Bill and Carl Larson: Brothers, forever

Except for the three years that Bill was fighting the Nazis and Carl was an Army medic in the Pacific, the Larson brothers had been side by side for more than 90 years.

They grew up farming on the outskirts of Oklee, Minn., never married, and stayed on the family farm to raise prize-winning Belgian horses long after their two older brothers, Roswall and George, died decades ago.

So when 95-year-old Carl Larson didn't return home on a dark, moonless night last week, 98-year-old Bill did what a protective older brother does: He headed out to look for Carl. The next morning, a hunter in blaze orange discovered a body in the Larsons' field. Neighbors hustled over, identified Bill's body and found Carl alive in a nearby ditch.

This morning, after an 11 o'clock funeral at Salem Lutheran Church, 4 miles north of town, Carl and many of Oklee's 358 residents will bury Bill in the church cemetery. Friends and neighbors will say goodbye to Bill, and an era.

"The Larsons are the last of a legend," said Don Stenberg, 74, who farms a mile away. He has known the brothers since he was kid growing up in the 1940s and will serve as a casket bearer today.

Bill and Carl liked to tell him stories about milking cows by hand and farming with their big Belgians, walking 20 miles a day behind their horses to operate farming implements before they bought their first tractor.

"When Bill saw a man walk on the moon, he said he'd never thought that would have been possible," Stenberg said. "He said he'd do it all over again if he could."

A final act

It was on the eve of Veterans Day last Wednesday, 65 years since Bill landed on Omaha Beach and fought the Battle of the Bulge as an Army infantryman. His last act would be searching for his younger brother, who had walked past their dilapidated farmhouse in the dark, heading straight toward a neighbor's light across the road by mistake.

The next morning, the hunter and a neighbor dropping children off at a school bus stop called Stenberg and his wife, Alma, after they found Bill's body.

"They knew it was one of the Larsons, but didn't know which one -- he was laying face down," Stenberg said. "I identified him and went into the yard to tell Carl we'd found Bill out in the field."

But they couldn't find Carl. By then, Red Lake County Sheriff's deputies and an ambulance had arrived.

"We got a search party together and found Carl down the neighbor's driveway across the road," Sheriff Mitch Bernstein said. "He'd tripped and fell and went in the ditch and was unable to get up."

After a 40-degree night in the ditch, Carl was hospitalized with hypothermia. No autopsy was ordered for Bill.

"There was no sign of foul play," Bernstein said. "At 98, I imagine it was exposure or something medical."

The Stenbergs picked up Carl on Monday after a five-day stay at Northwest Medical Center in Thief River Falls. They fed him lunch at their place and then brought him back to the only home he and his brother have ever known.

Their parents, John and Mary, homesteaded the 1,000 acres after emigrating from Sweden in the 1890s. Their older brothers stayed on the farm during World War II. In recent years, they sold off sections of their farm and rented out the rest.

"The closest relatives are third cousins," the sheriff said.

Generations of 'horse people'

In a 2007 interview in the Raven, a northwestern Minnesota journal published in nearby Wannaska, Bill Larson said his grandparents had been "horse people" back in Sweden in the 1800s.

"If you wanted to go the doctor, you'd call them up and why they'd come with a fast team and take you," he told the Raven's Steve Reynolds, who will be an honorary casket bearer today.

As boys, Carl and Bill were 4-H'ers and won enough ribbons at the county fair to make it to the State Fair nearly 300 miles to the southeast. They'd go check out the big Belgian horses at the fairgrounds, persuading their parents to buy a filly foal and one stud colt.

By the the 1940s and '50s, the Larsons' Belgians had won so many State Fair blue ribbons in Minnesota and Wisconsin that they were selling horses for $25,000 in Canada and around the world.

Not until the 50^th anniversary of D-Day in 1994 did they start to share their war memories.

"Bill would tell stories about hauling away dead soldiers by the truckload from Omaha Beach," Stenberg said. "It was something they never forgot, but they never said a word about it for 50 years."

They were too busy farming the land, raising their Belgians -- and watching out for each other.

According to his obituary: "Bill will be remembered for helping his brother in the garden and giving away tons of produce to their neighbors and friends."

Curt Brown • 612-673-4767