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FAMILY DAVE

Brief Bio

October 14th 1952 an early winter storm hit southern Manitoba. Helena Kehler was very pregnant with her 1st surprise, her second son. Feeling the anxiety of being seventeen miles away from the hospital and in labour, Jacob, her husband packed them both into the 1951 Chevy short box, step side truck and started towards Horndean, five miles south of the homestead. Arriving there, and faced with a huge snow bank, there was not was to get through. But fortunately Jake’s youngest brother Hardy lived in Horndean; he was the school principal and teacher.

Jake helped Helena over the snow bank and got into Hardy’s car and then they went the last 12 miles to Altona, and that evening I was born, David Anthony Kehler.

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I
Early Education

School had a very difficult start. All Dave could speak was Low German and the school teacher was determined to work this out of him. The teacher would severely reprimand him if he spoke in Low German instead of English; even to the point of giving him a spanking if he did not speak English on the playground. The school was a 1 room country school that had about 25 students in total, from kindergarten until grade 8.

Dave was very good at Mathematics and he learned best by seeing, touching and talking about whatever he was to learn about. This often landed him in trouble, for his talking to learn style was not appreciated by the teacher. However, in the environment where there are many grade in one room and the other grades are taught with each student there, he learned an amazing amount without ever reading a lot.

When he went to high school, he ran into a huge problem in grade 10. The school decided to change its format and to mark the students for the work done rather than with an exam format. Here Dave discovered that he had not maintained his reading level to the appropriate grade and as a result, never got past grade 10. This of course had a significant impact on the choices open to him, Bible School was no longer an option, he had not graduated and besides, he could not read well enough to hope to complete secondary training. More about that later.