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#717 – Dick Bernard: A look back to the future in North Dakota

Thursday, May 9th, 2013

A few days ago I did a long post about Sykeston High School, a tiny place near the center of North Dakota from which I graduated in 1958.

Curt Ghylin, now a Minnesotan but back in the early 1960s a student at the same college as I, Valley City State Teachers College, visited the blog, and noticed a state-wide test given to high school Juniors and Seniors that I had taken in November, 1957, on North Dakota History, Government and Citizenship.

For those interested, the 100 question test is here: ND Hist Govt Ctzn 1957001.

Curt asked a perfectly reasonable question: “I want to show our kids the test on North Dakota history that your referenced. Do you know if the key is available somewhere? I don’t know all the answers.”

Well, I was a kid taking the test in 1957, and I did well on it, but it was statewide, probably scored by the University of North Dakota (UND), 150 miles or so from where I was marking my sheet….

No, I don’t have an answer key, Curt.

And relooking at the test, yesterday, I wouldn’t give even odds that I’d get 50% right today, without lots of cheating!

But Curt’s was a perfectly reasonable question, and I knew I had placed second (or such) in the state that year, and there must be something…. In my bookshelf was a book I had been given at the state “Know Your State” contest at UND in December, 1957. It was an autographed copy of “North Dakota A Human and Economic Geography” by Melvin E. Kazeck of the Department of Geography of the University of North Dakota, published 1956 by the North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies at North Dakota Agricultural College (now NDSU) in Fargo.

Mostly, all of the answers will be somewhere in that 264 page book. Best I know I’m the only person in the world who has a copy (I google’d it), so if it’s going to get done, I’m going to have to be the one to do it.

And I will, Curt. Yes I will. Take the test yourself, and check back to this space by early June, 2013 for the “key” (which should be pretty close to accurate).

In his e-mail, Curt articulated a problem with such old documents: “I had to point out to my sister-in-law as she read the test that the date of the test was 1957 when she questioned why Interstate 94 wasn’t a possible answer for question 2—’The highway running across ND from Fargo to Beach’ “

Here, from Kazeck’s book, is a map with the answer to THAT question, from page 181! (The first stretch of ND Interstate wasn’t constructed until 1958, between Valley City and Jamestown, and that was among the first stretches of Interstate Highway in the U.S.)

(click to enlarge)

North Dakota Highways 1956 from Melvin E. Kazeck’s North Dakota, A Human and Economic Geography

But what about the title of this post, “A look back to the future in North Dakota”?

As I was leafing through Kazeck’s volume, I came across the last chapter “The Future of the State” of North Dakota.

That chapter was written 57 years ago, by someone very well versed in his topic and published by a respected institution.

This morning I pdf’ed that 35 or so page chapter, and for anyone with an interest, here’s how a North Dakota geographer saw the future of North Dakota in the year 1956: ND Geog 1956 Kazeck001

I find the chapter quite interesting.

I hope you do, as well.

Posted in Economics, History, North Dakota, Technology | 1 Response »
Tags: melvin e. kazeck university of north dakota, north dakota a human and economic geography 1956 by melvin e kazeck, north dakota institute for regional studies north dakota agricultural college

Dick Bernard: Thoughts on Sykeston High School at its Centennial

Saturday, May 4th, 2013

NOTE: This is a very long post which may be of interest to residents of Sykeston ND, or those interested in rural education in ND and elsewhere 50 and more years ago.

A postcard brought news of a July 4-6 2013 celebration in Sykeston ND, celebrating the Centennial of Sykeston High School, from which I graduated in 1958.

While I attended the high school only the single year of 1957-58, it is of far more than routine importance to my family. My Dad, Henry, was Superintendent of the School from 1945-51 and again from 1957-61. Mom, Esther, taught in one of the two elementary classrooms there from 1957-61. When the school year began in September, 1945, Dad was 37, Mom had just turned 36. When they left Sykeston in 1961 they were 53 and 51.

Today I’m 73. It is hard to imagine my parents as that young, back then….

Sykes High was a central and crucial part of my life from age five till eighteen, never more than a block or two away from where we lived – home.

I have all of Mom and Dad’s teaching contracts, which are all basically identical to the three sample contracts from the Sykeston years which you can view here: Contracts 45-57-60001

Every contract, in their long careers, was for one year: when you signed the contract, you agreed you were fired at the end of the year. So we kids migrated with them from town to town throughout North Dakota.

But Sykeston held a different status. It was very much our “hometown”.

Right after my graduation in 1958, I went around the town taking (I would guess) ten color photographs with a new camera. Nine of them survive, including this one of the high school, below. (The other eight are at the end of this post. Anyone from Sykeston in that era will recognize them all.)

(click on all photos to enlarge them)

Sykeston High School 1958 by Dick Bernard

When Dad came to Sykeston for the 1945-46 school year, Mom was expecting child #4, Frank, who was born in November. She stayed in the tiny town of Eldridge west of Jamestown. Her sister Edith stayed with her for the last months.

Frank was named for Dad’s brother, our Uncle Frank, who had been killed on the Arizona at Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

Sometime in the summer of 1945, the family came to Sykeston and Doc and Liz Dummer showed them around. The Germans had just surrendered, beginning the end of WWII, in May 1945 (some of our cousins were Germans, conscripts in the German Army – War is not abstract, “us” vs “them”). Mom’s brother, George Busch, had been hired to teach at Sykeston in the Fall, but was an officer on the Destroyer Woodworth DD460 in the Pacific and his wife, my Aunt Jean, filled in for him till he was discharged in early November, 1945. His ship and many others docked in Tokyo Bay September 10, 1945. As Grandma Rosa wrote about that time: “Hurrah, the old war is over”.

Jean, then George, taught at Sykeston High School for two or three years. Their first child, Mary Kay, was born in the Sykeston years.

Here are a couple of period photos from early our beginnings at Sykeston ND:

Jean and Gloria Dummer and Mary Ann, Florence and Dick Bernard, probably summer of 1945 at Arrowhead Lake.

Jean and Gloria Dummer and Mary Ann, Florence and Dick Bernard, probably summer of 1945 at Arrowwood Lake.

Bernards at the Hafner House on the High School Block, probably January, 1946. Esther and Henry with Frank, and Richard, Mary Ann and Florence.

Dad succeeded Everett Woiwode as Superintendent; some years later, Everett rejoined the Sykeston staff while Dad was Superintendent. Both were graduates of Valley City State Teachers College.

Among the local ‘gang’ of kids in the 1940s was Everett’s son, Larry, who at one point was a student at Sykes High, and who is one of North Dakota’s notable citizens, among the recipients of the North Dakota Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Awards. For awhile I roamed the Sykeston streets with Larry and the gang!

Writing this brings back many memories of the school* and the town. Two of the most prominent are these:

I vividly remember what had to be Memorial Day in May of 1946. There were crosses on the high school lawn, and an honor guard. It was less than a year after the horrors of World War II.

On another occasion, I’m guessing it was about 1950, a bunch of we boys were playing basketball in the little gym in the basement of the school – I remember the low ceiling and gray painted concrete floor. Dad came down stairs for some reason and fell down the last few steps. Being kids, we didn’t pay much attention, but I remember his fall to this day. He was in his early 40s then, so he probably recovered quickly. We kids were basically clueless and useless.

In April 1948, Dad took this picture of the school:

Sykeston High School April 1948

Like all small town schools in ND, Sykeston never had many students. The 1983 Centennial History of the town gives a good description of education, including the below photo of the High School at its opening in 1913. Here are the relevant pages of the 1983 History: Sykeston ND Schools001

The 1983 History list the names of the graduating seniors from 1916 to 1983. Perhaps still in the hall between the old and new school are the high school senior graduation photos from 1944-2005, the year the school closed.

