Don't Lose Heart

In loving memory of Marvin Krehbiel (1915-2001) and Orpha Flickner Krehbiel (1923-2007)

 I write this in honor of my loving my parents, Marvin (Merf) and Orpha (Orf). It is impossible to write about one of my parents and not include the other. My father knew my mother since her birth. Both were raised on farms, several miles apart. Their first language was German, and they had to learn to speak English to attend school.

During the Great Depression, Marvin, at the age of fourteen, quit his first year of high school and went to work for his uncle, a carpenter and farmer; while Orpha linked arms with her older sister, braving the mighty Kansas dust storms, to make their way to the one-room grade school. The two girls soon took on the responsibility of caring for their two younger brothers when their mother died suddenly following childbirth.

Orpha graduated from high school in 1941, and the couple married in 1942. One month later, Marvin was drafted into the Army. With a severely crippled hand since childhood, it had seemed unlikely that he would be called to serve. Orpha lived with her father and step-mother after Marvin entered the Army, and she took a job as a check-out girl in a grocery store. To her delight, she discovered that she was pregnant, and in 1943, the couple’s first child, Sue, was born.

Marvin had knee surgery and spent ten months recuperating in an Army hospital. Later, he was shipped to Manila Bay, Philippines, to serve as a mechanic in a motor pool. The couple’s second child, Jeffrey, was born in 1945, shortly after Marvin’s departure. He did not see his son until Jeff was six months old. Marvin was offered a disability pension upon Honorable Discharge from the Army. He refused it, saying that he didn’t need it, he could work, and he wanted that money to go to the widow of one of the boys who wouldn’t be going home. (My mother told me this story when I was forty years old. My dad had never mentioned it.)

After the war, the family rented farm land that included an abandoned house. Full of trash, they cleaned it out and repaired it, living on the lower floor the first winter, because they couldn’t afford to heat the upstairs. At dawn of the day they planned to begin harvesting their first wheat crop, a powerful hailstorm blew in. The result was one hundred percent loss of the crop and income the family desperately needed. But they managed, and that fall, they sowed another wheat crop.

In 1948, the couple moved the young family to a nearby farm. Orpha had been raised on a dairy farm, and in 1952, the couple started a dairy. Together, they milked cows twice a day, every day. But make no mistake, Orpha ran that dairy. Only during a short hospital stay, when the couple’s youngest daughter, Peggy, was born in 1954, was Orpha absent from that milk barn.

Marvin’s health was failing, yet he worked the fields, milked cows, and cared for the growing herd of beef cattle. For several years, the couple sought the help of local doctors. In 1961, Sue started nursing school, and Orpha took a job as a cook at the grade school to supplement the family income. When Sue came home for Christmas break, she told our parents she thought our dad was suffering from Hyperthyroidism and begged them to find yet another doctor. Diagnosed with Hyperthyroidism, due to Graves Disease, Marvin was successfully treated with radioactive Iodine, saving his life. Marvin suffered from consequences of this illness for the rest of his life. But he continued to farm with Orpha by his side

During the ’60′s, the farm was hit twice by tornadoes. Using the skills he had learned as a youth, Marvin repaired the house and rebuilt the cattle sheds. And Jeff began college, training to become an architect.

Both Marvin and Orpha shared the opinion that education was a privilege to be treasured and a goal to fulfill. Marvin had given up his high school education to help his family financially, and Orpha, an excellent student, had longed to go to college. The couple struggled and sacrificed, rewarded that all three of their children earned degrees.

The couple remained on the farm while enjoying their retirement years. They received the startling phone call that their only son had fallen dead from cardiac arrest, but was revived after five minutes. They rushed to his side, and within a week, were relieved to know that he had not suffered permanent brain damage. Jeff quickly recovered and returned to his normal life.

Two years later, Sue discovered that World War II Veterans who had not graduated from high school were eligible to receive honorary high school diplomas. She arranged for our father to receive his diploma. Shortly after, Marvin survived surgery for stomach cancer. Sue was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and passed away days before the graduation ceremony. Marvin had suffered a stroke that week and was in the hospital, unable to attend his daughter’s funeral service or the graduation.

Marvin returned to the farm, confined to a wheel chair, with Orpha as his primary caregiver. Our father passed away peacefully later that year at the age of 86. Our mother had her first heart attack three weeks before his passing, then a second on the anniversary of the first. After a third heart attack, she was diagnosed with a number of cardiac conditions, and was told she had four to six months to live.

Orpha returned to the farm, modifying her stubborn work ethic, to conserve her energy. But she did not waver from her high standards for cooking and cleaning. She occupied herself by piecing and hand-sewing colorful quilts for her two granddaughters’ wedding gifts. Orpha passed away suddenly, four and a half years later, at the age of 83, in the farm house that she and Marvin had shared since 1948.

And now my brother, Jeff, owns the farm. He has graciously offered the use of the farm house to the rest of our family, referring to it as our “vacation home”.

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” – Marcel Proust

~ Peggy