#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".

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

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

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

Photo by Mike at 1972 Olympic Games, Munich


Olympic Flame at 1972 Munich Olympics, photo by Mike.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Leila at right on trampoline in Girls Gymnasium.

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

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Note to reader:
Note: There are six other posts about Sykeston:
There are several other post I have done about Sykeston:
May 4 (the main article): Thoughts on Sykeston High School at its Centennial
May 9 A 1957 Social Studies Test
June 12 Remembering Sykeston in late 1940s
June 28 Snapshots in History of Sykeston
June 29 Sports in 1950s small towns in North Dakota
July 3: Remembering Don Koller and the Lone Ranger
This is also 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.
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Sykeston HS Graduates001

Sykeston HS build 1913, photo in 1958.

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

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”.

#678 – Dick Bernard: Anniversary of a Retirement

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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.
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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

#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!

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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?

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

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(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

#672 – Dick Bernard: Remembering Valley City (ND) State Teachers College 1958-64

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NOTE: There will be continuing updates and additions to this post, which will include all additional items. Suggestion that you bookmark this page, if interested in 1958-64 at VCSTC.  Here is a companion post including pdf copy of every page of the 1960-61 Viking News (13 issues, 76 pages).

In the era before phones were ubiquitous…1960 at the hall phone at VCSTC

UPDATES as of March 2, 2013:
1. Memories as shared by some graduates January, 2013: VCSTC MEMORIES JANUARY 2013rev2
2. VCSTC Faculty, Staff and Times: VCSTC Faculty and Times 1958-64rev2
2A. Photos of all Faculty and Staff at VCSTC 1958-64 should be accessible to all in a Facebook album accessible here.
3. Qualities of Memorable Teachers, as shared by teachers: here
4. Remembering Dean of Men Lou Bruhn: here
5. Some pages from the 1960 Viking Annual: Viking 1960111
6. Public Education in North Dakota, some thoughts: here
7. Leila Whitinger (class of 1963) remembers VCSTC here.
8. Mike, VCSTC’s Mr. Moore, a Civics Lesson and Freedom of Speech here
9. Catholic Pope’s remembered, Dick Bernard, here
10. A North Dakota State-wide Civics and Geography test from 1957, including a connection with Soren Kolstoe here
11. Loretta (Welk) Jung (class of 1964) presents a program about her cousin, Lawrence Welk here.
12. Hank Toring ’64 remembers construction of Interstate 94 near Valley City: HANK TORING. Here is a description of I-94 History in North Dakota.
13. Remembering two weddings in Valley City 50 years ago, June 8, 1963, here.
14. Dr. Soren Kolstoe’s poetry about North Dakota, here.
15. A visit to Valley City and Sykeston ND July 5 and 6, 2013, here.
16. A visit to the VCSU campus, October 24, 2013, here.
17. A road trip from North Dakota to California, Summer 1941, here.

Watching the 1960 United States Election Returns

(click to enlarge photos)

Dedication page of 1960 Viking Annual. See Carole Flatau text below.

Text from above page – 1960 Viking Annual

VCSTC Campus 1960 not including Euclid or East Hall. From Viking News May, 1961

Ordinarily I escape solicitors, especially by phone, so it was a happy mistake when I answered the call to enroll in the 2012 Alumni Directory project for Valley City State University, my alma mater over 50 years earlier. (Here’s an aerial map of today’s Valley City including the College)
There had been a previous Directory, in 2003, and I had purchased that as well.
Both are books. The 2003 version was 300 pages, and included only eight people with e-addresses who I knew ‘back then’.
The 2012 edition has about 335 pages, including nearly 40 people with e-addresses who I at least knew back in those long ago years. This edition also includes a CD-ROM.

