Introduction

It is interesting to wonder how the lives of Kenneth and Marian happened to intersect while each grew up in smaller towns in different states and then met in one of the largest cities in the United States.. There is a randomness of events in their lives that might seemed to have precluded their meeting each other, let alone ultimately committing themselves to one another. Yet perhaps the confluence of events predicted the ultimate outcome.

Kenneth's parents grew up in the same small farming community in Iowa and surely had many acquaintances in common. While Kenneth's mother Lorena Floye Beard (Garrett) was sometimes staying with relatives out of state, there must have been many instances where her path and that of Harley Garrett crossed in the Macksburg, Iowa area.

Similarly, Marian's parents, William Charles Kreie and Elida Christina Hollander, both grew up in a small Wisconsin city on shore of Lake Michigan. Their common German heritage was likely also a factor in why they met and decided to marry. They, too, must have had many acquaintances in common.

The following story, then, describes how Kenneth and Marian grew up and how events led to their meeting each other. What is missing, of course, is what is missing in many such attempts at writing a biography: what were the intimate and unknowable details of the attraction between Kenneth and Marian at that intersection in their lives.