{"id":7658,"date":"2017-03-01T10:15:56","date_gmt":"2017-03-01T15:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/?page_id=7658"},"modified":"2017-03-01T10:15:56","modified_gmt":"2017-03-01T15:15:56","slug":"gold-in-the-hills-cindy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/?page_id=7658","title":{"rendered":"Gold in the Hills: Cindy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Supplemental character material on members of the Alton Krause family
\nto accompany “Gold in the Hills”<\/a>
\nSister Cindy Ruth Krause Leonhardt (b. 1959 Salmon, ID)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Cindy & friend
in earlier days<\/p><\/div>\n

Cindy, an avid and methodical genealogist, is the one who started all of this family history and story telling. For years, she\u2019s done interviews, conducted research, and recorded even the smallest details of the Krause and other of her families. Although she doesn\u2019t leave her Riverton, Wyoming, paradise often to come East, she writes letters and e-mails and makes phone calls like there\u2019s no tomorrow. And perhaps that\u2019s her inspiration, because as an in-law and fellow genealogist, I believe that we do these things to preserve the precious vitals and accounts of our kin. Well, now it\u2019s Cindy\u2019s turn to be written about.<\/p>\n

In some brief notes forwarded about her sister, called \u201cThings Cindy did when she was little\u201d and particularly in their Salmon, ID, home, Becky writes: \u201cSqueezed all the toothpaste out of the tube and started crying because she couldn’t get it back. Asked me to \u2018Put it back in.\u2019 Washed her hair in the toilet because she couldn’t reach the sink. Cindy’s best friends were Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound. I once set a cup of tea on the coffee table and she screamed. I almost spilled my tea. Seems I had put it down on top of Huckleberry Hound and had to move it right now. That went on and on. One time I drove Mother to the grocery store and Cindy was standing on the seat in the middle (pre-seat belt and pre-common sense). Cindy kept edging closer and closer to me until I was having trouble steering. I said, \u2018Cindy, get over.\u2019 Cindy said, \u2018I can’t. My friends are standing there.\u2019 I said, \u2018Tell your friends to get in the back seat right now or they can’t come anymore! Zoom, Cindy moved over.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a short poem by sister Sandy’s husband Jay, he muses:<\/p>\n

Dear Cindy,<\/em>
\n Cindy of the ponytails and bangs of other days<\/em>
\n Happy go lucky but intense in some ways<\/em>
\n Fishing and camping and hiking over hills and dales<\/em>
\n A lot of youthful energy — almost running up the trails<\/em>
\n Changes brought on by age and the times<\/em>
\n From a little girl to womanhood in these few lines<\/em>
\n But we wouldn’t trade you for any amount<\/em>
\n You’re still our Cindy and that’s what counts<\/em><\/p>\n

Cindy\u2019s husband is Laurin, and he compliments every aspect of her rich life. She writes these impressions of her soulmate: \u201cLaurin loves hats of all kinds. He\u2019s a perfectionist. He has drawn caricatures since he was very young. Laurin loves to help people. He doesn\u2019t love to travel, but his wife puts him in the Blazer and drives him across the border. He is very good at a lot of different things. His aunt taught him to knit when he was a child. Laurin fixes Cindy\u2019s computer whenever she messes something up! He hates sawdust, but likes to work with metal. Worked at the sulfuric acid plant for almost 38 years. He grew up on a dairy farm north of Riverton. He had a pet coyote when he was a teenager. He says he has yet to meet any of my family that he doesn\u2019t like. Is better visiting with a couple or a few people, rather than a big group. Has a large and wonderful family. Has a son, a daughter, and six grandchildren.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Cindy
more recently<\/p><\/div>\n

