A Foot in Two Worlds: Converging Cultures Build the American Dream
by Charlie Langton, Vesterheim’s Communications & Marketing DirectorPete Espinosa’s maternal grandmother almost didn’t survive her immigrant journey from Norway, when the ship that carried her sank in New York Harbor. His paternal grandfather and grandmother fled the Mexican Revolution that began in 1910, a struggle that lasted almost ten years. His mother and father met during a downpour in Mason City, IA, when they took shelter in the same doorway, and their two very divergent backgrounds converged to find strength in their similarities rather than division in their differences.
Pete Espinosa, a 1981 graduate of Luther College in Decorah, IA, is a retired IBM Executive and currently the CEO of Mortgage Cadence, an Accenture Company. He is a member of the Board of Regents of Luther College and the founder and owner of Pulpit Rock Brewing and The Landing Market in Decorah, IA. He serves as an advisor to Limelight Health in San Francisco, CA, and he and his wife Kari are supporters of Decorah’s ArtHaus. By any measure, Pete Espinosa can be considered a successful man, and he built that success on what two generations from two cultures passed on to him. He has kept a foot in many worlds, Norwegian and Mexican, past and present, and his life is the culmination of a quintessential immigrant story.
From Norway to Ottosen
Anna Edwards, just 13, was seven miles off the coast of New York with her family, heading for Ellis Island, when their vessel began to sink. Ship after ship went right by and didn’t stop, for it was often a ploy of “pirate ships” to lure an unsuspecting craft by feigning trouble, and then rob it. They would all drown! Just as their boat was going under, an Italian ship saved them and brought them to Ellis Island. “Our family has always had a soft spot for Italians,” Pete Espinosa says. It was 1893 when the Edwards family made their perilous arrival in New York. They had traveled from a farm near Preikestolen—Pulpit Rock— and Stavanger in Norway, and they lost everything they owned when their ship sank. “It’s interesting to think about taking everything you own and leaving a country that speaks your native language,” Pete reflects. “You can’t take everything you own by boat, you just take what’s most critical to you—but it’s the land of opportunity! There are two reasons you immigrate: You’re either not safe where you’re at, or there’s better opportunity where you’re going. It’s either push or pull. To go to a small town in Iowa, where there were other Norwegian families— that’s what you did, find familiar people who were there before.”
The Edwards family knew other Norwegian families that had settled in Ottosen, Iowa, and they went there to live, since they had nothing. Ottosen still exists—a tiny little town, perhaps just 20 people living there now—but it used to have a school and a big Lutheran church that continued to operate for over a hundred years. “They had a church service there last year as a closing celebration,” Pete recalls. “Everybody came back from all over the U.S. We took my mother, and she told some great stories about how, in those days, the men sat on the left and the women sat on the right during the church services, and the kids typically sat with their mothers on the right. In the basement we went through all the pictures on the walls and we found all the baptism certificates of the kids in my mother’s family. Even though they were born in this country and were baptized here, through the years their baptism certificates were all still in Norwegian in this little community.”
Anna, the eldest of five children, married Peter Holt in 1904. The son of immigrant parents, he was born in Illinois in 1876. He farmed in Ottosen, and he and Anna lived there all their lives. They raised nine children—Mavis, Pete Espinosa’s mother, was the youngest in the family. Anna died of leukemia when Mavis was only 16, and Peter died in a car accident when Mavis was 21.
All of Anna and Peter’s nine children went to college, several graduating from Luther College in Decorah, IA. “My mother was tall, around five-foot-nine, and was a renowned high-school girl’s basketball player,” Pete explains. “I think her team made the state tournament one year, and she was awarded a college basketball scholarship.” Mavis Holt attended Hamilton Business College in Mason City, and there a rainstorm changed her life.
