A gift of life and love ~ January 26, 1989

David Heiller

Alice Dracy, Bruno, called the American office last Friday to tell about her son, Steve, and her daughter, Diane, and something they now share. The story is worth sharing, too.

Steven Dracy, lifted from
the newspaper.

On Jan. 12, Steven, who lives in Sandstone, donated one of his kidneys to his sister, Diane Dracy Buehre, at the Methodist Hospital in Rochester.

“Diane was diagnosed with kidney disease as a child and her condition had progressed to the point that a transplant was necessary,” Mrs. Dracy said. Her kidneys were removed on November 22.

Diane’s three brothers, Steve, Dennis, and Ron, all volunteered to donate a kidney to their sister. (Doctors prefer donated kidneys from living relatives when possible.)

Tests of the three brothers showed perfect compatibility between Diane and Steve.

“I was like an identical twin, seven years later,” said Steve, 29. “Our chromosomes were a 100 percent match.”

Steve admitted that he was startled about the operation at first. “But then when it came right down to it, it had to be done,” he said. “She was getting worse right along.”

On Jan. 18, just six days after a kidney was removed, Steve was released from the hospital. He is recovering at the Dracy farm in Bruno now, while looking after his place in Sandstone.

The loss of a kidney hasn’t affected Steve physically at all. He feels normal and will be able to continue working as a pipe layer for Lake Area Utilities, Hugo.

For Diane, 36, the new kidney will be like starting life over. Without the kidney, she would be facing a life of dialysis treatments, and 56-mile trips from her home in Brookings, South Dakota, to Sioux Falls, three days a week. She left the hospital only nine days after the transplant, and will return to her husband, Tom, and their two sons, Scott and Eric, in a month.

Diane expects to be back at her full-time job as secretary at South Dakota State University by May, or sooner.

Has this exchange of kidneys made Diane and Steve closer? Says Steve: “I haven’t really been with her that much after (the operation), but I’m sure it will make us closer.”

Says Diane: “There’s got to be a subtle change there somewhere. Nobody could possibly understand how Scott would be willing to do this. There’s just a wealth of love there. It’s some-thing inside, more intangible, more emotional.”

In these days of modern medical technology, kidney transplants are barely newsworthy, except in newspapers like the Askov American. But you don’t have to look too far back to see our amazing medical progress. I know this personally—my father died in 1953 from kidney failure. If he had been born a generation later, he wouldn’t have died at age 37. Maybe one of his eight brothers or sisters would have set him free. That’s what Diane says Steve did for her.

And this act of love is something Steve Dracy and Diane Beuhre will share for the rest of their lives. What better gift could there be?

Hurry, Getting Organized season almost gone ~ January 4, 2006

David Heiller

“All right, that’s enough.” The top Tupperware drawer wouldn’t close. Plastic lids and dishes of all description lay in a jumbled heap. Some had fallen onto the floor.

I pulled out the drawer, set it on the counter and took everything out. I put the round dishes together, and the square ones together, the rectangular and rhomboid ones together too. The lids, few of which seemed to match the shapes of said containers, went into a large bin of their own.

Then it was the same with the bottom drawer. Bottles were rejoined with their lids and placed in the back. Old Rubbermaid friends were reunited. Everything went back in place. The drawers miraculously had a lot of room to spare, and they shut just fine.

The whole process took about five minutes. “Wow, thanks,” Cindy said with true appreciation in her voice.

Nuts and screw and bolts and what-not:
Davids organizational bug-a-boo.

Something was going on here, I thought to myself. Just one late-December day earlier I had torn apart my little workshop in the barn. Cleared the counters, brushed off the dirt. Put the bags and containers of screws in the cupboards. Closed the lid on the Korean War ammunition canister that now holds sandpaper. I even swept the floor.

Then I went searching for a bolt fοr a garden implement I was repairing. It’s usually a daunting task searching the three-pound coffee can full of old bolts. Not that day. I carried it into the house, along with two empty ice cream buckets and a smaller plastic dish. Then I sifted through about 2,000 bolts, sorting out the screws and washers and nuts, and putting them all in their own containers. I never did find the right size bolt, but that didn’t matter. It just felt great getting organized.

