Ruth Josephine Wallner Grosboll passed away on January 10, 2010, in Wichita, Kansas. She worked at Steps to Life Ministries for over 15 years and has been a regular contributor to LandMarks magazine.
Ruth Josephine Wallner was born to Joe and Agnes Wallner in Huron, South Dakota, on August 25, 1916. She was born into a family that was well acquainted with heartache and trouble. Her father Joe Wallner was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1878 to German merchants who operated both in Austria and Hungary.
At birth, the physicians said that Joe would probably never survive babyhood and certainly would never grow up to manhood because he was born with a congenital heart defect. His heart valve leaked so badly that it was said you could hear the swishing with your naked ear close to his chest even if you didn’t have a stethoscope.
During this time of disappointment and sadness, a Jewish physician told his mother, “Never let that boy eat any fat.” That medical counsel was followed his entire life, and though he did continually suffer heart problems and had to take to his bed many times, he survived until the age of 78.
After Joe immigrated to the United States, in 1910 he met and married Agnes Shoonhoven, the eldest daughter of ten children of a prosperous German farmer in Iowa. Agnes was 10 years younger than he, and in that same year a set of twins was born of which only one survived. The girl who lived was named Maize. In 1912, Agnes’ father was killed in a tragic accident on a horse, leaving Agnes’ mother with several children still at home to raise. Agnes stepped into this crisis situation and began to help her mother raise the younger children, and for years Agnes’ younger brothers and sisters stayed at her home for longer or shorter periods.
The year after her father died Agnes’ second child, Dorothy was born and four years after the accident Agnes had her final and youngest daughter in 1916 and named her Ruth.
When Ruth was born, one of Agnes’ youngest sisters was living with her and helped take care of Ruth in her babyhood. Christine was about 17 years of age when Ruth was born. Agnes’s younger siblings were often in their home so they developed a very close relationship to Ruth, Dorothy and Maize, which lasted as long as they lived.
When John and Ruth Grosboll moved to Kansas in 1992, Christine, who was in her nineties at that time, came with them. Christine was almost as close to my mother as her real mother even though she was an aunt, because she had taken care of my mother since babyhood. Christine lived with John and Ruth Grosboll until she died at about 95. Her funeral service was held in the Steps to Life chapel. Although my mother was very stoical and I had never seen her in tears to the extent that the tears ran down her cheeks, she was as close to tears as I had ever seen my mother when she came up to Christine’s casket at the end of the service.
Approximately six months after Ruth was born, her mother and grandmother who, by this time had been a widow for four years, accepted the Three Angels’ Messages and became a part of the Second Advent Movement. Ruth’s father was opposed to this new religion and eventually went to the public libraries in an effort to do research that would prove that his wife Agnes and her mother were totally confused about the right day to keep as the Sabbath. As a result of his research he was astonished to find out from the historical evidence in the library that his wife was correct and it was the rest of the Christian world that was wrong about which day to keep as the Sabbath. He thereupon became a Sabbath-keeper himself and also became a part of the Second Advent Movement; however, this took many years, and for those many years Agnes had to try to raise her girls as Sabbath keeping Christians with a great deal of opposition from her husband.
Joe and Agnes Wallner moved with their family from South Dakota to Montana and homesteaded a 640 acre farm which was about 120 miles from the nearest town. Joe also worked in the winter in the mines near Butte, Montana. He bought a house in town and the family lived in it during the winter and on the 640 acre homestead farm in the summer. At one time a snowstorm and bitterly cold weather prevented Agnes from coming back home from town so the girls had to fend for themselves for days during the inclement weather until their mother was able to return home with provisions. Since they had chickens, they always had eggs and during those days of being stranded alone without their parents the girls ate so many eggs, fixed so many ways, that Ruth said for a long time after that, she could hardly stand to look at an egg.
A woman needed to be strong to survive in that environment, but Agnes Wallner was strong. She was well able to fight off mad bulls with a pitchfork and she knew how to use guns. She also knew how to satisfy the stomachs of crews of men running threshing machines and how to take care of people who were hurt when there were no physicians around.
In 1922, Agnes had her final child and only son, naming him Leonard. As time went on and Maize and Dorothy were teenagers, Agnes saw that her daughters had an interest in boys and also that there were no Sabbath-keeping young men in that area of Montana—their family worshipped as what is commonly called today, a home church. She decided that something must be done about this because she was unwilling for her daughters to grow up and have no social outlet except the barn dances in the community and she did not want her daughters to be participating in these. She heard from relatives that in Washington state there was an Adventist high school and also that this was a fruit-growing area affording ready employment so she decided to take her daughters and son there.
When she announced her decision to her husband he was very upset because they had a 640 acre farm where he could eventually retire which would provide them a livelihood in their later years, so he earnestly protested such a move, wanting to keep the farm. But Agnes was adamant in her decision. She said, “I am not willing for my daughters to grow up here. I want them to associate with Sabbath keeping young people and I am firm in my decision to move to Washington state. I am going to move there with my daughters and son and if you choose to stay in Montana on this farm so that I have to move alone, I will still move.” They moved to Granger, Washington, in 1927.
That first year Joe worked in the mines for income, but a few months later they moved to Granger where they lived in the Yakima Valley for the rest of their lives and are buried in the Toppenish, Washington cemetery. In 2006, I had the opportunity with Mother and Evelyn to visit their graves where we prayed and looked forward to the coming resurrection.
Soon after moving to Granger the family was involved in agriculture again with chickens, cows and goats, as well as large gardening operations and farming. Because Joe had heart trouble all his life the girls had to do both men’s and women’s work. They not only took care of milking and other chores connected with livestock but they also pitched hay and did all kinds of work that men did on a farm. Their father’s weakness resulted in the girls becoming exceptionally physically strong women. None of them had the figure of today’s beauty queens but if they were motivated to do so, they could pick up most any beauty queen with one arm and throw her in any direction desired.
