Remembering our roots ~ Andrew ‘Clifford’ Sanden

John Godsman
Times Contributor

 

Clifford’s father Jens J. Sanden was born in Vester Hassing, Denmark in 1891, and came to Garner, Iowa in 1908, where he found work as a tiling contractor.
Clifford’s mother Anna Margaret Reiffenstein was born in 1893, the eldest of 13 children. Her parents Andrew and Katherine had come from Velby, Denmark to Garner, Iowa in 1892, on their honeymoon and stayed. Andrew worked on the railroad.
Jens and Annie were married in 1916, and that year the entire Reiffenstein family moved to the Standard Area, where they acquired land.
Clifford was born on April 1917, the oldest of five children. Times were very tough with dust storms and crop failures, so in 1921 they sold the farm and moved to Kelowna, where Jens continued tiling and worked for the highway department.
Missing Annie’s large extended family, they moved back to Alberta in 1925, and bought the home quarter section, one mile west of Hussar. Clifford recalls the trip back with the family and their meagre possessions, in a Model T touring car. The makeshift roads through the mountains were very steep, and rough, and in places, they often had to get out to push the car.
Clifford’s dad and mom worked hard side by side, from dawn into the night in the field and on the farm, while Clifford and his sister Marian watched the other children, kept the house running and did chores. His mother would stay up all night making clothing by hand, under a kerosene lamp.
Clifford was thrilled on his ninth birthday to get a small box of shiny new nails. Usually, his dad would put him to work straightening hundreds of used nails so they could be reused. All five children walked the mile to and from school in Hussar.
Clifford loved school, especially mathematics, history and spelling, and to this day has remarkable penmanship.
He left school at age 15, to help on the farm. He remembers spending hours behind a horse in the fields, and the salted boiled eggs his mother gave him for lunch that burnt his blistered lips. At age 18, Clifford assisted Arthur Toogood as the driver, mechanic and cook, when they took a busload of teachers to and from New York in an old refurbished bus. It had been converted so their passengers could sleep in it, and their meals were cooked on an outside stove. Arthur was the tour guide.
In 1939, Clifford purchased a new two ton Chevy truck for $1,276. He built the box and did custom trucking, hauling grain and coal, all loaded and unloaded with a steel shovel!
As a builder, Clifford was a natural engineer, designer and mechanic; he understood the properties of wood and metal, creating items that worked long before they were invented and mass produced. Examples include a loader, a cement mixer, an ice house, kids’ toys, a motor car and the new family home completed in 1967.
Clifford’s wife, Helen J. Thorssen was born in 1918 in Namaka. Her family originated in Sweden, immigrated to Wisconsin, then moved to Namaka in 1918, where her parents Theodore and Ellen had purchased land from the CPR. Helen was third of five children and they rode to and from Ellwood School on horseback.
After high school she attended Calgary Normal School, and her first teaching position was at Sunny Range. She boarded with Alice and Charlie Reiffenstein, a wonderful home away from home! Her annual salary including janitor work was $690 a year. Helen was vivacious, fun loving, hardworking and talented, and soon captured the heart of the humble, quiet, and quick witted Clifford! They were married in 1947, and moved to the home farm, after Jens and Annie retired to Bowness.
Clifford and Helen had seven children, 20 grandchildren, and 14 great-grandchildren, with more coming!
Clifford was a Leader of the Hussar/Chancellor 4-H Grain Club, Treasurer of the Hussar Seed Cleaning Plant for 25+ years, and a Director of the Original Hussar Credit Union for six years. Helen worked with the Ladies Aid, and helped form and lead the Hussar/Standard 4-H Clothing Club which ran for over 20 years.
Regretfully she passed away in 1996 at the age of 76. Clifford stayed at the farm until he was 96 years old, and is famous for his Cliff Hangers, his shoe horns, and garden. His difficult decision to move to the Wheatland Lodge was eased knowing his beloved farm is in the capable hands of son Peter.
There have been many changes in Clifford’s lifetime – one horse to teams of horses, to a John Deere tractor with steel wheels! The biggest change is the shift from labour-intensive back-breaking work … to our gift and evolution of the machine! There was no power, telephone, radio, TV, computers and no GPS in the early 20th century.
Both Clifford and Helen feel blessed to have raised their family in such a caring community with such wonderful neighbours and friends.