Centennial Beacon | 100 Years of Stories

HILLCREST LUTHERAN ACADEMY

CENTENNIAL

HILLCREST’S

BOOKS WRITTEN BY STEVEN R. HOFFBECK

The Haymakers: A Chronicle of Five Farm Families.

St. Paul, Minnesota: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2000. Minnesota Book Award, 2001.

Swinging For The Fences: Black Baseball In Minnesota.

St. Paul, Minnesota: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2005. Sporting News/SABR Baseball Research Award, 2005.

HUNDRED

YEARS OF STORIES 1916

to

2016

STEVEN R. HOFFBECK

This book is dedicated to my daughter, Mary Elizabeth Hoffbeck, Hillcrest class of 2009, for the irrepressible love, joy, smiles, faithfulness, and lovely exuberance you have given to all of us, especially to me.

Copyright © 2016 Steven R. Hoffbeck All Rights Reserved Managing Editor: Todd G. Mathison Editor: Kristen Swendsrud Production Manager, Image Curator: Wayne Stender, Ryan Erickson Dustjacket Design, Book Design: Amanda Porritt All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™ Scripture quotations marked (AMP) are taken from the Amplified Bible, Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked “ASV” are taken from the American Standard Version (Public Domain).

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked “KJV” are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Public Domain).

Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB), Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.Lockman.org Scripture quotations marked (NIrV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Reader’s Version®, NIrV® Copyright © 1995, 1996, 1998, 2014 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIrV” and “New International Reader’s Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™ ISBN: Printed in the United States of America

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Table of Contents FOREWORD INTRODUCTION: TWO CORNERSTONES CHAPTER 1: LUTHERAN BRETHREN SCHOOLS FOUNDED — 1903 CHAPTER 2: SCARLET FEVER IN THE E.M. BROEN HOUSEHOLD — 1903 CHAPTER 3: “TORN AND TRAMPLED UNDERFOOT” IN CHINA — 1924 CHAPTER 4: T U R B U L E N C E O F T H E G R E AT D E P R E S S I O N : G R A N D F O R K S TO F E R G U S FA L L S — 1 9 3 5 C H A P T E R 5 : “ H E W H O R U N S F A S T C A N N O T R U N L O N G : ” T H E D E AT H O F PA S T O R E . M . B R O E N — 1 9 3 8 C H A P T E R 6 : N O R W E G I A N R O YA L C O U P L E V I S I T H I L L C R E S T — 1 9 3 8 CHAPTER 7: B L AC KO U TS : LU T H E R A N B R ET H R E N S C H O O L S D U R I N G W O R L D WA R I I — 1 9 4 2 C H A P T E R 8 : H E R M A N E N G E B R E T S O N AT A N Z I O D U R I N G W W I I — 1 9 4 4 C H A P T E R 9 : H OW H I L LC R E ST ACA D E M Y G OT I TS N A M E — 1 9 4 8 C H A P T E R 1 0 : T H E O L D B L U E J E T A N D T H E T R I P T O S E E B I L LY G R A H A M — 1 9 5 0 C H A P T E R 1 1 : V E R N WAT S O N A N D I N S P I R AT I O N P O I N T — 1 9 5 5 C H A P T E R 1 2 : D O N A L D B R U E T E A C H E S AT H I L L C R E S T — 1 9 5 8 C H A P T E R 1 3 : G E N E R A L G .T. G U N H U S , C H A P L A I N — 1 9 5 8 C H A P T E R 1 4 : E L L I N G H A LV O R S O N : C A R R I E D A W AY B Y A F L O O D — 1 9 6 6 C H A P T E R 1 5 : H I L LC R E ST A N D G E N E R A L JA M E S WO L D — 1 9 69 CHAPTER 16: THE LEGACY OF E.M. STROM — 1969 C H A P T E R 1 7 : T H E L A S T I N G I N F L U E N C E O F J . H . L E VA N G — 1 9 7 2 C H A P T E R 1 8 : H I L LC R E ST A N D T H E N O RW E G I A N CO N N E C T I O N — 1 9 89 C H A P T E R 1 9 : M R . G R E G G P R E S T O N A R R I V E S AT H I L L C R E S T — 1 9 8 9 CHAPTER 20: THE STORY OF DOUG HAMMOND — 1993 CHAPTER 21: RISK: NICK HANSEN’S BACK — 1998 C H A P T E R 2 2 : T H E R E V O L U T I O N A R Y R E O R G A N I Z AT I O N — 2 0 0 2 C H A P T E R 2 3 : M A RY H O F F B E C K G O E S TO H I L LC R E ST — 2 0 07 CHAPTER 24: JOSEPH UNDSETH, 1989-1994 — WRITTEN BY STEVE UNDSETH ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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Foreword This is not Steve's first book. He's written others. But this one is unique to our Hillcrest families and friends.

We can be grateful that he had the curiosity, energy, and passion to write down stories of how people were impacted through the ministry of Hillcrest. You'll also appreciate the depth and breadth of the research done to bring greater context and meaning to these stories. But you'll find this book to be much more than a collection of historic data. These stories are really about God and his faithful workings in the lives and events of his children who were at some point connected to Hillcrest.

Not too many years ago, when Pastor Richard Iverson was serving Hope Lutheran Brethren Church in Barnesville, MN, he introduced me to a family that was interested in sending their daughter to Hillcrest. What developed from that first encounter was another HLA graduate (Mary Hoffbeck, Class of 2009) and a great treasury of stories that you now hold in your hand.

Mary's father Steve, a history professor at Minnesota State University Moorhead, was drawn to all the connections of families who attended the Academy. He began asking questions, lots of questions. We met regularly for a time. He would stop by my office, lugging his briefcase, and out would come the ledger-sized pad of paper, and he'd be scribbling notes as fast as he could. My new professor friend had a project in mind! He'll write a book on the 10 best stories of HLA.

So, I give my thanks to Steve Hoffbeck for completing this first project at a meaningful time in Hillcrest's history with its 100 year anniversary. He has prepared a powerful HLA picture in the pages that follow. And, I thank the Lord Jesus Christ for this school and for the people who have been impacted by it for the glory of God.

You'll notice there are 24 stories in this first collection.

And, Steve dropped the word “best.� He discovered that the stories in the Hillcrest well shared equal value in God's kingdom perspective, and also discovered that the well would never run dry.

R E V. S T E V E N J . B R U E President, Hillcrest Lutheran Academy, 2003-2016 Hillcrest Class of 1976

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Introduction of classes and choir concerts and commencements. There have been ten decades filled with studying and exams and grades; of courtships and true love; seasons of basketball court heroics and track stars and gridiron glory.

HILLCREST LUTHERAN ACADEMY HAS T W O C O R N E R S T O N E S . One of them is on the

outside of the tall, four-and-one-half-story, red brick building. The white stone carries a carved inscription: “A.D. 1901.” The other cornerstone of the school is far older, and is not made of brick or limestone or granite. It is the true foundation of Hillcrest Academy, engraved upon the hearts of its students and imprinted upon the minds of its teachers and administrators.

All that went on in the halls and dormitories of Hillcrest, and all the hopes and dreams and realities of its thousands of students could fill a hundred books. This single book cannot tell all the stories that transpired during a century of Christian schooling at Hillcrest Lutheran Academy.

The school was built upon the spiritual and moral foundation of the Gospel, with Jesus Christ himself as the chief cornerstone, and in Christ the whole school has held together for a century. The graduates of Hillcrest Academy were carved there as “living stones” to do the work of the Kingdom of God—in their lives, in their marriages and families, and in their occupations.

What this book hopes to achieve, however, is to tell the essence of what Hillcrest has aspired to accomplish, how the academy’s educational mission began, and how the “Old Castle on the Hill” in Fergus Falls has carried on that mission with Jesus Christ himself as its acknowledged chief cornerstone. Some of the chapters tell the stories of Hillcrest graduates and how these men and women faced life’s challenges and opportunities. Other chapters will tell about the Hillcrest experience through the words of Hillcrest’s students and graduates, as written in the school’s publications throughout the intervening years or from personal interviews.

Hillcrest Academy has been in its Fergus Falls location since 1935, but this high school program of the Lutheran Brethren Church began in 1916 in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Thus, the year 2016 marks the centennial year of the high school program of Hillcrest Academy—one hundred years of teachers teaching and students learning; a century

11

CHAPTER

ONE

LUTHERAN BRETHREN SCHOOLS FOUNDED 1903

12

CHAPTER 1: LUTHERAN BRETHREN SCHOOLS FOUNDED — 1903

T

On November 20, 1904, school president Pastor E.M. Broen led a formal dedication service for the new Lutheran Bible School and Seminary. Broen’s blessing read as follows:

he Church of the Lutheran Brethren had its roots in the spiritual revivals among Norwegian-Americans in the Upper Midwest during the 1890s. Officially organized in 1900, the new synod established a Bible School in Wahpeton, North Dakota, in the fall of 1903.1

“Hereupon I declare this Bible School . . . as dedicated to and set apart for the glory of God and the upbuilding of His Kingdom.

The founding teachers, K.O. Lundeberg and E.M. Broen, held Bible classes in a classroom rented from the local Wahpeton High School. The first year’s enrollment totaled 27 students.

As a Bible School its aim and purpose shall be to seek to impart to its students the Spirit—the light and views of life of the Bible.

In the summer of 1904, the Lutheran Brethren Church authorized and built a new Bible School building. Sam Christenson, a building contractor in Wahpeton, was both architect and builder. Christenson was also a member of the local Lutheran Brethren Church, and the synod was pleased to award him the contract. The city of Wahpeton agreed to furnish a free building site on “block 4, Bades Addition,” along with “free water for a term of years” and free city sewer service.2

May the Holy Ghost superintend all instruction here.

May he keep a watchful eye upon this institution that it may never depart from its high and holy purpose.

The peace of God rest over this school and over all who shall go in and go out its doors! Amen.” 3 The Lutheran Brethren Church was active in missionary work, having sent out missionaries to China in 1902; its educational mission was to train pastors and missionaries

FOOTNOTES “ A Brief History of the Lutheran Bible School, Grand Forks, No. Dak.,” Lutheran Bible School Records, Box 1, University of North Dakota Special Collections Library, Grand Forks, ND, #649-1-3; “History of the Lutheran Brethren,” Lutheran Brethren Seminary, Fergus Falls, MN, http://www.lbs.edu/aboutus.html, accessed on October 4, 2011.

2 “Lutheran School,” Wahpeton [ND] Times, June 10, 1904, 8; “Wahpeton Gets School,” Wahpeton Globe, June 9, 1904, 4; Quit-Claim Deed, Richland County [ND] Deed Record, Book 24, November 26, 1904, 340.

3 “Lutheran Bible School Dedicated,” Wahpeton Times, November 25, 1904, 1; “Lutheran Bible School Dedication,” Wahpeton Globe, November 24, 1904, 8.

1

LBS President Engbret Mikkelsen (E.M.) Broen Married Juliana in 1893

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CHAPTER 1: LUTHERAN BRETHREN SCHOOLS FOUNDED — 1903

“Hereupon I declare this Bible School . . . as dedicated to and set apart for the glory of God and the upbuilding of His Kingdom.

As a Bible School its aim and purpose shall be to seek to impart to its students the Spirit— the light and views of life of the Bible.

May the Holy Ghost superintend all instruction here. May he keep a watchful eye upon this institution that it may never depart from its high and holy purpose.

The peace of God rest over this school and over all who shall go in and go out its doors!

Amen.” 3

in its seminary and to educate church workers in the Bible School. The school conducted all instruction in the Norwegian language.4

for the Wahpeton building was too small to handle the increased number of students that a high school would attract. There were not enough dormitory rooms to house both high school students and Bible School students in that location. The school administrators were forced to find a bigger building—either in Wahpeton or elsewhere.

By 1912, the “need for a high school in connection with the Bible School began to be felt more and more,” and “certain individuals of the Church” voiced “strong demands” for it at the annual national conventions. Public schools educated all students only through eighth grade in that era. If a young person desired to get a high school diploma, he or she would have to enroll at a town that had such a program.5

A larger building became available in 1918. Church leaders made a deal with H.H. Aaker, a businessman in Grand Forks, 120 miles north of Wahpeton. He owned Aaker’s Business College and was willing to trade his large school building for the smaller Lutheran Bible School building.

Aaker’s building had been built in 1891 and had sufficient classroom space and dormitory space for the anticipated needs of the combined Lutheran Brethren high school and Bible College. Since the building in Grand Forks was valued at $25,000 while the Wahpeton property had a valuation of $10,000, the church agreed to swap buildings and also agreed to pay Mr. Aaker $15,000 to make up the difference in value.7

In 1915, the church authorized the addition of freshman and sophomore high school classes at the Wahpeton school; these classes began in the fall of 1916, marking the official beginning of what later became known as Hillcrest Lutheran Academy.6 In 1917, the national church convention approved a full four-year high school program for the new school. While a positive step for the school, this decision created a crisis,

FOOTNOTES

E.M. Broen's Blessing Given at the Dedication of the Lutheran Bible School, Later Renamed Lutheran Brethren Schools

ureau of the Census, Special Reports; Religious Bodies: 1906 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1910), 402-403; Thor Quanbeck, “A History of NorB wegian-Lutheran Academies in North Dakota, 1878-1948,” Master of Science in Education thesis, North Dakota Agricultural College (NDSU), Fargo, ND, 1949.

5 “A Brief History of the Lutheran Bible School, Grand Forks, No. Dak.,” Lutheran Bible School Records, Box 1, University of North Dakota Special Collections Library, Grand Forks, ND, #649-1-3.

6 “A Brief History of the Lutheran Bible School, Grand Forks, No. Dak.,” Lutheran Bible School Records, Box 1, University of North Dakota Special Collections Library, Grand Forks, ND, #649-1-3; Joseph H. Levang, The Church of the Lutheran Brethren: 1900-1975 (Fergus Falls: Lutheran Brethren Publishing Company, 1980), 104-105.

7 “Lutheran Brethren Will Open Bible School Here Soon,” Grand Forks Herald, October 18, 1918, 12; “Bible School of Lutherans To Come Here,” Grand Forks Herald, August 28, 1918, 8; “Trustees Take Final Action in Bringing Lutheran School Here,” Grand Forks Herald, September 18, 1918, 10; Warranty Deed, Church of the Lutheran Brethren to H.H. Aaker, Richland County [ND] Deed Record, Book 46, September 21, 1918, 88.

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17

4

CHAPTER 1: LUTHERAN BRETHREN SCHOOLS FOUNDED — 1903

Wahpeton Campus, 1900’s

18

Grand Forks Campus, 1920’s

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CHAPTER 1: LUTHERAN BRETHREN SCHOOLS FOUNDED — 1903

Mr. Aaker decided to transfer his business college into another Grand Forks building and then sold the old Wahpeton Bible School building for $17,500 to the Lutheran Deaconess Hospital Corporation, which then converted it into a hospital.8

24, 1918, could the first classes begin at the newly named Grand Forks Bible College.

The Wahpeton Bible School had never seen an enrollment total higher than 70 students, but during the school’s first year in the new Grand Forks building, the total enrollment reached 89, due to the addition of high school students.10

The move from Wahpeton to Grand Forks was very hurried in the fall of 1918, and classes were supposed to begin on October 8. However, the country and the world were in the grip of a terrible influenza epidemic at that time. On the very day that fall classes were to begin, the Grand Forks city health officer, Dr. Henry O’Keefe, issued an order that closed all theaters, schools, churches, and other public gathering places. This meant that churches could not hold worship services; movie theaters could not show films; libraries had to lock up; poolrooms were shut down; and schools had to close their doors. The opening of the Lutheran Brethren School was then delayed to October 22, but the ban on public meetings would later preclude that, as well.9

Entrance into the high school program was given to “boys and girls who have good moral character, an earnestness of purpose,” and who would “enter heartily into the spirit of the school, and prove themselves worthy of its advantages.” Prospective students could take an examination to show their readiness for entrance into ninth grade, or they could show a certificate of completion of grade eight from a public school.11 The school catalog was clear about what the administration expected of its students, stating: “The school aims to create a spiritual atmosphere which shall be a powerful factor in molding Christian character of the students and to prompt such conduct as becomes Christian men and women.” No one who was “idle or shiftless” would find a

The shutdown lasted for seven weeks, from October 8 through late November. Only after the influenza contagion died down and after Dr. O’Keefe lifted the ban on November

FOOTNOTES “ Grand Forks Man Sells Wahpeton Property for Lutheran Hospital Use,” Grand Forks Herald, May 14, 1919, 3; H.H. Aaker to Lutheran Deaconess Hospital, a corporation, Indenture, Richland County [ND] Deed Record, Book 45, May 12, 1919, 407.

9 “The Influenza Wave,” Grand Forks Herald, October 9, 1918; “Lutheran Bible School Opens for First Semester,” Grand Forks Herald, November 27, 1918, 12; Levang, Church of the Lutheran Brethren, 126.

10 “A Brief History of the Lutheran Bible School, Grand Forks, No. Dak.,” Lutheran Bible School Records, Box 1, University of North Dakota Special Collections Library, Grand Forks, ND, #649-1-3.

11 Lutheran Bible School, Grand Forks, North Dakota, General Catalogue, Announcements for 1920-1921, in “General Catalogs, 1920-1924, Lutheran Bible School Records,” University of North Dakota Special Collections Library, Grand Forks, ND, #649-1-2, Box 1, 9-11.

8

LBS Faculty, 1910's

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CHAPTER 1: LUTHERAN BRETHREN SCHOOLS FOUNDED — 1903

place in the school, and if such persons “by chance” should gain admission , their stay would “not be prolonged unless they change their habits radically.” Rules at the school were instituted “to prevent or correct improper conduct, having for their object the best interests of all concerned.”12

The first high school graduating class, the Class of 1920, consisted of six students. Three of the graduates—Lena Skaug, Ella Skovholt, and Edward Thompson—came from Minnesota. Two came from North Dakota— Edwin Fuglestad and Westley Osgood; and one came from South Dakota—Carl Stadsklev. These were the first of what would become a total of over 3,000 graduates over the course of the next one hundred years.13

No student at the Lutheran Brethren schools in Grand Forks was “permitted to visit billiard or pool rooms, bowling alleys, or theaters, play cards, or use tobacco.”

Any who failed to abide by the school rules could not “expect to be allowed to remain” there for long.

FOOTNOTES utheran Bible School, Grand Forks, North Dakota, General Catalogue, Announcements for 1920-1921, in “General Catalogs, 1920-1924, L Lutheran Bible School Records,” University of North Dakota Special Collections Library, Grand Forks, ND, #649-1-2, Box 1, 9-11.

13 Lutheran Bible School, Grand Forks, North Dakota, General Catalogue, Announcements for 1923-1924, in “General Catalogs, 1920-1924, Lutheran Bible School Records,” University of North Dakota Special Collections Library, Grand Forks, ND, #649-1-2, Box 1, n.p.

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First Graduating Class of Hillcrest Lutheran Academy, 1920 [Seated: Lena Skaug, Ella Skovholt; Standing: Edward Thompson, Osgood Westley, Edquin Fugelstad, George Stadsklev]

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CHAPTER 1: LUTHERAN BRETHREN SCHOOLS FOUNDED — 1903

Lutheran Bible School Class of 1922 [Front Row (Left to Right): Martha Kilen, Ida Goplen, Hilda Kasa, Thora Norman, Sylvia Herigstad, Almina Foss, Hannah Hektner, Christine Hektner; Second Row: Carl Stadsklev, Mabel Foss, Nellie Vining, Hannah Giske, Clara Egge, Norma Kringen, Ingalf Torkelson; Third Row: Helmer Lybeck, Johnnah Fryhling, Emelie Johnson, Gladys Westley, Norman Nelson; Back Row: Clarence Walstad, Tellef Senum, Bersven Blikstad; Not Pictured: Ruth Bridston, Edna Randall, Iva Benson]

24 LBS Alumni, 1926

25

26 Botany Class, 1926

CHAPTER

TWO

SCARLET FEVER IN THE E.M. BROEN HOUSEHOLD 1903

First E.M. Broen Family Photo Taken in Whapeton, ND 1908 [First Row (Left to Right): Ruth Broen, E.M. Broen, Margrethe Broen, Philip Broen, Juliana Broen, Julius Broen, William Broen; Second Row: Hannah Broen, Bernhard Broen, Maria Broen, Esther Broen]

CHAPTER 2: SCARLET FEVER IN THE E.M. BROEN HOUSEHOLD — 1903

I

n the very first year of the Bible School at Wahpeton, trials and difficulties came to the family of E.M. Broen, the school’s president.

night I was dreaming about you folks. My boy had been visiting with you and came home very hungry. I asked him if Mrs. Broen did not give him anything to eat, upon which he answered, ‘I guess she didn’t have a thing to give to her own children.’ I awoke. But again I went to dreaming about you. So this morning I said to Sam (her husband) that there is surely something wrong at Broens. Maybe they have no money. Let us give them now what we have promised later as salary through the church.’”

Pastor Broen and his wife, Juliana, were the parents of eight children—Maria, Hannah, Esther, Bernhard, William, Ruth, Rebecca, and baby Philip (listed from the oldest at age nine to the youngest at just six months old).

The Broen family had just moved to Wahpeton from the small town of Osakis, located in the lakes country of central Minnesota, in the autumn of 1903. E.M. Broen rented a house—a large, drafty, not-well-insulated, two-story white home. He had exhausted his meager savings moving his household to North Dakota.

Mr. Sam Christenson “was of the same opinion,” wrote Broen, “and his wife started off to South Wahpeton to give us thirty dollars.” Sam Christenson was the man who later built the new Bible School building in Wahpeton.

Broen later wrote about the early struggles of trying to raise a family and start a fledgling Bible School on a “shoestring budget”:

“Does God answer prayers?” asked Pastor Broen, rhetorically, in a short autobiographical note he wrote after the event.

“OCTOBER, 1903. Just moved to Wahpeton, North Dakota. . . . for a whole week prior to October 7th, we had not had any money to our name. The larder was getting empty and a bundle of letters was on my writing desk, as there was not money to buy postage stamps for mailing.

The first crisis had passed, but Pastor Broen’s deep faith would be tested in the next months as a tragic illness struck the Broen home.

One by one, in November and December of 1903, the Broen children came down with scarlet fever—all except for baby Philip.

Then one evening at the supper table, I laid the situation before my wife and children, and suggested that we unitedly pray about money.

Eight of the Broen children (including Rebecca) taken at Wahpeton, North Dakota in 1903 [Left to right: Philip, Rebecca, Ruth, William, Bernhard, Esther, Hannah, Maria]

Scarlet fever is a bacterial infection marked by a sore throat, a fever, and a red rash. It is usually caused by the same bacteria as strep throat, and brings about the same symptoms, with the addition of a body rash. In modern

The next day, being my birthday, October 7th, one of the women of the church, Mrs. Sam Christenson, came with thirty dollars and told this story. She said, ‘Last

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CHAPTER 2: SCARLET FEVER IN THE E.M. BROEN HOUSEHOLD — 1903

times, penicillin is administered to kill the bacteria, but prior to the widespread use of penicillin in the 1940s, the disease especially struck young children whose immunities were still developing. Adults were largely immune to scarlet fever, for most had built immunities from enduring prior bouts with strep throat bacteria.

The first day of illness brought a high fever, as high as 104 degrees, to each of the Broen children, along with a sore throat and reddish tonsils. On the second day of the disease, a bright red, or scarlet, rash appeared on the child’s face.

cases of scarlet fever in Wahpeton, and in Breckenridge, located just across the Red River, that the local Catholic Hospital was filled to capacity, and all the little Broens had to be cared for at home.

Dr. Devine determined that surgery was necessary, and the operation was to be done at the Broen’s house. Pastor Broen and his wife were responsible for cleaning the dining room table for use as an operating table.

Each child recovered from his or her bout with scarlet fever, but two of the children, William and Rebecca, suffered aftereffects of the illness.

It was early in February of 1904 when Dr. Devine came to the Broen home to perform surgery on little Rebecca. It was an extremely cold night, for a blizzard had brought with it temperatures of thirty degrees below zero, and the wind chilled them to the bone.

William, age five, experienced continued soreness in his throat, and an infection passed from his throat to his inner ear, causing inflammation. He developed severe mastoiditis, an infection of the mastoid bone behind the ear. It was a complication of a severe middle ear infection. William suffered from continuing aftereffects of the infection—he endured more pain, as well as pus flowing out of his ear and, later in life, complete deafness in one ear.2

By the third day, the red rash would spread to cover the entire body, including the arms and legs, of the sick child.

The color was like a sunburn, and the skin texture was like goose bumps. At this stage, the fever moderated, and the child’s tongue became colored a bright, strawberry red. By day six, the rash faded in color, but the skin began to peel, leaving it raw and red underneath.

Little Rebecca, just two and a half years old when she contracted scarlet fever in December of 1903, was a “sweet, intelligent, and lovely child.” E.M. Broen was “very fond of this little child of his, with her big blue eyes, her blonde, wavy hair and sweet smile. He had taught her a song with a number of verses which she sang perfectly.”

Mr. and Mrs. Broen attended to the seven stricken children night and day for several weeks. It took constant activity to care for “seven very sick youngsters—swabbing sore throats, passing bedpans and potties, sponging feverish, rashy bodies, helping each child get down some soft food or drink, and trying to comfort those who whimpered and cried.”1

In January, Rebecca developed severe mastoiditis, and it brought complications and a great deal of pain. The local physician, Dr. T. Devine, feared the young girl had developed either meningitis, an infection of the outside layer of the brain, or a brain abscess, a pocket of pus and infection inside the brain. Either one was a life-threatening complication.

The Broens and the other families in Wahpeton were strictly quarantined from each other. Students from the Bible School ran errands for the Broens, and the local grocery store delivered groceries right to the front door, using great care to avoid entering the house. There were so many

ket. Then another snowstorm roared into the Red River Valley, and Rebecca’s funeral had to be delayed for several days.

The casket lay in the front entryway, which was unheated, making it “like an icebox.”

“Every once in a while,” in the intervening time, mother Juliana or father E.M. Broen slipped out “to the hallway to kneel beside the casket and pray.” They prayed for God’s compassion “for themselves and the rest of the little ones.”

In faith, they knew that Rebecca’s soul was in heaven, but it was hard for those left behind.

The doctor made sure that all the details were ready, and then instructed Pastor Broen in how to assist him in the operation. Broen was to “stand at the head of the table and hold a gauze ether mask over Rebecca’s mouth” so that she would be anesthetized for the procedure.

Bernhard, age six at the time, felt “such grief and sorrow” from the shock of his little sister’s death that “he could neither cry nor talk.”

The surgery did not go well, and Broen’s participation in the surgery “was a devastating experience for him,” wrote his biographer, “one that would be remembered for a long time to come.”

Pastor Broen felt the effects of losing two-and-a-halfyear-old Rebecca for a long time after her death. “There’s no tragedy in life greater than the death of a child,” wrote a parent upon the death of his son. “Things never get back to the way they were.”3

Little Rebecca struggled to recover from the surgery and from the scarlet fever complications, but was overcome and died a few days later, on February 29, 1904, a leap year day that rarely appeared on a calendar.

The funeral was in early March, as the bleak winter still held North Dakota in its grip. The main Scripture was from Psalm 103, which points to the deep love of God for all his children, and also tells of the fleeting nature of the lives of men. It reads, in part: “As a father is kind to his children, so the LORD is kind to those who honor him. He knows what we are made of; he remembers that we are dust. As for us, our life is like grass. We grow and flourish like a wild flower; then the wind blows on it, and it is gone—no one sees it again.” (Psalm 103:13-16).

On that day, Broen wrote, “It is February 29th, 1904. After a siege of three weeks of scarlet fever under quarantine, with seven children in bed, and the quarantine just being lifted, our sweet little Rebecca, 2 1/2 years old, did not recover with the rest [of the children], but left to be with the Lord.”

The sorrowful parents placed her body in a child-sized cas-

FOOTNOTES Here and below, Hannah Broen Hoff, The Bridge (Fergus Falls, MN: Lutheran Brethren Publishing Company, 1978), 43-44.

Children’s Health Encyclopedia, Boston Children’s Hospital, s.v. “Mastoiditis,” and “Scarlet Fever,” accessed July 12, 2012, http://healthlibrary. childrenshospital.org/Library/Encyclopedia/90,P02048.

FOOTNOTES

1

2

32

3

Dwight D. Eisenhower as quoted in “Ike,” American Experience, PBS.org.

33

CHAPTER 2: SCARLET FEVER IN THE E.M. BROEN HOUSEHOLD — 1903

better doctor from the start, Rebecca would have been saved’ from the illness. Or, ‘maybe this was to show me God’s displeasure with the Bible School project.’ No ray of light penetrated the darkness, and doubts about my relationship to God came and set a climax to the crisis.” 5

Broen felt a “keen sense of loss,” according to a written account by one of Broen’s daughters, and “his silent grief often led him, on Sunday afternoons, to her grave where he would wet her grave with his tears and pray, as he was wont to do. When he returned, we always knew where he had been. His sad eyes and pensive mood told the story” that he had visited the gravesite in Fairview Cemetery.

