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Key figure in drive to fund FL hospital in 1950s dies |
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Monday, 18 February 2008 |
Cliff Buchan
News Editor
It is 10 years this month since the Fairview Lakes Medical Center opened in Wyoming providing medical care to residents of the Forest Lake and Wyoming areas and beyond. In 2008 terms, the Wyoming hospital often carries the tag “new” as the replacement facility for the “old” District Memorial Hospital in Forest Lake. The former Forest Lake hospital closed in 1998 and is now home for Lakes International Language Academy, a Spanish immersion public charter school.
For many area residents, hospital care is a given, thanks to a modern and growing facility in Wyoming.
It wasn’t always that way in Forest Lake. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a community drive was undertaken to raise the seed money needed to build a hospital serving people in Forest Lake, Hugo, Columbus, Lino Lakes and Centerville.
It would never have happened without the tireless efforts of many community members.
The area has lost one of those trailblazers with the death of Norma Harper. Harper was 92 when she died at her home here on Jan. 19
Labor of Love
It was a true labor of love for Harper and the many other area residents who poured time and energy into those early years, trying to raise money and secure grants needed to build a hospital.
It was a public campaign that continued from 1955 until 1961 but eventually resulted in the establishment of Memorial Hospital.
Through it all, Harper was there, teaming with Phyllis Johnson to co-chair the fund drive. Later, the two would serve on the first governing board of the public hospital district, giving of their time in a different way.
“They were really active and gave a lot of their time,” recalled former Forest Lake Times Publisher Earl Lellman of Harper and Johnson.
Harper and Lellman had met earlier when the publisher hired her to work in the front office, a post she held for more than a year.
The key to a successful community drive, Lellman recalled, was securing public backing and cash donations. “They were asking for money and that’s not always too easy to come by.”
As publisher, Lellman rallied behind the drive and supported the efforts that Harper and Johnson were leading. “We finally got it,” he said of the hospital which opened in 1962.
Harper and Johnson both played “influential” roles in leading that effort, he said. “She (Harper) played a big part in the drive to raise the funds,” Lellman said.
Corbett Johnson, the son of Phyllis Johnson who now lives in Florida, said he watched as a boy as Harper repeatedly provided spark to keep the hospital fund-drive rolling. “Norma was always there to keep pushing and cajoling...finding new leaders to help with the efforts of the many volunteers,” Johnson recalled.
“There wasn’t a meal where the campaign wasn’t the central topic of conversation,” Johnson said. “While many people made incredible contributions to the hospital campaign it is likely that our hospital would have ended as no more than an unfulfilled dream without Norma Harper and the constant positive press of the Forest Lake Times and Publisher Earl Lellman.”
FL as home
That Harper wound up in Forest Lake is somewhat a matter of fate and her second marriage to Herb Harper who moved to Minnesota to attend college and was hired to teach in Forest Lake.
A child of the depression, Norma Schmuck was born on Aug. 15, 1915 and grew up in a close knit family in St. Paul, according to her son, Douglas Harper, a college professor today at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA.
In 1937 she married William Bremer. He was drafted into the Army in 1943. On June 25, 1944 he was killed in action fighting in Normandy.
“My mom was in an extraordinary state of depression for several months until her doctor ‘ordered’ her to act in her own behalf or perish,” her son said. “She left Minnesota for the first time (except for Wisconsin) to visit her brother Irvin, who was stationed in Portland.”
It was while visiting Irvin that she met Herb Harper, who was a friend of her brother and a supply officer during the war in the Pacific.
It was an instant match. “They only knew each other for about12 days over a couple of months and married that August, as the war was ending,” Doug Harper said.
Herb Harper was from Kentucky but moved to his wife’s native Minnesota. He earned biology degrees in Minnesota and spent his teaching career at Forest Lake High School.
Three sons — Irv, Doug and Todd — were born to the couple.
Harper describes his mother as a “proto feminist in that she was a powerful person with a lot of self confidence, and she dealt with men as equals.” It was not common for women of the early 1960s to hold elective positions but Harper relished the duty on the male dominated hospital board.
“She respected people when they earned it; not people of one gender rather than another,” her son said.
After working for Lellman, she joined Henry Houle’s real estate business and later started a ceramics business at home in Forest Lake.
“I vividly remember the house filled with laughter and good times as one class of women after another filed in for their time with my mom. I think the various classes were mostly emotional support and friendship groups and my mom’s confident personality drew these women back for years and years.”
Harper describes his mother as extremely artistic and accomplished the most with her weaving. An original piece she made in 1990 won a blue ribbon at the Minnesota State Fair.
Over a 20 year period, Norma and Herb Harper traveled the world. Their destinations included Australia, New Zealand, countries in Africa and Europe, Hong Kong, Japan and China.
The couple also visited New Caledonia where Herb Harper served during the war and also France and the city of St. Lo where her first husband was buried.
“This was decades before the Internet and this traveling was full of adventure, uncertainty and pleasure,” Doug Harper said. “They went to Haiti when it was a dangerous place; again they just bought tickets and went.
“They were of modest financial means but they lived rather simply and saved all extra money for travel.”
Two bouts with cancer many years ago were won, her son said, and she lived a full life. She loved to meet people and had a thirst for reading, he said.
“She had an extraordinary zest for life and took equal interest in the lives of her three sons; whether it was Todd’s Buddhism (he was holding her hand and chanting when mom died — at home, as per her wishes); my writing or Irv’s love of nature. She encouraged us and took pleasure in our accomplishments,” her son said.
Life became more difficult for Norma Harper in her final years as her husband died in 2000 and maculear degeneration led to blindness.
She spent her final years with minimal assistance and enjoyed books on tape and even mastered a computer that would scan documents and make it into spoken word. She was an avid Minnesota Twins fan and not a game was missed, her son said.
“We spoke most days these past years and since I am also a baseball fan we always began with the box scores from the day before,” he said. “One day a couple of years ago she said: “I had such a good dream; Kent Hrbek moved in next door and he was just like I always thought he’d be.”
Family details
A memorial service for Norma Harper will take place in the spring at the family home in Forest Lake.
She is survived by her sons, Irvin Harper, Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Douglas (Suzan) Harper, Pittsburgh, PA, and Todd (Lynn) Harper, St. Paul; six grandchildren; one great-grandchild; sister Elida Knoll, Joan Harrington and Marcelle Schulte; and one brother, Irvin Schmuck.
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