Berge, Herborg & Harold

This is the first post from my Dad’s perspective. Dad was Grandpa and Grandma Revne’s only child. Dad (Harold Revne) died in 2003, but thankfully he left some stories about his childhood…

My father (this is my Dad speaking about his father)was born in Norway, just south of Bergen on the seashore of the Bjorne fjord. I believe he had as a very young man the desire to serve God as a missionary to a foreign country. In handwritten notes I found, Father says he was influenced by Christian public school teachers and Christian parents. He was converted himself to Christianity at the age of 17, and the young childhood call came back to him then. Consequently he eventually left the farm and emigrated to the United States for further Bible training, practical missionary training and language learning studies, especially that of phonetics and phonemics and the study of the structure of languages.

My mother’s home was located about one-half mile up the mountain from the ocean where my father lived. The children living in the area would walk to school. My mother was three years older than my father and they went to the same school, but did not walk together. The school was in Baldersheim which was about a mile or two away. They never ‘went together’ but secretly liked each other. It wasn’t until my father sent mother a letter with money for a ticket to America that she knew he was serious – this was the equivalent to his asking her to marry him. She came to the U.S. and worked in Fargo as a nurse assistant.

I was born in Norway just half-way between my father’s seaside home and my mother’s mountain view home, in a house belonging to my aunt. My parents registered my birth with the American Consulate because they were naturalized citizens of the USA. My father had been studying in France that summer while waiting my arrival.

Two weeks after I was born they took me with them on a steamship back to Africa, where they had been missionaries for almost four years. Then we went by two covered dugout canoes to Garoua, Cameroon on the Benue river, and then by horseback or whatever transportation mode was available, in order to reach the mission station in Lere, Chad. Naturally I have no recollection of my first three years in Africa, but I am told that whenever a national would peer through the mosquito netting covering the baby buggy, they would invariably remark, “You mean they are even born white?”

When I was three we left for furlough via Norway to America. The first leg of the journey to reach the coast of Africa took two months in two dugout canoes outfitted kind of like Conestoga covered wagons, with mosquito netting to protect from insects, and grass mat overhead to give shade from the hot tropical sun. At night the canoes would be latched together to help prevent the hippopotamus from playfully or otherwise overturning the craft. From Lagos, Nigeria we went by ship to Norway and then across the Atlantic to America.

On landing in the United States I no doubt experienced a mild culture shock since I could not speak English, although I was fluent in Norwegian and two African languages: Masana and Fulani.

I’m trying to picture my three-year-old dad experiencing culture shock upon arriving in the U.S. for the first time in his little life. No worried parental talk of hippopotamus, no comfort of mosquito netting at naptime, no dugout canoes to romp in, and three toddler languages to try to get a glass of milk with, but none of them working... A Norwegian-born, U.S. citizen, who had really only lived in Africa by age three! What an interesting childhood my Dad had.

Yet what I’m even more intrigued by, is Dad’s mention of how his parents got together. Secretly liking each other, a letter with money for a ticket to America… (The next Nicholas Sparks movie?) I would so love to know what Grandpa’s letter said. Maybe he wrote: “Dear Herborg, I know I haven’t seen you in a year or two, but here’s some money for a ticket to America. Please hop on the next boat out of Norway because I’d really like to date you.”

Well, maybe not. Yet whatever Berge said, one thing is totally clear to me. It took some courage and faith for him to write it. And I have no doubt it took some courage and faith for Herborg to respond the way she did. They both took a risk to pursue love. Their granddaughter admires them for this, and is grateful they did.