From Mexico to Mason City
Pablo Espinosa found himself languishing in a Mexican prison until he was liberated by the famous Pancho Villa. For almost a decade, Mexico was in upheaval, with Francisco Madero unseating Porfiro Díaz as president, and then Victoriano Huerta unseating Madero. No matter who was in power, the peasant farmers suffered and were imprisoned, which gave rise to the great Mexican revolutionaries Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa. Luckily for Pablo, Pancho Villa busted him out of jail. He looked at the situation in his country and sized up his options. The Edwards family may have felt immigration’s pull of opportunity, but Pablo and his wife-to-be, Petra Olvera, definitely felt its push. Pablo decided to go to the United States, undocumented, swimming across the Rio Grande. In those days, women could cross the border and shop in the U.S. for a nickel, which is what Petra did. They met on the other side, and kept moving north.
Pablo tried his hand at a few jobs in the south—his grandson recalls stories Pablo told him about the mosquitoes in Louisiana and how difficult it was to work in that environment. They moved from place to place and, when they reached Kansas, Pablo married Petra.
Pete remembers other stories his grandfather shared, “He worked one day in a coal mine, and said, ‘That’s not for me!’ So he learned the railroad business, cleaned switches, ten cents an hour, working ten-hour days, earning a dollar a day in the railroad switching yards, first on the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe railroad, then in Mason City, IA.” Mason City is where the two finally settled, living in an ethnic area north of town that doesn’t exist any more. He lived in the town for 70 years and worked as a foreman for Lehigh Cement Company for 27 of those years. Somewhere in this journey, they became citizens and Pablo became Paul.
Petra lived to be 95 years old. Paul, born in San Julian, Jalisco, Mexico, was either 103 or 105 when he died in 1986. Together they had 17 children, all of whom went to school, but only Paul Jr., Pete’s father, finished high school. Pete explains, “My dad was a pretty serious guy. He had a very hard upbringing. He grew up in a house with a dirt floor and was the fourteenth of seventeen children. They all worked. It wasn’t that none of his brothers and sisters wanted to finish high school. It was hard for them to leave school in the spring to go work in the fields. And then they weren’t done until school had already started in the fall, so they were always behind when they got to school in the fall, and they always had to leave again early in the spring. It was hard to keep up.”
Two Cultures Converge
There’s definitely a touch of romance in how an Iowa rainstorm brought Paul Espinosa, Jr. and Mavis Holt together: A Mexican American who hadn’t spoken English until he went to school meets a Norwegian-American college girl, and they fall in love. Pete reflects on how unlikely it was, “She was in
Mason City, going to Hamilton Business College. Her side of the family was very well educated, the kids all went to college, a lot of them were Luther College grads. He was working, post-high school. They happened to step in the same doorway during a rain shower. . . .”
Mavis told Pete that three things really struck her about his father: First was his positive, enthusiastic attitude. Second was the poverty and the obstacles he had dealt with in his life. The third was his eyes. Probably in that doorway the eyes struck first.
“They started talking and hit it off. You would never think that their worlds would mesh,” Pete relates. “Yes, there were differences, but there were more commonalities. Even as a kid I saw, when we got together, that my mother’s family was a strong family. They took care of the elderly, always including them in things. There was a lot of food, a lot of fun. I saw the same when the Mexicans would get together—the elderly always included, a multi-generational thing, a lot of food, a lot of enjoyment. They might look different—one’s very fair, and one’s very dark, coming from different parts of the world—but both with Norwegians and Mexicans, family comes first, faith comes first. To the Norwegians, at least to the Norwegians that I was involved with, that faith was Lutheranism, to the Mexicans it was Catholicism.”
Of course some problems about the marriage naturally arose with their extended families. One involved faith: Paul converted from Roman Catholicism and he and Mavis raised their children Lutheran. Mexico strongly identifies with Catholicism and for a time some members of Paul’s family thought this was a kind of defection. “I won’t say they rejected us,” Pete observes, “it was just, once you leave, it’s a different existence.”
