Dorothy Swehla was born in Austin, Minnesota, during the Great Depression. She was the eleventh child of Joe and Kate Schmidt. They lived on a farm near the village of Rose Creek, Minnesota.As with most families, money was almost non-existent. Joe was unable to meet his mortgage payments and was eventually forced into foreclosure of the farm. He was an immigrant from Austria where he had been trained a blacksmith/farrier. is training kept food on the table and eventually he was able to pay back the mortgage company. Dorothy remembers those days as very frightening as Joe's disposition was often very irritable as he was most likely depressed and discouraged as most of his family members were still in the "old country," as he called it.As a young girl, Dorothy never had a new pair of shoes or a dress-only hand-me-downs from older family members. During the summer of her 13th year, she worked at her brother's farm helping with their young twins. For pay, they took her to the town of Osage where she was allowed to pick out her first off-the-rack dress. She thought she had gone to heaven and felt so special whenever she wore that dress, only to church.Dorothy later became an excellent seamstress and made almost all of the clothing for her family.