N.C.Berg

I was getting ready for Winter, cleaning out the old gene pool and came upon something interesting near the bottom. My grandfather and namesake, Neil C. Berg emigrates from Denmark at the age of 16. He went to back to school, learned English (no accent), and volunteered when WW I broke out. He returned a shell-shocked Gunnery Sergeant, baggage he dragged around the rest of his life. 

Then things get a little murky. I know he went to the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, before marrying Grandma in 1920, and possibly after. He also worked in California, but I'm not certain of the timing of that. I do have records that indicate he was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1920, the same year as he married and took his first church in Nebraska.

The report card below and a diploma indicate he apparently went back to school and graduated later from Des Moines University in the Spring of 1928, The sequence of events becomes a bit fuzzy. He had nice neat consistent report cards right across the board. No one every implied that N.C. was not intelligent or well read. Hell, he even picked up bonus points for Chapel Attendance.

These dates only came important when I Googled the history of the demise of Des Moines University. I recall him talking about student unrest, but apparently more than I realized and he was in the last graduating class.

"...things came to a head when board chairman Thomas T. Shields fired the entire faculty on May 11, 1929. A few hours later a riot broke out among the students. Angry students marched on the administration building in the afternoon, and that night 150 students attacked the building where the board of trustees was meeting. They threw eggs and rocks and attempted to break down the door to the room where the board members were hiding. Eventually police drove the students from the building, but not before they had wrecked the front office of the school administration building. The school closed in September 1929."