I was born about noon on a Sunday, 27 January 1929, at Walnut Grove, Minnesota at the Gales Township farm home of Albert Leonard Dahlgren and Anna Carolina Lund. Grandparents of both my father and mother came in early pioneer days from Sweden and assisted in starting the Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in a country location about three miles north of Walnut Grove. I was raised as a Lutheran and my folks were religious and faithfully attended church services and other congregational activities. I was confirmed as a boy, but can recall having reservations about my confirmation. Chiefly these reservations came because I had read the Bible about the time I was eight years of age, and I knew that the Lutheran Church and the Catholic Church from which they sprang did not conform to what I had read in the New Testament. I attended Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota beginning my first two years of college in 1946, a college sponsored by the Lutheran Church. I seldom attended church, but did attend a Lutheran Church of another Synod at Brookings, South Dakota, where I attended South Dakota State College to complete my Bachelor of Science degree. I believe I was a somewhat serious and religious boy. My mother had introduced me to the Lord Jesus Christ, and she wanted me to be a minister or pastor. My father had always accompanied me to church, instead of letting Mother and me off at the church as so many other men in the community did on Sunday. I can recall Sunday School teachers who increased my faith in Jesus Christ, and I seemed to gain satisfaction in giving my pennies to the Sunday school offerings at church.
At South Dakota State I first heard the word Mormon and do not recall hearing of the Mormons before. The occasion was a dance at the Student Union. I was taking a dance class at the time and learned about and attended a dance where the band was the “Mormonaires,” an LDS dance band. I was impressed with the prayers offered at the beginning and end of the dance.
I received an assistantship to attend Utah State University for my M.S. in Wildlife Management beginning in 1950. My major advisor, Dr. Jessop B. Low, was LDS. The first fall I dated Carmen Lee who was LDS. I attended her ward meetings several times, but was quite detached, and did not feel the spirit at these meetings. I was impressed by two old men who were home teachers of Bill Woodland, an LDS boy with whom I studied biochemistry. The second summer of research, when Carmen and I were living at Fillmore and I was employed at a local service station, I put gasoline in the car of Marion G. Romney, who left me his card; I felt a power or strong impression about this man. When I took his card home to our cabin, Carmen explained that he was an Apostle in the Church. A neighbor across the street, a Mr. Jensen, came over to visit with me briefly one afternoon; I also felt a power or impression that I could not fully explain associated with this man. Carmen and I were married June 11, 1951. We attended church several times, but people were not friendly to us and we stopped doing so. The folks who rented us the log cabin we lived in, Lloyd and Ruth Davis, had left a seven-volume church history in the bookcase. I did extensive reading in it, and enjoyed the reading. I was also impressed by home teachers who came to the apartment house where we lived in Logan across the street from the 5th Ward, and taught those who lived there.
We moved to Huron, South Dakota in 1952 where I began work for the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks and lived at 917 Beach Ave., S.E. One night we were playing bridge with Chuck and Marge McClaine when Marge explained that an elderly LDS couple had called on her. As we went home that night, I asked Carmen not to let them in if they came by. I suppose this caused me to think back over my experiences in Utah. A couple of weeks later, I was mowing the lawn in front of my house when I saw the couple coming from the north. I shook hands with them and invited them in. This was Elder and Sister Tucker from Cedar City, Utah. He was 65 or older and had turned his coal mine over to his son to run when he went on a mission. When they entered our home, he said, “May the peace of the Lord Jesus Christ rest on this home.” It seemed an unusual saying, but I have always remembered it. We made an appointment to take the discussions. They taught with stick figures and scriptures. About the second or third discussion, Carmen’s Grandpa Rob Mc Quarrie, Grandma Lillie Eliza, and her mother, Lily Mae Lee came to visit. The Tuckers came to give the discussion and I was resisting them. I was twisting the scripture where Jesus Christ said, “Let the little children come unto me” as evidence that the LDS were wrong in not baptizing infants. It was a night of heated argument.
Each night when the Tuckers came to give a lesson, they would ask me to kneel by my bed that night and ask Heavenly Father if the things they had taught me were or were not true. I was too proud to do so. Somehow, I can’t remember how, I had begun reading in the Pearl of Great Price, although I had not read much in the Book of Mormon. One day I was at the office and determined to go home a little early and continue some of that reading. Carmen was in the kitchen fixing lunch and I was in the living room sitting in the rocking chair and reading. I cannot pinpoint the chapter and verse, but I was reading something that made me think, “Wow, wouldn’t that be something if it were true.” I also thought that there was no way to know whether it was true. Then I thought, “Heavenly Father, is it true?” Instantly it felt as though something shot through my body from my head to my toes, a warm feeling, and I knew it was true. I remember thinking about whether the Book of Mormon was true. I reasoned that it must be if the Pearl of Great Price was true. And Joseph Smith must be a prophet and the Church must be the true Church of Jesus Christ as I had just learned beyond doubt that the Pearl of Great Price was true. I did not mention this experience to Carmen, but kept it to myself.
A few days later the District Leader, an elderly Elder Wilkinson from Idaho Falls, Idaho came to visit. I believed that I had been so recalcitrant and argumentative that the Tuckers wanted his permission to stop teaching me. Elder Wilkinson asked me whether I would be baptized if I knew the Church was true. I replied that I had learned the Church was true, and yes, I would be baptized. On July 25, 1953, I was baptized in the basement baptismal font of a home chapel near Gettysburg, South Dakota. It was wonderful to learn that the Holy Ghost would immediately answer my prayer once I overcame my pride and simply asked. Joining the Church has been a profound influence on me and my children over the intervening years, and we hope to be an eternal family. We lived in the Midwest: South Dakota for 21.5 years, Iowa 13.5 years, and Wisconsin since July 1987 when we became members of the La Crosse Ward.