LEVINE:

Okay, this is Janet Levine for the National Park Service. I'm here in Brunswick, Maine with Mr. Frank Lundblad who came from Norway when he was two and a half years of age in November of 1927. Today is October 11 th , 1996. Okay, I just want to pause for one second.

LUNDBLAD:

Sure.

LEVINE:

Okay, we're continuing now without the clock sound. All right, if you would say where in Norway you were born and the — the date of your birth.

LUNDBLAD:

I was born in Selbak, [PH] Norway, which is a little suburb outside of Fredrikstad, Norway, and I was born April 15, 1925 — 23, 1925.

LEVINE:

April 23 rd , 1925.

LUNDBLAD:

Right.

LEVINE:

And can you spell the names of the — of the two towns that — in Norway where —

LUNDBLAD:

Yes, Selbak, S-E-L-B-A-K and Fredrikstad, F-R-E-D-R-I-K-S-T-A-D. It's the second oldest town in Norway.

LEVINE:

Uh-huh.

LUNDBLAD:

A fortress town.

LEVINE:

Now, is Fredrikstad where you were most of the time?

LUNDBLAD:

No, we — we lived in this little village called Selbak.

LEVINE:

Oh.

LUNDBLAD:

What is outside of Fredtrikstad, and that's where my father had his business. He was — he made furniture.

LEVINE:

What was your father's name?

LUNDBLAD:

My father's name was Joseph Ludwig Lundblad, which is a — a King's grant name. At one time Norway was owned by Sweden and land was given to various families and lund was a — a glade and blad was a blade in the glade. And so this was how his name was derived. Even though he is Norwegian, it is a Swedish name.

LEVINE:

And — and he — and the glad in the blade was because he was working the land, was it?

LUNDBLAD:

No, it was just how they divided up the land. You have names like Lundkrist, Lundgrand and all kinds of Lund types and it's just a way of dividing up the land by different names.

LEVINE:

And your mother's name?

LUNDBLAD:

My mother's name was Signa Amalia Hollison and she came from Oslo and was a city girl and my father was a boy from the country. My mother attended the opera and theater and was a — out of sorts when she came to the United States and didn't get a chance to hear all those things that she was used to.

LEVINE:

And how did they happen to meet?

LUNDBLAD:

My father had some economic problems in the little town of Selbak. It was a little, tiny town that couldn't support his work, so he went to Oslo and he started working in Oslo in a — in a factory there, and he met a man named Harold Helvuson and he complained about the lousy conditions he was living in and Harold invited my father to come and live with his family. And I don't know how they did it because I think they had a three-room house, apartment, and so that the boys were in one room and the girls were in another room.

LEVINE:

And — and Signa was your — was Harold's sister?

LUNDBLAD:

Right.

LEVINE:

Uh-hmm. Let's see, so you don't have any memories of Norway firsthand?

LUNDBLAD:

Not — no, not as a young boy.

LEVINE:

Right, and — but do — do you remember what your family told you about why they came to the United States when they did?

LUNDBLAD:

Yes. My father, when they got married — they got married-they moved back to Selbak and he started up another factory making furniture and then there was an economic crisis in Norway in 1927 and the partner that was in business with him ran off with the money. So he had decided that he would better come to the United States where he come make a fortune because friends of his had already moved to the United States and wrote these long letters about how wonderful and how rich they were in America. So my father sold all his furniture and all their possessions and applied for a visa to come to the United States, and my mother wasn't going to apply because my father said that he was going to make his fortune in a year or so and then come right back. But my mother, being a little more sanguine, decided that perhaps she'd better be wise and apply anyway, just in case, and it took a long time usually for spouses to get a visa. But she was granted a visa right off because she could — she studied English and was fluent in English. So she accompanied my father, as did I, on the trip in November, 1927, and we came to Ellis Island, and then by train through Boston to Berlin, New Hampshire, where a host of Scandinavians had settled in the northern part of Berlin and had set up a separate community with the Finnish people on one street, the Danes on another, the Swedes and the Norwegians on the other, and they all attended the Lutheran Church in Berlin, New Hampshire. And they were a little enclave and my father's friends — one of my father's friends was a grocer and one of my other father's friends was employed by the city of Berlin, so that when things got rough, my so-called uncle was able to get my father some part time work. When the '29 crash came and the one industry in town went bankrupt and the grocery friend was able to give us credit when things were rough, in between jobs.

