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GRETA CUNNINGHAM: With news from Minnesota Public Radio, I'm Greta Cunningham. Northwest Airlines has begun canceling flights as a storm expected to dump heavy snow in parts of the region today moves into the Twin Cities. Minnesota Public Radio's Mark Zdechlik reports.

MARK ZDECHLIK: Northwest spokesman Kurt Ebenhoch says the airline is canceling 120 flights in and out of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport today, and that number could increase depending on the weather.

Ebenhoch says, in addition to canceling flights, Northwest ticket holders can change plans for travel over the next several days without paying additional charges.

KURT EBENHOCH: (ON PHONE) We do have a special weather waiver in effect for customers who would like to postpone their travel. They can postpone their travel from today through Monday, March 18, for travel up through Monday the 18th. And they will not be subject to any administrative fees, service charges, or penalties.

MARK ZDECHLIK: People with air travel plans, including the Twin Cities today, should check the status of their flight before heading to the airport. This is Mark Zdechlik, Minnesota Public Radio.

GRETA CUNNINGHAM: Forecasters say as much as a foot of snow is expected in the southwestern corner of the state at about 6:00 this morning. Nearly three inches of snow have fallen in the southwest. Snow is expected to continue until late tonight.

Roads are already getting slippery in southwest and south central Minnesota. State highways are in fair to poor driving conditions. Officials are advising motorists to slow down and turn off their cruise control.

Minnesota Department of Transportation officials say Interstate 494 at Bass Lake Road and Rockford Road in Plymouth is closed in both directions due to an accident. Officials say that section of 494 should remain closed until at least 1 o'clock this afternoon.

There is a winter storm warning and a winter weather advisory for Southern and east central Minnesota today and tonight. Snow could be heavy at times across the state of Minnesota with highs from 25 to 35. That's the news update. I'm Greta Cunningham.

SPEAKER 1: Programming on Minnesota Public Radio is supported by Integra Telecom, offering local, long distance, and internet service supported right here in Minnesota. Experience the Integra difference online at integratelecom.com.

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This hour on Midday, we're going to hear from an American Indian with a harrowing account of growing up in Minnesota and from a professor who has researched Indians who grew up under extremely difficult circumstances.

Then later in the hour is an account of Chisholm's eight Valentini brothers, the most members of any one Minnesota family to serve in World War II. It's all part of our Voices of Minnesota interview series. Here's Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson.

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DAN OLSON: Tucked away among stacks of documents in the National Archives in Washington, DC, Brenda Child found a treasure trove of human voices. They are letters written by American Indian parents and children about life at boarding schools.

From the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, thousands of American Indian children were forced to attend dozens of federally-funded boarding schools all around the country. The government created the schools to assimilate Indian children by taking them from their families.

Brenda Child is a member of the Red Lake Nation in northern Minnesota. She's a professor of American Studies and American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Her grandmother was a student at the Flandreau South Dakota Boarding School.

Child says her grandmother's experience is one reason she wrote her book titled Boarding School Seasons. The schools were part of a government strategy to pacify Indians and gain control of more of their land, rich with mineral and timber resources.

Life at many of the boarding institutions was more like a prison than a school. Nutrition was poor. Facilities were dilapidated. Disease was common. Tuberculosis, a constant threat in the general population, took a heavy toll at the Indian boarding schools. Brenda Child found letters like this one written by a boarding school student pleading for relief from the disease.

BRENDA CHILD: And this girl was miserable because of the painful lesions on her legs that would not heal. And she complained about the constant drilling and marching that was so much a part of the boarding school regimen.

And in this letter, Harriet reasons with her superintendent saying, "How do you expect me to learn and study when I suffer so? My parents are going to try and send me to a sanatorium, so I'll get well quicker. But they don't know how I'm going when I'm here.

So I'm going to ask you a question. Would you rather have me go away to a sanatorium and get well and where I can learn and be happy, or have me going to school and suffer?" And the girl closes with a statement. "It's about time I was going to a sanatorium to get cured."

DAN OLSON: How many schools were there, and how far away from American Indian families were they?

BRENDA CHILD: The first of the schools that historians generally cite is the Carlisle School in Pennsylvania, which was started in 1879. And some of the first children to attend that school were children of prisoners of war.

The Apaches-- you've probably heard of Geronimo and the resistance movement in the southwest. And his people were incarcerated and were actually prisoners of war of the United States for over 25 years.

And so their children were actually some of the first boarding school students because the children of the prisoners of war were taken from them and sent to the Carlisle Boarding School.

So after Carlisle, there were, I would say, by the turn of the century, dozens of similar institutions. And there were thousands of Indian children in these schools, so the idea really caught on. Of course, most of the schools were in the trans-Mississippi West, closer to the Indian population.

But even though the schools were close to where the Indian population resided, perhaps in the same state like Oklahoma or South Dakota, states with large Indian populations, native people were sent generally miles away from home and family to attend the schools, as I said, for years of time.

The average term of study back then was four years before seeing their families and communities.

DAN OLSON: Were there home visits? Could the kids go home?

BRENDA CHILD: Early on, for several decades, visiting home was discouraged. And it probably didn't happen with much frequency up until the 1930s, when boarding schools were still around.

But at the same time, there was a different administration in Washington during the years of Roosevelt's administration and a new group of people in the Indian office in Washington who regarded the boarding schools as medieval institutions that should be done away with, and American Indians should go to public schools. So it was a long time in the history of the US before that argument was made.

