Jamie Hauser

You can’t have too many friends. One enemy is too much, but you can’t have too many friends. Also God answers prayer. He gives you smarts for one thing and some little things he takes care of. I grew up very poor and I’m not rich by any chance. But I have all these things, that’s a miracle that I’ve got all these things. I attribute it that God has been good to me and I’ve served him.

Jamie Hauser

My name is Jamie and I’m 82 years old. I have three brothers: William, Phil, and John, all younger than me. I always wanted a sister though. My father died so we didn’t have any money. Nobody told us we were poor, though. We didn’t know we were poor. Now I know I was poor, but I was living a good life. I loved it. We did not have a refrigerator. My brothers would take a wagon and go down to Broadway and get ice in the wagon and bring it home. We had no hot water. To get hot water you had to go down and light some scary thing with a match. Today everybody’s got hot water.

My story is somewhat about tradition. I love tradition. Every Sunday at our house, it was game-day. We’d go to church and in the afternoon, the kids would all come to our house to play games and eat popcorn. My favorite game was Battleship.

When I was ten years old, my mother noticed I had curly toes. She took me to the doctor and he said I had scoliosis. I had to go to the children’s hospital in St. Paul when I was eleven and I ended up staying in the hospital for three years.

At the hospital there was a two-year-old little Indian girl. Her name was Rose Marie Bullhead and I just loved her! So they gave her to me. I was an eleven year old and they gave her to me to take care of. We named her Papoosie and that started my love for caring for children.

At the hospital, there were thirty kids in this big room. Each had a bed, but that’s all you had was a bed. You had no nightstand, nothing. So, we had to kind of make our own fun. We had a parrot in the room and he woke us up every morning, “Wake up! Wake up! Arck!” We’d get so sick of that parrot.

My mother came every weekend to the hospital. You could only see your mother Saturday or Sunday. She took the streetcar from Minneapolis to St. Paul every weekend to see me. But I only saw my brothers once—they were like strangers when I came back.

When I was in the hospital, I had five surgeries. They were trying to straighten out my toes and they put casts on my feet for six months! They thought I had polio when I was growing up. But I went to a neurologist and she said, you never had polio, you’ve got Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease.

In 30 years I worked at many different jobs. I went to college and after I graduated from Business College I became a secretary in the Minneapolis public schools. I was also part of the Finance Department Safety and I had to decide if a school was safe. I also worked in the library. I would plan field trips for kids. We had lots of exciting things happen on those field trips.

I taught Sunday School for fifty-five years and I loved that. I hated to give it up, but couldn’t do it anymore because I couldn’t walk the steps. I also had a kids club at church on Wednesday night for forty years.

After I retired, Mrs. Anderson, her husband and two kids lived with me in my basement. Today I like to travel. I drove to Guatemala, Mexico, Disney World, Grand Canyon, Glacier Park, Yellowstone Park, the Black Hills and Branson. I also like to spend time with friends.