By Elinor Wright & Martie Wilson

Martie and I answered the call.  Earlier in the day about one in the afternoon Dean Christian telephoned me that he and Joan had their life-story written. He said, “Can you come over to hear me read it?  I’m worried about your being able to read my writing.”

Martie could come, so we listened to the story of the Christians.  Here it is as we heard it:

Joan shared first:  It was one of those warm spring nights in Minnesota in the year 1934 where everything is wonderful.  Dean and I were sitting high up on a Ferris wheel at the Minnesota State Fair – getting acquainted.  He was 18 and I was 17.  He was quite a talker, and I was fascinated by his many stories.  The Ferris wheel was stuck, and we sat there for hours not minding that it was uncomfortable and scary. 

That’s how we met.  He was a friend of my girl friend Phyllis.  The next day he called me asking for a date.   And so it began.  Seven years later we were married. I was a secretary at Mason Publishing Company working as a proof reader of legal books in Shakopee, and Dean was working for Donaldsons in Minneapolis.  We lived in Stillwater and commuted.

We moved to Stillwater where I had a good job - $22.50 a week! I got a better job about a year later, and we moved to St. Paul and then to Mankato where I had a better job.  I quit that job and started a sport shop with a very nice man, Warren Denison.  We did very well, but Warren needed more money as he had a big family of five kids.  We had only two.  So his dad bought me out all on very good terms.

Warren was my best friend, and I learned a lot from him: not to be afraid to invent!  He invented the Johnson Fishing Reel. 

I got a job as a pharmaceutical salesman (for Medical Detailer),   calling on doctors.  My minor at the U. of M. was biology, and I found it a great help in learning all the medical terms and how to use the drugs, etc.  I studied all the medical books.   I found that almost all the doctors taught me a good deal.  I did well and worked for this big drug company for almost 15 years. 

Then I decided to go on my own and I took a job with a doctor, Carl Canfield, a friend who started a drug company.  I worked only on commissions, and he got me another company – a surgical supply house.  This way I had two checks every month.  Then I got three more drug companies and got five checks every month. 

I liked being on my own.  I didn’t have to answer to anyone but myself.  I also made more money.

During my years with the big company, I sold a chemical compound that was used in surgical procedures.  I talked another young friend into making products that contained this compound (methylbenzothonium).  I had him put this compound in a solution to wash patients in the nursing homes.  It stopped all decubitus ulcers that were common in nursing homes.  I also put it in a body powder and in lotions and creams. 

I knew it!  I knew how to sell methylbenzothonium!  Part of my job was to go to every town and get all the doctors together and demonstrate how it worked and to get them all to agree to use it. All the gowns, caps, surgical masks used in surgery were washed a certain way and treated with it.  When those clothes got wet, it instantly activated the methylbenzothonium.   

We made a lot of money.  I sold all of it and eventually the company sold for $80 million dollars.   I didn’t get too much of the money as I was not a partner, but I had stock, etc.  I did have a contract for making the invention so the new company (Coloplast) had to pay me as long as my wife and I lived.

“Dean has another invention that he hasn’t done anything about.  It’s a good invention that he says will someday pay off – how to stop Lyme Disease.”  Most people tuck their pants into knee boots and duct tape the boots to their pants. He says ticks are mostly on the ground and jump on you and immediately start climbing up.  He’s invented a special stirrup sock with a plastic inverted cuff with permanone which kills the tick as it tries to climb up.

Joan shared some more:  We had gone on lots of other trips besides Yellowstone.  We took four cruises – to Alaska, Hawaii, Venezuela and the Panama Canal.  We’ve gone to Scandinavian countries, Germany, Austria and others in Europe.  We went to South America through the Panama Canal on a freighter.  There were eight of us.  Everything was just as clean as a regular cruise and not as expensive.  

We took a lot of trips, but when all was said and done there is no place better than Sand Lake – right here!

Now we’re in our ‘twilight years’ and find living very difficult.  Disease of some kind or other takes over and you wonder when the end will come; but we take it all with a grain of salt and try to ‘play our deck of cards.’  God has a super plan for all of us.

I have fibromyalgia, arthritis of the spine and Parkinson’s disease.  Dean has been a wonderful caretaker for these eight years.

I worked at the University in Mankato, about 7 years, I think.  I worked in the theater. That was fun.  Kids were on the stage.  One night a kid wore two different colored shoes.   I noticed one was black and one was brown.  It was so much fun.

Joan added that her other career was cleaning ladies houses for $1 a day.  She was born 1918 in St. Paul.

Dean and Joan both say they love living up at the lake.  Dean added that if he had his way, and Joan didn’t have her ‘troubles’ they’d move up here.  But as it is they need to be closer to medical facilities.

How did they end up at Sand Lake? Dean said that his folks owned a resort about 80 miles south of here on Mitchell Lake.  Dean’s dad was a bank examiner and lost his job during the depression.  He told his family they were going up north and buying a resort and would make a living there.  He had a good rifle, good shotgun and good fishing pole, and they would grow a garden.

Later, when Dean and Joan looked for a place to have a cabin they had an old friend who took them around to look at places.  They only knew Little Sand Lake and had checked out places there.  Then, in 1972, they saw signs and discovered Big Sand Lake and two lots for sale on Eggar Rd.   Paul Bloom had just made a down payment on the other lot, and Dean thought this one was a pretty good one.  “It was all brush and mosquitoes like mad,” he said.  “We camped here the first summer and put up a screen house by the lake.  In the evenings we would sit in the screen house and play cards by gasoline lantern.” 

