#300 – Dick Bernard: The "War" of the Season

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Today is the Winter Solstice, this one especially unique because of the total lunar eclipse which last happened on this solstice in 1638, three years after my first French-Canadian ancestors, Jean Cote and Anne Martin, married at Quebec City November 15, 1635. One can wonder if they watched that eclipse, and wondered what it meant….
Fast forward 372 years, this morning at my coffee spot the every Tuesday Bible Study group at the next table was chatting about this and that, and the resident old guy at the table got into the Christmas Cheer topic: “if someone wishes me Happy Holidays, I wish them a Blessed Christmas back“, he loudly said.
None of this “Happy Holidays” stuff.
We are a pluralistic society, which is troubling to some who seem to have the desire to take over the Meaning of Christmas as solely a Christian observance, and more specifically, a Christian observance as interpreted by their own denomination.
It can get rather confusing.
At the local post office, I could buy, this year, seven varieties of ‘holiday’ stamps: Evergreen (representing the natural world, I suppose); Angel with Lute; miscellaneous holiday – snowman and such; Madonna and Child; Kwanzaa, Eid, Hanukkah. When I got around to buying stamps they were down to Evergreen and Angel with Lute, so that’s what I got. I was planning to buy a book of each. I am sure someone is analyzing the statistics of how many of each were purchased this year; and I am sure there have been numerous and earnest committee meetings within the post office, and assorted other interests, to lobby to get rid of certain designs, or to add others. In its way the U.S. Postal Service accurately defines This Season In Which We Are Now In The Midst.
All of the observances represented by those stamps are clumped around the winter solstice for a reason. The history of each can be easily researched.
I happen to have spent my entire life within one Christian denomination, so the Christian observance of Christmas is my tradition. But many, perhaps most, of the people I know do not share my specific tradition, and they deserve equal respect for their own view of this time of year.
A recent New York Times column, and the responses to it, frame the issues pretty well: here and here. Prepare for a long and interesting read.
I close with a winter solstice poem sent to me by someone I know as a Christian….
THE SHORTEST DAY
Susan Cooper
So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us – Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!!
As Tiny Tim so immortally says in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, “God bless us, everyone“.
Happy Holidays.

#298 – Dick Bernard: No One is an Island: Remembering at Christmas, 2010, an untimely death, and expressing a thousand "thank you's"

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UPDATE: This link was put together by Larry Gauper, a classmate and friend of Barbara during Valley City High School 1957-61: Barbara Sunde Bernard_12_13_2010-3.
Peace and all best wishes for a wonderful Christmas Season and a Happy New Year in 2011. If you wish to participate in a meaningful remembrance this season, note my post at this blog for December 16.

