Liese Wiebe

1920 -

• Name	Liese Wiebe
  Born	1920	, Russia
  Gender	Male
  Interesting	life story
  Residence	Bef 1922	New Hamburg, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
  Eby ID Number	Waterloo-146563
  Person ID	I146563	Generations
  Last Modified	7 Nov 2024

  
  

• Notes

  Niagara-on-the-Lake man finds 1945 letter stashed in house then finds its writer New Hamburg author was at Bible School when she created time capsule Tara Walton/News services Liese Wiebe had all but forgotten the letter she'd written on Feb. 23, 1945. That would be the one she'd stuffed into a glass jar, along with a couple of King George VI pennies and Bible-related pamphlets, and then placed between the joists at the end of a second-floor crawl space under the roof. The letter tells of life in the big Niagara-on-the-Lake house, then a Mennonite Bible school and dormitory, and mentions her teachers by name. "We have had many a blessed hour within these walls," says the letter, adding later that "two precious souls found peace and received the Lord as their personal saviour." But at the end there also comes a plea: "When you find this letter, please write me, will you?" In the event, Jens Ramputh didn't do that, but he did hit the local phones when he discovered the jar a week ago while renovating his house. Wiebe, it turns out, still lives in nearby Virgil, and Ramputh was soon heading her way, the jar in tow. "She's still very coherent, and that was what was nice about it," says Ramputh, now on leave from his job as a United Nations airline pilot while his house is being renovated. "I suppose I expected somebody to find it," says Wiebe, who will turn 90 Nov. 5. Or, at least, she reckons she did when she first put the letter in the jar. "I never thought of it again. I certainly didn't think it would end up like this." A Russian Mennonite, she'd come to Canada with her family as a 4-year-old from what's now Ukraine, and settled in New Hamburg. When she wrote the letter as a 22-year-old, she was in the middle of year-long Bible studies '97 one of 40 or so students staying at a house with its own illustrious and tangled history. Originally built in 1794, it had been torched by the invading Americans during the War of 1812, and then rebuilt in 1820. Another fire in the 1930s prompted further modifications, and the place then served as a Mennonite Bible college from the Second World War until the mid-1980s. Ramputh is now busy restoring the house to its 1820 self, which is how Trisha Romance depicts it in her painting, White Christmas. "It's the epitome of the Georgian house," says Ramputh, who asked Wiebe if he could keep her original letter to include in a little exhibit about the place when it reopens as a bed-and-breakfast in the spring. "It's all on a grand scale." There is, however, still one mystery. Wiebe's wasn't the only letter in the jar. A second dispatch was penned by one of her three roommates, Elsie Fast, then 18. "This letter is very hard to write knowing it is to someone that I don't know," it says, before giving a detailed description of Fast herself: 5-foot-5, 120 pounds, hazel eyes and brown hair. Fast's letter also wants the finder to make contact. "When you find this letter, I want you to write to me and keep the pennies for a good luck piece." When Ramputh first started making phone calls, he was looking for anyone with the surname Fast. But while someone by that name didn't have any Elsies in the family, they just happened to know that a certain Liese Wiebe was living in a nearby retirement home. Wiebe says she hasn't had any contact with Elsie Fast since they were roommates, but maybe that will change, too. "I hope I can find the other lady," says Ramputh. "Somebody will know somebody." The Waterloo Region Record 4 Nov 2012

  
  

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  Born - 1920 - , Russia Residence - Bef 1922 - New Hamburg, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada  = Link to Google Earth