Terry & April

CARL FREDRICKSON FAMILY

Terry and April

Terry was born on November 17, 1938, at the Baptist Hospital in Concordia, Kansas. He was the eldest of Carl and Alma Fredrickson’s three children. His parents had moved to a farm located 3 ½ miles east of Concordia not long before his birth. According to his mother and other presumably reliable observers, he was an unusually energetic and active child. One of his doctors pronounced that, "he will be an old man by the time he is thirty".

He started to school and attended almost all of the first two grades at District #8 School where his father and all other Fredricksons attended. Shortly before the second year of school ended in 1946, the family moved to a farm south and west of Belleville. He finished the second grade at Belleville Center School, which was another one-room country school that had neither electricity nor modern plumbing.

The farm where the family lived was in the neighboring Summit Point School district that opened the next September. It had been closed for a number of years because of an inadequate number of students in the district. The two Fredrickson boys who would be attending made a total of seven pupils, two more than the minimum required by state law at the time. The largest enrollment at the school over the next six years was nine for a short period, and it was never more than five for the last three of those six years.

Electricity was installed at some point during those years, as was oil heat to replace the ancient wood stove that sat in the middle of the one large classroom. The two oil-fired stoves could not keep the temperature in the room warm on the coldest winter days, but they represented a big improvement over the wood stove.

The school was located 1 ¾ miles from the farm, and transportation on most days was either on foot or horseback. A picture of Dobbin is included in the Photograph Album. Dobbin was a mare of some years having already raised one family of boys. She had some pony blood that is not good because it virtually ensures obstinance greatly in excess of that of a donkey.

Dobbin had lived long enough to know that it all paid the same and getting in a hurry made no sense. She was oblivious to any application of the switch except for those administered directly on her tail. This would irritate her into a somewhat quicken pace for a time. Terry rode backwards while Jan held the reins to maximize effectiveness.

Terry started to high school at Belleville High School in 1952 and graduated in 1956. He was class president during his junior year and president of the Future Farmers of America chapter during his senior year. He graduated fifth in a class of fifty-two scholastically.

Two months before he graduated from high school, the family moved to a farm west of Concordia. Terry and Jan drove back and forth until the end of that school year.

The drought of the 1950s began in 1953 and continued through the end of 1958. Northern Kansas received even less rainfall than during the drought of the 1930s, and money to go to college seemed an impossibility. Virtually at the last minute, however, Uncle Frank Carlson appeared assuring financial support and urging that the suitcase be packed.

He was on his way back to Washington, but dropped Terry off at Kansas State College (University came later) with $300.00 in cash. He also said, "Just let me or your Aunt Alice know when you need more". No more advances were ever taken, but it was certainly reassuring to know that help was available if needed.

The new collegian enrolled in the Agricultural Education major designed specifically to prepare one to teach Vocational Agriculture at the high school level. This remained the major for five semesters until the second course of Educational Psychology made the conclusion that he was not cut out to be an educator unavoidable. Terry dropped out of school at mid-term in 1959 and would not return until 1962.

April was born on July 31, 1941, at the Great Bend Hospital to Joseph and Melissa Allmon. She was the second of three children. Her elder brother Dean was born in 1938 and Robert was born in 1943. The family lived in Hoisington, a town of 4000 population located ten miles north of Great Bend, during her childhood years.

April’s father was an oilfield drilling crew foreman, who died of a mysterious liver ailment when she was eleven years old. April’s mother supported the family by operating a children’s shop in Hoisington until she remarried four years later. April, Bob and their mother moved to Concordia, and she completed her final two years of high school there.

She was an excellent and popular student in high school, but there was no financial support from her family for college. She became a telephone operator and began to save to go to college.

Not long after she began working for the telephone company, April and Terry met and began dating. They were both smitten quickly, but April kept her wits about her. When Terry failed to produce a ring and talk seriously about marriage as quickly as she thought he should, she informed him that she wanted to know whether or not he was really serious about the relationship. If he were not, she was going to move on to more promising prospects.

This focused his attention and they began making serious long-term plans. Terry had been an indifferent student in college and had no intention of returning. He had been working on construction operating heavy equipment. His immediate plan was to go to California to seek employment as a motor grader or bulldozer operator. Union scale wage for equipment operators on the interstate highway projects was $4.50 per hour, a princely sum by any measure.

April’s father had traveled away from home every week to work, and she had no interest in an iterant husband. After obtaining an engagement ring through coercion, she now would agree to marriage only on the condition Terry agree to return and complete his college education. They were married in July 1961, and he road construction industry lost a potentially great equipment operator.

They moved to Manhattan in June 1962, and Terry enrolled in the summer session with a major in Agricultural Economics. Thanks to the active interest of his major professor, Dr. Milton Manuel, and his first boss in the banking business, Mr. Jim Williams, he graduated in 1965 with a master’s degree and a job at the Wichita Bank for Cooperatives.

Tara Christine was born on April 10, 1964, in Manhattan while Terry was in graduate school and April was working for the telephone company. Jaret Dean arrived on January 4, 1967, after the family had moved to Wichita.

April and Terry moved to Wichita in 1965 and on to Alexandria, Virginia, in 1968 where they lived until 1985. Terry took a job in Washington, D.C. with the Farm Credit Administration. Both Tara and Jaret completed high school in Northern Virginia and later obtained degrees from the College of William and Mary at Williamsburg, Virginia.

In 1984, Terry resigned from the Farm Credit Administration to become President-elect of the Farm Credit Banks of St. Louis. He moved to St. Louis in August 1984, while April and Jaret remained in Virginia for Jaret’s senior year of high school. April and the household moved in June 1985.

In 1992, the Farm Credit Banks of St. Louis and St. Paul agreed to merge creating AgriBank. Terry was named its first chief executive officer. April joined him in June 1992.

Terry retired from AgriBank on June 30, 1999. April and Terry have remained in Minnesota and have no plans to move elsewhere at this point. They are fully occupied with landscaping projects, china collecting, the dogs and the cats, and, recently, this website. The greatly enjoy visiting Taylor and Ben and their parents in Memphis, and having them come to Minnesota. You come up too!