These stories can also be heard on Sunday mornings around 9:00 am on WILD 102’s “Look Back in Time” program. Each week’s radio story will be posted here on our website.
Weekly radio stories are researched, compiled, and read by Sheila Winstead, RCHS Board Member.
August 30, 2026
I’ll again read from Audrey (Helstad) Jensen’s memories of her family life. She was born in 1918 and died in 2006. Today’s part of the story was called “Family Pathways”. She starts by telling about her Helstad aunts and uncles.
Uncles and Aunts have also contributed to my life and my memories. I know very little about my uncle Evald, born July 14, 1892. He was drafted for service in World War I either before I was born or when I was an infant. He was the first Roseau County man to leave for service in that war. The Roseau American Legion Post is not named after him though because he was in North Dakota at the time he left for service. Uncle Evald Helstad was killed July 18, 1918 in France and is buried in Flanders Field in France.
Uncle Albin Helstad was a very special person to me. He always seemed to know just how to stay in my favor. Anytime when I was feeling unhappy or slighted when he was around, he would make me feel like someone special.
Albin was born in Pinecreek, Minnesota in 1896. He worked with Dad in the woods and sawmill and later went to Aunt Betsy’s at Canton, Mississippi. After he came back to Roseau, he bought grass seed, furs and scrap iron. He married a Roseau girl, Harriette Larson and they adopted two children, Sharon and Gary. They also brought up their grandson Robert after Gary and his wife separated.
Albin had a heart attack in the summer of 1946 and recovered only to suffer a stroke a couple years later. This left him an invalid the rest of his life. During the years following this, Harriette managed the Evergreen Hotel in Roseau and a restaurant at Springsteele Island near Warroad, Minnesota. Uncle Albin died on January 15, 1978. Harriette suffered from a heart condition and liver cancer and died from a heart attack just eight and a half months later on September 27, 1978.
Aunt Olga is the aunt on my Dad’s side that gets the most of my sympathy. She was born April 23, 1898 and died August 26, 1962 when only sixty-four years old. She was stricken with inflammatory rheumatism when she was only about thirty-five years old. She was an invalid from then on. She was never again able to walk without crutches and even had to have help to get up to use them. She spent many years of her life flat on her back in bed. She did beautiful crocheting in this position. Her hands were so crippled she had to grasp the crochet hook in her left hand like a person would hold a rolling pin and work the thread to the hook with her right hand. Unbelievable how she could do it. Her husband Pete Thingstrup, more commonly known as Pete Anderson, took care of her and their two children Romaine and Eloise. Aunt Hazel spent a lot of time helping them much like a second mother. Romaine married Veronica Grewe.
They spent most of their lives in the Roseau area, but did follow Eloise and her husband Einer Urdahl to Thief River Falls and Northfield, Minnesota. She had a mastectomy a few years before her death and suffered greatly from the radiation treatments. Through all this, she always greeted you with a smile.
Aunt Borghild was Dad’s oldest sister and was born in Norway. She came to America in 1896. She married Gust Anderson and they had two children, Elmo and Judith. Gust was a farmer and a carpenter and farmed and lived a mile east of Roseau until they moved to Canton, Mississippi. He was proud that he was one of the carpenters who helped build the state capitol building in Jackson, Mississippi. Borghild, or Betsy as she was usually called, had a different carriage and way of speaking and I presume this was part of the southern manners she had picked up. Rather charming.
They did move back to Roseau in their later years and lived in a house south of the school house on Center Street. Aunt Betsy lived the last years of her life in California where her granddaughters lived.
Before she left, she gave me a beautiful glass water pitcher that was her wedding present. It is one of my favorite heirlooms. Even more treasured is a ring she had made arrangements for me to get after her death. This was the wedding ring Grandma Helstad was wearing when she passed away. I will never forget when my Aunt Hazel turned it over to me. I slipped it on and it fit perfect! I have been wearing it ever since because my own wedding ring had worn so thin it was ready to break. I still feel Aunt Hazel should have been the one to inherit it, but she insisted it was to be mine. Makes me feel very humble and grateful.
Aunt Hazel is the aunt on my father’s side of the family that I know the best. We have spent many happy hours together. I can’t remember much about her until she moved to Roseau with her family. But I have been told that she taught school after graduating from a teacher training college. I can’t recall her teaching but I do remember her working at the Reese’s Variety Store for thirty years. That says a lot for her personality. She was content to stay on a job where there was no possibility of a promotion. Very few people have the fortitude to do this. I can’t help but think that the world today would be better with more people like her – satisfied to do their best, unselfishly, day after day.
My fondest memory of her is when I stayed at Grandma and Grandpa Helstad’s when I was going to high school. Every night we would listen to the radio for a little while. This was special for me because we didn’t have a radio at home. Few rural people did because it was quite costly to run a radio because there was no electricity and the radio had to be run on batteries. Aunt Hazel would knit and work on embroidery after the radio was turned off.
I also remember how shy and coy she was when Albert Johnson would come to court her. I had never observed a boy-girl relationship before this, and I was all eyes and ears until Grandma would find some way to get me to either go to the kitchen or upstairs.
Another fond memory I have is of her taking care of me for over three weeks when I was in bed with the measles and complications.
I worked for her for a while when she was expecting her baby. Aunt Hazel was the first person to notice that I was wearing an engagement ring without being told about it. Yes, I got my ring while I was working there.
She had only the one child, Sonja Lou, but as I said earlier, she mothered Romaine and Eloise a lot. She is still “mothering” because Uncle Albert needs a lot of attention now in his old age.
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for letting us share our county’s history with your listeners by donating air time, studio time, and production staff every week.