It was about an eight or nine block walk from the Bible School location.4

How could Broen “be rid of” this “vague sense of guilt”?

Juliana Broen tried to comfort her husband “as best she could,” telling him that “God does not hold one responsible for something over which one has little, if any, control.”

E.M. Broen deeply missed his beautiful little girl with the golden curls; he missed her lovely spirit and bright, sunny temperament. When it had appeared that she was recovering from the scarlet fever and when her life, seemingly, had just begun, by a tragic and terrible fate, death came to her from the operation that could have made her whole.

Pastor K.O. Lundeberg “was let in on the trouble,” wrote Broen. “Brother Lundeberg, my co-laborer at the Bible School . . . could only say this, that it was God’s way to deal thus with his servants, whom he had called to a responsible position in His Kingdom.” The two men later parted ways, Lundeberg returning to his earlier mainline Lutheran roots.

E.M. Broen had “had grave misgivings about the operation.”

If “he had called off the operation,” he wondered, “would Rebecca still be alive?”

Months passed, and lingering doubts and feelings occasionally troubled him, but, eventually, Broen absorbed his wife’s counsel. He accepted what he was unable to change and, in his weakness and loss, had to hold on tightly to the Gospel he preached—that Christ had conquered death. It was at Easter time when “a new light broke over my soul,” Broen later wrote, “Christ arose from the dead and broke through the barriers that hell had put up, and won His way to heaven —all for me—and now everything was possible . . . this fundamental truth about Christ’s resurrection has been the bulwark against the onrush of doubt and dark forebodings.”6

Pastor Broen later wrote: “Although Psalm 103 was read at Rebecca’s funeral and the spirit of the Psalm pervaded my mind, yet a few days afterwards a tremendous gloom settled over my mind, lasting for several weeks. During this time any number of reproachful thoughts came: ‘If I had remained in Osakis [preaching at the church there] and had had a good, warm house for my family [in Wahpeton], this would not have happened.’ Or, ‘if we had gotten a Knut Olafson (K.O.) Lundeberg Family Photo, 1901 [First Row (Left to Right): Olav, Marie, Amanda, Karl Rosenius, Knut Olafson (K.O.); Back Row: Wilhelm, Agnes]

FOOTNOTES 4 Hannah Broen Hoff, The Bridge, 43-44.

5 Here and below, “Snapshots from the Life of E.M. Broen,” edited by J.H. Levang, Faith and Fellowship, May 5, 1976, 7 6 “Snapshots from the Life of E.M. Broen,” edited by J.H. Levang, Faith and Fellowship, May 5, 1976, 7.

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Ultimately, his creed aligned with that deep truth expressed in a verse from the Bible, from the Song of Songs—that “love is as strong as death.” Acknowledging that feelings about the death of a beloved child could never be totally assuaged, he could, nonetheless, have assurance that God’s love for Rebecca, and for him, was at least as strong as death. In truth, he knew, it was even stronger, if one could see life, and death, and Christ’s atoning work, clearly.

Broen moved north to the town of Mayville, North Dakota, and bought a larger house that was big enough for his growing family, which had expanded by four with the births of Margrethe, Julius, Rudolph, and Elmer.

Broen launched himself into the role of traveling evangelist and teacher. As a preacher, he was qualified to use a free railway pass given by the Great Northern Railroad and the Northern Pacific Railroad as a courtesy to clergymen.

It was a common practice at that time; it cost the railroads little, and gained them much goodwill.

Clinging to this truth, the Broen family eventually recovered from the difficulties of that first winter in Wahpeton.

Pastor Broen led the Bible School through its first years in North Dakota, from 1903 through 1911. He had served as president of the Bible School and as president of the synod for several years. In 1911, he took time off from leading the Bible School and turned to assuming full responsibility as the synod’s president. The Lutheran Brethren synod decided that Broen should do the synod’s work, while also promoting the Bible School, in order to attract more students to Wahpeton. For the next three years, from 1911 through 1914, Broen traveled extensively, doing church work, evangelistic work, and Bible teaching, in order to “create interest in the school and in the church” nationally. During this time, the Bible School president was Lars L. Lillehie.7

In the summer, Broen was the preacher for revival meetings.

He was a popular attraction, drawing large crowds from surrounding areas. Typically, these meetings took place in large tents, starting on a Wednesday and culminating on a Sunday. In the fervor of revival, Broen preached mightily, and many souls were saved.8 E.M. Broen was a gifted evangelist, and he pursued evangelical work with wondrous enthusiasm and dedication. Broen was regarded as a “speaker of rare ability,” for “he always brought a fresh message from the Word [of God]. He always extolled a great Saviour and a finished redemption through faith in Jesus Christ,” and his messages glowed with a “spirit of revivalism.”⁹

FOOTNOTES off, The Bridge, p. 99, 54; and Joseph H. Levang, The Church of the Lutheran Brethren, 1900-1975 (Fergus Falls: Lutheran Brethren PublishH ing Company, 1980), 88. Broen also edited and wrote for the official church publication, Broderbaandet (meaning “a bond of brotherhood”).

8 Levang, The Church of the Lutheran Brethren, 119. ⁹ Hoff, The Bridge, 101.

7

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37 E.M. Broen at His Writing Desk as LBS President

CHAPTER 2: SCARLET FEVER IN THE E.M. BROEN HOUSEHOLD — 1903

Broen had not just been gifted with stirring preaching skills; he was also a melodious singer. Often, he would sing Gospel songs, accompanying himself on a “big guitar,” which became known as a “harp guitar.” Broen’s guitar had a hollow harp arm that extended from the left side of the eight-string body. The strings on the harp arm provided deep amplification of several bass strings, giving Broen’s music a power and harmonious tone little known to Midwestern parishioners. This added another musical layer to Broen’s Norwegian-accented vocals.

The worst flaw of this strong man of God related directly to his greatest strength. Pastor Broen’s children did not know exactly what he was accomplishing on his preaching trips, but they ended up resenting the amount of time he spent doing that work. When Broen was the president of the Lutheran Brethren schools, he “traveled during all vacation periods, summer, Easter and Christmas.” When he was a touring evangelist, he “was gone much of the time, which left little time for his family . . . this pattern continued, more or less, throughout his life.”11

Broen’s preaching was inspirational. As one of his contemporaries recalled:

Broen was habitually chained to his work, even if it was important work. He was, remembered his second-oldest daughter, Hannah, a “man of vigor, courage and determination.” His eldest daughter, Maria, wrote that their father was occasionally a “lonely and melancholy man . . . but this he seldom revealed.” The burdens of providing for a large family of twelve children, his church work with its constant strain of railway traveling and preaching, and his efforts to keep the school solvent while “being continually being faced with shortage of funds could not help but weigh heavily on him at times.”12

“He had deep insight into the Scripture . . . lucid thoughts and a living, joyful message…It was not something emotional he preached, or a soothing, comfortable message, but the salt of the Gospel. When he poured out from the Scriptures comfort and solace, there would be song in place of sighs and sorrow. God had bowed down and lifted up again, and the result was spiritual renewal for many.”10

“He had deep insight into the Scripture . . . lucid thoughts and a living, joyful message…

It was not something emotional he preached, or a soothing, comfortable message, but the salt of the Gospel. When he poured out from the Scriptures comfort and solace, there would be song in place of sighs and sorrow. God had bowed down and lifted up again, and the result was spiritual renewal for many.”

Broen’s Preaching was Inspirational, As One of His Contemporaries Recalled

FOOTNOTES Hoff, The Bridge, 151-152.

Hoff, The Bridge, 27, 59, 101.

12 Hoff, The Bridge, 108.

10 11

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CHAPTER 2: SCARLET FEVER IN THE E.M. BROEN HOUSEHOLD — 1903

Rev. E.M. Broen and His Sons Taken at Mrs. Broen's Funeral in 1933 [Left to right: Julius, William, Rudolph, Father, Philip, Bernhard, Elmer]

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THREE “TORN AND TRAMPLED UNDERFOOT” IN CHINA 1924

CHAPTER 3: “TORN AND TRAMPLED UNDERFOOT” IN CHINA — 1924

“C

hina is not to be won for Christ by quiet, easeloving men and women . . . The stamp of men and women we need is such as will put Jesus, China, [and] souls first and foremost in everything and at every time—even life itself must be secondary." Hudson Taylor (1832-1905), visionary missionary to China. 1

A seed had been planted within Broen. He wrote that “Foreign missions was on my mind” on the day of his conversion, and he said that becoming a missionary had “always had a large place in my thoughts, plans, and prayers.”

At Augsburg Seminary in Minneapolis, E.M. Broen studied hard and learned English well while he was there from 1885 to 1890 for his college degree and then for his seminary training from 1890 to 1893. 4

China was a world away from the Lutheran Brethren Schools in Grand Forks.

Yet, from the time of his Christian conversion, school president E.M. Broen had China on his mind. He had an abiding “concern and interest” for the souls of the eight hundred million people who lived in the ancient Asian kingdom.

Just after his ordination as a Lutheran pastor in 1893, he married Juliana Hanson.

“Soon after I became a pastor in Iowa,” wrote Broen, “I applied to the Mission Board of the United Church to be sent to Madagascar, but was refused because there were so many applicants ahead of me.” He had felt a calling specifically to Madagascar.

Born in Norway in 1863, Engebret Mikkelsen Broen came to America in 1882. Broen wrote that he was “a poor nineteen year old youth” who was “setting out in the world to try his luck, in order to find something better than what was to be found in impoverished Tufsingdalen,” Norway.2

Then, when he was a pastor in Osakis, Minnesota, he received a call from the Lutheran Mission Board working for missions to China. Although the mission need for China weighed heavily on his heart, he had to refuse it, for he “had never felt any [inner] call to serve in China as a missionary.”

Broen came to Minnesota and was working on a farm near Battle Lake, in the beautiful lakes country, when the Holy Spirit got ahold of him. The preaching of Pastor Torstein Moen stirred E.M. Broen to follow Jesus, and thus Broen received a “personal relationship and peace with God.”3

FOOTNOTES Quotation from Hudson Taylor in “Hudson Taylor, Faith Missionary to China,” Christian History Magazine, August 8, 2008, christianitytoday. com, accessed August 27, 2012.

2 Hannah Broen Hoff, The Bridge (Fergus Falls: Lutheran Brethren Publishing Company, 1978), 202.

3 Hoff, The Bridge, 203.

4 “Four Graduates; Commencement Day at Augsburg Norwegian Seminary,” St. Paul Daily Globe, May 8, 1890, 3; “Presented With Diplomas; Four Graduates At Augsburg Ceremony,” Minneapolis Tribune, May 8, 1890, 5.

The Lutheran Brethren Mission to China

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CHAPTER 3: “TORN AND TRAMPLED UNDERFOOT” IN CHINA — 1924

When Broen became president of the Lutheran Brethren Bible School in 1903, again he was asked by Pastor K.B. Birkeland if he “would consider a call . . . to go to India.” He did not go at that time.

Marie Harstad was in President Broen’s first class. She wrote that “one of Broen’s outstanding subjects was missions and mission history. His whole heart was in that subject and lots of times God’s presence was felt so strongly that the tears rolled down our cheeks.” So passionate was President Broen about the Great Commission to preach the Gospel to the whole world that, as Marie wrote, “At times I thought I was more in Heaven than on earth.”

Broen felt drawn to the new Lutheran Brethren Synod, which began as a “mission synod” from its founding in 1900. The first missionaries sent out by the brand-new denomination were a newly wed couple named Reinholt and Juline Kilen, officially dedicated as missionaries in 1902.

They went to China in that year as “pioneer missionaries . . . to establish a vital, indigenous church in a remote area of northern Hupeh and southern Honan provinces, where no Christian work had been previously undertaken.”5

“Broen spoke often of the mission field,” Marie said, “and wished he could go there.” Broen’s voice was a clarion call to action, and “the whole class seemed to catch the mission spirit.”

Marie traveled to China to be a missionary in 1906. She was one of six students who attended the Bible School during its first three years of operation who would go on to serve in the mission field.7

When Pastor Broen became president of the Bible School in Wahpeton in 1903, he immediately began teaching a number of classes. In his very first class was a young woman named Marie Harstad, who lived with her family in Wahpeton.6 Marie received salvation when she was a young girl, and, as she later wrote, “when God saved me . . . . He also called me to China.” She kept this missionary calling a secret for years until she at last told her sister Josie and then her mother and father. In those same years of her youth, Marie had also been praying that a Bible school would be established near her home. Both prayers were answered when the Lutheran Brethren synod opened the Bible School.

Miss Harstad married fellow missionary and Wahpeton Bible School graduate Marius J. Werdal in China in 1913; the wedding was conducted at the Lutheran Brethren mission station. The couple worked together in China until Marius’ death from disease in 1944.8 Marie continued to work on her own in the mission field there until she retired in 1948.

FOOTNOTES oel Christenson, “A Visit to the Interior of China; The Lutheran Brethren’s First Mission Revisited,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 63, no. 4, March J 14, 1996, 6.

6 Here and below, Marie (Harstad) Werdal, “Opening Day At L.B.S.,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 20, no. 18, October 20, 1963, 5-7.

7 Joseph H. Levang, The Church of the Lutheran Brethren, 1900-1975 (Fergus Falls: Lutheran Brethren Publishing Company, 1980), 47.

8 Levang, 47, 93, 197-198, 203.

5

46

47 Lutheran Brethren Schools Promotional Catalog, 1920

CHAPTER 3: “TORN AND TRAMPLED UNDERFOOT” IN CHINA — 1924

CHAPTER 3: “TORN AND TRAMPLED UNDERFOOT” IN CHINA — 1924

Carolne Rasmussen, Ida Walen, Marie Harsted

Reinhold and Juline Kilen

Diedrick Kilen Lutheran Brethren Missionaries from the Lutheran Brethren Student Body of 1903-05

48 The First Wave of Lutheran Brethren Missionaries to China

49

Gilbert Stenoien, First Editor of Faith and Fellowship

Ole Flugstad, Evangelist

Herman Fauske, Missionary, China

Diedrick Kilen, Missionary, China

George Holm, Missionary, China

Lena Rygh, Mrs. George Holm, Missionary, China

Ida Wallin, Missionary, China

Marie Harstad, Missionary, China

Anna Marie Tvedt (The first Mrs. Elliot Aandahl Sr., Missionary, China)

E.M. Broen, LBS President Ida Rasmussen (Mrs. Finn Larsen, Missionary, China)

K.O. Lundeberg First Church of the Lutheran Brethren President

50 Lutheran Brethren Schools Student Body from 1903-04 or 1904-05

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CHAPTER 3: “TORN AND TRAMPLED UNDERFOOT” IN CHINA — 1924

Pastor Broen inspired missionaries like Marie with his preaching and teaching and with his passion for the China Mission. In his own home, Broen “often prayed that some of his children would become missionaries.”9 The one child who fulfilled her father’s hopes in this regard was Broen’s second-eldest daughter, Hannah.

would be willing to travel to China to establish a school for the children of American missionaries there. There was a crying need for such a school; Hannah would be the teacher of elementary-age students there.12 Twenty-year-old Hannah Broen journeyed from North Dakota to China by ship and train, accompanied by Marius and Marie Werdal, in 1920. Before the trio left Grand Forks, they participated in a special meeting of the Bethel Young People’s Society at Bethel Lutheran Brethren Church, located on Belmont Avenue, several blocks away from the high school. Hannah sang a solo, and Marius gave a talk, followed by short addresses by the two women. The Werdals told about their work for the Lutheran Brethren Church in central China. By this time, the synod had three mission stations in Hupeh and Honan provinces (known in modern times as Hubei and Henan provinces), located in the geographic center of China. The Werdals and Miss Broen were to go to Tsao Yang, a city of 5,000 people, located 1,000 miles from the Chinese border, in Hupeh province. Part of the mission program was a middle school for Chinese girls; there were eighty girls there in 1919. After Hannah’s song and the talks, the three missionaries passed around an offering plate and all enjoyed “refreshments . . . served in the church basement.”13

Born in 1895, Hannah was a very small baby, weighing just three pounds. She was born prematurely and was not expected to live. But Hannah was a survivor and grew to maturity, even though she often suffered from illnesses.10 Hannah gained her high school education at Wahpeton School of Science, but had to take time off after contracting diphtheria. She almost died from the disease and was stricken with paralysis of her legs, which left her unable to walk for one year. This slowed down her schooling, yet she still graduated as the valedictorian in 1918.11 After Hannah recovered her health and was able to walk again, she took classes at the University of North Dakota, located west of the Bible School on the edge of Grand Forks.

Hannah had completed two years of college by 1920 and was eligible for a teacher’s certificate. At that time, the Lutheran Brethren Board of Missions asked her if she

Rev. and Mrs. Werdal

Broen and Children [Hannah Broen]

FOOTNOTES Hoff, The Bridge, 115-116.

Hoff, The Bridge, 23.

11 Hoff, The Bridge, 114-115, 122.

12 Hoff, The Bridge, 143.

13 “Will Leave For China,” Grand Forks Herald, August 31, 1920, 10.

9

10

Tsao Yang Mission Station

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The Lutheran Bible School had its own China Mission Society, so that students and alumni of the high school and Bible School could support the mission at Tsao Yang, where the Werdals and Hannah Broen served.14

Hoff began teaching in 1916, at the newly organized high school connected to the Bible School in Wahpeton. He first taught mathematics and then went on to teach other subjects. By 1918, when the school moved to Grand Forks, President Broen had put Hoff in charge of the high school department, and Hoff accomplished the goal of securing its accreditation with the state of North Dakota. Hoff was also the director of the string band at the school in Grand Forks.1 6

Hannah served as a teacher at the Lutheran Brethren Mission school for two years. Then, in 1922, she became re-acquainted with a young man named Bernard Hoff.

Hoff served in the US Army for a short time during World War I, enlisting in June of 1918 and being discharged in December of that year. His main duty was to supervise the “work of ten teachers working with 200 illiterates, foreign and American born” at Camp Dodge in Iowa. Hoff also “directed community singing” among the same group.17

Hannah and Bernard had known each other as children; their parents were friends, and the Hoff family had long been involved in the Lutheran Brethren Church. The J.O. Hoff family owned a farm near Abercrombie, North Dakota, located just sixteen miles north of Wahpeton.

Several of Hannah’s brothers and sisters had stayed at the Hoff farm for three months in 1909 when Pastor Broen and Juliana made a trip to Norway.

After the war was over, Hoff studied for his Master of Arts degree in School Administration from the University of North Dakota, gaining his MA degree in 1921; all he had to do to earn his doctorate was complete a thesis. That fall, Hoff became the principal of the high school department at the Lutheran Brethren School in Grand Forks.18

Bernard A. Hoff was a bright young man who grew up on the farm at Abercrombie and then went away to college at the University of North Dakota. He graduated in 1912 with a teaching degree, which qualified him to teach all subjects for grades one through twelve.15

FOOTNOTES “ China Mission Of Lutheran School To Hold Meeting,” Grand Forks Herald, December 31, 1921, 10; Annie Holm, “A Brief History of the Lutheran Bible School China Mission Society,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 9, no. 7, June 1942, 17.

15 “Many Attended the Exercises,” Grand Forks Herald, June 9, 1912; “Three More Successful,” Grand Forks Herald, June 14, 1912; Quarterly Journal of the University of North Dakota, vol. 10, 284.

16 Hoff, The Bridge, 119, 126.

17 Quarterly Journal of the University of North Dakota, vol. 10, p. 284.

18 “Bible School Opens Today,” Grand Forks Herald, September 20, 1921, 10; Hoff, The Bridge, 145.

14

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CHAPTER 3: “TORN AND TRAMPLED UNDERFOOT” IN CHINA — 1924

Things changed quickly then, for Hoff received a call to a missionary post in China. He left his position at the Lutheran Brethren high school in January of 1922.19 After a long trip to China, Bernard Hoff assumed his position at the Lutheran Brethren mission station at Tsao Yang, assisting Mrs. Juline Kilen and Hannah Broen in the school operations.

city of Hankow to have their wedding portraits taken by a photographer there. Shortly thereafter, the newlyweds and Mrs. Kilen went “down to the Tsao Yang station to open the schools and get the work started” in September of 1923.23 The province of Hupeh was in continual upheaval, and was virtually without any kind of centralized, effective government. As Hannah observed, “Warlords held each their part of China, collected their own taxes, raised their own armies and fought each other, killing . . . and keeping the countryside impoverished and in turmoil.”24

Hannah wrote that she and Bernard Hoff “had been attracted to each other” since he had joined the Bible School faculty back in 1916,20 but it was in China that their “friendship founded in childhood ripened into love.”21 Bernard courted Hannah, and they became engaged to be married. Bernard was thirty-two years old and Hannah was twenty-five when they were wed.

As soon as Bernard and Hannah reached the plains, she wrote later, “we began hearing rumors about the ruin, desolation and devastation brought about by . . . rampaging armies and robber bands.” They made it safely to the mission station, where “Mrs. Kilen immediately set about opening the girls’ school while Bernard opened the boys’ school and got the church services and programs going,” and Hannah helped with teaching the girls. The elderly Mrs. Kilen lived in one part of the mission duplex, and the young Hoff couple made their first home in the other. The mission complex “was walled in with a high brick wall and inside the space there were many buildings including the Girls Mission school conducted by Mrs. Kilen,” the duplex house where they lived, and the “little Chinese houses,” which they put to use as mission offices and storerooms.”25

They married on August 23, 1923, at the “mountain church on Kikung Shan, where missionaries from central China came for their summer vacations to escape the intense heat of the plains. The reception was held at the Swedish Lutheran School, and most of the missionaries on the hill attended the wedding and reception.” None of their parents were able to attend, as they were on the other side of the world in North Dakota.22 “Those few weeks on the mountain of Kikung, prior to our wedding,” Hannah later wrote, “were precious days, indeed, for both of us.” Their honeymoon time in the mountains was short, yet the couple still had time to travel to the

FOOTNOTES “Local Professor Chosen For China Missionary Post,” Grand Forks Herald, December 2, 1921, 10.

Hoff, The Bridge, 144.

21 “Fatal Raid Fails To Daunt Mrs. Hoff,” Grand Forks Herald, April 27, 1924, 11; “Grand Forks Missionary, Tells On Return In America of the Raid on Mission,” Bismarck Tribune, April 28, 1924, 1.

22 Hoff, The Bridge, 145.

23 Hoff, The Bridge, 145, 227.

24 Hoff, The Bridge, 144.

25 “Fatal Raid Fails To Daunt Mrs. Hoff; She Plans to Return,” Grand Forks Herald, April 27, 1924, 11; Hoff, The Bridge, 145-146.

19

20

Turmoil in China, from Hannah (Broen) Hoff's Photo Book

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Missionary Mrs. Kilen at Tsao Yang Mission Station

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CHAPTER 3: “TORN AND TRAMPLED UNDERFOOT” IN CHINA — 1924

compound next to theirs which belonged to a Chinese person.”

The three missionaries and their students were safe within their walled compound for three months, from September through December. On Christmas Day of 1923, they heard “rumors of bandit raids . . . all day long,” though usually such rumors did not come to much. But on the day after Christmas, the missionaries again heard about an approaching bandit army under the command of the renegade Lao Rang Yen. The missionary trio “went to the ‘Yamen,’ which corresponds to the American court house and three times [they] were told by the Mandarin to ‘Yunyang’ which means to let your heart be calm.”

In reality, a bandit had called out “Don’t run, or I’ll shoot!” in a dialect that the missionaries did not know, and they only heard the word “Run!”26 As they were climbing over the wall, they heard shots, and it was at that time that Mr. Hoff and his wife were shot—Bernard in the shoulder and thigh, and Hannah in the shoulder.

The bandits then pillaged the mission complex. They opened trunks and drawers, plundering all within their sight. The vandals took everything of value at the mission station and “destroyed about everything they did not take away,” wrote Hannah in a letter to her father.27

“After we had received this message three times,” Hannah later told a newspaper reporter “we thought that we were safe and went to bed about 9:30 p.m.” But an army of about 20,000 Chinese bandits “swooped down upon the city” and began to plunder it, taking any valuables, food, and other provisions they desired. “When we heard the disturbance we thought we had better stay there as we had been told during the day that there would be no danger if we stayed inside of our own compound.”

Mrs. Kilen, meanwhile, had worked to protect the 200 Chinese girls who attended the school by sending them to a next-door home. She directed the girls to daub their faces “with mud and ashes to make them appear as unsightly and old as possible in order that they might be passed up by the bandits and not taken prisoners.” Mrs. Kilen also told them to dress in “tattered clothing to appear as beggars and as undesirable in the sight of the bandits as possible.”

Mr. and Mrs. Hoff and Mrs. Kilen left their house and stood outside it, trying to decide what course to take next, hoping that the brick wall of the mission complex would provide a barrier between them and the encroaching bandit hordes.

They then heard someone say in Chinese, “Run! Run!”

The bandits held the mission compound for four days, holding the wounded Hoff couple as captives. The Hoffs “received neither food nor care for [their] festering wounds” during that time. Several times, the bandits threatened to kill all three missionaries outright.28

All three missionaries, “thinking that the voice was that of a friend warning them, immediately climbed the ladder which they had fastened on the wall and which led into the

The Lutheran Church Bernard and Hannah (Broen) Hoff Worshipped at During Their Stay in China

FOOTNOTES “Missionary Is Dead Of Bandit Wounds,” New York Times, January 14, 1924, 1.

“Mrs. Bernard Hoff Will Return,” Bismarck Tribune, February 29, 1924, 7.

28 Hoff, The Bridge, 146.

26 27

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Mrs. Kilen, as a longtime missionary who understood the dialect of the robber band, overheard their plan to take Mrs. Hoff with them as a hostage for ransom. “Mrs. Kilen promptly sacrificed herself, persuading the brigands to take her instead of the wounded woman.29 She said, “I will go in her place. She would die on your hands.”

gown which Mrs. Hoff had worn only a short time before.”

Hannah’s bridal veil had been found “torn and trampled underfoot among the broken and battered belongings” of her home.31

The bandits heeded her plea. They left the city after a four-day ordeal, taking Mrs. Kilen and their loot with them—and leaving Mr. and Mrs. Hoff to die. As for the 200 Chinese schoolgirls, Mrs. Kilen’s mud-and-ashes gambit worked, for none of the girls were taken captive.

Hannah Hoff later spoke about her feelings at the time when the shooting began. “I was not afraid,” she said, “I was not a bit nervous after the effect of the first shot had been fired. There is only one thing to be and that is calm at a time like that. My husband as well as myself was shot with the first bullets that were fired by the bandits as they sent their forerunners into the little city in which we were stationed.”32

In a later letter written to her father, Hannah described their plight after being hit by bullets: “I said to Mr. Hoff while we were lying wounded in a Chinese house near the mission station, ‘As long as the Lord is here with us, it doesn’t matter, does it, dear?’ He would only nod his head, as he was unable to speak. I said, ‘This is God’s way of saving us. If we had not been wounded, we would have been taken by the bandits.’”30

Still, the couple, with their lives hanging in the balance, needed to get to a hospital. They were taken to the nearest hospital, located forty miles away, at Siangyang. In their weakened state, they had to be moved very slowly and carefully, strapped to stretchers. Both suffered complications, Bernard with symptoms of malaria and Hannah from a severe case of dysentery.33

However, everything at the Lutheran Brethren mission at Tsao Yang had been terrorized. “An investigation of the premises after the bandit horde had passed, showed that trunks and drawers had been plundered and the contents strewn about on the floor. Among them was the wedding

Back home in Grand Forks, Hannah’s mother, Juliana Broen, had a feeling that something had happened in China.

As Hannah later wrote, “The very night we were shot, she had a strong premonition that something dreadful had happened to us. The following morning, wringing

FOOTNOTES “Missionary Is Dead Of Bandit Wounds,” New York Times, January 14, 1924, 1.

“North Dakota Woman In China Writes of Cruelties; Mrs. Bernard Hoff Writes to Parents in Grand Forks Of Bandit Killings,” Bismarck Daily Tribune, February 29, 1924, 8.

31 “Fatal Raid Fails To Daunt Mrs. Hoff,” Grand Forks Herald, April 27, 1924, 11; “North Dakota Woman In China Writes of Cruelties; Mrs. Bernard Hoff Writes to Parents in Grand Forks Of Bandit Killings,” Bismarck Daily Tribune, February 29, 1924, 8.

32 “Fatal Raid Fails To Daunt Mrs. Hoff,” Grand Forks Herald, April 27, 1924, 11.

33 Hoff, The Bridge, 146.

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her hands, she said to Father, ‘Something dreadful has happened to Hannah and Bernard.’ No news had as yet reached the States.”34

North Dakota, in April of 1924. “Everyone wanted to hear about the happenings in China,” she recalled, and she “spent part of the summer months speaking in various places on behalf of the China Mission and the situation in China.” She gave an interview to the Grand Forks Herald.36

Bernard was gravely wounded. He suffered for two weeks and then died on January 12, 1924. The body of Bernard Hoff “was sealed in a thick Chinese coffin which received several coats of varnish.” Funeral services were conducted in both English and in Chinese before Bernard’s body was interred in the missionaries’ cemetery in Fancheng, near the main station of the American Lutheran Mission. Bernard Hoff was the first Lutheran Brethren missionary to be martyred in the mission field. This son-in-law of E.M. Broen had heeded the call to serve as a missionary in a foreign land, a commission that was so close to Broen’s heart.35

Feeling the need for “some intensive Bible study,” Hannah attended classes for a year at the Lutheran Bible Institute in St. Paul, starting in October of 1924. She later completed her college education at the University of North Dakota.