In 2008 I took photos of all of these, and they are available on an open Facebook album page, including some other photos I added to the display. There was no graduation photo for 1945, possibly reflecting the turmoil around WWII, winding down in Europe, but still intense in the Pacific region. The 1944 photo includes several in military uniform.

Here is a list of the number of graduates in each year from 1916 to 2005: Sykeston Seniors 1916-2005. In all there were about 1050 high school graduates over the schools 92 years. The average class was about 11. The largest high school graduating classes were in 1927, 1936, 1965 and 1967. There were 31 graduates in 1927.

The smallest classes were post baby-boom years. In 2001 and 2002 there were only two graduates, and in 2005, the last year of the school, there were three graduates.

Sykeston’s data gives an interesting look at the ebbs and flows of population (and birth rate) in rural North Dakota, and is probably generally representative of other similar tiny towns in the Midwest.

Probably the proudest year for the town and the High School was 1950 when the Boys Basketball team won Third Place in the State Class C tournament in Valley City. I recall being there, but I was not yet 10, and I was not properly fixed on watching the games!

Much later, Travis Hafner (class of 1995) made a name for Sykeston as Designated Hitter for the Cleveland Indians.

Luckily, some years ago, I learned that Jean Dummer (Sister Jean) had the 1950 school annual, and I borrowed and copied it. The entire annual is available here: Sykes Hiawatha 50001 You can read, there, the exploits of the 1950 Boys Basketball team.

And I kept the 1958 Hiawatha, which Duffy Sondag and I co-edited. Here is that Yearbook: Sykes Hiawatha 58001 Even back then I wondered why the publisher, Intercollegiate Press of Kansas City, chose the mountain-scape for the inside front and back covers of the Annual. It didn’t quite match with the Sykeston I knew!

Here’s the high school Boys Basketball team for 1958-59, the year after I graduated:

1959 A Team: Jim Bierdeman Bob Miller, Duane Zwinger, Jim Merck and Lowell Fruhwirth

And here’s a portion of the 1968 school newspaper, (reduced from the original legal size), apparently run on the same cantankerous old mimeograph machine that we’d used in 1958: Sykes High news May 68001 The news sheet would win no awards, I’d guess, but nonetheless it was news.

The newspaper says it is Vol. 34; the 1950 Annual was Vol. V, and 1958 was Vol. VIII. What if any meaning those numbers have is unknown.

In 1974, here’s what Sykeston’s Main Street looked like, through my Massachusetts brother-in-laws eyes.

Main Street, Sykeston, 1974, by Hank Maher

For little towns, the public schools were an essential part of the very life of the community. When they closed, as Sykeston High School did at age 92, an important part of the town was lost with them: there remained fewer reasons to come to town.

PERSONAL
I’m old enough now (I’m 73 on this very day, May 4, 2013) and far enough away from those Sykeston years so I can reveal how I was (not) as a scholar at Sykes High!

As my 1957-58 Report Card indicates, I was not an especially diligent scholar. I was, in a four-letter word, l-a-z-y…. I only took those few courses, likely, because there were no other classes to take that I had not already completed somewhere else.

I had no inclination to make mischief, then. That natural kid impulse was never active. Dad was in the Superintendents office, or teaching Problems of Democracy (“Probs”); Mom was a floor below, teaching elementary. They were good teachers and gentle people, but not inclined to let us run free. Somebody from Sykeston said that it seemed I was “afraid of my Dad”. I won’t disagree. I had nothing to be especially afraid of, but he commanded respect. I didn’t test the boundaries.

Sometimes there is a suspicion that teachers kids get some sort of break. Not so, in my family. Best as I can tell, we were treated like everybody else. But neither was I one to overly attend to book-learning, then.

In the last Sykeston year, I did win the County “Know Your State” competition, and in December went to Grand Forks for the finals. In my memory, I finished second, behind Ron Lokken, the son of the President of Valley City State Teachers College.

Here is the test that we all took that November: ND Hist Govt Ctzn 1957001 It is interesting to note what knowledge they emphasized, then.

You can take it yourself, and see how you do.

Here is the list of the ND County finalists who went to Grand Forks December of 1957: ND Hist Co. Winners 1957001 Maybe you’ll see someone who became famous for some reason or another. Not I!

In the spring of 1958, my sister, Florence, was confirmed at St. Elizabeth’s, and we took a family photo at our house just east of the St. Elizabeth Town Hall.

I’m very much aware, at 73, that my parents, in that photo, were only 48 and 50 years old. My oldest child, son Tom, is 49….

1958 – Sykeston. Back: Esther, Richard, Florence, Mary Ann and Henry; front John and Frank Bernard

After graduation, I finally got the motivation to go to college. The motivator was unusual….

My first job was moving dirt, etc. by the wheelbarrow full at the under-construction St. Elizabeth Church across the street from the school. It was somewhere close to where the bell tower of the Church would be constructed that I made the decision that maybe going to college was a pretty good idea, and I then went straight through, summers and all, at Valley City State Teachers College, graduating in December, 1961.

In retrospect, I remember meeting Mr. Lou Bruhn at Valley City State Teachers College sometime earlier. He was Dean of Men there, and he’d been at the college when Mom and Dad were there. Maybe that helped soften me up?!

Ah the memories.

Here’s a 1960 photo of that then-brand new Church where I got education “religion”, plus the other photographs I took in May of 1958 in Sykeston.

Postcard of new St. Elizabeths Catholic Church, Sykeston ND ca 1960

Lake Hiawatha Spring 1958

Bridge to the Park, Spring 1958

Kids on the bridge, Spring 1958, the middle one my brother John, I think

The Swimming beach at Hiawatha Spring 1958

The Water Tower, Spring 1958

Our new car, out by the dam, Spring 1958

Lilacs beside the lake, Spring 1958

St. Elizabeth School Spring 1958

* – Some of the other memories associated with Sykes High School

Being introduced to the evils of cigarettes (at least, cigarette butts) inside the merry-go-round on the school grounds (it had something of a wooden frame inside, and some slats were missing and we could get inside). Dad almost caught we hoodlums once. My career as a smoker was very short. He caught me later that same summer. Thanks, Dad!

Waiting for mandatory shots for athletics in the fall of 1957. Somebody suggested that the doctor inside had a square needle. Of course, that was crazy, but the suggestion was persuasive.

In 1957-58 there were huge surpluses of dairy products and entire pounds of butter were often on the lunchroom table. One of us had a prodigious appetite for butter. Either he got over it, or he has major defenses against cholesterol!

Seeing in a closet in the third floor west classroom a bunch of bound volumes of the early history newspapers from Sykeston. I hope they were given to the North Dakota Historical Society.

Trying to do printing on the mimeograph machine in the office. It was hideous. I empathize with those young scholars who tried to do the 1968 school newspaper that is linked earlier in this post.

“Zoo period” – the big study hall every afternoon, which Mr. Hanson tried to supervise. To my recollection, I never participated (fear, mostly). Some of the guilty will remember. I’ve come to have admiration for Mr. Hanson (who you’ll see pictured on the last page of the 1958 Hiawatha). I often wonder about him.

Henry and Esther Bernard
by Dick Bernard, May 4, 2013
I knew Henry and Esther as Dad and Mom, and from grades 8-12, as my “teacher”. Other readers of this piece who knew them will have a different context: teacher, neighbor, St. Elizabeth’s….. Together, they had 14 annual contracts teaching in the Sykeston High School from 1945-51 and again 1957-61.

Dad (1907-97) was his adult height, 6’3″, when he was in 8th grade in Grafton ND. That was near giant size about 1920. But to my knowledge, he never participated in sports. Likely reason was flat feet. At times, including Sykeston, he had to coach, probably solely because nobody else would or could. He always enjoyed sports. But coaching sports wasn’t his thing.