1913 Christmas Card


Every year since 1977 I have crafted my own Christmas Card. Each year, something ‘catches’ me and becomes the focus for that year.
This years message is about “community” and how it entered three lives, years ago. My message has a history, literally, which began for me about 49 years ago, and which began again in November, 2007, when I dropped off some materials at the Fargo (ND) Forum about my brother-in-law Mike, who died Nov. 7, 2007, in a Fargo hospital. Larry Gauper of Fargo ND picked up the story in November, 2010, culminating in a blog post about his friend and Valley City ND High School classmate, Mike’s sister Barbara, who was my first wife. His post is entitled “Remembering a classmate and friend.” I became a close collaborator in Larry’s project.
Barbara and I were married slightly over two years, till she died of kidney disease at University of Minnesota Hospital July 24, 1965.
Barbara was desperately and, it turned out, likely terminally ill during our entire marriage. We married when I was 23 and she 20; at age 22 she was dead, leaving behind a son age 1 1/2, and a stunned family. Neither of us had any idea, when we were dating, then married, that our “Ken and Barby” (as Larry described us) view of the future would have no chance of being fulfilled.
Innumerable people have experienced what Barbara and I did so many years ago. We were not unique.
I can imagine our experience as analogous to being caught in a whirlpool and desperately trying to escape. Everything was supposed to be normal, but nothing was…. It takes a while, but sooner or later you know that you’re just not going to escape.
Barbara died in an intensive care bed at the University of Minnesota Hospital, on the 8th floor if I remember correctly.
Here’s where the “thousand ‘thank you’s” enter the picture.
The unplanned re-visiting of events of over 45 years ago had an unexpected impact on me.
I began to think of all of the people who in one way or another participated in helping us get through those very confusing and difficult days of 1963-65.
At one point, I thought of trying to list everyone, here. But I dropped the idea: there are far too many, and besides, I would forget some who richly deserved thanks. A great many of them have long ago passed on themselves; many have disappeared from my radar – moved, etc. There are large numbers of them whose name I never knew, or who I never even met. All of these are the “thousand” I refer to in the subject line.
We never did have an opportunity to thank them at the time. I doubt we thought about it – we were trying to survive, after all, and expressing gratitude is a luxury not readily available to those in constant stress.
So, here’s an attempt to at least thank those who were there when we needed them. While we tried to survive, they offered us endless varieties of helping hands.
In no particular order:
Our families and friends, yes, especially those who kept Barbara ‘under their wing’ in the hardest times. Thank you.
Babysitters who took care of our son, Tom, when Barbara couldn’t, and I was working. Thank you.
Work colleagues, school administrators, landlords, legions of medical staff in many clinics and hospitals. Thank you.
Marion and Louis Smart, then of 1615 S. Ferry, Anoka MN, who took Tom and I in the tough first year after Barbara died, and who I’ll likely again hear from this Christmas. Tom’s crib in their home was his ‘manger’ in 1965-66! Thank you.
To Mitsy Polman, then of Spring Lake Park MN, who, the following year, babysat Tom along with raising her own kids. Many years ago Polman’s moved. I don’t know where. Thank you.
To Irbers, who were very often a life raft for me in the toughest of tough times. Thank you.
The greater community, represented by the Hospitals and Clinics who took Barbara on as a patient, even though they knew we had no insurance and would likely never be able to pay the bill. Thank you.
To North Dakota Public Welfare, who paid most of the discounted cost for Barbara’s 58 final days as a patient at University Hospital in Minneapolis. Thank you.
Extraordinary special thanks to those who lent a helping hand, small or large, even if there was no reason to extend that hand.
I would wish on no one what we went through, especially what Barbara went through. On the other hand, one gets a new appreciation of what that little word “community” really means. It is ALL of us, whoever we are or wherever we live.
Thank you all. What little I can give back, I will.
Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year in 2011.

Tom and Dick Bernard, November, 1965, Minnehaha Park, Minneapolis MN


Footnote: The first paragraph of this writing refers to my post for December 16, which in turn refers to a memorial on the first anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Haiti. At our first committee meeting, one of the members suggested as a central piece of text John Donne’s Meditation XVII, commonly known as “No man is an island”. It seems to fit particularly well with this reflection.

#295 – Hunkering down for a Blizzard!

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UPDATE 8:15 P.M. DECEMBER 11: Most likely we have over 20″ of snow at our home, thus far no wind. Didn’t leave the house all day. More snow than expected.
UPDATE II 8:10 A.M. DECEMBER 12: We can now classify the storm as a modern day catastrophe. Not only was the Vikings-Giants game postponed till Monday, but at least part of the Metrodome roof apparently has collapsed under the snow.
The storm lasted only 24 hours, and it didn’t even approach blizzard standards, at least where we live, but it was an unusual time for us.
At the end of yesterday’s post are some memories of past times storms.

Our grill in disguise, late afternoon December 11, 2010


There’s something energizing about a blizzard, even if you’re totally disabled and immobile (translated: not going out for coffee) as I am at this moment.
We’re in the fairly early stages of what they’re calling a blizzard – plenty of fluffy snow thus far, but relatively little wind. Once the wind comes along, those harmless little pieces of fluff will be even more disabling.
So there’s little to do but revel in the warmth of a home (we’re fortunate) and reminisce…about blizzards I have known.
Recently I completed a history of my French-Canadian roots, and a bit player in that history was Father Joseph Goiffon, called the “peg leg Priest”.

Fr. Goiffon lost his leg in a mis-adventure when caught in an All-Saints Day (Halloween) blizzard in 1860 near where the Park and Red Rivers come together in northeast North Dakota. Fr. Goiffon only lost his leg; his horse froze to death. His nephew, Duane Thein, edited a most interesting 91-page book, still in print, about the near-tragedy in 2005 (see cover, above). Father Goiffon lived on to re-tell the story many times. He died in 1910.
I survived, somewhat more comfortably than Fr. Goiffon, the Halloween blizzard of 1991. I was living in Hibbing MN at the time, and it was said we got over 30 inches of snow which, after the wind, became the hard-pack flakes famous for igloos and fun for kids to build snow caves and forts.
For adults, such blizzards are usually the pits, even if in comfort (last night in a grocery store line I was chatting with the guy behind me who said the liquor store line had been even longer….) Yah, I’ll hear the high-pitched whine of the snowmobiles shortly, but mostly we’re house-bound.
In Hibbing, we were immobile for what I remember to be several days. There was nowhere to go, and no way to get there. Immobility for we in the mobile generation is difficult.