LEVINE:

Well, just backing up for a minute. I know in that bit of writing that you did about your family history —

LUNDBLAD:

Yeah.

LEVINE:

You mentioned the — the family chest or family trunk.

LUNDBLAD:

Yes. Anybody that was coming to America had a so-called America's chest and the woman would pack all her linens and embroidery that she was going to have in America. She would put that in there and it was not large enough to carry any furniture, except my mother secretly hid a table that my father had made, which was a chess table with inlaid wood. And that's still in the family. It's a beautiful piece of work that my father did, but that was the only piece of furniture that they had coming to this country.

LEVINE:

And how big was the chest?

LUNDBLAD:

The chest was about three feet long and about thirty inches square.

LEVINE:

And what — do — did your mother and father say anything about the ship, about the crossing?

LUNDBLAD:

Yes, after my parents got on the boat, my father contracted mumps and spent all but one day in the hospital on the ship, and fortunately arrived cured of the mumps by the time the ship docked in Ellis Island or New York.

LEVINE:

Yeah, wow. And the name of the ship?

LUNDBLAD:

Was the Os — Oslo Fjord.

LEVINE:

And were you in the steerage part? Do you remember the accommodations or did they ever mention the accommodations on the ship?

LUNDBLAD:

I think it must have been steerage because they were not very wealthy at that point.

LEVINE:

Uh-huh, and when you — how about Ellis Island? I mean, you mentioned that your father's hearing — had some hearing deficit.

LUNDBLAD:

Yeah.

LEVINE:

Was there any fear or did anything happen as far as his examination on Ellis Island?

LUNDBLAD:

Well, I think because my mother could speak English, I think she was able to handle some of the questions that my father may have not been able to hear, although he had some hearing. It wasn't a total loss of hearing at that point.

LEVINE:

Uh-huh, was there — were there any other family reminiscences or memories of Ellis Island that you can recall?

LUNDBLAD:

Not of Ellis Island. I mistakenly thought that my surprise to see a Black person, I thought that was on Ellis Island, but my mother's tape says that that was in the railroad station in Boston where we saw a Black porter and I had never seen anyone with a black face before and I thought that something had gone wrong with the person's face and had to interrogate my parents about that.

LEVINE:

Uh-huh. Now, but your parents, had they seen a Black person, would you think?

LUNDBLAD:

No, but they must have read about it because they — they were aware of what — of the problem and told me to "Hush up."

LEVINE:

Okay, and when you arrived in Berlin, New Hampshire by train —

LUNDBLAD:

Yes.

LEVINE:

Do you know who met your family and what happened?

LUNDBLAD:

Yes, we were met by Ernest and Inga Johnson and they took us to their home, where we lived for about two weeks, but my mother felt that it was not healthy for either them or us to live any longer, and they — someone found us a shed up in the woods which we lived in all winter long. The shed was not insulated and as a child I remember putting my hand on the wall and leaving an imprint of my hand in the rhyme and it was very cold and my mother was very unhappy. She cried an awful lot because we were so isolated from civilization and people. But the church was a cornerstone for their gatherings and they were received quite warmly and they had a big party for them, which was written up in the newspaper somewhere, celebrating their coming to the United States. And at some later point when my brother was born, they had a big shower for my — my mother, which she had never heard of. They had never heard of anything like a shower. They were very kind to us because we were the last immigrants coming into Berlin, New Hampshire.

LEVINE:

Do you know why that was? Why immigrants stopped coming there?

LUNDBLAD:

Well, we came there in time for the '29 crash and then the one industry in town went bankrupt and it was very poor economic conditions. Everybody was scrambling for work and so they weren't writing back to Norway saying how wonderful things were anymore. And it was very hard to get work and my father got some work in the city digging ditches and working in the mills and anything, and in the woods cutting trees because it was a logging area and also a paper mill. So we just were able to scratch out a living and it wasn't very — very interesting for other to people to come under that economic situation.