He was always religious – his best childhood friend became a Monsignor, and he’d likely have become a Priest if Latin hadn’t been so difficult. I never knew he – or Mom – to be pushy about religious beliefs with others, or with us after we left home. But back then, religion could be serious business, whatever your “brand”. One brand of “Christian” was not always very “Christian” with other brands. Then it was socially respectable, a usual practice, for one Christian religion to have not much to do with another.

Today it still happens, but is more covert, but in some ways far more dangerous than the intolerance was, then. Whenever one labels a group as being the problem (“Jews”, “Japs”, “Muslims”, etc.) there is potential for trouble.

To the end of his long life, Dad was bookish. He had both a Masters in Education and an Administrative Credential from University of North Dakota. He was a lifelong learner.

I seem to recall that during 1957-58 in Sykeston he was on a multi-year project to read the biographies of all the U.S. Presidents (Eisenhower was President, then). He’d get the books from the State Library in Bismarck. I never asked if he’d finished his project, but my guess is that he did. He was disciplined that way.

When at the end of July, 1949, the barn roof blew down at Mom’s parents farm near LaMoure – we were there at the time, a couple of hundred feet away – Dad stayed and helped rebuild the roof – a huge task. This was during our Sykeston years. My uncle Vince, now 88, still remembers Dad’s help.

Particularly after Mom died (1981), Dad became a very active volunteer, tutoring Hispanic kids in English at the school across the street from their home in San Benito TX. He did many other volunteer things as well.

Mom (1909-81) was my teacher in 8th grade, out at Ross in 1953-54 (Ross is in the midst of todays oil fields, and was then as well). She taught grades 7 and 8 and I have good memories of her as a teacher. Brother John, then of Kindergarten age in the time before Kindergarten was common, spent the day in the classroom with the rest of us.

She once recalled that as a youngster she had something of a dream to be a salesman. Yes salesMAN. She was enthusiastic. Her cheers stood out at basketball games.

She, too, was religious. They came to Sykeston in large part because St. Elizabeth school was there. In 1946 I started First Grade. All of we kids spent several grades at St. Elizabeth.

All in all, I thought Mom and Dad were pretty good partners. We were kept on a short leash and had our home chores. In my day, a 9:00 curfew was the norm.

Moving on: To be a teacher in those “good old days” was to be insecure. Between my birth and youngest brother John’s graduation from high school – 26 years – we made ten moves, two of them to Sykeston, two away from Sykeston.

We kids were accustomed to unanticipated moves. For our parents, sometimes the move was an undesired reality; at others, there seemed to be a better opportunity in another town. Available and adequate housing was often an issue. More than once, housing was far less than adequate.

I’ve done a great deal of family history over the years, and in some papers I found a letter from my Dad dated early April, 1990, responding to a question I had asked about the first move from Sykeston (1945-51) to Karlsruhe (1951-53). In relevant part he said this: “When I was not rehired in Sykeston, I did not know what to do. Apparently Father Sommerfeld [Sykeston pastor and immigrant from Germany] and Father Zimmerman [another native German Priest in nearly 100% German-Russian Karlsruhe] were good friends and Father Sommerfeld suggested that I apply for the school in Karlsruhe. One Saturday morning I drove to Karlsruhe to inquire. I was filled with doubts. When I got to the road that led to Karsruhe, north of Drake, I stopped the car, got out and wondered, should I go on or turn back home? I did go on. Don’t know whether I talked to Father Zimmerman first or a school board member, but apparently things worked out all right. I remember that on the way back to Sykeston that I picked up a couple of discarded automobile tires as we were still in need of the furnace at Sykeston….”

(Our Sykeston home, then, was the most northern house in town. Later Gartners lived there. The house has since burned down.)

After six years in three other places (Karlsruhe, Ross and Antelope Consolidated near Mooreton), we returned to Sykeston in 1957. I graduated from Sykes High in 1958; Mary Ann graduated in 1960.

Dad was again non-renewed in Sykeston at the end of the 1960-61 year, and the family moved to Tolley, where Florence and Frank graduated (1962 and 1963); thence to Tolna, where John graduated in 1966.

The early 1960s seems to have been a stressful community time in Sykeston and this seems to have had some impact on Dad’s employment. I was in college the last three years of their teaching in Sykeston, and almost never came home, so I don’t recall any talk about why the next non-renewal took place.

The Sykeston 1983 Centennial History says the addition to the high school was built in 1959 during Dad’s second four years at Sykeston. This apparently is in error. The addition was built after Bernard’s left in 1961. Assorted stresses may have related to changes at St. Elizabeth’s (the Centennial History says that “the only lay [non-Nun] teacher in the school’s history, was employed in 1961-62″ – a really big deal).

Growth of high school age population due to the post WWII Baby Boom, resulting in the need for a bond referendum to build an addition to the public school was doubtless a major factor as well. Even by then, likely, some elders knew that behind the baby boom was decline. Why build a new school that won’t be necessary in a few years? It would be a reasonable question, just like, these days, a reasonable debate in Sykeston may well be how to treat this venerable old building, essentially unused for the last eight years? It is a difficult question.

One of my siblings recalls that about 1961 the issue of religious tensions loomed a little more important than usual in Sykeston. I don’t know that. Mom and Dad apparently chose to move on rather than challenge the dismissal, as some community members had encouraged.

I spent an entire career in public education and I know that schools are more than anything else cauldrons of relationships, positive and not so positive, and things do happen as school boards change, etc.

It takes a thick skin and luck and lots of political savvy to survive very long as a Superintendent of Schools, given changes in school boards, etc. There are, annually, unpopular decisions to be made. And mistakes are made, too.

In addition to my parents, I had two uncles and three aunts who were teachers, a number of them career, all beginning in North Dakota. The stories of employment instability were all similar. If the annual contract was not renewed for whatever reason, the only choice was to move on. I have said frequently over the years that teachers were truly public Servants (with a capital S). It was just how it was. I don’t think that many community members, anywhere, gave this much of of a thought.

Nonetheless, of all the places that we lived, I think all of we Bernard’s, including our parents, would agree that Sykeston was as close to a home town as we ever had, and we remember it as such.

And that is good!

Have a great reunion and remembering!

Favorite photo of Henry Bernard visiting Sykeston August, 1970

Related: My story about Sykeston days written in June, 2008 can be viewed here. Also, a post published Friday, May 3, here; and another published Sunday, May 5, which is here. All are related very directly to reminiscing about Sykeston days.

I’m sure the Sykeston Committee would like to hear from you. Here’s the contact page.

Dick with son-in-law and two of nine grandkids, Orlando, March 23, 2013

Posted in Community, Education, Family History, History, Labor, North Dakota, Quietings | 2 Responses »
Tags: antelope consolidated nd, eldridge nd, karlsruhe nd, ross nd, sykes high, sykeston high school nd, tolley nd, tolna nd, uss woodworth dd 460

#709 – Dick Bernard: The Boston Marathon

Tuesday, April 16th, 2013

Yesterday morning, before 9 a.m., I was at the gym exercising at my usual place. Behind me, visible in the mirror, were two women, exercising beside each other and quite loudly chatting.

One of them mentioned to the other that her husband was in Boston, running the Marathon, checking in from time to time.

A few hours later I heard the news of the bombs at the finish line at the Marathon. This probably changed the woman’s conversation. Perhaps I’ll read in the Woodbury MN news something about this today or maybe next week…. Such is how communication goes these days. Instant and worldwide.

I got to thinking about two happenings in my own life.

Back on April 20, 1999, I was in the car on the freeway in north Minneapolis when I heard that there had been shooting at a school in Littleton, Colorado.

Littleton. That was where my son and family lived.

Soon enough, I learned my granddaughter, then 13 and in Middle School, was safe. No cell phones then. It was via e-mail.

