Hans Thrane

I, Hans Thrane, was born on June 17, 1911, in Kolding, Denmark. Although I was adopted by my grandparents and raised in their home, my mother enrolled me in kindergarten in 1917. I attended public school ending with the eighth grade. My brother, Karlo, was born on December 15, 1920, and my sister, Gerda, was born on April 7, 1923. They still live in Denmark.

I left home in 1925, at the age of fourteen, and became a sailor. I had been an observer of life since boyhood and had a desire to travel. My first wages that I earned were as a cabin boy, and I was paid twenty-five Danish Kroner per month, or six dollars and fifty cents in American money. I spent my first Christmas sailing in Dakar, West Africa.

I came to America first in 1928 and had to use my Danish dictionary to order a meal. I wanted to order ham and eggs but instead I ordered "looking glass eggs."

I was in Shanghai, China in 1929. While there I had my front teeth capped by a traveling dentist who carried his tools in a wooden box and used a foot pedal for his drills.

In the year of 1933, the ship I was on was at the Antarctic for whale oil and was near Little America where Admiral Richard Byrd had his weather station.

I sailed to Spain during the Revolution of 1936-38, and to Massava, Ethiopia while Mussolini fought in North Africa. I have sailed to Manaos, nine hundred and twenty-five miles inland on the Amazon River.

On September 3, 1939, I sat in a bier shanke in Kiel, Germany. On that day, Hitler declared war on England.

When I left Denmark on March 26, 1940, my shipmates and I never dreamed of being detained anywhere. But it happened that we were, for the ship we were on, the California, ran short of fuel oil and called at the Port of Pernambuco, North Brazil. We were denied help and the ship remained for the duration of World War II at the Port of Pernambuco.

My opportunity to return to North America came in the form of a British ship that called at the Port, and I was able to ship out on that ship.

Then I served in the United States Merchant Marine, and the United States Army Transport Corp. I finished my assignment in the Philippines and returned to San Francisco on January 21, 1947.

On that day, I paid the 'head tax' of two dollars that gave me legal entry #135 on an immigrant visa issued in Manila on December 12, 1946. I returned to New York and while working there, I became an American citizen on December 27, 1949, at the U.S. District Court, Brooklyn, New York. I had become a free man and called a stop to any more traveling the seas.

After living a while in New York, I spent eighteen months working in the coal mines of West Virginia. While in West Virginia, I joined the Masonic fraternity, to my life-long delight. In the latter part of 1949, and early part of 1950, difficulties in the Appalachian coal district became worse and I decided to go back to sailing.

My arrival in Toledo, Ohio, was on Election Day, November 7, 1950. I had hired on a job on the Great Lakes, but the job did not materialize, so I sought employment at the Libby-Owens-Ford Glass Company in Toledo. Not only was I hired there, but I found contentment in my work. For an old salt of almost forty years, my opportunity to work in a factory was good.

Some hidden inspiration made me buy a new torpedo-shaped, red Studebaker car off the showroom floor. I had no driver's license at that time. It was my red Studebaker that led me along the road to Texas, Ohio.

I found my wife, Mary Ellen, at Texas. She was a widow with three children, Lila, Lawrence, and Sharon Soles. Their history is in Volume I of this series.

It was at Texas, Ohio, that I found my port of destination at last — in the tranquility of the Maumee River, in the happiness of my devoted wife, and with her, watching the kids grow to maturity, graduating from school, and leaving to make their own homes.

I roamed the seas under the flag of many countries, and sailed the seas of many lands. The many years that I sailed was an experience that a university could not give me.

Let me tell you something about my homeland, Denmark, as I knew it.

Denmark has an extended education in public and Latin schools and advanced schools are for girls and boys from the ages of fourteen and twenty-one years. The Folke Schools, or People's Higher Learning Schools, have students enrolled from everywhere in the world. The Copenhagen University, instituted in 1478, and the Aarhus University, less than one hundred years old, are the Universities in Denmark.

