Ethnic Life Stories Trail of Trees

Ilga Vise was born April 13, 1934, in Riga, the capital city of Latvia. She grew up during a brief post-war freedom Latvians enjoyed, having declared their independence in 1918. She spent much of her childhood in Riga and Gulbene with her mother, Brona, her father, Janis, who was in the Latvian Air Force, and her cousin, Richie.

Some of her most cherished childhood memories include making music with her extended family, all of whom could play a variety of instruments and sang in their free time. The Vise family had a large garden with lots of animals, including chickens, goats and rabbits.

Vise’s life changed forever with the Russian occupation and later German invasion in the summer of 1939. In 1941 Germans began attacking, and danger became ever-present. On October 11, 1944, the Soviet Army captured Riga, and the family became refugees. In her story, Vise describes an enduring month in a German forced-labor camp in the winter of 1944.

Vise and her family, after they were unceremoniously released from the labor camp, spent the next two months walking hundreds of miles, to Eutin, a trek that almost killed her. After the war ended, the family spent a few years in Eutin and later journeyed to the United States in 1951.

She spent the rest of her high school years in a Chicago suburb and later went to college at Northwestern.  After college, she met Sidney Vice, who she would marry in 1958. The couple had two children, Silvia and David. The family moved to Missouri when Sidney got a job at Drury, and Vise would later be employed at the University, too, teaching geography and advising non-traditional students.

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Tong Trithara was born in March 1952 in Ban Ban Province, Thailand. He was the fifth of seven children. Until the age of 7, Trithara lived and traveled with his grandmother, who raised him Buddhist. He later practiced Catholicism when he lived with his parents.

His fondest childhood memories are of fishing on the rivers in his hometown of Audhaya and riding on the backs of water buffalo. He started kindergarten at age 6 or 7 and started learning English that year.

Trithara’s father and older brother helped him gather and complete the necessary paperwork to live in America. He lived briefly with his brother, Seri, in Los Angeles before striking out on his own. He worked many odd jobs at restaurants, gas stations and hotels in LA while in school.

Through work connections, a boss invited Trithara in 1979 to come live and work in Springfield at Vantage House. Three years later, he and his wife at the time welcomed a daughter, Chantra, into the world. More than a decade later, he had a son, Dakota, with his third wife.

After traveling across the States and seeing much of the world through his work in the sport of kickboxing, and opening several restaurants around Missouri, Springfield remained Trithara’s favorite place to live. The city’s been perfect for him to pursue his hobbies, find ways to help the youth of the community, and serve authentic Thai food at his restaurant, Tong’s.

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Eligio Augie Sanchez was born in November 1959 in Mexico City. He lived with both his parents and his two older brothers, Victor and Leo, but he spent most of his time living with his aunt in Acapulco when he was growing up. His family did chores during the day and ate meals together at a big table in the kitchen.

Sanchez was dreaming of life in the United States ever since elementary school. After he finished his Bachelor’s in Laboratory Chemistry at the University of Mexico City, his parents wanted him to become a doctor. But Sanchez was disillusioned with the path his parents had set for him, and he went to live with his cousin in Kansas in 1981.

While he was in Kansas, he met Dr. Raymond Rice, his wife, Sally, and their two sons. The Rice family invited Sanchez to live with them, and they helped him learn English and attend university. The Rices became Sanchez’s second family, and they all moved to Missouri together in 1983.

Sanchez landed at Drury University in 1986 and worked on a degree in biology and later received a job offer from the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners to become the Hispanic Program Manager and be on the Hostage Negotiator Team.

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Jorge Luis Padron was born in March 1931 in Cuba. He was the third and youngest son. He had a happy childhood in Havana with his older brothers, Adriano and Carlos, and younger sister Olga.

His favorite person when he was a child was his grandmother, Carmen, who doted on him and told him stories. His father owned a pharmacy, which inspired Padron to go into the science and medical fields when he got older.