After the Halloween blizzard in Hibbing MN 1991


Growing up in North Dakota, I became accustomed to blizzards – two or three of them a winter, it seems.
Unlike today’s blizzard, which was pretty accurately forecast, in those days in the 1940s and on, wise sages had to read the skies and we had to act prudently to avoid being caught in a killer out in the country. You knew those mean storms were out there, but you didn’t know exactly when they’d hit or how bad they’d be.
But if you were indoors and had enough food and fuel, you were okay.
Afterwards, you could walk on the rock hard snow banks, and the kids would work harder than they’d ever work doing chores, digging snow caves and building snow forts and doing all the things kids can do when presented with a new opportunity.
I think of the Elgin ND Blizzard of February, 1965 – a bad one. But it is just another example. They happened every year.
I write in the early stages of this one, so I can’t project what it will be like a few hours from now.
It appears to be of relatively short duration, but if it gets windy, watch out.
So far, nobody’s out for fun. Those who are out are busy.
Today we’ll put up the Christmas tree….

Christmas Tree 7 p.m. December 11, 2010, first view


Happy Holidays.
UPDATE: Some responses to the above post:

From Mel Berning, Eureka CA, who recalls a storm he lived through in rural Berlin, North Dakota, right after WWII.
“There were lots of memorable blizzards in N. Dak. but only one remains in my
mind. Dad and Mom came to the Dakotas in 1906 and i remember dad telling about
blizzards so severe you couldn’t see anything but dark lightness in the height of
the storm even during the daylight hours. As a wise kid I discounted these wild
stories as a flight of fancy until one day in deep winter I experienced just
that.
My brother Gus and I decided to get the chores over quickly and do them at 4:30
in the afternoon. It was in the winter of [19]46?? and Gus was home from the
service at the time and staying on the farm with us. To get on with it we went
into the summer porch and lit our kerosene lantern in preparation for the trip
to the barn, a distance of about100 feet. We stepped out of the porch door and
the wind blew the lantern out, I turned to my older brother and hollered lets
hold hands till we get to the barn, surprisingly he gladly complied and we
stumbled blindly on through the howling snow hand in hand. Fortunately I had been
to the barn so often that we collided with the side of the barn and felt our way
around to the door. I kept hoping one of us had matches to relight the lantern
because it was dark as ink. We slid open the barn door, stepped inside, and lo
the lantern was still lit. neither of us could see it in the blinding snow and
it surely was a relief to have light.
Another winter story if you would, We had a 2 week snow with constant blizzard
conditions. As can be expected, dad was out of tobacco and we were running low
on groceries when the storm suddenly stopped and a Chinook [wind] came up from the
south. The temperature rapidly climbed to 50+ and my neighbor and I started to
plow our way to the store in Berlin [about five miles away]. By 3:00 o’clock we were able to reach the
plowed highway and returned home. We both picked up our grocery list and headed
back to Berlin to buy the family groceries. After doing the shopping we decided
to go to the Oasis, the pool hall, have a beer and shoot a game of pool, We
barely got to break the racked balls when some one came in and said it was
snowing out side. We hung up our cues and headed for home. The blizzard was
back and the temperature was dropping rapidly, we got to with in 2-1/2 miles of
home when we hit a new drift on the road and it was home from there on foot.
When I got home dad and mom were very relieved and by that time the thermometer
was on the minus side of 10 below. Several people and some stock died in Dakota
that night.
From Myron DeMers, Fargo ND, who grew up in rural Grafton, ND:
When you mention blizzards and I see so many people outside using snow blowers right now in Fargo, I remembered asking dad years ago if they did a lot of shoveling “in the old days”. His answer surprised me. He said “yes and no” because with all the farmyard traffic, horses, sleighs etc the snow would pack down and most of the winter was spent riding on top of the snow rather then shoveling it. He said the only problem was Spring when it became a muddy mess but by then you were so happy to see Spring, the mud was “clean mud”. Merry Christmas, Myron
From Ellen Brehmer, Grand Forks ND, who grew up in rural Langdon, ND
I hear your supposed to get ‘a bit’ of snow & wind. We are breathing a great sigh of relief because this one will miss us. We’re just sinking into the depths of 20 to 30 below, and that’s not wind chill. We do have the wind so I’m sure the old snow will drift some. It’s always fortunate to be home when the storms hit.
One winter possibly late ’50’s we had to walk a mile across the field in the evening because the car got completely stuck and flooded trying to break through a snow drift on Schnieder’s corner. That’s 1 1/2 miles from home. We walked over the hard pack at an angle so it was probably only a mile – I’m here to tell you that my thighs were very very cold. I’m pretty sure that it was [siblings] Pat, Jerry, Marilyn and myself who walked behind Dad. We had been to some church thing or something. Nothing else got that cold, we all had scarves and mittens and boots, plus we were moving – the front thighs took the beating. So guess what gets cold first for me when I’m shoveling, yup the thighs.
From Mary Busch, Minneapolis, who grew up in ND and northern MN:
Your dad loaned my parents the car to drive to the Carrington Hospital [14 miles away] where I was born during a bad snow storm. (being a geographer-could we find info about that storm?) Late in her life mom revealed I was nearly born in the car. I always wondered about the very flat section of my head—-…
Growing up in Rugby North Dakota, we walked everywhere.
I valued my turquoise fluffy wool coat purchased in Herbergers in Grand Forks ND. The Little Flower School costume was skirts with white cotton socks with metal clasps tied to elastic garters holding them up… rubber boots over shoes and maybe pants… I remember the metal clasps near your skin burning and leaving red marks on cold days. It was a six block walk.
I craved excitement and would walk to the high school to watch Basketball games- Paul Prestis [Presthus?] became a star….It was so cold and about a mile there.
My parents STORED meat in a locked wooden box by the back door….a homemade freezer.
My dad had a complicated ritual involving army blankets to start the Plymouth in cold weather…We often visited relatives for vacations.
A geologist guest in the 1990s was raised in Siberia and commented that Rugby was exactly like Siberia in climate and geology so we had shared similar childhoods.
My dad would take us out ice fishing in very cold weather. We walked back into northern MN lakes, built a fire and drilled our holes. I kept my Rolliflex camera under my jacket so it did not freeze. I often brought guests home to Babbitt and recall an amazed despairing New York City gal, when I explained and demonstrated the toilet opportunities in subzero wilderness.

