After WWII and heading into the next decade, big changes began to affect the Hupila/ Kinnunen family. Those born as second generation citizens were getting older and starting to make their way in the world.
Alvar, being the oldest, had graduated from high school, spent some time at college and worked both as an iron miner and logger. Aili was getting close to graduating from Greenway High School. Tommy was a few years younger and just entering high school. He would graduate and go on to get a college degree. Fritzi was the youngest and still in elementary school.
Alvar still lived at home. By 1948 he had been hired by U.S. Steel and remained in their employment until retiring after 34 years of service.
The farm had diminished in size and would soon be done as a working entity. The resort was in its heyday and Edwin still operated the blacksmith shop but found less work there and more as a carpenter and log cabin builder.
Helmi worked hard with regular household chores, gardening and canning but also with added responsibilities with the resort. Cleaning cabins and laundering bed sheets and pillowcases became a large part of her summers.
The year 1950 brought two large events into play. Alvar and his friend Ralph Kluck would spend some evenings socializing in Bigfork – particularly at a place called “The Honky Tonk.”
One night he met a cute young girl in a flower print dress who would later become my mother. Norma Danielson - more often called “Toots” - and Alvar began a courtship that became a lifelong partnership by getting married in September of 1951. They settled into their first home – one of the cabins in the resort called “The New Cabin.”
The second event of the new decade involved my grandmother Helmi becoming ill. She hid symptoms of the cancer that took her until it was too late to do anything about it. She passed away on February 16, 1951. She was 53.
I was born in October of 1952, the first of the third generation. Soon my siblings started to appear and in order, Kathy, Kirk, Karen, Kimberley and Keeley came along with my youngest sister being born in 1960. More on us later.
After graduating, Aili followed Nellie out to California where she met and married Bill Larson. They had two children, Marina and Peter. They are the only first cousins on this side of the family.
Alvar had two first cousins in the U.S. Both were children of Uncle Bill and Frances Kinnunen - Tommy (Cousin Tommy) and Fritzi (proper first name Frances). Tommy married Connie Erickson and they had two sons, Bill and Jack. Fritzi married Chuck Lahti and they had a boy and a girl, Jon and Mia.
So, there were a total of 12 third generation descendants of the Hupila/Kinnunen family in America. It’s a funny thing. Difficult as it is to trace ancestors back past our grandparents, so is it difficult to keep track of contemporary relatives as we move to second and third cousins unless they live nearby and you grow up with them. I’d like to say that I’ve had close relationships all my life with them, it’s only recently that we’ve reconnected and come to know each other again.
Growing up in the 50s and into the 60s, hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles separated us from our closest relatives. There were no cell phones or internet. Texting, FaceBook and instant messaging were non-existent.
Aili came back three times from California that I can remember. My dad, sister Kathy and I went to visit her in California once. There would be cards and a long-distance phone call at Christmas, and that was about it. Tommy and Fritzi grew up in Mountain Iron, and today that drive would seem inconsequential. Back then, it was a major effort. Bill and Frances would stop by at Christmas and for years, that was the extent of our contact.
The fifties was a busy time for my immediate family. Of course, the arrival of myself and five of my siblings was a major cause of that. By 1955 we had outgrown the confines of the “New Cabin” so dad and grandpa Edwin built us a new house on the adjacent property that my dad had bought. As a kid, I had a short walk to the house that my dad grew up in to visit grandpa and his second wife Ina who he married in 1953. Ida, also known as “mumu,” passed away in ’53 as well.
We grew up as “Boomers,” although much of the growth of wealth during that period of time seemed to have passed us by. We were comfortable, but not “well off.” We heated our house with a woodstove from popple, birch and maple that we cut from our own property. We didn’t have running water until several years after we moved into the “new house.” My brother Kirk and I shared a small bedroom that was 8 ft. by 10 ft. and all four of my sisters had one room that was a bit bigger than ours.
We were fortunate that we lived in the center of our community. The Balsam Store was a quarter mile to the south, and the Scenic Grocery was just a bit more than that to the north. The Balsam Hall – built after the Finn Hall was torn down – was almost across the road from us. The baseball field was behind that and in 1963 the hockey rink was built just to the south. Balsam Elementary School was only another hundred yards to the north of the hall, and yes, we walked to school both ways through cold and snow for all six of our grades there.
I could write an entire book on my growing up in Balsam. In the interest of brevity, we’ll just hit some of the big events as I was moving toward graduation.
I started elementary school in 1959. At that time phones were party line and the only television in the community was at the Kinnunen farm. The polio vaccine had just come out and a new car cost less than $2000. We had a big garden and bought our dairy from a farm down the road.
Our beef grew, for the most part, within a mile of our house. We caught fish, hunted grouse ducks and deer and picked berries for desserts. We lived much like my grandparents did until late in the 60s. The modern world finally made it to Balsam, and it hasn’t stopped growing since. The advancement of technology, science and civilization since that time is staggering.
The 60s into the early 70’s brought the Kennedy assassination along with Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy being killed by violence. The space race was on a nd our fi rst a stronauts ventured from earth all the way to the moon – less than 70 years since the first powered flight. The Vietnam War caused over a decade of political upheaval. Watergate showed us how corruption could make the country stand still. The Civil Rights Act changed America from its very roots. Music evolved into more than just entertainment. And yet, many of the same problems we faced, were the same problems our forefathers had to deal with 75 or 100 years before. It just seemed to move at a faster pace now.
Uncle Otto passed in 1965 and Edwin’s second wife Ina not long after. Nellie died in 1969. Edwin drowned in his beloved Snaptail Lake in 1971 while putting docks in to start a new resort season. He was 83. Uncle Bill was laid to rest in 1979 and all the first generation was now gone.
The second generation have all left us now, too. Aili died in California of cancer in 1986, Fritzi in 2014 and Tommy in 2019. My dad, Alvar passed in 2012. He loved cutting wood and was on the chainsaw the day before a stroke took him at age 87.
I am of the third American generation, and the ninth generation from the beginning of this story. We are aging quickly and will soon be visiting those generations before us. We’ve lost one already. My brother Kirk was the victim of a murder in St. Paul in 1988. That leaves 11 that remain. I’m hoping this history will be of interest to those who are here after we are gone and to those still here that might have their interest piqued because of these writings.
Next time: Visting the Relatives in Finland