I tried to find where Columbine high school was on the then-version of Mapquest. The school location on the map was misplaced, I soon learned. My son and family, it turned out, lived only a mile from the high school, and later he said he probably had seen the two killers the previous day in a local McDonalds restaurant – just three of the customers at that time, that day.

But in those days, communications was not quite so convenient or instant (though it was pretty good.) There were cell phones of a sort, but not ubiquitous like now. There was cable, but not hundreds of stations vying on the competitive edge for news. I don’t think I was thinking, then, about what has since become something of a mantra for me: “too many news people, too little news.”

Then I thought back further, to December 7, 1941, when my Uncle – Dad’s brother – went down with the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor.

I was alive then, just 1 1/2, so I didn’t pay much attention.

Dad told me about his memories of that awful time years later. They didn’t know for certain that his brother, Frank Bernard, had died until some weeks later. The time was so chaotic that I don’t think there was even an organized Memorial Service for Frank. His parent were in Long Beach for the winter and had no car (they traveled by train, then), his sister in Los Angeles, and his brother in rural North Dakota. Making even a phone call was not a routine matter. No television. Less radio. The news coming via newspaper – I have the clippings.

We tend to forget that.

And now we are besieged for hours upon hours by repetitive images of the same exact thing; by speculation by experts about who done it, and why it was done. Everybody with their own agenda for communicating whatever it is they choose to communicate.

We’re a big country, and such incidents will happen from time to time.

We used to worry about the Russians bombing our school in central North Dakota in the 1950s; now, well you know….

We need to get a grip and keep things in a bit better perspective.

It was bad, what happened in Boston, yesterday.

As a city and as a nation and as a world we’ll survive it.

We really have it pretty good, here.

Posted in Colorado, Community, Family History, History, Media, Minnesota, North Dakota, Technology, War | 1 Response »

#704 – Dick Bernard: “You oughta go tah, Nor Dakota…”*

Friday, March 29th, 2013

* – Once upon a time, the North Dakota promotional anthem (at least as I remember it). I can hum it still. Wish it were on YouTube….
But the title “masks” a more serious message, today.

Recently, within a day or two of each other, came two links: one from a present day and lifelong North Dakotan; the other from a born and raised, but many years out-of-state North Dakota native.

Here is one, an article and photo album from The Atlantic magazine about the oil boom in western North Dakota.

I’ve seen quite a number of articles, photos and commentaries about the second boom in ND’s Williston Basin (I lived there, at Ross as an 8th grader, in 1953-54, so experienced mostly the down-side of it, then). I wonder, often, about the true “cost-benefit analysis” of the boom: there are big (money) benefits, yes, but what are the short and long-term and huge costs, not just in money terms….

The below photo is the other, following by a day the North Dakota legislature and Governors action outlawing abortion, deliberately pushing the envelope on the matter of State’s Rights (one would presume) 40 years after Roe v. Wade.

Both the article and the photo come from fellow alumni of Valley City State Teachers College ca 1960-62.

Both the article and the photo, in my opinion, illustrate that all is not all that simple in the state of my birth, my home for all but 28 months (21 of those in the U.S. Army) of my first 25 years of life.

I’ve been absent from North Dakota for the last 48 years, but North Dakota is a very big part of me. The first family member saw the Missouri River at Bismarck with Gen. Sibley’s forces in 1863; my descendants have lived in what was to become North Dakota since 1878.

When I began this blog in 2009, I decided to include two photos on the home page. One is of a North Dakota country road between Berlin and Grand Rapids and my uncle and aunts beloved dog Sam (dec 1995).

The other (below), looking north from Hawk’s Nest west of Carrington ND, was taken at the time of the Sykeston community reunion in July, 2008, also the 50th anniversary of my high school graduation from Sykeston High School.

(click to enlarge)

From Hawk’s Nest, July 2008

Photos, it is often said, speak thousands of words.

The landscape from Hawk’s Nest is the North Dakota I remember. The billboard above, likely a creation of photo shop technology, has a far more harsh message about North Dakota in this Easter week, 2013.

The billboard “photo” speaks its own volumes.

Early this week the North Dakota legislature passed, and the Governor signed, one of the most draconian anti-abortion measures ever passed anywhere in the country. There are thousands of words, including the Governors own, about the intention of these laws and the upcoming citizens initiative in the state of North Dakota. The months ahead will determine the wisdom – or stupidity – or unbridled arrogance – of North Dakota’s elected leadership.

The people will decide.

What the folks at the capitol building in Bismarck may not have adequately considered, however, is that most of we North Dakotans by birth and upbringing, no longer live in North Dakota, and may have our own stories, and our own ability to impact on the decision making in the state that we may not, now, physically live; but whose geography and history lives on in each of us.

This goes for me as well.

I left North Dakota in May, 1965, for a very simple reason: my wife was dying. In fact, she died at the University of Minnesota Hospital two months after we crossed the North Dakota-Minnesota line. Three days before she died I had signed a contract for a new job in the Twin Cities, and except for visits, I have not gone back to my “home state”.

But I do go back every year, and will, again, go back in May.

My heart is always there, in North Dakota.

But, back in 1965, only two months before I left North Dakota, the possibility of abortion needed to cross the minds of Barbara and I. I wrote about how this came to be in one of my early blog posts, which has a simple heading “Abortion”, and was filed in October, 2009. You can read it here.

Even then, we had no available legal options.

Today, I can add a small financial “voice” to the upcoming struggle in ND, and will do so; and I am still deciding what to convey to the ND Governor and Legislators representing the many towns that I lived in back then, including Elgin, from which my wife left in an ambulance near the end of May, 1965.

Gov. Dalrymple and the prevailing legislators may consider themselves to be clothed with great authority.

The people will speak….

I’d ask you to consider passing this commentary along to others.

Posted in Economics, Environment, Family History, History, North Dakota, Politics | 1 Response »
Tags: hawks nest, north dakota oil boom, north dakota prohibition of abortion 2013, ross nd, williston basin

#695 – Dick Bernard: Mike, VCSTC’s Mr. Moore and a lesson in Civics and Freedom of Speech; and the problem of “Judging a book by its cover”.

Tuesday, February 26th, 2013

I met Mike when he was about 14 years old. He was my new girlfriend, Barbara’s, brother, 4 years younger than she. I don’t remember much about him then. Their younger brother, David, then 4 or so, more sticks in my mind. He was a really nice little kid.

This would have been about 1961, in Valley City, at their little house just south of Mercy Hospital.

Forty-six years later I was with Mike when he had his last meal at the hospital in Fargo. A few hours later he died, last survivor from his immediate family. I was his brother-in-law and had become the “go-to” guy and friend. At that last meeting I was able to show him what I still feel was the death certificate for his Dad, and where his Dad was buried. It seemed a very important deal for Mike. He knew nothing about his father, who’d left when he was two years old and there had been no contact at all after his parents divorced.

(click on photos to enlarge)

Mike, May 2007. His last few years he was paraplegic as an effect of aneurysm surgery – a high risk of the needed procedure.

In my memory, Mike always seemed “odd man out” in the family. In his last months, I made it my mission to try to find out, at least, who his Dad was. (The likely father died when Mike was about 9, turned out, and had been living about 150 miles from Valley City.)

From early on, Mike’d been on his own, so to speak. He probably reminded his Mom of his Dad; and his sister and brother were easier to be with. Mike could be mean.

Mike lived most of his final years a block from the walking bridge near the college in Valley City. Up the block was a funeral home; across the street was the Sheyenne River. Till she died in 1999, his Mom lived with him in the little house.

Mike would have been noticed in town, not necessarily in a positive way. He was a loner, sometimes odd looking, nocturnal. He seldom shopped, but seemed to tend to buy doubles of things: two pairs of the same kind of shoes, two identical coffee makers; two bottles of Coke…. He’d been mentally ill for many years, but was one of those who if they take their meds can get along. I gather he went through his own drug phase, sometime.