Getting organized. That’s the season we are in right now. We have a lot of mini-seasons that fall between the big four. This one seems to hit every year about Christmas time.

Maybe it comes with a little free time from work. We need those spells to take a fresh look at things. It also probably stems from the need to get out of the house and the crazy times that holidays can inspire within the domicile. “Ah, honey, I have some important jobs to do in the shop, like inspect the handles on my hammers.”

But the main thing is a New Year drive. Not the false promises that we make to ourselves to knock off the Christmas cookies and lose some weight. No, this is deeper than bogus New Year resolutions. A new year is dawning. The solstice has come and gone. Days are getting longer. There’s light at the end of the tunnel.

We hear it on the news a little bit, but we feel it in our bones, from way back, from our grandparents carrying in a bucket of tools to sharpen by the woodstove. From Uncle Cro-Magnon chipping a new edge on that spear tip, and putting it in a pile with the other Clovis points, and putting the hammer stones and scrapers in their own piles like he’d been meaning to do for a couple months but those darn mastodons wouldn’t give him a day’s rest. And Mrs. Magnon’s grateful “Ugh, rahgra, hattamatta” was a heartfelt thank you that has carried all the way down to Crooked Creek Township and Cindy Heiller.

So ‘tis the season. Get organized. But hurry. I can already feel it slipping away. Pass the cookies.

A great American hero? ~ July 16, 1987

David Heiller

National politics usually has no place in a weekly editor’s repertoire, but the past week of testimony from Oliver North before a Congressional committee in Washington offers a good reason.

Excuse me while I rant and rave. Oliver North is not a hero to me, despite the telegrams stacked in front of him and his glittering uniform. Despite his “telegenic” personality, his erect back and direct stares, despite his sincerity and tenacity, I don’t think he will stay an American hero for long, if at all.

A friend of mine perhaps said it best Monday at lunch: “If people think Oliver North is a hero, they’d better take a refresher course in civics.”

North’s actions, and the actions of the covert operation he belonged to, challenge our government just two months before the 200th anniversary of our Constitution. The Constitution, to refresh a few memories, is the document that set up our framework of government, dividing it into the executive, congressional, and judicial branch. It also added a Bill of Rights, 10 amendments that needed to be added to keep people believing in that government. First on the list: freedom of the press, freedom of speech.

The people who worked out the Constitution knew what life was like without freedom of expression, and they knew that an active press kept elected officials accountable. They knew that the system of checks and balances between Congress and the President would accomplish the same thing.

Oliver North stated time and again, with seeming pride, that he lied to Congress, to keep them from knowing the truth. He stated that he did not trust them, that they would leak information to the press, whom he did not trust either.

He did this to follow orders, he says, but he did this because it is something he believes in with such fervor. He didn’t like the Congressional stand on Nicaragua, so he worked to change it, secretly, and against the laws of our Constitution, our nation. His way reflects the Reagan administration’s way of dealing with Nicaragua and elsewhere. It’s as good of an example of any as to why people in Nicaragua, and increasingly people around the world, are losing respect for our government. With double standards such as selling arms to terrorists, taking the money and secretly passing it on to the supporters of an overthrown dictator, and keeping the profits for personal use and future secret operations, who wouldn’t support the Sandinistas? Who wouldn’t lose faith in the current administration?

Heroes. We’ve all had them, and still do. Mine was Micky Mantle when I was a kid. He hit home runs and looked at you squarely from the Wheaties package. As we grow older, we look for other qualities to respect. Everybody has a person or two that they admire for their integrity, for their character, for their honesty. Parents try to raise their children with those qualities.

I hope my two children do not grow up to be like Oliver North. I want them to have convictions, but I want those convictions to follow our laws and government. If they do not, I want them to work openly to change them. I want them to follow orders, but not without asking why.

And I hope they live in a country that can separate a hero from a hoax.

Editor's note: A few weeks later David received this letter from our Congressman, James L. Oberstar:

Mr. David Heiller Editor

Askov American

Askov, MN 55704

Dear Mr. Heiller:

I was very impressed and very moved by your July 16 column questioning the hero status of Lt. Col. Oliver North. I was so impressed by the concise, articulate way in which you exposed the real issue of North's performance and the Irangate hearings, that I shared your column with my colleagues in the House.

