In the Arena: The Story of a Blessed Life: Academic Leadership, the Joy of Family, and Ham Radio

By Harold M. Kolenbrander

This memoir of the life of Harold Kolenbrander begins with his earliest days and continues through today - a chronicle of his personal and professional life as it unfolded. Harold's story is one of gratitude for all the people who have been so important in his life - his family, friends (both personal and professional), and his mentors.&nbs

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Jan 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781649900302

Harold M. Kolenbrander

Harold Kolenbrander grew up in rural South Dakota and Minnesota. He holds a BA in chemistry from Central College in Iowa, a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Iowa, and three honorary degrees. He taught organic and biochemistry for seven years before going into administration at Grand Valley State University, then Central College and later as president of the University of Mount Union. After retirement, he served as interim president at Alma College and for several years as a senior consultant at Academic Search. With his late wife, Harold has three children and six grandchildren, including a set of triplets. Recently, he and a college classmate decided to spend their senior chapters of life together living in both Rhode Island and Ohio. He has been a licensed ham radio operator since 1954, and also enjoys woodworking.

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PART ONE

THE FORMATIVE YEARS

CHAPTER 1

MY BIRTH AND EARLY YEARS

T

he story of a blessed life all began, I am told, at the Sibley, Iowa, hospital on October 7, 1938. My parents welcomed me home to join them and my big sister, Aletha, who was then nearing her second birthday. In fact, I was born twenty-two months to the day after her.

My father, a young pastor in the RCA, often known as the Dutch Reformed Church, was then serving a congregation in Sibley. About a year and a half after my birth, the family moved to rural South Dakota, where my father began serving a rural church about four miles outside the small community of Springfield. It was 1940, and our nation was preparing for greater participation in World War II, which was already fully underway in Western Europe.

One of my earliest memories of those years was my fourth birthday. I have absolutely no idea why, but that day ­happened to be the day that some men from the church poured a new piece of sidewalk leading from the parsonage to the church building. I, of course, as any self-indulgent four-year-old would, thought they would all be attentive to me on my ­birthday. That turned out not to be true, and I was a deeply disappointed little boy!

But very shortly after my fourth birthday, I was surprised one morning by a commotion downstairs that my big sister, Aletha, encouraged me to check out. When I crept downstairs and opened the door, I soon learned that we had a new baby at our house. It was November 23, 1942, just one day before my mother’s birthday and three days before my father’s. My mother had given birth to a baby brother. My parents named him Paul. When I went back upstairs to tell my sister what I had learned, she wasn’t certain I was telling the truth but soon learned that it indeed was so.

Aletha and me as little kids

Very soon it was clear that Paul had something wrong with his little body. After nursing he would forcefully expel all the milk he had just been fed. My parents were alarmed and quickly went to consult Dr. Joe who immediately identified the problem. Paul’s stomach could not empty its contents into his small intestine due to a pyloric stenosis. He had to be taken quickly to the hospital in Yankton—about thirty-five miles away—for surgery. The story has a happy ending. The surgery was successful, and Paul recovered quickly, but Mom never forgot how close she had come to losing her precious baby boy.

It was probably the summer of the year after Paul was born. It was a beautiful summer day, and my mother had placed Paul in the big wicker buggy and given me the honor of pushing the buggy up and down the sidewalk. The sidewalk was a simple straight line from the house to the garage. Soon I became bored with going up and down this straight path. There was a tree just off to the side, and I decided to take a detour around the tree to add some variety to my task. Unfortunately, I was going too fast with the buggy and turned too sharply, and Paul flew out of the buggy onto the lawn. Fortunately he was not hurt! Mom was so relieved that Paul had not been hurt that she let it go with a teaching moment in which she told me to be more careful the next time. As a matter of fact, I’m not certain there ever was a next time!

In the fall of 1944, my formal schooling began. Aletha and I walked the approximately three-fourths of a mile to the little one-room schoolhouse. It wasn’t uphill both ways, and we did have shoes on our feet, but there was a big—and, we feared, mean—dog that lived at a farm that we had to walk by on our way to and from the school. The dog never hurt us but certainly did scare us and made us both celebrate each time we passed by safely.

One early spring day, I was certain that I did not need to wear a coat. My mother was dismayed but finally acceded to my wish, and I walked off to school in shirtsleeves. I was feeling pretty smart and pleased with myself that I had been able to persuade my mother. That was true until morning recess, when a breeze had come up and the temperature had fallen a few degrees. Upon going outside to play, I found it was quite chilly, and I was uncomfortable. Oh, how I wished I had heeded my mother and worn my coat. But would I admit that? Nooooo!

