Armstrong kids Grandma's life

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Across
  1. 1. In high _______ I was the first chair (best) trumpet player in the concert band three of my four years. I also played in stage band, pep band and special ensembles that played for drama productions.
  2. 3. After one semester at Grace College of the Bible in Omaha Nebraska I came home to spend the spring with my parents because they were preparing to move to Auke bay Alaska to pastor the church there. In those last few months they needed to finish rennovating a house they had moved from out in the country onto a foundation across the street from the church parsonage we lived in. It was a lot of work and we bought "Gentle Ben"(a pickup) to haul supplies in. I attended community college in Dodge City (43 mile north of our town of Meade, that spring while helping my parents.
  3. 5. One year I came across an ______ squirrel so I begged my parents to let me keep him. I named him Chi Chi and kept him in a cage till he recovered. We let him go but he would always come when we called him and we would give him peanuts as a reward.
  4. 7. I never knew how dangerous Vacation _____ School could be until the summer before my 8th grade year. While playing softball, I hit the ball and ran to first base. Since I didn't know that you can safely overrun first base I planted my foot and stopped suddenly. My knee has never been the same because I tore cartilege that eventually required my first knee surgery. I spent 5 days in the hospital and had to stay off it (on crutches) for 6 weeks.
  5. 9. On Easter sunday one year while living in Lustre Montana someone dashed back to the house for something before church and didn't get the front door all the way closed. When we got home after church the ______ had blown into the entry and we had to shovel it out before we could close the door.
  6. 15. As a young girl in Marion South Dakota I would sometimes be allowed to sit with older girls. When I did that, and my mom was'nt there to keep me in line, I sometimes started acting up and remember once when my dad (great grandpa Johnny) stopped his ________ to tell me that if I didn't behave I would have to go sit with my mom.
  7. 16. Two weeks before our wedding I woke up on Friday morning in severe pain and called John to come take meto the hospital. They diagnosed my problem as apendicitis and took me to surgery. When I came out of surgery, I got the bad news that I was going to get sicker before I got better because my real problem was a lymph gland ______ (inflamation).
  8. 17. My second year of college was at Tabor _______ where I was taking classes to be a special education teacher for grade school kids. At the end of the year I decided I didn't want to continue, so I moved to Auke Bay.
  9. 18. At the age of 4,we moved from the Northeast corner of Montana 720 miles to the east south east to the Southeast corner of South _______.
  10. 21. The winter of 1968 we had over 100 inches of snow with a lot of wind (It was after all in South Dakota and there are no hills to block the wind). So the snow drifted over roads, fences and even our garage! We could climb up the snow right onto the roof of our garage and sled down off it which was really great since there were no other hills to sled off from in the area of our house. One time the _____ was so bad we were snowed in for two weeks and had to walk to our neighbors house 3/4 of a mile away to get groceries, mail and fuel oil for the furnace.
  11. 24. After 2 debridements (basically sanding the knee bone smooth) I finally had my right replaced 41 years after first injuring my knee. At 6:30 the following morning they had me up out of bed putting my full weight on my knew ______ (fake) knee.
  12. 25. While working for Mendenhall Auto Center I was invited to attend a lunch presentation by Gene Krantz, NASA's legenary flight controller for the ill fated Apollo 13 as well as many other space flights. During his talk he relayed to us how accurate the Apollo 13 movie with Tom Hanks was in portraying the events of that space flight. I particularly remember how many things happened that we had never faced before and how so many people who had never worked together before came together to create new solution for the new problems. The final triumph of that flight was that although they had to steer manually during re-entry they landed closer to the target than any other spacecraft had before that time.
  13. 28. As a pastor in a small rural community, the salary was not always adequate to cover expenses so Great grandpa Johnny would pick up odd jobs to supplement their salary. One such job was driving ____ bus every morning and afternoon. A three year old Cynthia (she was not called Ruth until her sister Rebecca {"Becky"} was born several year later) would ride along in the front seat behind him or even on the side console with all the switches for the various lights on it.
  14. 30. When I opened the door and met John I said to myself there is the man I am going to ________.
  15. 31. At our wedding reception there was a moment of panic when your dad and I were feeding each other a piece of cake and my veil caught _____.
Down
  1. 2. There were many times when I was afraid during the night and went to my parents room that I said the words of asking Jesus to come into my _____, but the time I know for sure that Jesus came in was at Lake Shetek Bible Camp in Minnesota at the age of 10.
  2. 4. As a junior in High School I was on a youth group outing (Church is very _______(dānj(ə)rəs)!) to see a pioneers sod house when I stepped in a prarie dog hole and twisted the same knee, tearing the rest of the cartilege in it. That led to my second knee surgery. Another 5 days in the Hospital and 6 weeks on crutches.
  3. 6. One day when I was at my mom and dad's because I had heard there was an airplane _____ (falling from the sky) involving someone grandpa had flown with many times. While I was there, Uncle Myron called the house and I answered the phone. He was surpised to hear my voice and asked if I was OK. Doing pretty well under the circumstances. Then he asked if I had heard about the plane _______, I said yes but we didn't know anything more yet. He asked me, "John was on that plane wasn't he?" No, I answered, he is in Ketchikan this weekend, one of the other missionaries took his place.
