After living throughout Minnesota, Kasson is home to Berghuis’

Larry and Lana Berghuis have lived in Mantorville since 1998.
Larry was the second youngest of 10 children growing up in Clara City, about 20 miles southest of Willmar, while Lana had two sisters and grew up in Circle Pines. After high school Larry attended St. Cloud State and met Lana on a blind date while they were in school. Lana thought maybe it was Larry’s car that had an added attraction.
They were married, August1964, and headed to Duluth for a honeymoon. On the way that same car had mechanical trouble so most of the money they were going to use while in Duluth went for car repairs!
The following week Larry started teaching sixth grade in Walnut Grove.
Walnut Grove was the setting for the TV series “Little House on the Prairie” about the Ingalls family, even though it was filmed in California. This community puts on an excellent “Wilder Pageant” in July. Larry became the Boy Scout leader and the scouts were the first to mow the area that was the site of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s home.
Their son, Kent, was born at the Tracy Hospital where Lana worked. Larry also helped on the Lost Creek earthen dam in Utah for one summer as Lana’s father headed up this construction project.
They lived in Walnut Grove for three years and the school played in the 1967 State Basketball tournament. This when it was still a single class tournament, but they lost in the first round. The location of their apartment was over the local hardware store so the owner said if they needed to use tools it was handy.
The grocery store and the post office were just across the street and the bakery was next door so each morning they could smell the aroma of baking bread, rolls and donuts. The school was only three blocks away and a bad snow storm during the winter of 1964 closed the school for nearly two weeks. They needed to bring in rotary snow plows to finally clear out the roads as the snow plows could not push through the hard packed drifts.
Larry taught science classes and was able to obtain white rats from an organization, and would conduct nutrition experiments on the mice with the students. He thought they were going to all be the same sex but the rat population started to multiply. At the end of the school year he told the students they could take home the white rats but said to check with their parents just to make sure they would also approve.
Larry said they would pick up road kill and bring the carcasses home. They would cook off the tissue and bring the animal skulls to display in his science class.
Their second home was in New Brighton, where Larry taught fifth grade from 1967-1970 in the Centennial School District, Circle Pines. Lana was a bank teller in New Brighton for those three years. Since they had one car, Lana said she got her exercise each day walking their son Kent to the babysitter and then walking to the bank in the morning and walking back when returning home after work.
Larry also earned his Masters’ Degree from Mankato State University in elementary school administration during this time.
Larry remembers playing in a basketball fund-raiser against a team of Minnesota Viking football players. Running back Bill “Boom-Boom” Brown grabbed, and just stopped, Larry dead in his tracks from making a sure lay-up.
One school morning, the custodian warned Larry there was a surprise on his desk and when he came into his room, there was a steers head on his desk! One of his students had brought it to school as they had butchered a steer and thought it was rather humorous since Larry had his display of animal skulls in the classroom. Larry said he did not end up displaying this skull as it reminded him of the movie scene in "The Godfather" with the horse head!
Their third home for three years was Fairmont. Larry was a half-time reading and math teacher but also half-time elementary principal at the East Chain school. When the Superintendent asked Larry if he was interested in basketball, he said of course he was and they would attend some of the games. “Well then you will be the B squad basketball coach,” said the superintendent. He also became the assistant track coach even though Larry said he didn’t know anything about track.
One day a bus load of students were stranded at the school because of blizzard conditions. The school superintendent lived next to the school so they had the younger students hold on to a rope as they led them to the house next door to stay the night at his home.
Larry said they went to the school kitchen to feed the older students supper. They told them they could play in the gym until it was time to go to bed with the girls in the Home Economics room and the boys in the gym. Later in the evening they could still hear the students playing in the gym so they said just go ahead if you want, so they played all night.
In the morning they rounded up food for breakfast and the kids said how about “if we do this again sometime.” Larry said that didn’t happen again!
Their second son Ryan was born while living there and they also hosted a student from Brazil for six months. Another family was supposed to host but they backed out so they got called on to do it. “We were probably too young to be a host,” Larry said.
The student was used to having servants at his house and he seemed to think Lana was a maid so he didn’t pay much attention to her request to do jobs around the house but he would listen better to Larry.
The paperwork said the student knew English but it was limited at first to things like French Fries and Coca Cola but his language skills did improve while he was there.