And, speaking of foolish choices, one warm spring day, my sister and I and one other kid from the school walked down the road just a little way beyond our house. There was a large culvert under the road, and a small pool of water had formed, probably due to the spring rains. I decided to go swimming. I think it was the only time I engaged in skinny dipping in my life, but I did that day. Seemed like a good idea at the time. My parents thought otherwise! My sister had told them of my adventure. I was sent to my room, and only after a time did my mom feel sorry for me and bring me some supper with the stern admonition to never do that again.

Our little school had only about ten to a dozen students enrolled. I was the only student in my grade, and I think Aletha had two in hers. There were a couple of older kids—probably in the seventh or eighth grade. In any case, at recess one day I heard one of the older kids say to one of the younger ones, You son of a bitch! I had no idea what that meant. All I knew was that the older kid was annoyed with the younger one when he called him a son of a bitch. That evening at home, my baby brother annoyed me somehow—it probably didn’t take much—so, in response, I repeated the exclamation I had learned. My mother was not amused! She told me in no uncertain terms that she never wanted to hear me say that again! I do not remember being told why, but I certainly got the message that it was a verboten expression.

The war was raging at that time, and students in schools across the nation were encouraged to participate through the purchase of war bonds. Each week we could buy a stamp to place into the stamp book that was, when filled, redeemable for a bond. All of us were quite aware of the war because everything was rationed. And, as I recall, we were told that we could help win the war by gathering milkweed pods to be used in making the parachutes that our soldiers needed. I remember several excursions to places quite near the school where the weed grew in abundance.

I also remember the day that President Roosevelt died (April 12, 1945). I do not know how our teacher was made aware of the fact, but I do remember that she took us all ­outside, where we stood at the base of the flagpole and recited the pledge as she lowered the flag to half-mast. And I have a vivid ­memory of going to the little town of Springfield, South Dakota, to march with others to celebrate VE Day in the spring of 1945—May 8, 1945. Cannot remember a similar event on VJ Day—August 14, 1945—but I’m guessing there was one.

It was a simple time in rural America. One of the big events at the school was a box social. At a gathering of the teacher, students, and parents (perhaps grandparents too, though I do not remember), the various boxes that different people brought were sold to the highest bidder. I was able to buy the box that my teacher, Lela Burr, had brought and enjoy its contents with her. It was a great privilege in my young life.

In August of 1944, the church had a party in our front yard. The purpose was to help my parents celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary. Aletha, Paul, and I joined our parents on the big front porch while the parishioners entertained us with singing and some truly homespun skits. And I remember explicitly that the leaders of the church presented a tin coffee can with a cash gift to my parents. (Traditionally, the tenth wedding anniversary involves a gift of tin.) As noted, it was a simple time in rural America!

Aletha had taught me to read before I started school, but nonetheless I vividly remember the books that were used to teach reading at the Kirkwood School—a one-room schoolhouse with all eight grades and one teacher. The main character in the series was a monkey named Winky. I still think of them as the Winky books! Thanks to Google, I was able to learn that these books were published as The Quinlan Readers. They were written by Myrtle Banks Quinlan.

Life in our house revolved around the church and its many activities. Dad did not have a lot of free time to share with us, but he was able to build a cart for us, using the tops and bottoms of buttermilk barrels for the wheels. In the process of building it, he showed me how to make an axle and how to build and strengthen the hub in each wheel. I was quite impressed with the product and so happy to have a set of wheels. Dad also purchased a used twenty-four-inch bicycle when we were old enough to learn how to ride it. Another very happy day in the life of a young boy!

A neighbor whose farm abutted the church had a junk pile. It contained many treasures, including discarded tractor parts that I took great joy in retrieving and using as I built my various dreams in the trees near the house. Speaking of trees, one day I had climbed into a tree with the new saw my father had given me. It was the first tool I owned. In any event, I proceeded to use it to cut off a small limb in the tree. The saw worked well. Its owner, however, was not very bright. I was holding on to the branch that I was cutting. When the limb fell, so did I! Wasn’t hurt at all, so decided to do it again. Same result—branch fell, and I fell after it. Not quite as lucky this time. I wasn’t hurt seriously, but it did hurt more than the first fall. I was at least smart enough not to do it again.