LEVINE:

As far as the town itself, were — were the Scandinavian immigrants all bonded or I mean did they — they — did they all stick together or were there divisions among the ones from Sweden versus Denmark, whatever?

LUNDBLAD:

No, they stuck together and they were totally isolated from the French Canadians who were working in the paper mill, and I guess the town was something like eighty or ninety percent French. And when I was growing up, no Scandinavian would sell a house to a — a Frenchman because they were so insular in their attitude towards integration. They had all kinds of crazy ideas about — well, they were old fashioned ideas like that the only people who were going to go to heaven were Lutherans and the French were Catholics, and so there was no inter-marrying or no mixing. And so it was kind of medieval thinking.

LEVINE:

Wow. Do you remember the town at that time, what it was like maybe compared with how it's changed or just things you remember about the town?

LUNDBLAD:

In those early days they had a streetcar and we could get to town by streetcar or walking. It was one mile away from the Norwegian Village. It was called the Norwegian Village or Scandinavian Village and that has now since disappeared. Also, a frequent happening those days was the river would freeze up and the spring it would jam up and the main street would be flooded, which was great for the kids. We used to make rafts out of logs that would float down the street and we would pretend we were Tom Sawyer and stuff like this. And we also did a lot of fishing in the summertime in the river and the good fish we would eat and the bad fish we would use for fertilizer for our gardens.

LEVINE:

And — and — how do you — looking back on it now, I mean, was this was a nice place to grow up, as far as you're concerned?

LUNDBLAD:

One of the joys we had was the Norwegians were great outdoors people and they formed the — a ski club and set up lodges and — around various places in the mountains and families would go, put on their skies and go on long ski trips and these little lodges or little huts would be manned by volunteers and they would serve coffee and tea and sandwiches. And on weekends we would always strike out into the mountains and go on these things and sometimes we'd go off into territory that was only logging camps and we would cook in the — punch holes in the snow and make fires and cook our food out, and as a child it was won — wonderful place to live because in the summertime we had the swimming in the river and the wintertime we had skiing, and my father being a carpenter, made our skis for the whole family so that all of us would go skiing together as a family. And when my sister was very young and get tired on these long trips, I used to carry an extra knapsack and I would put my sister in a knapsack until she was rested enough to get back on her skis. So —

LEVINE:

What a good brother.

LUNDBLAD:

It was a happy time.

LEVINE:

Uh-huh. Well, how about your mother, did — did she continue to miss the cultural life of Oslo?

LUNDBLAD:

Yes, because we didn't have — we didn't have any radios or anything and — but she used to go around the house singing opera and semi-classical tunes. So I got my classical musical education from my mother singing these songs. But it was a little bit better in Berlin, but after we moved out of the shack into the town there was a little more culture and the church always had musical programs and things like that. So there was some culture, but there was no opera or theater, except movies.

LEVINE:

Did your — did your mother and father ever talk of going back?

LUNDBLAD:

Yes, they had planned to only be in — in Berlin for a year or two and then they were going to go back after they had made their fortune and live happily ever after in Norway, but that was not to be with the economic conditions which they encountered. So I think it was twenty-eight years before they were actually able to go back to Norway to visit again.

LEVINE:

And by that time was — did they — had they decided that they didn't want to move back?

LUNDBLAD:

That's right. At that point I was — I had gotten through college and my brother was through college. My sister had scholarships at Wellesley and Radcliff and so that we were firmly ensconced in the American culture at that point.

LEVINE:

And did your mother and father then remain in Berlin, New Hampshire?

LUNDBLAD:

Yes. Yeah.

LEVINE:

And okay, so is there anything else that you can think of about the nature of the immigrant community in Berlin, New Hampshire?

LUNDBLAD:

I think the — the key thing was how all the Scandinavians rallied to help one another during the Depression which was pretty grim, and they tried to help each other getting work and all of us children worked. I — I sold newspapers and pots and pans and we had winter carnivals run by the Norwegians and they were internationally renowned for their winter carnivals. We had one of the largest ski jumps in the world, so that people would come from all over the world to ski jump in Berlin, and at these things I used to sell cigars, cigarettes, chewing gum and candy.