There were those among Mavis’s family, too, who could not understand why a girl with so much promise—the valedictorian of her class—would marry a man with only a high school education. “She had one brother who was a state senator and her other brothers owned insurance agencies and car dealerships. They were successful people. Sometimes when she would visit her family, she would basically hide my father to keep him away from animosity and antagonism.”
Pete reflects, “I think my dad got hit with the lucky stick when he fell in love with this attractive, athletic, incredibly intelligent, gifted Norwegian woman. My mother was just an exceptional person. She lost her mother when she was 16, she lost her father when she was 21. She’s had a lot of adversity to overcome in her life. Both my parents did. But rather than losing hope, my mother is absolutely one of those deal-withthings, move-forward sort of people. My parents were big on preparing us for the future: When you’re on your own, you’re going to face adversity, and it’s not what happens to you that affects how you end up in life, it’s how you handle it.”
Paul and Mavis settled in Mason City. Because Paul was from a huge family and they all married other Mexicans, there were Mexican relatives galore in Mason City. Mavis had only come for college—her family still lived in Ottosen—so there were no Norwegian relatives in town. Pete remembers, “When I was in high school, in my grade there was Frank Baltierra— his dad was my first cousin, because my dad was the youngest. Mike Espinosa, my first cousin, was also in my grade. My
Paul and Petra Espinosa with five of their sons. Front row: Paul (Pablo), Paul, Jr. (Pete’s father), Petra. Back row: Lawrence, Floyd, Leo John.
Paul and Petra Espinosa with five of their daughters. Front row: Josephine, Paul, Petra, Frances. Back row: Susie, Della, Kathryn.
cousin Vince Chavez was two years ahead of me. My first cousin, Jeannie Rubalcava, was one year older than me. You figure, if my dad’s the fourteenth of seventeen, there’s a lot of cousins.”
And yet, Pete says, they probably spent more time with Mavis’s relatives than they did Paul’s. Pete’s parents bought a house on the south side of Mason City, and the symbolism of that move had repercussions. As Pete explains it, “The north end of Mason City was the ethnic side of town—it’s where my dad had grown up—and suddenly we were living in the south end. It added another thing to the list: My father married an Anglo, a Norwegian gal, he left the Catholic faith, and he bought a house on the far side of town, away from everyone else. I’m sure they viewed it like he was leaving the family. I think he just wanted to have a chance to advance his life and start anew, and not be tied down to a lot of the stuff he’d grown up with, in terms of poverty and not going to school.” Pete recalls that, when he was in tenth grade, he introduced himself to a boy opening the locker next to his, and the boy replied, “Oh, my name is Mike Espinosa.” He was Pete’s first cousin and had lived in Mason City all his life, but the two had never met.
To be with family, the Holt-Espinosas more often traveled to visit his mother’s Norwegian relatives in Ottosen. Driving there took less than an hour and a half. They didn’t have a lot of money, so to the kids it seemed like a vacation when they went. There in that small, tight Norwegian community, Pete experienced the strong bonds of extended family and absorbed the values of education and hard work.
The family wasn’t totally disconnected from its Mexican side, however. Sometimes they would go to his Aunt Susie’s for family gatherings. Pete remembers, “Going into the north end of Mason City to Aunt Susie’s house was going to another
world. You’re in the barrio. Susie and my dad spoke Spanish when we would go there. My mother didn’t really fix Mexican food—my father would fix it once in a while—but we had my Aunt Susie, and that was always a highlight! Every once in a while Aunt Susie would make an extra batch of tortillas and sopa, and rice and beans, and bring it over. That was my favorite thing—it was super-yummy, homemade stuff.”