In the early forties, it was common for the women of churches to have meetings during weekday afternoons. There were usually a couple such organizations of women in each church with slightly different purposes. These were usually called ladies aid societies. Part of each meeting was a lunch, or in the parlance of rural settings of the day, a coffee time. One of the women of the society brought, in turn, the sandwiches and other goodies, usually cookies, and served the other women midway through their meeting. My mother had strictly forbidden Aletha and me from appearing hoping for a handout of sandwiches and cookies. However, if one of the women of the society brought one of her children with her to play with my sister and me, we would encourage her (usually the child accompanying the mom was a daughter) to go and see if there were sufficient sandwiches and/or cookies so that we could each have one. Most of the time, our guest was able to come back with the goodies. One of the little pleasures that came our way in that very simple time.

The forties were a very different time in many ways. One striking example of that—at least I find it striking—was that children did not know it when their mothers were pregnant and expecting a baby. One Sunday Aletha and I came home from Sunday school and asked our mom if we were going to have a new baby. As I recall, she asked us why we were asking, and we told her that our Sunday school teacher had said we were going to have a new baby at our house. I cannot remember if Mom affirmed the fact or simply demurred. In any case, a day or two later, we three kids—Aletha, Paul, and I—awoke to find a neighbor lady at our house and Mom and Dad gone. She told us that our dad would be home shortly, and he was. When he got home, he told us we had a baby sister and that her name was Eunice. He also told us that she had bright red hair. We could hardly wait to meet her. Soon enough we had that opportunity as Dad took us to the maternity ­hospital (common in rural South Dakota in those days) in nearby Scotland, South Dakota, to see Mom and Eunice.

Earlier I noted that the men laying the sidewalk had not really noticed that it was my fourth birthday. I had a reprise of that feeling on my eighth birthday. That was the day the moving van arrived to take our furniture and other things from South Dakota to our new home in Steen, Minnesota, where Dad and Mom had decided to accept a call to serve a different church. Once again I was disappointed that no one seemed to care that it was my birthday. It is funny now, but then it was a serious disappointment.

My family 1946 - when we moved to Minnesota

CHAPTER 2

GROWING UP IN STEEN, MINNESOTA

W

e arrived at our new home—a home that I would enjoy from age eight to eighteen. My first day of school in my new town, Steen, Minnesota, found me joining two other third-graders. The size of my class had tripled! Outside of the classroom, I was very fortunate to find two boys who would become my best friends for the next several years. Their names were Wilmer and Edwin Elbers. Wilmer was a year older than I, and Edwin a year younger. There are many stories I could tell about our youthful adventures. We enjoyed many hours of riding our bicycles, playing sandlot baseball, flying kites, digging caves, and myriad other activities.

One goal that we tried to accomplish, without ever fully doing so, was to set up a telegraph line between our houses. We created our telegraph keys using bolts wound with wire to create the electromagnet and a T-hinge as the sounder. With wire obtained from many discarded ignition coils that had been replaced in the cars of the day, we strung wires between our houses—approximately a city block distance from one other. I’m not certain where the losses occurred, but we never were able to make the key of the telegraph at one of the houses trigger the response of the sounder at the other house. Oh well. The attempt provided many hours of enjoyable activity together.

By the time we reached our midteens, my friends’ mother had fallen ill with multiple sclerosis. Their father was called to be his wife’s caregiver. His work was the delivery of gasoline and fuel oil to many farmers in the area. The task of delivery fell, in large measure, to my friends. So the three of us became quite good at the task. I am still surprised that my parents did not disapprove. All three of us had automobile driver’s licenses by that time, but we certainly did not have the license required to drive a bulk-fuel truck. Thankfully, we never had an accident while delivering many thousands of gallons of flammable liquids.

Sometime before the days of hauling fuel, I had an opportunity to learn how to play pinochle. After learning the rudiments of the game one evening, and upon returning to my home, I proudly announced that I had learned to play pinochle. My father instructed me that I should not play that game as it involved using face cards that he believed were ­inappropriate. Over the years that followed, I played hundreds—perhaps more accurately, thousands—of games of pinochle. In fact, I still enjoy playing it. But I had learned not to talk about it at home!

Another special memory of those early years in Minnesota was a trip with my father to a show that, as I recall, was put on by General Motors. The show was offered free of charge and was presented in the Armory in Luverne, Minnesota. I cannot remember all the things that we were told about that night, but I do have one very clear recollection. It was at the end of the show. The presenter told us that we needed to be very quiet in order to hear this new engine that he was going to show us. The lights dimmed as the presenter piqued the level of expectation in his audience. Then one final time he exhorted us to be very quiet, and then he would start this new engine! The new engine that he was presenting started, and its roar was deafening. Then he told us the new engine was a jet engine and that soon we would be seeing jet engines in airplanes. This young boy was very impressed! It was a special evening with my dad and one that I will always remember.

