Ray Kurth-Nelson:  

Born in 1951 in Minneapolis just south of Franklin Ave on 17th. Mother was depressed alcoholic elementary school teacher who took a bottle of barbiturates and a bottle of aspirin one evening because the doctor misdiagnosed her staph blood infection as a bruise, and her husband my sperm donor was out drinking on Franklin. She died. He kept drinking, married another alcoholic. He raped my sister. My sister stopped going to school, at age 11, and tried to raise her younger brothers. School and County removed us all, put us into separate foster homes. Steven Boyer, 11 years old at the time, was really terrible to my brother and me. But, GIGI was like a mother angel to us. She was a war bride from France. She met Fred Boyer during the march across France by the Allied troops. Came home to Wayzata with him. A year and one half later, my younger brother Danny and I were adopted by George and Berniece Harkess. She was nuts and he was also an abusive alcoholic. He owned Harkess Engineering. At age 13 or so, I found my way to the Henn Co Social Services division to tell them that our adoptive parents were beating us and were very verbally and emotionally abusive, but, the social worker, all he could focus on, was whether i remembered my birth name. He told me to go home and work it out. The New Hope Police came to our door one night, when i was 14, and wanted to take me out to the front yard to show me who was boss. I managed to talk my way out of that one. Eventually, after being whipped over the head and shoulders with the buckle end of his belt by George Harkess cutting my skin open0 because I had my elbows on the table at dinner, I called David Skogerboe and asked if i could go stay with him.. They took me in. Oh, BTW .. the minister from the Epiphany Episcopal Church in NEW HOPE, during all this??? came to me and told me I was a sick cancer, that everything was my fault, and I should straighten up. Thanks GOD!.. one of your own, i am sure. ANYWAY, so Danny my brother ended up in reform school, and then in a group home for boys, while all the good Christian CHURCH people told George and Berniece what wonderful people they were ... Oh let's see .. so .. i also stayed with Arne and Barb Grangaard for about Jan thru Aug 1968. They were pretty nice decent very good people. He was a counselor at Cooper. And then I had a short marriage and a son, then I wandered around the U of MN for about 10 years and picked up two d...Expand for more