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His favorite pastime during free time was roller skating. "Way back, before my time, some of these towns would put up a floor for skating," said Dick. "They did this back in the 1930's already when Mary's dad went skating." The next generation skated in style, in covered shelters, to music.
When Dick was 19 years old he met a young girl who loved to roller skate as much as he did.
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Mary was born on March 7th, 1940, to Charles and Leona Dunn of Delano. The middle of three daughters, Mary was also born at home -- in town, not on a farm. She weighed 11 pounds.
"My dad's job was at Granite Works Monuments in Delano," said Mary, who has photographs and stories of the detailed work involved in the making of tomb-stones.
The Dunn girls attended St. Peter's Catholic School and then Delano Public High School. When only 16 years old and a junior in high school, Mary was intro-duced to a young lad from Victoria.
The story is both written and told, how Mary's parents were out looking to buy a new car at the Ford dealership in Hopkins where Dick's friend was a mechanic. Mary was with her parents and all of a sudden she had tickets to go roller skating with someone named Dick Schmieg.
Says Mary, "My older sister always took me roller skating with her to Cokato. I did a lot of sidewalk skating before that, with the old skates you clamped onto your shoes and tightened with a key but they always came off. My dad used to roller skate at Buffalo, and it was also our pastime in St. Louis Park."
What did the young girl think of her new skating partner? "I didn't like his shirt," she replied, "but we kept going out for a couple of years, not just skating but also to the stock car races." Mary couldn't recall the style or color of Dick's shirt.
What did the young lad think of his new skating partner? "We got along," he replied. "I think we did quite a bit of talking. We went roller skating every other date. I remember that first night I took her back to Delano and we got lost. She was only 16 years old and I've always thought about how her dad let her go out alone in a strange car with somebody."
The young people began spending more and more time together, and often skated at the gymnasium of the Guardian Angels School in Chaska. "I even skated with Father Bernardine," said Mary. "He was a good skater."
And then everything was put on hold for a time. "Dickie and I were in a bad car accident on the road going to St. Boni, that road past the Dairy Queen," ex-plained Mary. "I got two and a half crushed vertebrae in my lower back and was in St. Francis Hospital for nineteen days. I missed six weeks of school my senior year. We lived right across from the high school, but I couldn't get out of bed. I had to lay flat, and my aunt stayed with me because my mother worked at Granite Works with my dad. My girl-friend brought my assignments to me so I got my homework done and I graduated. I wore a back brace for five to six months."
During that difficult senior year at Delano High, Mary asked Dick to the prom. It was the spring of 1958 and she wore the back brace along with her prom dress, but you can't see it in the photo-graphs. She graduated in June and kept roller skating!
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Dick Schmieg and Mary Dunn were married on November 8th, 1958, at St. Peter's Catholic Church in Delano. Dick was 21. Mary was 18.
Was there a honeymoon? Said Mary, "We just went up to St. Cloud overnight because there was a campaign at the Sugar Factory where Dick worked."
What is a campaign? Explained Dick, "That's when you process the beets into sugar. The beets are not red like what you're thinking. They look like a potato and back in the 1920's people grew them on 5 and 10-acre patches. Now they moved the operation to the Red River Valley."
The newlyweds returned to live in a house on a small farm site "in back of Clarence Kelzer's place, not too long, just till spring." The Kelzers and Schmiegs are neighbors at Marsh Lake Road.
Stated the bride, "There was no tele-phone out there and no people, so then we got a puppy because I was home by my-self. We were next to a railroad track and Dickie's mother was worried about me because of bums, but no bums ever came around the place."
In short order the city girl and her country husband moved into downtown Victoria, to a "pretty new" duplex next to the ballpark.
"It belonged to Aunt Lorene Diethelm -- who was Jerry, Bob, Mary Farrell, and Joyce Heiland's mom, also Carol Wickenhauser's. Our barn here came from that place. It used to be a farm where that duplex stands, and my dad bought the barn from Eugene Diethelm and moved it here to Marsh Lake Road. That was a big barn to move but they did it."
Click here to continue the Hilltop story.
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