Isaac Niva (pronounced Nee’-va) was born in 1859 in
Karungi, Sweden, near the Tornio (Torneå) River, which is the border between
Sweden and Finland, to I. Niva and K. Niva. Isaac came to the United
States in about 1880 and lived in Silver Bow, near Butte, in the Territory
of Montana. There Isaac married Kristiina Olson on the 24th day of July, 1889,
when Isaac was aged thirty years and Kristiina aged twenty-five. Kristiina was
born in Tyrnävä, Finland, in 1864, the daughter of Ole (Suutari) Olson and M.
Olson. (The name Olson may have been taken upon immigrating to the U.S.)
Isaac and Kristiina, along with their two girls born in
Montana, Aina and Selma, moved to north-central North Dakota in 1897. Isaac
homesteaded land in Towner County, near Perth. He and Kristiina built a sod
house. The prairie grass was thick, and it was cut out and stacked
like bricks. The walls were white washed and the floor was trampled
until it was as smooth as linoleum. Isaac farmed with
oxen. Oxen had a mind of their own. If they got hot and thirsty,
they would take off to a watering hole. Isaac got disgusted with the
oxen. He took them to town and traded them for a team of horses.
Isaac and Kristiina had five children: three girls, Aina
(b. 1895), Selma (Sally) (b. 1896) and Jennie (b. 1898) and; and two boys,
John Emil (b. 1900), who died at child birth, and Vaino, who was born in 1901
in Rolla, North Dakota. Vaino’s name was later Anglicized to Wayne Neva (our older brother Wayne (b.
1961) is named after him).
After the girls were out of the house, Isaac quit farming
and moved with Kristiina and Wayne to Astoria, Oregon, where Isaac may have
worked in the fishing industry. Kristiina died there in 1917, when
Wayne was about sixteen years old. They moved back to north-central North
Dakota and lived in Rolla. Isaac retired there, then died on the
17th day of October, 1923, when Wayne was twenty-one years old. (Years
later, Todd Neva, named his son after his great grandfather Isaac.)
In about 1926, Wayne married Anna Herrala, daughter of Otto
Henry Herrala and Lidia Alina Koski. Lidia was born in 1886 in
Atlantic Mine, Michigan. Otto was from Oulu, Finland, where he was
widowed. Without telling his parents, for their own safety, he fled Finland in
the middle of the night to avoid being drafted into the Russian
army. It cost sixty dollars, a large sum of money, to gain ferry
from England to the U.S. He settled in Redridge, Michigan.
To Wayne’s union with Anna was born Inez (b. 1927), Evelyn
(b. 1929), Ronald (b. 1934), Fred (b. 1939) and Helen (b.
1937). They lived in various towns in the area: Hansboro, Rock Lake,
Cando, Perth, and Bisbee. Wayne and Anna rented homes, and money was
tight, but they had a big garden. Anna canned vegetables and made homemade root
beer. Wayne learned carpentry skills, perhaps from his mother, and worked
for farmers. He seemed to have a talent for carpentry, even without formal
training. As for school, he only completed fifth grade.
Opportunity for work was limited in North Dakota, and his
wage was more or less fifty cents per hour, whatever he was able to
negotiate. In 1940, World War II had broken out and there was much
work to be had in Minneapolis, Minnesota, building defense plants. Wayne Neva
moved his family to Minneapolis and worked building a plant in Rosemont,
Minnesota. By then, he had become skilled at his carpentry craft, and he joined
the carpenters’ union with a wage of one dollar-thirty per hour. That was quite
a jump in pay. The minimum wage, then, was thirty cents per hour, so union
carpenters were making five times the minimum wage. This made him a strong
union advocate.
In The Great Depression, many banks failed and savings were
lost. As a result, people came away with a great distrust of business and
financial institutions. Wayne, too, was distrustful of the business world, so
he never took the insurance offered by the union.
His son, Ronald, recalled of his father, “For only having a
fifth grade education, he had a good mathematical mind. He was able to perform
the mathematics his trade required. When I was in high school, I was taking
algebra and was amazed the way algebra could solve many problems. I thought I’d
test my dad by giving him a typical algebra problem. While I was getting a
pencil and paper for him, he solved it in his head. That day I gained a great
deal of respect for his intelligence.” (Bryan and Wayne Neva, Vaino's
grandsons, both went on to become electrical engineers, and Todd Neva went on
to become an expert in statistical analysis.)
“Dad played guitar. He sang Finnish songs and ballads. He
was a social person, and Mother and Dad had many visitors. Mother often
commented that she felt people liked to visit because of Dad’s conversational
ability.” (Years later, Bryan discovered Vaino's old guitar in the attic
of his grandmother Anna’s home and learned to play it too. Eventually, the
old guitar broke and sadly he had to throw it away.)
“As a carpenter, he was in demand. Dad built several
houses. He built about three homes in Minneapolis and two in Sebeka, Minnesota,
along with a wooden silo. The amazing part to me was that he didn’t have the
wide array of power tools that are available to modern carpenters
today. He would sharpen his handsaws, for which he took great pride
in their cutting efficiency. He was truly a master carpenter. He had
a God-given talent for woodworking. He had the ability to use what was at hand.