Padron attended Candler College in Cuba and worked to improve his English, and after graduating second in his class, he was offered a full scholarship to study in the US. Arriving in Shawnee, Oklahoma to attend OBU was a culture shock. Despite this, Padron recalled his college years with fondness, and he made lots of friends.

While he was teaching at OBU after graduation, he met Dorothy Busha, whom he would later marry. They were married in 1957 and moved into a house on Walnut Street in Springfield together. The couple raised three children together: Anne, Charles and Phillip.

The family traveled all over on account of Padron’s Fulbright lectureships with Drury University, and he later became an administrator at the college, too. He retired from the school in 1996.

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Loan Thi Vu Nigh was born in June 1948 in Sa-cat, North Vietnam. The village is right next to the Thai Binh and Hong Ha rivers, both of which served as sources of clean water for the residents. The village has lots of ponds, each with specific purposes: washing food, dishes, bathing, etc.Sa-cat is an agricultural village, and the residents raise rice, fish, poultry, and fruits and vegetables.

Nigh’s childhood memories include going to church, helping run her mother’s store and attending school with her ten brothers and five sisters. She always loved art and drew as a hobby starting at a young age.

Her father was a soldier in the South Vietnamese army fighting Communism. Nigh and her family had to flee the Communists several times. She escaped Vietnam in 1981 and lived briefly in a Malaysian refugee camp before coming to the United States in 1982 to attend college. She arrived in Springfield on a sponsorship from her older brother, who was a member of the U.S. Catholic Council.

She studied at Missouri State University and met her future husband, Boyd, her first semester at the school. They were married in September 1985 and had a son, John, four years later. While raising John, she continued her passion for art and spent day and night creating religious paintings and depicting scenes from her life in Vietnam.

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Edith Middleton was born in April 1923 in Glasgow, Scotland. She was the youngest of three and the only daughter between Daniel and Isabella Laird. Her life was changed forever when she was 14 years old, when her mother died of heart disease, and she adopted her mother’s housekeeping responsibilities.

After high school, Middleton attended West of Scotland College of Domestic Science and later got a job on a marine ship as a cook. It was after this four-month trip in the Langlee Scot that Middleton met her future husband, Morrison, at a party.

The couple married in New York and enjoyed a happy marriage until Morrison’s death in 2003. The two raised three children together: David, Bruce and Moira.

Life brought Middleton to Springfield while Morrison’s health was declining. She moved to the Ozarks to be closer to her daughter and son-in-law. Since moving here, Middleton has enjoyed attending lectures at Drury, being a member of the Sterling Club and displaying her projects with her daughter at the Ozarks Empire Fair.

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Gwen Marshall was born on September 11, 1948, in Jackson, Mississippi. The South at the time was still segregated, and Marshall says her whole life was segregated. She went to Black schools, and all the restaurants and other businesses in her neighborhood were Black-owned.

She was the only child born in the union of Mae and Robert Lockett, and her parents divorced after 10 years. After her parents split up, Marshall lived with her mother and maternal grandparents on a big farm in Mississippi, which she cites as some of her most cherished childhood memories.

Marshall came to Springfield to attend Missouri State University with her best friend, Claudia, after the two graduated high school. During her second year in college, she met her would-be husband, Mike Marshall. The two were married for around 27 years until they divorced. They raised four children: Elisa, Chris, Michael and Octavia.

Marshall said her life’s mission has been to spread the gospel, and she has been invested in her faith all her life. She also aspired to teach and has worked as a teacher’s assistant.

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Jackie King was born in September 1933 in Balham, London. Her mom, dad, her older brother, younger sister and she lived in London for the first five years of her life until the family moved to the outskirts of London — in Surrey County — in hopes of escaping the worst of the war.

King lived in Surrey until she got married and moved to the United States. She said a lot of her childhood memories involve bomb shelters and food rations.

She married her husband, Tom, in 1953, and they raised two daughters together, Andrea and Jennifer.

Since retirement, King has stayed in Springfield to remain close to her grandchildren.