We all know people like Mike. People whose unattractive “cover” masks a “book” within. Often I see a woman pacing a small indoor mall near here. She is in her own world, seemingly oblivious to her surroundings, pacing quickly, talking loudly to herself. Recently, I asked a friend who works there about the woman. “She drives her car here”, she said, shaking her head. The lady probably takes her meds and is no danger to anyone, including people on the road.

For Mike, inside his “book” was great intelligence, and a refusal to give up.

He graduated from Valley City High School in 1965. When the few of us buried him in 2007, one of his high school teachers, Annie Haugaard, legendary Valley City teacher, said that Mike had been a good boy, a good student. She felt it important to say that about Mike. She knew a bit about him, inside that cover….

To my knowledge, no one attended his high school graduation as his sister, my wife, had just been admitted to University Hospital in Minneapolis with what turned out to be a terminal illness. All attention was on her, deservedly so. If someone went to the graduation to honor him, I haven’t heard about it.

Mike went on, and got his teaching degree at Valley City State Teachers College. Sometime in 1966-67 he had Mr. Kenneth Moore as a history teacher.

After graduation, he got a teaching job in ND, quite a distance from Valley City, in a school large enough to have 17 seniors. He taught there 1 1/2 years until he was fired. Thence he was drafted into the Army, where he served for two years, was given a secret clearance (which he honored, believe me), and was discharged as a Specialist 5th Class – a high ranking for a two year enlisted man. He had wanted to be a career man, but someone(s) in the little town where he had taught sabotaged his chances to continue in the military. The general allegation was lack of patriotism.

Mike (at left) 1972

I know all this, because when I was cleaning out his house, which he’d lost when he stopped making payments, I found among his meager belongings five copies of a 22 page statement from a military interrogatory at his base in Germany, dated 23 March 1972. The copies were almost unreadable (a one page sample is here:Mike transcript 3:1972001 ) For some reason, that interrogatory was important to him; as was his Army uniform, which I found crumpled in a dresser drawer. The uniform now resides in the Archives at the North Dakota History Center in Bismarck, with Sp5 affixed to the shoulder.

I’ve read through the interrogatory several times, and given the questions asked, and the persons cited by name, Mike ran afoul of someone(s) in his employing school district, basically for the sin of allowing kids to talk about their opposition to the Vietnam War, then raging. He was assigned to advise the school paper, and apparently kids wrote about maybe going to Canada to escape the draft, etc., and he wouldn’t censor them. Some of the complainants are named in the interrogatory. Into the mix came the name of Kenneth Moore of VCSTC whose teaching methods were, according to Mike, “to get people to think”. “It was through him that I probably got some of my teaching ideas specifically talking about current events, rather than by just lecturing….” (interrogatory)

The interrogatory goes on and on.

An allegation is made about how Mike himself may have threatened to go to Canada to escape the draft. In response to a question he says “When I first came in [the Army] I didn’t want to be in…But to tell you the truth, since I’ve gotten out of basic training I have nothing really of consequence against the Army. As a matter of fact, of all people, I even talked to the Sergeant Major a few days ago about going to Airborne School….” He had never even thought about resisting the draft or going to Canada; but he hadn’t prevented kids from expressing themselves, however.

The charges, however groundless, apparently created a quandary for the military, which gave him a security clearance and promoted him to a high enlisted rank given his short term of service. Sometime around or after the Munich Olympic Games (August-September, 1972) he separated from the service with an honorable discharge after two years of service.

He never talked about the military again, to my recollection. And until I found that uniform crumpled in a dresser drawer, I didn’t know he had any artifacts of that time in history.

I have tried to find out whatever happened to his VCSTC teacher Kenneth Moore, with no success: it’s too common a name and from long ago. Apparently, Mr. Moore was only at VCSTC that single year, 1966-67, a year when the Vietnam War was truly raging. It was not unusual for young instructors to have short tenures at VCSTC: they were continuing their education. But I’m pretty sure that Mr. Moore’s teaching was noticed, and perhaps not positively, in those tense days when free speech wasn’t particularly free.

When I think of judging people these days, I tend to think back to my brother-in-law Mike, who in our brief visits taught me more than he ever learned from me. I salute him.

You’ll find him lying at rest with his mother and brother at Valley City’s Woodbine Cemetery. His sister, Barbara, is up the hill at St. Catherine’s cemetery.

Postnote: Some years before he died, he left brief instructions with the funeral home which handled his arrangements: “As far as any funeral service, that would be nice. However, I doubt if I would have more than two or three people attending. I guess I am kind of a lone wolf.”

In the end, at graveside, there were 6 of us. And later at the assisted living facility in which he lived his last few months (the 2007 photo above was taken there), perhaps 40 or 50 residents gathered for a very nice memorial service.

He may have been a “lone wolf”, but he was not alone. If looking in on his goings-away, he was probably surprised, and you might have even seen a little smile.

Photo by Mike at 1972 Olympic Games, Munich

Olympic Flame at 1972 Munich Olympics, photo by Mike.

Exercise Tip Sheet from Mike during a period of hospitalization in the late 1970s (Note to self: use it!): Mike exercise tip sheet002

Posted in Community, Education, Family History, History, North Dakota, War | No Responses »
Tags: VCSTC

Leila Whitinger: Remembering Valley City (ND) State Teachers College

Thursday, February 21st, 2013

Leila’s reminiscences are a part of a series of recollections about the place we called “STC” back in the late 1950s to early 1960s. The originating post is found here, at January 2, 2013.

(click on photos to enlarge)

STC Band Officers 1960-61, Leila 2nd from right

Memories of Valley City State Teachers College
By Leila Whitinger, B.S. 1963

I attended VCSTC from the fall of 1959 until graduation in spring, 1963. By the time I finished, I completed majors in both Biology and physical education and a minor in German. Nearly all of the electives I completed were in music, and I was a member of the band for my first three years. I also sang in the choir. For fun, I took voice and piano lessons throughout my years in school. Because of the diversity of my classes, I had a lot of opportunities to become acquainted with students having many different interests.

Unlike most of my classmates, I was not from North Dakota. I was born and raised in Michigan, where my nuclear family still lived. I was in a unique situation, in that I moved into a totally new environment and nine hundred miles away from home to attend college at Valley City. Others repeatedly asked me why I chose to attend school there, and I had a ready answer for them. I told them that my grandmother was in the very first class at Valley City, my mother got her standard certificate there, and two of my aunts were also students there. I was just keeping up the family tradition.

My mother’s family homesteaded near Milnor, ND, while North Dakota was still a territory. My father’s family didn’t move to the Forman area until 1914, but they had a deep history in the area. Nora Mohberg, my mother’s sister, had just completed her Bachelor’s degree at Valley City when I graduated from high school. She was deeply involved in writing area historical articles and books, so I grew up reading about the challenges of pioneer life on the prairie. My grandmother still lived in Milnor not too far from Aunt Nora’s farm. One of Nora’s sons, Robert Mohberg, was a senior at Valley City during my freshman year.

To me, I didn’t feel as though I had left home. It felt more as though I was returning home. My parents and most of their brothers and sisters left North Dakota during the depression and dust bowl after losing their family farms. While Mother frequently reminisced with warm memories of her days at Valley City, she rarely had much good to say about their life on the farm. Because Mother’s mother was still living in Milnor, she and my father made annual trips to visit her. It wasn’t until my high school years that any of my five siblings or I could go with them, since they generally traveled with Mother’s sisters who also lived in our Michigan hometown.