At walking bridge, looking north Sep 21, 1986

The old walking bridge Sep. 21, 1986

September 21, 1986

Back in those long-ago college years, I doubt any of us, perhaps even our most astute faculty back then, could have even actively imagined the e-mails, facebook, twitter, etc., etc., etc. that exploded onto the scene about 20 years later! George Orwell in his 1949 novel “1984” talked about “telescreens”. 1984 was a long ways in the future, then. Wow.
Back in “ought three” as old-timers might say about 2003, I initiated a conversation of reminiscences with the few in the old crowd who I could reach by e-mail. Fortuitously (it turned out), I kept the recollections in an e-file, which even more fortuitously survived assorted subsequent computer crashes and a change from Microsoft to Mac technology three years ago. (I go by many accurate descriptors, but “geek” is not one of them. At the same time, I can do the rudimentary navigation required to survive in the 21st century).
Shortly after the 2012 Directory came out, I made contact with those brave souls who had chosen to reveal their e-mail addresses in the book.
I then decided to transfer the old memories (with permission of the writers of the time) to a pdf document remembering 1958-61 at Valley City State Teachers College, as written February-April, 2003. That 54 page document is accessible here, in 14 point Times New Roman: VCSTC Memories recorded Feb
During VCSTC times I had, for some unremembered reason, be come the Sports Editor of the 1960 Viking Annual, then Editor of the Viking News in 1960-61.
Thanks to Mary Hagen Canine, I have the entire set of that years Viking News (as I have the old annuals as well).
As a New Years Day project, I decided to make a Facebook album of the photos which appeared in the Viking News in 1960-61. You can see them here. Simply click on an individual picture to enlarge it somewhat. Since the original photos were screened for printing at the Valley City Times Record, they are not high resolution. (The news photographer, I learned from the 1960 annual, was Gerhard Ovrebo, who all aspiring scientists at STC would well remember!)
In fact, as a final part of this little new years project, I decided to pdf the Faculty pages of the 1961 Annual, which you can see here (Mr. Ovrebo and camera on page 22): VCSTC Admin 59-60001.
Ah, the memories.
It occurs to me, at age 72, that those faculty who I thought were ancient at the time I was a student, were actually much younger than I am today. So is how it goes.
If you wish to add to the memory bank of the reminiscences, feel free to e-mail me at [dick.bernard@icloud.com as of 2021]. Additional memories of others will be assembled and shared on or after February 1. If you wish a memory shared, please give your specific permission to republish when you submit the memory.
Some photos from Yearbooks 1959-62:

Old Main 1959-60

Bridge 1959-60

Assembly 1959-60

Dr. Lokken 1960-61

East/Euclid 1959-60

Mythaler Hall 1959-60

Then and Now….

Dick Bernard, Freshman VCSTC, sometime in 1958-59

Dick Bernard making a Peace Site presentation at Twin Cities public TV Channel 2, St. Paul MN, January 25, 2013

#656 – Dick Bernard: A School Band Concert, Memories

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Happy Thanksgiving!
Tuesday evening we took the short drive across the Mississippi River to neighboring South St. Paul.
The occasion was the Middle and High School Fall Bands Concert, in which one of our grandkids, 7th grader Ted, was a participant, and even a soloist!
Truth be told, I almost forgot about the event. We were tired and there was a ‘tug’ to stay home when I remembered. But we went.
It was a very good decision.
I love music, but when I was a kid I loved sports more, and we rarely had the opportunity to actually participate in organized instrumental music. We were people who lived in very tiny towns, and band was a rarity. Only once in a great while came a teacher who actually knew music and might have been in a band somewhere, sometime.
Sister Rose in Sykeston had tried valiantly to help me learn the rudiments of piano about 1950 when I was in 5th grade. She was kind; the metronome wasn’t. Piano and I weren’t ‘fit’. I’ll always know where middle C is, however! And what a sharp, a flat, a quarter note, etc., are. She gave the basics.
In 1954, in another country school, Miss Stone, a conservatory trained pianist, tried to coax some piano out of me as a 9th grader. She was kind too. She was a tiny woman, and I marveled at the reach of her fingers. She must’ve been born with extenders!
She did her very best with me. I didn’t. My parents gave up.
In between, out in tiny Ross ND sometime during the year 1953-54 in the midst of the first oil boom – I was in 8th grade, then – there was a teacher who was willing and able to help a few of us learn the rudiments. I got to use a clarinet that year.
Apparently some of the older kids came together well enough so that the town had a small band in a 1954 parade in Williston ND – I have a photo (click to enlarge).

Ross ND Marching Band on Parade in Williston ND, 1954.


But that was it.
I love music still – a long-time short season subscriber till the lockout of the Minnesota Orchestra this fall – but I’m an observer, not a participant.
Tuesday of this week, we sat in a packed auditorium of the South St. Paul High School watching Andrew Peterson, Director of Bands, expertly lead his approximately 200 grade 7 through 12 charges in a program of 18 short pieces, one of which included a drum solo by our 7th grade grandson, Ted!
What a concert for we parents, grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts, friends…!
Towards the end the stage was full to capacity with young musicians, and Mr. Peterson quipped that they were at the point of needing a larger stage.
It was then I started thinking about the film, The Music Man, and the finale, 76 Trombones. Here’s a clip from that movie, and here’s access to many other renditions of 76 Trombones.
The film version of The Music Man came out in 1962, 50 years ago, and I remember seeing it then, probably in Valley City ND, while on leave from the Army in which I was then serving.
Harold Hill, the band leader in The Music Man, had nothing on Andrew Peterson, Director of Bands on Tuesday night. Nor did the to-be band members in fictional River City have anything on those 200 7-12th grade students in South St. Paul.
When Mr. Peterson conducted the finale, John Philip Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever”, I felt like a proud townsperson of River City, and had those kids wanted, they could have led those of us in the audience out into the street like so many pied pipers.
It was a great evening.
Congratulations, all!