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Reynaldo Gumucio was raised speaking Quechua and Spanish in Bolivia. He was born on April 29, 1939. He was the youngest child by many years, so it often felt like he was an only child.

While he cites his childhood as a mostly happy one, the political instability and various coups taking place in Latin America at the time left Gumucio with lots of scary memories. In high school, he joined organizations that actively fought the spread of Communism in his country.

Three major events took place in late adolescence and early adulthood that changed Gumucio’s life forever. One was his mother’s passing, which happened after multiple strokes. Second, his father sent Gumucio to study in the United States after high school, and this was his first time being on his own. Third was his father’s sudden death a couple years after Gumucio’s move to America.

It was while he was working toward his degree in America that he met his wife, Billie, and they were married in 1965. They raised three sons: Charles, Rick and Eddie.

Life brought them to Springfield because Billie’s family had been living here. The Gumucios wanted to move away from the big cities after their six-year residence back in Bolivia after their sons were born. Gumucio started working with City Utilities in a water treatment lab in 1982.

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Malca Flasterstein was born in November 1951 in Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Israel. She was the third of four children. She lived in an apartment in a Holon apartment with her siblings and both her parents.

Her childhood memories include playing games with the neighborhood children, helping her mother with chores, celebrating Hanukkah and running to school with her siblings so they were not marked tardy.

For Jews of Middle-Eastern and African descent, life was not as easy living in Israel. Flasterstein said Ashkenazic Jews (Jewish people from eastern Europe and Russia) were favored socially and politically. Despite these rifts, Flasterstein married an Ashkenazic Jew named Bernardo.

They dated while in college, and the two were married in 1976. Flasterstein spent more than a decade in her teaching career while Bernardo was in medical school. Later, they raised one daughter and two sons.

The family came to the United States when Bernardo was accepted into a residency program in Cleveland. They later moved to Springfield after he got a job at Mercy Hospital.

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Adalyn Cravens was born in December of 1913 in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. She grew up with two younger siblings, Marguerite and Collyn, on a farm with her parents and paternal grandfather.

A big change in Cravens’ life came after her parents’ divorce when she was 12. Her siblings were split up and sent to different foster homes. After high school she briefly studied nursing in Canada before traveling to the United States to live with her mom and stepfather in 1938.

She got married to Bob Cravens in 1940 and the two raised one daughter, Donna Lee. Bob passed in 1988; they had been married for 48 years.

Cravens said her mission in life is to help others, and she did that through her Episcopal church, through her various jobs and volunteer work, and through her involvement in her daughter’s school.

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Claudine Arend Cox was born on October 4, 1929, in France. Her mother, father and two step-brothers lived on the second floor of a big house in the small town of Boulay-Moselle. Her father was a doctor and practiced medicine on the first floor of the building.

Everything changed for Cox both in her life and the world at large with the combination of her mother’s sudden death and the German occupation of France under the Nazi regime. She never felt safe living in Nazi-occupied France, and it wasn’t until her and her father moved to live with family in Marcigny that she could finally breathe.

It was also during the war that Cox and her father fled to the U.S. to live with family in Kansas. They returned after France was liberated, but Cox said she was soon ready to go back to the States because her home country was not how she remembered it.

She married Max Arend in America and the two raised two adopted daughters, Suzanne and Julie, until Max’s untimely death from cancer. In her later years, Cox found her calling with volunteer work and helping with her church in Springfield.

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Sara Lucrecia Fajardo was born in Guatemala on November 28, 1963. She grew up in the eastern side of the country with her parents and three brothers. Her native language is Spanish.

Growing up, Fajardo helped her mother with the household chores and managing the convenience store her parents owned and operated. Ever since she was young, she aspired to become a doctor.

A year after older brother, Jose, departed for America in 1985, she followed to live with him in California. She said one of the biggest challenges in coming to this country is learning how to speak perfect English.