Hannah returned to China in September of 1926, taking charge of the Girls High School at Tsao Yang, where she had experienced so much of life and loss with her newly found and sadly lost husband. Turmoil came to the Chinese countryside again that year, and Hannah, along with 400 other missionaries, left there in spring, 1927. She took further schooling, eventually earning her registered nursing degree at Lutheran Deaconess Hospital in Chicago and a Master of Arts degree in social work at the University of Chicago. Hannah had a career in social work, administration, and teaching sociology in Fargo, North Dakota, and at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota.

Hannah remained in the Chinese hospital for over three months, recovering and trying to regain enough strength to return home to the United States. Hannah took stock of her plight. “My health [was] in jeopardy,” she wrote, and “my much loved, newly-wed husband [was] dead, all my possessions gone or ruined,” and “I could have asked ‘Had God really forsaken me?’ That never entered my mind.

I knew God had something for me to do in life. God had imprinted upon my mind, from a very early age, that I was to serve Him in my special way, even as every believer is called to serve in each his special way.”

Bernard Hoff at His Desk

As for Mrs. Juline Kilen, she was held for ransom by Lao Rang Yen’s bandit army for three weeks, eventually being taken to a mountain hideout. Several times, leader Lao Rang Yen gave orders to his men to execute Mrs. Kilen, and then rescinded the command. At one time, an executioner

Newly widowed, Hannah Hoff came home to Grand Forks,

FOOTNOTES Hoff, The Bridge, 147. “ Fatal Raid Fails To Daunt Mrs. Hoff,” Grand Forks Herald, April 27, 1924, 11; “Memorial For Bernard Hoff Will Be Held,” Bismarck Tribune, February 11, 1924, 3.

36 Hoff, The Bridge, 147.

34 35

Bernard Hoff's Funeral

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was going to fire a bullet at Mrs. Kilen to kill her, and Mrs. Kilen asked for permission to dismount from her horse first so that she could kneel to say her final prayer. The gunman gave his approval, but her devotion unnerved him.

He dropped his gun to the ground and said, “I cannot kill you. You are too good and honest.” Mrs. Kilen dismounted anyway and then “talked to the men about sin and the love of Christ.” Her clarity of faith and purpose disarmed each of several bandits ordered to kill her.37

her ordeal, said simply, “only my faith in God sustained me.”40 The story of the Lutheran Brethren missionaries in China made newspaper headlines internationally in 1924. The story was one of villainy and hazard, intrigue and courage, adversity and rescue, of tragedy and faith.

The tale of Hannah and Bernard Hoff did not end with his death, nor with Hannah’s departure from China for the last time in 1927. The Lutheran Brethren missionaries in the provinces of Hupeh and Honan had planted seeds of the gospel there in the soil of central China. From among the Chinese people, the Lord raised up men, women, and children who accepted the good news of Jesus Christ, who lay down in the grave and rose for the remission of sins.

Another time, an authorized executioner took the elderly Mrs. Kilen to a secluded place to perform the deed. Mrs. Kilen asked him “why he wished to kill an old woman.” He replied, “I can’t do it.”38

All foreign missionaries were forced out of China after the atheistic Communist regime of Mao Zedong came to power in 1949. It seemed that Christianity in China would die a quick death.

In the end, Juline Kilen was rescued by mid-January, 1924. The US State Department sent a strong protest concerning the bandit outrages, demanding that China better protect American citizens. Chinese authorities approved the capture of bandit leader Lao Rang Yen, dead or alive, and troops soon closed in on the bandit headquarters.

With the assistance of US military attachés Major John Magruder and Captain Woodrow Woodbridge, government soldiers surrounded the terrorist group, killed Lao Ran Yen and his second-in-command, a man nicknamed “White Wolf,” and effected Mrs. Kilen’s release from bondage.39

But there were four million Christians in China when Chairman Mao came to power. Those numbers included Chinese pastors, theologians, and laypeople who carried on the faith—teaching and preaching in an underground church.

That work flowed from the efforts of the Lutheran Brethren missionaries and those of other Christian denominations.

Christianity in Red China “did not die,” according to Robert Overgaard, a former Lutheran Brethren Church president.

Mrs. Kilen, described as being “wan and emaciated” from

FOOTNOTES Levang, The Church of the Lutheran Brethren, 1900-1975, 164-165.

“Amazing Tale of U.S. Missionary,” Moorhead Daily News, January 21, 1924, 1.

39 “Mrs. Kilen Rescued From Chinese Band,” New York Times, January 15, 1924, 23; “Woman Held By Chinese Bandits Is Released,” Manitoba Free Press, January 15, 1925, 1; “Protest Outrages By China Bandits,” Moorhead Daily News, January 2, 1924, 1; “Bandits Kidnap American Woman,” Moorhead Daily News, January 8, 1924, 1.

40 “Amazing Tale of U.S. Missionary,” Moorhead Daily News, January 21, 1924, 1.

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Broen and Juliana Broen hold within their own hearts as they heard the sad news from overseas? Was it something akin to what they felt after the death of their daughter Rebecca by means of scarlet fever back in 1904, twenty years before?

“It became a lay church, and it spread like a weed” by means of the house church movement in Hupeh and Honan provinces and throughout the geographic expanse of China.41 By the year 2012, the Christian Church in China had grown dramatically to an estimated total of 65 million followers.

On any given Sunday, there are more Chinese Christians attending worship services in China than in all of Europe, according to a report by BBC News.42

We can never minimize the pain of the sudden loss of a loved one. But some have the capacity to think of how much they have been given, rather than to dwell on what had been taken away from them. Hannah Broen Hoff, when “writing about the passing away of her husband after such a brief life together,” and the “cruelties” that had been dealt her by terrorists, had a perspective of “faith unshaken.”

Before the Communist government closed China to missionary work, Lutheran Brethren missionaries had baptized over 2,000 people in central China, many of whom became leaders, evangelists, and pastors. The church did not die on the vine, for these people evangelized their neighbors. At the Pingshi and Tongbai mission stations, there had been about 300 believers in 1948; by 1996, there were over 10,000 in that area.43

“This is the Lord’s will concerning me and as often as I think about my beloved husband being taken away from me so soon, I yet feel thankful to God because I still have mother, father, sisters and brothers, and best of all, a loving Heavenly Father, who cares especially for me now. This is comfort and help in these trying days.”44

The concern of E.M. Broen for the unreached masses of Chinese people and his heartfelt pleas for young people to follow the missionary calling contributed to the journeys of his own daughter Hannah across the wide Pacific Ocean and the voyage of his son-in-law Bernard Hoff to Asia. Who could have known of the heartache that would be brought about by the bullets of the bandit lord’s army? Who could guess that death would lie so quickly on the horizon for a young groom? Who could measure the heart-longing and sorrow of his daughter Hannah? What feelings did E.M.

As for E.M. Broen, as president of the Bible School, and later, when he was the head of the high school, he was the one who taught students about foreign missions and about missionary history. Here was his true calling regarding the mission field—as a teacher who inspired others to respond to the call to become missionaries.

FOOTNOTES

“This is the Lord’s will concerning me and as often as I think about my beloved husband being taken away from me so soon, I yet feel thankful to God because I still have mother, father, sisters and brothers, and best of all, a loving Heavenly Father, who cares especially for me now. This is comfort and help in these trying days.” 4

Hannah Broen Hoff, when “writing about the passing away of her husband after such a brief life together,” and the “cruelties” that had been dealt her by terrorists, had a perspective of “faith unshaken.”

Robert Overgaard, Fergus Fall, MN, interview by Steven R. Hoffbeck, May 30, 2008; notes in the possession of the author.

“Christians in China: Is the Country in Spiritual Crisis?,” BBC News Magazine, September 11, 2011, www.bb.co.uk/news/magazine, accessed July 24, 2012.

43 E.M. Strom, “Our Ministry In China,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 20, no. 13, July 1, 1953, 2; Joel Christenson, “A Visit to the Interior of China,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 63, no. 5, April 4, 1996, 9.

44 “North Dakota Woman In China Writes of Cruelties; Mrs. Bernard Hoff Writes to Parents in Grand Forks Of Bandit Killings,” Bismarck Daily Tribune, February 29, 1924, 8.

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Tsao Yang School, Spring 1937 Lutheran Brethren Mission Conference in Tsao Yang, 1920 [Front Row (Left to Right): Einar Fauske, Hilmar Fauske, Helen Fauske, Cerelia Fauske, Myrtle Valderhaug, Gladys Valderhaug, Palmer Valderhaug; Second Row: H.S. Fauske, Mrs. H.S. Fauske, Hannah Broen, Caroline Oudahl, Mrs. P.M. Valderhaug, P.M. Valderhaug, Elliot Aandahl; Back Row: Gunda Hoff, Sigfrid Mykelbust, M.J. Werdahl, M.H. Valderhaug, F.J. Larson]

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FOUR T U R B U L E N C E O F T H E G R E AT DEPRESSION: GRAND FORKS T O F E R G U S FA L L S 1935

Staff and Students Play Baseball at the Park Across from LBS in Grand Forks

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T

he difficult times of the Great Depression (1929– 1940) tested the faith and determination of individuals and institutions alike. As a church school, the Lutheran Brethren Academy in Grand Forks did not receive public tax dollars to finance its operations; thus the decades of the Twenties and Thirties placed the school on the brink of closure.

The wooden superstructure for the ski jump stood 86 feet high on top of a small hill near the Red River. Skiers climbed up the steps on the side of the ski scaffold, carrying their long skis on their shoulders. Donning their skis, the jumpers sped down the jump and launched themselves into the air at the bottom, soaring out onto the Red River itself and, after alighting on the snow, gliding to a gradual halt on the hill opposite the jump. Winter tournaments attracted championship ski jumpers throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s and provided recreation for Bible School students who had ski-jumping in their Norse genes.2

President E.M. Broen of the Lutheran Brethren Schools continually faced cash flow troubles throughout the 1920s and 1930s. For President Broen, upkeep on the aging Grand Forks school building and its grounds proved to be a challenge. The campus, located on Belmont Avenue four blocks west of the Red River, was nice enough, for it had two main buildings and ample space—more than two square blocks, which provided room for future growth. Its location next to Lincoln Park provided access to tennis courts, a golf course, and picnic grounds, as well as toboggan slides and skating rinks.1

The school’s main building, three stories in height, had adequate classroom and office space, as well as a library, kitchen and dining hall, but it also served as the men’s dormitory. President Broen considered a new men’s dormitory to be a necessity, to be built “as soon as the necessary funds” could be obtained. The main building, constructed in 1891, required constant upkeep. The women’s dormitory, built in 1900, had room for fifty young ladies and was quite modern, with laundry facilities located within.

Lincoln Park had a uniquely Norwegian-American sports facility, for it featured a towering ski jump, built in 1916.

FOOTNOTES

Ski Jump in Grand Forks

Here and below, Lutheran Bible School, Grand Forks, North Dakota, General Catalogue, Announcements for 1920-1921, in “General Catalogs, 1920-1924, Lutheran Bible School Records,” University of North Dakota Special Collections Library, Grand Forks, ND, #649-1-2, Box 1, 5-7; “Hill is Put in Good Shape for New Year’s Fun Seekers,” Grand Forks Herald, January 16, 1916, 3.

2 “Crowd Watches Nine-Year-Old Boy in Five Attempts on Ski Slide—Jumps Fifty-Two Feet,” Grand Forks Herald, February 7, 1922, 8; “Big Field Will Enter Ski Meet,” Grand Forks Herald, February 3, 1935, 13; “Ski Slide Now Completed,” Grand Forks Herald, November 25, 1916, 2.

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President Broen had to work on fundraising immediately upon the school’s arrival in Grand Forks in 1918. The school needed to provide housing for the faculty as part of their compensation for teaching, so President Broen obtained synod authorization for “extensive improvements” on the main building, as well as for the construction of “two new residences for professors,” which were to be built right on the campus.

Lutheran academies in general declined in numbers in the 1920s. Public high schools were perceived as having improved both the quality of their buildings and of their instruction from former years, and some parents became averse to sending their children away to boarding schools in their mid-teen years. Of the roughly ninety-nine Lutheran academies that existed in the United States in 1920, just fifty-five remained in operation by 1930.4

The “immediate needs of the Bible School” amounted to roughly $17,000, as each of the two houses for the teachers would cost approximately $6,000, and the school’s furnace needed replacing.3

The Lutheran Brethren school administration faced a crossroads in 1926. Bills at the school kept piling up, and yearly deficits kept growing larger from 1919 to 1926. By the end of that span, the total debt surpassed $26,000. The school, despite its vital spiritual mission in Christian education, was on the road to ruin. The Bible School and high school department, according to M.J. Quarum, a long-time school trustee, had “almost at all times been in debt.” In that fateful year, at the national church convention, the school’s Board of Trustees reluctantly advised the convention delegates to close either the Bible School or the high school, in order for the school to survive the financial crisis. The convention prayerfully vowed to keep both schools in operation, and then hired Reverend R.S. Gjerde, a 1910 Bible School graduate and the synod president at the time, to be

In 1919, the school’s administration held a major fundraising campaign to cover the building and renovation costs, as well as to pay off some of the debts incurred from the purchase of the Grand Forks site. The moneyraising committee, made up of members of the Grand Forks Commercial Club (like a modern-day Chamber of Commerce) and church members, garnered pledges worth $10,000 within a short time, but had to plan a wider campaign among the churches of the Lutheran Brethren nationwide.

LBS Advertisement, 1920's

FOOTNOTES “ Lutherans To Erect New Buildings On Belmont Avenue,” Grand Forks Herald, June 28, 1919, 5; “10,000 Drive Had Good Day,” Grand Forks Herald, August 3, 1919, 16; Joseph H. Levang, The Church of the Lutheran Brethren, 1900-1975 (Fergus Falls: Lutheran Brethren Publishing Company, 1980), 128, 139-142.

4 E. Clifford Nelson, The Lutherans in North America (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), 431.

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a serious fund-raiser who would wipe out the accumulated debts. When Pastor Gjerde contacted the faithful people of the synod, they responded, soberly and sacrificially, with $27,000 in “cash and pledges” by 1927.5

Crash, such as raising interest rates, which discouraged business borrowing and home loans.

In the 1930s, enrollment at the high school declined, as families who might have sent their children to the private Christian school faced reduced income from farms, businesses, or other work as the economy fell apart. The senior class in the high school reached its largest numbers in 1929, with a total of twenty-nine students. The first graduating class of the high school, in 1920, had had a total of six seniors. In 1921, there were twelve graduating seniors, and in 1922, there were twenty-one. But after 1929, the numbers declined. By 1933, there were only twelve seniors. The 1934 graduating class also numbered twelve. Numbers of Bible School students also declined in the early 1930s, as parents reduced expenses to the essentials.7 Fewer students meant less revenue for the school; it was a time of financial crisis.

Pastor Gjerde, according to the account of church historian Joseph Levang, used as his motto “All debts paid in full,” including the mortgage used to purchase the Grand Forks school site. In December of 1928, with great thanksgiving, the synod’s Board of Trustees paid off the mortgage. “Every debt of every kind was paid up,” recalled M.J. Quarum. The mortgage was publicly burned, and its ashes were gathered up in a jar. The school’s leaders preserved the jar and vowed to never again take out a mortgage on the school.6 The Lutheran Bible School and academy became debtfree, but only for a short time, for worse times lay ahead.

The Stock Market crashed in 1929, a symptom of deeper economic troubles nationwide and worldwide.

The synod’s leaders were in a quandary over what to do about its educational mission when the economy, church members, and the school in Grand Forks were all in real trouble. Every year of the Great Depression, President E.M. Broen faced great financial burdens; every year, Broen and the synod’s educational board wrote a report of the school’s affairs; and every year, the pages of the report revealed that the school’s finances were in disastrous condition. This dire predicament had come about for a number of reasons, partly from a lack of assistance from the national synod

The Great Depression brought unemployment at unprecedented levels, with at least one-fourth of workers without jobs. Banks in general had been in trouble during the 1920s, with bank failures common both in the Midwest and nationwide. International trade declined as a repercussion of World War I’s aftermath, and nations retaliated against each other with protective tariffs. The Federal Reserve Banks made serious mistakes in the years after the 1929

FOOTNOTES .J. Quarum, “Greetings From the Board Of Trustees,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. XX, no. 20, (October 15, 1953), 13; Levang, Church of the M Lutheran Brethren, 128, 139-142.

6 Ibid.

7 Lutheran Bible School, Grand Forks, North Dakota, General Catalogue, Announcements for 1923-1924, in “General Catalogs, 1920-1924, Lutheran Bible School Records,” University of North Dakota Special Collections Library, Grand Forks, ND, #649-1-2, Box 1, n. p.; Levang, Church of the Lutheran Brethren, 131.

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A Thank You Card from the Gjerde Family [Translation: "With Regards and Thanks - Gjerdes"]

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at a sustaining level, and partly from the fact that some students could not pay their tuition because their parents had lost their farms or businesses during the Depression.

Worst of all, the school needed annual upkeep and repairs that had been put off in hopes of better economic times, but those times were not forthcoming as the economy failed to rebound. The New Deal programs of the national government provided more relief than recovery in those hard times.

‘We are up against the wall, God, wilt Thou not come and help us? Thy cause is at stake,” he prayed. “[L]et not Thy cause be put to shame.”

At another meeting, held in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, the synod had to “decide whether or not [they] could continue to carry on the work of the school.” The problems seemed “insurmountable,” and the group prayed and “discussed [its] difficulties until late in the afternoon.” As E.M. Strom recalled, “When most of us were almost ready to vote in favor of closing the doors of the school,” then Pastor Broen, who had helped found the school way back in 1903 and who had led it through turmoils and triumphs, with an investment of faith, prayer, and energy, stood to address their fainting hearts.

E.M. Strom, who taught Bible classes and Norwegian language classes at the school, witnessed all of the fiscal troubles during the Grand Forks years. “The trying years” of the Great Depression, wrote Pastor Strom, “caused our synod to pass through painful trials and agony. The financial burdens were so heavy that it seemed humanly impossible to continue our school and our mission program.” The national synod had so little money coming into its treasury from tithes and offerings that it could only support one or the other.8

With tears in his eyes, Pastor Broen said, “Brethren, I believe that the Bible School has a mission to perform. I dare not vote to lay it down. Let us look to God, and I believe that He will provide.”

The churchmen determined to keep the schools open.

Because a solution seemed “humanly impossible” and “all doors were closed,” Strom wrote, “the leaders of our synod called together the Christians from far and near to spend a few days in prayer and study of the Word.” At the prayer day that took place in Grand Forks, they prayed for a way to navigate through their financial crisis. Strom remembered “especially one prayer meeting in one of the classrooms,” when all of the synodical leaders “gathered for special prayer for our finances.” In a “small science classroom . . . one of the brethren cried to God and said,

And the teachers helped—they wrote a letter “expressing their willingness to continue in faith, looking to God to supply their needs.” They gave the letter to Pastor Strom to deliver to the church leaders with a promise to “continue as the Lord provided.” Some of the teachers “cancelled their salaries,” and all taught without full salary in order to help the school operate from 1929 through 1935. All understood that the school was in danger of closing.

FOOTNOTES 8

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Here and below, E.M. Strom, “Highlights In the History of Our School,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. XX, no. 20, (October 15, 1953), 2.

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In 1931, the teachers agreed to keep on teaching “even without a guaranteed salary.” In the 1932-1933 school year, the teachers and administration had a total of $1,930 of salary left unpaid.9

With tears in his eyes, Pastor Broen said, “Brethren, I believe that the Bible School has a mission to perform. I dare not vote to lay it down. Let us look to God, and I believe that He will provide.”

Pastor Broen

President Broen and Professor Strom led a day of prayer and fasting at the Grand Forks school in its darkest hours in 1933. Professor Strom wrote that “we were in great need of a new building and we did not see how a new building could be financed. We prayed for a larger and more adequate building; that God would supply us with teachers from year to year; and that He would send students to our school.”11

In the 1933-1934 school year, the administration and teachers were paid less than half of their contracted salaries.

They had been paid a total of $4,776.32, but $5,871 had been left unpaid. However, the teachers continued to perform their duties, because they knew the school was desperate and did not have enough funds to pay their full salaries. Ida Goplin, who had graduated from the high school program in 1922 and was on the high school faculty as a history teacher in the early 1930s, cancelled a part of her salary every year, as did her fellow teachers Irene Anderson, a teacher of science and English, and Leona Davis. C.F. Erickson, who taught math, science, and choir, and William Windahl, who taught piano, voice, and music theory, willingly took salary cuts in those years of privation. Mr. Windahl sometimes taught without earning any payment whatsoever. E.M. Strom, who taught full time in the school and also served as the pastor of Bethel Lutheran Brethren Church in Grand Forks, took no pay from teaching at the school and eked out a living for his family solely from his income as a pastor.10

And, as Professor Strom wrote, “God answered our prayers.”

A glimmer of hope came at the 1935 national convention of the Lutheran Brethren Church. It was the thirty-fifth annual national meeting, and was held at the Lutheran Brethren School in Grand Forks.

Delegates from Brooklyn, Chicago, Seattle, and from other Lutheran Brethren congregations heard the school committee report on deficits and declining enrollments, and came to understand that the “present building [was] very inadequate and sadly in need of repair.” In this atmosphere of gloom, John Kilde, a businessman from Fergus Falls, Minnesota, and a man of deep faith, gave information about a unique opportunity available in his city. Kilde said that a beautiful and commodious building located there, a former college, could be bought for a “very reasonable” price.

In the 1934-1935 school year, the teachers were paid a total of $5,647.40, with a total of $4,196.44 left unpaid.

At the synod’s national convention in 1935, the church officially vowed to award the teachers their back pay as a moral obligation, no matter how long it would take to do so.

The building was made of red brick and had been built on a hilltop in the southeastern portion of Fergus Falls. Four and one-half stories in height, with roof spires reaching even higher in the sky, the brick structure had been an architectural landmark in the area since its construction in 1901.

FOOTNOTES ere and below, Levang, Church of the Lutheran Brethren, 144-145.

H Levang, Church of the Lutheran Brethren, 144-145.

11 Strom, 3 9

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Professor Broen With a Group of Students at Grand Forks − [Photo Caption: "Professor Broen With His Flock"]

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The peak of the pencil-point spire on top of the building’s belfry measured about seventy feet off the ground, soaring far higher than any other building in the city.

The entire third and fourth stories consisted of living and study rooms for students, which were “really model apartments.”

A Fergus Falls newspaperman wrote a description of the building’s beauty of form and setting:

The large basement contained the “spacious dining room, capable of seating about two hundred at one time.” It had “a model kitchen and bakery,” and a laundry.

“Looming up from the river-bordered eminence, constructed in accordance with the most up-to-date plans, faced on all sides with Menominee red pressed brick, and virtually five stories in height—the basement being partially above ground and finished throughout as a full story—it is the largest and most complete college building in the northwest.”12

The building had a spacious gymnasium, something the Grand Forks school lacked. It had been constructed on the south side of the main building in 1910 and was still in excellent shape.13 The building also had a 1926 addition, when the Park Region Luther College had added locker rooms, an auditorium, and twelve more classrooms, at a total cost of $32,175.14

The tan-toned sandstone front steps directed one’s eyes to the main entrance of the building in the form of a “massive brick archway.”

The building was available because its original occupant, the Park Region Luther College, went bankrupt in 1932. It had carried too much debt in the depths of the Depression.

The city of Fergus Falls was eager to get a new tenant for the building, which had been empty for three years. The price was extremely low—the $26,000 price tag was less than the cost of the 1926 addition to the original college building.

In the main hall was the chapel—“capable of seating four or five hundred persons.”

The main floor featured a reading room, while to the left, “a neat reception room” and a principal’s office were located. At each corner of the first floor was a classroom, which could each seat seventy or eighty students. The principal’s living quarters were also on the first floor, and the second floor had two music rooms and a number of dormitory rooms.

Most importantly, the Fergus Falls building had room to provide lodging for 150 students, which would accommodate all of the high school and Bible school boarders.

FOOTNOTES “Finest In The West,” Fergus Falls Weekly Journal, January 9, 1902, 3.

13 Board of Trustees, PRLC. Minutes Book, Book “B,” Concordia College Archives, July 12, 1910, 234.

14 “P.R.L. College Plans a $30,000 Addition,” Fergus Falls Journal, August 4, 1925, in “Education-Colleges, Fergus Falls History File,” Otter Tail County Historical Society, Fergus Falls, MN, news clipping.

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Gymnasium at Hillcrest Lutheran Academy's Fergus Falls Campus, Photo from the 1910's

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board members deliberated for several hours and finally voted in favor of the proposed purchase, again by a three to one count.17

It also had sixteen acres of wooded property that was like a park overlooking the Otter Tail River.

The convention voted to appoint a committee to look into the possibility; John Kilde was one member of that committee. Also included were E.J. Blikstad, another Fergus Falls businessman, and Gust Overgaard, a carpenter/ builder from Ashby, Minnesota. The trio were members of Bethel Lutheran Brethren Church of Fergus Falls, which had been founded in 1912 and which lay in the heart of the Lakes Country region of Minnesota, heavily populated with Norwegian-Americans.15

But how could the synod afford to buy this large building when it could not even pay its teachers at the old school location?

Here, the churchmen were ingenious.

The school’s Board of Trustees met in Mayville, North Dakota, in Otto Egge’s furniture store. There, the trustees hired two carpenters, Nic Anderson and John Erickson, to carefully tear down the old school building and then sell the scrap lumber and materials, splitting the profits 50-50. This brought in $2,000 for the church.18

The committee recommended purchasing the college building “as the new home of the Lutheran Bible School” and high school. The committee acknowledged that it would take some money to get it ready for occupancy, and that it would be costly to move from Grand Forks to Fergus Falls. The synod leaders asked all of its member churches to “discuss the matter and make their decision known to the president of the synod.”16

Then, the trustees divided the two square blocks of property in Grand Forks and sold off the building lots, bringing in substantial cash as the lots sold.

Finally, John Kilde and E.J. Blikstad of Fergus Falls went to visit their fellow businessmen on a fundraising mission.

The response was overwhelming, for the community

The people of the church discussed it and voted “approximately three to one in favor of the move.” The synod’s

FOOTNOTES he Church of the Lutheran Brethren of America: Golden Anniversary, 1900-1950 (Fergus Falls: Board of Publications, Church of the Lutheran T Brethren, 1950), 24-25; “National Convention,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. 2, no. 8, (July, 1935), 4; “50 Years Ago: Local Men Instrumental in Relocation of L.B.,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, clipping file in Otter Tail County Historical Society, dated June, 2002.

16 “National Convention,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. 2, no. 8, (July, 1935), 4; C.E. Walstad, “The Transaction Is Made,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. 2, no. 9, (August, 1935), 5.

17 C.E. Walstad, “The Transaction Is Made,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. 3, no. 9, (August, 1935), 5.

18 M.J. Quarum, “Greetings From the Board Of Trustees,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. XX, no. 20, (October 15, 1953), 13.

15

Park Region Luther College, Fergus Falls, Minnesota

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checks. The electrical wires were all inspected, and were upgraded as necessary. Volunteers cleaned and painted all the halls, classrooms, and offices to be “cheerful and inviting” for the new occupants.21 Workers repaired loose bricks near the roof so they were re-set and tuck-pointed.

wholeheartedly contributed to assist the Church of the Lutheran Brethren in buying the building in their town.

Businesses saw the good sense in bringing the Lutheran |school to Fergus Falls: Otter Tail Power Company contributed $15; Norby’s Department Store also gave $15; Minnesota Motor Company donated $10; and Fossen Grocery chipped in $10. Other companies and individuals gave a little, from the little they had: Matt’s Service Station contributed one dollar; as did Jensen’s Auto Wrecking and Olson Electric Shop; Kingdon Levosen, Blanche Myster, and B.Z. Stewart each gave a dollar as well. John Kilde put in ten dollars himself. Together, the people of Fergus Falls raised $2,500 to help “defray the expenses incurred in putting the college building in shape for occupancy.”

The Fergus Falls Daily Journal publicized the fundraising campaign, printing daily another fifty-five or so names of contributors.19

The height and majesty of the building held certain hazards for Mr. Overgaard’s crew of workmen. When shinglers put new shingles on the roof, four and a half stories above the grassy summit of the hill, the forty-fivefoot roof peak gave some workers pause. When one of the shinglers lost his footing atop the sharply pitched roof and slid untethered to the edge, others saw him grasp the rain gutter with all his might so that he did not plunge to his death. They rushed to his aid and pulled him to safety on the rooftop.22 His life saved, the workman shakily got off the roof, going down the flights of stairs to rest tremblingly under an oak tree on the grounds below.