So Indians were actually segregated into a separate school system for many years in the United States. And it wasn't really until the 1930s that they were encouraged very much at all to attend public schools.

But what I also like to show with my book, and I think by using documents like letters, this is something that's-- a way of getting at the relationships that continued during the boarding school years.

What I don't want to end up saying is, even though this policy was very harsh, assimilation was, in fact, a very damaging policy for Indian people. I want to also not underestimate the families themselves, because ties were maintained. Even though children were separated from their families, families continued to be involved in the life of their children.

DAN OLSON: Brenda Child says there are several themes in the Indian boarding school, letters written by the parents and children, chief among them, homesickness. She reads a portion of a letter from a Wisconsin mother written in the 1920s to the superintendent of the Flandreau school about her daughter, Margaret.

BRENDA CHILD: This mother had been separated from her daughter for four years. And she wrote to the superintendent of Flandreau, asking that her daughter come home for the summer, begging, in fact, that her daughter come home. And this is what she wrote.

"So please be so kind, Mr. House, and let her come home for the summer. The poor girl has not been home for a long time, and I know she will feel more like going to school next fall if she see her folks once more.

I'm willing to let her go as long as she wants. I am proud of her to learned something new. Dear sir, if you'd please let her come home. I'm begging you, Mr. House.

So I will be looking for her. I will thank you very much if you do this and also see that she goes back to school." And she ends by saying, "Hoping you will be kind."

The next month, the same mother wrote, "This makes my third letter to you in regard of my daughter, Margaret. I don't see why you want to hold her. If you would only know how I feel longing to see her."

The mother concluded, saying, "Please take my word. Send her home to me for a few weeks. You know it won't be long until school starts, just to see her before she goes to school again." The reply the superintendent sent to Margaret's Mother was that, quote, he "could see no reason that would justify me sending her home."

There's another short excerpt from a letter from a mother from Red Lake. She wanted to see her, quote, "terribly homesick daughter, Claudia." And she expressed the sentiments of many parents when she wrote, quote, "It seems it would be much easier to get her out of prison than out of your school."

DAN OLSON: Brenda Child says among the saddest letters she found are those from school officials to parents, saying their children were ill or dead. Unsanitary boarding school conditions created an environment for the spread of otherwise easy to control diseases.

BRENDA CHILD: One of the big scourges of the government boarding schools was trachoma. It's a disease that is, if you think of the worst case of chronic conjunctivitis and before the use of sulfa drugs in the late 1930, there was no cure for this. So people suffered.

It came to be associated with boarding schools. and public health officials in the United States began to notice that there was an epidemic of trachoma on reservations, that if left untreated, could result in blindness. So it was a very serious disease.

DAN OLSON: Tuberculosis,

BRENDA CHILD: Yes, right, Tuberculosis was another--

DAN OLSON: But of course, these were chronic across the population. But we see that the American Indian population suffered disproportionately, both on reservation and in the schools.

BRENDA CHILD: They did. They did. And in fact, in Minnesota as well, you would see very high rates of tuberculosis in the late 19th and the early 20th century.

But in the boarding school context, students who suffered from TB, even students whose lungs hemorrhaged, that they were very obvious signs that they were seriously ill, were often kept in the school hospitals.

I have come across a number of letters, however, too, where superintendents were contacting parents because their children had contracted TB at school, and the children were being sent to sanitariums.

DAN OLSON: By the time federal boarding schools had been created for American Indian children, the country's native population had been decimated. American Indians had lost vast stretches of land.

Even so, people were still after resources, timber, water, and minerals on the remaining native land. Brenda Child says those forces, along with assimilation, were part of the reason for the creation of boarding schools.

BRENDA CHILD: People were thinking that when Native people were being persuaded, sometimes forcibly, to abandon their communal practices of land ownership, they argued that, well, it's too late for some of the older generation of Indians. But the younger generation can perhaps change their ways of thinking, their ways of doing things. But in order to do that, they should be away from the influences of their family, their community, and their tribe.

And so this policy, then, was devised and was given support and funding by the federal government, so that children would, in fact, be removed from their homes and their families and communities for extended periods of time for the purpose of education.

But I do like to always emphasize it's not just about cultural assimilation. It has to do with the direction of federal policy making at the time, which was really-- there were many, many people, many interests that combined at that time, people who wanted to get their land, hands on land, that tribal people were still in possession of.

DAN OLSON: Child says creation of federally run boarding schools was part of a government plan to open more resource rich Indian land for development. The plan led to passage of the Allotment Act in the late 1800s.

The Allotment Act gave Indian families a piece of property. However, Child says the result was another huge loss of land for Indians because of the way the Allotment Act was carried out.

BRENDA CHILD: The Allotment Act paid very little attention to residence patterns of Indians. So you could be like my grandfather from Mille Lacs and the Sandy Lake area and be given an allotment on the Red Lake or on the White Earth Reservation.

So it wasn't so much-- it's somewhat misleading to tell people Indians were selling their land. They were not allotted land often in the place where they lived. [LAUGHS] And so it-- in the case of my grandfather, he lost his land through nonpayment of taxes.

Now, in later years, the court cases have said that it was tribal land. It should never have been taxed. But he, nonetheless, lost his allotment. Tribal people lost a great deal of land after the Allotment Act. White Earth lost, I think they say, 92% of their tribal lands.

