Lloyd William Toll
b. Aug 29, 1921, d. Oct 20, 2015
Ripon, Wisconsin, 1921-1927
Lloyd William Toll was born in Fairwater, Wisconsin in 1921 to Albert Toll and Martha Scheer. He grew up as an only child; a sister, Lorraine Everdine Toll, was born in 1919 and died shortly after her birth.
Lloyd was baptized on Oct. 16th, 1921 at the parsonage in Ripon (Pfarrhause zu Ripon.) Note that the name on his baptism certificate is Lloyd Wilhelm Toll. His sponsers were:
- Dora Scheer (Martha’s sister-in-law, married to brother Frank)
- Albert Scheer (Martha’s brother, married to Helen)
- Fred Toll (Albert's brother)
Lloyd's father Albert died in 1923, and while much of Lloyd's life involved Martha's family - the Scheers, they maintained connections to the Tolls in Ripon.
References
North Dakota, 1927-1930
Temvig
In about 1927 Martha and Lloyd moved to Temvik, North Dakota, where they lived with Lloyd’s aunt Annie (Scheer) Brusch and her husband Herman. Lloyd attended first grade while living in Temvik, most likely at Hazelton Elementary School. Each day he carried his lunch pail to school – a covered syrup can – and still recalls how opening the lunch pail always yielded wondrous aromas. One day while living at (or visiting) Aunt Annie and Uncle Brusch, Lloyd picked up a loaded shotgun in the house. The gun went off, shooting a hole in the wall!
Linton
Lloyd attended 2nd and 3rd grade at Linton Elementary School. By this time, he and Martha had moved to Linton, where Martha ran the Linton Cafe. When not in school, Lloyd was often left to his own devices for entertainment, such as hiding out in the lumber yard loft, or rolling bicycle wheels down the road.
On a hillside on the edge of town, a set of rocks were laid out to spell Linton Cafe. One of Lloyd’s summer projects was to freshen the rocks with a new coat of white paint.
One day Martha asked Lloyd to take a fresh-baked pie to their neighbors, who were blind. Lloyd got as far as the neighbor’s front step when the pie slipped from his hands and landed on the porch. He returned home, and Martha baked another pie to replace the one lost to the porch.
And then there were the skunks. While traipsing around the hillside Lloyd found a skunk den. Seeing dollar signs, he killed the six skunks he found there and brought them home. The skunk smell was so bad, he packed them up into Martha’s Model A and drove out to Aunt Annie’s farm in Temvik, where he buried the skunks until the fur traders came to town. At 25 cents per pelt, he was a rich young man!
Minneapolis, 1930-1934
In 1930, Martha, Lloyd, and step-father Max Ziehlke moved to 1501 Lyndale Ave N. In a common arrangement of the times, they lived in a large house and rented the upstairs to boarders. While living in Minneapolis, Lloyd attended 4th-6th grades at Bremer Elementary School located at Emerson and Lowry Ave No. and in 7th grade, he attended Jordan Jr. High located at Irving and 29th Ave N.
Images of Lloyd's childhood schools
After Max's death in 1933 Martha ran a restaurant at 3122 Lyndale Ave N and she and Lloyd lived around the corner at 619 Lowry Ave N. Lloyd recalls walking to Camden Park to swim. In an odd coincidence, mom's uncle Ray Carpentier's sister ran the same restaurant many years later.
On some Sundays, Martha and Lloyd walked to Wesley United Methodist Church - about 4 miles one way! Wesley may have been the church where Martha and Max married, since the minister who married them was a Methodist minister.
Martha and Lloyd continued to spend time with Tolls and Scheers in Ripon and Green Lake. Some Lloyd memories:
- Picking blackberries at Grandma and Grandpa Scheer's farm, but eating them all himself!
- Lloyd would borrow books from the woman across the road from Grandma and Grandpa Scheer. She had a library, or maybe her many books seemed like a library to a kid.
- One day in Ripon, Lloyd threw an apple at the bratty kid next door to Elizabeth Toll. The kids's mother admonished him, "You've been nothing but trouble since you came here."
- Grandma Elizabeth loved the radio show Barn Dance. During the war, the show travelled to rural areas. Two of the performers, Lulubelle and Scotty would stay with Elizabeth when they were in town.
- A celebration in Fairwater, maybe a Toll reunion and bobbing for coins with playmate Mary.
Joliet, Illinois 1934-1938
In 1934, Martha packed up once again and moved to her sister Ella Johns’ house in Joliet Illinois. Eventually, Martha bought or rented a large house of her own at 413 Bluff St., near the Des Plaines River.
They attended St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, where Lloyd was confirmed in 1936. The church was and is still located at 310 North Broadway. A history of the church can be found at: http://stpeterjoliet.org/who-we-are/
In Joliet Lloyd graduated from Farragut Junior High (1935) and then Joliet Senior High (1938).
Linton, North Dakota 1939-1941
After graduation, Martha and Lloyd moved back to Linton. Here, Lloyd helped at Martha’s restaurant and had a room in the basement of the cafe. Uncle Fred gave Lloyd a pocket watch that belonged to Grandma Elizabeth, but it was stolen from his room at the cafe! Lloyd also participated in a youth employment program in Linton and one summer worked on repairing a bridge in the local park.
Friends from Linton/Bismarck:
- (Victor) John Bickler – Joined the army at the same time as Lloyd and they remained friends until John’s death in 2011.
