Wesley Christensen

CHRISTENSEN PETERSEN

Posted By: Connie Swearingen (email)
Date: 4/12/2010 at 21:26:21

Woodbury County History 1984

Wesley Christensen
By Mrs Wesley Christensen

Wesley Christensen was born September 9, 1902, on a farm in Sergeant Bluff to Chris L Christensen and Sofie Christensen. He was educated in the Sergeant Bluff Schools. His father’s early death, at 59, kept him on the farm until 1932, he purchased the Sencenbaugh farm, a half mile south of Sergeant Bluff.

He married Erma Petersen of Sioux City in 1933. Erma’s parents, H P and Kathrine Petersen, also of Sioux City, moved to this farm and lived in the new home built by Scencenbaugh. It was said that the building of this six-bedroom modern bungalow caused the Sencenbaugh bankruptcy. Wesley and Erma moved an old tenant house, where Ernest Bryan lived, to the building site and remodeled it for their home. A 75 foot concrete driveway, lily pool and rock garden, and landscaped lawns made the home surroundings beautiful.

It was not to be their home for long, however. In 1940, the Sioux City Municpal Airport became a part of air transportation of this great land. In 1941, several hundred acres were condemned and taken by Sioux City and leased to the US Air Force for Airbase purposes.

The Wesley Christensens and her parents found themselves without their homes and buildings, with only a bare 80 acres remaining. The year before, George Brucker ahd offered to sell his adjoining 80 acres to Wesley for $11,000. Brucker raised his price to $22,000 and Wesley, in his dilemma, bought it. He also bought the buildings back from Sioux City.

Three days after the contract was signed with Sioux City, which gave the Christensens thirty days to move the buildings to the Brucker site, the Air Force Commanding officer ordered Wesley to remove the garage and chicken house with four days or ‘have it blown out’. These were harsh words to American citizens who thought that their property was theirs ‘to have and to hold’ as long as they wished. The buildings were out! Eighteen to twenty hour days filled that contract month, until the building mover became ill. On the 29th day of the contract, when only the older house remained to be moved, the Air Force Commanding officer appeared again with his threat, ‘Be out tomorrow or have it blown out’. That evening the house was moved out onto the road on its way to Sergeant Bluff, where a lot had been purchased on which to place it. The two families were to live there until posession of the newly-purchased farm was to be given. The two families slept in the house out on the road that night, without benefit of electricity, phone or water.

The iron of all this was the Air Force did not need this site. AS WITNESSED BY THE FACT THAT ONE YEAR LATER, the concrete steps remained and the flowers were blooming, quietly reminiscent of the home that had once been there.

Ten years later, after tons of concrete had been poured for feeding floors and foundations on the new place, the Sioux City Journal carried large headlines, ‘SC Airbase to be enlarged by 1600 acres’. The Christensens, and other neighbors effected, could not take this lying down. The courts and a bond issue rejected by Sioux City residents saved us all form further heartache.

In 1951, Interstate 29 made its way through the Christensen farm, taking 157 acres, which included the pasture. This meant the end of the cattle business, leaving just 39 acres at the home place; adjoining acres to the south had been added to the home place. Wesley had an implement sale and became a John Deere Implement dealer in Sioux City. In 1961, he sold the implement business and invested in farmland in the area. He later sold one farm, which became the Camelot addition to Sergeant Bluff. In 1965, Wesley and his wife moved to 201 Frist Street in Sergeant Bluff. Gene Mogensen has farmed the land since that time.

Wesley was a forty-four year member of Trinity Lutheran Church in Sioux City and a church council member for several terms. He was a member of the National Lutheran Laymen’s Movement. He was a member of the Woodbury County Conservation Commission for several yars and a member of SIMPCO, Siouxland Interstate Metropolitan Planning Commision and a township trustee. He was a member of the American Security Council, of the Woodbury County, the Iowa and the National Republican Party. He was president of the Old Settler’s Picnic Association in 1947.

Wesley died, February 7, 1975, of a heart attack. There were no children.

His wife, Erma, after his death, soon learned that her farm was again in the line of fire. The town of Sergeant Bluff routed a new sewer line past the farm on the opposite side of the road. The Town Council assessed her $40,000 on her remaining 39 acres. It should be noted here that we are asked annexed into the town of Sergeant Bluff, to keep Sioux City from annexing lands up to the confines of the town. The cource reduced the $40,000 assessment; however, together with legal fees, the sew line cost Erma about $27,000, withou any benefits.

Presently the city of Sergeant Bluff is planning to put a drainage ditch through this same property at the opposite end, purchased at the going price per acre, while the sewer assessment was made on the subdivision basis. It is a farm and will remain so.

Let it be said with fervor, however, that the Wesley Christensens have always been grateful for this greatest of all counties, grateful for its rights and privileges, built not by government but by people innately good; not by welfare, but by work; not by shirking responsibility but by seeking responsibility. Liberty is not free. We need always to be on guard to defend it.