When we were finally able to accompany our parents, we had a chance to meet mother’s “dozens of cousins” and get acquainted with our grandmother. I knew that I wouldn’t feel like a outsider, since I was related through my mother’s family to a whole lot of Andersons, Ankerfelts, Ericksons, Fladeboes, Toftleys and Johnsons. Her father was one of fifteen children, and most of them remained either in southeastern North Dakota or southwestern Minnesota. We visited many of them during our visits throughout the years, so I already knew what North Dakota women mean by, “A little lunch.”

Aunt Nora took us to Valley City during the summer between my junior and senior high school years. I fell in love with the place the minute I saw it, and I think that I may have even gotten an application on that same day. Mother was horrified at the idea of my moving so far from home, but it helped that my home would be with her sister and that Robert would be a student there. It definitely wasn’t an easy sell, except for the fact that it was so much less expensive than Michigan colleges.

Blowing Bubble Gum – Leila at right – one of her favorite pics in the 1960 annual.

I had been planning to go to college from the time I was a very small child. I visualized a college as a small cottage in the woods, and it sounded great to me! By the time I got older, I could see that it would take a miracle for me to go to college because we had no money. Our father was critically injured when I was eleven years old and out of work for over a year. Because of his injuries, he was unable to provide much for the family. I started working and saving for college at that time.

I baby-sat, worked for the school recreation and hot lunch programs, and taught dancing at my sister’s dance school. I saved every nickel I earned during that time. I baby-sat for our senior class advisor on prom night because I didn’t want to waste money on a dress I didn’t need and would never use again. Outside of band and Spanish club, I didn’t participate in any extra-curricular activities. By the time I moved to North Dakota before my freshman year, I was exhausted. My cousins wondered about me, since I slept for almost the entire six weeks I spent with them on the farm before the term started. The hypnotic wheat fields, bright blue skies and quiet farm life agreed with me, and I relaxed for the first time in a very long time.

Aunt Nora took me to Valley City before the beginning of the school year to help me set up my dance school. Charlotte Graichen was very helpful to us, and I was able to start teaching during the second week of classes. I lived in the dorm, of course, and I loved it. I was in a suite with five other girls, and we became good friends very quickly. Perhaps it was because I grew up in a small one-bathroom house with four sisters and a brother, but it didn’t feel crowded to me.

Leila dancing at EBC Hit Parade 1960

One of the benefits of living in the dorm was that my suite mates always brought “care packages” to me from their mothers. I learned about wonderful pfeffenusse cookies, krumkake, apfelkuchen and a myriad of other Swedish, Norwegian and German treats. On weekends, I was usually one of the few girls left in the dorm. Our housemother was a sweetheart to me. Mrs. Hedberg, AKA Hettie or Grendel, was also from Michigan. After my first week in the dorm, I requested a board to be placed under my mattress for support. I injured my back in a diving accident when I was fifteen, and was having problems with the mattress. In only a few days, she had a new firm mattress delivered to my room! I used it for the entire three years I lived there. When her sister sent Michigan cherries to her, she always invited me in to share them with her.

Marion Rieth mentioned something about wearing high heels to class. When I saw students going to class in high heels, I almost flipped. I remember asking myself, “Are they insane?” I started out wearing dress shoes, but quickly changed to tennis shoes. They had equally insane rules about wearing slacks, but nothing was written about shoes. By the end of the first term, most of the other girls from the dorm were also wearing tennis shoes.

The slacks issue was particularly galling to me, since it really was an outrageous rule. We weren’t allowed to wear slacks in any of the classroom buildings, cafeteria or library. I have no idea how many times I was kicked out of the library for breaking that rule, since I would often stop there after teaching my dance classes. It meant that I would have to go back to my dorm room, change clothes, and return to study. I quickly learned that logical arguments about subzero weather didn’t work, but it did motivate me to work towards getting rid of that rule. I also learned that I didn’t run into that kind of nonsense when I went to work in the biology labs in the evening. It took a couple of years for us to get rid of that rule.

I thoroughly enjoyed my experiences in band. Fred Koppleman was a senior during my freshman year, and he was an excellent percussionist. Before our very first practice, he showed me his award for being the national rudimentary champion of percussion instruments, along with a terrific photograph of him with his drums. As a percussionist myself, I had the distinction of being the only snare drum soloist earning a first place during the Michigan solo-ensemble festival during my senior year of high school. Art Froemke was still directing the band during my freshman year, and his eyesight was practically gone. He kept calling me Fred as we were practicing, so the rest of the band frequently called me Fred after that. I guess if someone is going to mistake me for a national champion, it isn’t so bad!

If I were to say that there were a lot of interesting people in that band, it would be an understatement. Because of my dance and choreography experience, I taught the chorus line for EBC Hit Parades, and that was a lot of fun. I learned that I would never be able to cut it as a straight man/woman to a comic after doing a sketch with Lynn Clancy. I was supposed to keep a straight face while I was asking him questions, but I couldn’t hold it together. I also learned that it is almost impossible to deliver lines when you are choking with laughter.

I especially liked Mr. Lade’s classes, since he gave me some of the best advice a science teacher would ever need. He told us not to waste our time memorizing science facts because they are constantly changing. He said that the most important skill we could develop is to learn where to find information when we needed it. He encouraged lifelong learning with that simple piece of advice.

For me, at least, my years at Valley City provided me with the experiences I missed during high school. I attended formal dances, and enjoyed them. I had time to sit around with girlfriends and be silly. My activities with my Delphi sisters are treasured memories. I became acquainted with countless terrific classmates and teachers who positively affected my experience at Valley City. All of that prepared me to teach, to advocate, and agitate throughout my career in education. I really don’t think that a large university could have done a better job.

Leila at right on trampoline in Girls Gymnasium.

Posted in Education, Family History, North Dakota | No Responses »
Tags: Leila Whitinger, valley city state teacher's college, VCSTC

#687 – Dick Bernard: “Sykes High, oh Sykes High School of Dreams Come True….”

Monday, February 11th, 2013

Note to reader: This is one of a series of posts spawned by recollections of attendance at Valley City (ND) State Teachers College 1958-61. This and the other items are (or will be) permanently accessible at January 2, 2013.

I was a tiny town kid. Sykeston High School, class of ’58, included eight of us. A ninth had dropped out mid-year to join the Air Force. (The subject heading for this blog was the School Song, written in 1942 by two students. Sykeston School Song002) The previous year I had attended Antelope Consolidated, a country Grades 1-12 school near Mooreton, and the Senior Class numbered two: a valedictorian and salutatorian. The smallness didn’t seem to hold us back: long-time U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan was fond of recalling that he graduated 5th in his class of 9 at Regent, in far southwest North Dakota.

Most of us at VCSTC were from tiny towns. In contemporary terms, even Valley City (2010 population 6585) would be considered nothing more than a town; John Hammer, a colleague freshman in 1958 from the surrounding Barnes County (2010 population: 11,066) said that in his high school times, aside from Valley City itself, there were 16 school districts with high schools in Barnes County – perhaps one high school for every 300 total people.

Sykeston was probably pretty typical of those hamlets many of we students called “home”. In 2008, after my 50th high school reunion (held coincident with Sykestons 125th anniversary), I managed to cobble together the data about that high schools graduating classes from the first, in 1917. You can learn a lot about ND from that graph including the fact that my high school closed in 2005, leaving behind only the stately building from 1913.

(click to enlarge)

Sykeston HS build 1913, photo in June 1958, Dick Bernard.

Valley City State Teachers College, then, was big-time for me, a country kid. It was founded in 1890, and was part of a State College system supervised by a Board. Here is the 1960 Board: ND State College Bd 1960001

Old Main VCSTC 1959

STC’s sports teams, then, were excellent, and the 1959 annual, in the Basketball section, notes the competition. The ND State Colleges played that year were: Wahpeton, Ellendale, Bottineau, Mayville, Minot, Bismarck & Dickinson. Some of these were Junior Colleges. Private Jamestown College was next-door arch-rival. VCSTC also played University of Manitoba, and S.D. schools Huron and Aberdeen.

