- My family immigrated to the United States from Germany.
My parents had the clothes on their back and five kids.
We moved to Deerfield, Wisconsin, and started farming.
There were some wonderful people that lived there.
I remember, that Christmas we didn't have anything.
All the neighbors showed up with presents for the kids.
My sister Erna was impacted by that.
She always, always wanted to repay people in kind.
Erna put Wisconsin Public Television in her will
because she wanted to repay all the kindness and help
that our family received,
and one way of repaying them, I think,
was through Wisconsin Public Television
and giving back to her neighbors
and to Wisconsin and to the country.
That was just part of her life.
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