He and Mother bought their house at 215 Gerard Avenue in Minneapolis. He needed
trim for around the doors and windows. I thought he’d buy pre-fabricated trim,
but he came across rough-sawn oak from a packing crate. He hand-planed the
boards and fashioned them into trim that was equal to factory standards.”
(Ronald developed advanced finish and cabinet making carpentry skills. While growing up, Ronald taught his boys Wayne, Bryan, and Todd the same carpentry skills he learned from his father Vaino. Bryan is now the proud owner of his grandfather Vaino’s hammer.)
“Times were different back then in the 1940s. Dads worked
and Moms shopped and ran the house. Families used cash, not checks
or credit cards. They paid their bills at a notary public
agency. Banks were located uptown and weren’t open Friday evenings
or Saturdays, so when men got paid, they had to find a place to cash their
checks. Neighborhood taverns had cashier windows, and a bad habit
developed with many men: they would stop at the tavern to cash their checks,
and then they’d have beer. (For years in Minnesota, taverns could sell
only weak 3.2% beer, not 6% alcohol beer or hard drinks.) Drinking was a
manly activity, and Dad would join his friends at a booth where they would take
turns buying rounds of beers. Saturdays were shopping days, but Dad
would come home late Friday evening from the tavern with part of his paycheck
already spent. This caused a great deal of problems between Dad and
Mother. Mother was a believer, a practicing Lutheran, but Dad, at
the time, wasn’t, so there was a battle of values. They fought once or twice a
week! After each fight, my father would be repentant and resolve to
change. Dad was not a mean person; he never hit or threatened my
mother, and we children were never abused. Even with all this fighting, they
never once talked of divorce. (When I went to work for Hibbing
Taconite Mine in 1975, the condition of my employment was that I had to agree
to direct deposit of my paycheck. This greatly reduced family problems, when
the wife had the first opportunity for the pay and men would no longer cash
their checks at bars.)”
“Although we knew Dad’s behavior was wrong, we sided with
him because Mother came on so strong. It shows how kids can get mixed up in
their thinking. Dad was a social drinker, not an alcoholic. I never saw him
drunk. He never drank during the week or at home, and his drinking
never interfered with his work. He was an honest man; he never cheated anybody and
always paid his bills. When Dad didn’t drink, Mother was happy, and life was
good.”
“After the war, in about 1946, we moved to Sebeka,
Minnesota, where Dad bought a small farm. Why this came to be, I do
not know. Perhaps, Mother thought a change of area would be a good
change for the family. However, it was a bad experience for the
whole family. Dad tried to farm, but frankly he was not a farmer. He
was out of his element. Dad bought six cows from a man; he made payments, but fell
behind, and the man repossessed the cows. The farm was only forty
acres, not big enough to make a living, and there was not enough carpentry work
to supplement his income. So he got a larger farm, about 120 acres,
but that wasn’t successful, either. Mother had a nervous breakdown
and Dad began drinking again. After only two years, we moved back to
Minneapolis. There, Mother recovered, Dad found work, and the
drinking tapered off.”
“Around 1950, he developed cataracts in his
eyes. In those days the doctors believed the cataracts had to be
fully developed before they could operate, so his eye sight wasn’t good enough
to hold a job. Surgery was primitive, and he was a victim of
malpractice, for which his eyes required more procedures. In those days, there
weren’t implants like we have now, so his vision was corrected with thick
glasses.” (Ronald eventually developed cataracts too, but by the 2000s
the surgical procedure had become so advanced, that Ronald has near perfect
vision.)
“Mother went to work for the Supervalu packing center in
Hopkins, Minnesota. Around 1952 or 1953, Dad went back to work. He
was a skilled carpenter, so he was able to get the better jobs that were
available in commercial building, which required exacting workmanship. He
worked on Southdale Center, the first enclosed mall in the world. He
worked for about four years, but developed other health problems, such as an
enlarged prostate. He was diagnosed with a bleeding ulcer, which was
treated for a couple of years. He thought it was just his ulcer, but his bone
marrow may not have been producing blood. Thinking back, I now believe he
actually had prostate cancer, which had spread to his bone
marrow. In February 1960, when I was twenty-five, Dad went into the
hospital for a blood transfusion and there he died.”
“Because of his limited education, and being distrustful of
the business world, he never took the insurance offered by the
union. So he accumulated about $17,000 in medical bills (equivalent
to $136,000 today), which Mother was left to pay after his death. That was a
large amount of money in 1960. She paid the whole bill herself, taking many
years to do so. Though her wages were not high, she never considered
bankruptcy. That’s the way my parents were, having survived The Great Depression.”
Ronald went on to describe a religious conversion experience his Dad had before he passed away, “About four years prior to his death, he called for the minister of the Laestadius Luthern Church to whom he stated his need for salvation and he repented of his sins. I believe both Mother, who died years later in 1997, and Dad are with the Lord. As it says in Galations, ‘some frustrate the Grace of God.’ The Lord considers the light that people have received. My Dad should not be defined by a few dark incidents in his life. He should be defined by the whole of his life. My Dad was a good dad and he always provided for his family. We were never in want, we were fed, clothed, housed, and we never went hungry. He did his best.”
