Miller and Johnson look at past century

By Meg Heaton

With all the speculation associated with Y2K, no one knows for sure what, if anything, will happen as the new century begins. What seems a better use of time is to reflect on what has happened and how life in Hudson and the world have changed in the last 100 years.

While neither Catherine "Kay" Johnson, 89, or Willis Miller, 81, saw the 20th century begin, both have been around for the majority of it, and both have spent most of their adult life in the business of reporting to the public the important events of any given week in this very newspaper.

Kay Johnson was born in 1910 in Blooming Prairie, Minn., the daughter of one of the town's bankers. Her earliest memory, that of speeding along while being pushed in a stroller, perhaps foretold of how fast things would change in her lifetime.

Willis Miller was born in 1918 and moved to Hudson from Iowa when he was three years old. His father was a traveling salesman and Hudson put him in the center of his territory. The town would be the center of Miller's life and his work as newspaper editor and publisher would put him in the middle of life in Hudson.

Miller's earliest memory came shortly after moving to Hudson. He recalls getting Little Buddy, a small puppy that his father carried in a shoebox as he got off the train in Hudson.

Johnson was a little girl when World War I broke out. She remembers war bond drives and that dear friends were leaving to fight in the war. Her family had a maid whose fianc‚ died in the war, and she recalled sitting in the lap of Dr. Dailey the night before he left.

It was shortly after the end of WWI that Johnson saw her first airplane. Seeing an airplane fly overhead in those days was an event that everyone ran into the street to see. Her father's cousin, a WWI flying ace and a barnstormer after the war, came to Blooming Prairie and was giving rides to the men. Women weren't riding, in large part because they wore dresses and couldn't climb in and out of the plane too easily. "My mother said she was not going to let something like that stop her from getting a ride in that plane. She put on a pair of my father's trousers and a long duster and got her ride. That was quite a sight," said Johnson.

Miller recalled the excitement created by the flight of Charles Lindbergh across the Atlantic. He went to the parade in the aviator's honor in St. Paul.

Both Johnson and Miller remember when automobiles began to appear on the scene. The first were open cars like the Overland. Miller remembers the Willys Knight, a "beautiful car with side curtains that cost about $2,800."

Both recalled friends and neighbors gathering in the homes of whoever had a radio in the neighborhood. Miller's parents would stay up late at night to try to tune in distant stations on their three-knob RCA.

Telephones were fairly common but most people were on a "party line," which meant anyone on it could "rubber" or listen in on conversations. Sometimes there would be static on the line when too many people were on it at the same time.

The Depression left lasting memories. "I remember it well," said Miller. "It was a time when it really didn't matter if you were rich or poor. It was hard times for everybody. We always had enough to eat but things were tight. My father was out of job and my mother took in roomers at our house on Third Street. People got by pawning things."

Johnson's father's bank suffered serious losses during the Depression. Loans on farms and homes could not be repaid and there was no money to buy the repossessed properties. The family was in danger of losing everything. She remembers that her father became physically ill from the stress of that time. Years later he told Johnson that he even considered suicide at the time, believing his wife and daughter might be better off because of his life insurance money they would collect.

Miller said the bank did foreclose on his home but never put the family out. "They worked with everyone to pay even the smallest amounts, to pay just the taxes. They didn't want all these houses on their rolls either."

Miller recalled that his father received a pension of $15 a month as a veteran of the Spanish American War. Their house payment was $18 a month. Miller peddled the Minneapolis Journal to help out.

Both recalled the "bank holiday" of 1933. Banks across the country closed for two weeks to reorganize. Many did not reopen. Of the three banks in Hudson at the time, only the First National reopened. Johnson's father's bank also survived.

Talk of the Depression leads naturally into recollections of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his programs and his "Fireside Chats" over the radio. Government programs were designed to give people work and wages while the country crawled out of the Depression. They included the CCC, Civilian Conservation Corps, which gave work to many young people from Hudson, the WPA, Work Progress Administration and the National Youth Administration.