Pete and his family also attended social gatherings organized by the of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), and they hosted at least one such gathering in their home. Mexicans from the North Iowa area would come together to welcome new families, share food, and play music, something Pete’s grandfather loved. “When the LULAC brought all of these people together, the music was flowing,” Pete remembers. “The guitars came out and we were singing and dancing. It was very festive. I spent a lot of time with my grandfather when I was a kid,” Pete elaborates, “and by that time he was in his nineties. He loved music and, although I never saw him play an instrument, he said he played guitar. But he was a great singer, loved to sing—totally into music. His favorite song was ‘Allá en el Rancho Grande,’ about a rancher living happily on his big spread, and he also liked to sing ‘La Cucaracha’—La cucaracha, la cucaracha, ya no puede caminar. . . . It’s a famous song, but very few people realize it is about a cockroach smoking marijuana.”
Pete was the youngest of the six children—Sherry (1944), Paul III (1946), Pamela (1948), Debbie (1954), Ann, (1958), and Pete (1959). There was a large age-gap between the older children and Pete. When he grew up, his parents were in their forties or fifties, but when they were younger, his mother fixed Norwegian food for the older kids sometimes. By the time Pete came along, their diet—except for what Aunt Susie brought them—was strictly all-American: “Chicken, pork chops, french fries,” Pete says. “What everybody was eating.”
At the holidays, though, there was lefse, and Mavis put candles on the Christmas tree. “They were actual candles that she had from when she was a little girl, candles they’d brought from Norway,” Pete explains. “Each had a little holder with a little clip to fasten it to the Christmas tree, and you’d put
The Espinosa children. Front row: Ann, Debbie, Pete. Back row: Sherry, Paul, Pam. Pete’s sister Debbie was tragically killed walking to school a week before her seventeenth birthday, when a young man with a new motorcycle lost control of his bike and hit her.
a little candle in one and light it. I asked her if it would be dangerous having a lit candle on a Christmas tree, and she said, no, everybody had a candle that it was their job to watch. You didn’t just light it and leave it, you lit it and you’d watch it. Everyone had their own. She still has those candles today and puts them on her Christmas tree at her house in Mason City, my parents’ house. She doesn’t light the candles anymore, but they’re still there, from when she was a little kid.”
Paul was a strong disciplinarian, because that was something that he had grown up with. He had strict rules. “All the other kids got to stay out later than us, all the other kids had more flexibility,” Pete remembers. “If he told you to be home at a certain time, you’d better be home then, or you would be punished. And my sisters talked about how other girls were allowed to date, or could stay out later on dates— not in our house!”
Both Mavis and Paul were very supportive parents, inspiring their children to strive, and encouraging them to do well in school. “My mother especially pushed us to dream big, to believe that we could accomplish anything, and was very much ‘achievement oriented’ and ‘you can do it,’ though not in an obnoxious, pushy way. Having a mother like that means the world,” Pete says.
But the kids didn’t always consider it support at the time. Pete tells a story that, although he tried to get straight As, difficult sciences like chemistry and physics kept him from his goal. In his sophomore year of high school he resolved to succeed, and he worked very hard in chemistry to get his grade up to a low A. Paul and Mavis were scheduled to go to a “back to school” night and, when Paul saw the name of Pete’s chemistry teacher on a list of instructors, he exclaimed, “Merlyn Iverson? I’ve known Merlyn Iverson since I was a kid!” Between his own hard work and a possible “in” with his teacher, Pete was sure he had it made.
When Pete got to class the next day, Merlyn Iverson said, “I didn’t realize you were Paul Espinosa’s kid. I had a great time catching up with your dad.” Hope was growing—but then Iverson said, “By the way, your dad told me to give you a B.” Shocked, Pete exclaimed “What? What do you mean?” Iverson explained he had told Paul that Pete was working very hard, progressing in the right way, almost to a low A. “Your dad said ‘If you have to make a judgment call, give the kid the B. My kid can handle it. Give some other kid who can’t handle it the higher grade, because my kid can handle it,” Iverson told the crestfallen Pete.
