How did we get here?
Janet Letnes Martin (aka Neil’s Mrs.) and Suzann Johnson Nelson (aka Ronald’s Mrs.) are two “100% Norwegian Lutheran farm girls who didn’t turn, and who didn’t dance, and who memorized all of Luther’s Small Catechism. This is most certainly true.”
After meeting at Augsburg College in the 1960’s the two became friends. Married to “two decent Scandinavian Lutheran husbands,” they raised their children, volunteered at church and, over the years, went on to become, “authors, speakers, Jello judges, and middle aged women who suffer from hot flashes…You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know where this global warming is coming from.”
(Quotes taken from their comedy act “Those Lutheran Ladies” Live in Medora.)
Prolific writers, their book GROWING UP LUTHERAN won the Metro Lutheran’s “Golden Pen Award” which garnered them an ever greater audience. Along the way Curt Wollan, Executive Producer of Troupe America, met with the duo, and was granted access to their life and work for a new musical. Curt paired them with a number of theatrical writers to help shape their story and, in 2005, the first CHURCH BASEMENT LADIES was born.
