For immediate release:

Descendants of Depression Era Rural Classmates Finally Meet

Over 75 years ago, their parents attended Vokes School – a tiny one-room schoolhouse in District 13 near Park Rapids and Nevis, Minnesota. There were 15 students from 7 families in grades 1 through 12 in the class, taught by Miss Eula Edum, 19, a first-year teacher with one year of education past high school.

Park Rapids Minnesota, June 15, 2009 — The third week in June, relatives, descendants, and neighbors of the original 15 classmates will finally meet in person. Ruth Linsley Forman’s son and daughter, Mark Forman and Lucy Jeanne, now of Deer Park Washington, will be in Park Rapids, culminating in a pie and ice cream social at the Hubbard County Historical Society on Saturday afternoon June 27. During their visit, Mark, a national award winning producer (www.markforman.com) will be filming interviews for a documentary, and Lucy will host a presentation and question and answer session. (See Mark's current bio, PDF format - 187KB)

Ruth and John Linsley attended Vokes School for only two years, but their spirited adventures have been immortalized in family letters, photos and Ruth’s memoirs on the new website, www.deardaddy.com.

Once the Dear Daddy website was launched, word spread throughout the Park Rapids area, and descendants of many of the families began email correspondence, sharing more photos, recipes and memories. Website visitors from around the country – and the world – have continued to sign up for email updates as more photos, letters and chapters of Ruth’s memoir are posted.

John and Ruth Linsley joined the class in the fall of 1932 after moving to the rural community from Minneapolis, where they attended the old Miles Standish Elementary School. At the height of the Great Depression, just as FDR was elected, their parents, James and Martha Linsley, took the biggest gamble of their lives, and traded their small home in Minneapolis, as a down payment, for the deed to a 160 acre parcel near Park Rapids – sight unseen. Their dream was to establish their own family farm like James’ family had in West Concord Minnesota.

Ruth Linsley Forman eventually became an elementary school teacher, artist and writer, and her brother John, an Astrophysicist, was nominated for a Nobel Physics Prize in 1981. A four-generation team of Ruth’s family members have been working on the website project for the last year.

Contact:
Lucy Jeanne, Director of Public Relations
www.deardaddy.com
Dear Daddy: The Farm Letters
509-276-6220

Karen Danks
President, Hubbard County Historical Society, Park Rapids MN
www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mnhchs/
218-732-5237
Cell: 218-252-8910

# # #

 

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•