#294 – Dick Bernard: Naming a mystery man in a photograph, 72 years later.

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Pearl Harbor Day I posted a piece about my Uncle Frank and his service and death on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.
The day went on and late in the afternoon came an e-mail from a name I’d never heard before. The e-mail included two photos of my Uncle Frank in Long Beach CA on November 10, 1938. The writer of the e-mail identified himself as the son of the man, Max Calvert, who was posing with Uncle Frank in the photo. His Dad, Dave said, was then the secretary for Admiral Kimmel on-board the USS San Francisco. Kimmel was at that time commander of the Pacific fleet and professionally suffered in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor.
I have my pictures fairly well organized, so I took out the package labeled “Frank Bernard” to see if there were any matches. You can see the results for yourself, below.
The first photo of each pair is from Dave Calvert; the second is from my family file.

Max Calvert and Frank Bernard Nov. 10, 1938 Long Beach CA


Same setting, date, place from the Bernard files

Max and Frank from the Calvert album Long Beach Nov. 10, 1938


Same setting, Frank with his Dad Henry Bernard, from the Bernard album


Again, the first photo is from the Calvert album, the second from the Bernard album, third, Calvert, fourth, Bernard.
Before December 7, 2010, Dave Calvert, a Californian, and I had never heard of each other.
How did Dave find me? He had the pictures, and he knew that Frank was a casualty on the Arizona, and on this particular Pearl Harbor Day he decided to see if he could find any evidence of family of this long ago sailor who was friends with his sailor Dad in 1938. He did a simple google search and several pages in found reference to my family history website. From there he managed to get ahold of my e-mail address and the rest is history.
The miracle of the internet.
Some days later, he says, he still has ‘goosebumps’ over this essentially chance meeting and our sharing of essentially identical photographs from 72 years ago. I share his sentiments exactly.
I couldn’t label that photograph with the unknown man though I knew that the picture had been taken in 1938 from a developers mark.
Now, thanks to someone who took the extra step another piece of the family tapestry has been identified.