LEVINE:

Hmm.

LUNDBLAD:

In order to earn money for the family and then — at one point when my father got sick, I had to quit going to school all day and I started going to school only through noontime and then I went and worked in the paper mill from three o'clock in the afternoon until eleven every night until my father got well, which was about six months. The terrible economic conditions that they encountered really did a job on my father's health. He wound up having a bleeding ulcer and suffered for years until they could afford to have an operation. And when I was only — when I was seven, I was ski jumping and I jumped further than I should and somebody had left a plank in the landing and I broke my leg and it was a real tragedy because I felt that the family couldn't afford to have me break a leg. But we were lucky enough to have a wonderful physician who recognized our problem, economic problem and lowered the bill and so people were really kind in those — those days.

LEVINE:

How about the — the Brown — was it the Brown Paper Company?

LUNDBLAD:

Yes, the Brown Paper Company. Yes.

LEVINE:

That was kind of the —

LUNDBLAD:

That was the one industry in town.

LEVINE:

And can you say anything about that and how that operated in family's lives? I mean, that kind of a town really revolving around one major industry.

LUNDBLAD:

Yes, they made — the Brown Company made Nimbrot [PH] Paper Towels, which were distributed all over the United States. They also made high gloss papers, wrapping papers and things like that. Most of the jobs were run by French Canadians, so that it was not good to be Norwegian or Scandinavian because you didn't get the good jobs and my father finally took a demeaning job as a job as millwright. He was a — he was a fantastic craftsman. Later when — when things, economics improved in the town, he used to work for a forge — foundry. Any time they had a broken part, he would make the part in wood so that they could cast it in sand, and it had to be made within the thousandths of an inch. So he was a real craftsman and instead, he was working on junk stuff in the mill, plumbing and stuff that didn't require much skill, and he was the happiest in his whole life in America when he retired and could do what he wanted to do.

LEVINE:

Hmm. And let's see. So the — I — was — was the company, the Brown Company, was it kind of a paternal situation? Like did they have housing for their employees and did they —

LUNDBLAD:

I think they were initially paternalistic. They were run — owned by the Brown family, but there was no company housing. It was kind of a big enterprise. They had mills in the northern part of town, the Scandinavian part. They also had mills in the southern part of town and then another mill in a town below Berlin, which is called Cascades. So they had three mills up there and they were a major factor in paper industry in the world — in the United States at that time. But I — I don't think they were particularly paternalistic to the workers. I think it was they had a large supply of workers who were just needing work, so they didn't have to be too paternalistic.

LEVINE:

Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm. Okay, so let's see. How — how was it that you and your brother and sister excelled? I mean, you went to college. I assume that a lot of people didn't.

LUNDBLAD:

Yes, most of the people didn't go to college in — in the town of Berlin, neither the French nor the Scandinavians, but we were told as children that Lundblads never give up and Lundblads always win and — which was hard to handle later in life, however. But we sort of lived on that — under that slogan and I was on a basketball team walking down the hall one time in high school and the fellows I was walking with said, "Are you going to take the Navy Officer's Exam?" and I said, "No, I'm going into the submarines," and they said, "Well, you're saying that because you probably would flunk the test." So I said, "Okay, where do you sign up?" I went down to the principal's office and signed up for the test. There were two hundred and fifty of us that took the test. All but ten flunked the test and seven flunked the physical and that left the class brain, myself and my friend, and then my friend flunked out of midshipman school. That got me onto Dartmouth College and I became a Navy officer, and I got my BA from Dartmouth Tech School and also went onto Harvard Business School. My brother volunteered for the Army and under the GI Bill, he got education at University of New Hampshire and became an engineer. And about that time I also was granted a scholarship to study at the University of Oslo. The Norwegian government wanted to thank the Americans for freeing them from the Germans and they selected two hundred and fifty students from America to come and study English and Norwegian culture at the University of Oslo. And I think they had something like three thousand and I was one of the two hundred and fifty that went to the University of Oslo.

LEVINE:

I'll bet that made your mother proud.

