Henry William Straatmeyer's life

 

HENRY WILLIAM STRAATMEYER  (Cindee's Grandfather)

 

He grew to manhood in the Chancellor and Tea, South Dakota areas, attending the Brothersfield and Schoffelman Grade Schools. He said he skipped one of the early grades because the teachers said he was "smart."  He finished the 8th grade.

 

When he was first married he was a farmer renting land about two miles east of Lennox.  Losing everything in the Great Depression, he moved to Chancellor and Davis, South Dakota where he worked for the WPA (A government program to put people unemployed by the great depression to work).  His wages were $1 per day plus there was weekly welfare for his family which consisted of food items.  While working for the WPA, he built roads, worked for farmers during the harvest season, and even shoveled to free a freight train which was stuck in the snow southwest of Davis near Hooker.

 

In 1943, he moved his family to the Bement Dairy Farm about one mile South of Sioux Falls where he was given $40 a month plus a small one bedroom home, and free eggs and milk as his wage.  His main job was to milk about 60 cows every morning and evening and to help with all the other farm chores.

 

In 1944, the family moved to a farm nine miles south of Beresford, South Dakota where he rented 80 acres.  This farm was a quarter of a mile north of a farm rented by Justus Bossman, his brother-in-law.  Since he had no machinery, his brother-in-law's machinery was used to run the farm.  It was a farm which didn't produce much because of the "creepin' jennies," a type of weed which would wrap itself around the corn like a vine.  When the landlord wanted to farm the land himself in 1945, he moved his family to Alcester, South Dakota.  He had no job there but went because his brother Claus ran a feed grinder there.

 

When he arrived at Alcester, he was offered two jobs.  One was to run a road grader at 75 cents an hour or to work for the local RE (Rural Electric Coop), Lincoln Union Electric, as a grunt for 50 cents an hour.  He took the latter.  Three years later, in 1947, he was offered the position of line foreman for the Lennox area.  Since this is the area where he was born and raised, he moved his family to Lennox where he continued to work for the Electric Coop until he retired in 1969.

 

He attended the Chancellor Reformed Church in his younger years and then attended the Salem Presbyterian Church 6 miles north of Lennox, where his father had moved when he married his second wife.  He used to tell of having to work the hand crank for the pump organ in the church.

 

After he was married, at the Turner County First Presbyterian Church to Gertrude Bossman on February 16, 1927, he attended the Chancellor Reformed Church, the Davis Reformed Church, First Reformed Church in Sioux Falls, the Congregational Church in Alcester, and the Ebenezer Presbyterian Church in Lennox.  It was at this last church where his faith grew and he served as an elder and deacon, taught Sunday School, and served several terms on the Union Gospel Mission Board in Sioux Falls.  During these latter years he did lay preaching.

 

He died of a heart attack late at night at his home at his home in Lennox.  His service was held in the Ebenezer Presbyterian Church in Lennox and he was buried in the Lennox Cemetery.

 

In many ways, his life was difficult.  He remembered the death of his mother very well when he was only 8 years old.  One memory he had was his grandfather Wibben being so drunk at the funeral that he staggered and fell to the ground.  No one went to pick him up, he said.

 

When he was a young man, he suffered greatly from asthma.  There were many nights that he could not sleep and would sit up in a chair or sit outside.  He often inhaled a powder which was lit with a match and which sent up smoke.  Sometimes this helped and sometimes it didn't.  Asthma hospitalized him several times in his later years.

 

An outstanding quality, which he possessed, was his ability to get along with people.  He often was the point man to deal with customer problems on his job.  He usually was able to resolve the problems and settle the matter.  He was well liked and respected in later years when his commitment to Christ grew stronger.