  4. 8. My next 3 knee surguries were done via an ________ procedure (a procedure for diagnosing and treating joint problems where a surgeon inserts a narrow tube attached to a fiber-optic video camera through a small incision — about the size of a buttonhole. The view inside your joint is transmitted to a high-definition video monitor.) The purpose of these was to "clean up" the joint. I was out of the hospital the same day and could put limited weight on it immediately, but still had to use crutches.
  5. 10. Early on April 24th Johnny loaded a very pregnant Rachel and their 3 year old Rachel Marie into the car and set out on the 34 mile drive over very snow roads to the be sure they got to the hospital in ______ (wild dog) Point. The drive went well and they arrived so early that they were not able to drop Rachel Marie off at the friends they were going to leaver her with, so they parked on the street in front and waited for lights to come on. Then the dropped off one precious bundle and headed to the hospital get another.
  6. 11. When I was old enough to attend school, I went to the one _____ school house one mile away. There were 8 grades and between 8 and 15 students (depending on the year). The older ones would often help the younger ones with their work. We had an outhouse for a bathroom--it smelled bad!
  7. 12. I told your grandpa that he was going to be a father the first time on _______ day. I don't think there could have been a more appropriate day of the year for him to be told this news.
  8. 13. Some years later, we moved 550 miles nearly due south to Meade, ______ (State between Oklahoma and Nebraska) where I attended Junior High and High School. It was a big change to go from a one room school house with 8 students to a Junior High with about 100 students.
  9. 14. My high school physics teacher was a _____ (someone who flies airplanes) and he taught us physics by taking us through the ground scool required of private pilots.
  10. 19. We made arrangements with a _____ agent for a number of hotels on our honeymoon. As far as we knew everything was taken care of when an issue came up that caused us to need to change how long we were staying at a hot springs resort in Eastern Oregon. When we called the resort, they had no reservation for us even though we had given the _____ agent money for a room deposit. That spooked us and we called the hotel where we were suppose to spend the first night of our honeymoon and they didn't have a reservation either, and they had no rooms available for that night. When we called the travel agent, Grandpa asked him how he would like to spend the first night of his honeymoon on the street. He asked what the problem was and we told him about the hotels we had called, he said he would get it all fixed and not to worry. We, however, did not believe him at this point and made our own reservtions. The day before the wedding he called with panic in his voice and asked if we had made our own reservations. We told him yes, there was no way we were going to trust him ever again.
  11. 20. We were living in Haines when I was pregnant with your Uncle David. There was only one doctor in the town and we trusted him a lot, but when he told us he would be hunting of David's due date and there would be a different doctor at his clinic we decide to go to Juneau for his birth. This was a blessing from God because David was holding his ear while being born and the contractions were squeezing the _____ cord and cutting off blood flow so that his heart rate dropped precipitously. Because he seemed to be stuck, our doctor attempted to break his collar bone in order to make delivery easier. That was something he had been taught in medical school but but never attempted before. a second doctor was suommoned who began suctioning mucus as soon as Davids head appeared while the other doctor assited with the delivery. After David was born he was very blue from lack of oxygen and they continued suctioning and massgaging him trying to get him to breath. They even gave him his first spanking. It was 20 to 30 very long seconds before he took an breath and began to cry.
  12. 22. When we lived in South Dakota we did not have a private telephone line. We had what was called a _____ (synonym: celebration or festivity)line. That meant that the phone rang in your house even if the call was for your neighbor. Each house had a distinctive ring....but often that just alerted the neighbors to quietly pick up the phone and listen in to get some gossip.
  13. 23. We were engaged on Armed Forces Day, married on Veterans day, our unity candle went out shortly after it was lit in our wedding and would never relight. Then after sitting on a back shelf it split in two, even though it had never fallen or been hit with anything. Friends joked after being married on Veterans day that our marriage would be a battle, then when our unity candle split they just shook their heads and said we didn't have a chance. But by the time you have read this we will have been married 15,750 _______.
  14. 26. My first trip to Echo Ranch was in 1967 when your great granpa _____ was the camp speaker. At that time it was a boat ride of over an hour from Tee harbor to get to the camp because the road ended shortly past that point. Then we returned in 1974 and the road had been extended to Echo Cove, that summer I was a junior counselor. Then my third summer at Echo Ranch was with my good friend Stella Loewen (now Stella Brown). Of course your grandpa served on the staff in 1977 and 1978 and then we served there as a couple/family from 1979 to 1982.
  15. 27. I signed up for band and began to take lessons to learn to play the ________ (a brass instrument with three valves that often plays the melody). I played that until I completed high school.
  16. 29. A guy named Rick showed up in Juneau a few days before the ______ to try to convince me that I was supposed to marry him and not Grandpa. This was the second time he had done this and I was very upset that he could not take no for an answer.