LUNDBLAD:

Yeah, and my sister is a — is a — has above average intelligence and my parents wanted to send her to Lutheran School and I said, "No, she's too smart for that." I used to have her count my pennies and stuff when I was on the paper route, when she was just a teensy little kid and by the time she went to school, she could read, write and — and count and I said, "She's going to go to a good school." And I had her apply to all the top colleges and she got accepted to every college she applied to and got a full scholarship to Wellesley and then she finally — after a degree there, she went on and got a degree from Harvard, her Master's degree from Harvard.

LEVINE:

Hmm. Well, where in your career did you meet your wife?

LUNDBLAD:

I was hitchhiking back to Dartmouth College one spring day. A lady came by and asked — she came by in a car and said, "I'd like to pick you up, but I can't do that because I don't have enough room," and I was frozen solid. And I was in a Navy uniform. I said, "How about if I could go in your trunk," and so she let me ride in her trunk until some ladies got out of the car and she invited me up to the little town of Newberry, Vermont, and I vowed I'd never go up there because it was just a tiny, little town, but I was supposed to go to a dance at Framingham State Teacher's College when the president of the college died and the only invitation I had was this old lady. And make a long story short, she introduced me to my wife. [Laughs]

LEVINE:

Okay. We're going to stop here and turn the tape over.

LUNDBLAD:

Okay.

LEVINE:

Okay, when you look back over your life, what are the things that make you feel most satisfied that you have done?

LUNDBLAD:

Well, I think just getting through — as a family getting through the Depression and surviving the Depression. Looking back at it, I don't look at the negative part of the Depression, I look at it as a — a wonderful family time, rather than a time when we were all sad because I don't think we were sad. I think we endured. So that was a high point and I've had a lot of wonderful things happen to me by accident, like going to college and when I was hitchhiking. When I was graduating college, a man said to me that I — actually, my roommate said, "What are you going to do when you get out?" and I said, "Well, I think I'm qualified to be an accountant or an economist," and he said, "You'd make a rotten accountant and nobody wants an economist," and he said, "Well, how about" — I said, "What do I do then? He said, "Well, if you would help me sail my sailboat to New York, I will teach you a new discipline, which is called market research." And so I helped him sail his sailboat and we had to do it at night because of the tides and because the boat was leaking, I — we spent the whole time being wide awake and he taught me market research, and when I came back that weekend, I read the want ads and applied for a job was director of market research for a company and got it.

LEVINE:

Oh.

LUNDBLAD:

So I've had a lot of fluky things happen in my life like that that have been kind of gifts.

LEVINE:

You mentioned the — the family tenant or whatever that Lundblads always win.

LUNDBLAD:

Yeah.

LEVINE:

Were there any other attitudes or values or ways of thinking about yourself and the world that either your mother or father passed onto you?

LUNDBLAD:

Yes, the town my father came from was just a funny little town. It was sort of like the Brooklyn of Norway. Everybody had a — a slang name, like "The Pig Man," or whatever, and they had all these funny sayings. And so that all through my life I kept hearing these little slogans which I should have memorized. The one I remember that I'd never forget because it was repeated so much is "[Norwegian]" which is a Norwegian who of saying — Norwegian way of saying "Don't worry about tomorrow until you get there." But translated it means, "that day, that sorrow." Norwegians tend to be a little bit heavy and so that they — because of their long winters, they tend to look on the dark side until summer comes. So — but that's a very popular saying in Norway [Norwegian]. That day, that sorrow. [Laughs]

LEVINE:

[Laughs] And how about your mother, did she — did she try to instill any ideas that you can recall?