Fajardo married a man she had fallen in love with in Guatemala, Roger Calderon, and together they raised Jennifer and Michelle, two daughters from a previous marriage. It was after her marriage to Calderon that life brought Fajardo to Springfield, Missouri.

Her life goals are to succeed as a mother for her daughters, to become a doctor and to become a business-owner in her home country.

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Tony Alburquerque was born in the Dominican Republic in February 1956. He grew up in the capital city of Santo Domingo with his parents and three younger siblings. After the Dominican Civil War, the Albuquerque family moved to Puerto Rico.

Albuquerque always knew he wanted to work in the field of medicine because his father owned a pharmacy, and the children were always fascinated watching their dad prepare medications. He went to medical school and later worked for a community hospital in Puerto Rico in the mid-80s. It was during his time at this community hospital that he was recruited to come work in the States.

It was the federal medical prison next to the Springfield Botanical Gardens that brought Albuquerque to Missouri in 1989. The prison hired him as an interpreter and then later as a physician’s assistant. He met his wife, JoAnn, in Springfield, and the two were married in 1991.

Albuquerque says his biggest mission in life was to become a doctor, and that the most rewarding part of his life is to take care of sick people and see them get better as a result of his treatment.

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Tobby Yu-Yung Yen was born in China in February 1945, and he moved with both his parents to live in Taiwan when he was 2 years old. He was brought up in an old town in the southern region called Tainan.

After two years in the Air Force training to become a pilot, Yen moved to Columbus, Ohio in 1969 looking for work. It was here in the States that he got into the restaurant business.  In the following years, he opened restaurants in places like Washington D.C., New Orleans, and several right here in the Ozarks.

After marrying his wife Lily, the couple had four children, John, Paul, Michael and Betty. In raising his children, Yen said he wanted them to learn from experience and making their own decisions.

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Joy Elaine Vermooten was born in March 1928 on her family farm in Natal, South Africa. She had an older brother and two older sisters.

Her favorite childhood memories of her riding on her pony around the farm and visiting with her aunt. As a teenager,she spent her free time going on hikes with her friends from church.

When Vermooten was 18, she moved to London with her mother and found a job working at a hospital there. She soon became an RN and a midwife and later met her would-be husband, Cyril. The two were married in March 1954 and would have three children together: Ian, Linda and Graham.

The family would regularly go camping in African animal parks, which are some of Vermooten’s most cherished memories.

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Cyril Arnold Loyd Vermooten was born in South Africa on July 3, 1929. He grew up with an older brother, Lawrence, and with both his parents. His father taught him to play rugby. He grew up attending church with his family and playing checkers with his friends. His favorite subject as a youngster was math.

As a young adult, he continued an interest in math and additionally enjoyed engineering and drawing. He studied parasitology and microbiology at Natal college, which set him on the path conducting important research in places like Kroonstad, Vanderbijlpark and Eshowe.

It was in Eshowe that Vermooten met Joy, his would-be wife. The two were married in March 1954 in Durban and had three children: Ian, Linda and Graham.

He later started a program called “Living Free” with Joy, which taught people aged 50 and higher to develop dreams and visions for the rest of their lives.

Vermooten and Joy came to Springfield to follow Linda, who was working in the States. He described his Springfield experience as a positive one.

Listen to FOG’s audio production of Vermooten’s story by tapping the link in our bio.

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Juan Salazar was born in the small town of Tuman, Peru, in August 1958. He grew up speaking Spanish with his mother, father and three older sisters.

His family was Catholic, so they would celebrate holidays like Christmas, Mardi Gras and Easter. Additionally, the Peruvian Independence Day, July 28, was a very big celebration. His favorite childhood memories are at the beach.

When Salazar was seven years old, his parents split up, and he went with his mother to live more than 1000 miles away in Arequipa, where he attended Catholic and played on the school’s soccer team. He finished high school at 17 while simultaneously attending a night school to learn electric work; after that he was accepted into the Peruvian Air Force and served for 11 years.