Dad was always very busy. He had no secretarial help and had to prepare and deliver two sermons each Sunday, week after week after week. He did have a month of paid vacation, but other than those vacation times, he was very busy. Not only did he need to prepare the sermons, but he also had to teach catechism lessons to a couple of groups each week, lead the session to prepare all the Sunday school teachers for the coming Sunday, type up and mimeograph the weekly bulletin, and pay regular visits to all the parishioners who were housebound or in the hospital.

Dad had a large vegetable garden that served two purposes. He loved to spend whatever free time he had during the growing season tending his vegetables, trying new seeds, and the like. He loved to do it, but sometimes I’m sure he must have wished he did not have to work quite so hard. He needed the big garden to feed his family, and I never heard a word of complaint from him about it.

One of his new seeds produced a plant that yielded a fruit that looked very similar to a watermelon. The couple of hills that he had planted produced prodigious quantities of fruit. Apparently, one night some intruders—probably some young guys from the church—thought they would swipe a couple and enjoy some good watermelon. They were quite surprised I am sure to find that what looked very much like a watermelon was not! The broken remains of the ones they had pilfered were lying near the garden the next day. Dad was quite amused. Dad found great satisfaction from his garden as a laboratory where he could test his various ideas. Only much later, actually in the last few years of his life, did I understand that Dad was a frustrated scientist.

He had consistently encouraged my brother and me in our scientific predilections. We always had subscriptions to Popular Science and Popular Mechanics at the house. And he was immediately supportive of my interest in ham radio when I started down that path in the early fifties. I was very happy to have his support but never thought a lot about why he had so eagerly endorsed my interests in science and technology. One time, when I was visiting him in the nursing home, where he lived after Parkinson’s disease had made it impossible for him to take care of himself, our conversation moved to talking about his high school and college experiences. It was then that he told me that, when he had asked his parents for their support to go to college (this was in the late 1920s), his mother made him promise that if he went to college, he would also go to the seminary and become a minister. The light went on in my head; Dad had really wanted to be a scientist, but his obligation to fulfill his parents’ wishes had taken his career in a different direction.

Returning to the story of my years in Minnesota—nearly every winter included days when the low temperature for the day was −30 degrees Fahrenheit. Cold, very cold, was the norm in the winter. Despite the cold weather, the boys at our school regularly played basketball on a frozen court on the school grounds. Our teacher encouraged us and tried to schedule a few games with teams from the school in nearby Hills, Minnesota. Hills had an elementary and secondary school and was the place we would later attend when we finished the eighth grade and went on to high school. We eagerly looked forward to playing a game with the boys from the school in Hills. It was the first time any of us had had the experience of playing basketball in a gymnasium. I have no recollection of who won or lost the game but will never forget the feeling of luxury that came with playing in a warm gymnasium.

The elementary school in Steen had four rooms. Three of them were classrooms, and the fourth was a shop with a limited selection of tools. The grades were divided among the three rooms, with one used for grades one and two (kindergarten was not offered). Another served the third, fourth, and fifth grades, and the third classroom housed grades six, seven, and eight. While the school was small, we were blessed with good teachers. I particularly remember my seventh-and-eighth-grade teacher. His name was Dana Madison Fleming. He had a master’s degree in English and was a gifted teacher. One of the gifts he shared with us was his reading skill. He would spend perhaps fifteen minutes a day reading to us, and one book I remember particularly well was entitled Ol’ King David an’ the Philistine Boys. Mr. Fleming could read with great expression, which made all his reading so very enjoyable.

Moving on to High School

Upon completion of the eighth grade in 1952, I moved on to attend high school in Hills. Schools still used initiation in those days, and the comic book character that I was instructed to look like had a bald head. I cannot remember the name of the character, but I can tell you that at that time my head was covered with very thick hair! In an effort to achieve a bald look, I wore a nylon stocking on my head. I guess it was OK with the upperclassmen, who did not give me any grief about it.

I have noted that the area of southwest Minnesota where we lived was a rural farming community. One of the consequences of that was that all ninth graders were required to take a course in agriculture. Our teacher, Mr. Erickson, was a kind man and quite patient with a group of rather high-energy and unruly freshmen boys. In terms of the classroom, the highlight of my freshman year was a course in English composition and grammar. Our teacher, Ms. Krause, taught us how to diagram a sentence, and through this process we learned a great deal about English grammar. Ms. Krause was a large woman who drove a Jeep and loved to hunt bear in the mountains. Her hunting exploits got my attention. She had a big, warm smile, and I looked forward to each class with her and the opportunity to figure out how to diagram the complex sentences she would give us for in-class analysis.

