Obit: Nelson, Carl (1915 - 2015)

Contact: Robert Lipprandt
bob@wiclarkcountyhistory.org 

Surnames: Cross, Nelson

----Source: The Star News (Medford, WI) 2/12/2015

Nelson, Carl (18 NOV 1915 - 7 FEB 2015)

Carl Nelson was born on November 18, 1915 and died on February 7, 2015. He had a lot of years in which to have many adventures, but through it all, he was a Wisconsin farm boy who had somehow caught the notion that our world could be repaired with words well spoken.

Carl grew up in the township of Holway with his sister Evelyn and his brothers Norman, Lee, Harvey and Lynn. He walked behind the horses in open fields, swam in the Black River with his brothers and explored the woods with the neighbor boys. He described it as the best boyhood anyone could ever have. On one adventure, he found his way to South Twin Lake, a place he would love all his life.

He enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1940. At Quantico he was captivated by a young woman who taught at the base school. In the midst of war and the roughness of a military base, he courted and won her with poetry. Carl married Janet Cross on July 28, 1944.

After the war, Carl took Janet to South Twin. Together they built a little cabin on the property he had bought from his earnings as a Marine. This place would be their one constant home through all the moves and changes that would follow. Carl got his education in Chicago, then worked as a Unitarian minister in Vermont, Massachusetts and Oregon, but year after year he and Janet returned to South Twin. First they came alone, then with their daughter Nancy, then Mark, Anne, June, Bruce and Sally.

The little cabin on the lake was a refuge and sanctuary for Carl, as he worked to repair the damage done to a world he loved. His boyhood had taught him that you didn't wait for someone else to come along to fix your broken farm machinery. In the same manner, he always felt it was his responsibility to do his part to fix what was broken in his world, and words were the tools he used.

With sermons, speeches, poetry and letters, he joined the struggles for civil rights, for an end to the Vietnam War, for environmental protection and for nuclear disarmament. In 1965, the Unitarian Church sent him to march with Martin Luther King in Selma, Ala. He really believed in the words of the song they all sang together on that day, "We Shall Overcome."

Aging is often difficult for people who see their life's missions in terms of fixing broken things. But Carl had many years to practice, touching wine glasses with Janet in the evening with the toast, "To now!"

In his book, "A Rain Washed Earth," Carl reflects on the names carved into headstones in the churchyard down the road from the farmhouse where he grew up. He ends with words spoken by his father's grave: "I tell myself each generation has its beauty and its ugliness; but looking back it's mostly beauty. The here and now still blows reveille for me upon its bugle. So, I'll leave the old man here, and get going..."