INSTALLMENT SEVEN - MEJ's Bio (The Family)



Bobby and Dotty

The Family

Because we moved around a lot during our early married life, our three children were born in three different states. Dorothy June was born soon after we moved to Princeton, Illinois. She grew up to be a cute curly-headed little girl, the kind that made people turn around for a second look when she was old enough to go shopping with her mother. When she was still just a little girl, she showed signs of becoming a good house keeper because she helped her mother with the dusting and sweeping and other household chores. After going through grade school, high school and a short normal course, she taught a country school for two years. Then she decided to become a farmer’s wife, which is a fairly permanent job any way you look at it. (Pictured on the right is Menne (MEJ), Dorothy June and Grandpa John P. Plucker)

Bobby & Dotty at 9 & 11

Robert Elvin was born while we lived in Dubuque, Iowa. When he was small he would spend hours watching the wheels go around on his toy train and his many toy trucks, so we expected he would be a mechanic when he grew up. That changed soon after he got into high school and found out about music, especially the vocal kind. As soon as he graduated from high school he enlisted in the army – to keep from getting drafted. He was sent to State College at Brookings, South Dakota for a short while, then inducted into the paratroops. He had a teaching position at Faulkton, South Dakota, but since he was still in the reserves, he was called back into service and sent to Korea for a year. Since that time he has been music instructor in Winona, Minnesota and Green Bay, Wisconsin. He married a college schoolmate who is also a teacher. 

Bobby, Jeanie, Dotty - 1939



Dots, MEJ, Dena, Jean, Bob - 1945

Jean Ellen, our youngest, was born here in South Dakota where we now live. One reason she was named Jean was because for a year or so before she was born, there was a complicated musician’s strike going on that made it impossible for radio stations to play any kind of music except these numbers on which the copyright had run out. All of Stephen Foster’s songs were in this classification, so the song “I Dream of Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair” was usually heard several times a day. Also, the name, Jean, is the feminine counterpart of the name, John, which was her grandfather’s name. Besides all of that, we like the name. We had no idea that she would some day marry a man named Gene. It seems to me that even when she was real small she had an idea she wanted to marry a minister. If that was true, she succeeded famously.

Jean Ellen, Robert Elvin, Dorothy June - 2011