Welcome to WeeklyWilson.com, where author/film critic Connie (Corcoran) Wilson avoids totally losing her marbles in semi-retirement by writing about film (see the Chicago Film Festival reviews and SXSW), politics and books----her own books and those of other people. You'll also find her diverging frequently to share humorous (or not-so-humorous) anecdotes and concerns. Try it! You'll like it!

Tag: Nelson G. Peterson

Nelson G. Peterson Shuffles Off This Mortal Coil June 24

My best in-town friend, Nelson G. Peterson, age 95—almost 96—died today (June 24th) at 9:10 a.m. I was planning on popping into Heartland (nursing home and rehabilitation center) to visit him before leaving for Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to take pictures at the National Federation of Press Women Conference, but another good friend of 50 years’ standing (one of our foursome) unexpectedly showed up in town from the Des Moines area, called me wanting to get together,  and I didn’t stop on Wednesday. I left town on Thursday.

Today is Monday. Nelson died 5 days after my visit with Judy, another fellow teacher and bridge player (whom I also taught to play the game). In May, when we returned from Texas and I went to visit Nelson for the first time in 4 months, he hugged me and cried, “Oh, Con! It’s been so long!” (No one had ever been so glad to see me that they cried.) 

He went on to apologize for his emotional outburst and said, “I’ve outlived everyone.” He answered this way when I asked him about his Swedish relatives, saying he had outlived them all, too. I remember my own mother, who lived to be almost 95, saying much the same thing to me during her final days.

I had been trying to find a pair of slippers to replace Nelson’s heavily worn slippers and showed up with a “normal” pair, only to find that his feet and legs were “extra wide.” They were, in fact, wrapped in heavy white constricting bandage-like garments. This may have been a sign of the sepsis that, they say, took his life after less than 24 hours in the hospital.

Nelson was a veteran of World War II. He had been involved in the Battle of the Bulge. Even more remarkably, his father was a veteran of World War I and my daughter once took Nelson’s dad’s little  WWI diary with “Kilroy Was Here” cartoons to history class when in high school.

Nelson and me.

I met Nelson in 1969-1970 when I began teaching Language Arts at Silvis Junior High School. He had begun teaching history there after another career and he put in 25 years. Prior to that, Nelson worked at the Arsenal, tasked with tracking the delivery of Arsenal products to their destination. He didn’t like pushing paper clips around, he said, and went back to school to retrain   to become a history teacher of 7th and 8th graders. He never bothered to learn any of his students’ first names, preferring to call them “Miss or Mr._______.”

Every morning, Nelson would leave the door to his classroom open. Through the door, before school started, would come the strains of  Edith Piaf from a recording on a turntable. His mother, a Swedish immigrant, worked as a maid in the wealthier homes of Moline, and Nelson spoke fluent Swedish. In his eighties, he still corresponded with relatives in Sweden. He is, to this day, the only person I know who installed a walk-in tub in his home. [A forward-thinker, even then.]

In 1986 Nelson had cancer surgery on the very same day that my father had colon cancer surgery. (I was warned NOT to call Nelson to report on my dad, because now he was hospitalized with the same ailment.) My father only lived six months after the discovery of his condition in the spring (March). Nelson lived, with a colostomy bag, for an additional 33 years and even traveled with that inconvenience to Sweden at least once.

I’ll always hear Nelson’s chipper voice saying things like “If you’ve got the money, honey, I’ve got the time,” (an old joke). He used to tell us that his job when in WWII was to teach the soldiers about sexually transmitted diseases. I never knew if that was true or not, but it always got a chuckle. I’ll never forget the many diets we tried together. (Nelson was the darling of the Weight Watchers set). I finally quit after HE got a cookbook, and I got bubbkas. Each of the 3 others of us was to bring lunch to school one day of the week. Nelson’s idea of “lunch” was to open a cold can of tuna fish and a cold can of green beans, while we were preparing warm sandwiches in the Home Economics room oven and thinking up tasty recipes.

I taught Nelson to play bridge.  I must say, he was the worst bridge player I’ve ever seen. He would lead with a King, no matter what. It got so bad that we made up our own rules of the game. One of them was that we dealt the cards face-down, and the four of us (Nelson, Judy, Linda and me) had to bid without looking at them. If this sounds like far from serious bridge, you’re absolutely right.

I will always think of Nelson in his little house in Moline, with his baby grand piano and his small room full of books. I will always remember the time I went over to show Nelson my new snakeskin shoes and scared his elderly mother, who didn’t see well enough to know what I was wearing on my feet. (“I’m scared!” she said in a quavering voice). 

Nelson took care of his mom at home until the day she died. He never married. He was engaged a few times, but the romance with Kay (and others) never bore fruit. He had no children. The nursing home staff thought I was either his daughter or his granddaughter.