While at school, Salazar met his future wife, Urcina. They had their civil ceremony in March 1977 and religious ceremony years later, in 1982.

Salazar and Urcina were both studying at university when they decided to go to seminary in the small village of Trujillo to spread their religious message.

Life took the two all over — Argentina, Spain and back to Peru — until they landed in New Jersey and later, Missouri.

Listen to FOG’s audio production of Salazar’s story by tapping the link in our bio.

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Maria Josefina Oconer Salazar Raborar was born in December of 1943 in Manila, Philippines. She grew up speaking the Philippine national language, Tagalog and American English as a second language, and her community often combines words from both languages within a sentence.

Raborar’s early life was in Central Luzon, which is surrounded by mountains and active volcanoes. Growing up, she celebrated many Catholic holidays like Easter, Christmas and Epiphany.

Her parents, Roman Salazar and Bienvinida Oconer, both came from big families and had lots of children themselves. Raborar is the third oldest of eight.

She graduated high school, second in her class, and studied dietetics in college. She left home at age 23 to move to the United States with her soon-to-be husband, Arteso. The two were married in 1967 in Cleveland, and later had three daughters: Aileen, Rowena and Farrah.

Since coming to Springfield, Raborar has made prolonged efforts to bring education and acceptance of Asian culture to the Ozarks. She embraced multiculturalism and believed in education, which inspired her to bring multicultural projects to the area.

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Ioana Popescu was born in the capital city of Bucharest, Romania, in June 1968. She was the second child between Ana and Eugen Popescu. The family lived in a tiny apartment in the center of the city and a decade later moved to the countryside.

Popescu enrolled in kindergarten when she was three and started learning English from a young age, but she said she was terrible at it. After graduation, she wanted to go to a school to learn biology and chemistry.

Her cherished family memories take place at the seaside, where her parents and her brother George, two years her senior, would spend many weekends at their cabin. More turbulent memories in Popescu’s story are growing up in a communist country, where she describes the quality of life started to really decrease in the second half of the 1980s.

Britain was Popescu’s first step outside of Romania - and she left her home country again in 1994 after accepting a job as a teaching assistant in Cincinnati. She said she wasn’t homesick at all because she was excited to be in the U.S. and adapted easily.

During her first year in Cincinnati, she met her would-be husband, George. The two were married in June of 1998 and found themselves in the Ozarks in 2001 when Popescu came to Drury University for an interview and accepted a position as a professor in the biology department.

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Edward Ksara was born in 1937 in Morocco, the third of four children. He has two older sisters, Elizabeth and Dorothy, and a younger sister, Ruth. His father, Mehdi, was born in Morocco, too, and was raised Muslim but later converted to Christianity and became a Christian missionary. His mother, Pauline, was born in Arizona and came to live in Morocco because her father was a missionary.

Mehdi, Pauline and the four children fled Morocco in 1940 when the Germans invaded Poland and France. Ksara describes it as a “chaotic” and “fearful” time. The family settled in Huntington, Pennsylvania. When the war was over, the family made plans to return to Morocco and lived in Tamara. But Pauline longed to return to the States, and when Ksara was 14 the family planned to return to America.

Pauline and her children loved the States and didn’t have much trouble getting acclimated, but the same couldn’t be said for Ksara’s father. Mehdi and Pauline split up during Ksara’s teen years when his father returned by himself to Morocco.

Ksara later met his wife-to-be, Janice, who grew up in Springfield, while the two attended the University of Arkansas. They later raised 3 children: Kristen and the twins Ellen and Elaine.

He taught history for over 30 years and retired in 1994.

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Edgar Galiñanes López de Victoria was born in April 1917 in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. He was the youngest of seven children, six boys and one girl. He was brought up speaking Spanish and English.

Since he was young, Galiñanes loved to read and had a great interest in history.

He first met Mary, his future wife, when he was 16. She entered the family’s bakery to buy candy and Galiñanes said to himself, “she will be my wife for the rest of my life.” The couple later had one son, Edgar Galiñanes Lafont.