#292 – Remember the Maine; USS Arizona; Never Forget; LPD 21 USS New York

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December 7, 1941, my Uncle Frank Bernard was minding his own business on the USS Arizona, berthed at Pearl Harbor, HI. Without doubt he was awake at the time a Japanese bomb destroyed his ship and snuffed out his life. 1176 shipmates also died that day. Frank was definitely at the wrong place at the wrong time. Every year on this date, no doubt today as well, I will see a photo or a film clip of the Arizona blowing up.
I am the only one of my siblings old enough to have ever actually met Uncle Frank; the last time at the end of June, 1941, in Long Beach, California.

Bernard Family Reunion at Long Beach CA late June, 1941. Frank is in the center, Dick, 1 1/2, is next to him.

Frank had served on the Arizona since 1936. Though he seems to have been engaged to someone in Bremerton WA, he likely intended to be a career man in the Navy.

Frank Bernard, Honolulu, some time before Dec. 7, 1941

Wars are never fought without reasons, or consequences. They are collections of stories, often mythology masquerading as fact. One war succeeds the last war. That’s just how wars are.
Frank’s Dad, my Grandpa Henry Bernard, 43 years earlier had enlisted to serve the United States in what he always called the Spanish-American War in the Philippines. He was very proud of this service, which lasted from the spring of 1898, to the summer of 1899. The pretext for this war was the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana harbor. Whatever actually caused the explosion was blamed on the Spaniards, and led to an outpouring of patriotic fervor in the U.S. “Remember the Maine” was the battle cry.
Grandpa’s unit, one of the first to the Philippines, never actually fought any Spaniards – he and his comrades were hardly off the boat near Manila when the Spanish surrendered. His battles were with the Filipino “insurgents” who were glad to be rid of the Spaniards, and just wanted the Americans to go back where they came from. That war is now called the Philippine-American War – a term Grandpa wouldn’t know.
In Henry’ company was his future wife’s cousin, Alfred Collette. Some years after the war, Alfred returned to the Philippines, becoming successful, later marrying and living the rest of his life in the Philippines.
After Pearl Harbor, the first major conquest of American territory by the Japanese was the Philippines…. Alfred was imprisoned at the notorious Santo Tomas. During the final battle for the liberation of Manila in 1945 his second child, named for my grandmother Josephine, was killed by shrapnel from either the liberators or the Japanese. She was only four years old, in her mother’s arms. Her two siblings witnessed her death.
Seven of Uncle Frank’s cousins in Canada, all from the same family, went to WWII, three in the Canadian Army, four in the U.S. Army. One of the seven died in combat. Others from my families served as well, as did neighbors. Most survived; some didn’t.

Alfred Collette, 1898, Presidio San Franciso CA

Henry Bernard, middle soldier, in Yokahoma Japan, enroute home1899

Which brings to mind the USS New York LPD 21.
On Thanksgiving day came one of those power point forwards celebrating the launch of the Amphibious Transport Ship the USS New York, a ship partially manufactured out of the wreckage of the World Trade Centers September 11, 2001. The internet is awash with items about this ship, commissioned in November of 2009.
A key caption of the powerpoint said that the New York’s contingent was “360 sailors, 700 combat ready Marines to be delivered ashore by helicopters and assault craft”, apparently roaming the world at the ready to do battle with the bad guys wherever they were. The transport has “twin towers” smokestacks,
I could see the attempt at symbolism in the power point: “don’t mess with the U.S.”. The boat plays to the American fantasy that we are an exceptional society, more deserving than others.
But, somehow, I failed to see the positive significance of this lonely boat, roaming the world, looking for opportunities to do battle against our enemies.
It doesn’t take a whole lot of geographic knowledge to know how immense this world is, and how tiny and truly insignificant is a single ship with about 1000 U.S. servicemen, no matter how highly trained and well-equipped they might be.
It seems we have better ways to use our money.
Uncle Frank was technically a peace-time casualty – War wasn’t declared against Japan until after he was dead. He and his comrades at Pearl Harbor who also died were only the first of hundreds of thousands of Americans, who joined, ultimately, millions of others who became casualties of WWII. A few of Grandpa Henry’s comrades were killed on Luzon, and till the end of his life in 1957 in Grafton ND there was an annual remembrance at the monument in front of the Walsh County Court House.
The triumph of war is what we seem to remember.
The horror of war is what we best “never forget”.
Peace takes work, lots of it. Let’s work for Peace.