The National average was something like 85%. So at Red Lake, although we'd made a considerable land cession just prior to the passage of the National Allotment Act, we did not lose our land base, as so many other tribal communities did.

DAN OLSON: As she read letters written by American Indian parents and their children at boarding schools, Brenda Child says she found some of the young people adjusted to life far from home. However, many resisted.

Children frequently ran away from the schools. Child says the letters paint a grim picture, but also contain some examples of Indian students standing up to their adult overseers.

BRENDA CHILD: The material that cheered me up the most were the letters that indicated resistance on the part of family members, or children themselves, the students who ran away, or who whatever, tried to commit arson.

DAN OLSON: There was rebellion.

BRENDA CHILD: Yeah, there was a full-scale rebellion at one of the schools I looked at in 1919, where the kids took over the school one evening, cut off the electricity to campus, and did some damage around the campus of the school. But I don't know. Things like that--

DAN OLSON: Was attendance compulsory? Would kids, literally, be collared?

BRENDA CHILD: There were, in fact, compulsory-- there were compulsory attendance laws passed in the 19th century so that by the 1890s there were such laws in existence. So parents and family members had no choice. They had to send their kids to school. Police sometimes rounded up children to go to schools, and it was a compulsory thing.

And one of the stories that I like to tell my students about to when we are in the History of Indian Education class is about the resistance on the part of some communities across the country, because it's important to remember that it's something that happened in the Great Lakes, and it happened to Indians in Minnesota.

But it is a national-- in fact, I think in some ways an international story because Canadian Indians were subject to the same policies. And last year, I was on the dissertation committee of a Maori student from New Zealand who was writing about the Maori boarding schools.

I also looked at the experience of Australian Aboriginal people as being quite similar because children were taken away from their families and adopted out. And there was this same strategy of separating children from families that you see operating in the US and Canada.

DAN OLSON: The letters from Indian boarding school students, Brenda Child says, revealed the strong ties that are a hallmark of Native families. She says her favorite letter is from a teenage boy to his father.

BRENDA CHILD: This is a rather long letter from a White Earth student, Victor, who was born in 1914. And he talked about having a partner named Maurice that is another Ojibwe student who was from Hayward, Wisconsin. Both of them were teenagers at Flandreau in South Dakota.

And on February 20, 1931, Victor's father learned from the White Earth agent that his son had deserted school. And often, the school superintendents referred to the student runaways as deserters, as if they had deserted the military or something.

That same day, a remorseful Victor wrote to his father from Hayward, "Dear Dad, I suppose you will be surprised to know that I'm here. I know I've made a big mistake, and it's hard for me to think of the grief it will cause you, Dad.

Dad, I was discouraged. I just went mad. I realized what I've done, and I'm very sorry. I'll go back next year and like it.

The main thing is getting out of here and home now. I've had good luck in the bum world, but I don't like it somehow. We left Flandreau Saturday afternoon, about 4 o'clock. We slept in a straw stack Saturday night and stayed there all day, Sunday.

11:30, we caught a passenger out of Pipestone to Wilmer. From there, we caught another passenger. From Granite City, I think it was, we rode a dead header to Minneapolis. We walked all day and slept in a straw stack.

In the morning, we finished our journey to Hudson. Here we each got an orange, three Graham crackers. And for $0.30, we bought a loaf of bread, a can of sardines, three Milky Ways, and some chocolate peanuts. We then caught a time freight from there to Spooner.

We rode between the cars from Hudson to New Richmond. Otherwise, we rode the blinds and a dead header all the way. We walked 29 miles from Spooner to Hayward and then 10 miles to my partner's home.

They are good to me here, insisted I stay till I get rested up. I was going on, but they insisted. It is a nice place.

Dad, I just want to forget the cause of my running away. I have to get home, Dad. Write and tell me what you think. I hate to start bumming for home, but I can't raise any money. I promise I'll do my best to make up for my mistake. Your son, Victor."

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DAN OLSON: Brenda Child is a professor of American Studies and American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota. She's a member of the Red Lake Nation. By the way, if you're on the road in the southwestern United States sometime soon, you might wish to drop by the Heard Museum in Phoenix. One of the exhibits is Remembering Our Indian School days. Brenda Child helped create the exhibit.

[NATIVE MUSIC, CHANTING]

You're listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Dan Olson. Later in the hour, we hear from Frank Valentini, one of eight brothers from Chisholm on Minnesota's Iron Range who went off to World War II. All eight returned alive. Next is another account from an American Indian about a childhood of deprivation not at a boarding school, but at Minnesota's state-run orphanage.

Hundreds of Minnesota children of all races were sent to the state orphanage in Owatonna in the early 1900s. As they became teenagers, many, including Peter Razor, went to live with Minnesota farm families, where they were used as laborers.

Treatment of the children at the orphanage and on the farms varied widely. Peter Razor recalls brutal treatment, including verbal abuse and beatings that put him in the hospital. He survived, became an electrician, served in the Korean War, and raised a family.

When he told his children about his experience at the Owatonna Orphanage and life as a farmhand, they encouraged him to write a book. He titled the memoir While The Locust Slept. It's drawn from state records and his memories.

Razor is a member of the Fond Du Lac band of Ojibwe. He says he learned early at the orphanage that being an Indian provoked especially harsh treatment. Razor talked with Minnesota Public Radio's Lorna Benson.

