Wadena Pioneer Journal | PERHAM FOCUS
Thursday, August 22, 2024
Contributed / Robert Andersen
Andy and Donna dated for about a year and a half before they tied the knot at a small church in Omaha. She was 18 years old and he was 19 years old.
90 years of life, 70 years of marriage Robert “Andy” Anderson shares stories of service, life BY ROBERT WILLIAMS Perham Focus PERHAM — Robert “Andy” Andersen, a Korean War veteran who turned 90 on Aug. 8, has accumulated quite a few interesting stories since he was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1934. He and his wife Donna were married in 1954 and they celebrated 70 years of marriage together on June 12. Andersen turned 17 years old in 1951 and joined the military on his birthday that year. “When I went out and got sworn in, I went out to Fort Omaha and they had a room full of guys and the guy in charge pointed and said ‘Now you, you, you and you are marines.’ And one of those guys passed out. I’ll never forget that,” Andersen said while laughing. Growing up in Nebraska, Andersen’s father ran a small grocery store and would do the meat cutting there. When he got on a bus to leave home, Andersen said the bus drove by his family’s store and his family stood outside so they could wave to each other before he left. That was the last time he saw them for quite a while. He found out he could
go to Hawaii for basic training, so he volunteered to go there thinking it might be nicer. He also found out later that infantry training does not take place in the nice areas of Hawaii. “We crawled up and down every bad spot on the island,” Andersen continued. “They didn’t train us in the good sections. They trained us in the bad sections. In the muck.” But it wasn’t all bad. While recollecting his time in Hawaii, Andersen laughed and said he did have a funny story from that adventure. He was too young to drink at the time, so when they would go into town to have some fun on leave, he was the one who’d get everybody back to camp. One time they had a runin with the Hawaii Air Shore Patrol. “We were down there walking the street, and here comes this little drunken sailor. And he was not very big, but he was just all over the place,” Anderson said. “Well the HASP got him. They started to put him in the back of the van and all of a sudden he turned and laid all three of those guys out cold. He was a lightweight champion boxer in the navy, come to find out. So
we just got out of there.” Andersen agreed that’s one of those things you probably couldn’t get away with these days. After basic training, he was sent to Japan to go to cook school for 30 days because he was only 17. After that, he rode on a train across Japan to a place where they loaded soldiers onto landing craft bound for Busan, South Korea. From there he rode another train that went through Seoul. “I went through Seoul and I think the biggest building I saw there was maybe a corner and a half of one side of a building,” Andersen continued. “Everything else was blown away. Nothing was there. And then they ran us up into North Korea and I went into the 987 Armored Field, which was self-propelled howitzers.” Despite being in a war zone, Andersen did remember a couple of funny stories from his time there. One was about a fellow soldier who decided to use the restroom shortly after an intense firefight. Well, the fight wasn’t totally over, and the North Korean forces started shelling their base while he was on the toilet. “They started shelling us, he got his drawers up,
Contributed / Robert Andersen
Andy joined the Seattle Police Department in January 1959 and stayed there until being medically retired in 1972 following a bad motorcycle accident while he was on duty. Before he retired, Andersen rose through the ranks to become a sergeant and a detective. he’s running like mad and they’re dropping shells right in behind him as he’s running up,” Andersen said. “He got up by our tent and I jumped out, grabbed him and pulled him in behind the sandbags.” Another story Andersen told involved their medic tent blowing up after some incoming fire set the tent ablaze. The explosion wasn’t from the incoming fire, but rather the tent exploded because of some homemade booze that was being stored inside. The containers the booze was stored in got so hot they blew up. “We had a bunch of incoming fire one time and it hit the medic’s
tent. The tent was burning like crazy and we’re trying to get it out,” Andersen continued. “All of a sudden it blows up and the colonel jumps all over this doctor saying, ‘What’s going on! You’re not supposed to have any explosives in there!’ Well, the medics had been coming up and taking the leftover fruits or whatever we had and were making raisin jack in 5-gallon cans.” After the war was over, Andersen came home to Omaha in January 1953. He said it took him a week to ride a ship to Japan from Korea, then a three-week ride on a ship to Hawaii before another two-week trip to Seattle, Washington. From there
he boarded a train to Carson, Colorado, where he met a sergeant from Iowa. That sergeant had just bought a brand new 1953 red-bottomed, black-top, big V-8 Buick convertible. He gave Andersen a ride back to Omaha in that car, and Andersen said he drove about 100 miles per hour the whole way. Once he finally made it home, Andersen said he met his wife Donna shortly after. “When I got home, Donna, her sister and her brother had been taking my two sisters to church and that’s how I met her. She reminded me of Daisy Mae, always barefoot,” Andersen said.
ANDERSON: Page 3
Wellness in the Woods: Transforming wellness into reality Business provides mental health resources to underserved individuals
BY NICOLE STRACEK Wadena Pioneer Journal WADENA — With a heart for serving people and a background in human services, including running a detox center, founder and CEO Jode Freyholtz-London established Wellness in the Woods alongside her husband Tom London in 2013 after she recognized the need for mental health support in Greater Minnesota. As a nonprofit organization, Wellness in the Woods provides peer
support services for individuals facing mental health and substance use challenges, particularly in rural Minnesot,a with services that focus on advocacy, education and expanding statewide peer support networks. Armed with lived-experiences and a passion for serving others, Freyholtz-London said that initially finding funding for the wellness-based organization was a challenge. “Although everybody thought it was a wonderful idea, there wasn’t any
money to go along with that,” said FreyholtzLondon. After applying for and receiving a $95,000 grant from the Minnesota Department of Human Services, Freyholtz-London was able to continue growing the network of peer-support professionals that work to help individuals who are struggling with mental health issues. “Those funds allowed us to start building some capacity and gave us the label of a statewide consumer network,” said Freyhotlz-London.
Today, Wellness in the Woods has 63 peer support professionals who work virtually throughout Minnesota with an emphasis on region five counties including Cass, Crow Wing, Todd, Morrison and Wadena counties. The mission is to support individuals with mental health challenges that often co-occur with substance use. “But no matter who we serve, we don’t do any billable services,” said FreyholtzLondon, who said her goal was to employ peer support specialists with
lived experiences. “I knew in my heart that I wanted all of my staff and board members to be people who have had a lived experience with a mental health challenge, oftentimes substance use. Many of my staff have experience with incarceration,” said Freyholtz-London. Wellness in the Woods offers paid training for employees and helps to develop a wellness plan that focuses on how to best serve those who need it
the most. The Virtual Peer Support program provides access to mental wellness from the comfort of home. Offered seven days a week via Zoom the Virtual Peer Support program is open to anyone in Minnesota and is facilitated by certified peer or recovery specialists Contributed photo / Jode Freyhotlz-London
Founder & CEO Jode Freyholtz-London speaking after receiving an award for the work done by Wellness in the WELLNESS: Page 4 Woods.