Denmark is about the size of Connecticut and has as possessions, Greenland, and the Faro Islands. In the past, Iceland, Norway, part of Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania, and the Virgin Islands were also Danish possessions. Denmark is an old government for the first ruling king, Gorm, was constituted 'Dana-law' in 985 A.D. The royal house of Denmark contributed kings of Norway and Greece, a queen of England, and a Czarina of Russia. Some were children of Frederick VIII of Denmark. The flag of Denmark has a saga telling of it falling from the heavens in a battle at Reval, Estonia, on June 15, 1219.

The Danes broke from Catholicism during the Reformation and are now Lutherans. The Ribe Cathedral was built in 1215 A.D., and the Roskilde Cathedral was begun in 1080 A.D., and is a resting place for past monarchs of Denmark.

Holidays celebrated in Denmark are: the first and second Christmas Days, first and second New Years Days, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and first and second Easter Days.

America's Fourth of July is celebrated in honor of America's independence. Grateful Danish emigrants, now prosperous American citizens, started to build a log cabin in 1912 in the Rebil-Bakke, North Juteland, and celebration of the Fourth of July began.

Denmark's more than nine hundred years of independence and freedom was eroded on the fatal morning of April 9, 1941, when Denmark capitulated to German superiority. Then —

'Our old warrior, 'Holger?Danske', at rest on his granite stone table in the catacombs in the "Kronberg Castle", at Elsinore, did not rise as in days past to answer the call to protect and defend the Danes. The fictional Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, and his beloved Ophelia, who rest in the old church cemetery, felt their bones shaking when the voice of Shakespeare declared, "There is something rotten in Denmark".

The Danish government is of democratic nature and was socialistically inspired. Expenses of churches and schools are paid by the state. Hospitals and old folk's homes are free. Day care centers open at 6 a.m., and close at 6 p.m., and a baby or child has full care, necessary shots, exercise and learns discipline, manners, and much what a mother would teach it, and the mother pays only about $1.50 per week for the child's care. All these expenses are paid from taxes, as high as forty-five percent.

Denmark is a mostly agricultural country. It exports, all over the world, such products as meats, meat products, port, bacon and fresh milk. Fresh milk used to be shipped daily to England.

Other Danish industries are shipbuilding, silversmithing, and an enormous line of fine furniture. The Floredanica porcelain was made in Denmark for the royal family of Russia. The Bing-Grondahl Christmas plates were started in 1895, and were followed by the Royal Copenhagen plate in 1908. The molds to these plates are destroyed on January first of each year and this leads to them being of antique value. The plates have high collectible value since they are individually hand painted, and burned at a high firing, and are made of fine porcelain.

Denmark introduced the world's first Christmas stamp in 1905; the first diesel driven ship in 1912; and the Folke Schools. The Social Security Act was suggested to President Roosevelt by America's first appointed woman Minister, Ruth Bryan Owen, Minister to Denmark. An 'Act of Social Security' had been influencing Denmark from before World War I.

The Thomas B. Thrige Company, Odense, Denmark, the hometown of Hans Christian Anderson, had the first patent on electric winches and steering gears for ships.

The famous Tivoli Garden in Copenhagen was first introduced to the world in 1848. It became Walt Disney's inspiration for creating Disneyland.

Many Danish-Americans have labored to enhance the prestige of the United States. Among them are Jacob Riis, reformer of the New York Police system, who was an author and journalist. Peter L. Jensen installed the first wireless station in California in 1909. He was co-inventor of the Magnavox loudspeaker. Gutsom Borglum, of Danish descent, was the sculptor of the heads of the American presidents that appear on Mt. Rushmore. Jean Hersholdt and Carl Brisson were famous actors. Victor Borge, pianist and comic; Lauritz Melchoir, the Metropolitan Opera Wagnerian singer; and William S. Knudson, of General Motors, were all Danes. Many Danish immigrants toiled and farmed land in the northern and western sections of America.

My autobiography that I have written, entitled, "The Odyssey of Hans Thrane" was written for our kids, and their kids, and for the privilege of being an American citizen in a great country. I hope that some day it can be published and become a legend.

Submitted by: Hans Thrane