PETER RAZOR: I was in St. Paul at the Christian Charities Boarding Home for Children. As I recall from my information I got from my various relatives that I contacted after I became an adult, I was thought to become a water head, a hydrocephalic.

So they took my brother and raised him and left me there in St. Paul with my father who, subsequently, took off for Milwaukee, and I was left in the care of the Christian Boarding Home for Children. And then I was assigned at the age of one year to the State Public School in Owatonna.

LORNA BENSON: When did you realize that you didn't like it there?

PETER RAZOR: I never did realize that, because that was the only thing I knew. You become inured, I think, to your circumstances. You either don't have time to think about it, or you know nothing else.

So you're stuck with trying to make the best of what you have and not considering whether it's good or bad. But I realized early on that it was uncomfortable, that I was unhappy quite a bit.

LORNA BENSON: Uncomfortable and painful at times, no doubt.

PETER RAZOR: Yes, very much so.

LORNA BENSON: What were some of the punishments that were meted out to you?

PETER RAZOR: That varied with the matron and the assistants. There was radiator brushes, which is a long hardwood, handles with a brush on the end that they stick in between and clean out the radiators, steam radiators. And they used them quite frequently on the people.

They would hit you with brooms, whatever was handy, actually. And they'd go fly into a rage. Like when I was 11 years old, a matron in Cottage 15 broke a broom on me twice while I was scrubbing floors on hands and knees.

LORNA BENSON: They broke a broom on you?

PETER RAZOR: Yeah, they swing it, and it would break as it hit you. So it was-- the first time it didn't hurt too much. It hit a soft part of my body, and it broke the broom. And they usually become quite surprised, as though they didn't realize they'd hit that hard.

Then the second time it was quite painful, and it left me with bruising for a number of weeks. And then they have a paddle where they-- a few of the employees would agree to provide punishment for the matrons, and they would come down on a Saturday or some other pre-arranged day.

And after breakfast, they would line up the boys who had earned punishment through the previous week, and they would bend over and touch the foot and touch their feet. And the gardener-- in my case, it was a Gardener, and he provided the number of slots that the matron told him to-- that I had earned, so to speak.

LORNA BENSON: And this was with a paddle?

PETER RAZOR: It was a very sturdy hardwood paddle, varnished and with a handle on it and a very well-designed weapon.

LORNA BENSON: How much of this corporal punishment was common at the time, and how much of it was--

PETER RAZOR: Pretty common. Even the teachers in the school-- they had a school from kindergarten through eighth grade, at the orphanage, and even the teachers used corporal punishment because it was customary to do that.

They used rulers. And their paddles were ping pong bats that they used to paddle with. At least when I got paddled, it was used. It didn't really hurt you that bad, but it stung pretty bad.

LORNA BENSON: You wrote about being attacked by a matron with a hammer one time when you were staying--

PETER RAZOR: She was in a rage, and that wasn't a formal punishment. It was just one of those breaking a broom over you in a rage.

I had gotten a drink of water. I'd worked in the kitchen till after supper, and it was real hot, and I was thirsty. And after I'd gone to bed, I went out in the hall and got a drink of water from the bubbler.

And that enraged her so much that she followed me back in the bedroom. And I don't know where she-- she had the hammer in her hand, and she started beating me. Well, that put me in the hospital for six weeks. Those weren't punishments. Those were rages, I'd say.

LORNA BENSON: At what point did you realize that you were oftentimes being singled out for punishment because of your race?

PETER RAZOR: The gardener was one of the few employees that actually mentioned race. When he crippled me up in the garden, he called me a-- and he swore-- a dirty Indian. But the other ones, like when she hit me with a hammer, I never heard "Indian" mentioned.

And when the paddling-- I'm sure the severe paddlings-- and those things were as a result of race, but they never really said it. They were keeping it hidden. They were just doing it, but not saying it.

LORNA BENSON: But did you know it?

PETER RAZOR: I didn't really know it at the time. Naivety was built into my upbringing. Because I was there since a baby, I just grew into that system. And I was trying to be open minded enough, looking beyond the problems I perceived, and looking for something better, and ignoring the reality that I was immersed in.

LORNA BENSON: Who provided comfort for you?

PETER RAZOR: Well, there was none of that. There was-- I grew up for 15 years and then two years in a farming venture with-- never been touched except by abuse. It's odd when I think of it now.

LORNA BENSON: But at the time, it seemed normal?

PETER RAZOR: It was normal at the time, yeah. When I went to the army, it was the same. I didn't think anything of it.

I had met somebody in Minneapolis, and I went over to Korea during the war, and I didn't think anything of it. I never wrote a letter home to nobody. And finally, the Red Cross said somebody wants-- I had met somebody in Minneapolis before I got drafted.

And those people wanted to find me, and they contacted the Red Cross, who found me over in Korea and said, you're supposed to write a letter to these people. I've already been over there almost a year already, and I hadn't written a letter to anybody. I didn't think nothing of it. So you grow oddly, as I see it now.

LORNA BENSON: It sounds like some of your family members had tried to make contact along the way, but it just didn't work out.

PETER RAZOR: They wouldn't-- when I left the orphanage, one of my cousins wanted to find me. He was a young man, and he tried to find me, and the state wrote a letter. And it's in my files.

The state said it's best I do not be contacted. It would interfere with my life with the new family. So they even prevented that.

