Death 2009 March 1, in Longmont, Colorado
Married
Fred Lindquist
July 30, 1935
Marriage Certificate signed John F. Wagan
In Ft. Collins, Colo
Fred and Lucille Newlun Lindquist married, in 1935, in Ft. Collins, Colorado.
Jon Fred Lindquist was a young man in Sweden in the late 1920s and decided to emigrate to America.
This all started when his cousin, Fred, had purchased a ticket aboard a ship sailing to New York. Fred decided he was not going to use his ticket to sail to America. Shortly before the departure date of the ship, Jon discovered his girlfriend with another man. So Jon goes to his cousin and asks him if he could use his ticket to sail to America and pay him back when he makes enough money. Fred agrees and gives him the ticket and his passport. There was not enough time for Jon to get his own passport before the ship set sail and they, being cousins, shared the same names, Jon Fred and Fred Jon Lindkvist and looked enough alike in the ID photo to pass upon inspection.
Jon sails to America and settles with other Swedes in St. Paul, Minnesota and gets work in an Armour slaughter house. With the oncoming Depression, layoffs eventually force many men out of work. Jon, now Fred, offers up his position in an attempt so that his manager, with a wife and child, could save his job.
Fred and a friend of his decide to head west in search of work. Upon hearing of a work lead at a timber mill, Fred heads to Wyoming, outside of Laramie, and becomes a lumber jack, up in the hills in Keystone.
Hampton Inn Laramie, WY
Keystone mine
He would later meet and fall in love with red-headed Lucille, who worked in the cook house for the timber mill. She had lived next door to the lumber mill owner with her parents in Colorado. They soon married and had a son, Freddie.
Freddie Lindquist, 1942
A few years later, Lucille gave birth to twin girls, Janet and Joan.
With the outbreak of WWII, the US government is concerned about Swedish migrant workers returning to Sweden, as their skill and labor working for the mill was needed for the war effort. Fred was questioned by the mill manager and asked, what would make him stay? He said he wanted to stay in America and wanted to be a citizen. Without taking classes and studying for the test, as they were too far away, a judge comes up to administer the test and he passes. He is granted full citizenship (with his cousin’s passport) and stays in Wyoming.
In around 1943-44, the lumber camp accepts some Germans as POWs, along with other prisoners of the Germans, who were not enemies of the USA, such as some Eastern-Europeans (Polish, Serbian, Hungarians…). The Germans were detained and worked in the mill with the other POWs, who were allowed to roam free and as they pleased, bunking among the other mill workers already there.
One of these POWs would often come by the Lindquist’s house and sit on the floor with the infant twin girls. Lucille said he would just sit there and cry while gazing at the girls. He talked about how he was told that his whole family had been killed back home in the war, so he had nothing to go back to. He deeply missed his little children and wife he had lost forever.
Janet and Joan Lindquist, 1943
At the end of the war, the POWs are all returned back to Europe. Many of them even returned to work at the lumber camp.
One day, the Lindquist’s get a letter from far away. It’s a letter in an envelope, written in blue-crayon on something that looked like old brown butcher paper. It was from the POW who used to come by the house and sit with Janet and Joan.
Inside, it had written something like:
Dear Lindquist,
Wife alive.
Children alive.
It was difficult to read the writing and his signed name. Janet doesn’t recollect what country in Eastern Europe the letter might have come from.
Freddie said the man was from Germany. Freddie was in Ft. Collins going to school, during this time.
Lucille would remark on how everyone involved in the war, the Germans, the Swedes, the Eastern-Europeans, and the Americans all shared similar cultures and a common fear (an ethno-relative mindset). Nobody knew what would happen, because of the war. “Everybody was scared,” (experiencing the same anxieties), and everybody was happy to be in Wyoming.
Lucille also talked about the German POWs and what “young, scared boys” they were. The Germans were mindful in their situation in being away from the war, yet in a new country not sure how they would be accepted by the people there. They were just kids, like her younger brother, a Marine in the Pacific fighting the Japanese. She also thought that the American Army guards were “assholes” and acted like jerks with their mindless authority over the German POWs.
Children
Frederick Duane, Jr.
Janet Kay Croft
Joan Ann Harding
A Trip Over the Golden Gate
We were heading south from Oregon. Somehow she got on the northbound side. She tried once or twice more but always ended up going the wrong way. Finally, the last time when she realized what she had done she made a u-turn right in the middle of the (Golden Gate) bridge. She had to drive over two concrete islands to do it. When the toll booth guy saw what she did, he about blew a gasket. Told her he would only let her off the bridge if she promised to NEVER come back. This was in the '50s. We hit the toll booth going each way several times. That's why the guy remembered us. We had just paid the toll and could not have had time to go all the way across and come all the way back. Also, you have to remember this was the '50s and highway signs and directions have much improved since then. In addition, paved roads were a luxury to people used to driving on gravel roads. Freeways, were mind boggling.
[Croft, J. June, 2011]
Swedish Visitors
In 1970, Fred went back to Sweden the first time sense he left (41 years).
In 1976, Freddie took relatives on a visit of the southwest USA. Cousin Ketty spoke English.
March 1978, some of them (Swedish relatives) visited us in Arvada, CO and San Diego, CA.
In 1979, Karl Gunner had a second trip to Colorado.
In 1984, Lucille, Fred and Janet went to Sweden.
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