydia who died in 1943, but I did know my Uncle Emil. He and my grandmother Nina Sohlberg Fry, his and Lydia's niece who she had photographed as a child with her friends in Lindsborg, at Bethany College and at Coronado Heights, lived at the Deere home on North First Street at Olsson Street at the south entrance to Bethany College, at "The Gateway" to Bethany of which she played a major role in its 1917 construction.
In the early 1960s due to a family emergency in California, my mother Lois Fry Cochran and sister Melinda Cochran and I were destined to move to Lindsborg where we were to eventually live three houses south of their house on North First Street at Sohlberg House. This was, in 1904, the retirement home of my Swedish great great grandparents, pioneers Anders and Ingrid Sohlberg. In 1916 it was the first home that Emil and Lydia lived in as newlyweds. When our family lived there we spent many special nights at our grandmother and uncle Emil's home, that Lydia designed and was built for them in 1940.
In my freshman and sophomore years (1964-1966) at Bethany, my Uncle Emil, although retired from his official college duties several years before, still continued his work as the curator for the Bethany College Museum-- a position he held for 58 years. Many times I would visit him in the museum and later join him at the Pihlblad Memorial Union's cafeteria for supper which was always a treat for me, as I lived at home and not on campus.
In the early 1960s due to a family emergency in California, my mother Lois Fry Cochran and sister Melinda Cochran and I were destined to move to Lindsborg where we were to eventually live three houses south of their house on North First Street at Sohlberg House. This was, in 1904, the retirement home of my Swedish great great grandparents, pioneers Anders and Ingrid Sohlberg. In 1916 it was the first home that Emil and Lydia lived in as newlyweds. When our family lived there we spent many special nights at our grandmother and uncle Emil's home, that Lydia designed and was built for them in 1940.
In my freshman and sophomore years (1964-1966) at Bethany, my Uncle Emil, although retired from his official college duties several years before, still continued his work as the curator for the Bethany College Museum-- a position he held for 58 years. Many times I would visit him in the museum and later join him at the Pihlblad Memorial Union's cafeteria for supper which was always a treat for me, as I lived at home and not on campus.
Old Main, their living quarters for 20 years.
Affectionately and respectfully, in Lindsborg and at Bethany, many referred to my Uncle and greeted him as Pop Deere!
Emil was a fixture of Bethany College for 67 years, serving in a variety of administrative and academic positions. He was "the source" from whom all generations of the Bethany College family could come regarding the history of the inner workings of the College. He was seen then as the link connecting Bethany's past to her present. Emil's unusually long relationship with the College began by its founding father Swedish American Dr. Rev. Carl A. Swensson who called on him to come to Bethany in 1899 via his father Charles Deere, a close personal friend from the early Moline and Rock Island Augustana Illinois days.
Emil was destined then to become colleague and friend to the founder of Bethany College and to its first seven (7)Swedish American presidents covering a period from 1899 to 1966!
I was in the Deere home in 1965 when Bethany College Director of Publicity and Alumni Secretary Kenneth Sjorgren, with a tape recorder in hand, came to interview my Uncle Emil about the history of the College. I remember that day clearly, yet not at all understanding Emil's significance to the College then.
I now understand. For more or less of the same reasons as Mr. Sjorgren's and the Bethany College of that day seeing the significance in interviewing him then, this website has also been created, to provide some insights into the earliest history of this Swedish American institution of higher learnng. This I hope will give joy to those remaining Swedish Lindsborg descendants and Bethany College Alumni who "still" have "some memory of these earlier times" while providing an accessible platform to them and to those generations today now experiencing "their Lindsborg and Bethany College."
Emil was a fixture of Bethany College for 67 years, serving in a variety of administrative and academic positions. He was "the source" from whom all generations of the Bethany College family could come regarding the history of the inner workings of the College. He was seen then as the link connecting Bethany's past to her present. Emil's unusually long relationship with the College began by its founding father Swedish American Dr. Rev. Carl A. Swensson who called on him to come to Bethany in 1899 via his father Charles Deere, a close personal friend from the early Moline and Rock Island Augustana Illinois days.
Emil was destined then to become colleague and friend to the founder of Bethany College and to its first seven (7)Swedish American presidents covering a period from 1899 to 1966!
I was in the Deere home in 1965 when Bethany College Director of Publicity and Alumni Secretary Kenneth Sjorgren, with a tape recorder in hand, came to interview my Uncle Emil about the history of the College. I remember that day clearly, yet not at all understanding Emil's significance to the College then.
I now understand. For more or less of the same reasons as Mr. Sjorgren's and the Bethany College of that day seeing the significance in interviewing him then, this website has also been created, to provide some insights into the earliest history of this Swedish American institution of higher learnng. This I hope will give joy to those remaining Swedish Lindsborg descendants and Bethany College Alumni who "still" have "some memory of these earlier times" while providing an accessible platform to them and to those generations today now experiencing "their Lindsborg and Bethany College."
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Uncle Emil's 1916 photograph of Aunt Lydia
"looking back"
as she walks toward Old Main with the Swedish Pavilion on her right
Uncle Emil's 1916 photograph of Aunt Lydia
"looking back"
as she walks toward Old Main with the Swedish Pavilion on her right
So let us look forward to their stories. Go below for the directory on this Home section.
| home_for_swedesthewaytheywere_directory.docx |
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With my Uncle Emil looking at my dad, Gene Cochran, Yosemite, 1950
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Swedes: TheWayTheyWere
~ restoring lost local histories ~
reconnecting past to present
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All color photography throughout Swedes: The Way They Were is by Fran Cochran unless otherwise indicated, or obviously concluded it is not.
Copyright © 2019 www.swedesthewaytheywere.org. All rights reserved.
Swedes: TheWayTheyWere
~ restoring lost local histories ~
reconnecting past to present
* * *
All color photography throughout Swedes: The Way They Were is by Fran Cochran unless otherwise indicated, or obviously concluded it is not.
Copyright © 2019 www.swedesthewaytheywere.org. All rights reserved.