Nelson was a World Class Sweetie, and he was my friend through thick and thin. He never excluded me from his life for any reason. I was “good enough” for Nelson just the way I am. I wish I had been invited to his 93rd birthday party at the Cellar in Geneseo, but at least I have these pictures from his 94th birthday, when my husband and I took him out to eat at Short Hills Country Club. He dressed up in his suit and wore his patriotic pins and we tottered on down to the dining area in style. And on his 95th, I took a large cake to his nursing home dining room.

I am too sad to write more. “Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes.” 

I love you, Nelson. Rest in Peace.

Happy 93rd Birthday, Nelson Peterson

Nelson G. Peterson

Nelson G. Peterson

My good friend and former teaching colleague Nelson Peterson is celebrating his 93rd birthday today. I took him to lunch at a restaurant of his choice and asked him about his service during World War II.

Nelson is a veteran of both the Battle of the Bulge and, among other locations, Normandy Beach, Nuremberg, Salzburg and Munich. Although he has WWII memorabilia on the walls of his house, I had never really heard him speak about what he actually did during the war, so I asked him.

He responded, “I was a radio operator for the forward observation for artillery. We radioed back to the guns. We were way up front and we were way back.” Asked about Normandy, memorialized in Stephen Spielberg’s film “Saving Private Ryan” he said, “D-Day was the sixth of June. I went in 10 days after D-Day.”

Asked how, exactly, he “went in” (“Did you parachute in?”) Nelson said he had gone in on an LST ship and also remembered that he crossed the Rhine at Worms.

Nelson joined the Army when he was just 18, so, out of his company of 150 men (there were 3 or 4 companies in a Battalion), “All of those men are gone.” His best friend was Jack Norris from Fort Wayne, Indiana. Since Jack is long gone, perhaps it won’t matter that Nelson described him as a bit of a kleptomaniac at times.

When asked to describe his experiences during World War II in a word or phrase, he said, “It was a great experience.” Asked about war, in general, he said, “It’s a necessary evil. And sometimes it’s an unnecessary evil.”

Happy 93rd Birthday, Nelson, and many, many more.

Happy 92nd Birthday, Nelson G. Peterson!

I am posting this on the eve of one of my very best friend’s birthdays: Nelson G. (for Gene) Peterson of Moline, Illinois.  Nelson was born Aug. 20, 1923. He is 92 today. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NELSON!

I first met Nelson when I began teaching at Silvis Junior High School in the 1969-1970 school year.I taught Language Arts to 7th and 8th graders. He taught History in the room across the hall from me. In fact, we taught across the hall from one another throughout our years on-staff (my years there ended in 1985; Nelson retired earlier).

But teaching was not Nelson’s only job. He is a World War II veteran (the Battle of the Bulge, I think) just as his own father before him served in World War I. He also worked at the Arsenal and came to teaching later in life. Nelson used to say his initials (N.G.P.) stood for “No Good Prick” but that’s not true.  He is one of the sweetest, kindest, nicest people I know. He has always been my friend and has never waivered or let me down or tried to hurt my feelings, intentionally or unintentionally. Nelson has never come to a funeral home and gone out of his way to snub me, as a different old friend has done on two  occasions. If the funeral is that of someone who was a mother to you for close to a half-century (my mother-in-law) it is particularly distressing and upsetting to be on the receiving end of mean-spiritedness at an already trying time. (Better not to come at all than to come just to be mean.)  But that’s the way some people roll— although not Nelson. He even came to one of my book signings at the (now-defunct) Book Rack in Moline and another one at the Hy-Vee Grocery store in Silvis— in the middle of winter— for a children’s book, despite having no children or anyone who needed books. He has truly gone out of his way to be the great friend he remains today. (Thanks, Nelson! I appreciate it!)

Nelson G. Peterson

Nelson G. Peterson

Since Nelson, at 92, is the Renaissance man who literally has everything, I stole the idea of 3 of his other friends  who took him out to dinner on his 91st birthday. That was a GREAT idea. Kudos! My husband and I decided it would be the best way to salute Nelson on (or near) his special day.

I purposely did not plan dinner for the REAL day, because Nelson, who speaks fluent Swedish, has many cousins in the area and many other friends from his Baptist Church who probably also want to fete him on his birthday today (the REAL day). For example, 3 friends who taught with him for a long time, (as did I), took him out to dinner last year. Perhaps they plan another such outing for this year on August 20th, or perhaps the cousins in town will be “on the case.” [Best not to muck that up and ruin 2 dinners out for the Birthday Boy—although Nelson did say, as we dropped him off at home, that he hadn’t been out after 8:00 p.m. in a long time !]  One of Nelson’s cousins, Rose Fuller of East Moline, has shuffled off this mortal coil, but also taught with us at George O. Barr Elementary School for years, so, sadly, she won’t be among the relatives there for him. (R.I.P., Rose). Nelson never married.

