Videos Honoring Timothy Wesselowski: His Life and Funeral Service

The Videos

Documentary on My Grandpa's Life

My Grandpa's Funeral Service

My Grandfather's Death

On the 2nd of January, 2021 my Grandpa Tim Wesselowski passed away at the age of 80 years old. He had contracted COVID-19 in the month before and died as a result of the accompanying pneumonia. Unlike many who met the same fate in the last year, he did not die alone. My Uncle Nathan was by his side and my Mom was on speaker phone. My Uncle had spent the prior day with him doing one of his favorite things: watching football with family.

1931 Bethany Daisy: The Junior Class pt. 1 (pg. 38-39)

This is part one of the Junior class photos and part five of my ongoing series of pictures and transcriptions of the 1931 Bethany Daisy that belonged to my great grandma Frances Elsie Caroline Gustafson.

Junior Class History

JUNIOR CLASS HISTORY 

ON SEPTEMBER 5, 1928, there arrived on the campus of 

Bethany College a group of bashful, bewildered seekers of 

higher knowledge. After wandering through dark halls, climbing 

numerous stairways, and peering into a seemingly endless number 

of vacant rooms, we were finally directed to the library to go through 

the tedious process of enrolling. 

The next event was to appear before the august Miss Magnusson 

for our entrance examinations; everyone seemed to survive. Then 

we were received with malicious joy by the "Ruf Nex" and upper- 

classmen who for a few weeks would not let us forget that we were 

Freshmen. 

But it was not long until we became accustomed to the life at 

college including the visits to the dining hall during chapel exercises, 

cutting all unnecessary classes, and the duty of visiting the college 

library either with a studious intent or merely with the motive of 

creating some hilarity among the more studious upperclassmen. 

Our career as a class during the Freshmen and Sophomore years 

has been, with the exception of an occasional party, rather unevent- 

ful. However, as a Junior class, we are interested in publishing the 

best annual in the history of Bethany and also in entertaining the 

Seniors at the annual Junior-Senior banquet. 

Variety is recognized as the spice of life, and we endeavor as a 

class to follow this axiom. We range in mental ability from Lucille 

Holmberg to—no fair to tell a class secret; in height from Carl 

Larson to—we'll let you decide that; in athletic ability from Kenneth 

Monson, basket ball player de luxe to Floyd Peterson, "champion 

sleeper" ; and in musical ability from Pete Moline, whistler, to Harold 

Carlson, chief of the fourth-floor warblers. 

But from the beginning we have been imbued with the Bethany 

spirit and our loyalty has been shown by the number from our class 

who have been on forensic teams, athletic teams, and numerous other 

campus organizations. 

Now we are nearing the close of our third year in the halls of 

Bethany, and may we fully realize that from Bethany we receive the 

influence that is moulding our lives and characters and may we 

realize these benefits and express by our future lives in service to 

humanity our true esteem of the ideals given to us at Bethany.

1931 Bethany Daisy: The Senior Class pt. 3 (pg. 34-36)

This is part three of the senior class photos and part four of my ongoing series of pictures and transcriptions of the 1931 Bethany Daisy that belonged to my great grandma Frances Elsie Caroline Gustafson.Frances got notes from a significant portion of the students. Many students chose not to write their letters by their senior photograph, but instead by a photograph of them doing an activity they like, or they chose to use an entire blank sheet of paper for their note, so its entirely possible people who don't have notes showing yet will have them later on in the book.

Page 34

1931 Bethany Daisy: The Senior Class pt. 2 (pg. 32-33)

This is part two of the senior class photos and part four of my ongoing series of pictures and transcriptions of the 1931 Bethany Daisy  that belonged to my great grandma Frances Elsie Caroline Gustafson. Frances got notes from a significant portion of the students. Many students chose not to write their letters by their senior photograph, but instead by a photograph of them doing an activity they like, or they chose to use an entire blank sheet of paper for their note, so its entirely possible people who don't have notes showing yet will have them later on in the book.

Page 32

1931 Bethany Daisy: The Senior Class pt.1 (pg. 30-31)

This is part three of my ongoing series of pictures and transcriptions of the 1931 Bethany Daisy that belonged to my great grandma Frances Elsie Caroline Gustafson. This section includes the page "Senior Class History" as well as the first page of the senior photo section. Frances got notes from a significant portion of the students. Many students chose not to write their letters by their senior photograph, but instead by a photograph of them doing an activity they like, or they chose to use an entire blank sheet of paper for their note, so its entirely possible people who don't have notes showing yet will have them later on in the book.

