LOVE LIFE WREATH
Pro-Life Wisconsin Staff Article
You never know when or how your pro-life efforts will make a difference in someone’s life. This is one of those stories!
Friends of Pro-Life Wisconsin Bob and Kathy Kougl recently got together with a fellow churchgoer from Saint Stanislaus Catholic Church to recall their story and document it for posterity. We are grateful to all the people involved in making sure it was told! Here is the story as told by Bob:
One morning in the spring of 2020, we found a handmade ornamental basket hanging on one of our evergreen trees at the end of our driveway near West Bend, Wisconsin, close to a handmade sign I had made that read SAVE THE UNBORN. I had placed this newest sign near the side of the road in our front yard, just like all the pro-life signs we had put up in our yard since Roe v. Wade. We have always had pro-life signs in our front yard. We asked each of our seven children if they made the basket and put it in the tree. No one claimed ownership, so we brought it in and found it was made with birch bark and twine. We hung it up in our kitchen and forgot all about it.
Later that same summer [in 2020], while I was picking black currants with my back to the road, a strong looking bearded man in his 40’s came walking up to me and said, “I see that you finally got that basket from under the tree.” I asked him if he made it and he said, “Yes, and I have something else for you.”’ I then invited our visitor up to the house, saying, “Come on up to our porch and I’ll introduce you to my wife.” The man followed me up to the porch carrying a beautiful wreath in his arms. He then gave it to us as a gift. It was adorned with all the decorations you see here [in the picture below] and was made with birch bark, twine and some beads, spelling out the words, LOVE LIFE…
It must have taken him hours to make it by hand. My wife started crying when she saw it and asked why he made it for us. He replied, “Because of the sign you have by the road that says SAVE THE UNBORN. My mother told me if I had been born in 1973 [when Roe legalized abortion] instead of 1972, I would have been aborted.” He started to cry. He never gave us his name. He just thanked us for having the SAVE THE UNBORN sign up at the road and left.
Many people have passed the sign over the years. While some have shown negative reactions, most have offered support by pointing to the sign and giving us a friendly beep of the horn or giving us a thumbs up. Even teenagers have happily walked up to it and admired it. But of all the stories and interactions associated with our SAVE THE UNBORN sign, this one has truly touched our hearts. We thought Pro-Life Wisconsin would be a good home for it, so more people could hear this story and appreciate it, so we have given it to them. It might even save a baby!"
Bob and Kathy Kougl pose with their SAVE THE UNBORN sign and the LOVE LIFE wreath