In the summer of 1935, the “new home of the Lutheran Bible School” and high school became “a place of bustling activity” as workmen under the supervision of master carpenter Gust Overgaard renovated and repaired the schools’ new home. Even the teachers lent a hand in helping with the renovations.20

Gust Overgaard gave the shaken man thirty minutes to ponder his mortality and then told him to either go home or go back on the roof. If the man did not climb again to the roof, said Overgaard, he would likely never work on high places again.

The fellow went back up.

Plumbers made sure the faucets and drains worked properly. The hot-water boilers for the furnace passed safety

FOOTNOTES “ Bible School Drive Now On,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, September 18, 1935, 3; “Bible School Contributors,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, September 19, 1935, 9; September 21, 1935, 7; September 23, 1935, 9; September 24, 1935, 3; September 25, 1935, 7; September 26, 1935, 7; September 28, 1935, 7.

20 Here and below, “The New Home of the Lutheran Bible School,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. 3, no. 11, (October, 1935), 4; “As a New School Year Approaches,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. 2, no. 10, (September, 1935), 5.

21 “Bible School Drive Now On,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, September 18, 1935, 3.

22 Here and below, Robert Overgaard, Fergus Falls, MN, interview by Steven R. Hoffbeck, May 30, 2008, notes in the possession of the author.

19

Grand Forks Building Demolition to pay for Park Region Building, 1935

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“Fear not, I am with thee. O be not dismayed, For I am thy God, I will still give thee aid.

I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand, Upheld by My righteous, Omnipotent hand.” 25

And the Lutheran Brethren Schools did the same thing, getting back upon a firm footing in the new Fergus Falls location.

Classes in the remodeled school began with opening exercises on September 17, 1935, with the formal opening of the thirty-second year of the Bible School and the nineteenth year of the high school. President Broen delivered a short address, pointing to the wise promise found in a verse of Psalm 34: “Come, my children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD.”23

This stanza came directly from Isaiah 41:10: “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.”

President E.M. Broen, who had led the schools from the beginning, delivered the dedication sermon. In it, he told of the “aim and purpose” of the school—it was to do more than just educate the students, whether in its “secular or religious” classes; it would strive to help “young people to get . . . a spiritual vision.” They were not to be blind, but should see clearly themselves and the calling that God would give them. They would see “themselves in a new and startling light as lost sinners who were in desperate need of a Savior,” who would confess their sins and receive grace and forgiveness. Then their eyes could be opened to read and understand the messages given in the Old Testament and in the Gospel of the New Testament.26

In late October, nearly a thousand friends of the school “gathered from far and near” for a “day of festivity” and a Dedication Day service at the Lutheran Bible School and high school.24 The day began with a prayer meeting in the school’s chapel at 9:30 a.m. Then came a worship service in Norwegian at 11:00 a.m. in the school’s auditorium.

In the afternoon, at 2:00 p.m., the school held the main event—the dedication service. It started with Scripture readings, prayers, and songs. The opening hymn, “How Firm A Foundation,” described the hope that had carried the school and its synod through the tough times of the early 1930s. As verse two told it:

FOOTNOTES

LBS Class of 1935

“ Opening Exercises,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. 2, no. 11, (October, 1935), 4.

“Dedication Services” Faith And Fellowship, vol. 2, no. 12, (October, 1935), 5-6.

25 Robert J. Morgan, Then Sings My Soul (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2003), 42-43.

26 Here and below, “Dedication Sermon,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. 2, no. 12, (October, 1935), 2-3.

23

24

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Lutheran Brethren churches; but even greater numbers would go “forth as homemakers, useful church members, and loyal and efficient citizens.”

Pastor Broen pointed to 2 Kings 6:17, in which Elisha prayed that his servant would be able to see that the Almighty God could rescue Israel from a large army encroaching upon the Israelites. And then the Lord “opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw . . . the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.”

President Broen asked God in “His merciful way” to “guide and help us through, even in this new place” to give a “still more clarified vision” to teachers, administrators, and students alike.

It was prayer that opened the eyes of the young man, and it was prayer, Broen proclaimed, that had “meant a great deal at the Bible School from the very beginning.” It was the praying members of the school’s faculty and the school’s praying students who saw clearly the “numerous answers to prayer” throughout the history of the school. In the move to Fergus Falls, there were “so many things in evidence of God’s favor,” which Pastor Broen ascribed as flowing from “this secret source of power and promotion.”

The dedication service concluded with another hymn, entitled “Now Thank We All Our God,” which told of the Lord— “who wondrous things hath done” and who “hath blessed us on our way.” The school, through the words of the song, called upon God to “be near us,” and to “cheer us,” to “keep us in his grace,” to “guide us when perplexed,” and to “free us from all ills, in this world and the next.”

President Broen then gave the benediction: “May the Lord bless you and keep you; may the Lord make His face to shine upon you; and give you His peace.”

Broen judged that Christian parents from coast to coast would send their children, at great expense, to the Bible School, because these parents were “desirous that their boy and girl [would] receive a spiritual vision in addition to high-school education.” Some of these young men and women would then be enabled to become “missionaries to China and Africa,” or “pastors and evangelists” in the

As President Broen said, “It was an afternoon long to be remembered.” It ushered in a new chapter in the history of the Lutheran Brethren Schools, in its Fergus Falls home. 27

FOOTNOTES 27

“Dedication Sermon,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. 2, no. 12, (October, 1935), 5-6.

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FIVE

“ H E W H O R U N S FA S T C A N N O T RU N L O N G : ” T H E D E AT H O F PASTOR E.M. BROEN 1938

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E

. M. Broen wrote an essay entitled “He Who Runs Fast Cannot Run Long” in the spring of 1890, when he was a student at Augsburg Seminary in Minneapolis.1 He read the essay on his college commencement day, prior to beginning his seminary classes. Broen wrote it in English as evidence he had become fluent in both Norwegian and English.

In some ways, the title told the story of his life.

Engebret Mikkelsen Broen, born in Norway in 1863, came to America when he was nineteen years old. He had been “greatly disadvantaged due to a lack of opportunity to develop his education or talents” in Norway, and could not “realize his dreams” there.2

In Minnesota, he found Christ—or, rather, Christ found him. He also gained his education at Augsburg College and Seminary. And it was in Minnesota that he met, wooed, and married his wife, Juliana.

E.M. Broen was a strong man, both “physically and intellectually.” He had been engaged in hard labor in his youth, and he had learned English in just a year of study at age twenty. He was a handsome man with a powerful frame. And as a Norwegian, he was an expert skier 3

Juliana, oftentimes called Julia, was a slender and very attractive woman with “auburn hair, deep-set hazel eyes and a smooth, fair complexion.” She was born in Minnesota, in Faribault, located in the southeastern part of the state, on November 24, 1870.4 Together they raised twelve children—six daughters and six sons, and all but one lived to adulthood. Rebecca died at age three under tragic circumstances, as told previously in this book.

They were strict parents, and the eldest children followed their strictures most closely. Due to Broen’s many travels and time spent away from the family, the younger children were more wayward than the elder ones. A number of the twelve lived up to the reputation of “preacher’s kids”— those who rebel for a season against the idea that they must always live up to both congregants’ expectations of super-spirituality and their parents’ expectations. While all eventually returned to the straight and narrow path, there were certainly twists and turns along the way.

E.M. Broen was very talented as a preacher and teacher. He was also quite musical; he played a large harp-guitar and was a gifted singer, a strong tenor who “sang himself into people’s hearts.” Pastor Broen “loved music in a minor key,” for it “evidently struck a chord” within his own soul. He wrote lyrics for a “number of songs,” his own favorite being “In Storm and Darkness.”5

Broen returned to Norway three times after coming to the United States. In 1910, when he was forty-seven, Broen and his wife, Juliana, made a trip there, and he preached at a number of evangelical meetings during their three-month stay. Juliana got to meet her in-laws there for the first time.6 The couple made another trip to Norway in 1930, when Broen was sixty-seven years old. His third trip would be in 1938, without his beloved Juliana.

In 1937, Pastor Broen and his wife embarked upon a worldwide tour. He had received an invitation to be a featured speaker at a mission conference at the Kikung Shan site, the summer mountain retreat where his daughter Hannah had married Bernard Hoff way back in 1924. The conference marked the thirty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Lutheran Brethren Mission in China.9

Juliana died in 1933 from a “lingering illness” when she was sixty years old. She was buried in Grand Forks Memorial Park Cemetery. E.M. Broen purchased two cemetery lots there, expecting that he would be buried there also.7

In the trip planning, E.M. Broen and Elizabeth decided to visit Japan before speaking at the conference in China.

On the homeward journey, the couple would visit the Holy Land in Palestine and then go to Egypt; and finally, they would tour Scandinavia before returning home.10

The year after Juliana’s death, E.M. Broen re-married.

He was age seventy when he and Elizabeth Roten were married at Bethel Church in Grand Forks. She was twenty years younger than he, and they had known each other because both were members of the Bethel Lutheran congregation. Elizabeth was an eye doctor, an ophthalmologist with a degree from the University of Minnesota, and had a private office in Grand Forks. Some in the Bible School and in the congregation raised their eyebrows at his marriage so soon after Juliana died, but one of Broen’s daughters noted that it was common for a widower to take a new wife a year or two after a spouse’s death, missing the close companionship of marriage.8

It was to be a realization of a dream for Pastor Broen to go to the mission field in China. He got to visit the four mission stations—at Tsao Yang, Tungpeh, Pingshi, and Tangho. Broen noted with joy that, since 1903, 700 of the people in that region had been reached by the Gospel and had been baptized by the missionaries. He understood the sheer size of the region that comprised the synod’s mission field in Hupeh and Honan provinces, lamenting the fact that there were “altogether too few missionaries, as well as native workers, to evangelize . . . the large area for which [they were] responsible—a population of around one and one-half million persons.” He realized that the Lutheran

E.M. Broen and Elizabeth Broen relocated to Fergus Falls in

FOOTNOTES “ Four Graduates,” St. Paul Daily Globe, May 8, 1890, 3; “Presented With Diplomas,” Minneapolis Tribune, May 8, 1890, 5.

Hannah Broen Hoff, The Bridge, preface.

3 Hoff, The Bridge, 6, 23.

4 “Wife of Lutheran School Head Dies,” Grand Forks Herald, July 12, 1933, 8; “Funeral For Mrs. Broen,” Grand Forks Herald, July 14, 1933, 5; Hoff, The Bridge, 14.

5 Hoff, The Bridge, 5, 22, 23.

1935 when the Lutheran Brethren Schools moved there. He was still the president of the schools at that time.

FOOTNOTES

1

2

Hoff, The Bridge, 51.

Hoff, The Bridge, 166-167.

8 Hoff, The Bridge, 167-168.

9 Hoff, The Bridge, 173.

10 Hoff, The Bridge, 172.

6 7

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E.M. Broen with Missionaries in China During His World Tour Before His Death

A Group of School Supporters Gather Outside Hillcrest Lutheran Academy Before E.M. Broen's Memorial Service at the School

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Brethren Church in America could “never hope to send enough missionaries . . . and support them in such a vast field.” Broen considered it a “rare privilege” to be the main speaker at the Kinkung Shan Conference, and to address representatives from twenty different church bodies and missionary organizations there.11 When Pastor and Mrs. Broen were in China, fighting raged in the eastern part of the country due to a Japanese attack.

Pastor Broen noted that the very air vibrated with “anxiety and unrest.” He heard about the “massacres in North China and Shanghai, and the bombardment in Nanking and other cities.” It was the beginning of World War II in Asia, in reality, when Japan stabbed its neighbor China in the back in order to take over territories and seize vital natural resources such as iron ore and wheat.12 The Broens visited the Holy Land and Egypt as the year 1938 began, before traveling to Denmark and thence to Norway. In his former homeland, E.M. Broen preached in revival meetings, as he had done during his previous visits there. But his energy started to flag, and he began to fall ill over a two-week time period. First came headaches, and then his feet and hands felt cold. Even though he felt unwell, Pastor Broen still preached a couple of sermons, one entitled “Christians With Fire, and Christians Without Fire.”

Broen’s health got worse; likely he had pneumonia. He became jaundiced, and got so weak that he remained in bed.

When he was in Moss, Norway, his eyes became dull, and he had little life remaining. His mind was clear, and he

perceived that his own passing was near. He died on February 24, 1938, when he was seventy-five years of age.13 It took some time for word to cross the Atlantic Ocean to the Broen family, scattered as it was across the Midwest from North Dakota to Minnesota to Chicago. The Lutheran Brethren Schools heard of Broen’s death not long after the fact, by means of a telegram sent to the school by Elizabeth Broen. The acting president, E.M. Strom, suddenly felt a larger load of responsibility, for he was only supposed to administer the schools until October, when Broen was scheduled to return from his worldwide speaking tour.

The Broen family was justifiably shocked by the news, and some of Broen’s children read the news of his death in the Associated Press stories in their local newspapers.

Newspapers in North Dakota noted the passing of this regional church leader in short articles, for his death had taken place in Norway, so very far away. The Bismarck Tribune headline read: “Founder of Wahpeton Bible School Is Dead.”

E.M. Broen was buried in Norway, with a funeral service held in the Moss Lutheran Free Church, and another service in Oslo in March of 1938.14 The Broen family and the Lutheran Brethren Schools conducted memorial services. The Broens gathered at the school in Fergus Falls for one memorial ceremony, and another was held at Bethel Lutheran Brethren Church in Grand Forks.15

FOOTNOTES Hoff, The Bridge, 219-221.

Hoff, The Bridge, 223.

13 Hoff, The Bridge, 175-176.

14 Hoff, The Bridge, 179, 181.

15 Hoff, The Bridge, 182, 185.

11

12

E.M. Broen, 1863-1938

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Eulogies, then and later, noted well the impact of this preacher’s life. He was “the outstanding leader in the Church of the Lutheran Brethren,” according to E.M. Strom, and was the “inspirer of youth who caused so many to go to the foreign fields as missionaries.” Strom called Broen a true “teacher, preacher, [and] friend,” whose career continued even beyond his death through the many lives he affected by his work in the school and church.16 Mrs. Elizabeth Broen outlived E.M. Broen by thirty-four years. Elizabeth died in 1972; she was eighty years old.

One of the most visible reminders of E.M. Broen’s contributions to the Lutheran Brethren Schools was the large map of the world in the Hillcrest Chapel with the title: “Behold The Fields—Go Ye! Presented by Student Society in Memory of Pres. E.M. Broen, 1937 1938.”

The map was a dramatic portrayal of the essence of the Great Commission to “Go forth and make disciples of all nations,” for it had little electric lights designating where graduates of the school were located in the mission field. For many years, it was a luminous inspiration to students in chapel times. The map was put in storage during a time of remodeling and, alas, has been lost.17 One of the most permanent physical reminders of E.M. Broen still stands in Fergus Falls—the Broen Memorial Home. Formerly a college building, the Lutheran Brethren Synod purchased it, then remodeled it to be the seminary building, and then turned it into a nursing home for elderly

people. The “Broen Home” has been very well-known in the city of Fergus Falls since its dedication in 1957. When Elizabeth Broen died in 1972, she died in the Broen Memorial Home, and her burial was in the Fergus Falls cemetery. The burial place of E.M. Broen was in Norway, the place of his birth; Juliana Broen was buried in the Grand Forks city cemetery in the city where the Lutheran Brethren Schools were located; and then Elizabeth Broen was buried in the same city where Hillcrest was located.

And poignantly, though E.M. Broen had wanted to be buried in Grand Forks in the plot next to Juliana, he was instead buried across the sea—far from the burial spots of both Juliana and Elizabeth.18 Even though Broen’s burial place was in Norway, on the grounds of Hillcrest Academy stands a monument stone dedicated to the memory of E.M. Broen, a man who was noted for his studying of the Bible, for his powerful and effective preaching, for his heartfelt teaching, and for his writing of books, brochures, articles and songs.19 Put in place and dedicated in 1943, the Broen monument is very simple. It reads: “President E.M. Broen, 1863-1938.

Preacher Teacher Editor Bedre Lengre Frem.”

The Norwegian phrase “Bedre Lengre Frem” means “Better Farther On,” indicating that he, as a servant of the Lord, could now rest from his labors, being transported to a “better place”—in the heavenly realm.

FOOTNOTES E.M. Strom, “Biographical Profile: E.M. Broen,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 29, no. 20, November 5, 1962, 11-12. “ What Is Missions?,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 30, no. 18, October 20, 1963,12; Hannah Dalen Sunwall, “L.B.S. Influence on the Mission Field,” The Alumnus of the Lutheran Brethren Schools, May 1949, 15.

18 “Broen Memorial Home Dedicated,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 24, no. 15, August 1, 1957, 9; “Mrs. Broen Dies; Services Tuesday,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, November 25, 1972, 2.

19 “Broen Memorial Service,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 8, July 1943, 12.

16 17

104 The Broen Memorial Stone at Hillcrest Lutheran Academy, Fergus Falls

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SIX

N O RW E G I A N R OYA L C O U P L E VISIT HILLCREST 1939

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T

he old gymnasium at Hillcrest Academy was a vital centerpiece of school life in bygone days, but it was partlydisplaced in 2006 by the new gymnasium, a sparkling gem of a gym. The old gym may seem like a forgotten relic of the past, yet it still holds a treasure-trove of deeply-felt memories for former students. Alumni revere its venerable hardwood court and nearby stage, that once reverberated with the sounds of countless basketball games, P.E. classes, global mission conferences, and graduation ceremonies of yesteryears.

Yet few would remember or know that the future king of Norway and his lovely princess were once there at the old gym for a royal reception—visiting with Minnesota’s governor, enjoying coffee and a “little lunch,” and charming young and old alike—on a rainy day in June of 1939. How wonderful it was to have present on the Hillcrest campus the Crown Prince of Norway, Olav, and the Crown Princess, Martha. It was a day that should be remembered.

Norway has always held a special place in the hearts of those immigrants who left its fjords and shores for America, and the founders of the Church of the Lutheran Brethren sought to preserve the links of language and culture with the Old Country.

So it was entirely fitting that Fergus Falls was chosen to be on the American tour taken by Prince Olav and Princess

Martha of Norway in 1939, and it was an entirely divine blessing that they set foot upon the Hillcrest campus in early June of that year.1 Prince Olav was born in 1903, the firstborn son of King Haakon VII. He was baptized as Alexander Edward Christian Frederick, but Haakon, elected king in 1905, later renamed his son Olav to give him a heroic name that recalled the old Viking rulers.

Princess Martha was slightly older, having been born in 1901 as a princess of Sweden. She married Olav in 1929 in the Oslo Cathedral; it was the first royal marriage in Norway in over 400 years. The couple was blessed with three children—daughters Ragnhild and Astrid, and son Harald, heir to the throne.

The royal couple came to the United States to dedicate the Norwegian Pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. They arrived in the city by sea on April 27th, in time to participate in the Opening Day ceremonies on May 1st.

They visited with President Franklin D. Roosevelt at his Hyde Park estate, and they were said to be “the stars of the second day of the World’s Fair.”

Whereupon Olav and Martha set out upon a two-anda-half-month tour of the United States—the “most extensive tour of this country ever planned for European

FOOTNOTES 1 2

“ The Royal Visitors,” Faith and Fellowship 6, no. 8, July 1939, 2, 9, 10.

“Wide Tour Mapped For Prince Olav,” New York Times, April 19, 1939, 18.

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royalty.”2 It was during that tour that the Crown Prince and Princess came to Fergus Falls on the morning of June 10th, a Saturday.

The only glitch in the preparations was that the skies opened up with an inch and a half of rain, a gift that was appreciated in the fields during a dry time, but one that was inconvenient for the planned festivities on the front lawn of the school’s grounds. Still, “many thousands braved the soaking rain to welcome . . . the royal entourage and Governor Stassen on their arrival” at Hillcrest. “The rain . . . failed to dampen the spirits of the assembled throng, many of whom were able to gain admittance to the auditorium.”

Estimates were that the crowd numbered as high as four or five thousand, and a host of cars were “parked south, west and northwest of the school building.”4

Security was tight for the protection of the Norwegian royal couple as their motorcade traveled from Moorhead to Hillcrest via Highway 52. While in Moorhead, Prince Olav gave a talk, urging young Norwegian-Americans in the audience to “keep open the windows to the country [from] whence your fathers came.”

Twenty-five proud highway patrolmen escorted the royalty, barreling down the two-lane roadway at speeds approaching seventy miles per hour, for the tour was behind schedule. However, the route passed through the towns of Barnesville and Rothsay, and in each of the villages, the cars slowed down so that Olav and Martha could “wave a cheerful greeting to those who . . . gathered to welcome the visitors from the homeland beyond the seas.” Minnesota’s governor, Harold Stassen, rode with them in the car, sharing accolades with them.

When the royal couple arrived at Hillcrest at about 10:30 in the morning, they were escorted directly into the gymnasium, which had been beautified for the occasion.

The large space had been turned into a “veritable flower garden,” with “three truckloads of greens” brought in from the countryside and arrayed on the walls as “garlands of green.” The environs were graced with the splendor of spring flowers in bouquets and baskets and vases. The “finest silver and china” gleamed on the three long tables arrayed with white silk tablecloths.

Preparations for their arrival in the city and at the Academy grounds were extensive. Citizens decorated the city with welcoming signs along the motorcade’s route and flew Norwegian and American flags along the boulevards.

Throngs of spectators lined the way, carrying umbrellas to ward off summer raindrops.3

Olav and Martha were first greeted by little Harriet Svensrude, who was dressed in a colorful traditional Norwegian costume with her hair braided in the Scandinavian fashion. She smiled brightly when presenting Her

FOOTNOTES 3 4

110

“ Display the Flags,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, June 9, 1939, 9.

Here and below, “Royalty Is Warmly Greeted Despite Rain,” Fergus Falls Weekly Journal, June 15, 1939, 1, 7.

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Highness with a bouquet of red roses. Young Harriet’s great-grandparents had settled in Minnesota long ago, coming among the first wave of arrivals from the land of the fjords. Harriet and dozens of other school children serenaded the distinguished visitors with two verses of “Ja vi elsker dette landet” (“Yes, We Love This Land”), the Norwegian national anthem, and two verses of the “Star Spangled Banner.” Among the little girls in the choir was Joyce Bruns, who was of Norwegian extraction from nearby Rothsay; she would later become a teacher at Hillcrest Academy.5 Of course, the speechifying had to begin, led off by Mayor James Eriksson, and followed by Governor Harold Stassen.

Stassen arose and gave his “welcome and good wishes to our royal guests, because we are wrapped up in one central thought—Norway—and to honor the land from which so many here came.” He praised the establishment of the Academy, Bible School, and seminary. He spoke of the “pioneers who loved their churches, their homes and their schools” and who saw fit to maintain these as a portion of their Norwegian heritage.

The governor lauded the “close tie between the homeland of Norway” and Minnesota, and applauded the “love of the motherland . . . evidenced by the fact that these children were able to sing today the national anthem of

that country beyond the sea.” He concluded by expressing “a sincere wish that health, happiness and prosperity may be yours and your children’s today and throughout the future.”

Prince Olav then rose and spoke in perfect English. He said that he was proud of those who had their “cradle in Norway,” and of the way they had helped make the United States a “great country.” He was proud that these NorwegianAmericans had kept up their traditions and that they worshiped “God in the same way your fathers and mothers have done before you.”

In his farewell wishes, Olav “said a few words in Norwegian, which was indeed a treat to the many old pioneers who had come to hear him.”

After the ceremonies, the serving committee brought “coffee and light refreshments, first to the royal couple and then to the other distinguished guests.”6 Prince Olav and Princess Martha then departed from the city, traveling with the state patrol motorcycle escort on State Highway 52 to Alexandria, where they were to be entertained at a luncheon at 1:00 p.m., and then on to Sauk Centre, where they received an autographed copy of Sinclair Lewis’s classic novel Main Street.7

FOOTNOTES “Flowers and the Royal Family,” Fergus Falls Weekly Journal, June 15, 1939, 7.

“Royalty Is Warmly Greeted Despite Rain,” Fergus Falls Weekly Journal, June 15, 1939, 7.

7 “Crown Prince to See Main Street,” Fergus Falls Weekly Journal, June 8, 1939, 1.

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He said that he was proud of those who had their “cradle in Norway,” and of the way they had helped make the United States a “great country.” He was proud that these NorwegianAmericans had kept up their traditions and that they worshiped “God in the same way your fathers and mothers have done before you.”

Prince Olav of Norway

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After the reception at Hillcrest was over, the cleanup of the gymnasium and the divvying up of the flowers and greenery proceeded apace. Memories were made that day, and the glow of the visit was recorded in the pages of Faith and Fellowship magazine, the flagship journal of the Lutheran Brethren Church. The school considered it “quite an honor to have the Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Norway with us” and “to have the festivities staged” in the gymnasium. It was clear that there were “so many blood ties and spiritual ties which [bound] us to the little country of Norway.” The leaders of the school “stood with the prayer of the poet” in their souls as the prince and princess departed, proclaiming “Gud signe Norigs land.”8 These visitors from Norway had arrived in the same week as the annual church convention for 1939, and attendance had surged for the gathering. It made that year’s convention “rather unique.” It was a time when “many thousands had gathered on the spacious and beautiful” Hillcrest campus and witnessed a special moment in the history of the school.

Little did the church people or the Norwegian royalty know the suffering that would follow that glorious visit.

In 1940, the Germans invaded Norway and attempted to capture King Haakon VII, Prince Olav, and their families.

Finding shelter in the mountains, Haakon and Olav defied the Nazi menace, and the Norwegians attempted in vain to halt Hitler’s takeover of their sovereign nation.9 The royal family slipped away to safety in England, and it was from that base that Olav organized and led the Norwegian resistance forces that vowed to retake their homeland. That hope was realized after difficult years of warfare.

Prince Olav never returned to Fergus Falls, but he did return to the region in 1942, in the midst of the wartime, when he spoke in Grand Forks, North Dakota. He told his American friends that Norway was “more united than ever, its spirit still unbroken.” His visit to Grand Forks and Fargo had “none of the joy” of the visit three years previously. Much later after the war, in 1957, Norway crowned Prince Olav as King Olav V. Martha, sadly, had passed away in 1954, before Olav ascended the throne. Olav died in 1991 at age 87.10 After the Norwegian royals’ visit to Fergus Falls, there were arduous times to come for all. However, in the time of the gathering storm in Europe in 1939, a pair of distinguished visitors graced the platform stage at the esteemed old gymnasium at Hillcrest Lutheran Academy.

FOOTNOTES ere and below, “Display the Flags,” Fergus Falls Weekly Journal, June 9, 1939, 9; “The Royal Visitors,” Faith and Fellowship 6, no. 8, July 1939, 2.

H “Olav V, Norway’s King 33 Years and Resistance Hero, Dies at 87,” New York Times, January 18, 1991, www.nytimes.com, accessed September 30, 2008.

10 “Crown Prince Tells About Norway’s Fight,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, April 28, 1942, 4; “Olav V, Norway’s King 33 Years and Resistance Hero, Dies at 87,” New York Times, January 18, 1991, www.nytimes.com.

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CHAPTER

SEVEN BLACKOUTS: LUTHERAN BRETHREN SCHOOLS DURING WWII 1942

Excerpt from the Hillcrest Lutheran Academy Yearbook, 1946

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T

he Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, plunged the United States into World War II. Almost overnight, the entire nation mobilized for the global conflict.

In Fergus Falls, the Lutheran Brethren Schools—the high school, the Bible School, and the seminary—were deeply affected by the war.

Charles Sheppard, a senior at the high school, wrote in his diary on December 9, two days after Pearl Harbor: “Once again our country is at battle, for today Congress declared war on Japan. Yesterday that country bombed the Philippine Islands. What will the conclusion of this world chaos bring? Only God knows.”1 The president of the school at that time, Pastor Erwin Martinius Strom (1891-1969), wrote that the war had put “everything out of its proper equilibrium,” for homes were “broken up;” schools were “handicapped by a lack of teachers;” and “anxiety, fear, sorrow, and sad forebodings” filled the “hearts of men and women everywhere.” The world of 1941 was “like a storm-tossed ship,” said Strom, “headed for the rocks.”

“When the very foundations are being shaken,” continued Strom, “it is good to look unto God, who never changes,” to find “peace, joy, and strength.”2 President Strom, grandfather of former Hillcrest choir director David Strom, looked to the Lord to help the Lutheran Brethren Schools weather the storms of World

War II. The school continued to provide a Christ-centered education while the tumults of war swept the continents from 1941 through 1945.

Students who had graduated from the high school joined the armed forces of the United States and served in Africa, Asia, and Europe. For example, Herman Engebretson was in the Army and went to North Africa, Sicily, and Italy; his story will be told in detail in the next chapter.

Thor Bugge, class of 1943, served in the Pacific Theater of war. Roger Amberson, also in the class of 1943, was in the US Army. Ellsworth Gilseth, a 1941 graduate, went into the Navy.

Those who were still at home worried about their sons and brothers and grandsons who were in danger on the battlefields of the war. They hoped and prayed for the safety of these loved ones in distant lands.

On the home front in Fergus Falls and at the Lutheran Brethren Schools, it was a time of adjustment as the young men went off to war and the civilians tightened their belts to conserve resources by means of wartime rationing.

Government officials prepared for the possibility of attack against the United States on its own shores.

