Probably no one worked longer at the Lake Auburn Home for the Aged than Lillian Kroening, who retired in 1983 after thirty years of cooking for the residents.  The mother of John Kroening and Joan Geske, Lillian was featured in the Victoria Gazette in September of that year of her retirement.
In 1988 the building was sold to a Baptist organization known by a con-glomerate of initials, MABSSCO, who turned it into a home for problem boys.  Then called the STEP Group Home, the acronym stands for Skills Training Emancipation Program.  Some of the youthful residents were featured in the June, 1990, issue of the Gazette.
In 2003 the City of Victoria purchased the Home and 22 acres from MABSSCO for $1.5 million.  About 15 of those acres of are deemed to be unbuildable wetland.  The City of Victoria will technically own the land in early January, according to Interim City Admin-istrator Dave Urbia.  Then it will belong to Three Rivers Park District, having been traded for Three Rivers park-land located adjacent to the Central Business District in downtown Victoria.

As the Old Home was being crushed to pieces on those cool December days of 2006, Ron Holtmeier of Victoria joined the Gazette editor in her warm car.  He and his wife Harriet had front row seats in their living room across the road, but he may have thought it comforting to tell his own story about the place as it was again changing character.  No one has more historical connections to the property nor the Old Home, nor knowledge of its past, than does Mr. Holtmeier.
"The first person to live here on the shores of Lake Auburn was a widow from the War of 1812," said Ron.  "She built a shanty.  Soldiers were given money from the war and that's probably how she got here and had money to build something ...
"Then my great grandfather, John C. Holtmeier, came out here in 1854.  He paid some money to the widow -- this was before homesteading -- and built the first two-story duplex in Carver County.  The first Moravian services were held at this settlement before the Moravian Church of Lake Auburn was built. 
"My great grandfather died in 1890.  He had nine children when he died.  His large farm -- which stretched north toward Lake Zumbra, east toward Stieger Lake, and south toward the Dairy Queen -- was divided between my Grandfather Sam and Great Uncle John H. Holtmeier.  The other siblings received monies or land in another area. 
"The Lake Auburn Home for the Aged was built on the property that had become John H. Holtmeier's farm.  Most of John H.'s entire farm -- 139 acres -- became the property of the Home, and for many years part of it was rented by tenant farmers."
According to information retrieved from the 1928 Cornerstone of the Lake Auburn Home for the Aged, John H. Holtmeier (Ron's great uncle) donated half of his 139-acre farm on the shores of Lake Auburn for the site of construction of the Old Home.  Ron said there are documents elsewhere that indicate there was an exchange of $10,000 and this was perhaps for the other half of the John H. Holtmeier farm.
Quoting the May 9^th, 1928, edition of The Moravian, published out of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and proud of the new Moravian construction in Minnesota ...
"Lake Auburn is only 25 miles west of Minneapolis, the metropolis of the middle Northwest, and the gateway of the great Northwest including western Canada.  It lies at the western end of the well known chain of lakes called Lake Minnetonka, with a shoreline of 390 miles and the summer estates of the people of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul ... The growing town of Victoria, a station of the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railroad, with high school, bank, and good stores, is only a short mile distant ... The radio will bring to the people in the Home the best of sermon, lecture, and music.  What more can be desired this side of Heaven than what is offered here? ... Besides at Lake Auburn there is plenty of room for further development, such as an orphanage and a rest cottage system."
According to that same publication, the Lake Auburn Home, and also the Moravian Church across the street (County Road 11), were located in a plotted village -- recorded in 1925 -- named Lake Auburn, Minnesota. 
Ron and Harriet Holtmeier are living today in a home built on one of those recorded lots near the church.  Somewhere along the line, however, the village of Lake Auburn became part of the Village of Victoria.
Ron said that before construction began on the Lake Auburn Home for the Aged, all the Holtmeier outbuild-ings, including the barn and granary, were moved across the road, down Wisteria, closer to Stieger Lake.  "I wasn't born yet so I don't remember the farm on Lake Auburn but I certainly remember the buildings in their new location.   It's where I grew up and played."  Ron was born in 1930.
Those farm buildings no longer exist.  Ron's dad Erwin Holtmeier became the President/Cashier of the Victoria State Bank.  Ron became a steadfast longtime employee for Prudential.  The children of Ron and Harriet Holtmeier are the first generation of the historic family not living at Lake Auburn.  Their grandchildren also make their home elsewhere.

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