Miller's father worked with Thomas Gherty, later Judge Gherty, doing a WPA survey of houses in Hudson. Miller had a job at school as part of the Youth Administration, which paid $8 a month. "It was a great thing. People were working again, making some money to support their families and doing jobs that were useful and important. A lot of the national and state parks were built with labor that these programs provided."

Johnson was a teacher in Flanders, S.D. The school superintendent would take small groups of teachers out to meet the families of their students. "He wanted us to see how these families were being affected. I remember a family I visited only had mashed potatoes to eat. He wanted us to be more compassionate to the children we taught. That maybe a child wasn't just being willful, maybe there was a reason for it, maybe they didn't have what they needed."

The war years

Miller was a freshman at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., in 1939. He remembers that Hitler invaded Poland that same fall.

Johnson, now married and living in Minneapolis, recalls listening to broadcasts from Europe and hearing of Germany's invasion of Norway. "That was very frightening. We had relatives there. It was difficult to imagine what was happening."

Both Johnson and Miller remember the broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow during WWII. "There was something about his voice and what he said. He always seemed to hit the nail right on the head," said Miller.

Johnson was visiting her parents on Dec. 7, 1941. She remembers listening in disbelief to the radio reports of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Miller was preparing to perform in a quartet at an annual memorial service at the Elks Lodge in Hudson. They heard the news while practicing and the speaker at the service, Dr. Wright, talked about the war that was now upon them.

It was a man from Hudson, Irving Swanson, who as clerk of the House of Representatives, read the official declaration of war on the floor of the U.S. Congress on Dec. 8, 1941.

Exempt from military service due to a bout with polio in 1930, Miller began his long career at the Star-Observer, then located on Walnut Street in 1940. He remembers lines at all the stores along Second Street brought on by the rationing of almost everything during the war years. Even the size of the newspaper was limited to only four pages in an effort to save paper.

In 1941 Johnson, now a mother and living in Hudson, remembers being concerned that the family would not have enough fuel oil rations to keep warm through the winter. "Bessie Bell, who went south for the winter, gave us her fuel coupons to keep the furnace going."

The Star-Observer regularly reported the young people drafted into the service and those who enlisted. Those reports were followed by stories about those who were killed or wounded. "I remember there was a Ryan girl who was only married a few months before her husband was called up. He was shot down. That happened to a lot of people," said Miller. He estimates that about 20 servicemen from Hudson were killed during the war.

The day the war in Europe ended, the bells of Hudson, like those all over the country rang out in celebration. And the good times began again.

"You couldn't make a poor investment in those days," said Miller of the post-war economy. Just after the war, Miller considered turning his family home into a duplex. The cost was estimated at $3,500. He waited another three years to do it and by then the cost was $11,000.

One of the biggest stories Miller ever covered as a reporter was in 1947 and involved the theft of the Hessian crown jewels. One of the thieves was a Hudson native, Kathleen Nash Durand. The case brought the FBI out in force to Hudson. Johnson remembers seeing FBI and police officers all over the lawn of house where Durand was staying with her sister. According to Miller, Durand was tipped that the police, including Chief of Police Don O'Connell, were on the way. As they came in the front door, she escaped out the back into a taxi, driven then by Tom O'Connell, a brother to the chief, who took her to the train station not aware of what was going on. She was later arrested in Chicago.

Miller recalled going to the house to see the "loot," which included letters from Queen Victoria and countless jewels. "There were reporters from all over the world here, from the New York Times, Washington, New Orleans. It was really something," said Miller.

The '50s

In 1952, the railroad closed the car maintenance shops located in North Hudson. The shutdown affected 400 workers and probably had the biggest impact on Hudson's economy since the Depression era. Many relocated, according to Miller, but it was awhile before the city recovered from the loss of jobs. New businesses were starting up, however. In 1947, Nor-Lake was started by the Blakeman family. It remains one of Hudson's most prominent businesses today with more than 250 employees.