The United States also prepared its citizens to defend themselves in case of a bombing attack by the enemy air forces of Japan or Germany.

FOOTNOTES 1 2

“ My 1941-1942 LBS Diary,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 9, no. 7, (June, 1942), 25.

E.M. Strom,“ In Times Like These,” The Bible School Alumnus, January, 1945, 4.

Mr. and Mrs. E.M. Strom, LBS President, 1950's

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While it may seem unlikely to modern readers that Minnesota or Fergus Falls could be struck by enemy bombers in World War II, nonetheless, civil defenses were mobilized even in these places against just such an eventuality. What follows in this chapter is the story of how the Lutheran Brethren Schools participated in the civil defense blackouts in case of an air raid in Fergus Falls.

“Would there be any occasion” for the enemy “to bomb Minnesota?” asked James Martin Hagen, a civil defense organizer, in 1942. Hagen believed there was, because Minnesota furnished much of the iron ore that industry turned into steel for the war effort.3 President Franklin D. Roosevelt fed fears when he “admitted that under certain conditions the bombing of our heavy industrial areas at Detroit and the shelling of New York City were possibilities.” FDR also said in a press conference that Alaska could be subject to attack.4 The philosophy of civil defense programs was that it was

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“a lot better to be prepared for an air raid and not have it come, than to have it come and not be prepared.”5 Fergus Falls was unlikely to be targeted directly, but bombers could strike the city because it was situated near the Iron Range and the port city of Duluth. The chief local Air Raid Warden, Judge Frank C. Barnes, pointed out that long-range bombers could fly a polar route and rapidly reach Minnesota.6 To protect Fergus Falls, Leo H. Dominick, Commander of Civilian Defense, worked with Judge Barnes to choose and supervise over fifty local air raid wardens to watch the skies for enemy aircraft.7 As a public service, the Fergus Falls Journal newspaper printed drawings of eleven Japanese warplanes, showing their silhouettes.8 Air wardens held designated rooftop positions where they kept binoculars at the ready to aid them in spotting

FOOTNOTES

“Air Warden School Opens Wednesday,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, July 7, 1942, 2.

“Roosevelt Says U.S. Cities May Be Attacked,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, February 18, 1942, 1; “Roosevelt Warns Foe Could Shell Or Bomb New York,” New York Times, February 18, 1942, 1.

5 “Air Warden School Opens Wednesday,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, July 7, 1942, 2.

6 “Block Air Wardens Are Being Picked,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, June 30, 1942, 9; “Fergus Almost As Near Japan As West Coast,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal June 4, 1942, 5; “Not Likely To Drop Bombs On Fergus Falls; Japanese Could Easily Reach Us If There Was Anything of Military Value Here,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, April 23, 1942, 2.

7 “Block Air Wardens Are Being Picked,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, June 30, 1942, 9; Judge F.C. Barnes became the city air raid warden, and then Dominick took charge of the civil defense program in Fergus Falls; “Blackout In This City On Dec. 7,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, November 23, 1942, 3; “Instructions For Blackout,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, December 3, 1942, 3; Otter Tail County Had 65 Volunteer Air Raid Wardens; “Air Wardens In County Are On Alert,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, December 29, 1941, 7.

8 “Spotting Japan’s Warplanes,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, February 14, 1942, 2.

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enemy aircraft in the skies over Fergus Falls. The same air raid wardens were called upon to ensure compliance with practice blackouts of all lights on blackout drill nights.9 Fergus Falls had four blackouts—two in December of 1942, one in May 1943, and another in later August 1943.10 The first came on Monday, December 7, 1942, exactly one year after the infamous Pearl Harbor attack.

Air raid wardens watched “every block in the city” to ensure that no light from inside the houses would “penetrate the outside darkness.”11 The time of the first blackout was from 10:00 to 10:30 p.m. This was a good time for the test, because many Fergus Falls residents would already have turned out the lights and gone to bed.

The local newspaper served as the main forum for communicating the instructions for the blackout to residents of Fergus Falls. Everyone was required to “turn off all lights visible from the outside immediately” upon hearing “intermittent blasts” from five “whistles located in various parts of the city.”12 If a person was driving a car, the driver was to park the vehicle at a curb, turn off its lights, and walk, but “DO NOT

RUN to the nearest shelter.” Anyone caught outside while walking during a blackout drill was to stay on the sidewalk and off the streets where emergency vehicles traveled.

Streetlights would be turned off, making it even more imperative that pedestrians stay off the streets, because the headlights of emergency vehicles were painted black except for a 3/8th-inch stripe, and anyone in the street might be accidentally hit.13

judged to be a “real success.”16 The Lutheran Brethren Schools building, being one of the four largest in Fergus Falls, along with the State Hospital, the Kaddatz Hotel, and the River Inn Hotel, was a focus of the air raid wardens. All four buildings were reportedly blacked out “blacker than an old-fashioned derby hat.” Because it was a boarding school and lights-out time was typically at 10:30 p.m., the students did well to make sure the windows were darkened.

The third blackout during the war came in the form of a “semi-surprise” drill, in which citizens knew that the exercise would occur on May 7, 1943, but did not know the exact time of it; they knew only that it would start at “some time between 9 and 11 o-clock.” As soon as a person heard the “shrieking whistles” or saw the streetlights turned off, he or she was to follow the by-now-typical lights-out and sheltering routine.19

Every person who was outside a building could not “smoke, light matches, or use flashlights.” Businesses were to black out “night-lights, neon signs,” and any other lights.14

To test city firemen’s response time, fire trucks rushed to an imaginary fire at the Lutheran Brethren Schools, known as the “Bible School” in those days. The scenario called for another fire truck run to the River Inn Hotel.

The “semi-surprise” blackout began with the wail of the siren at 9:20 p.m. and ended with an all-clear signal at 10:13 that night. The Hillcrest Academy building was again the focus of a practice incident for the Fergus Falls fire department, and the police also responded to a simulated “disturbance” at the public school.20

All instructions for the blackout were to be followed until the “all-clear signal” sounded; it was to be “a straight two-minute signal” given on the whistles. Any who did not comply with the blackout were subject to fines or imprisonment, according to city regulations passed for the good of all.

All citizens were urged to do the following: “Keep cool. Stay home. Put out lights. Lie down. Stay away from windows,” and thus help the Office of Civilian Defense do its work.15 The first blackout, on December 7, was a test run and was

Airplane spotters, led by local chief observer Maynard Lee, looked for enemy planes in the darkness from atop the roof of the Otter Tail County Courthouse.17 The second blackout, on December 14, was part of a ten-state test and was “declared an unqualified success” in Fergus Falls and in Minnesota generally. Civil Defense Commander Leo Dominick judged that the second “blackout worked smoother than the initial black-out.” Although the warning whistles were not heard well throughout Fergus Falls, everyone became aware of the blackout as soon as the streetlights were turned off. The only violators were those who had inadvertently left basement lights burning.18

FOOTNOTES

All went smoothly, except for an alleged violation by A.R. Schultz at his home located at 531 West Alcott Avenue, near the Hillcrest school building. Schultz had a “greenish” colored light that he insisted was approved by “national blackout officials as being all right to use during blackouts.” He had to pay a fine of $13.37 for using the light to illuminate the house numbers on the front of his home.21

By August of 1943, it seemed that the public was tired of practicing for a bombing blitz that was unlikely to strike Minnesota. The blackout was scheduled for a night

FOOTNOTES

“ Blackout In All Minnesota December 14,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, November 14, 1942, 1.

“Final Instructions For Tonight’s Blackout,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, December 7, 1942, 7.

11 “Blackout In This City On Dec. 7,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, November 23, 1942, p. 3.

12 Here and below, “Instructions For Blackout,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, December 3, 1942, 3; “Final Instructions For Tonight’s Blackout,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, December 7, 1942, 7.

13 “Blackout Rules For All Minnesota,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, December 10, 1942, 3.

14 “All Stores To Blackout On Monday,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, December 5, 1942, 3.

15 “What To Do In An Air Raid,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, December 18, 1941, 10.

Here and below, “First Blackout Here Is Pronounced Real Success,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, December 8, 1942, 3. “ Airplane Spotters To Meet Here,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, March 16, 1943, 3.

18 “Blackout Tonight, 10 To 10:20,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, December 14, 1942, 3; “Unannounced Blackout To Take Place Soon,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, December 15, 1942, 1; “Everyone Cooperated In Blackout,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, December 15, 1942, 7.

19 “Prepare For Blackout Tonight,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, May 7, 1943, 7.

20 “Blackout Here Was Quite Successful,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, May 8, 1943, 7.

21 “Claims Lights Were Approved,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, May 8, 1943, 3; “Blackout Case Tried In Court,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, May 19, 1943, 9

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between the 22nd and the 28th; however, the exact date and time was a “military secret.”22 The blackout drill of August 24th brought a tepid response in Fergus Falls, for “about fifteen violations” occurred on that night. “The August black-out has come and gone,” ho-hummed a local reporter, and it was not a “full success.” Weary of the war and no longer wary of an air attack, people’s enthusiasm for the drills waned.23 In January of 1944, the War Department and the Office of Civilian Defense, both based in Washington, DC, ordered an end to practicing blackouts nationally, except for on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The blackouts interfered with production of war goods, and government officials deemed that “most communities [were] sufficiently well organized to cope with such emergencies as can now reasonably be anticipated.” It was clear that German and Japanese aircraft did not have the capability of flying so far over land and sea as to attack the interior of the United States during the war.24 President E.M. Strom presided over the Lutheran Brethren Schools during World War II, and he admitted that “the present war conditions” had “hampered our work to some extent.” Yet he stressed that, in such times, the school

would “still be a Christ-centered school” where “young people [were] being led to the Lord” and called to work in His Kingdom.

In the school chapel, a large map of the world showed the locations of the Lutheran Brethren School alumni who served as missionaries by means of little lights placed on a multitude of points around the globe. During the war, the little lights were shining brightly on the map to show far-flung locations, as graduates in the military kept the faith in their journeys.

Herman Engebretson was one such light in the darkness at Anzio Beachhead in Italy.25 Sergeant Vernon Blikstad shone for Christ in England while serving as a gunner on a B-24 bomber.26 Thor Bugge was a point of light on a path that led him all the way to China.27 It was the most perilous of times, when death on the battlefield or in the flak-filled skies was an ever-present risk.

In those years of World War II, President E.M. Strom and the Lutheran Brethren Schools tried to serve as a “light house on the Hill,” reflecting the light of the Gospel to a war-wearied world.

FOOTNOTES .22 “Be Ready For Blackout Next Week,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, August 17, 1943, 7; “Blackout Coming Without Notice,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, July 29, 1943, 1.

23 “Black-Out Not Full Success,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, August 25, 1943, 9.

24 “Practice Blackouts Are Ordered Eliminated,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, January 13, 1944, 2.

25 “Vita,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. 17, no. 9, (May 1, 1950), 16.

26 “Staff Sgt. Blikstad Traveled 81,000 Miles In Nine Months,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, July 10, 1945, 5.

27 “Serving Uncle Sam,” Alumnus Quarterly, March 15, 1946, 4.

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President E.M. Strom presided over the Lutheran Brethren Schools during World War II, and he admitted that “the present war conditions” had “hampered our work to some extent.” Yet he stressed that, in such times, the school would “still be a Christ-centered school” where “young people [were] being led to the Lord” and called to work in His Kingdom.

President E.M. Strom

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EIGHT H E R M A N E N G E B R ETS O N AT A N Z I O I N WO R L D WA R I I 1944

Herman Engebretson Leans Against a Rake During Campus Cleanup Day, 1941

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W

ho knows what goes on in the heart and soul of a soldier during a battle?

Only he knows. And God knows. The combat soldier can tell a little of that universe of battle to others who have not been there, but those they tell don’t understand very much of it.

Herman Engebretson was in the middle of combat at Anzio, Italy, in 1944. He learned firsthand what it was like to be in battle there, amid the thunder and the roar of exploding artillery shells from German 88s, diving from foxhole to foxhole for shelter from white-hot shards of screaming shrapnel, hoping that machine gun bullets from strafing Luftwaffe fighter-bombers would miss him.

The Third Army Division was in a bad way at Anzio, a beachhead established in Italy in January 1944. All that the 100,000 American and British forces could occupy at the beach was a toehold. The German troops surrounded them and pinned them down for four months with withering artillery fire and air attacks. It was a bloody stalemate.

Herman Engebretson played a small role in the military in this world war as a chaplain’s assistant. The job would seem to be fairly safe—helping a unit’s chaplain set up worship services and then passing around the Communion bread and cup. However, in the maelstrom of combat operations, chaplains and their assistants faced death directly—pray-

ing with gravely-wounded soldiers, mourning at countless funerals, counseling and consoling GIs who were far from home and far from the ones they loved in the most harrowing times of their lives. Although a chaplain’s assistant’s duties might seem to be less dangerous than those of a combat soldier, the chaplain’s assistants were dug in right alongside the infantry at Anzio.

Another Army soldier at Anzio, Private Paul Curtis, wrote home and told his family what it was like there: “I don’t think any man can exactly explain combat.

Take a combination of fear, anger, hunger, thirst, exhaustion, disgust, loneliness, homesickness, and wrap that all up in one reaction and you might approach the feelings a fellow has. It makes you feel mighty small, helpless and alone . . . without faith, I don’t see how anyone could stand this.”

It was the “last letter” Private Curtis “ever wrote,” for “he was killed the next day.”1 Herman Engebretson lived through Anzio, just as he had previously survived the invasion of Sicily. However, Engebretson had been deeply marked by the battlefield experience, for it was during the fighting in Sicily in July of 1943 that he did his most difficult duty. And it was in Sicily, half a world away from his family, where he had to come to grips with God and God’s calling for him.

Born in the tiny village of Antler, North Dakota, on December 9, 1918, Herman was the firstborn son of Hans and Sophia (Huss) Engebretson. Hans was a Lutheran Brethren pastor who served a small congregation of Norwegian American farmers in an isolated area just miles from the US border with Canada. These farmers were bound together by the Norwegian language and their pietistic Lutheran faith.

When Herman was born, his father “dedicated him to the service of the Lord.” In 1920, Pastor Engebretson moved his young family to Grand Forks—which was, at that time, the largest city in North Dakota—where he served as a preacher until 1922.2 “As Herman grew up he was constantly under the influence of Christian teaching in the home and also in the Church.”

After he was told of his dedication to the Lord, “he rebelled at such a thought.” In his teenage years, “He watched how through the Depression years in North Dakota, a preacher’s life was extremely difficult, materially speaking.” As he knew those who had suffered from unemployment, economic hardship, and the humiliation of being on the government dole, he “had a desire to get into something which would assure him of prosperity” rather than a life of just scraping by on the meager salary of a pastor.

In 1934, when Herman was sixteen, the Great Depression was still creating hard times. Herman was a high school student at the Lutheran Brethren Schools, the forerunner of Hillcrest Academy, at the time when the schools were

2

“Featured Letters, Paul Curtis, May 28, 1944,” pbs.org, accessed June 24, 2008.

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“During his first year . . . when the Annual Mission Conference was held . . . he saw his need of a Saviour” and “one evening during those services he surrendered to the Lord.”

The difficult times of the Depression led to the physical removal of the Lutheran Brethren Schools from Grand Forks to Fergus Falls, Minnesota. Herman moved along with the school and completed his high school education in the newly-refurbished five-story castle building on the hill beside the Otter Tail River.

When his “high school days were ended the question which he pondered was what he should do next,” a problem that most young people faced, and one that posed more gnawing anxiety at that time than in other times, because of the Depression. “It seemed” to him “that every door was shut but the one which led him back again to Bible School” in Fergus Falls. Engebretson “went back not so much to prepare for the ministry as to satisfy his conscience,” and the echo of the story of how his father had dedicated him to God’s service.

While at school, he sang in the choir and got to travel far afield from the Fergus Falls campus. Not only did Herman

FOOTNOTES

FOOTNOTES 1

still located in Grand Forks. He had agreed to attend this school, with its Christian foundation, “mostly because of the adventure involved in getting out a little in the world.”

He boarded at the school while his father and family were back in Antler, ND.

ere and below, “Vita,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. 17, no. 9, (May 1, 1950), 14; locations of H.E. Engebretson in Board of Publications, The Church H of the Lutheran Brethren: Golden Anniversary, 1900-1950 (Fergus Falls: Church of the Lutheran Brethren Board of Publications, 1950),18, 20.

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complete the Bible School courses; he took the Seminary program as well. In 1941, he completed the Seminary Course at last, and he faced a serious question: where would he go now?

He felt that he had “two alternatives: one was to go directly into the ministry, the other was to be drafted into the Army.”

The selective service draft had been authorized by Congress in September of 1940, as the world had become engulfed in war. Germany had brought on World War II with its attack on Poland on September 1, 1939. Japan had been fighting in China against the Chinese forces since 1937. It seemed that the whole world was being caught up in conflict as the tempests of war swept across Europe and Asia.

Herman “thought it would be a good experience to spend a year or so in the Army,” and he put off the idea of serving as a pastor. He chose to be drafted and was inducted into the Army on December 4, 1941. It was a fateful decision, for just three days later, the forces of the Empire of Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. On December 8th, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the United States two days later. These momentous events occurred when Herman Engebretson was newly-arrived to basic training. With the potential of combat looming in front of him, the newly-minted GI found a door open to a chaplain’s assistant position, which made some use of his seminary education. However, since he had not been ordained, he was not eligible to be a fully-fledged chaplain.

When US forces invaded North Africa in late 1942, the Third Army Division was thrown into the forefront of the battles. The Third Army started out as inexperienced soldiers, but, after defeating German and Italian forces in North Africa by May of 1943, the Third Army became a battle-hardened group. Engebretson began his service as a technician and as a chaplain’s assistant, in the Third Army Division chaplain’s office, on July 9, 1943.

Engebretson joined the Third Army on the very day when the US invasion of Sicily began. The island of Sicily, located just west of the point of the toe of Italy, was to become the staging ground for invading Italy itself. “At the end of the first day” of the invasion, wrote famed journalist Ernie Pyle, “it [had] all been so easy” that it “gave you a jumpy, insecure feeling of something dreadfully wrong somewhere. We had expected a terrific slaughter on the beaches and there was none.” Pyle wrote that the “south coast of Sicily was “a drab, lightbrown country,” with “fields of grain that had been harvested and they were dry and naked and dusty.” The villages were “pale gray” and drab. Water was “extremely scarce.”3 But the gray countryside exploded into fiery red when the “German dive-bombings” and “strong counter-attacks” came, soon after the British and American forces landed.

The US Third Army Division, with Engebretson as part of the invasion force, landed at Licata and worked to “protect the left flank of the American beachhead.”

FOOTNOTES 3

ere and the next paragraph, Ernie Pyle, “Wartime Columns: An Easy Landing,” July 17, 1943, Indiana University School of Journalism, http:// H journalism.indiana.edu, accessed June 23, 2008.

Herman Engebretson was the Hillcrest Lutheran Academy Choir Manager, 1943

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The island of Sicily became a crucible of conviction for Herman Engebretson as he faced his own mortality, his rebellion, and his calling in life, as he faced his Creator.

the words written by an American soldier give heart to the reality of war: “The battle seems like something in a faraway land, and everything seems sad, lonely, and dark. The roar is even as bad as the movies have it. The cries of the wounded are pitiful. They seem so helpless. The dead seem forsaken . . . the things rage on all around them, but they are still and quiet. It’s a comfort to know there’s One who is present at all times and everywhere ready to help you through. My faith in God has been steadily growing stronger all along. You have no energy but still you go on.”5

The US offensive against the German forces in Sicily began in earnest in the heat of July, as General George S. Patton led his forces to the capital city of Palermo and then east to the city of Messina.4 In early August, 1943, the Third Army Division experienced its worst combat at San Fratello. The German “29th Panzer Grenadier Division had entrenched itself on a ridge overlooking the coastal highway,” and the Third Division “made repeated attempts to crack the San Fratello position . . . but failed to gain much ground.”

The victory came eventually, after American and British troops had “relentlessly pursued” the Axis forces; the Germans retreated to the Italian mainland by August 11, 1943.

US losses in the Sicilian Campaign “totaled 2,237 killed and 6,544 wounded and captured.” Total enemy losses came to about 29,000 soldiers killed or wounded, with 140,000 captured.

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It was his faith that carried Herman Engebretson through the Sicilian valleys of the shadow of death. He was wounded in battle and this propelled him into a crisis of faith, a time of deep soul-searching.

“One evening while convalescing in a hospital in Sicily . . . he seemed extremely uneasy and in spiritual darkness.

He walked out into the darkness of the night and found a place where he could be alone and began to pour out his heart to God.”6

But the losses are merely numbers until these figures are turned into actual soldier’s lives. For Herman Engebretson, he became intimately involved in these human losses.

Included in his duties as a chaplain’s assistant was the emotionally-wrenching, heartbreaking work of helping “locate and collect the bodies of American and enemy dead.” The aftermath of battle brings grim scenery. Again,

“It was clear to him he had been disobedient to the call of God. That evening he promised God that should he be permitted” to live through the war and “to return to civilian life he would be obedient” to the dedication of his father to the Lord’s service upon his birth “and go into full time service for the Lord.”

“It was clear to him he had been disobedient to the call of God. That evening he promised God that should he be permitted” to live through the war and “to return to civilian life he would be obedient” to the dedication of his father to the Lord’s service upon his birth “and go into full time service for the Lord.”

Donald Whisenhunt on Herman Engebretson

FOOTNOTES Andrew J. Birtle, “World War II Campaigns: Sicily,” brochure, http://www.history.army.mil/Brochures/72-16/72-16.html, accessed July 1, 2008. onald N. Whisenhunt, Reading the Twentieth Century (NY: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), p. 138-139.

D 6 Here and below, “Vita,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. 17, no. 9, (May 1, 1950), 16.

4 5

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Engebretson was to face two more years of war.

At Anzio, in four months filled with German attacks upon the boxed-in US Army forces, Herman Engebretson was steadfast in his work. As a technician, one of his duties was as the “chief operator and maintenance man of the Public Address System” at Anzio. “His work carried him over dangerous roads on which the enemy placed harassing artillery fire.” Engebretson, “disregarding personal fatigue and hardships and working long hours day and night,” kept the communications system operating, though being “ continually subjected to air and artillery bombardments.”7 His faith in Christ sustained him. And not only did Engebretson’s faith strengthen him, but it encouraged those he served with as well. When he dug a foxhole for protection while on his missions within the besieged beachhead, as he stated when telling of his mission later in life, other US soldiers wanted to dig their foxholes close to his.

They hoped that Engebretson’s closeness to Christ would protect both Engebretson and those near to him.8 125,000 Germans had encircled 100,000 American and British troops at Anzio, but the Germans could not destroy the Allied forces. The breakout from Anzio came finally in late May 1944, just prior to the D-Day invasion at Normandy in France on June 6, 1944. Engebretson and his Third Division compatriots helped liberate Rome and carry out

the final phases of the war in France. Engebretson finished his war service in the fighting in Germany. V-E Day, or Victory in Europe Day, came at last on May 8, 1945.

Germany had fallen.

Herman Engebretson finally got to go home again in September of 1945, after Japan had been defeated in August. The Army awarded Engebretson with the Good Conduct Medal, and he was recommended for a Bronze Star for his service from July 9, 1943, through May of 1945. His duty done, he went to college at Augsburg College in Minneapolis on the G.I. Bill.9 After earning his B.A. degree in 1948, he met, courted, and married Lois Haverly, a Hillcrest Academy graduate, in 1949.

The night of decision for Herman Engebretson came in the darkest hour of his darkest night on the island of Sicily, when he turned from his rebellion and accepted his vocation to serve as a pastor in the Lutheran Brethren Church.

Pastor Engebretson was “ordained into the Christian ministry” at Bethesda Lutheran Brethren Church in Westby, Wisconsin. He was ordained by Rev. C.E. Walstad, who had served as a chaplain in World War II and who was the president of the Church of the Lutheran Brethren at that time. Walstad preached that day about “that value of being called of God and how that God empowers those whom he calls for his work.”

Chapel During Herman Engebretson's Time at Hillcrest Lutheran Academy

FOOTNOTES eadquarters Third Infantry Division, Major Lloyd Langford, Chaplain, US Army, “Recommendation For Award of Bronze Star to Herman H Engebretson,” June 1, 1945, letter to Commanding General, Third Infantry Division, in possession of Rich Engebretson, Edina, MN. 8 John Kilde, Fergus Falls, MN, interview by Steven R. Hoffbeck, March 6, 2008, notes in the possession of the author.

9 Here and below, “Vita,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. 17, no. 9, (May 1, 1950), 16.

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Herman prayed for the “help of Almighty God,” and he requested the “prayers of the members” of the church and his friends as he embarked upon his ministry.

Engebretson later pastored churches in Lake Mills, Iowa; Mayville, North Dakota; Staten Island, New York; West Union, Iowa; and Clearbrook, Minnesota.

Herman and Lois eventually had three sons—Rich, Dan, and Tim. Herman retired from active ministry in 1989, and he and Lois lived in Fergus Falls, close to Hillcrest Academy, where he had experienced his conversion to Christ and where he had graduated from the seminary.

His war experience shaped a part of Pastor Engebretson’s personality. He was said to have a military bearing and a “strong, commanding voice.” He had a firm handshake, and his grip was strong enough to “send a twinge of pain” through the “hands and into the knuckles” of his young nephews. “He was a steady, confident man,” recalled a relative, “who had a twinkle in his eye and he enjoyed a hearty laugh.” He enjoyed athletics, fishing in the lakes near Fergus Falls, and playing horseshoes.10

He became a man who “walked uprightly,” following the Gospel directives to love God and love his neighbor, never wavering” from the calling set before him. Herman “committed his life to his family and to his church” as a shepherd of the congregation. He drew people to him, because he showed true interest in those around him and in their journeys through life.

In every church he served, Herman Engebretson’s “love for God and people was evident in his ministry.”

Herman Engebretson died on February 17, 2005, at age eighty-six. At his funeral, the opening hymn was “It Is Well with My Soul.” The soldier’s soul within Herman Engebretson, so filled with the trauma and pain of battle in Sicily in 1943, and brought to peace through Christ, became a pastor’s soul once he became reconciled with his calling in life. May it be for all who are restless within themselves.

FOOTNOTES 10

Steve Brue [nephew of Herman Engebretson], email to Steven R. Hoffbeck, July 10, 2008, p. 1.

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HOW HILLCREST ACADEMY GOT ITS NAME 1948

140 What Would Later Become Hillcrest Lutheran Academy, Fergus Falls, 1906

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illcrest Academy was an outgrowth of the Lutheran Bible School. The Church of the Lutheran Brethren established a small Bible School in Wahpeton, North Dakota, in 1903.1 Its first classes were conducted in a room in the public school, but it outgrew those quarters, and the church built a school of its own. The Bible School added a two-year high school course, grades nine and ten, in the fall of 1916.2 The schools remained in Wahpeton until 1918, when the Lutheran Brethren traded for a larger college building in Grand Forks and moved there, adding two years more (grades eleven and twelve) to its high school department.

The schools were located in Grand Forks from 1918 to 1935. The schools struggled with finances in the 1920s, and money issues got even worse after 1929, in the throes of the Great Depression. In 1935, the Lutheran Brethren Church moved the schools to Fergus Falls, Minnesota.3

For the next thirteen years, the name was simply the “Lutheran Bible School and Academy.” It was in Fergus Falls that a full seminary was added, to better educate pastors.

The high school got a new name, Hillcrest Lutheran Academy, in 1948. In that year, in the aftermath of World

War II, which had ended three years before, the school’s leaders wanted to renew the mission of the high school in the dawn of a new era of hope after the tragedies of that deadly war.4 To bring some fun into the mix, the church fathers proposed a contest to choose new names for the high school department and the Bible School and Seminary departments of the Lutheran Brethren Schools. If ever there was an unexciting name, it was contained in the terms “Lutheran,” “Brethren,” and “Schools.” Each word was foundational, but very basic—hence, boring, unimaginative.

E.M. Strom, president of the Lutheran Bible School, was chairman of the “Name Committee,” established in 1947.

Strom, who had a musical last name that sounded like the strum of a guitar, asked the people of the church for assistance in this name quest. “We Need Your Help,” he pleaded in Faith and Fellowship magazine. He wanted to find new names for the two schools that had different missions in the denomination—the Seminary/Bible School wished to be identified separately from the high school department, partly because its students were older than the academy’s teenagers, but mainly to elevate the seminary to its proper status within the higher education community.5

FOOTNOTES “ Bible School Program Given At Rotary Club,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, September 19, 1935, 3.

“Lutheran Bible School Opens On September 19th,” Grand Forks Herald, September 10, 1922, 14.

3 “The Lutheran Bible School in New Quarters,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. 2, no. 9, (August, 1935), 5.

4 “The President’s Report,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. 13, no. 10 (May 15, 1946), 2-3; “Lutheran Bible School Report,” Faith And Fellowship vol. 13, no. 10, (May 15, 1946), 4-5.

5 “We Need Your Help,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. 14, no. 9 (May 1, 1947), 4.