SENIOR CLASS HISTORY 

1931 Bethany Daisy: Staff pages (pages 13-28)

This is part two of my ongoing series of pictures and transcriptions of the 1931 Bethany Daisy that belonged to my great grandma Frances Elsie Caroline Gustafson. This part will focus on the staff pages, and while my great grandma did not get signatures from all the staff or even most of the staff, she did get notes from a few.

1881---1931 

BETHANY College is fifty years old. From 

a small beginning the institution has de- 

veloped to what it is today ; two fully accredited 

colleges, the College of Arts and Sciences and 

the College of Fine Arts. 

The founder of the college was Rev. Carl 

Aaron Swensson who served as president from 

1881 until his untimely death in 1904.  

1931 Bethany Daisy: Pages 1-11

This is part of my series on the 1931 Bethany yearbook owned by my great grandma Frances Elsie Caroline Gustafson. These first 11 pages are mainly historical pictures of the scenery at Bethany and tributes to Birger Sandzen.

Frances E.C. Gustafson

1931

What in the world is a Wesselowski?(And solving a Mystery)

Julius Wesselowski

The Wesselowski family name is one that is carried by only a lucky few. In fact, only about 37 people in the world can call it their own. This is largely due to a German family choosing an alternate spelling from the slightly more common 'Wesselowsky', and a man named Julius Wesselowski being one of the only members of that family to have sons. Then there is the fact that many Wesselowskis chose to change their last name to one of two variants: "Wessley" or "West". My maternal grandpa is just one of the ~37 with the surname. However, whether or not Wesselowski was my grandpa's family's true surname has long been debated. Thanks to DNA, however, those rumors have come to their conclusion. This post will tell the full story of the Wesselowskis, their families, and the genetic findings that changed my personal family history.

Interview with Grandpa Tim

When I went on the trip to see my grandpa Tim Wesselowski I recorded some interviews with him. This is the transcript of the first interview.

Grandpa: well that Couch Cemetery is our family cemetery.

Me: yuup that’s it

Grandpa: There’s more people-  more relatives- I’ve got more relatives buried up there than probably anybody else in that cemetery.

Me: yup

Grandpa: and I recognize a lot of the names that aren’t, you know, ours. Claude Slate. Called Claude Slate he used to come down and go fishing with grandma and he’d go fishing with the boys up in the pond.

(post talk note: the names he mentions are related through marriage or otherwise, contrary to what grandpa thought)

//silence as grandpa Tim clicks through the findagrave site. He reaches Etta Byers’s page.

Documents found on Kansas Trip

On my trip to Jewell County, Kansas I found the time to visit the County Clerks office. Unfortunately, the time I found was not nearly enough to examine all the documents I wanted to, but I did still find some interesting ones I thought I would share today.

My trip to Kansas: Things I did and saw

I am currently on an almost 2 week-long trip to Mcpherson Kansas to see my grandpa Tim Wesselowski and to do some genealogical research. Thus far it has been an extremely successful and eventful trip, one that has provided the answer to a 100-year-old mystery (although that part of the trip warrants its own post). In this post I will simply write about the things I saw, what I did, and the best parts of the trip.

I'll start off by listing off the genealogy related things I did, although I won't go into detail here, the post would be far too long!

1. Scanned in over 500 (as of today) family photos in my grandpa's possession
2. Recorded about 3 hours of an interview (done over several sessions) with my Grandpa Tim about his childhood, his parents, and his grandparents.
3. Visited the Couch Cemetery and the Jewell City Cemetery and took pictures of the graves and visited with deceased relatives.
4. Visited the Court House in Mankato and found a lot of records on the family.

You can look forward to more detailed descriptions of all those things in future posts- this one will be about my sightseeing excursions and miscellaneous activities I partook in.

I'll start with today and go backward:

Today my mom, my grandpa Tim, and I journeyed to the border of Kansas and Nebraska, finding ourselves in the rolling hills and expansive plains that constitute the rural county of Jewell. The trip was specifically planned to coincide with the solar eclipse. We imagined watching the sky turn an inky black, the moon blotting out the sun so, for a fleeting couple of minutes, a million stars could paint the sky deep hues of blue and purple.

Unfortunately, that did not happen. We went up to Couch Cemetery to watch and the sky got slightly dim at best. The clouds that decided to roll in about 3 minutes before 1:01 (the time the eclipse was supposed to peak) also did a pretty great job of making it impossible to see anything interesting. It was still pretty darn cool though and the dim lighting made for perfect picture taking weather. Here are some snapshots from the evening.

Couch Cemetery Mid Eclipse

Me, looking through my phone at the sun (All the stores were out of eclipse glasses)