Recipes for Living Luke and Karen Druivenga

Luke's fascinating name originated with ancestors who lived in Ostfriesland, a settlement in northern Germany near the Holland border. One of Luke's first cousins, a retired Colonel in the Air Force, went back in recent years and researched the name. He discovered that when Napoleon occupied Germany in the early 1800's, he required that everyone have a first and last name. Luke's great-great-grandparents lived in a house with grapevines on it. Druivenga means grapevines and wine. Thus it became the family name. There are still some Druivengas in Germany. Letters were received from them after World War II, and Luke has a friend who is translating them into English.

Luke's grandfather was a professor in a university in Germany. The Kaiser didn't approve of his way of thinking and teaching, so he came to America in 1903, bringing his entire family of four brothers, three sisters, and his mother-in-law. Friends who preceded them had written about Iowa, so this was their destination. Luke's grandfather settled in Odebolt, Iowa. He spelled their last name correctly, but his brother who came to America and settled in Applington, dropped the "i" ("Druvenga").

Luke was born in Carroll, Iowa, to Kasper and Ida Druivenga, and was raised in Carnavon, near Lake View. He has two sisters. Mary Ann and her husband Bud Bals are retired and live in Fonda. Betty, semi retired, and her husband Courtney Noreen live in Fort Dodge. He manages a HUD project with 125 apartments in that city. Their brother passed away in 1996. The sister-in-law, Ruth, lives in Carnavon and is retiring from bank employment.

Nineteen ninety-six was a terrible year! Luke's father, Kasper, died on April 3, just three weeks short of his 100th birthday. At the funeral Luke's brother began having trouble with his vision, and tests revealed a brain tumor. Luke spent time with him in Houston, Texas before he died on October 24. Karen's dad died two days before Christmas that year, and a close friend died of cancer the following February. He and Luke were neighbors, they had gone to school together and for a time he had worked for Luke. "It was a rough 12 months" hardly describes all the grief and pain the Druivengas experienced that year.

For eight years Luke went to country school, and in 1959 he graduated from Lake View High School. The class was very close. At the alumni banquet every year, 10-15 out of the original 26 attend. Four are deceased.

Luke started farming after high school, "and that is when I lost my arm." He made the mistake of trying to clean out the stalk injector on the com picker while the machine was running. He was alone, about a quarter mile from the house, where his dad and brother were. He managed to turn off the tractor and began hollering for help. Neighbors were shingling their house and heard him. They came, turned off the picker and took it apart. They took him to the doctor in town, about two miles away. Originally the loss was at the wrist, his hand and fingers were crushed.

Luke thinks that today, with all the medical advances that have been made, it might have been possible to save more of the arm than they could at that time. However, but he has an incredible attitude toward his loss. "I just thought this must be the way the good Lord wants me to live the rest of my life, and all the crying and complaining I might do can't bring my arm back." He is continually gaining in what he is able to do.

In 1965, five years after losing his arm, Luke quit farming and went to Sioux City to sell automobiles for three years. He went back to farming a large farm - about 400 acres at one time. He also went to a computer programming school, but when he tried to find a job programming, companies were more interested in finding salesmen. Luke took a job with Case Implement Company, hoping that in time they might transfer him to the computer department. They never did, even though he was there for 9 ½ years. He also sold White, Allis Chalmers, John Deere, and Ford farm equipment.

Luke loves to talk and to sell. He says that in all his years he has only known one who was a better talker than he - Alan Teel’s son, Tim, who graduated from Clarke Community School. Tim worked for Luke when he was general manager at Van Loon' Implement Company.

Luke and Karen met at Luke's sister's house. Karen had been born and raised in Newell, Iowa, the middle child of Donald and Evelyn Wiese. As previously mentioned, her father is deceased; her mother will be 90 years old in November and lives with Karen's brother, John. Donald farmed and Evelyn taught in a country school until they were married. After all the children were in school, Evelyn taught as a substitute. Occasionally she would teach Karen's class, which was upsetting. Karen accused her mother of never calling on anyone but her. "You know everybody in the class. Call on some of them!" Evelyn taught full time in Pomeroy when she was in her late 50's and then for 19 years she and Donald went to Texas every winter.

Karen graduated from high school in 1960 and from nurse's training in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1963. She has worked all but 1 ½ years since then. She and Luke were married in 1966 and had two boys - Sean and Jason. Sean married Jody Benedict in 1987 and they have three children - son Dilan (age eight), and daughters Dakkota (age six) and Devin (age two). They live in Stanton, Iowa. Jason is not married. "He is too busy riding motorcycles. He says girls cost too much money. He’d rather spend it on motorcycles."