Two Very Special High School Teachers

In my second year of high school, two men entered my life and went on to be heavily involved in who I would become. The first was my athletic coach. We had only one coach for all the sports! His name was Hugo Goehle. The second was my science teacher. Again, we had only one for all the science subjects. His name was J. J. Hron. Coach Goehle was a great motivator and provided a model for us young boys to emulate. He was demanding but kind. Mr. Hron allowed me the freedom to experiment and learn through doing. More about that in a minute.

Coach Goehle was a PK (preacher’s kid) like me. He had played college football at the University of South Dakota and was an excellent athlete. He was a big, strong man. He was not married while I was in high school and devoted all of his time to coaching football, basketball, and track. On the football practice field, he would not tolerate laziness. We had only one blocking dummy, and we each had to take turns either holding it or blocking it. If Coach decided we had not hit the blocking dummy hard enough, the penalty was that we had to hold the dummy while he blocked it at full force. More than one of us found ourselves on our backsides on the ground following his block. Most of us did not make the same mistake twice.

We played six-man football. We did not have enough players to play the eleven-man game. So the line was comprised of the center and two ends. The backfield included the quarterback and two halfbacks. Most of the plays involved the two running backs either running with the football or trying to catch a pass from the quarterback. Most of the time the lines’ job was to block, but some of the time an end around play was called, or the end was sent out to catch a pass. The game was much more wide open, and in order to get a first down, it was necessary to move the ball forward at least fifteen yards rather than the ten that are required in the eleven-man game.

Basketball was played in the very gymnasium that had been such a luxurious privilege when I was in elementary school in Steen. Coach Goehle was, as in football, a demanding but kind, fair coach. He taught us the fundamentals of passing and dribbling, how to shoot a layup with either our right or left hand depending on the situation, and to not only shoot but also make free throws. He was such a believer in the importance of scoring every time we went to the free-throw line that, at the end of daily practice, we were required to make ten free throws in a row before we could leave the floor to take a shower.

In both football and basketball, the treat at the end of the season, for the varsity players, was a trip with Coach to see the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers play in the Twin Cities. Wow, that was special!

Coach Goehle also directed the track team in the spring. I had run the mile as a freshman but was able to convince Mr. Goehle that I should be the trainer rather than one of the participants. It probably was an easy sale as he had told me more than once on the gridiron that my biggest problem was that I ran too long in one place. In any case, I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to be outside in the spring with the track team.

Mr. J. J. Hron, who was also a very important model in my young life, was older than Coach Goehle. I would guess that he was in his late fifties or early sixties, though my ability to guess ages of older people was undoubtedly flawed by my assumption that they were all old people. In any case, Mr. Hron not only permitted but also encouraged my experimentation.

At our school, sophomores took biology (it was a required course) and juniors and seniors could elect to take chemistry and physics. When the chemistry course began, I knew immediately that it was a discipline I would enjoy. And Mr. Hron made it an especially enticing subject by permitting me to do extra experiments in the laboratory.

One day I read in one of the few books we had that you could change white phosphorous into red phosphorous by heating the white form in a vacuum. While our labs were far from well equipped, I was able to find an ignition tube and fit it with a stopper and a tube to permit me to draw a vacuum. I placed a small amount of white phosphorous in the tube, hooked the system to a manual vacuum pump, and pumped it for a short time, thinking that I certainly had gotten all the air out of the tube by that point. I then proceeded to heat the tube. Very quickly I learned a couple of important things. First, it is not easy to create a vacuum! Second, the heat applied by the Bunsen burner quickly expanded the air left in the tube, resulting in not only the stopper but also the white phosphorous ­flying out of the end of the tube. The latter attached itself to the superstructure of the lab bench and, as phosphorous unprotected from the air is wont to do, it began burning brightly. I quickly got the fire extinguisher and put out the blaze.

Undaunted, I reloaded the ignition tube with some white phosphorous and pumped it for a long time before attempting to heat it. When I did start to heat the tube, I soon saw that I was going to be successful in converting the white phosphorous to the red form. My excitement about chemistry was definitely kindled by this and other opportunities that I had to try things. That said, what I was permitted to do was without doubt dangerous. Working alone in a lab with no safety