by Sue Orsen
"He had blue, blue eyes and a wonderful smile.  I thought he was really good looking, but he was a mighty senior, Class of '49, and I was a lowly freshman, Class of '52, and I thought he never noticed me ... I never thought I was going to spend the best years of my life alone ... Our hopes were so high for the transplant.  Our hopes were so high for recovery."
Most heart transplants are successful, but that was of little consolation to Carol Schaefer of Victoria. 
"David had a heart attack in 1982, and he became progressively less able," she said.  "In 1993 he was put on a heart transplant list at the Univer-sity of Minnesota hospitals.  In 1995 he became a patient in the Intensive Care Unit for two months.  In Septem-ber of that year he got a heart.  He died one week later."
There is no wallowing in self pity for Carol, but when your own heart has beat inextricably with another's, the loss of one is monumental to the other.  The lone heart must make con-tinual adjustments to keep the life-blood flowing.
"My attitude wasn't good at first," she said.  "And I knew the way I felt wasn't healthy.  Thank God for my kids, bless their hearts.  I can't imagine what would have happened to me without them." Thank God, also, for Carol's sister who traveled with her to another world, both literally and figuratively. 
Carol and David had always enjoyed traveling.  First trips included camping with their children across much of the United States and then touring the countryside and dozens of major European cities.  Travel was in their blood.
"I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to travel again, that it would be too sad," said Carol.  "Then I came across this travel brochure and I showed it to my sister.  The next spring she and I went on a photo safari to Africa.  I was still very, very sad about David ... but for a trip like that you have to make all these commitments in advance - the shots, the down payment, so you end up being forced to go."
Carol's heart became stronger and acquired a new beat, a new rhythm, that would help her blood to flow again.  "That trip turned things around for me," she said.  "This was not a trip that David and I had talked about.  We never talked about an African safari.  Everything there was so different.  It helped me acquire a different mindset.  It changed my outlook, and I decided I could do other things, too.  Then I heard about Elderhostel ... and my computer ... and the Internet ..."

Carol was born on September 26^th, 1934, to Reynold and Blanche Andersen, in Colman, South Dakota, not too far from Sioux Falls.  The oldest of six, Carol had four sisters and one brother. 
"Colman was a tiny little town," she said.  "It was wonderful place to grow up because both of my grand-mothers lived in town.  We could walk to both of their houses.  One of my grandmothers had a wind-up phonograph and she let us use it.  She had old miners' songs and we loved them.  I remember she had 'Little Mary Fagan' and 'The Dream of the Miner's Child' and also popular music like 'Baby Face.'"
Carol calls herself a Depression baby.  "My father never had a full time job until he was 30," she said.  "I never even knew that until much later.  Those young men that came of age during the Depression had no work.
"My dad rode the rails to the State of Washington to get a job picking fruit.  He had so many stories for us when he returned home.  He was a character, a very funny man.  He had the gift of laughing at himself."
She recalled some of his humor-ous ways.  "Dad made stilts for all of his kids and grandkids.  On his birth-day, every year until he was 80, he'd get up on stilts.  My mother would just shake her head ...
"My mother was the musician.  She played the piano for Sunday School and for the high school orches-tra.  In that little town we were lucky to have a piano at our home.  That piano is in my sister's house to this day.  It's an old upright.
"Yes, years ago that was the entertainment in homes, the piano and singing.  In the department stores back then, they'd have pianists, and people would pick out sheet music to buy but would first ask the pianist to play it for them ...
"When I was growing up, my mother, bless her heart, bought us these big music books called Scribner's Radio Music Library.  I've saved them.  I can play the piano some, but I can't sing.  I always said when I get to heaven, I want to sing!"
How did Carol end up in Minne-sota?  "When my dad was in Seattle looking for jobs, he worked his way down the coast to California, then came back to South Dakota and went to welding school.  That took him to Minneapolis for work.  It was war time and welding was a good job to be in then.  My father is a big success story.  He ended up on the Board of Directors of Gerber Sheet Metal."



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