Holiday memories: Woman shares grandparents' 'magical' story

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By David Heitz | Monday, December 24, 2007 | 2 comment(s)

A larger-than-life war hero. Young lovers apart. A busy bus stop. Falling snow. Christmastime in the city. A happy ending.

It sounds like the perfect holiday movie, but this story of the season is true.

Tears welled up in the eyes of Amy Chung of Bettendorf as she recalled the romantic tale of her grandparents, young lovers parted by war but reunited 62 years ago today, on Christmas Eve.

Her grandmother, Marijean Trodahl, had left her job working at the cosmetic counter of Prange’s Department Store in Green Bay, Wis., on Dec. 24, 1945. She had filled in for a worker whose husband had come home from the Navy for Christmas. Marijean’s husband, Wilmer, also in the military, had not been so lucky, and she left the store with a heavy heart, walking through the snow to catch a bus and head home to an empty apartment on an evening when sweethearts were supposed to be together.

Marijean Trodahl had spent the day doing what cosmetic counter workers did during the war — selling makeup to women who used the tinted foundation to cover their legs like stockings. Such things could not be purchased in wartime because the silk was needed for parachutes. Ladies would use a black pencil to mimic the seam that stockings had back then, Chung said.

Although the war had ended, Marijean Trodahl had not seen her spouse for 22 months. He had returned to the states from his combat post serving with the 10th Mountain Infantry Division in Italy, but he remained on active duty in Texas.

As she left the department store, she nonchalantly passed servicemen swirling around a nearby train station. She proceeded to the bus stop and took a seat on that lonely Christmas Eve.

Back then, Marijean Trodahl said, little information came out about the military. Most people did not have televisions, and even on the radio, scant reports could be found. She did not know that President Eisenhower had ordered all combat troops on active duty home for the holidays.

Meanwhile, Wilmer Trodahl had been on a two-day journey, chugging on a train from Texas toward Green Bay. With so many troops headed home, seats on board a locomotive were scarce, and he ended up boarding a freight train and riding in the mail car with other soldiers. He wound up arriving in Kansas City late on Dec. 23 and missing the connecting train to Green Bay.

After spending the night in the train station, he anxiously awoke the morning of Christmas Eve and roused the other soldiers from their slumber. He had a train to catch.

“I don’t know where I got the money,” Wilmer Trodahl recalled. “I had $17 in my pocket.” As the train rolled into sight, only soldiers in uniform were allowed aboard, he said.

Hours later, as Marijean Trodahl stared out the window at the falling snow, a man boarded her bus and motioned to the person sitting next to her to move. When the woman next to Marijean Trodahl sat down in another part of the bus, one Wilmer Trodahl walked up to his wife, tapped her on the shoulder and asked, “Is this seat taken?”

“I just burst into tears and shrieked,” Marijean Trodahl said. “Oh my goodness, I started to cry. He put his arms around me, squeezed me real hard and said, ‘Merry Christmas.’”

The couple rode the bus home and spent a quiet evening together. They had a barren apartment with only a tiny tree.

“There really wasn’t much Christmas,” Marijean Trodahl said. “He didn’t have any money. We just enjoyed being together. Our presents were being together.”

Chung said her grandparents’ story changed the way she views Christmas forever. “Otherwise, it’s just like going through the motions.”

Now she shares the heartwarming tale with her own children. “We always talk about it. It was one of those magical things.

“My grandpa always says, ‘When you’re in a war, every day that you get to live is a gift.’”

David Heitz can be contacted at

(563) 383-2202 or dheitz@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.