#283 – Dick Bernard: A simple and positive idea, Holiday Greetings to those who may not otherwise receive them.

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A great friend clued me in on a project a friend of hers was doing: to deliver 1000 greeting cards to military service persons, their families or veterans. It has a deadline of December 10, 2010, and the details are here.

Early 1900s Christmas Card


I bought in on the project and it was simple process to complete 50 cards for the project. We had unused cards from previous Holiday seasons, and it was simple enough to find cards that were not overly focused on one religious tradition or another. I chose to identify myself as a US Army veteran because that is what I am. I was in the service in 1962-63, nearly 50 years ago, in an infantry company.
Back then, as Company Clerk, I was well aware of the fact that when mail call came, there were always colleague GIs who didn’t get any mail at all. Some never got any mail. There is something unfortunate about feeling left out when (it seems) everybody in the unit is getting mail but you. This feeling intensifies when you’re a long way from home and you’re missing a major holiday.
The folks with this project have very simple rules: no inserts, personal messages, mailing addresses – that sort of thing.
The rules make sense…and they make the project even simpler. I simply offered “all best wishes, in peace” and that was that.
Dig out those leftover cards, complete as many as you care to, and send them in within the next week. They cannot be sealed, and the fold has to be inside so that the cards can be easily inspected for content.
If this particular idea doesn’t intrigue you, replicate the idea in some other way this intense season of the year.
Whatever your tradition, or your personal feelings about this season, I’d recommend this as a worthwhile project.

Christmas postcard from December, 1913


My story about those long ago postcards, two of which appear above is here.

#279 – Dick Bernard: On Turning 65

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Today, my brother is 65. He’s the cherub in the blankets in the photo taken probably in very early 1946. If you could see this photo close up, even then you can imagine him squirming, hoping to break the shackles of those blankets and play in that snow! He would have been ready, that’s for sure.

Bernards, Sykeston ND 1946


65.
I’m old enough so I can legitimately say “he’s just a kid”. And I know many people who can say, to me, that I’m “just a kid”. Strange how Time just keeps on walking.
For years, literally, I’ve done the mental exercise of remembering this or that at a certain age. It helps to give perspective.
For instance, my four grandparents were 68, 60, 59 and 58 when I was born. When I became old enough to have a notion who they were, they were really, really, really old.
65.
In our society it has been, for many years, a ‘marker’ with unusual significance. It is an appropriate marker of a transition point from the work world to the retired world. It is not a place set in stone. I know people who continue to be employed beyond 65, some because they want to be, others because they need to be. On the other hand, I recently talked to a friend who told me he became the adult in charge of most of the work on their farm when he turned 13 due to his Dad’s disability. He “grew up” rather soon.
In the end analysis the number is less significant than what one does with the time between the beginning, the present and the end.
Best, I think, that one can show that he or she contributed to making the greater world a better place because of his or her being here.
Later today we’ll be flying to visit my brother and friends in his long-time home of Salt Lake City.
Yesterday I was remembering a long-ago trip which took my then-family through Salt Lake City in June, 1971. I dug out the slides from that trip and found the one below which shows my children, then, at the Bingham Copper Mine outside of Salt Lake City.

Tom and Joni June, 1971, at Kennicott Copper Mine


This day, November 17, 2010, Tom is driving his trucking route somewhere in the Great Plains outside of Denver; Joni is doing her work as a school Principal in a suburban Middle School. Tom and Jennifer have a married daughter and son-in-law “as we speak”; Joni and John have a couple of kids well up in elementary school. Time flies.
Happy Birthday, Frank.
To the rest of us, I recall one of Dad’s many admonishments as a school teacher to we reluctant scholars looking at the clock, waiting for school to end: “Time passes. Will you?”

