Hans T. Jorstad

Dear Amy,
I am so sad to hear the news of your husband. My thoughts and prayers go out to you and the boys at the difficult time. Best Regards, Patty Fowler

I did not know Hans well; in fact I hardly knew him at all. And yet I liked the man a great deal, and I’m sorry to have missed the chance to get to know him better.

I first met Hans on my very first cub scout campout. I had brought my son Nathan down to a Pack 203 campout at Camp Cutler to see if he really wanted to join the scouts. Hans was there, big strapping fellow with a booming voice, among the other fathers around the campfire ring. Hans was lighting the fire. With, I believe, a blowtorch. I never thought of a blowtorch as standard scouting equipment before, but Hans swore by it. To be fair, I’ve also seen him light fires with flint and steel, with paper and matches – and with gasoline. It was something he was very good at, so it became his job.

Hans could be a bit vulgar at times. Standing around the campfire while the boys told ghost stories, it was not uncommon for Hans to rip off a loud one, after which he would make sure everyone knew it was himself by sighing loudly or uttering some Ben Franklinesque witticism, ‘better out than in’. It was almost a sort of ritual for Hans: first would come the explosion, then the sanctifying words. There was no discouraging him in this; the best one could do was what we all did, roll our eyes and shift slightly upwind.

That weekend I met Hans at Cutler was the same weekend Hans lost his wedding ring, somewhere between the fishing pond and the campsite. He was quite distraught over this, and spent the last light of the day stalking back and forth between the pond and the camp, glaring at the path beneath his feet. Just imagine my impression on this, my and my son’s first, tentative step into scouting – and here is this booming giant of a man stomping back and forth between two fixed points, liable at any time to fart or burst into flame. I don’t think we ever managed to find the ring.

Well, we joined the scouts anyway, Nathan and I; and I got a chance to know Hans a little better, and I learned that I liked him quite a lot. Always affable, I enjoyed his company at the scout meetings, but especially at the campouts where we had a chance to talk a bit. I recall one evening late at the campfire, Hans remarked out of nowhere in particular, ‘You know, anyone who would fail to join the scouts is a fool. How could you fail to take advantage of the opportunities like this?’ Hans was certainly no fool in that regard.

Hans and I differed in many respects (besides the propriety of gleefully breaking wind in public). But we did share a few things in common. One of those was our Scandinavian heritage, in which Lutefisk – or at least jokes about it – played some role. Another was a prep school education, complete with training in Latin and classical literature. Hans remembered more Latin than I did, I think; but one night as we prepared our rest in a room full of scouts at a campout, we entertained each other with a competition of quotes from Shakespeare that went on for a good while before we ran dry. Now there is the picture of a man: he could blow a foul wind with the best of them, and do it with a glint in his eye – but he could also recite Hamlet’s soliloquy and discourse at length on the benefits of a literary education. That was Hans as I knew him. He was, for lack of a better word, replete. And as long as there was something to burn, you could never be cold when he was there.