The 1950s saw the rise of Communism. Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin put the loyalty of countless Americans on trial in hearings he led of the House Committee on Un-American Affairs. Miller and Johnson both remember being uncomfortable with the tactics their senator used. Some readers were suspect of the Star-Observer, believing that it was "soft" on Communism. "It was a little like things were during the dog track issue. The newspaper tries to strive to be neutral but the public never perceives us that way. Depending on which side you are on, the newspaper is always on the other. It is just the nature of things," said Miller.

Johnson remembers wondering, "The kings and crowns were all gone by then. You had to wonder was Communism the wave of the future? It was an uncertain time."

And Sputnik, the first successful foray into outer space, accomplished by the Russians, didn't help matters any. "It was hard to take that they were able to do it before we did," said Johnson. It took the successful landing on the moon by the Americans in 1969 to finally put the embarrassment of Sputnik out of people's minds according to Johnson.

A new generation

Things changed in the 1960s. Miller remembers reading "four-letter" words in the UW-River Falls student newspaper. "I called the president of the college and voiced my objection. I was told 'that's the way of the world these days.'"

Neither remembers the election of the first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, as being a big deal. Kennedy did campaign in Hudson. Johnson covered the event and left unimpressed by Kennedy who treated her dismissively. "I wasn't one of the boys."

When Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Hudson came to a standstill just like the rest of the country. "It was something that united everybody. We were able to watch the whole thing, from beginning to end on television," said Johnson.

The Vietnam War was unpopular in Hudson according to Miller. The draft board was reinstated. Some young men were granted conscientious objector status. Some just disappeared into Canada or elsewhere rather than fight in Vietnam.

Miller remembered taking pictures at the funeral of one young man killed there. Johnson recalled an employee of the newspaper who returned after serving in the war but whose life "was ruined by it."

Vietnam was a "TV war" according to Miller. The impact of television on journalism seemed like it might mean the end of the newspaper business. "It had a lot of newspaper people scared skinny," said Miller. "You know the new broom sweeps clean."

Initially television did mean the loss of national advertising revenues and some drop in readership but it didn't last.

"People want to have their newspaper. They want the details you don't get in a one or two minute story on the television," said Johnson. "If you really want the story, you need a newspaper."

Miller describes television journalism these days as more entertainment than news.

The civil rights movement didn't affect Hudson much according to Johnson and Miller although they remembered several black families living here through the years.

The most prominent among them was Mr. Hilliard, who ran the barbershop. He was married to a white woman from Hudson which left her status somewhat questionable but didn't seem to affect her husband's. Miller recalled that when he died, Hilliard had one of the largest funerals ever held in Hudson. Even the president of the railroad came.

In 1970, former president Lyndon Johnson came to speak at a banquet to honor Hudson athlete Jim Bertelsen who had played in Johnson home state at the University of Texas. "The sale of tickets for the banquet wasn't going well but when Johnson finally agreed to come, you couldn't get a ticket to save your soul. I had a nice visit with him in the men's room of the Hudson House," said Miller. "He was very affable and on his best behavior when he was here."

Looking back, looking ahead

And what of Hudson in recent history? Miller believes that the arrival of Wal-Mart in Hudson marks a line between the way things were and how they are. "It seems to be a turning point. It brought in so many people and was part of that whole development on the hill. I remember when Dick Mueller (Mueller's True Value Hardware) moved from Second Street up to the hill. He said it would change main street and it did. That's what Wal-Mart has done."

Johnson said she marvels at all the changes and improvements that have occurred during this century in medicine, sanitation, travel and communication. "There is a lot of negative things going on now, but people shouldn't forget all the wonderful things that have happened like the discovery of penicillin and antibiotics, and the improvements and advances in education. These are wonderful things. It has been a wonderful century."

Miller acknowledges that the great affluence of America has contributed to many of the problems the country faces today, like drugs and violence. But he is optimistic. "America is the greatest country in the world and its people will see that that continues."

For Johnson, the century has been overall one to remember. As for the future, her outlook is simple. "It's the Lord's world. He'll take care of it."