Here is the current roster of North Dakota State Colleges. Ellendale long ago “bit the dust”. Devils Lake and Williston may or may not have existed in 1958. I’m not sure.

For whatever reason, I seem to have developed early an interest in what “school” in North Dakota meant, even back in college and early post-college years.

In June, 1961, for some reason I did a little research piece about the history of North Dakota Public Schools and published it in the Viking News which I then edited. I can remember writing the piece, but not why I chose to do it, though I don’t think it was an assignment. You can read it here: VCSTC ND Educ Jul 5 1961001. On rereading it, I think I was basically quite accurate. I probably used the college library sources for research.

In February, 1965, during one of those vaunted three-day blizzards in western North Dakota, I whiled away my time in our tiny apartment doing some more research on Changes in the Small Schools of North Dakota. I used the simplest of resources: the North Dakota School Directories and census data. Blizzard over, for no particular reason, I submitted the unpolished piece to the North Dakota Education Association which, much to my surprise, printed it in the April, 1965 issue: Changes in ND Small Schs001.

Later that month, an editorial about the article appeared in the Grand Forks (ND) Herald – a minor brush with fame.

It would be interesting to see someone update that 1965 blizzard-bound “research”.

Posted in Community, Education, Family History, History, North Dakota | No Responses »
Tags: antelope consolidated, barnes county nd, sykeston nd, valley city nd, valley city state teacher's college, valley city state university

#678 – Dick Bernard: Anniversary of a Retirement

Friday, January 18th, 2013

It was thirteen years ago today, January 18, 2000, that my staff colleagues at Education Minnesota bid me adieu at my retirement after 27 years attempting to do my best to represent teachers in a collective bargaining state.

I was not yet 60 when I cleaned out my office, handed in my keys and walked out the north door at 41 Sherburne in St. Paul.

It had been long enough.

Even so, I had purposely fixed my retirement date to accommodate the statutory deadline for contract settlements that year: January 18, 2000.

My job back then was an endless series of negotiations about anything and everything: elementary teachers had differing priorities than secondary; that teacher who’d filed a grievance, or was being disciplined for something, had a difference of opinion with someone. Somebody higher up the food chain had a differing notion of “top priority” than I did….

So it went.

And negotiations was a lot better than the alternative where the game was for one person to win, against someone else who lost.

It was one of many lessons early in my staff career: if you play the game of win and lose, the winner never really wins, at least in the real sense of that term, where a worthy objective is for everybody to feel some sense of winning something. Win/Lose is really Lose/Lose…everybody loses.

We are in the midst of a long-running terrible Civil War where winning is everything; where to negotiate is to lose.

We’re seeing the sad results in our states, and in our nation’s capital, and in our interpersonal communication (or lack of same) about important issues, like the current Gun Issue, Etc.

Thirteen years is a while ago.

I brought my camera along that January 18, 2000, and someone took a few snapshots (at end of this post). Nothing fancy, but it is surprising how many memories come back:

There’s that photo of myself with the co-Presidents of Education Minnesota, Judy Schaubach and Sandra Peterson. Two years earlier rival unions, Minnesota Education Association and Minnesota Federation of Teachers, had merged after many years of conflict.

I like to feel that I played more than a tiny part in that important rapprochement, beginning in the late 1980s in northern Minnesota.

Both officers have retired. Sandra Peterson served 8 years in the Minnesota State Legislature.

Leaders don’t stop leading when they retire.

February 28, in Apple Valley, Education Minnesota’s Dakota County United Educators (Apple Valley/Rosemount) will celebrate 20 years from the beginning of serious negotiations to merge two rival local unions.

I was there, part of that. And proud of it.

There’s my boss, Larry Wicks, who many years earlier I’d practiced-teaching-on at Valley City State Teachers College. I apparently didn’t destroy him then; he’s currently Executive Director of the Ohio Education Association.

And my work colleague and friend Bob Tonra, now many years deceased, who somehow took a fancy to my Uncle’s WWII ships, the battleship USS Arizona and destroyer USS Woodworth and painstakingly made to scale models, behind me as I type this blog.

And of course, colleagues – people in the next office, across the hall, other departments, etc. Or Karen at the Good Earth in Roseville – “my” restaurant for nearly its entire existence. They gave me a free carrot cake that day….

That January 18 I finally cleared the final mess from my office and took a few photos of my work space, across the street from the State Capitol building. On my office door hung a photo from the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, April, 1999, a few days after the massacre at Columbine.

That young lady in the picture is granddaughter Lindsay, then 13. She, her parents and I walked up that Cross Hill on a rainy April day, and saw the stumps of the two crosses one Dad had cut down – the ones erected by someone else to the two killers, who had killed themselves. They lived then, and now, scarce a mile from the high school….

All the memories.

Let’s all learn to truly negotiate and to compromise on even our most cherished beliefs.

Such a talent is our future. Indeed our world’s only chance for a future.

(click to enlarge)

Judy Schaubach, Dick Bernard, Sandra Peterson Jan 18, 2000

In Gallop Conference Room at Education Minnesota Jan 18, 2000

Karen Schultz and server at Good Earth, January 18, 2000

Bob Tonra with his model of the USS Arizona ca 1996

Larry Wicks (at left)

Cross Hill above Columbine High School, April 1999, granddaughter Lindsay by the crosses, late April, 1999

Posted in Colorado, Community, Education, Family History, Guns, History, Labor, Minnesota, North Dakota, Politics | No Responses »
Tags: columbine, Education Minnesota, good earth roseville mn, judy schaubach, Minnesota Education Association, minnesota federation of teachers, sandra peterson

#675- Dick Bernard: A Mysterious Photograph; subtext, can’t be serious all the time, there are mysteries, and they give an opportunity to think back to those ever more olden days!

Sunday, January 13th, 2013

Recently, enroute to finding something else, I came across a mysterious 8×10 photograph, unlabeled.

(click to enlarge)

An unknown bunch....

I remembered when I first saw it, in my mother-in-laws effects. She had passed away in 1999 at 84 or so, and it certainly wasn’t her fan memory. Her children have all passed on as well, the most recent and last in 2007, so I can’t ask them. My wife, Barbara, had passed away of kidney disease at age 22 in 1965; her brother, then 19, had died in a car accident in 1975; and the middle brother died at age 60 in 2007.

The photo was and still is a mystery.

I decided to scan the photo and send on to a friend who maintains an e-mail list from Barbara’s high school graduation class of 1961. We were all born from 1940 to 1943…WWII babies.

It brought forth quite a few comments, from whimsical to serious. Here’s a “Facebook” like thread, which turned out to be very long. But if you’re interested, you’ll read on…!

Diane started the conversation: “I don’t have a clue who these people may be. Sorry.”

On we went, and here are a few later responses:

Barb: “I showed this picture to my husband, the musical person, and he had no clue either. He said it looks like a heavy metal band, or one of it’s precursors. Seems to me as though it is not a group from the 60′s, so it was probably not Barbara’s property.”

Larry: “Right…you saw some these guys later on, with Grateful Dead, Kiss, others, but during our late 50s early 60s era, this wasn’t the kind of group we were following and I don’t imagine….”

Margaret: “Perhaps their hair dresser would know.”

Ron: “Very funny Margaret. The guy on the right looks somewhat like a young Frank Zappa. Maybe???”

Diane: “I thought it was rather clever. ”

Doug: “Love your answer Margaret … I asked my wife and she doesn’t know.”

Barb: “[Ron] says that ” it could be” a young Frank Zappa. So who is he???”