DAN OLSON: Peter Razor is talking with Minnesota Public Radio's Lorna Benson. You're listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio.

When Peter Razor became a teenager, he was handed over by the Owatonna Orphanage officials to a southeastern Minnesota farm family. Razor barely survived the experience. Here's more of his conversation with Lorna Benson.

LORNA BENSON: The new family that you eventually got was a farm family that came to pick you out. Why do you think they picked you?

PETER RAZOR: Well, for working. There's no question about it. I was just going to be a worker. And they were supposed to send me to high school, but as soon as I got to the farm, they tried to get me out of high school.

I was quite socially retarded, I believe, at the time because it never really dawned on me just what was going on as far as the reality of my circumstances at the time.

LORNA BENSON: Were you excited at first when you found out that you were finally going to go with a family?

PETER RAZOR: Not really. I was apprehensive. There was some hope, probably, deep down that something would change for the better. But I was quite apprehensive.

LORNA BENSON: Because you suspected that--

PETER RAZOR: Yeah, there was rumors going around that about what was happening on farm indenture, that people were dying or getting hurt. And a lot of boys did die on the farm.

LORNA BENSON: How common was it for farmers to get their hired hands from state orphanages?

PETER RAZOR: Apparently, quite common. I never saw my farmer till the day he came to get me. I never knew anything about it, anything real. I just heard that I was going to be indentured, but I didn't know anything more than that until they came to get me.

LORNA BENSON: Do you find it odd that they never asked you anything about--

PETER RAZOR: Yeah well, now I do. But not only odd, but I think it's a travesty that they didn't consider the needs and the feelings of the children.

LORNA BENSON: So what was the arrangement, in your case or in many cases, between the farm family and the child that was going with them?

PETER RAZOR: Well, I was supposed to become part of their family, according to the contract, and he was supposed to let me go to high school. That was in the contract. And he was supposed to-- in my summer wages, I was supposed to get paid for the summer work. They were supposed to put a certain portion of my money into a trust fund and then return it to me at age 18. But that never happened.

LORNA BENSON: It sounds like, though, that the state, at least once, came to check on you, and you didn't take the opportunity to tell them that it wasn't working.

PETER RAZOR: I think at the time, I think I was quite-- partially because of the prior treatment at the orphanage and also the subsequent treatment on the farm-- that I was quite, probably, emotionally traumatized, and I didn't know how to bridge that circumstance to communicate. Although, I remember thinking that I would like to, but I didn't know quite how to do it.

LORNA BENSON: But this farmer was beating you.

PETER RAZOR: Yeah, and I had no idea how to escape that, just like I couldn't escape the beatings at the state school.

DAN OLSON: In a section of his book, While The Locusts Slept, Peter Razor describes his life with the farm family. In an excerpt read by Vaughn Armsworth, Razor recalls being late for chores one evening and the reaction of John, the farmer.

VAUGHN ARMSWORTH: "The sedating babble of the creek soon lured me to sit and listen. A squirrel scampered up a nearby oak. When the squirrel disappeared on the hidden side of the trunk, I tossed a stick, and the squirrel flicked off.

Suddenly realizing I had lingered, I hurried on to the farm. Turning into the driveway, I stiffened with fear. John stood near the house, staring at me with his head cocked.

I moved to step around John on my way to the house, but John's arm shot out, stopping me. 'You're late.' His eyes burned from a stony face.

I tried to move around his arm toward the house. I have to change clothes for chores. He grabbed me by the shoulders, spun me violently to face him, then pulled me into his chest in a tight bear hug.

I grunted as John squeezed me, nearly breathless. I tried to scream, but John squeezed harder. 'When I talks, don't you ever turn your backs on me, bastard!'

I managed to bring one arm over John's arm to shield my face. For a frightening moment, he squeezed even harder as though to crush me. Then the world spun as John threw me like a sack of feed.

Landing on hands and knees, I scrunched on my belly. The mauling more terrorized than hurt me. And though able to move, I didn't at first.

Abusive staff at the state school seemed satisfied if I appeared weak or injured after their attacks. Watching from side vision, I waited until John's shoes backed off. Scraped on my hands and knees, I stood and exaggerated a limp as I shuffled to the house.

At the door of the house. I was forced to stop, but did not look back. 'You to come right home,' John yelled.

In spite of reassurances from smiling social workers, I now knew the truth of farm placement. Social workers, apparently, felt it unnecessary to tell farmers how to treat orphans or to tell orphans how to live with guardians."

LORNA BENSON: How did you finally escape all of this? You end the book with finally coming of age.

PETER RAZOR: Well, I, came of age, and I found jobs, and started my working life-- until I got drafted. Of course, I got drafted in the Korean War. And that was a turning point, and things started to come together pretty fast after that.

LORNA BENSON: When did you realize you wanted to write about this experience?

PETER RAZOR: My daughter, when she graduated from college, she started asking me about that other set of grandparents that she had. She started talking. And the more I told her-- I hadn't told her anything when she grew up. None of my children knew what happened until they read the story.

And so then she thought, well, we should-- it sounds like we've probably got a story there. Mostly out of her-- the way she prodded me to do that-- and then she married a teacher now, so the two of them prodded me to finish it.

LORNA BENSON: What was it like doing the research, particularly when you would find these references to your case?

PETER RAZOR: It was quite emotional. It took quite a few years because I had to put it down from time to time and do other things.