For many years, Galiñanes was the manager at his family’s various bakeries and coffee shops. The most prominent business was a luxurious restaurant in San Juan called El Nino, which became the choice destination for high class visitors and Latin American celebrities, politicians, artists and business owners.

When Galiñanes retired, he moved to Springfield because his son was employed at the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners. That way he and his wife could be with their two grandchildren, Edgar and Jan.

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Ruth Burgess was born in August 1939, in the city of Pune in Maharashtra State in India. Her parents were Christian missionaries who ran an orphanage and school while Burgess and her younger brother Teddy and younger sister Helen were growing up.

Burgess describes herself as a child of the “third culture” because of her blended Indian upbringing and assimilation with American Midwestern culture. The family came to live in the U.S. in the early 1950s, and Burgess attended high school in Oklahoma and Texas.

She later attended junior college in Texas and later worked to earn masters and doctorates, both at Mizzou. Her careers have since taken her to speech-language pathology, research, and professing at Missouri State University.

She married Stan Burgess in Abilene, Texas in February 1960. The two first met at a prayer meeting for missionaries, and their paths crossed again in 1959 after the family moved to Texas from India. Burgess said the marriage has been a physical journey (with many travels across Europe and Asia) and a spiritual journey (as the couple came to grips with class, caste, race and gender discrimination within Christianity).

They raised five children together: John, Stanley, Scott, and the twins Amanda and Justin.

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Sterling Macer was born Mason City, Iowa in April 1933. He is the third of four sons born to Ruby and Aaron Macer. He grew up climbing the tree in his backyard, fishing and swimming, hanging out at the YMCA, and cruising on his scooter through the neighborhood with his brothers and attending church on Sundays with the whole family.

Macer’s father died when Macer was only eight years old. The day is vivid in his memory. With no savings and four children to raise, Macer’s mother had to work hard to provide for the family, and the boys brought home money from odd jobs whenever they could.

His teenage years brought complications to his life: Growing up Black barred him from many opportunities compared to his white friends. He had his first run-ins with overt racism while he was in high school. After high school, he met his wife-to-be, Dolores, at Drake University while he was attending barber school in Des Moines.  The two were married in June of 1956 and later had three children: Deanne, Sterling Jr. and Dawn.

After earning his Masters and PhD, Macer had careers as a recreational therapist at an Iowa hospital and as the associate director of counseling and guidance in a Job Corps career center. Work brought the family to Springfield in 1977. Macer got an offer to work as a human resources manager at the GE plant, and he retired in 1995.

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Regina Lotven was born in Nancy, France, on November 4, 1923. Her parents had both emigrated to France and met and married in Nancy. She and her younger sister Gytel and younger brother Henri grew up speaking Yiddish and French.

Lotven says she was a minority growing up Jewish in France. Her family lived in a cramped but clean apartment in a Jewish neighborhood. Growing up, she helped her mother with household chores and looked after her siblings. She was an excellent student and loved to read and learn.

Looming over her childhood was the threat of war. And that threat became much more present and literal with the Nazi occupation of Nancy in 1940. Her family had to wear a yellow Star of David whenever they left the house; plus they had to follow a slew of new ordinances that made them prisoners in their own homes.

Many people were fleeing to areas of France that were free from occupation, and Lotven and her siblings made their escape in July of 1942 when her father heard the Germans were intending to raid Jewish neighborhoods and round up all the Jewish people that night. The children had to leave that night with their parents’ promise that they would meet up again soon.

She was 18, Gytel was 17, and Henri was 13 when they sneaked onto a train southbound to Lyon. She cites the liberation of France in September 1944 as one of the most impactful moments of her life.

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Hyman Frank Lotven was born in Russia in January 1911. He was the youngest of six between his parents, Jenny and Israel. Lotven didn’t know his father until he was 9 years old because Israel had left for work in America when Lotven was only a month old.