Cindy\u2019s Laurin talks about her and her family this way: \u201cCindy is a tenderhearted rescuer of feral cats and stray dogs. I first met her when she came to work at the sulfuric acid plant in 1992. I had separated from my first wife, my father and my aunt died a week apart, and I was an emotional wreck. Cindy, being Cindy, took me in as one of her strays. It wasn’t long before we discovered that we were a matched pair. If I was hungry, she was hungry. If I was tired, she was tired. If we wanted to go out to eat, I could pick a restaurant and she would go there without me telling her which one I was thinking of. Our life together has been wonderful and easy. Cindy is kind and forgiving. She doesn’t stay mad or bring up every faux pas I ever made or when I make another one. My kids love her, my grandkids love her, my whole family loves her. I think they may prefer her over me, but that’s OK. I do, too. She took me out to meet her mother. Genevieve was a little, round lady with the kindest of hearts. She would to say to me, \u2018I used to have a neck.\u2019 She decorated for holidays and invited the whole family for meals. She would cook and we would do the dishes. She painted her own greeting cards and those lucky enough to receive them never threw them away. They were treasured. If she had one that didn’t quite turn out right, she’d say, \u2018That one’s for my brother-in-law, Ralph.\u2019<\/p>\n

As for the others in the family, Laurin says, “I only met Cindy’s oldest sister Deb when she came to take care of their mother Genevieve during her last days. Before that, I remember Genevieve would go to the mailbox every day hoping to hear from Deb. But when it came to caring for her mother, she took charge and handled it all well. I never saw her again, but she used to call Cindy once in awhile.\u00a0Deb would say anything and took great pleasure in \u2018getting your goat,\u2019 as they used to say.<\/p>\n

When Cindy invited her sister Becky in to meet me, I was taken immediately. She was lively and pretty and reminded me a little of my favorite aunt. She is strong-minded and lives life her way, but she is also kind and cares about her family. I met sister Sandy and her husband Jay at mother Genevieve’s. Sandy was quiet and reserved and Jay wouldn’t talk to me for a few months. Once he thawed out, we found we knew a lot of the same people and places and visited at length. We usually go there for Christmas Eve. Sandy puts on a good meal and makes her special peanut butter fudge. It’s a comforting place to be.<\/p>\n

Cindy\u2019s brother Butch came to Colorado Springs when Genevieve was in the hospital and then a short time later while she was fading away at home. He visited a couple of other times over the years. He had a dry sense of humor and a serious delivery. Me, being slow-witted, would bite like the fish he caught. He suffered from migraines like Cindy, which made it hard to know when to call him on the phone.<\/p>\n

What does Cindy say about herself? Here\u2019s what she writes: \u201cLoves to do genealogy, read, and go on long drives with Laurin. Majored in history in college\u2014love Egyptian, Civil War, Western. Used to be timid and polite and now I\u2019m over it. It took years. I loved to fish, hike, camp and rock hunt when I was skinnier & stronger. I wish I was fierce and had an inner Warrior\u2014like Xena\u2014and nothing ever scared me. Worrier I was a sleep walker, used a night light and had imaginary friends. I love figure skating, chocolate, and Star Trek. I LOVE Christmas. I love wildlife and bird watching. The dogs I\u2019ve had were named Bobo, Hobo, Pom, Pokey, Buddy, Dandy, Teddy, and Spook, and Chub the Cat. I don\u2019t love grasshoppers, mosquitoes, lima beans, peas, flying, or traffic.\u201d<\/p>\n

As you can read, Cindy has a great gift of communicating through the written word. Most of this project was inspired by a collection of family memorabilia she produced for a lost member of the family, Bart Nelson, whom she only recently found through DNA testing. Like Cindy, I hope these written memories will survive among future generations and be expanded upon. We hope to post additional stories here, so come back from time to time. For now, the original account of how the Alton Krause family spent their summers searching for gold in the Idaho mountains awaits you.<\/p>\n

Return to \u201cGold in the Hills: The story of the Alton Krause Family\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Last revised: 3\/1\/17<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Supplemental character material on members of the Alton Krause family to accompany “Gold in the Hills” Sister Cindy Ruth Krause Leonhardt (b. 1959 Salmon, ID) Cindy, an avid and methodical genealogist, is the one who started all of this family … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":7636,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-7658","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7658"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7689,"href":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7658\/revisions\/7689"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}