Olive Claire (Bun) and Lucia Esther were identical twins born July 5, 1900. Esther died at the age of two, of unknown causes. Olive remembered the events as: their father had just bought them each a new pair of shoes. Esther tried hers on, danced around - then lay down in bed and never got up again. Olive never forgot her and was wont to say sometimes that the wrong twin died (her descendants disagree whole-heartedly and know this to be a sign of the depression that plagued her through out her life). Edward drank toward the end of his life, if not before. One of the older boys would shimmy up a pole and keep watch out for the return of the wagon. If Edward weaved as he drove, the older boy would signal and the youngest kids were rouned up and hidden from the father's abuses. Olive, however, would not hide. She often stood up to her father to protect her mother. Olive was nine when Edward sucumbed to pnuemonia, and she went to work in Gordon to help support her mother.
Olive met Guy Irving, a carpenter who was in Gordon working on the school. He seemed quite a nice fellow and so they were married on May 21, 1919 in Hot Springs, south Dakota. They were a study in contrasts. Olive was 19, Guy was 40. Olive stood 4.11' where as Guy stood over 6'. Guy had been a soldier, a policeman and a carpenter, who had traveled the world - Olive, a seamstress & cook, had never been out of Gordon. Together they would try their hand at logging, homesteading and raising a family.
In 1920 they were homesteading in Wyoming. Guy was away most of the day working, cutting and hauling trees for a lumber mill. Olive was afraid (she admitted this nearly sixty years later) and her husband thought she would feel better if she knew how to shoot a gun. Olive didn't know anything about guns and was content to let it remain so...but Guy insisted. He took his wife and his rifle down to the creek below the cabin. Pointing to a branch on a tree on the far side of the creek, Guy aimed, fired and split the branch! He had become a Marksman First Class while in the Philippines during the Spanish American War. Olive aimed, fired and...missed, very nearly losing the rifle. Guy took the ifle over to a nearby sapling and steadied the rifle in a crook of the tree saying, "Surely you can hit that big tree now!" Olive was so angry she had tears in her eyes, but she held on to that rifle and pulled the trigger!
"Lardy!" Guy said, "You hit all right. You hit a cow!" That ended Olive's lessons in marksmanship.
Olive & Guy had four children; two boys and two girls.
While traveling in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Olive & Guy (and at least one of their children, Lucy) were driging along a road that had a rock overhang. Olive wanted to turn around because she just knew that the rock would come down. Guy said "No." and kept on going. Just as they passed under the rock, someone above it fired a gun and Olive thought they'd had it. Guy thought it was hilarious.
In the later twenties, Olive and her family lived in Monroe, Louisiana, in a tent, on a lot with two other tents. Despite the sound of it, Guy did right by his family for their tent had a wood floor with partial wood walls, then canvas tent. The other tents were the umbrella tents. A couple of tornadoes came through and knocked the other tents down. When the next one came through, a neighbor lady came to the Church's tent to watch from there. So, naturally the tornado struck Olive & Guy's tent this time. When it hit, Olive had been canning figs in a large uncovered bowl in the ice chest. The ice chest was flung on its side - but when Olive righted it, she found that none of the figs...not even the juice...had spilled out of the bowl!
Their travels brought them finally to Council Bluffs, Iowa. The house that Guy built still stands on Avenue "G". Guy died January 4, 1951 and is buried in Council Bluffs. Olive continued to live in Council Bluffs for a number of years before living first with her youngest son, Victor, in Canada and then with the older son (Waldo) in Maryland. Her final years were spent in a Catholic Nursing home in Dubuque, Iowa near her youngest daughter, Evelyn (Sr. Dominic).