Lotven, his mother and his five siblings spoke Yiddish while they lived in Russia, and they were very poor. He described life as “very rough” until the family finally escaped to Poland in 1921. After several weeks in Warsaw, the smugglers, who were hired by Lotven’s father, put the family on a ship to the United States.

He started school in September 1921 after the family settled in Springfield. He didn’t know any English at the time.

When WWII broke out, Lotven and his brother Isadore served in the Armed Forces. It was during this time they met their would-be wives, who were sisters.

Lotven married Regina in France right after the war and moved back to Springfield, where he later became an advocate for the Ozarks Jewish community.

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Yung H. Hwang was born in Japan in August 1935 but lived most of his childhood years in Korea. His father, Dochul, was a businessman, and it was business that had the family temporarily living in Japan. Hwang said his father and mother, Yunduk, are the people he admired most. He was the oldest son of Dochul and Yunduk, and as such he was the favored sibling.

His favorite places of his childhood included his school, the mountains, and the river in which he swam. He described Korea as being very poor, in part because of the Korean war and WWII. He said it was a very hard time.

He went to college at Yonsei University in Seoul and later converted from Buddhism to Christianity. After graduation he served a tour of duty in the Korean Armed Forces. It was while he was in the Army Medical Corps, he met his would-be wife, Kapran. They later had three children: John, Christine and Keith.

When he came to Springfield in 1991 and got a job in medicine, Hwang adopted the role as a sort of interpreter or bridge for the Korean community in the Ozarks.

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John Ernest Hernandez was born June 24, 1950, in San Antonio, Texas. He was born into the Mescalero tribe of the Apache Nation. He is the third born of 10 siblings. His family grew up poor, but his mother always taught him to help others because there is always someone who is less fortunate.

He said he had tons of unhappy experiences as a child with discrimination. When he was enrolled in a Catholic school in Texas, he was always picked on because of his complexion. After high school, he joined the Army and fought in the Vietnam War, and it was the harrowing experiences of war that later caused his drug and alcohol dependency.

Life led him to Springfield when he came here to live with his parents, but he later became homeless until his future wife saved his life. Hernandez married Jeanne in September 1980 and later had a daughter, María.

Spirituality and working with the community also helped Hernandez. He also was involved with prevention programs with the Department of Mental Health on their drug and alcohol board, in local nonprofits benefiting children in the Ozarks, and at the Center for Substance Abuse in D.C.. He worked in the education and museum departments at Bass Pro and with NATO to teach children all around the world.

Listen to FOG’s audio production of Hernandez’s story by tapping the link in our bio.

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Taj el Din Taji Farouki was born on October 19, 1931, in Wadi Hunayn, Palestine. He grew up speaking Arabic on his father’s orange grove with his mother and 11 siblings. Farouki admired his oldest brother, Hikmat, who studied at Harvard Law School and became a successful attorney in Jaffa. Farouki was raised in the Muslim faith, and religion has been an important part of his life from a young age.

In 1948, the war in Palestine required Farouki’s family to move a lot. He lived in Cairo, Egypt, for a few years and attended college there. After finding work for a prominent lawyer in Jerusalem, he continued his education in America in 1952.

While living in Chicago, Farouki met his future wife, Ingrid. The two were married in Ingrid’s hometown of Lake View, Iowa, in 1955. They raised four children together: Kimera, Nadia, Tanya and Karim.

After pressure from two of their children, Farouki and Ingrid moved to Springfield for retirement and to be close to their grandchildren.

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Olga Noemi DiPaolo deCodutti was born on May 23, 1929, in Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina. She was raised in a big home with her extended family. Some of the most important people in her life included both her parents, her two older sisters, and her grandparents.

When the Depression hit, Codutti’s family lost everything. They made the move to Salto Grande to find work. It was in Salto Grande that Codutti’s childhood sickness - pneumonia and whooping cough - nearly took her life. She remained ill for nine years, which was difficult for her, but she credits the careful attention she received from her mother and grandmother, plus the love and support from her family as they shared her pain.