#278 – Dick Bernard: Muslims of the Midwest: From the 1880s to 2010

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Back on September 5, 2010, I posted “A Close Encounter With a Mosque“, remembering a friendship in the 8th grade in Ross, North Dakota in 1953-54.
In the mysterious ways such things work, someone saw the blog post, liked it, and on November 13, 2010, I found myself on stage at the annual celebration and awards banquet of the Islamic Resource Group of Minnesota (IRG)*, and my blog post** printed in their program booklet. I said to the assembled group that I was both astonished, and very, very honored to be with them. The evening was a powerful and inspirational one, with very good attendance considering the first major snowstorm of the season had just struck us here in Minnesota.
“Mysterious ways” indeed. I have long believed that there is no such thing as a “coincidence”. Everything has some purpose. Some would call this “luck”, or “fate” or attribute good or bad occurrences to something caused by a higher power, using that same higher power to justify good or bad actions.
Whatever the reason, I felt very privileged and humbled to be in that hotel banquet room last night.
There is a formulaic aspect to such events as IRG’s celebration: food, speeches, awards….
These all happened last night.
I chose to notice who was in that room, and who it was that really made IRG a success. They were, by and large, young people: people in their 30s or younger. Yes, there were the ‘gray-maned’ folks like myself and my spouse, but this was a celebration by and about youth.
There was another aspect of this gathering that stood out for me. This was a group that was about understanding, not fear and division; a group whose intention is to promote dialogue rather than positioning and taking sides. To be for, not against. The “Building Bridges Awards” were for Media, Education, Interfaith, Community Leadership and the “IRG Speaker of the Year”. Four of the five Award winners were young people.

This photo and following: people recognized for their work with IRG



Keynote speaker Daniel Tutt, himself a young person, helped us to understand some of the reasons for the dynamics which lead to the politics of division, which in turn lead to the kinds of campaigns which exploit the issues of such as the Ground Zero Mosque (why I wrote the previously mentioned September 5 blog post), fear and loathing of “illegals”, Gays, etc., etc., etc.

Daniel Tutt


Daniel knows of what he speaks. He is program director of the national program 20,000 Dialogues, a program of Unity Productions Foundation.
As Daniel was speaking it occurred to me that the major controversial wedge issues, like the “Ground Zero Mosque”, suddenly went silent immediately after the election November 2.
Before November 2 they were eminently useful, politically. Now they aren’t, but simply put on the shelf till the next election….
There is a window of opportunity now to, as IRG emphasized, “Build Bridges”.
Indeed, as I heard last evening, those bridges are already being built, as Emmett and his family and Muslim Community in rural North Dakota were building from 1902 forward.
Whatever your issue, talking – dialogue – is a strong part of the answer of breaking down barriers. “Building Bridges”.
* – The IRG website is currently under re-construction, but still includes useful information about the group.
** – On November 13, I updated the September 5 blog post to include some additional information.

#277 – Dick Bernard: MinnSPRA Celebrates Its 50th anniversary

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Friday I went to a luncheon celebrating 50 years history of an organization for which I once served a one year term as President (2000-2001).
The group, Minnesota School Public Relations Association (MinnSPRA) has always been a small organization, probably never exceeding 150 members. It began in 1960, and affiliated with a national group, the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA) which dates back to 1940. In each case, as in all cases of such grassroots organizations, some dedicated persons came together in a common interest to help each other and, in this case, public education.
I didn’t count, but it appeared that at least 20 of we former Presidents took the time to travel to this luncheon. It was an impressive turnout, a reunion for many of us, a renewal of some old esprit d’corps. A time to tell stories of the past.

MinnSPRA Alumni November 12, 2010


Small organizations like MinnSPRA come and go. When such a group endures for 50 years, it is a testimony to people of vision and persistence who ride the usually small waves, and often endure the cruel rip tides, which come with advocating for most anything in an organized fashion. For an organization to last 50 years is a testimony to the tenacity and dedication of many. A 50 year marriage is a great accomplishment for two people. A voluntary organization living for 50 years endures constant change every year, including in the “cast of characters” who come on ‘stage’ (like me). Survival is more than a small miracle, well worth celebrating!
At our tables we all were asked to discuss four questions about MinnSPRA: 1) Best memory; 2) Best Program All-time; 3) Person who embodies/embodied MinnSPRA; 4) why, in one particular year, we decided to change our name from M-NSPRA to MinnSPRA. (With respect to #4, I was involved, then, but I couldn’t recall exactly why – that’s what 20 years can do!)
With many tables, there came much rich feedback, bringing back long-forgotten memories of really very significant events that happened and passed into history.
I thought to myself that MinnSPRA’s history really was a series of small parts which when put together created a very substantial whole. In themselves, those small parts didn’t seem very important at the time. Those long years ago when I was sitting first on MinnSPRA’s Board, and then took a one-year turn as President, it often seemed that we weren’t accomplishing anything. But when added to all the other small accomplishments, we had accomplished a great deal. We had left a very substantial base from which to continue to build. The next generation chose to continue building.
Our Keynote speaker, Rich Bagin, Executive Director of NSPRA, took us through a very significant discussion of change in the past 50 years. In 15 segments he talked about things Public Relations (PR) people “used to believe” as contrasted to what they “now believe”. With a single exception, the reality of the other fifteen beliefs had changed very significantly in 50 years.
The essential message Mr. Bagin conveyed, it seemed to me, was “live in the past, die in the past”.
I went to the reunion today unsure what to expect.
I came home very happy that I had attended.
Best wishes to MinnSPRA for another 50 years even better than the first 50!