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E.M. Strom, LBS President and Chairman of the "Name Committee" Established in 1947

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President Strom asked for new names that would identify the mission of each school, and stated that those names “ought to be euphonious”—in other words, melodious and rolling off the tongue like a poetic christening and anointing of the four-story castle on the summit of the hill on Alcott Drive.

it to be woefully and emphatically non-euphonious.

Instead of Lakeview, the delegates decided to call the schools by the blandest of plain names, the dullest of lackluster labels. The notes from the annual meeting tell the story clearly:

All contestants were to write suggestions for school-names on a “separate sheet of paper without your name on it,” so that the name of the writer would not influence the judges.

Each contestant was instructed to write his or her name on a cover letter, so that the winner could be identified.

“Motion passed: That the names of our school system shall be The Lutheran Brethren Schools, with the seminary designated as The Lutheran Brethren Seminary and the high school as The Lutheran Brethren Academy.”6

As with any contest, prizes went to the winners of the name game. Because it was a Bible School, it seemed to make sense that the winners would each get a Bible. Two “ten-dollar” Bibles, one donated by Pastor Oscar Monson from Fergus Falls, and another by O. H. Overland of Grand Forks, North Dakota, were held as enticement for those who wished to bring mellifluous names before the committee.

How these names were better than the old name of “Lutheran Bible School” was unclear.

Not all went a smoothly as hoped, however. A few ideas came from “different people,” and the naming committee carefully considered them all, and picked the most euphonious, the most sonorous, the most harmonious one for the church’s annual meeting to approve. Sadly, the name that was chosen—“Lakeview Lutheran Schools”— faced total rejection by the conventioneers, who judged

The headmaster of the high school, President M.E. Sletta, felt that the colorless names were “unsatisfactory,” and he wrote that plenty of people felt a “general dissatisfaction” with those names. Therefore, the church body gave the matter another year of thought.7 In 1948, the contest resumed, and the church sought a name that would really resonate with the schools’ mission. A graduate of the high school department, class of 1947, came to the rescue. This young man came up with the right name, a lyrical one that was rightly appreciated by the people of the church.

Hillcrest Campus, 1940's

FOOTNOTES 6 7

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“Recommendations on the Bible School Report,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. 14, no. 13 (July 1, 1947), 8-9. “ The Future Name of the Bible School,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. 14, no. 13 (July 1, 1947), 12.

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Robert Overgaard, who had been born in Dalton, Minnesota, twenty miles south of Fergus Falls, and who had grown up in Fergus Falls, had a stirring inspiration. His father, Gust Overgaard, was a carpenter who had been hired to remodel the Old Castle school building after its purchase in 1935, and the height and majesty of the building held its sway over young Robert as his father’s workmen improved it on the outside and inside. The fact that Fergus Falls had twenty-seven hills, covered with oaks and maples, within its city limits and that the school was located atop one of these hills set Bob Overgaard to thinking. He submitted the name “Hillcrest Lutheran Academy” to the powers that governed the school.8 Overgaard wrote a paragraph to explain the name. The long name could be shortened to “Hillcrest,” to simply tell where the school was built—on the crest of a hill in Fergus Falls. And this way, a student of the school could simply say “I go to Hillcrest.” The word in itself was descriptive of the “little hill at Hillcrest” that lay among the many hills of the city. The building itself was high, and to be in the upper stories brought the “feeling of being on a hill,” high above the treetops.

Maybe some people felt at the time, recalled Overgaard later, that the word Hillcrest didn’t “say anything,” but

it worked because it “sounded good in your ear,” and it had a “crisp sound to it.” Overgaard commented that it was not really that sophisticated of a name, but Hillcrest Academy “sounded like a private school,” and to outsiders it sounded “academic.”

The “Lutheran” aspect shows it to be a Christian school with its clear connection to Martin Luther, the theologian, for both he and the school stand for the pure message of Christ as the sole basis for living one’s life (Solus Christus—“Christ alone”). The proof of being a Christian school is not in name only, but must be revealed through teaching students to love God and to love their neighbor, and those are the prime missions of Hillcrest Lutheran Academy.

What did Bob Overgaard win for a prize? According to his recollections, he won a small sum of money—twenty-five dollars—and a Bible.

The name of Hillcrest Lutheran Academy has endured, and while the old building looks much the same as it did back in 1948, the legacy of the school, through its threethousand-plus graduates, continues to be written through the lives of those alumni who by faith were called to enroll as scholars in this most-picturesque of schools.9

FOOTNOTES 8 9

ere and below, Robert Overgaard, Fergus Falls, MN, interview by Steven R. Hoffbeck, May 30, 2008.

H “New Names Chosen For Fergus Church Schools,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, June 30, 1948; “Annual Meeting Proceedings,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. 15, no. 13 (July 1, 1948), 9.

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Winner of the Naming Competition, Bob Overgaard's Senior Picture, Class of 1947

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Overgaard wrote a paragraph to explain the name. The long name could be shortened to “Hillcrest,” to simply tell where the school was built—on the crest of a hill in Fergus Falls. And this way, a student of the school could simply say “I go to Hillcrest.” The word in itself was descriptive of the “little hill at Hillcrest” that lay among the many hills of the city. The building itself was high, and to be in the upper stories brought the “feeling of being on a hill,” high above the treetops.

Bob Overgaard on the Name Hillcrest

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THE OLD BLUE JET AND THE T R I P T O S E E B I L LY G R A H A M 1950

Students from the Class of 1952 Gather Outside the Blue Jet [Front Row (Left to Right): Mabel (Benson) Helland, Aslaug (Wilhemsen) Christiansen); In Bus: Adren Slattum, Ken Vesta, Leland Erickson]

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B

illy Graham brought revival to Minnesota in 1950.

Young and filled with the Holy Spirit, Billy Graham preached about souls broken down by sin on the road of life, and of the redeeming power of Christ to fix what was wrong. The Baptist evangelist attracted throngs of Minnesotans to the Minneapolis Auditorium for a twenty-day evangelistic crusade.

Hillcrest students got to go to the Sunday evening crusade, traveling on the school’s choir bus. Lovingly known as the ‘Old Blue Jet,’ the GMC school bus featured special individual seats so that its forty-two passengers could travel long distances in comfort. And travel they did; the bus brought the choir on 4,000-mile-long tours, once a year, every April. Brand-new in 1947, the bus transported the Hillcrest Choir to Seattle; in 1948, the choir toured in California. In 1950, it went all the way to New York City and the 59th Street Church in Brooklyn, and then back to Fergus Falls.

first serve[d]” basis, with 11,000 chairs available. Graham’s basic message was simple: “This is God’s hour of decision and Minneapolis hangs in the balance.” The “hawk-nosed and handsome” preacher spoke with fiery passion. “Flailing his arms, crouching and pointing, coiling his big [6’ 2”] frame around the Bible he read from” or “wrestling with the microphone, he gave his audiences not a moment’s emotional letup.” After preaching about “Heaven, Hell & Judgment Day,” his stirring concluding appeal was for sinners to make “decisions for Christ.”2

The bus would also bring a group of students to attend Billy Graham’s Minneapolis event. The trip to hear a young and spirit-charged Billy Graham was deeply memorable for the forty girls and boys from Hillcrest.

Dr. Graham clearly expounded upon the idea that “heaven is a literal place,” and that “Christians go there the moment they die.” He preached that “there will be wonderful reunions as loved ones are recognized up there. . . . What a glorious place it will be—with streets of gold, the gates of pearl . . . and the trees bearing a different kind of fruit every month.” He gave a “detailed picture” of Heaven, and a description of Hell, as well. He described Hell as a place where “there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.” He said, “I believe . . . that there is literal fire in Hell, but if there is not . . . then the Bible is talking about something far worse when it speaks of the flames of hell.

What ever it is going to be is so horrible that it cannot be expressed in the language of man.”

Dr. Billy Graham had electrified the nation, becoming America’s number-one evangelist by 1950.1 Seating at his event in the Minneapolis Auditorium was on a “first come,

Graham’s “old-time religion,” as it came over the public address system, stressed the need for repentance from sin.

Graham spoke in a metaphor about Judgment Day: “God

FOOTNOTES 1 2

“ Dr. Billy Graham,” Winona Republican Herald, September 9, 1950, 7.

Here and below, from “Heaven, Hell & Judgment Day,” Time Magazine, March 20, 1959, www.time.com, accessed June 30, 2008.

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is going to say, ‘start up the projector!’ Because from the cradle to the grave God has had His television cameras on you. God has every sinful word on his recording. The only thing that can save your soul is to let Jesus Christ come into your heart. Are you ready?”

Thousands of Americans had responded to Billy Graham’s call for revival. The blond-haired Calvinist-inspired Baptist preacher had become nationally known after his fourweek-long Los Angeles Crusade in 1949, when over 250,000 came to hear him at “the largest revival tent in history.”3 The Hillcrest administration gave students an opportunity to be a part of that “great national revival,” as Dr. Graham proclaimed it, “an old-fashioned, heaven-sent, Holy Ghost revival.”

The Old Blue Jet bus took the students on a trip that was memorable not only for the chance to hear the “deep, cavernous voice” of the Southern Baptist evangelist, but also for a mishap-filled bus ride that had the students laughing and yawning and cringing and snoozing along the way.

One of those students was Mabel Benson, a Brooklyn girl who had just turned age sixteen. She recorded the events of that day in a letter to her mom and dad back east. Mabel had arrived in Fergus Falls just two weeks before the trip to the Crusade. She was new to Minnesota, being a junior at a boarding school far away from home. Here is Mabel’s story about her adventure as she wrote it to her parents, and as she has told it to this day.

“Dear Mom, Dad, and [sister] Margie, I am writing this letter in my free period (3rd period) and I am just about sleeping. We went to Minneapolis at one o’clock yesterday afternoon and arrived home about halfpast six this morning. We went on the choir bus and the art teacher Joel Lunde, and Harland Helland, a graduate from Hillcrest and a seminary senior, took turns driving.

We got there fine in about four-and-one-half or five hours. We were supposed to be home before midnight because we had classes right away on Monday morning.

We heard Billy Graham, the great Evangelist that we read about in the Faith and Fellowship magazine a few months ago. The building held 11,000 and it was full and he had to go and preach a sermon just before he preached to the big audience, to 1,000 that had gathered in the annex. He was just wonderful. Hundreds made decisions for Christ.

You should have seen us on the way home. We were a little over half way and we stopped to get something to eat and when we were going to take off again, the bus wouldn’t start. The drivers had to crank the engine in the front but they could not get it to start. So, Lunde and Helland and all of the boys came out of the bus and started to push it, with the thirty-five girls still on the bus, in order to turn over the engine to start it, and did we ever laugh! When it finally started, we drove quite a ways and then we had to stop and the drivers fixed something.

FOOTNOTES 3

The Bensons, Mabel (Benson) Helland's Family

Here and below, from “Sickle for the Harvest,” Time Magazine, November 14, 1949, www.time.com, accessed June 30, 2008.

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When we were about twenty miles from home, near Evansville, the bus just completely stopped. The bearing on the distributor went out so that the rotor was turning off center so it wasn’t touching the contacts like it should.

Both of the drivers, Helland and Lunde, were farm boys who were quite mechanical and they figured out that if the distributor was held in a certain position, then the engine worked fine.

About six miles from home, and at about 2:30 in he morning, the bus stopped completely. It had run out of gas. And the battery was almost gone so it wouldn’t budge.

So Harland Helland had the idea that he could hold the distributor while Joel Lunde drove the bus. The hood opened from the side by the front fender and near the headlight and Harland figured that he could lie down on the fender, put the hood down over his upper body, and straddle the headlight, holding on to the headlight with his legs. He had Joel Lunde pull down the hood over his upper torso, with his bottom sticking out from the side of the hood. All we could see from the inside of the bus was his rear sticking up for about ten miles—we laughed until we were almost sick. It seemed like a happy ending but then everything started to go wrong.

We hadn’t been there more than two minutes before it started to lightning and we knew we were going to have a big storm, so it was no use trying to walk to a farmhouse.

While the thunder roared and the lightning flashed terrifically, we tried to make ourselves comfortable and ready to stay there for a while and sleep, but we couldn’t— we had to get air because we thought the skunk must have gotten into the bus, the odor was so strong.

After two miles we drove over a skunk and the laughter stopped suddenly. We hit it square and the front and rear tires squeezed the smell out of it good, and we had to stop to get air because the smell was so terrific. Under the hood, Harland had it worse—he put his nose right up to the engine’s carburetor because the gas smelled better than the skunk.

We were going to send the art teacher to get help but there wasn’t one house in sight for we were in a place just like a flat prairie.

A truck finally came along and took one of the drivers, Harlan, to town, and he went to get his car and then he drove to Co-op Oil Company and hired a tow truck.

And the tow truck came and the truck pushed us all the way home.

At six-thirty in the morning we came marching slowly in to the Hillcrest building so sleepy we could hardly walk.

I guess that’s enough for that.”

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"So Harland Helland had the idea that he could hold the distributor while Joel Lunde drove the bus. The hood opened from the side by the front fender and near the headlight and Harland figured that he could lie down on the fender, put the hood down over his upper body, and straddle the headlight, holding on to the headlight with his legs. He had Joel Lunde pull down the hood over his upper torso, with his bottom sticking out from the side of the hood. All we could see from the inside of the bus was his rear sticking up for about ten miles—we laughed until we were almost sick. It seemed like a happy ending but then everything started to go wrong."

Mabel (Benson) Helland

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All the Hillcrest students got an opportunity to attend the Billy Graham Sunday Crusades. The Old Blue Jet bus made three trips to the Twin Cities that fall in 1950—two of the trips were smooth with no problems, but the bus ride Mabel Benson was part of would live on in her memory. It would go on to become a Hillcrest legend—an unforgettable combination of spiritual revival mixed with skunk scent and cranky engine troubles, with the thunder and roar of a late-September cloudburst, complete with the crackle of lightning in the dark of night.

It was funny how it worked out—Mabel Benson, the Brooklyn girl born to Norwegian immigrant parents, graduated from Hillcrest Academy in 1952 and returned to the East Coast to work. There, she became reacquainted with Harland Helland, who by this time had graduated from the Lutheran Brethren Seminary and was a youth worker at Brooklyn’s 59th Street Church, where Mabel attended youth group. And so it was that the former bus driver and innovative mechanic who had grown up on a dairy farm in Fergus Falls married the big city girl who had once laughed at his ungainly appearance, draped on a blue-and-white bus fender, on the way home to Hillcrest after the famous Billy Graham Crusade.

Alf Benson, Mabel (Benson) Helland's Father, 1933

Harland and Mabel Helland, 1953

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ELEVEN V E R N WAT S O N A N D I N S P I R AT I O N P O I N T 1955

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DATELINE: NOVEMBER 20, 1955: LIEUTENANT VERNON WATSON DIES IN A C-124 PLANE CRASH AT THE ISLAND OF IWO JIMA

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“Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted.” Matthew 5:4.

n 1955, an Air Force flight turned tragic in a moment. Just after takeoff from an Iwo Jima airfield, while the C-124 cargo plane was only one hundred feet in the air, one of its four engines malfunctioned. The mechanical problem caused the C-124 to plunge into the ground, killing all ten of its crewmen.

One of the men was Navigator Vernon Watson, a 1947 graduate of Hillcrest Lutheran Academy.

Vern Watson, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Watson of Minneapolis, Minnesota, had been born in 1929, the year of the Stock Market Crash. In his youth, he received the Gospel at Ebenezer Lutheran Brethren Church in Minneapolis, and attended the Summer Bible Camp at Lake Geneva in Alexandria, Minnesota, where the Lutheran Brethren Church rented the camp facilities from the Assemblies of God.1 Vern Watson joined the US Air Force in the spring of 1952, after having graduated from Hillcrest Academy in 1947.

He was married to Joan Swenson of Belmond, Iowa, in

September of 1952, and the couple were sent overseas in the autumn of 1953. That year, Vern and Joan became the parents of a baby girl, whom they named Robin.

While stationed in Japan, Vern was a navigator for a C-124 plane crew. Early on, he loved all aspects of aviation, feeling that it was his calling in life.

In 1955, while attending a Deeper Life Christian conference, Lieutenant Watson had a heartfelt inspiration.

He was particularly moved by one of the sessions, which was on the book of Hebrews—specifically, the following verse from chapter three: “Harden not your hearts.” Vern “surrendered to the Lord for full-time service,” not “as a pastor or missionary,” but in a path of God’s choosing.

Watson then found fulfillment in teaching a Bible class at the Air Force base and “talking to his fellow servicemen about Jesus.”2 But just when Vern had responded to his new calling and felt he was losing interest in aviation, then death came to him at the island of Iwo Jima in November of 1955. Vern Watson was only twenty-six years old when he died.

FOOTNOTES “ Lt. Vernon Watson: Words in Memoriam,” Faith and Fellowship, January 1, 1956, 8; “Military Rites Monday for Lt. Vernon Watson,” Mason City [IA] Globe Gazette, December 9, 1955, 3.

2 Joan C. Watson Carson, “Adventures With Vern,” manuscript, Inspiration Point Bible Camp, Clitherall, MN.

Vern Watson, Class of 1947

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For Joan, his wife, the instantaneous crash had allowed her no chance for any parting words. She was engulfed in a time of mourning, for she was left alone in Japan with daughter, Robin, far from their families in Minnesota and Iowa.

Robin was only two years old at the time, but she was “quick to sense the loss of her Daddy,” for on the “second night after Vernon’s death, Robin woke up crying and calling for Daddy.”

Joan had to try to stay as calm as possible, for she was pregnant with her and Vern’s second child.

“Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted.”

Matthew 5:4

Joan was able to accept the “sudden and awful sorrow” and God’s sovereignty over her life. She mourned the loss of her husband, but was not “overcome by grief as were others who suffered like loss” in that accident. From her faith in time of tragedy, at least “one soul” was saved at the air base in Japan.

Joan and Robin returned to the United States ten days after the plane crash for the funeral and burial of Vernon Watson in December of 1955.

After the funeral had passed, with all its condolences and solemnity and forlorn black clothes, Joan Watson and her daughter and unborn child had to return to the cold realities of everyday life and the difficult question: “what is to be done next?”

Mrs. Watson returned to her hometown of Belmond, Iowa, and her son was born in 1956—she named him Marc.

S U M M E R C A M P M AT T E R S On another front, at the same time that Joan Watson suffered the loss of her husband, the Lutheran Brethren Church leadership was looking for a lakeshore site as a location for a permanent summer Bible camp, so that they would no longer have to pay a premium to rent the Lake Geneva camp at Alexandria, Minnesota.3 In July of 1958, the synod authorized its Camp Board to look for a suitable location for a Bible camp. Rollin Rogness, camp director for the Midwest area, assisted in visiting more than one hundred possibilities over the course of the next two years.

Mr. Rogness and the board searched exhaustively throughout Lakes Country in Minnesota, but found lakeshore property prices to be prohibitively high. At that time, a property of the size suitable for a Bible camp would cost from $42,000 to $45,000 for the land alone, not to mention the cost of cabins, docks, boats, and kitchen facilities.

In desperation, Rogness and his board placed an advertisement in the Fergus Falls Daily Journal in June of 1960, with a plea for a plot of land suitable for a summer camp.

Thirty-two property owners responded to the ad. Mr. Rogness began to look at the sites, one by one, but found none to be in an affordable price range.

FOOTNOTES 3

168

ere and below, Rollin Rogness, “Midwest Bible Camp Site Purchased,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 28, no. 4, February 15, 1961, 4-5; Ira Mjelde, H “Dedication At Inspiration Point,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 30, no. 20, November 20, 1963, 5-6; Charles Batchelder, “God Has Provided,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 30, no. 2, January 20, 1963, 5.

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Finally, on an “extremely hot, sultry day,” as Rogness recalled, when a summer storm warning had been broadcast on the radio, he was about ready to give up on the quest for a site.

Rogness was in favor of the location, and the Camp Board quickly voted to approve the deal, making a $1,000 down payment and agreeing to make monthly payments at a below-market interest rate of 4%.

As he read and re-read a letter from Mr. and Mrs. Cyril Barnack about a potential property located on Spitzer Lake, located twenty-one miles southeast of Fergus Falls, he thought he would try just one more location, despite the heat and storm warnings.

At a meeting convened in July of 1960, synod leaders discussed the means of raising the funds to complete the purchase of the camp property.

When he turned off the main road near the lake, Rogness beheld “a most beautiful spot of God’s wonderful creation” as he viewed a “cozy little farm” nestled along the shoreline of Spitzer Lake.

The twenty-three acres, located on a point of land, had 2,300 feet of lakeshore and prime hills wooded with oaks and maples. It even had a two-bedroom cabin located along the shore.

Mr. and Mrs. Barnack gave Rogness a warm welcome on a hot day and expressed their support for a summer Bible camp at the site. Mr. Rogness found the Barnacks to be “wonderful people” who were willing to provide a “wonderful bargain” for the land—the farm couple said that the synod could buy the land for a price of only six thousand dollars.

To the “complete surprise” of the Camp Board, a woman asked for permission to address the members of the board—that woman was Joan Watson. Mrs. Watson stood there and, “in tears, explained how she felt she wanted to do something the Lord” had “prompted her to do.”

After the death of her husband Vern, she had received a lump-sum payment from his life insurance policy and had used half of it to buy a house. Joan wanted to use the remainder of the money as a gift to some “endeavor for the cause of reaching young people for the Lord.” She had been thinking about a good use for the funds for quite a long time, and had become aware of the camp quest of the church. With great feeling, she said that “both she and her late husband had experienced such great blessings of the Lord” at Bible camps, and that she believed Vern would have wanted her to give the money to a cause like the camp property purchase. Thus, Joan offered to give five thousand dollars to buy the land on Spitzer Lake.

Rollin Rogness, Inspiration Point 50 Year Celebration

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As Rollin Rogness wrote, he and the members of the board were “all amazed and baffled at how the Lord had arranged [it],” and they accepted Joan Watson’s offer, with gratitude.

It seemed that Vern Watson’s calling to spread the Gospel had been fulfilled in a way that he never could have imagined when he was at the Deeper Life Bible conference in Japan just prior to his death. For out of mourning for his tragic loss in a plane crash, after time had passed, would come joy for thousands of young people at what became known as Inspiration Point Bible Camp.

Joan Watson’s life changed after that momentous meeting. She got a job at Hillcrest Academy as a dean in the women’s dormitory and had an association with the school for a number of years. Later, Joan became well-known in Minnesota as an “inspirational” speaker while she was a member of the “Speakers Bureau” for the American Bible Society.4

It took more funding to build four dormitories at the camp and hours and hours of volunteer work on the main building, docks, and trails before Inspiration Point could open for its dedication ceremony in the summer of 1963.

The theme on that July day was “God Answers Prayer,” and the prayers of those who wanted to provide an opportunity for a summer Bible camp were answered when Joan Watson fulfilled the calling of her husband to bring the Gospel to those who needed to hear the “Good News.”

Today, the beautiful Bible camp at sparkling Spitzer Lake hosts over 9,000 people each year for summer camps, retreats, workshops, and special events. Since the camp’s beginning, its counselors and directors have faithfully proclaimed the message of the redeeming love of Jesus Christ and inspired young people to love God and to love their neighbors.5

FOOTNOTES Mrs. Watson, Inspiration Point 50 Year Celebration 4 5

172

“Fergus Woman Invited to Bible Conference,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, March 19, 1965, 10.

“Who We Are,” Inspiration Point Bible Camp website, www.ipoint.org/about/whoweare.php, accessed May 29, 2008.

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TWELVE DONALD BRUE T E AC H E S AT H I L L C R E ST 1958

Don Brue in English Class

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dolescence is a time in your life when you are imperfect and unpolished, at times. The teenage years uncover emotions that can be overpowering as one feels the swoon of first love or the jolt of first rejection. Young people sometimes make mistakes and need to correct their errors or faults. It is a time when a person is discovering more about himself and herself and more about life, and about how he or she fits into the Kingdom of God.1

As Iverson recalled, Don Brue was the “kindest, most compassionate man,” and was known for his “listening and empathy for his students.” Mr. Brue showed his concern for others in class and out of class, and so words were elemental both in his English classes and in his talking to students and listening to Hillcrest students—he would connect with them in small groups or by speaking one to another.

Young people look for role models to help them find their way to adulthood. There will always be family members who are wise guides; yet, if one can find a role model from outside of the family, one has found a treasure.

Don Brue’s arrival at the school came about because of a number of factors, the key one being his Norwegian ancestry, as well as his father’s developing ties to the Lutheran Brethren denomination.

One of those treasures started work as a teacher at Hillcrest in the fall of 1958. Donald Brue came to teach English classes, to help students to navigate through words. He showed them how to use words in the context of grammar and literature and themes and writing.

He taught all of those “wordy” things, but there was a resonating word that defined Mr. Brue: “compassionate.”

Don Brue was a South Dakotan. Born in 1928 in Viborg, South Dakota, to James and Elsie Brue, Don grew up in Centerville, four miles from Viborg and about twenty miles southwest of Sioux Falls. Donald was the oldest of seven children in a farming family.3

“When you look in the dictionary for a definition of the word “compassionate,” said Rich Iverson, one of Brue’s former students, “you will see Don Brue’s picture as an illustration of the definition.”2

James Brue (1902-1996) had assisted in establishing a Lutheran Brethren church at Centerville and therefore had an awareness of the mission of the synod’s Bible School. His favorite Scripture verse was: “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” (III John 4).4

Donald graduated from nearby Harrisburg High School in 1946, and his first connection to Lutheran Brethren Schools came when he ventured north to attend the Bible School.

The very first day at the Bible School that September left indelible impressions on Don Brue. “It seemed impossible for me to believe that so many young people of my age were Christians,” he wrote, “and had been through similar battles and crises.” There he could spend “pleasant hours . . . sharing kindred joys and fears” in fellowship with likeminded friends. “Beginning a class with a prayer,” recalled Brue “was a wonderful new experience.”5 The “first weeks at Lutheran Bible School brought a joy into my life,” Brue wrote, “that I had not known before.”

All aspects of the school contrasted with the educational system, as he had known it. The student cafeteria at the Fergus Falls school differed from his old public high school, as he noted: “Sitting down to a meal with bowed head in thanksgiving for God’s blessings was not cause for a ‘smart’ remark as it had been.”

“Setting aside a time for quietness and personal devotion before retiring” for the evening “was a new experience.”

Brue clearly saw that “God was there, and, as students, we could share this glorious reality.”

Don Brue enjoyed “the new-found fellowship in the classroom, in the chapel, in the dining room, in the gym and in the dormitory with Christian young people” so deeply that he said he would “never forget it.” He was thankful for “godly instruction under the direction of the

Holy Spirit” and for “life-long friendships” that were born in his year at the Bible School.

It was there in Fergus Falls that a most-important “lifelong” relationship began, for he met a young lady who was also enrolled in the Bible School and who had graduated from the Lutheran Brethren high school in 1945. Her name was Verna Mae Haverly, the fourth of five siblings in the Haverly family. Her father, William Haverly, moved to Fergus Falls, selling his farm at Spicer, Minnesota, 130 miles away, to make sure his children could get a Christian education at Hillcrest Academy. Their house was located on Court Street, six blocks from the redbrick, castle-like school. Mr. Haverly worked hard as a mechanic, scrimping and saving in order to send each child to the Lutheran Brethren high school.

Don and Verna Mae met and fell in love, and the young couple kept their relationship alive even as Don went to Chicago for more schooling at Moody Bible College. Even more time passed as Brue earned a B.A. degree in English at Augsburg College in Minneapolis.

The two were married in 1953, just after Don returned to Fergus Falls for his seminary education at Lutheran Brethren Seminary.

After graduation from seminary and ordination as a pastor in 1954, Don and Verna Mae moved to Minneapolis, where Don had accepted a call to Ebenezer Lutheran Brethren Church. After two years of service in Minneapolis, Mr. and Mrs. Brue moved to Faribault, Minnesota, where Don was the pastor of Bethel Lutheran Church for two years.

FOOTNOTES “ Spider-Man a Daring Maneuver,” Star-Tribune [Minneapolis, MN], July 1, 2012, E10; ideas from a quote by director Marc Webb.

Rich Iverson, Fergus Falls, MN, interview by Steven R. Hoffbeck, July 21, 2012, notes in the possession of the author.

3 “Donald W. Brue,” obituary, Fergus Falls Daily Journal, May 21, 1991, p. 3.

4 “In Memory: James Brue,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, vol. 63, no. 8, June 13, 1996, 11.

1

FOOTNOTES

2

176

5

Donald Brue, “Christian Fellowship At LBS,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 30, no. 18, October 20, 1963, 17, here and below.

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In 1958, Donald Brue responded to his calling to be a teacher, rather than a preacher in a congregation, accepting an offer to teach English classes at Hillcrest.

On October 19th, Mr. Brue and two other teachers, Jeff Christenson and Leland Erickson, participated in an installation service on the stage of the Hillcrest gymnasium. All three teachers gave a short testimony to the audience assembled there. 6 Don Brue spoke of his assurance of the “greatness and power of God which we can rely upon in service in His Kingdom” and how he could trust in the truth found in God’s Word. He said, “I am sure that it is God’s will that I should accept the call of the Board of Education to come to serve on the faculty of the Lutheran Brethren Schools.”

