The Life of Donald Bossuyt
by Ken Rucker
Its funny how you can know someone all your life but there are a lot of things that you don’t know about them. It can be that way with a grandparent because they are so much older than you are. This is some information I have learned about my grandfather.
Don Bossuyt was born at Tracy, Minnesota on January 9, 1933, at the Tracy hospital. He grew up in the Milroy area on two different farms.
He had two sisters. His older sister’s name is Dorothy. Dorothy was a hard worker and struggled to find work after graduation. She worked on the farm until she got married. His younger sister’s name is Doris. She was graduating about the time Don was building a house in Marshall. He asked his banker if there was work for her at the bank. She was hired and worked there for several years.
Don’s parent’s names were Alphonse and Irma Bossuyt. They were strict. The kids would rather go to their mom if they had a problem. She made them smile. She was not well-educated. When Dorothy needed help with math, Alphonse had to do it, but he was so gruff that it was hard to learn from him. They remember him playing with them when they were little, but when they were older he worked so hard he didn’t talk to them much. The kids were well-cared for. They had good food, decent clothes, and nice gifts for Christmas.
His mom worked around the house. His dad farmed by Milroy.
Don’s jobs around the farm were driving the tractors for cultivating and plowing, milking the cows and feeding the pigs and chickens.
The house that he first lived in was a nice large square farmhouse, but it had no electricity or plumbing. Then, in 1947, they moved to a different house that had electricity and plumbing. Electricity was a big change for him. He had gone without electricity for so long that when they finally had it, he felt it made life so much easier because they had light and didn’t have to milk cows by hand.
He was never much of a game player. He would always try to make or fix something. Once he tried to make a three-wheel bicycle. He got a chain and sprocket from the neighbor’s grove. He used mostly wood to make it. It wasn’t very successful. His dad grumbled, “When you’re done with something like that you knocked it to pieces again.”
His best friend was his cousin, Denis Matthys. They hunted a lot for rabbits and Denis also had a motorbike they rode to school.
His favorite pet was a dog named Fritz. He was a nice dog and pretty smart. They even got him to bring in the cows from the pasture. He would nip at the hooves of the furthest cow to get them started, but the problem was that he got them all running when they were full of milk.
For the first through sixth grades, he went to a little schoolhouse between Milroy and Vesta. After that, he went to the Milroy Public School. The class he disliked the most was science. His favorite subject was math. He liked his typing teacher the most because she was nice.
After school he would go to woodworking class. He made many shelves. Some were for the floor and some were for the wall. Some of them had leaves carved in the wood. He and his daughters still have many of them.
The most memorable world event that happened in his life is when World War II ended because it has been long and difficult. He was twelve when the war ended. He was happy because the neighbor men would come back home. He didn’t have any relatives that had to serve because they were all either too young or too old.
Don explained that World War II happened because the Japanese wanted oil. So they bombed Pearl Harbor to try to get control. Germany had a dictator named Hitler who wanted to take over the world. That was why we had to fight him and his army.
The invention of the 20th century that impacted Don’s life the most was the combine. It could handle the crops so much better than when people had to do it by hand or had to cut it and then gather and thresh it. This made it easier for his family because they didn’t have to hire bums that followed the railroad anymore. These people had to live with them until the end of harvest. Don had to sleep with them and his mom cooked for them. They no longer had to do this when they had the combine.
When television first came out, “Andy Griffith” was one of the first shows he saw.
When Don was 20 years old, he was drafted and sent to Korea. While he was there, he worked on trucks. He changed tires, greased wheels and serviced transmissions. He was there for 13 months. Then he got hepatitis. He spent about two weeks in a hospital in Korea. Then he spent ten days in another hospital in Japan. After that he was sent to Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver, Colorado. He was able to come home for Christmas and then he went back until he recovered and they discharged him because it was too close to the end of his service time to send him overseas again.
After the war, Don farmed for a while. Then he was asked to do mechanic work in a truck shop. He did this for four years. Then he worked for four years for a John Deere shop. After that, he returned to the farm site he was raised on to farm and open a diesel mechanic shop called, “Don’s Country Shop.” He chose this work because he was a natural mechanic.
Don met his wife, Delores, on a three couple date set up by his cousin’s sister-in-law who worked with her. They were married on April 9, 1956.
They had six daughters: Ruth, Karen, Deanna, Julie, Yvonne, and Cynthia. Yvonne died as a baby. The others are now adults.
He has eleven grandchildren: Randi, Megan, Kim, Ryan, Heather, Brett, Ken, John, Clarissa, Kirsten, and Katie. They range in age from two to 25 years in age and all live in Minnesota.
After living with Parkinson’s disease for 14 years, Delores passed away in 2002. Two weeks before she died, she was able to enjoy the Milroy Centennial events with her family.
After retirement, Don began to restore tractors either for himself or others. He buys old tractors and fixes or searches for replacement parts and paints them. He has displayed some of them at Heritage Hill near Montevideo, the Milroy Centennial, and the Tracy Boxcar Days. The tractors he has restored for himself are:
• 1948 G Allis-Chalmers
• 1946 C Allis-Chalmers
• 1952 B John Deere
• 1936 BR John Deere
• 1941 WC Allis-Chalmers (Don did custom bailing with one like it as a teenager.)
• 1949 WD Allis-Chalmers (His dad bought this tractor new.)
He currently has and uses a 1954 Minneapolis Moline for doing work where he needs a loader and a 1959 D17 Allis-Chalmers for blowing snow.
Don also restored a penny-farthing bicycle. This kind of bicycle has a large front wheel and a small rear wheel. It was originally made in England in the 1800s. Its name came from the largest and smallest English copper coins at that time. It has wooden handle bars, spokes, and rims with a strip of iron around them. The bicycle was on the farm where his mother’s family lived when they came from Belgium. His uncle had ridden it where the cows had walked and the mud had baked hard so the frame broke. It hung in the machine shed for many years. When Don was young, he went to work for a farmer who lived on that farm and the bicycle was still there. He fixed it and learned to ride it himself. His dad told people about it, so they wanted it in the Milroy 50th Anniversary parade. They said they would get someone to ride it if he didn’t want to. He thought, “If anyone was going to ride it, it will be me.” Then 25 years later he rode it in the Milroy 75th Anniversary parade too. His nephew, Roger Cauwels, rode it in the Milroy Centennial Parade.
When asked what he would change if he had a chance to do anything differently in his life, he said he wouldn’t change anything.
When I asked him what advice would he give to me about life? He said to get a good education. Even though he did very well without a lot of schooling, he knows that it is harder to get a good job now without education beyond high school.
I like my grandpa because he is good at making things, we like a lot of the same things, and I learn a lot from him. Interviewing him was fun because I learned things that I never knew about him before.
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