Exiled from Home

Ventis Plume was born in Sauka, Latvia in 1932, where he stayed until grade five. His family had never left Latvia before they fled from Soviet troops in 1944 to Berchtesgaden, Germany. Ventis recalled fleeing their farm with everything they could bring on a horse-pulled cart. Their train to Germany was bombed, destroying all of their belongings. His father Janis, mother Anna, and brother John lived in Insula from 1945 to 1949. Ventis’ memory album (pictured below with the title “Wartime Log”) shows what life looked like inside Insula. From Hamburg, Germany, Ventis and his family sailed on the SS Ernie Pyle to New York. His family lived on a farmstead in St. Joseph, Michigan for two years with sponsorship from the National Lutheran Council. 

 In 1951, Ventis graduated from St. Joseph High School and worked at a metal shop while taking community college engineering classes. Ventis was called to serve in the Korean war by the U.S. Just three days after he was drafted, the war stopped. He served at Fort Knox, Kentucky, Fort Lee, Virginia, and Camp Chaffee, Arkansas. Once discharged from the service in 1955, Ventis moved to East Lansing, Michigan with his wife, Maija Slesers, and began studying forestry and economics at Michigan State University. 

In 1959, after finishing his degree in forestry, Ventis and Maija moved to Grangevilla, Idaho so he could work as a junior forester, fighting forest fires and planting thousands of trees. During this time, Maija drove herself sixty-five miles to the hospital to have their son Janis Juris in 1960 and daughter Mara Anna in 1961, and in 1964, their last daughter, Inta Maija. By 1974, Ventis and his family moved to Alaska to further his career with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, where he worked for 25 years, visiting many Native American reservations. In the 1990s, Ventis and Maija visited Latvia over a dozen times where they visited relatives and friends.

Maija Plume passed away in 2007 and Ventis Plume in 2022.1

Alida was born in Aduliena, Latvia in 1905 and lived with her father, two sisters, and one brother. Her mother passed away when she was young. Alida went on to study chemistry at a university in Riga Alida also joined the well known Dziesmu Vara choir with her talented voice and worked as an accountant.

The conflict of WWII separated Alida from her family, and she was transported by the Germans to work as a telephone operator in Erfurt, Germany. She made her way to Insula where she shared a 240 square foot room with the Plume family of four. She worked as the lead switchboard operator at Insula, joined the Insula choir, and learned to climb and ski the Bavarian Alps.

In 1949, along with the Plume family, Alida boarded the SS Ernie Pyle to immigrate to the U.S. and settled in Wisconsin. Ventis recalls how she would visit his family in Michigan and pick fruits from their trees. By 1951, Alida moved to Rochester, MN to work in the Mayo Clinic laboratory. She dutifully stayed there for 20 years until her retirement, never missing a day. She visited every continent during her retirement years and was a member of the YWCA, Lutheran Church of Minneapolis and St.Paul, Minnesota Orchestra Women’s Club, and the Mayo Clinic’s Women’s Club.

Alida Nussbaums passed away in 1992 and was buried in the Latvian Memorial Park, in Elka Park, New York.2