“At the time I couldn’t believe what he had just done to me,” Pete reflects. “He had just submarined me! But he and mother were the same way. They taught us how to handle adversity, and how to cope. That’s probably the greatest thing my parents did. They both had dealt with hardship, but that spirit to endure, that spirit to overcome, to stay optimistic and remain grounded in their faith, was something that they both believed in. It was a common bond between the two of them and they worked hard to instill it in their children. Everybody in this world faces all kinds of unanticipated obstacles and adversity, and how you handle that adversity is a bigger indication of your success than whether things happen to you or not.”
Paul Espinosa passed away at the age of 91 on December 27, 2012. Mavis celebrated her 97th birthday with the family
in July 2020. Following in his father’s footsteps, Pete married a Norwegian. He met Kari Tollefsen at Luther College and they wed in 1985. Kari continues many Norwegian traditions in their family.
Feet Firmly Planted in Two Worlds
Today, in Decorah, IA, Pete feels that he has one leg planted firmly in the town’s historical Norwegian community. “I enjoy it, because that’s what I was raised in. When we founded Pulpit Rock Brewing, we chose the name to connect to the local Pulpit Rock here in town of course, but also to Preikestolen, the Pulpit Rock in the area of Norway where my grandmother came from. The name is very personal, very much connected to my mother and her family.”
But Pete says he has the other leg planted in this new world, “where immigrants still come, even to Northeast Iowa.” He continues a life of service today that began early, in part inspired by his father, who often helped translate when the police picked someone up who couldn’t speak English, or when there was a court case.
When Pete was home from Luther College one summer, he got a job working for the Muscatine Migrant Commission in the Community Food and Nutrition Program, providing food vouchers for migrant families that were coming into Northern Iowa. He got the job, he says, because his name was Espinosa and he could speak a little Spanish. “There were lots of migrant farm workers working in the fields even in the late 1970s early 1980s. Many of them had big families and some
didn’t have a dime to their name,” he explains. “They came to the government office where I worked and I spoke enough Spanish so I could help them fill out the paperwork or travel with them to the grocery store to make sure their government vouchers were accepted so they could buy food. They couldn’t use them for cigarettes or beer or anything like that, but they would load up on food and take it home to help feed their families. Most of them were from places like Eagle Pass, TX, close to the border, and they could come up and work in the fields all day, to make what money they could and they would go back home in the winter.”
Today Pete works unobtrusively when he can to help Hispanic immigrants who come to the area to work on farms or in meat-packing plants, or to find other jobs, and who face familiar obstacles created by language, culture, and prejudice. “There are more similarities than differences, more shared values, but it just goes to show that, with ignorance, without proper understanding, comes prejudice, comes animosity. I grew up in that world. People can be judgmental. I can remember negative things people said to me or members of my family as a kid, or things we got excluded from, because we were Mexican, we were Espinosas,” he says.
Pete has found that he can serve the Hispanic community even by being a successful businessman and serving on Luther College’s Board of Regents (a very Norwegian thing to do). Hispanic people, he notes, are “hardworking people,
but some haven’t had access to education, to opportunities, they’ve had to face more racism. I didn’t realize just how much I had a leg in both worlds until, growing up in the business community, I would have employees embrace me because of my Mexican ethnicity. If they were somebody of color, they would cling to that in me. They would love the fact that I was their boss’s boss. And recently I was up on the Luther College campus and a woman of color came up and hugged me and said, “I’m just so happy somebody named Espinosa is on the Luther Regents.” It was meaningful to her because my name is Espinosa and my skin is darker. They’re looking for a bright light. They’re hanging on to opportunity.”
Looking for a bright light. Hanging on to opportunity. Isn’t that what all immigrants do, no matter where they are from?
About the Author
Charlie Langton is Vesterheim’s Communications & Marketing Director. He is leaving Vesterheim after serving the museum in various editorial capacities for over 34 years and shepherding Vesterheim magazine since its inception in 2003. He earned his undergraduate degree from Marquette University and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop, and he is the author of a book of poetry, Keep Silence, But Speak Out.