LORNA BENSON: With such a negative experience growing up and so little positive interaction with other people, are you surprised that you're able to be a writer?

PETER RAZOR: Yeah, I never realized that, so you go through your life with an inferior attitude about life, about yourself.

LORNA BENSON: Are you OK with the experience that you went through?

PETER RAZOR: Well, no. You can understand that, intellectually, things could have been different, should have been different, or could have been worse or better. But it doesn't sift down into the emotional caverns of your thinking. It doesn't, so it stays there. And in the intellectual arena, you don't do any wishful thinking, I guess. No regrets.

LORNA BENSON: No regrets.

PETER RAZOR: Yeah, you can't have regrets. It's just life. Life is life is life, whatever it is.

DAN OLSON: Peter Razor is talking with Minnesota Public Radio's Lorna Benson. After another life-threatening beating at the hands of the farmer, the 17-year-old racer escaped. A local doctor treated his wounds and called a county social worker who placed him with another much kinder family where Razor says he learned at last what it meant to be a boy without fear of abuse.

The state orphanage in Owatonna was closed in 1945. Razor writes in the epilogue to his book, "My children have been my joy, and they've saved me. Seeing them grow into happy, healthy adults has helped ease the pain of my childhood. But nothing can ever erase the memories."

Razor's book is titled While The Locusts Slept. It's published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press. You're listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Dan Olson.

[MUSIC PLAYING] When Johnny comes marching home again,

Hooray, Hooray

We'll give him a hearty welcome then

Hooray, hooray

DAN OLSON: Finally is the account of Frank Valentini, who with seven of his brothers, served in World War II. Here's Minnesota Public Radio's Chris Julan

CHRIS JULAN: The United States is riding a wave of patriotism, and Frank Valentini is happy to see it. Valentini says he hasn't seen this kind of national spirit since World War II. He served in that war along with seven of his brothers. Eight Valentini brothers went overseas during World War II, and all eight came home.

Frank Valentini and his brothers grew up in Chisholm on Minnesota's Iron Range. He came back to Chisholm after the War and became a high school social studies teacher. He looks like a social studies teacher. He's short and sturdy, about 5 foot 6. On a recent morning, he was wearing a white mock turtleneck and blue jeans. Frank Valentini could pass for 65, but he's 82.

Most of his brothers have died. Only he and Frello are left. It's been 60 years since the United States entered World War II, but Frank Valentini remembers it vividly. He says he only has a few mementos from the War. He takes one out of his wallet.

Describe what you're holding there.

FRANK VALENTINI: A wallet-size grouping of three brothers who served in World War II together, and we're in chronological order, pictured in chronological order. Dindy, there's Frank, Frello, Bellow, Queenie, Louis, V, and Gusty.

CHRIS JULAN: How long have you had this?

FRANK VALENTINI: This thing here?

CHRIS JULAN: Mm-hm.

FRANK VALENTINI: Ooh, a long time now. This guy gave each one of us one, so I have it in my wallet. Once in a while when I'm bragging about some things, I take it out.

CHRIS JULAN: Tell me the given names of your brothers.

FRANK VALENTINI: Costantino, Luigi, Agostino, Quinto, Francesco, Fiorello, Marbello, Valentino. I just Marvel at this one. I don't know what my old man was thinking of, Valentino Valentini. Is it something? That's his given first-- that's his name. We call him V.

CHRIS JULAN: And most of them got anglicized, you say.

FRANK VALENTINI: Yeah, these three couldn't be anglicized. The rest, Francesco is Frank. Luigi is Louis. Agostino is Gusty or August Quinto would be Quentin.

CHRIS JULAN: There were 10 Valentini brothers in Chisholm. They had one sister. One brother was too old to serve in the military. Another was a chemist in a steel plant. He stayed home. The rest of the brothers went to war.

Frank and his brother Bello, tried to enlist the day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Bello got into the Air Force. The Navy rejected Frank because his eyes were bad.

But Frank got another chance. The army drafted him a few months later. He went to Fort Snelling for his physical.

FRANK VALENTINI: A corporal was giving me the eye test. And I said, if I open both eyes, I can see it perfectly. So he passed me on. Now, that may sound gung gung ho, but I said, I'm not going to be left behind. I want to be a part of this.

CHRIS JULAN: Frank Valentini says he was ready to go even before the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor.

FRANK VALENTINI: By 1939, we felt that we were preparing for this, that we would become a part of this, eventually. I just assumed that I was going to be a part of this when it happened.

And we didn't expect it to happen as it did, but we're all gung ho. Off we went. When we got drafted, we got drafted. Some volunteered, and others waited for the draft.

As I said, I was rejected to start with, but I said, I'm not going to stay home. And that was before all my brothers got in, except the one was in already. And I didn't think that there would be eight of us. I thought these older ones would have to go.

In fact, Frello, who was just two years, three years older than I, I thought he wouldn't have to go because he was a family man. I had this feeling that if you're a family man, you don't have to go. But it all changed.

Valentino-- let's see. He went in 1944. He didn't have to go. He volunteered on his own. He had three children. Very unusual fella, he saw the rest of his brothers go and said, I want to go too. He didn't have to go.

He must have been about 34 years old when he went into the service, and Gusty been about-- it's listed here as 37. I was 22, 23. I was trained in the Signal Corps. I was a radio operator.

So eventually, I ended up in China, and we would call for sorties--

[ALARM]

--for bombing. I'll answer that.