Even though he felt inadequate to the responsibility involved in teaching young people, he trusted that God would provide the strength and dedication he needed to carry out his duties as a teacher.

Mr. Brue said, “I know that the Lord has called me to serve him in His Kingdom,” and to work in a school like Hillcrest, “where we are committed to both academic training and the ministry of the Word of God.” In his teaching, Mr. Brue encouraged his students in their English classes and also showed the kindheartedness and concern for young people he had shown through his previous experience as Pastor Brue. For Don Brue had that combination of being a pastor and teacher that, at several

times in its history, has made the faculty of Hillcrest most certainly different from those of public schools. Through the years, many of Hillcrest’s teachers have had a Christian educational background—either by having graduated from Hillcrest themselves, by having attended the Bible School, or, in a few cases, having earned a seminary degree, trained for the pulpit ministry.

Part of Brue’s responsibilities included promoting Hillcrest Academy, and so he took to the road in the school station wagon. Mr. Brue led students from Hillcrest and the Bible School on weekend jaunts around the Upper Midwest.

The students would use their talents in singing hymns and Gospel songs, making melody with trumpets and clarinets, and employ their public-speaking abilities to share with congregations in the area. As Don Brue wrote: “I count it a real privilege to have been able to accompany deputation teams” to cities like Blue Earth, Minneapolis, and Faribault in Minnesota; Eau Claire and Colfax in Wisconsin; Rolette and Bottineau in North Dakota; and Lake Mills and Joice, Iowa. Students from each of those cities went on the trips and got both a trip home and a chance to show the benefits that Hillcrest had bestowed on them personally. At the churches, the students “gave their testimonies in word and song,” and told about Hillcrest, emphasizing that the “prime objective of the School is to bring young people to Jesus and encourage them in their walk with Him.” Don Brue would do the preaching at these church visits. Brue wrote that “the team desires to interest other young people in the program of our schools and encourage them to attend also.”7

FOOTNOTES 6 7

J. H. Levang, “LBS Installs New Teachers,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 25, no. 22, November 25, 1958, 6. on Brue, “On Deputation for Our Schools,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 26, no. 10, May 15, 1959, 12-13.

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When Mr. Brue drove the station wagon, he and the students would sing songs, and they had “some very interesting discussions” that made the “miles go by quickly.” This genial man involved himself in the lives of his fellow travelers.

In his Bible classes, Mr. Brue was “devotional in his style,” seeking to help students find the message in the Scriptures that helped them in their own lives. In the Bible classes, Hillcrest teachers connected with their students on a person-to-person basis or discussed vital faith matters in a small group setting.8 Don Brue also eventually served as the seminary librarian, a position that he greatly enjoyed, because he was “so very orderly, so extremely organized,” and liked to make well-ordered stacks. He also kept on studying, earning a master’s degree in counseling from Moorhead State University, located fifty miles west of Fergus Falls, so he could help students who were “seeking God’s will and direction in their lives.”9 In the early years of the 1960s, Brue managed the Publishing Company (now the Hillcrest Junior High building). Other than four and a half years in the pastorate at Rose of Sharon Lutheran Brethren Church in Portland, Oregon, Don Brue’s primary employment for twenty years was either at Hillcrest, the Bible School, or the Seminary.

Don and Verna Mae Brue were the parents of three sons and two daughters—Charles Wayne (born in 1956); Steven John (born in 1958); Thomas Allen (born in 1960);

Cathryn Anne (born in 1964); and Amy Louise (born in 1968). All five children grew up and then graduated from Hillcrest Academy, and the Brue family legacy at the school continued in a line from mother, as a graduate; to father, as a teacher there; to sons and daughters, as alumni. The continuity of Norwegian-American families like the Stroms and Brues constituted a key element in the successful operation of Hillcrest Academy.

Don Brue was consistently compassionate in his teaching at Hillcrest and consistently faithful in teaching his own children at home. He was the head of the household, leading his family to worship at Bethel Church—which built a new building just southeast of Hillcrest and adjacent to it—and to share devotions at the dinner table. Brue liked to use the Little Visits With Jesus devotional book with his children, and would say, “let’s talk about this,” using the three or four questions from the book.10 As a father, Don Brue was gentle, yet strong in his deep moral convictions. He wanted to be a “role model in the disciplines of the pietistic traditions of the Lutheran Brethren Church, encouraging his family in Bible reading and personal prayer time.” This included the concept of being “called out to be separate” as Christians, and he “gave the ‘don’ts’ regarding personal behavior, so familiar to pietism—don’t play cards or use tobacco or alcohol or gamble or dance;” thus, he “didn’t drink or smoke, but was not a prideful man” about it. He corrected his children, but was “not coercive” about it, and was “not a dictator” in the home.

FOOTNOTES ich Iverson, Fergus Falls, MN, interview by Steven R. Hoffbeck, July 21, 2012; notes in the possession of the author.

R Steve Brue interview by Steven R. Hoffbeck, Fergus Falls, MN, August 9, 2012; notes in possession of the author.

10 Here and below, Steve Brue interview, Fergus Falls, MN, August 9, 2012.

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Don Brue Taking the Boys Fishing Behind Their Home on Alcott Ave [Left to Right: Tom, Steve, Charlie, Don Brue]

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Don and Verna Mae Brue loved putting puzzles together, and they loved to entertain guests, playing the card game Rook, a game called 5ive Straight that used pegs and cards, and Scrabble. Rather than go out to movies, the Brues invited other families over to their house, and the adults would play games while the kids would play outside.

Because Verna Mae was a good cook, many a perfect evening would conclude with a dish of “fresh rhubarbcrisp and ice cream.”

The fun times took place at a house that Don Brue bought, located at 530 West Alcott Avenue, quite close to Hillcrest Academy. He and each of his children trekked to school at Hillcrest each day, walking three blocks on a sidewalk aligned with maples and elms that shimmered with yellow and red and blaze-orange-colored leaves on glorious October days; shivering for a short time in the bleak midwinter January frosty-below-zero temperatures; or reveling in the first sunny days of May, when the pale green leaf buds warmed into the brightest-emerald leaflets of springtime. The house was close to school, but one winter, when Steve Brue was a junior, a blizzard arose that was so fierce he could not get home, and he had to stay in a friend’s dorm room until it subsided.

The five Brue siblings grew up in the shadow of Hillcrest’s ‘Old Castle.’ Charles, the eldest, known variously as Charlie or Chuck, graduated from Hillcrest Academy in 1974. Steve Brue graduated from Hillcrest in 1976. Tom Brue became a Hillcrest grad in 1978. Cathy Brue earned her diploma in 1982. Amy Brue completed her high school degree in 1986.

In the 1970s, Don Brue mainly taught classes in the Bible School and Seminary, including a personal evangelism class, in which he stressed the importance of memorizing Scripture. Brue’s students used three-by-five cards to help them remember key verses that related directly to the essential needs of lost souls.

from Hillcrest in the spring of 1976, he attended Fergus Falls Community College and then transferred to Bethel College, of the Baptist General Conference, in St. Paul, Minnesota, earning a bachelor’s degree in art education.

So, Steve earned a Minnesota teaching certificate, just as his father had done.

Don Brue’s love for people came across clearly to the students, for he wanted the truth to reach out from Hillcrest and through his students. He was very effective as a teacher, and he especially excelled in class discussions about evangelizing and how to minister to people who were having trouble with life, for he was full of lovingkindness.

This deep quality of caring came across especially clearly in his “one-on-one mentoring and counseling” sessions with students. “When anyone had a conversation with Don Brue, they always felt that he gave them one-hundred percent of his attention. Whenever someone had a concern, he dropped everything and listened—he was a good listener.”11

It was then that Steve Brue felt a calling to be a pastor. He believed that “it was his father’s influence that prompted him to think about entering the ministry.” As Steve Brue said, “It was on my mind that when I received my four year degree, I would likely return to attend seminary” at the Lutheran Brethren Schools.

“Don Brue was an incredibly gracious, kind, gentle man,” said Steve Undseth; “one of the nicest men I have ever met.” Mr. Brue “always had a smile on his face, and was very encouraging and very complimentary.” His foundation as a man and as a teacher was in his Christian faith, and he wanted to always present the Word of God in all its fullness, and to proclaim the truths of the Kingdom of God, for “Truth always awakens faith.”12 The son who followed most closely in the footsteps of his father was the middle son, Steve. After graduation

His teaching degree helped Steve to finance his seminary education, for he was hired to teach art classes in the local Fergus Falls public school system, as an arts specialist working with grades four through six. Then Hillcrest hired him to teach some art classes, as well as some Bible classes and physical education classes, and he also worked with speech and coaching activities.13 “I thought God was being good to me to let me teach,” Steve Brue said. “I was able to teach kids and get to know them. It was a double blessing to study, work with parish ministry goals in mind, and be able to teach.” He taught at Hillcrest for two years while earning his seminary degree.14 The income from teaching helped Steve Brue support his young and growing family. Steve had married Linda Senum, daughter of Reidar and Norma Senum. Reidar Senum was from Brooklyn, New York. Norma had

FOOTNOTES ere and below, Steve Undseth, Fergus Falls, MN, interview by Steven R. Hoffbeck, August 9, 2012, notes in the possession of the author; Steve H Brue interview, August 9, 2012.

12 Steve Brue interview, July 6, 2012, notes in possession of the author.

graduated from Hillcrest in 1948, and all of Reidar and Norma’s four children (Susan, Linda, Paul, and Karen) were Hillcrest graduates.

Steve and Linda and their four children—Matthew, Nicolas, Benjamin, and Lindsey—moved to Briarcliff Manor, New York, where Steve served Faith Lutheran Brethren Church.

In 1986, a health crisis for Don Brue affected the entire Brue family, for Don suffered a major heart attack in that year. Don survived the attack and endured triple-bypass heart surgery soon thereafter. He returned to teaching for several years and told his students that those were “gift years,” for the Lord had revived his heart. He was thankful each morning that another day had been added to his life.

Brue enjoyed the simple pleasures that he had always enjoyed, journaling and stamp-collecting. He also continued his practice as a “lawncare hobbyist, who loved to mow the lawn, oftentimes mowing after school—taking off his tie and still wearing his white shirt and dark pants from work. He really knew how to clean a lawn and his garden was green and free from weeds.” All the mowing was done with “straight and parallel” swaths of precision.

Don Brue received five of those “gift years” and filled them with family and work and worship and friends and hobbies; but then, he suffered a sudden, massive heart attack on May 20, 1991, and died in his home. He was only 62 years old. It was the final week of springtime classes at Hillcrest and the Lutheran Brethren Schools.

FOOTNOTES

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13 14

“ Brue Named Hillcrest Principal,” Faith and Fellowship, May 1998, 13.

Steve Brue interview.

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It was a Monday morning when Steve Brue heard the sad news, and he was able to get a flight home on that same day. The Brue family gathered for the funeral at Bethel Church in Fergus Falls, where Pastor David Veum, who had been a student in Don Brue’s classes at Hillcrest and at the Seminary, gave the funeral oration for one of his spiritual mentors. Don’s wife, Verna Mae, continued to live in Fergus Falls, close to her sisters.

The heartfelt compassion that Don Brue showed in his calling as a husband and father, pastor and teacher, was to be carried on by his sons and daughters. His example of how to be a loving Christian man had the power to shape those he left behind. As his son Steve wrote about the development of his character as a teacher and preacher: “The main thread in weaving the tapestry of my life was Lutheran Brethren Schools, through the influence of Dad’s ministry there.”15 After six years out East, Steve Brue accepted a call to come back to Minnesota as an associate pastor at Triumph Lutheran Brethren Church in Moorhead.

In 1996, the administration of Hillcrest called Steve Brue to serve as the Campus Pastor and Dean of Students at the academy. He accepted the call, and the Don Brue teaching legacy came full circle as son followed father through Hillcrest’s door. In his new position, Steve was responsible for “direct[ing] the social and spiritual life at the Academy.”

Brue thus joined the Hillcrest administrative team with school President Joel Egge and Principal Bill Colbeck.16 Steve and Linda Brue moved their family to Fergus Falls, to a house located just two blocks from the Old Castle on the Hill, and Steve began his campus ministry. He organized the “See You At The Pole” early morning prayer session at the outdoor flagpole; set up chapel speakers and praise team music; helped supervise football, volleyball, basketball, and soccer games; took students on sledding trips to Old Smokey’s abandoned ski-jump hill; had class picnics at nearby Phelps Mill Historic Site; organized trips for students to fight the raging 1997 Red River flood in the Valley; and prayed and counseled with students.17 Steve Brue had been working as campus pastor for two years when Bill Colbeck retired from his position as principal of Hillcrest Academy in the spring of 1998, ending his thirty-nine-year career of service (four as a teacher and thirty-five as principal). Colbeck had groomed Steve Brue to be his successor as principal.18 President Joel Egge established a twelve-person Task Force on Strategic Planning for Hillcrest Academy to write a mission statement; to review and revise “Hillcrest’s Educational Philosophy Statement;” and to formulate the next principal’s formal “Job Assignment.”

Because President Egge was responsible for operations at the academy as well as the seminary and Bible School,

FOOTNOTES iktor D. Frankl, The Doctor and the Soul (New York: Vintage Books, 1986), 138-139; Steve Brue, email to Steven R. Hoffbeck, July 2, 2012.

V “Rev. Steve Brue,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 63, no. 8, June 13, 1996, 11.

17 “Pastor Steve’s Corner,” Hillcrest Happenings, Fall, 1996; Winter, 1997; Spring, 1997; Fall, 1997; Winter, 1998.

18 “Colbeck Retirement Dinner Scheduled for June 18 in Fargo,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 65, no. 5, May 1998, 14.

15

16

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Former Hillcrest Lutheran Academy President, Steve Brue, Speaking at the Commencement Exercises for the Class of 2016

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he felt that a serious review of all of these educational missions had to be undertaken at a time when online and distance education was on the horizon; when enrollment in the Bible School was declining; when the Norwegian student connection for Hillcrest was expanding; and as the twenty-first century was rapidly approaching.19 After the Hillcrest faculty and the synod approved the plans and job description, the synod’s Board of Education selected Pastor Brue as the new principal in 1998.

President Egge noted that Steve Brue’s combination of experience as a classroom teacher, parish minister, campus pastor, and Dean of Students gave him exceptional preparation for the position. In addition, being a graduate of Hillcrest Academy and a graduate of the seminary gave him a “strong sense of awareness of the Lutheran Brethren Schools and the Fergus Falls community.”20 In order to better understand school administration, Brue earned a Master of Science degree in Educational Leadership and Administration through Minnesota State University Moorhead.21 For seven years, Steve Brue was the Hillcrest principal, responsible for all aspects of the school’s dayto-day operations, including hiring new personnel;

supervising teacher evaluations; directing parentteacher conferences; disciplining and inspiring student behavior; supervising student athletic events; and reviewing curriculum. Under Brue’s leadership, Hillcrest experienced growth in numbers beyond any historic precedent, partly due to the expansion of the junior high classes, and from the annual infusion of vitality from the students of the Norwegian Danielsen School, and Jeff Isaac was called in to serve as assistant principal.

All of these combined experiences led the Lutheran Brethren synod to call Pastor Steve Brue to fill the office of President of Hillcrest Academy in a major reorganization in 2003.

“I want to help where I can.”22 When Steve’s father, Don Brue, began teaching at Hillcrest in 1958, he said something very similar to what Steve Brue wrote in 1998, forty years later: “I believe that our youth today will be tomorrow’s leaders . . . I am convinced that . . . young people of today have a real contribution to make today in our churches, our schools, and in every phase of our living. Because of this conviction, I am willing that the Lord should use me in whatever way He sees fit to help by precept, counsel, and example.”23

and leading at Hillcrest Academy. It was part of a Christian heritage expressed by James Brue of Centerville, South Dakota; it was true for Donald and Steve Brue, and for the next generation of Brues as well. “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” (III John 4).

This was the legacy passed from father to son in teaching

As Steve Brue accepted the call to work at Hillcrest, he said, “When I was a little boy . . . I wanted to be a preacher when I grew up.” When he was young, he never “had an inspiration to become the leader” of Hillcrest. But in 1995, when he was an associate pastor in Moorhead’s Triumph Lutheran Brethren Church, he “took a serious look” at his life and found that he “was getting the itch to return to the castle on the hill . . . as a pastor to teens, in the hopes of helping them through an important time of their development into young men and women.” He said,

FOOTNOTES “The LBS Mission: To Graduate Servants; Interview with Joel Egge, President of Lutheran Brethren Schools,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 65, no.

5, May 1998, 9.

20 “Hillcrest’s New Vision; As Principal, Brue Says He Hopes To Shape Future of Fergus Falls Lutheran School,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, March 23, 1998, 1.

21 “Welcome to the New Principal at Hillcrest Academy—Reverend Steve Brue,” Hillcrest Happenings, Spring, 1998, 4.

22 “Pastor Steve’s Corner,” Hillcrest Happenings, Spring, 1998, 4; “Welcome to the New Principal at Hillcrest Academy—Reverend Steve Brue,” Hillcrest Happenings, Spring, 1998, 4.

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FOOTNOTES 23

J.H. Levang, “LBS Installs New Teachers,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 25, no. 22, November 25, 1958, 6.

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CHAPTER

THIRTEEN G E N E R A L G .T. G U N H U S , CHAPLAIN 1958

G.T. Gunhus with Coach Phil Werdal, 1957

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I

t’s a long way to Washington, DC, from Fergus Falls, Minnesota. Thirteen-hundred miles, to be exact. But that was the path laid out for G.T. Gunhus, a Hillcrest graduate who eventually became General Gunhus, Chief Chaplain of the US Army, in 1999.

At Hillcrest Academy, Gunhus was a high school football star. He was “one of the greatest quarterbacks” ever to play at Hillcrest, according to school official John Kilde, when Gunhus was a running quarterback in a single-wing offense in the fall season of 1957.1

However, Gunhus’s calling in life was not to be played out on the athletic field, but instead, it was to be on the battlefield, where he would provide spiritual and pastoral guidance for US Army soldiers in far-flung places like Vietnam, Bosnia, and Iraq. At the close of his career, General Gunhus played a vital role in the reconstruction of the Pentagon after the terrorist attack there on September 11, 2001, as he ministered with hope and compassion to those who suffered in the attack’s aftermath.

As for his path to the Pentagon, Gunhus said that he “could never have orchestrated it” himself to become Chief of Chaplains. When he started his military career in 1967, there were 700 chaplains who joined at the same time,

but the “Lord opened doors,” and Gunhus rose in the chain of promotions so that when he was a colonel, the Army selected him eleven different times over other candidates.

Born in 1940, G.T. (Gaylord T.) Gunhus was the son of Harms J. Gunhus, a pastor in the Lutheran Brethren Church in Enderlin, North Dakota. The family followed the calls given to Pastor Gunhus—from Chicago in 1941, to the chaplain ministry in Washington state in 1944, then to Japan from 1949 to 1952, and then back to the Seattle area in 1954.

G.T. Gunhus was both a good student and a good athlete.

In 1957, he enrolled at Hillcrest Academy for his senior year and played both football and basketball. Hillcrest had initiated its football program just the previous year, and other teams in the area expected that the new Hillcrest teams would be a “soft touch,” an easy victory, but, as Gunhus said, “we had a good team.” The Campbell, Minnesota, team scheduled Hillcrest to be its homecoming victim, but by halftime, the score was “thirty-four to zero, in favor of Hillcrest.” Playing nine-man football, using helmets discarded by Augsburg College and secondhand equipment from other programs, there was “not a team that could beat us,” recalled Gunhus. “It was a fun year.”

FOOTNOTES 1

“ Gunhus Day honors U.S. Army Chaplain,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, May 31, 2003, http://www.fergusfallsjournal.com/news/2003/may/31/ gunhus-day-ho . . ., accessed July 16, 2007; here and below, General G.T. Gunhus, Underwood, MN, interview by Steven R. Hoffbeck, November 27, 2007, notes in the possession of the author.

G.T. Gunhus, a Standout Quarterback on the 1957 Comet Football Team

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192 1958 Hillcrest Lutheran Academy Basketball Team − [Front Row (Left to Right): Ronald Samuelson, Walter Berge; Back Row: Ordean Fossaa,

193 Joel Backstrom, Ethan Windahl, Joel Egge, Gaylord Gunhus, Donn Hawkinson, David Thompson, Richard Nilsen, Roy Strand, Phil Werdal]

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G.T. Gunhus went to college at Seattle Pacific University, graduating in 1962 with a pre-med degree, having majored in zoology. At the end of his junior year, he had a sense of God calling him into the ministry, and he also had a calling to marry Ann Broten, a young woman from Seattle. After being drafted into the Army in 1962, he took the medic’s course, and followed his calling to attend the Lutheran Brethren Seminary while in the Reserves. He and Ann moved to Fergus Falls, where he served as Dean of Men at the seminary while taking classes there.

When Gunhus graduated in 1967, he was at a crossroads, and a difficult one at that. The Army required that its chaplains attend an accredited seminary, which the Lutheran Brethren Seminary was not, and that candidates be already ordained. The Lutheran Brethren Church required that those who would be ordained must have a call to a specific church. Pastor D.A. Erickson, in charge of ordinations, asked Gunhus: “Where do you want to go?”

“I want to go into the Army as a chaplain,” declared Gunhus.

Disappointed by this response, Erickson responded by saying: “I’m going to pray about it.”

Feeling the call of the chaplaincy, Gunhus murmured, “I will, too.”

Whose prayer was answered? Well, the Army accepted all of Gunhus’s seminary credits after Trinity Evangelical

Seminary of Deerfield, Illinois, certified them. And, in an unprecedented move, the Lutheran Brethren synod ordained him on June 7, 1967, at its annual convention in Fergus Falls, even though he had no congregational call.

In a gradual progression, G.T. Gunhus became trained as a chaplain, became an officer, and moved with his wife and young family along the Army’s career path. “Personally,” he later wrote, “I inherited the mantle of priestly, pastoral and prophetic roles from my father . . . .[and] I wear a mantle of responsibility when I wear the black and gold Army chaplain’s stole that my dad used a generation ago and that he presented to me.”2 When Gunhus received orders to report to South Vietnam, the war there, as Gunhus recalled, “was going full blast.”

Arriving at a base camp at Phu Loi in 1968, he was thrown into the middle of the maelstrom. For the entire first month, as Gunhus put it, “I was afraid I was going to die.”

On the night of October 12, Gunhus had to come face to face with his own mortality. When Viet Cong guerrillas attacked the Phu Loi Camp with rocket and mortar fire under cover of darkness, Chaplain Gunhus hurried to shelter in a deep bunker held up by huge timbers and covered with sandbags. There, as he said later, “I had to come to grips with my calling.” He and Ann had two small boys, Kevin (age four) and Michael (just one and one-half years of age), and within himself came forth the “image of a family without a dad and husband,” and he was thinking, “I didn’t sign up for any of this.”

FOOTNOTES 2

194 Excerpt from the 1958 Hillcrest Lutheran Academy Yearbook

.T. Gunhus, “The Influence of ‘Embedded Chaplains’ Visible in Our Soldiers,” Response: Seattle Pacific University Magazine, vol. 26, no. 2 G (Spring 2003), www.spu.edu, accessed July 16, 2007.

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And G.T. Gunhus, huddled in the middle of a bunker with his fellow soldiers, got a word from God: “Do you trust me to keep you alive?”3 Gunhus responded: “Yes, by your Grace.”

“If I allow you to die, do you trust me to take care of your family?” God asked. Again, Gunhus replied, more slowly: “Yes, by your Grace.”

In that night of fear, his soul centered on a Bible passage from the Gospel of John, chapter 15, verse 16: “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” At that point, Gunhus realized that he was God’s servant, and his response was to say, “Lord, send me where you want me to go.”

pray with him before being sent across the Pacific. And when soldiers returned to Ft. Lewis after a one-year tour of duty, Gunhus would see those that he had counseled and had helped to find the courage that “precluded them from running and deserting.” Grateful soldiers who had battled against their own fears, said, “Thanks to you I can retire honorably,” and that with Gunhus’s counsel, “I could make it” through the pitfalls of Vietnam.

Gunhus himself returned to South Vietnam for his second tour of duty in 1973, when the war was ended by a ceasefire, and he was the “last chaplain in the Delta [region]” before the US pullout.

After that pivotal night, G.T. Gunhus, though still afraid, came to grips with his calling as a chaplain. He came to know his role in the military and the need of his men for spiritual guideposts in Vietnam, the most desperate of places. “Every day,” he came to understand, “is Sunday in a war” for a chaplain; he was always on call. Danger and death were never far away in Vietnam, and Gunhus suffered the loss of friends who were killed or who were seriously wounded in Vietnam.

Stateside once more, G.T. Gunhus advanced rapidly in rank and in his standing in the US Army. He earned a Master of Theology at Princeton University and gained top-level leadership training at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He served as a chaplain in Germany and in the Persian Gulf War in 1992. A series of promotions from colonel to one-star general culminated with his appointment to Army Chief of Chaplains by President Bill Clinton in 1999.

After serving his tour of duty in Vietnam, Gunhus went to Fort Lewis, Washington, where his family grew by one more child when daughter Holly was born in 1970. There, Chaplain Gunhus counseled young soldiers en route to the war or returning after one year in Southeast Asia. Gunhus talked to draftees who were “scared going to Vietnam,” reassuring the young men of “God’s care and love for them.”

Gunhus calmed young soldiers with a gentle request to

As George W. Bush ascended to the White House after the 2000 elections, General G.T. Gunhus and his wife Ann lived in a house at Ft. Belvoir, located eighteen miles south of Washington, DC, and his Pentagon workplace. Gunhus’s regimen consisted of twelve- or thirteen-hour days; which included commuting at 6:00 a.m. to his office, attending meetings, staying late, and ministering one-on-one to the senior Army commanders in the nation’s capital.

FOOTNOTES 3

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And G.T. Gunhus, huddled in the middle of a bunker with his fellow soldiers, got a word from God: “Do you trust me to keep you alive?”3 Gunhus responded: “Yes, by your Grace.”

“If I allow you to die, do you trust me to take care of your family?” God asked. Again, Gunhus replied, more slowly: “Yes, by your Grace.”

In that night of fear, his soul centered on a Bible passage from the Gospel of John, chapter 15, verse 16: “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” At that point, Gunhus realized that he was God’s servant, and his response was to say, “Lord, send me where you want me to go.”

A Pivotal Night at War for G.T. Gunhus

ack Storry, Sermon (story as told to Storry by G.T. Gunhus) in Barnesville, MN, September 26, 2010, notes in the possession of the author, here J and below.

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All that was routine for Gunhus changed in the year 2001, when 9/11 became a date forever seared in American memory, with the worst terrorist attack upon US soil in the history of the republic. General Gunhus would play a role in the events after September 11, 2001, when he put to use all the lessons he had learned about life and war and grief and loss in his earlier career.

Upon the arrival of G.T. Gunhus in the nation’s capital in 1994, his assigned office in the Pentagon was on the southwest face in a portion of the building designated for the Army.

As the decade of the 1990s unfolded, after a terrorist bombing of the Twin Towers in New York City by Islamic radicals in 1993, and following the Oklahoma City bombing of a federal courthouse by a homegrown terrorist in 1995, Pentagon officials authorized a renovation of the entire building to protect against a potential terroristic bombing.

When Congress first authorized the construction of the Pentagon in 1941, the structure was designed to be a massive office building, allowing all branches of the military to be under a single roof, albeit a very large roof.

The official date that construction began, strangely, was on September 11, 1941, a mere three months before the Japanese attack on the US base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

At Pearl Harbor, US deaths totaled 2,388, of whom fortynine were civilians.

The construction of the Pentagon sped up when the US entered World War II, and, in a remarkable day-and-night continuous effort, it was completed in a mere sixteen

months. Built mainly of thick, reinforced concrete in order to “avoid using critical war materials whenever possible,” the building had an exterior facing of limestone from Indiana. Architects installed concrete ramps in place of passenger elevators, and minimized the use of metal. Each of the five outward facades of the Pentagon was five stories high, and each side was one-fifth of a mile in length, so that if a person walked around the outside of the whole building, the distance would be about one mile. The Pentagon is really five pentagons—five rings with a common center courtyard (which is six acres, or the size of six football fields). With “spoke-like corridors” that radiate through all of the rings, and with numerous connecting ramps, a person can efficiently walk from any point in the building on any of the five floors to the farthest point in seven to ten minutes.4 The Pentagon and other federal buildings became targets after the Persian Gulf War, when Islamic fundamentalists like Osama Bin Laden became outraged over the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia, deeming them to have profaned Muslim holy ground. To counter potential terrorist threats to the Pentagon, the government began to strengthen the basic structure of the building and update its basic plumbing, air conditioning and heating systems in 1994, and planned that the changes would be completed in 2011.5 To make the Pentagon bomb-proof, workers made the walls and floors stronger by installing structural steel beams. And to reduce potential injury to Pentagon employees, designers put in place new blast-resistant glass windows. Each window was one and one-half inch

thick. Their glass layers were “bonded together by an inner layer of plastic” so that they would not shatter in an explosion, and they were so heavy that they could shield people from the heat and fire of a bomb blast. The interior office walls were reinforced with “super strength polymer mesh,” similar to Kevlar, to limit the fractured pieces from splintering like shrapnel.6 In 1998, G.T. Gunhus and his chaplain’s staff moved out of their Pentagon offices, located on Wedge One, to temporary, leased office space at nearby Crystal City to accommodate the renovators. After three long years, the improvements were completed, and, in the last week of August 2001, General Gunhus met with J.B. Hudson, the civilian manager of the Army’s Pentagon space, and said that “it was time to move my folks back in from the Crystal City location.” But Hudson was determined to move his own financing and accounting employees, thirty-five total, from another wedge to be renovated and temporarily place them in Gunhus’s offices, and insisted that the chaplains would just have to wait longer. “I did not get my way,” recalled Gunhus. At the end of August, traditionally one of the hottest times in Washington, DC, Gunhus and his wife, Ann, got away for a vacation at the family cabin retreat, located thirty-five miles northwest of Fergus Falls, for a time of fishing and picnicking and rest.