Sean works for Parker Hennipin at Red Oak, and made headline news when he was severely burned at work. They make hydraulic hoses which are wrapped with nylon material. On May 15, 2000, a machine malfunctioned, blowing out nylon material 500° hot. He is getting along well. They took skin from his thigh and grafted it on his arm from his shoulder to his wrist.

Eight-year-old grandson, Dilan, races a 75 CC motorcycle. Karen will go to his races at this age but has made it clear that she will not attend when he begins racing the big ones. She has taken care of too many motorcycle accident victims.

Karen didn’t feel close to her brother and sister when they were growing up, attributing that to sibling rivalry. They are closer now. Her sister, Janet, and Janet's husband, Glen Pedersen, have three children and three grand children. Glen is a banker at Newell and Janet is the postmistress at Fonda, Iowa.

Karen's brother, John, and his wife have a total of seven children. Luke and Karen have six grandsons and three granddaughters with two more expected. They all get together about once a month. "In fact, when we are not in church, we are with either Janet’s or John's family." In June, 2000, they will have the third reunion of Luke’s side of the family. This is a weekend that includes all the family, the cousins, and their children. Last year they were in Osceola and the entertainment was garage sales. They have gone to Omaha, Wyoming, and Colorado. They take turns acting as the host, furnishing the place, the activities, and general planning. In Wyoming they went water rafting for the first time.

Luke and Karen have also lived in Colorado, Illinois, and Missouri, either farming or selling farm equipment. They lived in New Market, Iowa for 10 years. There they met Fred and Sarah Malone, a couple who pastored the United Methodist Church, and they became members of that church. Prior to that Luke had been a member of the Emmanuel Presbyterian Church, a church that is still standing in Carnavon. Karen was a Baptist. They truly enjoyed the friendship of the Malones whom they found "so down to earth." They could sit and talk to them and enjoy just being around them. The fact that the Malone's youngest son was only three or four years older than Sean helped as well.

Luke and Karen moved to Osceola in 1991, first living east of town and then in town since 1992. By that time Karen had worked in hospital and clinic nursing for 30 years, but when she applied for a job, the only position she could get was the "graveyard shift"-11:00 p.m. to 7:00a.m. She decided she had served enough years to do better. A friend told her that she had gone to work for an insurance company, Mondays through Fridays, weekends and holidays off, and no "on call" work. That sounded appealing and Karen applied at Blue Cross/Blue Shield in Des Moines. She is in the Care Management or Medical Management Division. She does utilization review explaining that when members are admitted to the hospital, it is reported to
their insurance carrier, where their case is reviewed so they receive the appropriate level of care - inpatient or outpatient, the doctor's reason for admission, and the treatment plan.

Before several new rulings went into effect some years ago, insurance coverage privileges were abused and managed care became necessary. It is not always understood that treatment is still determined by the doctor, not the insurance company; but basic guidelines have been set in place.

Karen describes the role of Blue Cross/Blue Shield as working with doctors and examining community resources in order to adequately take care of patients in the most cost effective way. It is gratifying work, even though Karen is gone from home nearly 12 hours a day. She catches the bus about 6:00a.m. and gets home at about 5:40p.m. "When all you do is go to the grocery store and sleep in town, it isn't possible to get to know many people."

Luke is living out the dream he had for several years. Three years ago he and two friends established their own business which has to do with farm consultation. He describes it as crop input financing for farmers. They are currently working on a program through which they will be able to back financing with a guarantee, thus making crop input financing more appealing to bankers. It will include machinery financing, refinancing farm loans, crop inputs, and leasing farm equipment. They serve mainly farmers but do some commercial loans, also. Their clients are primarily in the mid-west, but they have also made loans in other parts of the U.S., or "wherever they happen to call from."

''Now," Luke says, "I spend lots of time with 'honey-do' lists which Karen provides." Karen spends lots of hours working in the yard and garden. They profited from years of farming in the good, rich soil of northern Iowa but have enjoyed the less competitive attitude in southern Iowa. They have been surprised, however, at the number of people who don't attend church. Everyone in the communities they came from had a denomination and it was habitual to be in church on Sunday mornings. Luke said, "We talk about foreign missions but there is a great deal to be done right here.

"Attending church this summer is a challenge for us because we have so many relatives coming and going. We could attend a family reunion every week if we went to all of them. However, family and friends are very important to us, and we wouldn't have it any other way."