CHRIS JULAN: An old friend of Frank's drops by with some newspapers. Frank spreads one out in the dining room table. It's a reprint of the Chisholm Tribune press from the 1940s. There's a two-page spread of pictures of men in uniform. These are the 55 young men from the town of Chisholm who died in World War II.

FRANK VALENTINI: Yeah, all these people. Here is my closest friend.

CHRIS JULAN: And is this somebody you grew up with, went to school with?

FRANK VALENTINI: This guy here, yeah, was one of my closest friends. Fred Francis Ketty, he was a navigator on a B-29, missing and never came back.

CHRIS JULAN: How many friends did you lose in the war?

FRANK VALENTINI: Lots of them. I'll take a look. I lost Dario. I lost Fritze, Elroy Frank. I lost Tom Roditis, Louis Loric, Ernie [INAUDIBLE]

This guy. two from this family-- there are two brothers that were killed in the War. This is Joe Cani and Louis Cani, two brothers killed in the War, from Chisholm.

There's another one. Guski, remember Guski? Peter Gustovich, we called him Guski. Idro Garoni. Lots of friends. Lots of them.

CHRIS JULAN: Among you and your brothers, how many of you actually were under fire and risked dying during World War II?

FRANK VALENTINI: All, except this guy.

CHRIS JULAN: Tell me what you have.

FRANK VALENTINI: This is the Bronze Star. It's not as highly rated as the Silver Star or the Purple Heart or this or that. For the Purple Heart, you have to be hit. But this is for Outstanding-- I think somewhere on the back, I think it says here. I don't know if you can see. I can't read it to you.

CHRIS JULAN: "Heroic or meritorious achievement." What did you do to receive that?

FRANK VALENTINI: [LAUGHS] Off the record, I retreated fast. No, I don't know. No, no. I was a radio operator and under fire. When I say "under fire," I was exposed to artillery fire. No, hand-to-hand combat for me.

I had the ringside seat. In other words, observation post, we saw what was going on. The officer I was with steered the bombers that we called for into the target. And my job was to get them there, and my officer would steer them to the target. And there we were, ringside seats, But we were strafed at times. We were bombed at times and artillery.

CHRIS JULAN: I'm trying to imagine what it's like for your parents.

FRANK VALENTINI: My mom wasn't living. My mom had died the year before, exactly a year before Pearl Harbor in December 29 of 1940. I don't know what would have happened if she had lived during the War. She couldn't stop us from going. But the point is, I don't know if that probably--

PATRICIA: It would have killed her.

FRANK VALENTINI: That probably would have killed her.

CHRIS JULAN: Frank's wife, Patricia, has been listening to the conversation. Patricia sits forward in her chair when Frank mentions his mother.

PATRICIA: That'll probably kill her, all eight of her boys going into the service.

FRANK VALENTINI: She was a diabetic. But anyway, it happened so that she didn't have to suffer with that. My father, well, he was a man. [LAUGHS] Compared to my mother being a mother, my father was a father, but he was a man. He accepted it.

And my father was an Italian immigrant. Each family had stars portraying the number of people serving, whomever. My father said he was running out of windows. He didn't have enough windows for the stars honoring his sons.

I was told second hand the story that he got half in the bag one time-- he was an Italian, and he drinks wine with his meals, and he got half in the bag one time. And he was 70 years old-- in his late 60s.

Well, anyway, he went to volunteer, but he went through the motions. He was about 70 years old. He says, you took all my sons. He says, why not take me or something or other? And he was an Italian immigrant all this time.

CHRIS JULAN: He actually came over to Chisholm from Italy?

FRANK VALENTINI: Yeah, he came here, and he came to Chisholm in 1911. He became an underground miner and had very little education, very little knowledge of the language.

And that was quite common, really, because I lived with individuals who were parented by immigrants. We had a lot of immigrants here. They were underground miners, the Slavics, the Italians, the Finns.

The mining captains were English or some of the Scandinavians who were better educated than we were. But the Finns and the Italians and the Slavics were the strong back and, supposedly, weak mind, which wasn't true. They just weren't educated.

CHRIS JULAN: Frank Valentini says most of the men who went to World War II from the town of Chisholm were the sons of immigrants. Some of them were immigrants themselves.

FRANK VALENTINI: One guy couldn't speak English, and he had been in the Serbian army in World War I. I saw him after the War. He got a discharge. Eventually, he got a discharge.

I met him after World War II. I said, "Nick, how are you doing?" "Hey, boy. I go. How you? How you? Where you be?" That's the way he spoke. He had the Serbian brogue, the Slavic brogue.

"How you be? How you be." He said, "I get discharged. I have trouble with the legs." He had, supposedly, varicose veins. He was in World War I.

And he said, "I got trouble with the legs. They send me home. They give me money. I get money now every month. I get money." That's the way he talked. He was 45 years old. He got drafted. [LAUGHS]

Another guy that's Italian, "I come. You, you come with me. I go army. I go Army."

There was Serafino [INAUDIBLE]. I said, Serafino, where'd you go? Oh, they make me cook. I cook. I sergeant, I sergeant. Are you sergeant? You can't speak English! I know. I speak. [LAUGHS]

CHRIS JULAN: Frank Valentini left for the war in the summer of 1942.

FRANK VALENTINI: And I never got home. On furlough, one time, I served 39 months. These other guys got home. They got these pictures with their wives at home. And I became a pessimist. I've been pessimistic ever since.

