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SHAWNEE, Okla. —
Gerhard
Laule’s parents
escaped from Soviet rule in East Germany in 1948
by pushing their 2-month-old son,
Laule’s older brother, in a baby
carriage into West Berlin, acting as
though they were going to work.
His parents were on the east side of
Berlin when the Berlin blockade
started,
Laule said. His father worked for a farmer who sold products
on
both east and west sides. “They
didn’t want to live in the Soviet
sector
of East Germany. One day my mother and father went over just
like
they were going to work — and never
went back,” Laule said. “They weren’t
able to take anything with them, just my
brother in a baby
carriage.” They
lived for a time in Wilhelmshaven, West Germany, a
city on the North Sea. That was where
Gerhard Laule was born in
1949.
His mother’s home was in what is now Poland. “She left her
home after the war. She couldn’t go back
to her home,” Laule said.
So the
family came to America to start a new life. Through a
U.S.
program for displaced people, a
Clarksville, Mo., farmer sponsored their
passage to the United States. His
parents agreed to work on the
farm. “That’s how we got to the
United States,” Laule said. He was 2
when they arrived here. Most of
Laule’s youth was spent in Missouri
and
around Chicago. They moved from O’Fallon, Mo., to Fort Smith,
Ark., in
1964, and later to Searcy,
Ark., where Laule graduated from high
school. He received a bachelor’s
degree in chemistry from the
University
of Central Arkansas and for several years, worked for the
Arkansas Department of Health analyzing
inorganic contaminants in
water.
Laule later took a position traveling around the state
certifying breathalyzers. “I
traveled around all the jails and
police
stations. When I first met Danielle, we would drive around and
I
would tell her, ‘I’ve been in that
jail,’” he quipped. Laule
completed a master’s degree in
instrumental sciences at the University of
Arkansas. After his master’s, he worked
for a year toward a doctorate in
physical chemistry at the University of
Oregon. He returned to
Arkansas and began a job search that
resulted in his accepting a position
on
the chemistry faculty at Seminole State College in 1988.
Laule
has lived in the Shawnee area
since then. While teaching at Seminole
State, Laule finished all the course
work required for a doctorate in
organic
chemistry. He has fulfilled all the requirements except for
the
doctoral dissertation, earning the
designation A.D.D. His love of
hiking started when he was studying at
the University of Oregon in
Eugene. “On the west side of
Eugene you have the coast range and on
the east side, the Cascades. You’re
about one-and-a-half hours from the
ocean and about an hour from the top of
the Cascades,” Laule said.
“I did
a lot of hiking there.”
Source: Shawnee News-Star July 28,
2008 |