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PRESS RELEASE 10/4/11

Open House and Consignment Sale

Bookends on Main is  marking the store makeover with an Open House and consignment sale starting on October 12, 3:00-7:00pm.

Dr. and Mrs. Richard S. Ostenso have a personal story worthy of a novel.  In addition to their large family, they had a large library that is being offered for sale at Bookends on Main starting October 12, 3:00—7:00 P-M. The sale will run through the end of October. Part of the proceeds of the sale will be donated to GETSET-GO, a non-profit that provides education for Cambodian Girls.

The Ostenso library has some rare and collectible books on airplanes, science, furniture and children’s books. Most of the collection consists of non-fiction works on art, crafts, educational subjects, science and travel.

The following biography of Richard and Victoria Ostenso was prepared by Roy Ostenso:

Born in December 1923 half a continent apart, Richard and Victoria met by chance or providence on the other side of the world. Individually and together they led a life of travel, adventure and fulfillment.

Richard was born December 8, 1923 in Montevideo, Minnesota to parents of Norwegian and English ancestry. His father Nels’ work took the family to Ladysmith where Richard graduated from high school. The family eventually settled in Chippewa Falls. Dunn County farmers may remember Nels when he worked with the Federal Farm Loan program. After high school Richard began study to be an engineer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During his third year, the United States involvement in WWII began. He failed a hearing test and was disqualified from military services, but as with many of his generation, duty to serve a greater cause led him to join the American Field Service (AFS) as an ambulance driver. He was attached to the British Indian Army in India and as the war progressed he made his way to the end of the Burma Road, Kunming, China.

Victoria was born December 23, 1923 on the island of Trinidad, a British colony at the time. Both her parents were Chinese, with her mother’s mother being of Spanish ancestry. Her father was a businessman who had dealing in Hong Kong as well as family property in the Pearl River basin near Guangdong (Canton), China. Her parents took her and her siblings to Guangdong Province when Victoria was five years old. When she was nine, the family moved to Kowloon in Hong Kong Colony where she attended the Maryknoll American High School until late 1941.

On December 8, 1941 Hong Kong was attacked by the Japanese, coinciding with their attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 – a different date because of the international dateline. After three months of occupation Victoria’s family escaped Hong Kong and moved to Guangdong. She finished high school there before the family fled to Guilin to escape the advance of the Japanese, eventually fleeing again to Kunming where she stayed until the war’s end. The war in Asia ended on 15 August 1945.

After the end of the war, Richard obtained a job with the American Red Cross to build tuberculosis hospitals in China. While living in the American Red Cross Building in Kunming, he met Victoria who worked in the Red Cross Library. This is where the rest of the story begins.

Because they had British passports, Victoria and her family were repatriated to Shanghai at the end of October. Richard was transferred to Shanghai in November, but Victoria and her family were repatriated to Hong Kong in early December, 1945. The courtship survived this move and Richard’s subsequent transfer to Tianjin in far northern China. They married in Hong Kong on December 22, 1946, had the reception at the Peninsula Hotel, honeymooned in Repulse Bay and settled in Tianjin where Victoria had her first experience with winter.

By May 1947, the communists were taking over the Tianjin area and Richard was transferred to Japan. Their first son was born in Yokohama on Thanksgiving Day.  In May 1948 they returned to the United States.

Richard began medical school in Madison and Victoria raised an ever increasing family that eventually numbered ten. After medical school the family, four boys and one girl at the time, moved to the Panama Canal Zone where Richard had an internship at Gorgas Hospital. In 1960 he completed his otorhinolaryngology (ear, nose, and throat) residency during a one-year stay in Philadelphia.

The family returned to the Canal Zone with six children and stayed two more years. In 1962, they moved to Marshfield with Richard working at the Marshfield Clinic. After two years the final move was to Eau Claire with now nine children in tow. While establishing his private practice, the youngest daughter was born in 1964. Richard retired and passed away in the fall 1993. Victoria never retired from the job of caring matriarch and grand-matriarch with twenty grandchildren. Victoria lived a fulfilling and adventurous life, passing away in the fall of 2010.

Beginning with a travel-filled and adventurous romance, Richard and Victoria enjoyed exploring and learning about new people and places throughout their lives. Regardless of the family size, every summer there was an extended trip to Mexico, Canada, a world’s fair, a national park. One of the great adventures was a six-week drive to the Panama Canal Zone and back on the barely existent Pan-American Highway in the summer of 1966. After the nest was empty, Richard and Victoria traveled to both East and West Europe, Egypt, Israel and other Middle Eastern destinations. Before every journey began they read as much about the destination as possible. Every journey ended with artifacts, art or crafts collected along the way.

The greatest adventure of all was revisiting China in 1990 and 1992 with many of their children and their spouses. The first trip was a sentimental journey which included Shanghai, Guilin, Kunming, Guangdong and Hong Kong. The second trip took them up the Yangtze River, before the gorges disappeared, and terminated in Chongqing. After Richard’s death, Victoria returned again to China, again with some of her family. This adventure took her to Tibet, a place she always dreamed of visiting.