Here I'm in the China Burma Inndia theater, and the rule was, when you complete the 24th month in China, you can go home. They'll send you home and reassign you.

What happens? This friend of mine, 21 months from my outfit, my 21 months, he's got 24, I'll see you, Val. Another one, my 22nd, I'll see you, Val.

And I'm getting close to 24. And I said, jeez, am I going to get home? Am I going to get home? My 24th month, three of us were selected. I'm waiting for my orders.

All furloughs, everything's canceled. Nobody goes home. Why? The war in Europe ends May 8, VE Day. Nobody goes home. They're not going to send me home when they're sending troops from Europe, the European theater, to the Pacific.

What's going to happen? If anyone ever tells you that the dropping of the bomb was inhumane, don't listen to them. Recently in that Duluth paper, every other article, letters to the editor, four or five people would write about the inhumanity of the atomic bomb. They never should have done it.

That's not true. That's not true. I don't think so. If they didn't do that, I don't know where I would be. Maybe I'm selfish, but I like me.

And they dropped the bomb. Oh, I'll never forgot that. I'm a radio operator. I tell these other three guys, I said, hey, things look good. I got home as of October 28, 1945.

CHRIS JULAN: Now, you've seen a lot of places, but this is pretty close to where you started life.

FRANK VALENTINI: Hey, I'm using a story I was telling. My wife's tired of hearing it. When we had one of our class reunions, somebody suggested that each classmate get up and tell how far they got in the world.

And a friend, classmate, said San Francisco. Another one, another close friend, said Dallas. My turn, OK, my turn, I said, two blocks on the same side of the street. And I was born two blocks down on the same side of the street. In fact, all my life as a teacher or as a student, I never had to drive to school.

CHRIS JULAN: How far are you from the school here?

FRANK VALENTINI: Right across the street, right across the street. I taught school here-- let's see-- four years in Deer River, six years in Tower. That's ten. 29 years in Chisholm.

I replaced my 1936 social studies teacher when I came here in 1959. And I taught here for 29 years until I got fired. (LAUGHING) No, no. I was 69 years old. And I gave up my job because they were cutting back because of declining enrollment, and they were going to let the young guy go--

PATRICIA: With a family of three.

FRANK VALENTINI: And I said, I better go.

CHRIS JULAN: And that's why he decided to retire?

FRANK VALENTINI: The young guy was on a seniority basis, and he had already received his unrequested leave letter. And I said, I'll go.

My superintendent came to see me three days before school was out, and he said, why don't you stay? I said, I can't. It wouldn't be right. So I left. Yeah, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed teaching.

CHRIS JULAN: Frank Valentini taught high school social studies for 39 years. He spent 29 of those years at Chisholm High School. He lives in Chisholm with his wife, Patricia. They've been married for 54 years.

Frank Valentini served overseas in World War II, along with seven of his brothers. All eight of the Valentini brothers came home at the end of the War. This is Chris Julan, Minnesota Public Radio.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

(SINGING) Get ready for the Jubilee

Hooray, hooray

They'll get three cheers from you and me

Hooray, hooray

Uncle Sam will prove he's still the champ

He'll close up shop and break up camp

And we'll all feel gay when Johnny comes marching home

When Johnny comes marching home

When Johnny comes marching home

SPEAKER 1: You've been listening to Our Voices of Minnesota interview series produced by Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson. To learn more about the valentiny brothers who Chris Julan was just talking about, you can find Chris Julan's story about them at our website, www.minnesotapublicradio.org.

SPEAKER 2: Programming on Minnesota Public Radio is supported by Northern Brewer Home Brewing Supplies on Grand Avenue, offering products for beer and wine makers, including starter kits for beginners online at northernbrewer.com.

SPEAKER 1: And that'll just about do it for Midday today. Tune in tomorrow at 11:00 going to talk about transportation issues in the state of Minnesota. We'll be seeing where the various bills are at the legislature.

Transportation Commissioner Elwyn Tinklenberg will join us, and we know Dean Johnson, the Senate Transportation Committee Chair, will be with us as well. That's tomorrow at 11:00 here on Midday.

Well, there is quite a storm blowing through the state of Minnesota right now. Winter storm warnings are out for portions of southern and central Minnesota this afternoon and tonight. Winter weather advisories are out for parts of central and southeastern Minnesota this afternoon and tonight.

Snow, sometimes heavy, should fall today in southern and central Minnesota. There's brisk winds as well. And there will be a mix of precipitation in the far south.

We should have highs about 30 degrees. Then tonight, the snow will continue heavy at times, during the evening, eventually decreasing late in the night. There's just a chance of snow in Northern Minnesota, lows from the middle teens to the middle 20s. So if you are going to be doing some traveling today, look out for the weather. It's going to be bad in southern and central Minnesota.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

LORNA BENSON: I'm Lorna Benson. Congress wants to fix farmers' problems by offering controversial subsidies. We'll have that story on the next All Things Considered, weekdays at 3:00 on Minnesota Public Radio, KNOW FM 91.1.

SPEAKER 1: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio.

It's 29 degrees, snowing at KNOW FM 91.1, Minneapolis St. Paul. Twin Cities weather and winter storm warning is in effect for this afternoon through tonight. We could have five to seven inches by evening and highs in the lower seconds. Snow is heavy tonight at times with a total accumulation of eight to 14 inches.