On January 9, 1909, Loren abandoned the family, leaving 11-year-old Edna, her three younger siblings, and her pregnant mother destitute. Edna had to grow up fast. While attending high school in Garwin she did housework for area families and cared for her siblings, especially baby sister, Mary. Along the way she made many friends, with trips to Clear Lake with girlfriends, house parties, and picnics on the Iowa River. One friend, a farm boy named Lawrence Reinig, soon became something more.
Lawrence, who lived near Toledo, would get to Garwin any way possible – by car, on foot, and even hopping the freight train. He would spend his evenings at the Garwin Telephone Office, sitting with Edna while she worked the switchboard. They wrote each other constantly, Edna encouraging him to visit often: “It won’t make any difference if you’re in your work clothes,” she wrote. “I don’t care and it isn’t anyone's business how you look… You know darned well you can come anytime. I’m not going anywhere.”
Their marriage on September 12, 1923, was a surprise to no one. For months, Edna’s friends had asked her when it was going to happen. When she came into work one morning after a late night visiting Lawrence, her boss greeted her with, “You aren’t married now, are you?”
They would start their family the next year, eventually having four children, six grandchildren, and several great-grandchildren before Edna’s passing in 1972.
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