On an early 1950s summer day near Clam Lake, Wisconsin, a 14-year-old girl from Mellen met a tall, quiet 15-year-old boy from a farm outside Glidden.
It was a Catholic Order of Foresters court picnic, and Day Lake shimmered as children splashed in the water and adults chatted on the beach.
Lois Schraufnagel couldn’t have known she was about to meet the man she’d marry.
Nick Killinger was 6’3” tall with black hair and a smile that caught Lois’s attention right away. He was the oldest of six boys in a deeply rooted Catholic Order of Foresters family. Lois’s father and brothers were members, too. Their hometowns were small, and Catholic Order of Foresters was part of the glue that held communities like theirs together. That day at the lake was the first chapter of a love story that would unfold slowly.
“Neither of us could drive,” Lois recalled. “We wrote to each other for a long time before we could even see each other regularly.” Once Lois was 16 and Nick was 17, they were finally able to spend more time together. She eventually moved to Evanston, Illinois, to study nursing and worked at The Cradle, a major adoption agency in Illinois. Nick earned a scholarship and went off to college, but they married soon after he graduated.
They’ve now been married for 65 years.
Wherever they went, they stayed grounded in their Catholic faith. Nick coached basketball and volunteered for school and parish events, while Lois served as a Eucharistic minister for over two decades. Their four children, Pamela, James, Sandra, and Jay, are all members.
Nick’s roots run deep in Glidden, where his father and brothers had been active Catholic Order of Foresters members, and Lois’s connection ran even deeper. Her grandfather, Michael Schraufnagel, was a COF stalwart in the decades surrounding World War II, active in Glidden and beyond. He and his wife Mary had 13 children.
“There are Schraufnagels all over,” Lois said. “They were very involved with Catholic Order of Foresters.”
The family legacy didn’t stop there. Today, their grandchildren have college degrees, fulfilling careers, and strong roots of their own. None are married yet, Lois noted, chuckling, “Kids wait longer nowadays.”
Lois and Nick are currently preparing for a move after 58 years in the home Nick built with his own hands. Their daughter Jane, a nurse in Cedarburg, is helping them transition to a place closer to family.
“I married into a good family,” Lois said. “All those brothers of his built cabins near where they grew up. They’re close. Still are.”
From handwritten letters to a life built in northern Wisconsin, the Killinger story not defined by grand gestures, but by a foundation that began at a Catholic Order of Foresters picnic.