Janet Swiecichowski, MinnSPRA


Mary Ellen Marnholtz, North Central NSPRA V.P, Wausau WI


Rich Bagin, NSPRA

#275 – Dick Bernard: Armistice/Veterans Day. Remembering a Vet

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The November 10 mail brought a newspaper column I had been expecting, a tribute to my brother-in-law Michael Lund, who died exactly three years earlier in Fargo ND.
The column, by Bob Lind in the Fargo (ND) Forum, Mike Lund Fargo Forum001 tells most of the story, and speaks profoundly for itself.
I had the honor of spending quality time with Mike as his life ended Nov. 10, 2007, at age 60, cancer.
A few hours before he died I was able to tell him a little about his Dad, whose death certificate came up in an internet search. I was lucky, and he was grateful: he never knew his Dad or anything about him.
This is Veteran’s Day, and Michael was an Army veteran. He was inducted 8 February 1971 and was honorably discharged 30 January 1973, with Good Conduct Medal and rank of Specialist 5th class – an unusual accomplishment for an enlisted man. Much of his service time was in Germany. It was an easy trip from base to the Munich Olympic Games of 1972, and he went.

Mike Lund, early 1973


As Mr. Lind relates, Michael’s early life was anything but easy. One wonders how he survived at all. His sister was my wife; his mother was my mother-in-law, a fine but very poor and disabled woman who did what she could.
A draftee, Mike once told me that he grew to like the Army. It brought stability to his life and he had thoughts of making it a career.
But as often happens, circumstances interfered. In Michael’s situation, the problems began sometime in the late winter of 1972 when someone unknown filed a complaint against him, very obviously concentrating on his short career as a school teacher in small town North Dakota. The 22-page military interrogatory transcript, of which he kept five copies for some reason, laid out the allegations against him. The primary complaint appeared to center on his allowing his high school students freedom of speech to protest against the then-raging War in Vietnam. Somebody didn’t like that. He was fired from his teaching job in mid-year, and then he was drafted.
He did well in the service, likely had a secret security clearance, and someone, probably a civilian back home, didn’t like that a person who allowed protests of the War was in an intelligence position. In the transcript, questions are asked about an apparently radical teacher at the college he attended. Was he in this teacher’s classes? Yes. He was dirt poor, and he was apparently behind on some small payments to stores and such, and that was on the tally sheet as well.
His Honorable Discharge is the only official record of his military service and there is not a single word on it that even suggests less than totally honorable service.
Still that 22-page interrogatory was his most important paper. For me it has become, in a sense, his biography.
Michael came home in the winter of 1973, his dream of an Army career apparently destroyed; his opportunities to get another teaching job probably destroyed as well. The rest of his life, which I witnessed from a distance, usually, did not reveal the tenacity of a kid who rose above all odds to not only graduate from high school but earn a B average in college. I am guessing there are things that went on in his post-Army life that I would rather not know. Nonetheless, when I make my list of heroes, he is near the top. He survived against all odds.
As life wound down for him – this began to accelerate with his mother’s death in 1999 – Michael lost his house. Winning the Minnesota Lottery or other sweepstakes had become his passion…. He mused about good places to be homeless. Becoming paralyzed from the waist down as a result of major surgery ended that idea.
It finally fell to me and a cousin of his to clear out the flotsam and jetsam of his life.
In a small chest in his room, by his bed, in a drawer by itself, was his crumpled up Army uniform, with a small box of medals. It was a mess, that uniform, but it was very important to him. Also there were his dog tags, and on their chain a little medallion he had purchased somewhere, sometime.
Then he died. One of the few people at his funeral was one of his high school teachers, Ann Haugaard. She spoke very positively of him.
This past summer I delivered that uniform and all of his important papers to the North Dakota State Historical Society in Bismarck. They accepted the gift.
Mike, I salute you.
Dick
U.S. Army, 1962-63

Mike Lund, May, 2007, Fargo ND




Related post here.