This was also when Title 9 was being started in the school system. The school started talking about a bond issue to add classrooms and a gym. The committee people would ask the residents “do you want to send your students to Blue Earth or Fairmont instead of staying here if it doesn’t pass?” The bond issue was passed with a large majority. The school later merged with other school districts but it has been closed for several years and is now used as a community center.
Their fourth move was to Ada, for two years where Larry was the elementary principal. The roof collapsed in the old part of the school right before the teacher workshop week. Larry said it was a good thing the workshops were not being held as a skylight fell in the room they would have been meeting in, and people could have been severely injured or killed. They had to use some classrooms in local churches because that part of the school was not safe to use.
They had stored furniture at a local farm while waiting to have their new house built. The first night in the new home their son, Kent, came into their room and said there is a mouse in the house. They told him just “come sleep with us as there can’t be any mice here in our new house.” A little while later Larry felt a mouse crawling on his arm and soon there were other mice that jumped on their bed and Larry and Lana quickly jumped out of bed. That was enough, so the next day Larry bought as many mouse traps as he could find in town.
Soon after they moved in, they only had a few boxes unpacked but Ryan found some pills in a box. When he started to look sick they found out what the problem was so got him to the doctor to have his stomach pumped. Larry taught Junior High Sunday School and also joined the local JC club.
Their fifth home was in Marshall, from 1975 to 1998. Larry was elementary principal at two different schools and for 10 years also the district’s Title One director. Lana worked as a bank teller, at an insurance agency and also as a special education para.
Their church sponsored a Vietnamese family and two of the children attended the school Larry was at. Larry was the President of Southwest Minnesota Elementary Principals Association for one year. Their school hosted an educator from Ghana and China, each for a week. The educator from Ghana was so impressed with things available in the local stores as they did not have electricity in his community. They sent along flashlights, batteries, a cooler and other supplies that he could bring back to his school.
A 100 year flood in 1991 caused a lot of damage to the community and their basement was flooded and the sewer backed up into their recently refinished basement. Lana said they were able to get a pump from the hardware store and had to use coffee cans to dip out the mess to clean out the basement.
When they were taking out the damaged furniture, their neighbor's cat got into their screened porch, then got scared and started tearing the screens in the attempt to escape back out. When the insurance adjuster came to their house to inspect hail damage to the roof, the ladder he had climbed up on blew over and landed on their car causing more damage. Meanwhile Larry and the adjuster were stranded upon the roof until someone finally came and rescued them.
Lana’s father suffered a severe stroke and was unable to communicate verbally or do things for himself for 11 years. They would drive to the cities to give some relief to her mother who was taking care of him throughout this period of time.
Larry went deer hunting with some teacher friends and while they were driving the deer, they fired their shotguns when the deer were close. Thinking they got a deer, one of the guys said he had been hit in the legs so Larry got him into the car to drive him to the hospital. The injured man kept telling Larry to drive faster but Larry said this is as fast as I can go. It seemed like there would have been a lot of bleeding but there was not. Larry said the slug had passed through his legs and the slug had dropped out of his pants leg. The doctor said if it had passed just a fraction of an inch different it would have hit an artery and he might have bled to death. The guy said the slug going into his leg didn’t hurt nearly as much as when they were cleaning out the wound at the hospital. The teacher took the shotgun slug home and made a key fob with it. Larry said none of them knew who had fired the shot that hit their fellow hunter.
Larry joined the Lions club in 1984 and served two terms as the club president and was also on the Lions District cabinet for two years. He taught Sunday School for 5th – 8th grade for 14 years. Their first grandchild was born while living there.
Larry retired in 1998 and their son Kent was a police officer in Kasson and Ryan was attending Rochester Community College after four years in the army. After visiting this area and attending Marigold Days, they decided to move to Mantorville to be close to their family and future grandchildren.
Larry did some substitute teaching for seven years at the KM school. Lana continued working as a special education para and substitute for the Triton District for the next 20 years plus some at KM schools.
Larry joined the KM Lions in 1998 and continues to serve in different roles in the club being selected KM Lion of the Year and also received the Melvin Jones Award, the highest award a club member can be given. The Berghuis’ celebrated their 50th anniversary in 2014 and three of their six grandchildren have been born since moving here. Larry and Lana continue to be quite involved with the United Methodist Church in Kasson. They used to go to Arizona for a few years for part of the winter but they said we really missed the things that go on in the Kasson community when they were gone.
Larry and Lana said they have had wonderful experiences in each of the communities they have lived in, and commented on the great neighbors they had in each place. Lana said when we connect up with them it is almost like time has just stopped when we share our experiences with each other.