In 1901, after their father Joseph died, the five Gunderson children were split apart because their mother Emma could not care for all of them alone. Emma kept only her second child, Lillian, while the eldest, Florence, married at age 16 a year after her father's death, and the three youngest, Mamie, Frederick, and Alfred, were placed in an orphanage. In 1905, the Children's Aid Society sent Mamie, Fred, and Alfred to Rock Port, Missouri, where they were first placed together with Mr. and Mrs. E. J. Million, a farm couple in their late sixties. The two boys later went to other homes, but Mamie was treated well by the Millions and adapted to life in Missouri. An excellent student who wanted more education, she gained permission through Agent Clarke to attend high school in Milton, Wisconsin. Between school years she joined H.D. Clarke in Battle Creek, Michigan, serving as assistant matron of Haskell Home and working at a sanitarium before returning to Wisconsin to attend Milton College on scholarship. At 21, against Agent Clark's advice, Mamie married Verne F. Rose, a jeweler she met while visiting her brother Fred in Rock Port. After the marriage, Mamie and Agent Clarke lost contact, which saddened him greatly because he had been like a father to her. Mamie and Verne had two sons, Charles and Robert, and after moving around the Midwest, they settled in Junction City, Kansas.