Dean and Joan also vacationed to the southwest in a trailer when the kids were little.  They started out with a tent, then a small trailer, then a bigger one.  Over the years they had three Airstreams and an Avion.  They went to Spokane to Dean’s brothers and took in all the parks on the way.  In the southwest, they hunted various stones in desert areas.  They took group hikes.  Everyone in the group was musical, playing banjos, guitars, harmonicas. Joan added, “We’d have bonfires at night and lots of music.  Once when we camped in the desert, Dean went to split some wood for a camp fire and the axe bounced right off the wood – it was ironwood.”

They spent several months in the desert area living in Airstream trailers. Two of the places they stayed were Ajo and Why, Arizona.   Joan asked, “Why would anybody live there?   We wonder how it’s all changed now.” 

After the kids were grown, they went south every winter.  They would go to Corpus Christi – a 65 mile long island and camp on the beach. .  Dean said they would meet all kinds of people:  “If you go to a hotel or motel, you go to your room and hardly meet anyone.  But when you go camping, you can hardly get your camp set up when people start coming over to visit.”

     Joan went on:   “Dean had a 4-wheel drive job and would drive down the beach about 10 miles and park, put on his waders and go fishing.  One day he no sooner than got parked and was fishing when another vehicle arrived and parked – a little too close for comfort, Dean thought. 

Dean continued:  “This guy came on a tiny little motorcycle about this high. (Dean holds up his hand, not very high.)  “He looked a lot like a hippie if I ever saw one.  I caught a big fish that fought like mad – I had a light line, 6 pound test, on my fishing pole.  When a wave came, I’d back up on beach and hold him where it was.  I kept doing that, using the waves to help bring the fish in.”

“The fellow came by and I hollered, ‘Grab that hook and gaff my fish.’   He jumped off his tiny motorcycle and waded out and grabbed my fish.

“The fellow introduced himself, ‘I’m Arthur Murray and I don’t dance and we live on 42nd street.’”  

Dean and Joan met the fellow’s wife and three or four dogs that slept in the trailer with them.  It turned out that Arthur Murray was one of the guys who worked on the Atomic bomb. He told Dean that he wrote two volumes on the synthesis of radioactive isotopes.    They lived in Los Alamos, New Mexico.   

Dean said when they got home, Joanie looked up the volumes in the college library and saw that they were really there.   Next year  Dean and Joan saw Art in Corpus Christi and told him they got his books. “Art asked if we read them,” and Dean replied, “Read them?  We couldn’t even lift them!”

Dean has won many awards for shooting – competition pistol, rifle, shotgun.  He said, “I didn’t devote as much time to it as I should because I had a family.”  He’s really proud of winning the State Champion Trap Shooting in Senior Vets Division in 2000 “when I was 84 years old.  It isn’t as high an honor as champion [in the class] open to anyone, but when you’re 84 and you win anything you’re pretty lucky.”   

Dean shared, “The best advice I ever got was from Warren Dennison.  I always had a lot of ideas and thought they were junk.  Warren said, ‘Try it – it might fly.’   I have a patent on a cabin (like this) for an artificial log house made out of PVC pipe, light weight, and all the insulation is inside the pipe.  It’s all pre cut, as easy as can be.  Anyone could make it.  But I’m ahead of my time.  I think something like this will be done.  If they can make your dash board look like it’s made out of wood, anything can look like wood.”

Dean has also patented cement blocks you put underneath [the cabin] filled with foam.  He said he thinks they have something like it out now.

He goes on to say, “I have a new idea now which I can’t divulge.   The company was paying me but quit, and I’ve had to write them twice threatening to turn the case over to an attorney.  Now they’ve been in touch and want to buy my idea and say it will be settled up in 30 days.”

The best advice Dean ever gave:   “Quit smoking. I wrote a paper on it and a lot of people have quit because of it.  I tried marketing this, but you should have a lot of promotion, and that takes a lot of time.  At 91, I don’t have time to be tied down too long.”  Joan added, “A lot of fellows have quit.”

Dean is also an author.  He says he has lots of stories he doesn’t have completed yet. He wrote a story, “Just by Chance,” that was published in The Accurate Rifle in the February 2004 issue.  Joan added she was published, too.  In Airstream, I think.”

Joan was asked about her philosophy of life:  “What’s my philosophy of life, Dean? “  He replies, “Love.”

Joan said, “I know opposites sure attract, because Dean and I are sure opposites.  He’s everything I’m not, and I’m everything he’s not.   He’s like black and I’m like white, just the opposite.  But it’s worked for 67 years.”

Dean’s philosophy is quit smoking, be happy and have a dream. He said, “If you start saying I’m too darned old, or I don’t have time to do this, pretty soon you quit doing anything.  Happiness doesn’t cost money.  You can’t buy happiness and can’t buy love.  People think they need lots of money.  They do need enough money to be comfortable and have a good life, but money can’t buy love or happiness.”

He says, “We’ve had a good life.  You can mourn only just so long, and I’m sure a psychiatrist would tell me I didn’t mourn enough or in the right way, but we did the best we could and it’s all anybody can do, and we do it all - a day at a time.”

Joan adds, “We still laugh.  I don’t know why, but we make the best of it.  One day walking through Walgreens with my friend, a lady ran up to me and hugged my waistline and said, ‘Keep it up, you’re doing just great.” 

We’ve had a lot of friends and unfortunately most of them are gone. 

We all have our hopes and beliefs, but what difference does it make?  We only have one life and that’s it.”