Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Reunions galore & why they’re important to me August 12, 2025

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At a previous Helbling reunion, I pulled stories from a family history book to display. Some of the stories were part of a family history trivia contest I planned. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)

THERE’S SOMETHING TO BE SAID about the importance of family reunions. They allow us to reconnect, to celebrate, to reminisce, to build new memories, to support, encourage and appreciate one another and our shared histories.

A snippet of a photo from the July 1938 family reunion in Courtland attended by 511 Bodes. My grandparents, Lawrence and Josephine Bode, are in the center of the picture, between the adults holding the babies. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)

THE BODE FAMILY

My first reunion of the summer was a small gathering with a maternal aunt, uncle, cousins and my youngest brother and his wife in south Minneapolis. Aunt Rae, my godmother, was in town from Missouri. Over a table laden with breakfast foods, we talked and laughed and then afterwards moved to the screened in porch for more catching up and a discussion about the current state of affairs in this country. Mostly, though, we talked family. Since my mom’s death in 2022, I’ve felt even more the need to stay connected to her siblings and their families.

The annual Kletscher reunion always starts at noon with a potluck. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)

THE KLETSCHER FAMILY

The next reunion happened on the last Sunday of July. The extended Kletscher family met in Echo, a small southwestern Minnesota town some seven miles north of my hometown. There, in a community center, we filled tables with homemade foods for a noon potluck. Afterwards, I circulated in an attempt to talk to nearly everyone in attendance. This reunion has been going on annually for probably seventy years or more. I don’t always make it. But I try to because I’d rather see my cousins and my remaining aunts and uncle at a happy event rather than at a funeral.

A photo board displayed at a Helbling reunion several years ago. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)

THE HELBLING FAMILY

And then there is the Helbling reunion, held last weekend at a nephew’s rural Faribault acreage. This gathering brings my husband Randy’s family together from all across Minnesota and the country. Our son flew in from Boston. Our second daughter and her family arrived from Madison, Wisconsin. Others came from Michigan, Missouri and North Dakota. This event happens annually. And each year family members travel from all over to see each other, which says a lot about just how important family connections are to all of us.

Jams and jelly won in the family raffle. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo August 2025)

This year organizers changed things up a bit by replacing BINGO with a raffle of homemade/home-grown foods and goods. There were cookies, banana bread, multiple jams, wine, honey, engraved stones, crocheted animals, garden fresh potatoes, salsa and more, including canned rabbit meat. I brought an anthology that included five pieces of my writing. Randy brought a bottle of Cry Baby Craig’s hot sauce, an allowed raffle item given it’s made in Faribault.

Everyone went home with something. But perhaps the best part of the raffle was the money raised for the Community Action Center in Faribault via the sale of $5 raffle tickets. With $300 in raffle ticket sales and a company match by an employer, the CAC will be gifted with $600 from the Helbling family. This family cares.

Tom and Betty Helbling, circa early 1950s.

I love my husband’s family. They are a genuinely loving, kind, caring, compassionate, generous and supportive group. During the reunion, we shared family updates while the kids bounced in a cow-shaped bouncy house. During a corn hole tournament, Tristan and his teammate once again walked away with the “trophy,” a mini corn hole board. My six-year-old grandson showed me how to pound nails into a round of wood in a game of hammerschlagen. My granddaughter and I watched baby ducks swim in a pond next to a menagerie of poultry, goats and two black sheep. Kids shot rockets high into the air. Adults gathered in lawnchair clusters to chat. Slowly, as the sun set, family members began to leave. I left feeling so loved.

The evening prior, the siblings and their spouses met at the Craft Beverage Curve in Faribault for food, drinks and conversation. The new addition to the reunion proved popular. Family raved about the setting. I felt a deep sense of pride in my community. But mostly, I felt the love of the Helbling family which I have been part of for 43 years. Tom and Betty Helbling would be proud of the family they started. And they would be happy that, on the second Saturday in August each year, their family reconnects at a reunion.

© Copyright 2025 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Thankful for rain… June 29, 2021

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Playing in the rain in July 2014 in southwestern Minnesota. Minnesota Prairie Roots file photo.

RAIN, RAIN, oh, glorious rain.

Much-needed rain fell here in southeastern Minnesota over the weekend and into Monday, easing the drought that has left lawns parched brown and soybean and corn fields stressed.

Rain fell from late morning to late afternoon Saturday, with 3.5 inches collected in the rain gauge at our house. More fell on Sunday, although those were showers rather than anything substantial. Monday afternoon, just as I was about to hang laundry on the line, raindrops began falling. That ended plans to hang clothes outdoors. But I was OK with that given the steady rain.