She met her husband, Enzo, in Argentina. He was the son of a family friend. The two were married in January 1950. They had three children together: Jerry, Bill and Analia.

The move to America came after country-wide economic troubles throughout the ‘50s. They raised their children in Philadelphia before coming to Springfield to retire. Codutti took up the hobby of watercolor painting after moving here, which has allowed her to make new friends and gather accolades.

Grace Margaret Ballenger was born on December 18, 1939 in Shanghai, China. Her mother was half English, half Chinese and her father was born in British Guiana, South America, as a British citizen of Chinese descent. Grace and her parents, with her brother, Joseph, moved to British Guiana to avoid conflicts during the Japanese War. Guiana is where Ballenger lived for most of her childhood.

Ballenger’s parents spent most of their time with mission work with the Assemblies of God, and it is through the church that she was able to move to America. Ballenger flew to Springfield to live with her parent’s church friends and to attend high school and college in the States.

Her life is enriched through her education and work in nuclear medicine. She studied at Mizzou in the ‘60s and became chief technologist in Nuclear Medicine Services at Mercy Hospital. It was during one of her first hospital jobs in town that she met her husband, Glenn. The two were married in 1959. The couple have two children: Penny and Jay.

While religion had always played a role in her life, Ballenger really started getting serious about the church atmosphere when she started raising her children.

Martha Cheryl Harrison Baker was born on October 1, 1948 in Houston, Texas. Her parents and five siblings grew up on the road as they moved from base to base with their father, who was in the armed forces. Along with her parents, both sets of grandparents had big impacts in Baker’s life.

Her grandparents on her father’s side were Native Americans. Her grandfather was full blood Cherokee and her grandmother, half.

Some pivotal points in Baker’s life include her graduation from an Aurora, Missouri, high school in 1966, her conversion to Catholicism at age 18, her graduation from nursing school in 1969, receiving her bachelor’s degree at Missouri State University in 1983, her master’s at Mizzou in 1989 and her Ph.D at Mizzou in 1999.

She has two children, Cheryl and Greg, with her husband, Leon.

Baker grew up in a culture where it wasn’t “cool” to be Native American, but through her journey she has brought Cherokee spirituality and practice into her daily life and was elected to a leadership role of the White River Band of Cherokee in 1999.

Janet Miyoko Akaike-Toste was born April 2, 1949, in Kofu, Japan. Her American name, Janet, was given to her by her English teacher at a YMCA in Tokyo. She grew up with both parents and her younger brother, Jesse, in Tokyo.

Her journey to America was in the summer of 1960. She lived in California until she graduated from and began teaching at U.C. Berkeley. She married her husband, Anthony, in 1975 and had two children with him — Eriko and Emiko — whom they raised speaking Japanese and English.

It was in 1888 that the family moved to Springfield and Akaike-Toste and her husband both began jobs at Missouri State University.

Yohannan T. Abraham was born on December 3, 1939, in Pathanamthitta, Kerala, India, near the west end of the southern peninsula. The area is known for its vast agricultural exports of rice, vegetables, bananas, mangos. He grew up speaking Malayalam, Hindi and English in this hilly and fertile part of the country, where he went to school learning about the area’s rich heritage in Christian, Hindu, Islamic and Jewish traditions.

As a young adult, Abraham moved to Bombay and lived there for around five years before moving to the United States in 1963 and eventually settling in Springfield in 1967. From Drury University, to Missouri State University, to Oklahoma University and back to MSU, Abraham cites his graduation with a Ph.D. and joining MSU’s business department as a professor as some of his crowning achievements.

With his wife, Tessy, Abraham has three children: Susan, John and Michael, and he has raised his family with his life’s mission of dedication to his religion.

Friends of the Garden is pleased to announce the Ethnic Life Stories: Trail of Trees is coming back to our Friends in a new audio series. You can hear the stories of Springfield's ethnic community leaders Tune in on Anchor every Tuesday at 10 a.m. for new releases.