Although my mother never lost her temper with me so that she became violent, I was well aware throughout childhood that, if she wanted to, she could pick me up with one hand and send my body in any direction that she pleased. When she and her sister Dorothy were in nurses training, an invalid lady who had to be picked up said to the nurses, “When you have to pick me up let one of those two farm girls pick me up because I feel secure when they are holding me.”
Ruth graduated from Yakima Valley Academy in 1935. She attended the 100th year reunion there in 2006. After her graduation she then went to Walla Walla College and took pre-nursing. Her sister Dorothy was thinking about becoming a teacher, but later changed her mind and decided to become a nurse also. Ruth could take nursing in an Adventist school in Portland, Oregon, or in Adventist schools in California but Dorothy, who had decided to become a nurse also, could not because she had not taken pre-nursing courses. Ruth and Dorothy learned, however, that there was an Adventist nursing school that would accept a student into nursing school without pre-nursing. This allowed both Dorothy and Ruth to attend nursing school together and be in the same class rather than Ruth having to wait for Dorothy to take pre-nursing or for Dorothy to be behind her in nursing school. This nursing school was in Hinsdale, which is located about 20 miles from Chicago, Illinois. In 1937 Ruth and Dorothy left home and went to Hinsdale.
Ruth passed her state board examinations and received confirmation of her new status as a registered nurse in a document, dated August 31, 1940, which she retained with her important papers for the rest of her life.
The year before, in 1939, John N. Grosboll had graduated with a major in business from Emmanuel Missionary College in Berrien Springs, Michigan, and came to the Hinsdale area to work with his older brother who was working there as a painting contractor. Actually, John had two older brothers and one brother-in-law who were all painting contractors in the Hinsdale area and each of these relatives had picked out an Adventist girl whom they thought John should marry. However, they each picked a different girl but John had other ideas. One day when John was in the cafeteria with a male friend of his he saw Ruth Wallner and recognized from her dress that she was a student nurse and he asked his friend who she was. Later, when he was with this friend again and saw her, he inquired about her again and his friend said, “Well, that is same girl you asked me about before!” John said to his friend, “I want you to arrange a blind date for me with that girl and with you and your girlfriend.” John bragged for the rest of his life that once he had dated Ruth, he never dated another girl again and he held it up to her face that she could not say that she had never dated another boy after she dated him. Her retort to this was that he had a reputation of going out with one girl after another and she did not have a reputation like that and she could not tell that such a man was really serious after one date. They were married on September 26, 1940, and the year of John’s death would have been the year of their 60th wedding anniversary.
John and Ruth lived in the Hinsdale area for a short time after their marriage. They had both worked their way through school and although they did not have much money they were not in debt to anyone. They wanted to be involved in work that would make a difference in the world, not only for time but for eternity. A few months after they were married they joined an evangelist by the name of W. D. Frazee who was working at that time in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Ruth got part time nursing jobs and John got part-time painting jobs, but their full-time work for which they were not paid and worked as volunteers, was personal evangelism. They passed out hundreds of pieces of literature about the Three Angels’ Messages every week and this led to Bible studies and baptisms.
They were only in this work a short time when tragedy again struck their family. In late summer 1941 Ruth’s only brother, her father’s and mother’s only son who was not yet 20 years old, on the day before he was to go away to Walla Walla College with other students, was enjoying a game of volleyball. As he was preparing to serve the ball, all of a sudden a horrible look came over his face and he dropped over dead. John and Ruth felt that they must leave Baton Rouge and go to Ruth’s family in this hour of crisis so they made arrangements with Elder Frazee to leave and got in their car and drove nonstop for 36 hours to Granger, Washington. They did not have enough money to return.
They were acquainted with Adventist medical and nursing personnel in the area and found that there was a small town, Toppenish, which was near Granger, that had no hospital. All the sick there had to be transported to a hospital in Yakima, almost 20 miles away. John and Ruth got the idea of starting a small hospital in Toppenish, so they opened a ten-bed hospital. John was the business manager, accountant and overall superintendent of the operation. Ruth and her older sister Dorothy, who was not yet married, were the two registered nurses and Ruth’s mother Agnes Wallner was the cook. I have always supposed that the patients in that hospital had the best food of any hospital in the United States, genuine German cooking with all the fat, sugar, salt and other things that make food taste good. My father used to say that she could even make sawdust taste good! Other workers were also hired to help them in all these areas. It was in this hospital that I was born in 1943 and was given the first name of his father and grandfather and the middle name of his maternal grandfather.
It was the time of World War II and the hospital had to be closed down. My father, John Nelson, was drafted into the army in 1943. For a while Ruth moved wherever John went so they could keep their family together. They lived in El Paso, in Abilene, Texas, and other places, but the time came when John Nelson had to go overseas. He was shipped to the Pacific-Asia war theater and spent time in India and Burma, often not seeing any other Adventists for long periods of time. He witnessed for his faith by showing the soldiers from Daniel 2 that Hitler could not take over the world. Ruth went back to Toppenish to where her parents had moved from Granger and, while there, taught church school.
John Nelson met and got acquainted with Adventist missionaries in India and Burma while he was in the service as a U.S. soldier. He thought that he would like to be a missionary to a foreign country as well so when he returned to the United States in 1946, he immediately began making plans to bring this idea to a reality. He took a course work at Walla Walla College to prepare for mission service. During that time John and Ruth had a second son in 1947 at Walla Walla and named him Marshall James. When Marshall was a few months old, the family left on a ship for Burma.