A copy of the Congressional Record from August 3 is enclosed.

I applaud your insight and your courage. All too many Americans have been duped into believing North was right when he broke the law, lied to Congress, and conducted his own foreign policy. It is good to read an editor who is not afraid to rant and rave on the behalf of the Constitution.

Sincerely,

/s/ Jim Oberstar

Staying together is a good resolution ~ January 8, 1998

David Heiller

A friend asked me on New Year’s Eve if I had any New Year’s resolutions.

An old Polaroid shot from Morocco, 1978

“No,” I answered. I told him sincerely that New Year’s resolutions don’t make sense to me. They are promises made to be broken.

If something really needs changing, then change it for the right reason. Don’t base the change on a calendar date. That isn’t the right motivation. It has to come from a much deeper place. 

That’s what I told my friend, in so many words.

Making a New Year’s resolution and then breaking it can do more harm than good. It can discourage you from trying to fix something that needs fixing. “Well, that resolution didn’t work. Might as well forget about it.”

But New Year’s resolutions do serve a purpose in that they can get us thinking about things that need to be worked on, and things that we value.

A little later at the same New Year’s Eve party, I was telling our friends about how some knick-knacks in the bedroom had fallen down when I had turned on an amplifier. The amp had made such a loud noise that it literally knocked those two little shelves off the wall.

I thought that was pretty funny. People laughed and smiled. But then I added, “I hate those things,” referring to the knick-knacks.

Never say “hate” about something your spouse likes. It’s just plain rude. It humiliated Cindy. And it wasn’t true. If I had thought about it for a second, I wouldn’t have said it.

Cindy has a way of decorating the house nicely. She puts things on the wall and they look great. It’s only when they fall on me that I don’t like them.

In our back yard with MacKenzie, the Aussie Shep.

If I lived alone, my walls would be pretty bare. My life would be too. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like how my wife decorates the house.

When our guests were leaving, another friend said something like this to me, “I’ve got a suggestion for a New Year’s Resolution for you, Dave. Think before you say some things.”

Especially the dumb things, I thought.

She was right. I wouldn’t call it a resolution. But it’s definitely something that I can work on. Think before you say something that is poorly thought out, or that could hurt someone’s feelings.

I sometimes wish my brain had a five second delay switch, so that I would have to pause before talking. The delay wouldn’t be nearly as time consuming as the time it takes me to pull my foot out of my mouth.

Cindy and I worked out the anger and confusion caused by my insensitive remark after our guests had left. We usually can work out arguments. We value that.

Which leads to another thing I want to work on: staying together.

My wife and I are in no danger of breaking up. But I see divorces happening all around. Sometimes they are unavoidable, and best for everyone. But not always. Sometimes I think—and I may be wrong—that with hard work and counseling and giving in a little, a marriage could be saved.

I loved David and David loved me.
We mostly had a very good marriage.

I used to think couples shouldn’t have to work on staying together if they love each other. A few lucky ones don’t. But most of us have to thrash out the seemingly trivial issues—like knick-knacks on the wall—before they become the tip of a big iceberg of larger problems.

I’ll end this complex subject with the simple words to one of my favorite songs, called “We Believe in Happy Endings.” It sums up my feelings very well.

Click here for one version of this song:

Who can say just how it starts? Angry words and broken hearts, till silently we sit apart, you and I.

But in a while the anger’s gone, and we forget who’s right or wrong, when one of us can end it all with just a smile.

We believe in happy endings, never breaking, always bending, taking time enough for mending the hurt inside.

We believe in new beginnings, giving in and forgiving. We believe in happy endings, you and I.

Just a word is all it takes, and suddenly the silence breaks, and looking back it makes us ache for what we’ve done.

And so we cling together now, and wonder why we’re oh so proud, when all that matters anyhow is our love.

We believe in happy endings, never breaking, always bending, taking time enough for mending the hurt inside.

We believe in new beginnings, giving in and forgiving. We believe in happy endings, you and I.