LUNDBLAD:

Well, the whole family had a strong work ethic and when things didn't go well enough with my father's employment, my mother hired out as a cook to wealthy people like the R.H. Stearns Department Store people had places up in the White Mountains, and my mother would go and cook all summer and we wouldn't see her all summer. She'd just be a cook for the wealthy and she continued to do that. She was an excellent cook and she was also, even in her old age, she used to be very kind to people and she would often go, as she would say, "Visit the old people in nursing homes." She didn't consider herself old. She walked every day, even when she was in her late eighties and seemingly was in good health all the time. And my father, for example, one time was told by my brother, "I'll bet you you couldn't water ski," and he was seventy at the time, and my father says, "Give me the skis," and my father water skied for the first time when he was seventy. So we were a family instilled with pride to win anyway. The down side of that slogan was I — I grew up in the Horatio Alger tradition in that if you work hard, you'll always be rewarded and I — at one point I took a company from nothing. I started it in my basement for a Dutch company and after eight years, I had them going strong. It's not a — one of the leading candy companies in the United States. And then they asked me to start another company for them and then after eleven months, they decided they didn't want to do that and they just let me go and I didn't think that — I thought that was so unfair that I — I wound up getting pancreatic cancer. The doctor said, "You have four months to live," which was kind of heavy.

LEVINE:

You're relating it to the stress of — of that.

LUNDBLAD:

Relating it to the slogan: you always have to win. It's all right to — to fail sometimes or not succeed, but I — I never could work that out until I got cancer and that was a — a lesson that the slogan that I got wasn't always correct. But the positive part about that is that the last sixteen years of my life have been wonderful because the colors are more vibrant. The sunsets are more lovely and I also have spent a lot of time working with people who are dying because I know what it's like because I came awful close.

LEVINE:

And has that been satisfying to you, working with — it's hospice?

LUNDBLAD:

Yes, hospice. Yes, yes. Sometimes it gets a little heavy, but both my wife and I are working on that now. She works in bereavement counseling and I have — well, and we both have one thirty-five year old client who's — who's dying. It's unfortunate. It's a lovely, lovely young lady.

LEVINE:

Hmm. Just to pick up on a few things. You said your mother was a wonderful cook.

LUNDBLAD:

Yup.

LEVINE:

Do — do you remember any things that she made that were Norwegian fair?

LUNDBLAD:

Yes. Well, of course, Christmas was a big deal. Christmas baking started one month ahead of time and they made all the traditional cakes and cookies that are made in Norway still today, and my wife is also a good cook. And my wife and my mother used to do this Christmas baking together and my wife continues this and makes the most wonderful Christmas bread. It's just delicious, and she also makes Christmas cookies still.

LEVINE:

And do — were there any other — were there any ceremonies that were of a Scandinavian nature that you remember the community in Berlin observing in this country?

LUNDBLAD:

Well, we had a very liturgical year in the church and — in the church itself, in the initial years they had Norwegian speaking ministers, but by the time I was thirteen, this faded and they started having English speaking ministers. So in one generation from Norwegian speaking people, it was all English and the interesting thing about this thing is that when you got two Norwegians together and an English speaking person, they always spoke English, which was just contrary to the French. The French would always speak French regardless and I think the Norwegians were very conscious and proud to be Americans. It was a great privilege. They felt that it was the greatest country in the world and I still do because I've worked all over Europe and Africa and South America and I still feel that this is the greatest place to be living.

LEVINE:

How do you think of yourself in terms of Norwegian American?

LUNDBLAD:

Well, that is complex and the reason that I took my wife to Norway on our honeymoon was that so she could understand that part of me. And if you listen to any of Garrison Keeler's humor, he incorporates a lot of this crazy Norwegian stuff, sometimes serious, sometimes foolish, sometimes tragic and it — it's sometimes hard to split the two. I've been back to Norway many times. As a matter of fact, I've studied again at the University of Oslo with my wife and I guess — I guess the part of me that really relates most to Norway is coping with weather. Weather to me is wonderful. I love weather of any kind. It doesn't have to be sunny. It doesn't have to be warm. I grew up where, you know, I could go skiing at forty below zero and it was fun and still is fun, and this year I'm going on ski patrol for the twenty-seventh year and I'm the old man of the mountain and I can still ski better than a lot of the young kids. I think that's something that's strictly Norwegian. If you go to Oslo now, the trolley cars have ski racks on them for all the people and so they can put their skis on the trolley and go up the mountain and ski outside of Oslo and during the summertime, awful lot of walking around, trails and stuff. People are always going off on picnics and enjoying the outdoors. I think that's typically Norwegian, enjoying, loving the outdoors. I think partially that's because they have only have four hours of sun — daylight in the winter — in the summer — in the wintertime and in the summertime of course it never gets dark there. So they really revel in the summertime.