I love Nelson and appreciate his sense of humor and his loyalty as a friend, which mirrors my own. I try very hard to be the Best Friend Anyone Could Be, remembering special days, offering help if needed, and just generally trying to be a friend, for the right reasons, not the wrong ones.  I don’t need (or want) thousands of superficial friends. I only want the really good ones, like Nelson. I won’t befriend you simply because I think you are going to do some good for my social status or because you have a lot of money or any of those other bad reasons that can come into play. I have only ever befriended people I truly like, who (seemed to ) truly liked me.

On this night, I gave him a card that said, “Everyone is young once…(and, on the inside) Your time is up.” He laughed and seemed to enjoy that and the catfish dinner he selected from the menu at Short Hills Country Club. We were (literally) the only people dining on Tuesday night and out-numbered the staff. I asked the waitress if she could turn down the air conditioning, as it was  frigid. The waitress said, “Well, you’re the only people here, so why not?” The A/C was promptly reduced to something that did not threaten to turn me into a popsicle during dinner, for which I am grateful. (Thanks!)

I am also grateful for true-blue friends like Nelson. It is possibly my aversion to early mornings that makes me an unsuitable friend for invitations to join others as they take  (took) trips to Chicago or Wisconsin or Las Vegas or wherever over a 40-year span. (Anything before 10 A.M. is verboten.) I admit that early, early mornings are not my thing; I write late into the night (30 books, so far). I didn’t know that being a Night Owl made me a bad person, but apparently it is a fatal flaw. Speaking your mind is not appreciated, either, but I have always spoken out and been honest about things, both for myself and for others, and if that is a flaw, I plead guilty with a certain measure of pride. It is not always easy suffering the backlash of being outspoken, but, for instance, during 4 terms as President (or Co-Chairman) of the Silvis Education Association, it was necessary in order to unionize our district’s teachers. And there are many occasions in a classroom setting where a teacher has to intervene to insure fairness. When I have spoken my mind, it has sometimes been applauded and other times, [because the truth hurts if it is unflattering], I have been reviled and, later, treated very poorly. One should, instead, play their cards very close to the vest and pretend they like people that they (may) actually despise—maybe even send them an oh-so-proper little note of some kind to suck up to them. I never aspired to such dishonesty.

Craig, me and Nelson as the evening ended.

Craig, me and Nelson as the evening ended.

I try to be loyal, honest, and true-blue— not a phony or superficial or sometimes friend . But I don’t play golf, don’t like early mornings, and I never was a teacher at our local high school (UTHS), United Township High School. I’d say that was a criteria for inclusion in dining out with Nelson in a group, although one guest last year  [Judy LeMaster Patchin] was not a teacher at UTHS, either, but taught with him in Silvis, as did I.   Judy made the guest list; I did not. (She is better with early mornings, for sure, but I don’t think that is the entire story.)

I was judged and found wanting, probably because I tell the truth instead of currying favor with one and all by any means possible.  I am positive I am just as good a friend of Nelson’s from our mutual teaching days as any of the other attendees with whom I also taught, and the Amish “shunning” thing is both childish, hurtful and unnecessary. Is 10 years of that not enough for having noted that the invitations to the “fun” things went to others, but the invitations to help out or pitch in came in pretty regularly and routinely, and I did my best to comply.

Then, too,  I’m usually off on an adventure of one sort or another that others don’t find interesting or noteworthy (*Nicest compliment of the week from someone I did not know in a store I frequent: “Your life is an adventure.”)

Yes, my life IS an adventure. It is true, as Shakespeare wrote (roughly paraphrased), “If you cut me, do I not bleed?” It is hurtful to be shunned when you have done nothing to deserve it. If you must be punished for feeling left out (when you were left out) and saying so, is that a life sentence? It is also sad to realize that people you thought were your good friends don’t stand up for you in the face of  meanness directed at you for over a decade without good cause, don’t remember your special day (even if  you always remembered theirs), and disappear without a trace. But, c’est la vie—right gang?

I’m lucky, though. I have a wonderful husband, wonderful kids (my daughter drove me all the way to Indianapolis to see the Rolling Stones for my birthday in July!) and at least one truly wonderful, loyal, long-time Quad Cities friend: Nelson G. Peterson. (I’d name a couple of others, but I’m a believer in quality over quantity and I don’t want to jinx my good fortune or cause them to be ostracized.)  I’m pretty sure Nelson won’t leave town and move to a remote location without so much as a phone call to me, nor, intentionally or unintentionally, forget my birthday, (which he remembered this year, as he has every other year.) I’d recite a list of other loyal friends, beginning with my college roommate (who does not live in this area), but this post is for Nelson on his special day. [If you see him, wish him a “Happy Birthday!”]

Nelson G. Peterson, my good and special friend, long may he live and be my friend and here’s to many, many more birthdays! (We’re aiming to have Nelson replace the lady who was the Oldest Living Veteran at age 110.)

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