MY STORY – IRENE LOUISE (NEE KUCKKAN) MUELLER
Written By Irene L. Mueller

Mom’s Autobiography – Chapter 3 – In Book, Page 6

Northwestern Prep and College – 1944 – 1951, Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary, 1951 – 1954, Crivitz – 1954 – 1957

NORTHWESTERN PREP AND COLLEGE – 1944-1951

How excited I was to start at Northwestern. – cf. Pages 10, 11, 28, and 50 of FACES & PLACES II – WATERTOWN AREA. I loved school there too, and was eager to learn all I could. I studied hard, taking many books home for homework. I played my clarinet in the band. “Betty (Kielgas) Welke” and I were the first two girls in the history of Northwestern to be in the band. That is true!` – cf. Page 115 of FACES & PLACES – WATERTOWN AREA and cf. Page 11 of FACES & PLACES II – WATERTOWN AREA. My sister, Doloris (who also attended Northwestern Prep), and I sang in the Northwestern Mixed Chorus – cf. Page 115 of FACES & PLACES – WATERTOWN AREA. There were only about twenty of us girls in the “Co-ed Room”, a room in the basement of the recitation building. We would go there when we got to school, in between classes, and before we went home. I walked or rode my bicycle from 911 North Fourth Street to and from school. There were no buses to take children to and from school in those days.

One of the girls told me, “You can have any boy in the school, but not Richard Mueller”. The first time I saw him he was sitting in the window of a dormitory playing with a hand puppet, watching us walk over to a classroom. Well, it was love at first sight – for both of us. We were invited to a party given by one of my classmates. I walked to her house with another boy, but when it came time to take a walk to the “brickyard”, I said, “I’m not going with you, Krueger”, and went with Dick. He started coming to Young People’s Society at St. Mark’s and walking me home. He also came to our house after church services. Ma cooked and baked delicious dinners. During the afternoons we went on long walks or went to the movies. As the years at Northwestern went by, our classmates and friends called us the “Siamese twins”.

There was one boy I met at Riverside Park during one summer when Dick had gone to Medford where his father was Pastor at that time. He attended the University of Wisconsin. He wanted me to be “his girl”. He wrote poems for me, and wanted me to come to his house and look through his telescope at the stars. I didn’t go to his house, but he did walk me home from the park. My mother and one of my sisters listened through an open window upstairs to every word we said. As the summer came to an end, I told him that I was going with another boy. He became very angry and told me that I treated him “like a puppet on a string.” He became a banker, and was instrumental in setting up the TYME system in Wisconsin. Again, God had other plans for me.

Before we were married – after I graduated from Northwestern Prep in 1948 – I attended Dr. Martin Luther College, New Ulm, Minnesota, to study to become a Lutheran school teacher (that same year my little sister, Janet Lee, was born April 19th. I was so happy and excited to go to DMLC, but sad to leave my little sister, the rest of my family, and of course, my Dick). At the end of the first year, I was asked by Professor Schweppe, the President, if I would “emergency” teach. There was a severe shortage of teachers at that time. I was called to St. Peter’s Evangelical Lutheran School in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, to teach fifty-six fourth graders. Some of them still correspond with me. I also taught forty first-graders at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran School in Jefferson, Wisconsin, and thirty first-graders at Trinity Lutheran School in Freistadt, Wisconsin. Sometimes we see some of them, now all grown up.

I also served as the personal secretary to the President (Mr. George E. Musebeck) of the Musebeck (Health Spot shoe stores) Shoe Company for two years before we were married. During my Northwestern Prep years, a commercial (shorthand, typing, law, bookkeeping) course was offered. Besides all the regular courses, I took the commercial courses. I really enjoyed those, Professor R. Sievert being the Professor. The commercial course served me well during the summers when Dick and I were separated (his parents living in Medford, Wisconsin, where he also worked for his tuition). I worked for a lawyer, Mr. Kenneth Kolberg, during one summer as his secretary.

WISCONSIN LUTHERAN SEMINARY – 1951-1954

Dick and I went together during our Prep, Dick’s College, and almost all of his Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary in Mequon, Wisconsin, years. In those days students were not allowed to be married. The Wisconsin Synod did not allow students to be married during their school days, but did allow them to become engaged after their college years. My sweetheart gave me my engagement ring at the Schwabenhof restaurant in Milwaukee after he graduated from Northwestern. How happy we were!