I still think like the farmer’s daughter that I am with my dad’s words echoing in my brain. I can almost hear him saying, “They got more rain north of Echo.” No matter how much rain fell on his fields near Vesta, he always thought Echo, seven miles to the north, got more. Or that their crops always looked better.

I never understood Dad’s dissatisfaction. And I can’t ask; he’s been gone 18 years now. But if Echo got rain, good for the farmers near that small southwestern Minnesota town.

Right now all of Minnesota needs rain. And if you got some, no matter how much or where, then I’m thankful.

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TELL ME: Are you dealing with a drought or rain shortage where you live? Or if you live in Minnesota and got recent rain, how much?

© Copyright 2021 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

A legacy of love in 10 words May 19, 2018

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TEN WORDS IN A TELEGRAM. Ten words of love. Sent seven weeks prior to their December 7, 1945, wedding.

She saved the creased and partially torn slip of paper for 73 years, a reminder of the love they shared until his death a dozen years ago.

On Thursday that love letter, wired by my Uncle Glenn from Camp Patrick Henry in Virginia to his betrothed back in Minnesota, was shared at his beloved’s funeral. There, among all the family photos and remembrances, this piece of my Aunt Elaine’s life held the sweetness of young love and evidence of an enduring love between husband and wife.

“You don’t think of your grandparents in that kind of way, in a romantic way,” Glenn and Elaine’s granddaughter said as we stood (after the funeral dinner) reading the romantic words of Kim’s grandfather: DARLING. ARRIVED SAFELY. EXPECT TO BE HOME SOON. LOVE = GLENN.

Darling. That single word holds such love, such sweetness, such promise. I can only imagine the joy Elaine felt in receiving that October 19, 1945, wire from the man she was about to marry. While he served in the US military, she was back home on their native southwestern Minnesota prairie working as a nurse at the Marshall Hospital.

 

Elaine Borning. Photo from the Sunset Funeral Association website.

 

What a gift Elaine left to her six surviving children, 24 grandchildren and 47 great grandchildren by saving that telegram. Love of family threaded throughout her funeral day. In between comforting Scripture, we sang “I Was There to Hear your Borning Cry,” a hymn sung at every Borning family funeral. Song connecting generations, even in death.

I was there to hear your borning cry, I’ll be there when you are old. I couldn’t make it through that song without tears releasing at the death of my godmother, in the emotion of gathering in a small town Lutheran church to grieve and to celebrate Elaine’s life. There, on a May morning as perfect as they get in Minnesota, our voices rose in love and sadness and hope. When the evening gently closes in, and you shut your weary eyes, I’ll be there as I have always been with just one more surprise. I was there to hear your borning cry…

After the service, vehicles in the long funeral processional trailed clouds of dust through the under-construction gravel Main Street of Echo as we passed the grain elevator and boarded up buildings toward the cemetery. As I stood on the lush grass a tombstone away from Elaine’s gravesite, I took in the scene. Family gathered. Clenched tissues wiping tears from eyes. My cousin’s head bowed in sadness. A Spee-Dee delivery truck passing by. White clouds hung in a deep blue sky, farm fields just across the highway. And then, as the pastor led the graveside service, the noon whistle blaring, loud and clear across the land. So small town. So fitting. A moment to laugh within, to think, Elaine would have appreciated this.

 

 

Just like she would have appreciated the homemade chocolate mayonnaise cake served at her funeral dinner. She had a fondness for sweets, was known for the chocolate mayo cake she baked. After her death, her family found candy bars stashed in her freezer alongside bags of neatly-stacked homemade buns.

And they found, too, her life story written just for them. I can only imagine the comfort my cousins and their children and their children’s children will find in reading those words. Just like the ten words written in that telegram 73 years ago. Words that leave a legacy of love.

© Copyright 2018 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Aunt Elaine May 16, 2018

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That’s Elaine in the middle, between two of my other aunts. I took this photo at the 2014 Kletscher Family Reunion. Minnesota Prairie Roots file photo.

 

EVERY CHRISTMAS I COULD COUNT on a handwritten letter from my Aunt Elaine updating me on the latest news in her ever-growing family. At last count, 47 great grandchildren. But those missives will come no more. My godmother died Monday afternoon at the age of 95.

Now I have only memories of the second oldest daughter of my grandparents, of the woman who outlived her husband, two children and seven siblings (two of them infants). She was strong. Tough. Stubborn. Determined. Whatever word you want to use, my aunt held her own in life. Her love of family, her faith and her get-up-and-go defined her. Elaine still lived in her own home and as most recently as several weeks ago delivered food to her sister-in-law after the passing of Elaine’s brother Harold.

