At 94, retired engineer 'blessed' to have wed identical twins

Accomplished electrical engineer Gerald Williams, who turns 94 in North Oaks this July 4, is always happy to talk about the seven patents he earned as a pioneer with early Minnesota tech companies — including Univac and Control Data — or the sound company he started in the 1970s providing customized hearing aids for churches and hospitals.

But Williams was delighted to steer our phone conversation away from his career in transistors, all the way back to 1946 and his first band rehearsal at St. Olaf College. That's where he believes God's plan and fate conspired to set the stage for his unique marital life, wedding identical twin sisters — Lorraine Laura and Florraine Flora Hoffman, of St. James, Minn. — 59 years apart.

"What a blessing," he said. "I didn't realize it at the time, but the St. Olaf band would become the most significant factor in my life."

Williams recently completed a 10-year project, writing a 241-page memoir for his grandkids "who will never know me or what kind of life I lived." How he ended up marrying twins emerges as the most intriguing subplot.

Williams began tinkering as a teenager, repairing toasters, lamps and appliances for an electrician in Cannon Falls, Minn. His father, Marland, was the town doctor for decades after playing cornet in an Army band during the First World War in France.

Memories of battlefield horrors, sleeping in barns and begging French civilians for food prompted Marland to persuade his son to enlist in the Navy — better food, cleaner conditions — when the next war erupted. After his service as a radio technician at the end of World War II, Jerry Williams came home at 19 eager to study electrical engineering. But the classes he wanted to take were full at the University of Minnesota.

So in 1946 he enrolled instead at St. Olaf in Northfield, Minn., 15 miles west of Cannon Falls. When he tried out for the school band, he bombed his alto saxophone tryout; though he had played it in high school, he had put the horn down for three years during his Navy days. The band director said he could join the band if he'd play the college's baritone sax instead.

To his left was alto sax player Shirley Hetland from Valley City, N.D., who would become a lifelong friend. On his right sat the Hoffman twins, Lorraine on alto clarinet and Florraine on the bassoon.

"Because the twins were inseparable, the three of us soon became good friends," Williams writes, recalling how Lorraine and Florraine dressed alike so classmates could tell them apart only by their slightly different voices.

At one rehearsal break, Williams told Lorraine he was struggling in chemistry class. She offered to tutor him, and the chemistry soon clicked both academically and otherwise. "I began to look at Lorraine differently," he writes.

But he broke things off, transferring to the U his junior year while Lorraine landed a job teaching high school home economics in Truman, Minn., 20 miles southeast of her home in St. James. Regretting his breakup, Williams sent a letter to Lorraine via her parents and rekindled things with an engagement three months later.

Florraine, meanwhile, was teaching home ec in Heron Lake, Minn., 40 miles southwest of St. James, when she became engaged to a man she met on the bus. The twins' mother, Emmy Hoffman, said the family couldn't afford to pay for two weddings. So Lorraine and Florraine decided on a double wedding on June 11, 1950, at the First Lutheran Church in St. James.

Jerry and Lorraine were married for 56 years, raising three children in Roseville and Edina who would later produce five grandkids and 11 great-grandchildren. Lorraine developed severe rheumatoid arthritis in her early 30s, her pain medication slowly weakening her bones and leading to repeated fractures and surgeries. She died in 2006 at 79 after six bedridden final years.

Before she died, Lorraine asked Jerry to look after Florraine, whose second husband, Bill Trygstad, was in his late 80s.

"I assured her I would do that," Williams writes, "but asked, 'What would you think if I married Florraine, because that would be the easiest way to care for her?' She replied, 'That would be all right.' "

Williams married Florraine five months after Trygstad died in 2009 — 63 years after that first band rehearsal.

"Since we were both 82 years old, Florraine and I decided not to wait too long," he writes, detailing their travels to Hawaii, Alaska, the Panama Canal and the Grand Canyon. Florraine died on Nov. 17, 2018, just shy of 92.