A year before he graduated, he and some of his classmates (who also had gone with their girls for so long) went to the President of the Seminary, Carl Lawrenz, and asked permission to be married – to break the age-old tradition of students not being married at the Sem. After deliberations they gave their permission (President Lawrenz kidded us whenever he saw us in later years. that we gave him “trouble” the first year of his Presidency). So, we were married June 7, 1953. What a happy, glorious, day it was to walk down the aisle of St. Mark’s church – cf. Page 20 of FACES AND PLACES II – WATERTOWN AREA – with my father and see my handsome man waiting for me – thanks be to God!!!

 We went on a wonderful honeymoon to Florida. We used a trailer borrowed from a Seminary professor, just big enough for a bed, to go there, but it was enough for us. We went to Cypress Gardens (water skiing), Silver Springs, Weeki Wachee Springs, the Bok Tower, a snake park where venom (used for vaccine to cure polio) was milked into a glass from the fangs of a King Cobra (out of its cage right in front of us on the ground), saw alligator wrestling, porpoises jumping to take food out of a person’s hand, and so many other wonderful things. I went swimming in the Ocean – what a feeling! We also went all the way to Key West, but the coastline was taken over by the Navy, so we didn’t see much. But, it was spectacular just to go way down there and across all those bridges connecting islands leading to it. What a honeymoon!!! The Lord took us safely all the way there and back home.

Home!! We first lived in a tiny apartment in Thiensville, Wisconsin. The building is long gone. The bathroom was used by all the tenants, including us. I worked as a secretary for Power Products in Grafton. But, one day Mr. Fred Loppnow (he had a daughter, Ruth, with whom I am still in contact), the Principal of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran School (Missouri-Wisconsin Synods), Freistadt, Wisconsin, came and asked me if I would teach first grade there. He said there was a second home on a farm near the school where we could live. So we moved (Dick put a toilet in; he was the first of other Seminary students to live there with their wives), and I taught some wonderful little first graders. One of my “little” first graders, “Janice (Suelflow) Chmielewski, is the mother of the husband of one of our granddaughters, “Nicole (Wilson) Chmielewski”. Another “little” first grader, Herbert Prahl, is the President of the Western Wisconsin District. The Lord works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform”. Dick would drop me off at the school in the morning, and pick me up in the afternoon. I became pregnant toward the end of the year. My little first graders and their parents gave me a wonderful shower.

CRIVITZ – 1954-1957

After Dick graduated from the Seminary, he received a divine Call to Crivitz, Wisconsin. We loved it in Crivitz. The first person who came to our door had the smiling face of Anna Gocht, bearing a huge plate with luscious strawberries from their garden piled on top of it. The people of the congregation were wonderful to us, and we loved being with them. Our Debbie (Deborah Louise) was born in Marinette, Wisconsin, twenty-five miles from Crivitz, on October 27, 1954. What a beautiful baby she was! When my Pa saw her for the first time, he said, “That’s a Mueller!” Debbie could talk in sentences before she was a year old. Our neighbors couldn’t believe it. Then our Dickie (Richard John) was born in Marinette on November 24, 1955. He was born on Thanksgiving Day in the middle of Dick’s sermon. When Dick came to the hospital, he was introduced to his very handsome son, and ate Thanksgiving turkey dinner with me. How happy and thankful we were – a daughter and a son – thanks be to God! Children were not allowed in hospitals years ago, so I remember so clearly holding Dickie up and waving to Dick and our little Debbie from the second story window of the hospital, and Dick in his hat, holding Debbie, waving to us while the snow was gently falling. How exciting it was when we brought the baby home, for us and our members of Grace Ev. Lutheran Church.

Before Dick graduated from the Seminary, he had expressed his willingness to go as a missionary to Africa. It also was my desire, – to “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations “ – Matthew 28:19. There wasn’t a Call to Africa when he graduated, but in August, 1956, he received the Call to Lusaka, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). After much agonizing deliberation, he returned the Call. He thought he had not served the congregation in Crivitz long enough. He did receive the Call again, and this time accepted it. He was commissioned as a missionary to Africa on January 7, 1957, in Crivitz, Wisconsin. We were happy and excited! We sold our two year old furniture, appliances, car, etc, which we had bought when Dick received the Call to Crivitz, packed up our necessities, and left our dear friends in Crivitz. We stayed with Ma, Pa, and little sister “Jannie” (eight years old) in Watertown, waiting for our visas and entry permits to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Finally, Dick went to a ham radio operator, Mr. Erv Buchert, in Watertown. Mr. Buchert told a ham in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, Africa, about our situation, and the next day he had a reply. Our entry permits were on their way, and on April 13, 1957, we were on our way to AFRICA!!!!