- Buster Hogue – Parents ran a hotel in town, located south of the Cafe. Lloyd and Buster played basketball on the roof of the hotel. (Buster, aka Rolly R II, was an excellent athlete and ran track at Notre Dame.)
- Kenny Sauder – farmers brought their milk to Kenny’s parent’s store to sell.
- Joe Goldstein – drove a wagon pulled by two horses around town.
- Guy Schurmeister and his sister.
References
U.S. Army, 1941-1945
On February 26, 1941 at age 19, Lloyd joined the National Guard in Bismarck, North Dakota. He and others from Bismarck were assigned to the U.S. Army Service Battery of the 188th Field Artillery Battalion. Their first stop was Cheyenne, Wyoming where they began training. From Cheyenne, they headed south to Camp Gruber in Muskogee, Oklahoma. At Camp Gruber, they trained on maneuvers using the heavy artillery. After two months or so, the young men loaded up their gear into a convoy and headed off to Fort Lewis in Washington State.
Lloyd was assigned to the kitchen crew – maybe his experience cooking at Martha’s restaurant opened the door to the army kitchen. The kitchen crew consisted of four men. They divided the workload so that teams of two worked alternate days, giving each team every other day off.
In the fall of 1943, while training for desert operations, the Battalion’s orders arrived. They were initially scheduled to go to North Africa, but since activity in that area of the globe was winding down, the troop was reassigned to Europe. The Battalion packed up their convoy and travelled across the United States to the eastern seaboard, stopping in new Jersey to regroup and prepare to sail to Europe.
Europe
The Battalion boarded a navy ship in New York and arrived in Glasgow, UK on Dec 18th 1943. A 24-hour train ride took them to England in the area of Sherborne/Crendle Court/Selsey where they spent two months regrouping and training. On June 18th, 1944 The troops sailed across the English Channel and landed at Utah Beach. They were about two weeks behind the famous D-Day Landing in Normandy.
A soldier in Lloyd's unit detailed the day-by-day activities of the 188th FA Battalion in a document called the Combat Journal. He documented their march from Utah Beach, France to Miltitz near Leipzig, Germany. Their journey took them roughly 1300 miles over the course of 11 months, from June 1944 through April 1945.
The sounds of gunfire and bombings and the sight of medics carrying injured soldiers accompanied the mess crew as they prepared meals for their troops. At each stop, they unpacked the truck and set up a kitchen to serve roughly 80 soldiers at a time. When the air raid siren sounded everyone hunkered down until the threat had passed.
During the Battle of the Bulge, a struggle to push the Germans out of Belgium, the 188th Battalion was about five miles away, offering aid and comfort to battle-weary troops. Lloyd spent Christmas of 1944 supporting this famous battle.
Click on the image to see a map of the 188th Battalion's journey through France, Belgium, and Germany.
References
Marriage and Family
In a chance encounter at the Rustic Manor, Lloyd's Uncle Fred Toll met Luverne Franzman, where Luverne is working as a waitress for the summer. Fred gives Luverne Lloyd’s phone number and suggests that she call him when she returns to Minneapolis. It takes 6 months, but Luverne finally does call. After a 6-month courtship, they married on August 14th, 1954 at Peace Lutheran Church in Robbinsdale, MN.
Luverne was teaching in St. Louis Park at the time, and dad took a mail route in the same suburb. They bought a house at 2709 Vernon Ave. in St. Louis Park, where they lived for about 7 years. Nancy, Laurie, Sharon, and David were born during the years on Vernon Ave.
In 1962 the Toll family moved to 3007 O’Henry Rd. in Brooklyn Center. Michelle was born during this time, completing the Toll family. The neighborhood was filled with new families and close bonds developed between them as the children grew up. The Coyers, Fishers, Lehmans, Whitakkers, Rasmussens, Hauglies, Kripners, Tomlinsons, Oftedahls, Ranauas - these adults remained friends for the rest of their lives.
In 2004, when Lloyd was 83, he and Luverne moved to a townhome on Telford Lane in Brooklyn Park. They remained active in their church, with their growing family, and with both old and new neighbors.
In his last year of life, Lloyd became increasingly frail. His body seemed to no longer absorb nutrition. His senses began to fail. One night on October of 2015, he fell. The EMTs arrived at their home and fought to release Lloyd’s grip on the commode where he fell. When he got to the hospital, he repeated that he couldn't feel his legs. A scan revealed a blockage in his abdominal aorta - where it divides and a main artery drops down into each leg. The blockage stopped all circulation to both legs, leaving them basically paralyzed.
There was some talk about surgery to remove the obstruction, but ultimately the family decided that outcome of the 4-5 hour procedure was uncertain, if even survivable. Further tests showed that his kidneys were failing as well. In retrospect, his kidneys may have been failing for some time, as some of his behavior during his last few months (confusion, withdrawal, etc.) is consistent with kidney failure.
After 3 days in the hospital, Lloyd was moved to hospice care. During the next ten days, his large family gathered at his bedside, sometimes in small groups, sometimes as individuals, and on a few occasions with the entire family of 19. We told stories, laughed, and cried, never certain when a given moment would be our last with him. It was a tender and heartwarming time, if not bittersweet. When Lloyd passed away on Oct. 20, 2015, we’re certain his heart was full.