#655 – Dick Bernard: Ken Burns on PBS: The Dust Bowl, part two

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I wrote about the first segment of Ken Burns The Dust Bowl here.
Part Two, last evening, was equally compelling. You can watch both part one and two here.
Together, the two segments total nearly four hours. They are available on-line through December 4. They are well worth your time.
And they provide lots of opportunity for reflective thought about where humans and government fit into nature, positively and negatively.
If you watch the entire four hours, about ten years in, particularly, the area of the Oklahoma panhandle – “no man’s land”, and you think about our place in the our own present and future United States and World, you will have reason to consider what we are bringing down upon ourselves and our own future, if we pretend to ignore the consequences of our own actions.
There is no sugar-coating. This is reality, and not belief.
As I watched I got to thinking back to something I wrote seven years ago as my Christmas Letter.
It was a story about an old Cottonwood tree at my Uncle’s farm in North Dakota. The story is here (link is in the caption below the photo). The tree still exists, out there in a row of trees east of the farmstead.
Have a great Thanksgiving.
Help keep Thanksgiving for the generations to come after us.

#654 – Dick Bernard: The Dust Bowl

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Sunday evening we watched part one of Ken Burns’ latest photo-documentary: the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
I’d urge everyone to watch this series, which is playing on public broadcasting around the nation.
You can watch the program online here, but only through Monday, November 19. Consult your local listing regarding part two.
Born in 1940 in North Dakota, I just missed the Great Depression, and thus did not experience directly the drought years that so heavily impacted the state.
But my entire background experience – my raising – was shaped by people who actually experienced those bad years.
North Dakota was not technically part of the Dust Bowl, which centered in the panhandle of western Oklahoma and neighboring states of Texas, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico. But according to Uncle Vincent, near 88, who we visited in LaMoure this past weekend, ND certainly did experience the massive dust storms, though not on the scale farther south.
Vincent has always remembered 1934, the year he was nine years old, as being the worst year of all in south central North Dakota.
In fact, the only time ND entered Sundays program was 1934, when President Roosevelt came west and did a trip through part of North Dakota. A hand-made sign from someone said, at the time, “You brought back beer”, recognizing the end of Prohibition, “now bring us water”.
Back then, like now, people liked to pretend that they could use “God’s gifts” as they wished; and that their actions would have no consequences. They were in control.
Ain’t so.
The Dust Bowl years were with no reasonable question the worst directly man-caused catastrophe in American history. The genesis of the Dust Bowl was the result of careless national policy, and hope-springs-eternal practices of Dust Bowl farmers. Buffalo grass could handle the drought and wind storms. Over plowing, wind and no rain brought disaster in the 1930s.
We live in the same kind of dream world today – not surprising, we’re the same human beings. We’re not much into long term vision, or vision period.
We think that there are no consequences to our own head-in-the-sand attitudes about many things, climate included.
North Dakota is now a very prosperous state, with oil extraction in the west a primary reason. But in the long run it will be false prosperity caused by contemporary folly of short-term thinking.
Vince and I chatted a little about this.
North Dakota today is said to have as much oil reserves as Saudi Arabia, but we need to remind ourselves that we are driving ourselves over another cliff on energy: even with North Dakota, the oil resource has finite limits, and when its gone, what will our descendants do then?
And what are the consequences of fracking, long term.
As with foolish over-plowing in the development days of Oklahoma and other states, we can consider that we are digging our own grave as a prosperous society.
The Dust Bowl is a good vehicle, a wake up call, for all of us.
Do take the time to watch it.

Aunt Edithe and Uncle Vince, Nov. 17, 2012


Dry Antelope Creek ND, Nov. 18, 2012


(Uncle Vince, for all of his working life a dirt farmer in North Dakota, noted in a previous visit that while it was dry in his areas in 2012, farmers still had very good crops, especially of corn. He said the crops utilized good subsoil moisture, but there needs to be a wet fall and winter to replenish that moisture, or a dry year next year would not have such good results.
Antelope creek, which we used to play in as kids in the 1950s, was dry yesterday. Meaningful, or meaningless?)