Autobiography

A short personal history that John wrote in 1997, included in "The Minnesota Connection"—a family album of photos and stories published by Sexton Printing.

I was born on a very hot Friday, July 28, 1933, the third of six boys. My oldest brother, Billy, was bedridden from infancy. I would go in and greet Bill in the morning. I think he could recognize me and smile. The second oldest was Jerry. He was a typical big brother and gave me a bit of grief. Tom, Jim and Mike completed our all-boy family.

When my parents were married, they moved in with my mom's parents and three of her four brothers. It was a large house on a farm in West St. Paul. By the time I came along, my uncles had moved out. My grandfather died before I was born, and my grandmother was like a second mother to me. I am told that I spoke Dutch as well as English in those early years.

My early memories are about a large house with yard, barnyard, farm buildings and my favorite, the greenhouse. In the winter I was bundled up and sent out to the greenhouse to play. What a wonderful way to spend winter days. The summer was even better. I would wander out to the barn and visit the animals; we had 2 horses, 1 cow, many chickens and some cats. The farm consisted of 25 acres of vegetables which were sold at the city market.

My first three years of school were in the West St. Paul school system. I started third grade at St. Matthews, which was about one and a half miles away. Usually we got a ride in the morning and walked home in the afternoon. In the winter months sometimes my aunt May drove us home. I became an altar boy in the fourth grade. About that time St. Joseph's church in West St. Paul was started and I did my serving there. St. Joseph's didn't have a school so I still went to St. Matthew's. Some mornings when we served a funeral at St. Joseph's, our paster would drop us off at St. Matt's on his way to the cemetery. He would have to get to the cemetery before the procession, and we always were thrilled by Father Foran's 50-mile-per-hour rush through town.

After St. Matt's I went to Cretin High School.  It was a great school and the friends I made there are still my friends.  My grades were good, and I had a great social life.  I went to nine formal dances in my senior year.  Of course in those days the cost was not what it is now.  To rent a tux was $6.00, corsage $3.50, dinner afterwards (for two)--$5.00, and share paying for the gas.  I worked part time at the family newspaper during the school year, and full time in the summer.  I earned enough to pay my school tuition and to have some spending money.  I had take all pre-college courses, but at graduation I received a scholarship to Graphic Arts Technical School and decided to stay in printing.  The scholarship was for 12 months.  The school had 25 students and 6 teachers.  I specialized in the linotype, as an operator and a mechanic.  My father said, "learn the linotype and you will always have a trade."  After a year at GA Tech I joined the family business full time.

The Korean war had been going on for two years, and my friends and I knew our days as free souls were numbered.  Five of us from high school decided to volunteer for the draft rather than wait.  My mother was quite upset because the war was still going on.  When I went to the draft board and said I wanted to go that month, the gal said it had been already decided that I was going that month.  It just shows that you can't beat the army.  Two weeks later I got my "greetings" letter and went to camp Chaffee, Arkansas, to spend 4 months in basic training and artillery fire direction.  I came home for two weeks leave, then took the train to Fort Lewis, Washington, then a boat to Korea.

I was sent up on the line, so I was relieved to hear that a cease-fire had just been declared.  We landed at Inchon, and started our trip north.  We traveled 75 miles in mid-January; it took 2 days on a train, then 4 hours by truck.  The weather in Korea is similar to Minnesota weather, it was very cold and snowy.  I lived in a tent, worked in a bunker and pulled guard duty every other night.  We were a very small, heavy artillery unit attached to the Korean army.  We got to shower every 2 weeks.  A shower consisted of riding in the back of a truck for half an hour to the shower point.  There we turned in our dirty clothes, showered, received clean clothes and returned to our little valley in the back of the truck, which meant getting covered with dust again.  After 12 months in Korea, our unit turned all our equipment over to the Korean army and moved to Japan.

Not just Japan but Tokyo, Japan!  We finally began to live like soldiers: inspections, parades, etc.  I was still in an artillery outfit and we even fired our guns on an artillery range up on Mt. Fuji.  Since it was a combat-ready outfit, we had no overnight passes.  Bed check was at 11:00 p.m.  At one time we were put on alert to go to Vietnam.

Tokyo was an interesting city.  The restaurants, the movies and the markets were very different from St. Paul.  In those days our money went a long way.  We would travel by train and bus, and people were very friendly.  My friend and I would go into Tokyo, take a bus or street car to the end of the line, get lost and spend the rest of the day meeting people, asking direction and working our way back to the center of the city.  After 6 months in Japan I returned home and became a printer again.

I took 7 years of diligent searching to meet my wife.  Claudette was a widow with 2 children, a car, a house full of furniture, and she seemed to overlook my many faults.  She and the boys moved into a duplex I owned in St. Paul.  After a year we exchanged that hom for a larger duplex on Summit Avenue in St. Paul.  It was a 3 story, 36 foot-wide house on a 44 foot lot.  Sean was born about this time.  After another year or so we bought 12 acres in Eagan and began to draw plans for a house.  We picked the location of house by pounding in four stakes in the center of the acreage near the top of a hill.  The night before our excavator was to start, we discovered a duck nesting where we were to build.  We moved the stakes,  and our home was built about 15 feet over from where it should have been.  It took us about 12 months to finish the house, since we did quite a bit of the work ourselves.  We moved into our new home in April, about 4 weeks before Mark, our second son of the second group, was born.

Five years later, I started my own typesetting business.  I quit my job, bought some new equipment, and went out to look for work.  After about one week of sales calls, I had all the work I could handle.  My business was set up in our basement, and after a year our work force consisted of Claudette, myself and four employees.  We were typesetting about 30 publications, some monthly and some quarterly.  Our main client was Webb Publishing Co. but we also had some other large companies as customers.  We worked out of our home for about 2 years and then moved into larger offices in West St. Paul.  As the industry changed and equipment became cheaper, more people got into typesetting.  After 20 years, we reduced the company to two, built an addition onto our home, and now we only have to go into the next room to go to work.  We still do typesetting, but now we also specialize in database conversion into directories and Internet home page design.

While all this was going on, Claudette and I agreed that although our family of four sons was great, a daughter would be a wonderful addition.  Since the boys were 19, 18, 11 and eight, we felt a five-year-old would fit in quite naturally.  We expected a child from Vietnam, but after month of waiting, we were shocked to hear that Saigon had fallen.  Our social worker then told us she had also contacted Korea for us, and soon five-year old Denise joined our family.  This worked out so well that two years later Natalie and Nicole, sisters who were then 8 and 9, completed our family circle.

The following 15 years, Claudette and I were both working fulltime in the business.  With children in various schools and after-school activities, our home was always busy, usually happy, seldom quiet.  Each of the children has followed a different life path, and all are doing well.

As the house began to empty, we were privileged to become host parents to a girl from Germany, and later a girl from Japan, who were each with us for 7 months.  To our great delight, both have since returned to visit us.  We have also participated in a short summer program at St. Thomas College, in which we hosted college-age young men and women from Japan.  Over the years we have had about 15 of these young guests.

Now that all the children have moved on, our lives are still punctuated by frequent visit by our "kids," 7 beautiful grandchildren, friends, relatives, and occasionally "guest cats."  (On temporary loan from traveling kids.)

If you are traveling through Minnesota, feel free to stop and visit, or spend some time with us.  Just be forewarned, life is never dull at Sextons-on-the Hill.

--John Sexton, 1997