I grew up in a close-knit extended family that gathered often to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. We all lived near each other, either in Redwood or Yellow Medicine counties on the southwestern Minnesota prairie. I especially liked going to Aunt Elaine and Uncle Glenn’s house because then I could see Joyce, a favorite cousin born months after me. I also loved their house, a big old farmhouse of fine craftsmanship on a farm with a creaking windmill.

 

Homemade dill pickles (similar to the ones Elaine made) sold at the September 2015 Faribault Farmers’ Market and published here for illustration purposes only. Minnesota Prairie Roots file photo 2015.

 

Beyond that, I selfishly couldn’t wait for the lunch Aunt Elaine would serve at the end of an evening of visiting. She made the best dill pickles. There was talk that well water made all the difference. Maybe. Maybe not. But I believe it was the hands that nurtured and picked those cucumbers and dill and then crafted them into dill pickles that made them legendary within our extended family.

 

 

Elaine was also known for her chocolate mayonnaise cake. I found the recipe (under her oldest daughter’s name) for that moist cake in the Peace Lutheran Centennial Cookbook, 1896 – 1996, Echo, Minnesota. Elaine served as a co-chair of the Cookbook Committee. I’m not surprised. She was always doing something for her church, community, family and others in general, including work as a practical nurse at the start of WW II. It’s part of our family legacy—this care and compassion and service.

 

Not the same cake Elaine made, but similar. Used here for illustration only. Minnesota Prairie Roots file photo.

 

Days before her death, Elaine sampled that chocolate cake one last time after a granddaughter baked the cake and brought it, still warm, to her dying grandmother at the hospital. Elaine ate a few bites and then reminded her family of just how much she loved sweets. I love that story. I love that story because it makes me laugh. In laughter I am reminded that death, though it brings sadness, also brings laughter in the memories. I will always hold sweet memories of my dear aunt, my dear godmother. She was a strong woman of faith, loving her family, her community and the prairie place she called home. And now she has reached her final home: heaven. That, too, gives me joy in the presence of grief.

© Copyright 2018 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

It takes a strong man or woman to farm August 2, 2011

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Bins on a farm place somewhere along the back roads between New Ulm and Morgan.

“I COULD NEVER BE MARRIED to a farmer or be a farmer,” I told my cousin Kevin as we stood outside the Vesta Community Hall Friday evening discussing the July 1 windstorms and tornadoes that ravaged my native southwestern Minnesota.

Kevin farms south of Echo, where he lost three grain bins, trees, and, if I remember correctly, an auger, to high winds. He’s looking at replacement and upgrade costs of more than $140,000. And a good chunk of that will not be covered by insurance. Investing so much money in his farm now, at near 60 years old, doesn’t come easily for him, he claims. But he doesn’t have an option if he is to continue farming.

As he was sharing his story, he said, “I told the wife I need to…” Kevin, 56, got married late in life (six years ago), so I still have to remember sometimes that he’s with Kris, a wonderful woman.

It takes a strong man or woman to live a life of farming. As much as I love the farm, I couldn’t farm. I couldn’t handle the financial stress, the “I told the wife I need to” replace the grain bins or I need to borrow money for a new tractor or the beans were hailed out…

I’d stress over borrowing all that money and over the financial risks inherent in farming.  Will commodity prices be up or down when I want to sell the corn and beans? Should I sign a contract now or wait? Should I buy that piece of equipment, build that machine shed? Will I get a decent crop? I’m not a gambler or a risk taker, even though I grew up on a crop and dairy farm.

Soybean and corn fields stretch into forever in southwestern Minnesota. I shot this image on Friday between New Ulm and Morgan.

For many Minnesota farmers, this year has been especially challenging. Crops were planted late due to wet field conditions. Then the heavy rains fell, drowning out entire sections of fields. Next, strong winds and hail devastated beans and corn.

For the first time that I can ever recall, I saw black fields near my hometown of Vesta. My cousin told me the fields had been replanted and then the storms came when it was too late to replant again.

Three days this week, beginning today, farmers, agri-business reps and others will gather at the historic Gilfillan Farm between Morgan and Redwood Falls for Farmfest. There, in the heart of Minnesota’s farm country, I bet if you eavesdropped on a conversation or two or ten, you’d hear some farmer say, “I told the wife I need to…”

I spotted this damage to a building on a farm just north of Belview, which was hit by a July 1 tornado.

I took this shot traveling Minnesota Highway 67 west toward Morgan Friday afternoon. Follow this road and you'll end up at Farmfest. You can see Morgan's water tower and grain elevator complex in the distance.

Farmfest at the historic Gilfillan Farm runs today through Thursday.

When I drove by the Farmfest grounds Friday afternoon, tents were already in place for the event.

A barn, outbuildings and a corn field between New Ulm and Morgan.

Bins on a farm site along the back road between New Ulm and Morgan.

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling