Elizabeth Johanna Vant

Elizabeth (Christensen) Lillestrand married Irel G. Vant in 1945, after the death of her first husband, Karl Bernard Lillestrand (1942). And she was known to my brothers and sisters and me as Gramma Vant. Gramma Vant was fun. She enjoyed life and she wanted everyone around her to enjoy it, too.

When I was very little, the family packed up for two weeks in the summer and headed for Minneapolis. Back then, Irel Vant was still working (he ran a trucking company), and he got up early. Gramma got up even earlier to get breakfast going for him. All of us kids would be asleep in the living room. Gramma would make her way into the kitchen and turn the light on over the sink. Then she would turn the tap on the get water for coffee. That was my cue to get up. I would step over brothers and sisters and make my way to the kitchen, and I would watch Gramma chop potatoes and cook pork chops or bacon. When the coffee was ready, she would give each of us some in a big mug. And we would sit and watch the sky brighten and drink our coffee. We whispered some, but not much, because Gramma didn't want us to wake anybody else up--although I don't know how any of them slept through frying bacon and percolating coffee. Once Grampa Vant got up, everyone else did, too. Grampa Vant didn't know how to do things quietly....

Gramma Vant's two major cooking tasks for us were lefse and her little dinner rolls. I'm afraid the secret to her dinner rolls left the earth with her. I've never been able to duplicate them, and Jody tried to figure out the recipe by watching Gramma whip them up and was never able to get the exact recipe.

After Grampa Vant retired, they travelled more. And they played a lot of cards. Thirty-one and cribbage were favorites.

One of Gramma Vant's greatest abilities was in sewing. She could whip out dresses and shirts faster than anybody I ever saw. She made almost every dress I ever saw her wear until she was well into her nineties.

In the last year or so of her life, I think her biggest disappointment was her loss of sight. Not only because she could no longer see the people around her, but because she could no longer work her word puzzles. When Gramma wasn't sewing or cooking, you could pretty much bet she would have a puzzle book and a pencil in hand.