LEVINE:

And you mentioned how you happened to meet your wife, but what is your wife's name?

LUNDBLAD:

My wife's name is Deborah Ellen Cobb and her family goes back to the Mayflower and when she was growing up, her mother — her grandmother was a member of the DAR and kept talking about 'having the right kind of blood.' So Debbie felt that when she got married, she was going to marry somebody from some foreign country just to spite her grandmother. [Laughs]

LEVINE:

And do you have children?

LUNDBLAD:

Yes, we have three. Our — our oldest is a — is a woman and she teaches French and graduated from St. Olaf College in Minnesota. Our son decided to become a carpenter. He lives in Massachusetts, and our youngest went to Wellesley and Harvard Divinity School and has opted to be a free spirit and does — is a massage therapist.

LEVINE:

And how about do you have grandchildren?

LUNDBLAD:

Yes, we have — my son has a son who's seventeen and our oldest has a — a daughter and a son.

LEVINE:

Let's see. And this time of your life seems to be quite — quite full.

LUNDBLAD:

Yes, I — well, I spend a lot of time in hospice. I spent — I'm retired, unvolun — involuntarily. I would still like to be doing consulting. I just did a consulting job recently, but I miss the routine of working on cases like I worked in Algeria when they kicked out the French and had something like eighty percent unemployment. Balance of payments were going bad. People were starving to death and I — I was working for Arthur D. Little, a management consulting company. My job was to try to figure out how do we solve the problems of Algeria in terms of feeding the people and stuff like that. And those are stimulating jobs. Or working for the government of Ireland. How can they compete with the English on pot pies, shepherd's pies and this kind of stuff. And working in South America and Central America and Africa and Europe. I miss that part, but on the other hand, I'm very busy. I play tennis. I — I'm on ski patrol. I sail. I am on long range planning for the church, on the finance committee in the church and I have — I do paintings, as you can see.

LEVINE:

I didn't realize they were yours.

LUNDBLAD:

Yeah, and I do wood working. I make long shoehorns for people who have arthritis or physical ailments so that they can't bend over and put their shoes on. Scissors holders for people that loose their scissors and I do Norwegian rose painting on those things. So that they're not just utilitarian, they're also pretty.

LEVINE:

Oh. And when you look back on the fact of — of your family and you as a young child coming to this country and making the rest of your lives here how — how do you think about it now?

LUNDBLAD:

I think we are so fortunate and I just wonder at the mystery of it, why? Why wasn't I born an Arab or a Jew or why did I — why was I born Norwegian to come here? Such a wonderful country. I'm so lucky and we've been blessed by being here and we've had a — a real wonderful life. I had a lot of opportunities that I never would have had if I had stayed in Norway. I think there would have been more stratification of skills. For example, my father went through the apprenticeship and all this kind of system to get to be a carpenter and — and I presume they still have some of that structure. Whereas here, as I — as I mentioned, I jumped from college right into being director of market research as a fluke. The opportunities in America are just so great for people that really just try hard. [Chuckles]

LEVINE:

Hmm. And how, when — I take it you visited it Ellis Island, is that how it —

LUNDBLAD:

No, friends of ours did and — and we had invited them up to our cottage in New Hampshire and they said, "We knew that you had been through Ellis Island. Here's some papers you might be interested in," and told us a little bit about Ellis Island. We've never been back. We've given money to Ellis Island, but not to go back. But now we really want to go back after hearing their stories and stuff. It sounds wonderful.

LEVINE:

Okay. Well, now your story will be part of those that are on computer in the Oral History Library.

LUNDBLAD:

Ha!

LEVINE:

Available to anyone interested.

LUNDBLAD:

Oh! Great. Great.

LEVINE:

And I want to thank you for a most interesting interview.

LUNDBLAD:

Good.

LEVINE:

I have been speaking with Frank Lundblad and he came in 1927 at two and a half years of age, and this is Janet Levine for the — for the National Park Service and I'm signing off. [END OF INTERVIEW]