I met Lorraine Dingmann for the first time just days after her 95th birthday. Family and friends came from miles around to help celebrate her special day. She’d ridden in a horse-drawn wagon and participated in a mile-long stretch of son Art’s horseback riding tour of Minnesota on behalf of Camp Amanda-MN. She ate cake, laughed and talked with those who’d come to honor her, and posed for countless photos memorializing her special day. All this took place at Country Manor, her home since June 2006. On this particular day, Lorraine pushed her walker through the doorway of the comfortable sitting room at Country Manor and her daughter Joan introduced us. I took an immediate liking to this gracious lady in the olive-green pantsuit. She parked her walker, then settled into an armchair, her favorite when she visits this room. Soon, Art and Marlene Dingmann joined us. Before he sat down, Art crowned his mother’s head of soft curls with the brown Western hat she’d worn at her birthday celebration. Then Lorraine talked about her life as a young girl on the family farm near Foley, and the circumstances that brought her to Kimball in 1943. One of four daughters born to Mary and Arthur Parent, Lorraine and her sisters learned at an early age that, “if you don’t have any brothers, you make the brothers yourself!” She remembers her dad was “a little tough.” When she was 7 years old, she learned how to milk cows, a chore she performed until she married. “I could milk cows almost as fast as my dad,” she beamed. Of course, that didn’t happen overnight. Meanwhile, she learned to deal with the aggravation that faced hand-milkers everywhere – being slapped in the face by the cow’s constantly swishing tail. Lorraine’s dad came to the rescue, though. He built a stool to hold the pail; pail and stool were then placed on a platform. Instead of holding the pail between her knees, as before, she could use her knees to hold the cow’s tail. Life on the farm had its bonuses – fresh milk to drink every day, and fresh eggs to eat whenever – but, as anyone who grew up on a farm can attest, everyone contributes by working hard every day to keep the place running. So, besides milking, the girls helped in the field, and also took turns delivering eggs that their mother’s chickens produced, and fresh milk, to the creamery. “Every day, we had to drive our Model T to the creamery in Foley,” she said. But Lorraine didn’t like to drive the Model T, and has never forgotten one particular incident. “This one day, it was my turn. We had to go up a grade to a gravel road and then turn to go to Foley. As I got up on that gravel road, there was a hill and the road was quite a bit wider. I got over to the right as far as I could. I went into what you would call a ditch, but it wasn’t a ditch, it was lower than any place else. The eggs were on the back seat.” Did the eggs make it, I wondered. “Most of them made it – and the cream, too.” The Model T wasn’t their only form of transportation, thanks to the five workhorses Arthur Parent kept for field work. “In the summertime, the hired man would hitch up Maude on the buggy and we would get in that buggy and go to church. Mother could drive the horse and buggy but not the Model T.” The reliable Maude was also a workhorse. Later, a Model A replaced the Model T, and driving got easier. Back in the day, attending school often meant walking through fields and barbed-wire fences. Sometimes, their neighbor who lived just north of them hitched a team of horses and picked them up for school. Country school days ended with the eighth grade, then it was on to high school in Foley. Rather than make the daily trip, Lorraine often stayed with her grandmother. She spent the following year in St. Cloud at business college, and stayed with a relative then, too, probably an aunt. Besides school and work, Lorraine enjoyed attending dances. It was at a dance that she met Francis – he went by Frunz – Dingmann, her life’s partner. They married in 1938, and for the first five years together, they lived in Clear Lake, where he worked at the family hardware and implement store. Frunz’s brother and nephews manned the Kimball hardware store. As, one by one, they were drafted into the military, the couple moved to Kimball. Frunz and Lorraine remained there for more than 50 years, rearing their six children and becoming involved in community life and the funeral home business. Lorraine was active in St. Anne’s church life, and belonged to their prayer group. At home, she gardened – both vegetables and flowers – raised horses, and baked pies, usually four at a time, on Saturday mornings. She and Frunz found time to travel. She loved playing cards, with lady friends during the day, with Frunz and friends in the evening, and as a long-time member of Kimball’s Bridge Club. Sometime in the ’50s, Lorraine started the practice of serving dinners after funerals, a practice which continues today. The delightful hour had passed and now it was time for goodbyes. Lorraine still had another “photo op” waiting for her in her room.