Dick: “Well, you shook the bush, and here I am: [look at this video].
It might be Zappa…
If I was to guess, this photo belonged to…Barbara’s younger brother [who] died in a car accident…in August, 1975. He was only 19. I can’t say this for sure, but I think he got into the drug culture in later teen years, which was a shame. He was his Mom’s boy. He really never had a Dad, since his Dad split shortly after he was born. The family story was a very, very difficult one.”

Barb: “Yup, I think Ron was right . . . the guy in the video does look like the picture Dick has! My hubby says he was popular during the hippie years, the drug years, and that he named one of his kids “Dweezel” . . . . good grief! I think I was married and raising little kids during those years and I missed all of those goings on.
Dick, if you put it on e-bay, who knows what you might learn! Even if it isn’t autographed, it’s a real photo. Some old ex-hippie might want it!”

Ron: “He’s [Zappa] the musician who named his children: Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan and Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen.”

Larry, to Margaret’s hairdresser comment: “Haha…good line Margaret…..we 61′ers all had neat hair…like Leland’s and Chuck’s duck tails and Roy’s and others’ crew cuts…etc…and then I was using “butch wax” and “Brylcream” …a little dab will do ya..”….to slick back the locks.”

Dennis: “I have to laugh at the dialogue that follows a picture. We must all be home snug in our environment hoping for those hazy, lazy, crazy days of summer. My skiing ability was tested as I went out this morning and slid down the entire driveway to get the paper. I was very successful, however when I turned to go back up the driveway, I learned it is easier to ski downhill than uphill. Must be a physics law here. I remember the crew cuts. It was suggested to us by our coaches that it would be to our advantage to keep our hair short. I went back to the archives and looked at our basketball pictures, all short hair. Now I pay my barber by the number of hairs left. Oh well!”

Margaret: “You guys had great hair!”

Larry: “Haha…hey, Denny…assume you know HOW to ski or, at YOUR “advanced” age, are you just learning? Bully for you if you’re learning a new skill. Keeps those neurons cracking and healthy, they tell me.

Don had a crew cut or something like it, if memory serves. I look stupid as hell in one (some would argue, “ya, in any other haircut too!”) and that’s how I looked when JoAnne and I got married. Ouch. Why she went through with marrying me I will never know. Now, I too, Denny, as I noticed this morning at “Great Clips,” that I am growing a rather large hairless spot on the back of my head AND the clippings on the cloth I was wrapped in show quite a noticeable amount of gray, that being the growing color of whatever remains.

Weatherwise, as you mentioned, we are “hunkered down” too awaiting a dip into the ice box and perhaps a blizzard of sorts. Roads are very icy tonight. Fargo’s temp, at 8:43 PM central is 16 above, but Denver’s is only 12 – my daughter’s Florida Goldens like romping in the snow but I imagine they’ll start to miss the tropical temps as the thermometer dips. And it’s only 39 in Las Vegas tonight….those are the temps I watch on my iGoogle page.”

Dick: “Does anybody still use Brylcreem? I was one kid who was pretty liberal with the definition of “a little dab”. Maybe that’s why we didn’t have a second chicken for dinner – the family budget went for my Brylcreem.”

Larry: “Hahaha…hey, Dick I see by your Wikipedia link that ” Sara Lee bought the personal care unit of SmithKline Beecham in 1992.” Brylcreem was part of that . I believe it must be sold in some parts of the world, if I read the article correctly..maybe under a different name. Heck, there might even be some in Sarah Lee food products…perish the thought.

I put on plenty of it too. My grandmother used to get pretty mad when it stained the inside of my PARKA.. We all had to have a “parka” in those salad days. Now I wear a red bomber cap when I run my snowblower.”

Dick: “Since I started this ‘marathon’, perhaps I can add another comment (which probably won’t close the conversation). I thought the comments were so intriguing that I’d do a blogpost about the photo, including some of your comments.”

Barb: Well, you were right, Dick. You’ve started a whole “other” conversation! Diane is entertaining a big group of friends at her home in Tempe today, so I’m guessing she won’t comment until tomorrow at the earliest.”

Reader, if you’ve got this far: your opinion?

Posted in Family History, History, North Dakota, Quietings | No Responses »

#673 – Dick Bernard: The 1960-61 Viking News of Valley City State Teachers College

Saturday, January 5th, 2013

(click to enlarge photos and graphic)

The Jan. 2 musing about Valley City State Teachers College 1958-61 became longer and longer, but as I completed it, it didn’t feel complete without finally, after over 50 years, dealing with the Viking News I had the privilege of editing in 1960-61. All 13 (and 76 pages) of the issues are in pdf form below. It was worth the better part of a day of work to do this. Perhaps one or two folks from those halcyon days of yesteryear will find a memory or two or three! I surely did.

1960-61 was the ‘good old days’ of technology.

Those newspapers – on 10″x14″ inch white glossy paper, were typeset on linotype at the Valley City Times Record. Mr. Vandestreek (as I knew him, his byline was C. Vandestreek) was the editor or publisher and the person to whom I delivered the copy, and the corrections for each issue of the Viking News. I watched the linotype guys do their work. I walked the half dozen or so blocks from campus up to the newspaper office.

We staff people were all amateurs, but we had good practice and an outstanding adviser in Mrs. Canine. We operated out of a room in the basement of Old Main at the College, and worked with manual typewriters.

Mrs. Canine was a tiny lady but a formidable person. No one even thought of messing with Mrs. Canine! She had that commanding presence that on occasion comes in handy.

Science instructor, Mr. Ovrebo, seems to have done almost all of the picture-taking, and he did a great job. Photography must have been his hobby. This was in the day of black and white film, and flash bulbs. Picture taking was hard work. I’d guess Mr. Ovrebo did his own developing and printing in a darkroom at home or on campus.

The volunteer staff of the paper changed by the month. I took the time to do a count, and in all 56 people, including five teachers, were named as contributors to the paper, in one way or another. Seven of us were on the staff for all 13 issues: myself, Robert Rieth, Dick Greene, Doug Dougherty, Diane Pederson, Marcia Bemis and Darleen Hartman.

I think Mrs. Canine liked the work we did in 1960-61, and at the end of the year she gave me a set of the newspapers, stapled in the margin. Now, 52 years later, they are once again “republished” in a manner that none of us could have imagined back then: on a blog over the internet.

The contents of our newsletter speak for themselves. Our ad salesman apparently did a very good job; you can see the ads for the movies that happened to be showing at the single theater in town around deadline date!

We were just a bunch of kids, and it was a good year. Thanks for the memories.

Issues of the Viking News:
September 23, 1960 (four pages): Viking News Sep 23 60002
October 6, 1960 (four pages): Viking News Oct 6 60001
November 3, 1960 (six pages): Viking News Nov 3 60001
December 5, 1960 (six pages): Viking News Dec 5, 1960001
January 20, 1961 (six pages): Viking News Jan 20 1961001
February 16, 1961 (six pages): Viking News Feb16 1961001
March 15, 1961 (six pages): Viking News Mar 15 1961001
March 29, 1961 (six pages): Viking News Mar 29 1961001
April 14, 1961 (six pages): Viking News Apr 14 1961001
April 28, 1961 (six pages): Viking News Apr 28 1961001
May 3, 1961 (eight pages, Senior Edition): Viking News May 3 1961001
May 24, 1961 (six pages): Viking News May 24 1961002
July 5, 1961 (six pages): Viking News July 5 1961001

This list changed somewhat with each issue. Bernard, Rieth, Greene, Dougherty, Pederson and Hartman, as well as Mrs. Canine and Mr. Ovrebo, were on staff for all the issues.

Mrs. Mary Hagen Canine, Viking News Advisor

Mr. Ovrebo, Faculty member and photographer for Viking News

Posted in Community, History, North Dakota | No Responses »
Tags: Gerhard Ovrebo, mary hagen canine, Viking News Valley City State Teachers College ND