16 Mar 2022
Ethnic Life Stories: Trail of Trees Episode 34 - Ilga Vise
Ilga Vise was born April 13, 1934, in Riga, the capital city of Latvia. She grew up during a brief post-war freedom Latvians enjoyed, having declared their independence in 1918. She spent much of her childhood in Riga and Gulbene with her mother, Brona, her father, Janis, who was in the Latvian Air Force, and her cousin, Richie.
Some of her most cherished childhood memories include making music with her extended family, all of whom could play a variety of instruments and sang in their free time. The Vise family had a large garden with lots of animals, including chickens, goats and rabbits.
Vise’s life changed forever with the Russian occupation and later German invasion in the summer of 1939. In 1941 Germans began attacking, and danger became ever-present. On October 11, 1944, the Soviet Army captured Riga, and the family became refugees. In her story, Vise describes an enduring month in a German forced-labor camp in the winter of 1944.
Vise and her family, after they were unceremoniously released from the labor camp, spent the next two months walking hundreds of miles, to Eutin, a trek that almost killed her. After the war ended, the family spent a few years in Eutin and later journeyed to the United States in 1951.
She spent the rest of her high school years in a Chicago suburb and later went to college at Northwestern. After college, she met Sidney Vice, who she would marry in 1958. The couple had two children, Silvia and David. The family moved to Missouri when Sidney got a job at Drury, and Vise would later be employed at the University, too, teaching geography and advising non-traditional students.
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Read all of Vise's story and the rest of the Ethnic Life Stories Project stories by clicking here. (https://thelibrary.org/lochist/els/menu.cfm?_ga=2.48289443.425697512.1598647287-590141047.1595863894)
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Music is Bach Cello Suite no. 3 by Colin Carr from the Free Music Archive (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/).
Episodes are edited, recorded, mixed, and published by Diana Dudenhoeffer.