The morning of September 11, 2001, seemed like just

another day for employees at the Pentagon, until strange news spread about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center’s North Tower in New York City at 8:46 a.m., and then came word of the shock of a second plane ramming the South Tower at 9:03 a.m. One Pentagon staffer, Peter M. Murphy, turned on a television to find out details on the incidents, and he “started speculating, wondering who’s next.” Twenty minutes after he checked the TV, at 9:37 a.m., Murphy and the other Pentagon workers found out.7 An American Airlines jetliner, Flight 77, had been hijacked by five Islamic suicide bombers, some with flight training, after its takeoff from Washington’s Dulles airport. The al Qaeda leadership had made the immoral decision to use commercial aircraft as huge airborne bombs, similar to World War II Japanese kamikazes, but even more wicked because of the innocent passengers onboard the planes. Al Qaeda had plans of targeting the White House or the US Capitol, but they ultimately hit the Pentagon, as a symbol of the American military. The terrorist fliers approached the Pentagon at a low level, clipping off the tops of light poles outside the building before they crashed the nose into the first floor of the southwest wedge. The flying bomb exploded. Red kerosene jet fuel, about 6,939 gallons of it, ignited with the force of the crash. The plane, now a fireball, penetrated the outside ring of the Pentagon, and then further, into the second ring, and finally, partway into the third ring. A forest of concrete columns that anchored

FOOTNOTES

S Army Corps of Engineers, “Did You Know: Under the Pressure of War, the Corps Built the Pentagon in 16 months,” Office of History, No. 34, U www.army.mil, accessed December 6, 2007; “Pentagon has more than 5 sides to its story,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 24, 2007.

5 Steve Vogel, “Lessons Learned,” Washington Post, September 9, 2007, C1; another source states that the renovation began in 1993; see Tom Ford, “Minnesota Glass Firm gets award at Pentagon: Viracon product saved lives on 9/11,” Minneapolis Star-Tribune, November 21, 2002, 1D.

teve Vogel, “Pentagon Mourns Loss of Its ‘Spiritual Ballast,’” Washington Post, July 18, 2002, p. T9; Tom Ford “Minnesota glass firm gets S award at Pentagon; Viracon product saved lives on 9/11,” Minneapolis Star-Tribune, November 21, 2002, 1D; “Pentagon’s Design Saved Many Lives; Steel Limited Damage in the Attack,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, January 24, 2003, A2; “Up from the ashes; ‘Phoenix Project’ restores Pentagon,” Seattle Times, September 10, 2002, A3.

7 Steve Vogel, “Retaking a Lost Position; Pentagon Workers Return to Rebuilt Section of E Ring,” Washington Post, August 16, 2002, A1; The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2004), 7-10.

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the building, spaced every twenty feet, stopped the incoming blazing force. The new sprinkler system in the renovated portion of that side of the building “helped halt the fire” in that section, but it raged unimpeded in the unrenovated, older portion of the building. The reinforced walls held long enough for employees located above the impact point to evacuate the blast zone before the four upper levels collapsed into the gaping hole in the wall.8 The sixty-four plane passengers all died. The terrorists who had inflicted the deaths perished. 125 Pentagon workers were killed. Firefighters and rescue teams raced to the Pentagon zone of horror. In the swirl of smoke and jet-fuel fumes, survivors fled from the floors above the breached wall, and some Pentagon employees went back into the conflagration to bring injured workers to safety outside the burning structure, through their individual acts of heroism.9 Far from the East Coast, G.T. Gunhus was at the family lake home in Underwood, Minnesota, when he heard the dreadful news of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on that darkened day. He and his wife, Ann, started driving to Washington, DC, for airline travel had been shut down. Gunhus did not know exactly where the Pentagon had been hit or who had been killed, and when he found out, he understood that the gaping hole in the building “where the airplane had hit,” was “exactly . . . in the very space” where the chaplains’ offices had been. The thirty-five civilian employees of J.B. Hudson, temporarily

in the chaplain’s offices, all died instantly that morning.

The dreadful news brought the pain of deep sorrow for G.T. Gunhus, because “he knew a lot of them.”

Even more deeply, Chaplain Gunhus understood that “it should have been us, but it was not.” It was not his time to die, but it was his time to be a help to the afflicted. The Pentagon chaplains began their ministering immediately, with thirty-two of them arriving at the site “within thirty minutes of the crash at the Pentagon.”

The first work was to care for the spiritual needs of the search-and-rescue workers, the firefighters, and the searchers who were moving through the horrible wreckage of the Pentagon, to help them cope with what they experienced. Every time a team of soldiers entered the building to remove a body, a military chaplain accompanied them, wearing an improvised cross on his protective suit— made from two strips of duct tape. When they placed a victim on a stretcher, the chaplain kneeled and prayed the “Nunc Dimittis” from Luke 2:29-32 (KJV)—“Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.”10 For the next three months, Gunhus and his fellow chaplains in the Pentagon sent a chaplain to each area to minister to the individuals in each section, to try to help comfort the families and to meet the needs of the people of the Pentagon for solace. They helped with funerals, which continued for weeks and months because the bodies of the deceased could not be immediately identified. The

FOOTNOTES obert Schlesinger, “Renovations Saved Lives At Pentagon,” Boston Globe, September 16, 2001, A23.

R Todd Milbourn, “Army’s top chaplain listens, consoles; Maj. Gen. Gunhus and his cadre of 1,300 chaplains offer hope to soldiers in the war on terrorism,” Minneapolis Star-Tribune, January 21, 2002, 1A. 10 Noelle Phillips, “It’s Our Experience As Soldiers’ Army Chaplains Create Stained-Glass Window For Pentagon Memorial,” Savannah Morning News, March 8, 2002, 1A. 8

9

G.T. Gunhus, Chaplain

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remains of the bodies of those who were in the military were interred in a special section of Arlington National Cemetery, on a gentle slope overlooking the Pentagon.

The senior Army brass in the Pentagon, led by Secretary of the Army General Thomas E. (Tommy) White, held daily operations and intelligence briefings as usual after 9/11.

G.T. Gunhus gave updates on what was happening with the families who were suffering in their grief. In those first difficult days, General White informed his staff that “these are not normal times, I think we need prayer,” and so thereafter, every meeting ended with prayer offered by Chaplain Gunhus.

At one briefing, General White spoke of the “need to do something as a memorial to the people who lost their lives,” according to the recollections of Gunhus, “and a symbol of hope and a message to the enemy that we are not defeated.” He ended with a request: “If anyone has an idea, let me know.”

Gunhus had an idea, an inspiration of what to do—and immediately after the meeting, sat down and “wrote up a paper in one-half day.” His concept was to build a chapel, right at the place where the aircraft had hit the building, as a permanent place to “have services, have prayer,” and have it be a place to sit and remember those who had been victims of the attack. In the very place “where there had been grief and stress, the chapel would be a place of peace and hope.”

There was a real need for a chapel in the Pentagon, for

all that had been provided was only a small prayer room, and auditoriums had to be used for religious services in the building. Army Secretary White and his staff were in support of building the chapel, and J.B. Hudson, whose employees had died on 9/11, “made sure that the chapel construction would happen” as “his way of healing and giving back” to those who had been at the point of impact.

General White and his staff were in favor of including the chapel as part of the Phoenix Project, a massive around-the-clock rebuilding effort to “rapidly restore and enhance” the Pentagon within a year after 9/11. The “black, V-shaped gap in the nation’s military headquarters” would be cleared of the debris and put back together almost exactly the way it was before the attack. The only differences included the new chapel, all of the reinforcing elements from the previous renovation, and one exterior limestone block, deliberately left blackened by smoke and engraved with the inscription: “September 11, 2001.”11 The Memorial Chapel featured a five-sided stainedglass window with images of an eagle, the Pentagon, the American flag, and an olive branch. Two rings around the images were made of 184 squares of crimson glass— one for each of the 184 victims killed there. The glass pieces for the windows were reverently fitted into place by family members, fellow workers, and military leaders as a way to remember those in the Pentagon or in the plane. Each person who put in a glass piece got to keep a companion piece “as a memento of having helped put the windows together.” 182 chaplains, including G.T. Gunhus, were allowed the privilege of placing a red square on the

FOOTNOTES 11

Pentagon Emblem That Came from G.T.'s Work in Establishing a Chapel in Memory of the 9/11 Attacks

“ Phoenix Rising,” Washington Post.com, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/flash/metro/phoenix/phonixRising.html, accessed December 6, 2007; “Can-do spirit fixes the Pentagon,” Omaha World-Herald, September 11, 2002, 9ss; “Up from the Ashes; ‘Project Phoenix’ restores Pentagon,” Seattle Times, September 10, 2002, A3.

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window that was to serve as a “mosaic of memory,” and Gunhus said that their involvement gave them “a chance to reflect, refocus, and renew our spirits.”12

of innocents cannot be explained, only endured . . . We ask God to bring comfort to every home where they are loved and missed.”

On September 11, 2002, one year to the day after the fateful attacks on the United States, families and friends of those who had died gathered outside the reconstructed walls of the southwestern façade of the Pentagon to rededicate the building and to dedicate the new chapel. Those who participated in the memorial service included President George W. Bush; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; General Richard Meyers, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Chief of Chaplains G.T. Gunhus. Gunhus delivered the opening prayer outside the chapel, which had been built at the “exact site of the most painful event in the Pentagon’s history.”

13,000 people gathered outside the Pentagon that day, and though they could no longer see any “outward signs of the impact,” they recognized that “inward healing” remained incomplete.14

That day, he prayed, “We ask You to bless us as we gather in this sacred place as the reality of our pain and loss have become all too apparent.” Gunhus beseeched God to “bless the memory of those who made the ultimate sacrifice a year ago.” He vowed that “we will not let those who died fade from our memory.”13 In his remarks concerning those who perished at the Pentagon, President Bush acknowledged that the “murder

The new chapel became the “most-used public facility other than dining areas” in the Pentagon. During the day, there would be “one or two people praying and meditating” there. “The chapel,” said Gunhus, “became what we had hoped”—a place of reflection and remembrance.

For G.T. Gunhus, who had witnessed many joys and numerous sorrows while ministering to soldiers and officers in his thirty-six-year career, the events of 9/11 and its aftermath “changed my life significantly in trying to understand God’s providence and care.” Gunhus reflected that even intelligence briefings became “one more place to honor God in the public realm.” Gunhus reached out to J.B. Hudson, whose office had been far from the Pentagon impact zone, to help him through his guilt and grieving.

If either man “passed the other’s door, they would get together and have prayer from that time” onward.15

FOOTNOTES eisha Rogers, “Window Shines Light on 9-11 tragedy,” Army LINK News, www.ihsstudios.com, accessed January 10, 2008; “Army Chaplains to N Assemble Stained Glass Window in Honor of Pentagon Victims,” US Newswire [Washington, DC], February 25, 2002, 1; Phil McCombs, “Mosaic of Memory,” Washington Post, September 11, 2003, C1; Noelle Phillips, “It’s Our Experience As Soldiers’ Army Chaplains Create Stained-Glass Window For Pentagon Memorial,” Savannah Morning News, March 8, 2002, 1A. 13 Donna Miles, “Pentagon Memorial Chapel wedding brings hope, promise in face of despair,” American Forces Press Service, www.defenselink. mil, accessed January 10, 2008; “9/11 Pentagon Ceremony,” www.cnn.com, accessed October 17, 2007.

14 Jan Cienski, National Post [Don Mills, Ont.], September 12, 2002, A7.

15 General G.T. Gunhus, interview by Steven R. Hoffbeck, 2007.

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Gunhus retired from the military in 2003, moving home to his Minnesota house overlooking Pickerel Lake, a deep lake with a 90-foot hole, a lake with walleyes and northerns in its depths. He and his wife, Ann, spent summer days there with children and grandchildren, and also traveled to Seattle to spend time on their sailboat. Never one to totally retire, Gunhus spoke with students at the Lutheran Brethren Seminary, just forty miles away, and participated in prayer breakfasts in Fargo, North Dakota. The general also worked with Guideposts Magazine to publish devotional books for those who served their country in the military—complete with desert camouflage covers.

Significantly, G.T. Gunhus and Ann began a ministry for pastors and their wives, escorting them on tours of the Puget Sound area. It was a time of retreat, reflection, and relaxation for pastors who had become burdened with too many responsibilities and not enough time to minister to all the needs of their congregations. The sixty-foot-long boat was christened as A Pastoral Call, so that if a preacher was asked what he was doing while away in Washington State, he could merely answer: “I’m on A Pastoral Call.”

From Enderlin, North Dakota, to Underwood, Minnesota; from Hillcrest Lutheran Academy to Seattle Pacific University; from Washington, DC, to South Vietnam, G.T. Gunhus heard the call to pastoral ministry and the chaplaincy, and he answered the call.

AFTERWORD (JULY 20, 2016) This chapter about the life and ministry of G.T. Gunhus came from an interview with him conducted in November of 2007 at his summer home at Pickerel Lake. Sometime after the interview, Chaplain Gunhus’s health began to fail.

In the summer of 2008, Gunhus began suffering from shortness of breath. That fall, doctors gave him a preliminary diagnosis of mesothelioma. G.T. Gunhus sought a second opinion at Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale, Arizona.

Physicians there confirmed malignant mesothelioma, a cancer in the thin layer of tissues surrounding his lungs.

Gunhus and his family were stunned, but resolved to embark upon a treatment plan for the aggressive and deadly form of cancer involving chemotherapy, surgery and radiation, and prayers for mercy. He was not cured of mesothelioma, but he got eight more years of life, giving him time for his wife and family, and he kept on ministering to soldiers, even as his health deteriorated.

G.T. Gunhus was called to be a husband and father, and an officer and a chaplain. He was true to all his callings in life.

Death came to G.T. Gunhus on May 27, 2016, at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, at age 76. He was survived by Ann; his three children, Kevin, Michael, and Holly; and seven grandchildren.

Well-known and well-loved, there were memorial services held in Seattle and also in Fergus Falls, with burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

He lives best who loves best. G.T. Gunhus loved God and loved his family. He loved the soldiers that he counseled and ministered, and he loved the Army chaplains, serving as a “shepherd to the shepherds.”

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Student Body Officers, 1940 [Front Row (Left to Right): M. Sjule, Secretary; E. Halvorson, President; caption I. Nygren, Social Director; D. Stenoien, Vice President] Back Row: A. Pederson, Treasurer; W. Almelien, Social Director;

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“You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning:” Psalms 90:5 (ESV)

o

n December 3, 1966, rain began to fall in Northern Arizona near the Grand Canyon.1 For the next two days, it “rained and rained and rained.”2

By December 5th, eighteen inches of rainfall had rushed into the Colorado River through Bright Angel Creek.

The torrential floodwaters swept away all in its path.

It washed away mammoth cottonwood trees, each one hundred feet tall, that had stood alongside the river junction for a century, all were lost, never to be seen again.

It carved a new channel, overnight, for part of Bright Angel Creek.

The raging water also brought wreck and ruin to Elling Halvorson’s $3.2 million contract with the National Park Service to install water pipes from the North Rim to the South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park.3 The flood washed out eight miles of newly laid, hightensile aluminum water pipes, as well as all the equipment, the backhoes and drilling machines, used to install the pipes. Contractor Elling Halvorson lost all that his crew had worked to install for the previous twenty-three months.

On Monday, December 12th, a week after the Bright Angel Creek flood, Elling Halvorson, age 34, climbed into a helicopter to survey the flood damage after the terrible waters had receded.4

FOOTNOTES “ Copter Crashes in Canyon,” Arizona Republic, December 16, 1966, C1.

Here and below, Elling Halvorson, Commencement Speech, Hillcrest Academy graduation, Fergus Falls, MN, May 2007, DVD transcript; other information is from an interview of Elling Halvorson by the author, May 30, 2010, notes in the possession of the author; Elling Halvorson, interview by Rich Iverson at the Grand Canyon, March 18, 2011, notes in the possession of the author. “Copter Crashes in Canyon,” Arizona Republic, December 16, 1966, C1.

3 “Contract Let For Water Pipeline In Grand Canyon National Park,” Arizona Republic [Phoenix, AZ], January 28, 1965, 32; “Grand Canyon Water Line Contract Let,” Tucson Daily Citizen, January 25, 1965, 16; “Grand Canyon Pipeline Job To Seattle Co.,” Navajo Times, January 28, 1965, 11.

The Grand Canyon has been carved by the Colorado River. Technically, the Grand Canyon is not the deepest canyon in the world, but at 1 mile deep, 277 miles long, and up to 18 miles wide, it is unique for its great size.

4 “Copter Crashes in Canyon,” Arizona Republic, December 16, 1966, C1; “Northern Arizona Clears; Canyon Pipeline Damaged,” Tucson [AZ] Citizen, December 8, 1966, 1; “Canyon Floods Reported,” Arizona Republic, December 8, 1966, 25.

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Seated beside Mr. Halvorson in the helicopter was Dick “Hummer” Ellis, pipeline project director, and pilot Emery Lamunyon was at the controls. Lamunyon had guided his aircraft down into the Grand Canyon hundreds of times that year, transporting men and supplies to the work camp, where each night the pipeline machines were parked at a level above the historic 100-year flood line, for safety.

It was a routine flight—at the start. But as the trio got down to the creek bed, they felt disappointment at seeing the empty trenches where once the shiny aluminum pipeline had been. They experienced the shock of realizing that the work camp and its equipment—caterpillars, tractors, screening plant, and concrete-batching plant—was gone, swept away downriver.

As they approached Phantom Ranch, a dude ranch situated at the canyon’s bottom, something far worse than disappointment hit Halvorson, Ellis, and Lamunyon. They could not see that a copper-coated steel wire (used for getting good radio reception deep in the canyon), which had been attached to a rocky outcropping just below Phantom Ranch on the eave of an abandoned Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) shack, was dangling in their way. The flood had ripped the wire from its mooring.

In a moment, in the blinking of an eye, the thin steel cable caught the chopper’s main rotor. The helicopter pitched forward.

Pilot Lamunyon, near shock, was unhurt, with just a gash in his helmet that left his head unharmed.

Director Dick Ellis escaped with minor injuries.

Elling Halvorson, however, had crashed into the front console directly with his chest and lay caught in the wreckage, conscious, but broken. He suffered eighteen fractures in his ribs.

He had a punctured lung.

He had a fractured leg.

Halvorson had been cut and lacerated, from head to toe.

He was a bleeding mass; his body was almost unrecognizable for the injuries.

Elling Halvorson felt that he was going to die, and he whispered to his fellows the words that they should say to his wife and their five children if he should die.

The verses of Psalm 90, as inserted throughout this chapter, relate directly to the joys, struggles, and challenges of Halvorson’s life and his ever-deepening understanding of his own fragility, in the time before he plunged to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and as he lay there in pain, on death’s doorstep.

Pilot Emery Lamunyon reacted instantly, trying to land quickly, but like a whip’s lash, the flailing cable “wrapped around the tail rotor” and “tore off the whole tail.” The disabled helicopter “spun into a rock wall,” bounced off, and crashed 300 feet down, onto the canyon floor, landing upside-down.

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Psalm 90:17 (AMP) “And let the beauty and delightfulness and favor of the Lord our God be upon us; confirm and establish the work of our hands—yes, the work of our hands, confirm and establish it.”

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HILLCREST ACADEMY, CLASS OF 1950 Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1932, Elling Halvorson was the youngest child of Elling and Beda Halvorson.

Their surname was Halversen when the elder Elling came over from Norway, but was changed to Halvorson soon thereafter. The immigrant Halvorson could not speak a word of English when he arrived at Ellis Island.

Mr. Halvorson worked his way up in a large construction company—Lovering Construction of St. Paul. He became general manager in the tough times of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Elling was born in 1932, ten years after his sister Evelyn had been born.

Around 1940, opportunities in Montana led the Halvorson family to move west to Billings, Montana, to start a family construction company with the elder Elling’s son Carl as his partner. The second son, Halvor, worked on the jobs, and sister Evelyn (a Hillcrest graduate), managed the office.

As the storms of war swept across Europe and Asia and it looked as if the United States could be plunged into World War II, Halvorson Construction got government contracts to build non-military family housing in Anaconda and Billings, where strategic copper was mined and refined into ingots.

Before the Pearl Harbor attack, Halvorson Construction procured contracts to survey and build Section B-2 of Camp Adair, a sprawling infantry basic training camp at Corvallis, Oregon, thirty-six miles south of Salem, the state capital.5

Son Elling Halvorson later followed his sister to Hillcrest and became a member of the graduating class of 1950.

While attending Hillcrest, Elling became president of the student body, and sang in the a capella choir under the direction of William Windahl, a wonderful man of music.

Elling was a solidly built, muscular, and athletic young man. His athleticism and leadership qualities led him to become chosen as co-captain of the Comet basketball team.

“Sports were just starting” at Hillcrest, related Halvorson later, and the “intramural teams began to play teams from other schools in little towns” near Fergus Falls. The team needed a name, and they met to brainstorm various ideas.

Elling said, “Let’s call ourselves ‘Comets’—they’re hot; they’re fast; and they leave a streak of fire behind them.”

And the name stuck.

At Hillcrest, Elling met a girl by the name of Barbara Tweed, and though no dating was officially allowed, they began a courtship. The administration “was very strict in those days” about separating the boys from the girls; they were kept apart in the dorms, and at lunch and dinner in the dining hall, they sat at different tables.

FOOTNOTES

Elling Halvorsen's Senior Photo 5

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The Halvorsons re-settled in Salem, and there young Elling Halvorson attended grade school and junior high school as the war years passed. The elder Elling Halvorson had heard of Hillcrest Lutheran Academy through their close ties with Lutheran Brethren families they had known in Minnesota, and “had confidence” in its mission of Christian education. They sent their daughter, Evelyn, to the Lutheran Brethren high school in the late 1930s.

“The Visionary: Carl Halvorson,” Portland Living, May-June, 2001, 21-22.

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214 1940 Choir − [First Row (Left to Right): E. Reynolds, G. Skartland, E. Erlandson, J. Norheim, R. Erickson, A. Skovholt, M. Sjule, L. Bridston, Prof. Windahl; Third Row: A. Pederson, H. Kavlie, G. Sjule, M. Walstad, I. Vall, M. Endrud, O. Norby, M. Tjornhom, P. Larson;

1 5Inglestad, W. Almelien, B. Tweed; Second Row: B. Lloyd, J. Slattum, L. Haga, A. Johnson, M. Norman, M. Bakke,2M. Fourth Row: G. Aase, I. Nygren, E. Halvorson, S. Raun, R. Walstad, K. Jacobsen, H. Helland, J. Lunde]

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The team needed a name, and they met to brainstorm various ideas. Elling said, “Let’s call ourselves ‘Comets’—they’re hot; they’re fast; and they leave a streak of fire behind them.” And the name stuck.

Elling Halvorson Came Up WIth Hillcrest's Mascot - The "Comets"

Elling's Intramural Basketball Team, the Stags, at Hillcrest Lutheran Academy [Top Row (Left to Right) : J. Olson, K. Jacobson, I. Nygren; Bottom row: J. Seaver, E. Halvorson Cap., E Torreson; Not pictured: L. Erickson]

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The administration had an “eighteen inch rule,” which stated that gals and guys should not get any closer than eighteen inches. But all of that, as Elling Halvorson later recalled, “didn’t stop romance” from starting. Elling said that their ways of meeting were “pretty innocent,” in that the boys would sometimes go to the corner store and get some ice cream and cake to share with the girls. The boys climbed up the fire escape in order to get to a place where there was a small opening, through which they could talk and exchange ice cream and cake through a partlyopened window.

During Elling’s senior year, his father and mother came to Minnesota to see him. His father said a few words at chapel one morning and said that his son had “come to the school as a child,” and that he “was leaving it as a man.”

At the time, Elling felt that he “wanted to crawl under the seat” and hide, feeling that his father had “totally embarrassed” him. Much later, the younger Halvorson came to understand that there “was some truth to it,” for he became a man much sooner than he had expected.

What his father had said added to the confusion that Elling felt about his calling in life. As a high school senior, he was puzzled as to what exactly he should do with his life. He was unsure as to which way to go. Should he “go into some church-related services?” “Should he become a pastor?”

“Should he be a missionary?” As with other young people at age eighteen, he wondered which path in life he should take.

Psalm 90:10 (ESV) “The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.”

At that time, Elling “read a book written by a fellow who was a good friend of his father.” The author’s name was Robert LeTourneau, who was a “great inventor” in the heavy-equipment field, being the first person to put rubber tires on earthmovers. He also developed offshore oil platforms and built a factory to manufacture them.

The book, entitled God Runs My Business, told of how LeTourneau, after prospering, gave 90 percent of his income to Christian work. The book inspired Elling to become a businessman by “following in his father’s footsteps into the construction business,” where “maybe he could be successful and be a stronger help to Christian endeavors and the work of the church” than he could by being a pastor or missionary.

his brother Carl to see their stricken father, who was only sixty years of age. But when they stepped off the airplane at the airport, a family friend met them at the bottom of the steps.

His goal was to earn a civil engineering degree in four quick years and then work with his father in the construction business. But it didn’t work out exactly that way.

Because he was eligible for the draft in 1954, Elling enrolled in the Army ROTC program at the University of Idaho for a year, and was then allowed to get a college deferment. The young father earned an economics degree back at Willamette University, with a minor in civil engineering, in 1955.

After graduating from Hillcrest Academy in 1950, Elling enrolled in Waldorf College in Forest City, Iowa. He transferred to the University of Idaho after one year.

At the end of his sophomore year, on the last day of the school year, while Elling was busily taking a final test in calculus, a knock at the door interrupted his career plan.

There was an important call for Elling Halvorson—“your father is in the hospital with a heart attack,” the caller said.

Elling asked the caller: “Can I finish the test?”

“No,” said the caller, “you have to leave now to get on an airplane to see him.”

Elling got to the plane and traveled with his mother and

“You’re too late,” he said, “he died at two this morning.”

The young Hillcrest graduate’s world went topsy-turvy when his father died. He moved westward from Idaho in 1952 to attend Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, in order to be near his mother.

Elling then married Barbara Tweed in 1953, and the couple had their first child, Brenda, the next year.

Even though it took awhile, Elling Halvorson was finally able to start his own general contracting construction company in 1957. He called it “Elling Halvorson, Inc.” Known as the “Boy Contractor,” for he was just age twenty-five, Halvorson often competed for bids with competitors twice his age.

“Things went very well for me,” recalled Halvorson later. “In the first eight years of my career, it seemed like everything I touched turned out well.” By 1966, by his own accounting, he had “a beautiful wife, five wonderful children [Brenda; Elling Kent; Lon; and twins Randal and Rodney] and a beautiful home.” He had plenty of money, and he learned to fly and had his own airplane. The jobs

came one after another. In accordance with his life of faith, he “was active in his church; he had become a deacon” in his local church in Woodinville, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. He was a member of boards of directors of local charities and commissions about town, and a member of numerous civic and business organizations. Things really seemed to be going well.

By the early 1960s, Elling Halvorson, Inc., had offices in Seattle and San Mateo, California. His construction company specialized in what was called “high logistics work”—complex operations involving detailed coordination in order to move supplies, heavy equipment, and workers to remote geographic locations.

His men worked on projects near the Arctic Ocean in the oil fields, building wastewater and freshwater facilities. They constructed a gas-turbine generator to provide power for the oil companies in the Prudhoe oil field. Halvorson’s crew built warehouses at the Kuparuk Oil Field in Alaska and had other work on Adak in the Aleutian Islands. They got contracts to build on high mountain peaks and to work deep in valleys and canyons.

One particularly challenging project involved constructing a microwave-transmission tower for the long-line division of AT&T. The tower was to be built on a 10,000 foot peak called Echo Summit in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, above Lake Tahoe, California. There, in a place with no roads and no easy access, Halvorson recognized the “unique lifting and maneuvering capabilities” of helicopters, and he bought his first Bell helicopter (a 47G3B1) in 1960 “to serve as a workhorse, lifting supplies and workmen to high elevations.” He built a 1.5-mile tramway to convey heavy loads to the mountaintop.6

FOOTNOTES 6

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Martin J. Pociask, “Elling Halvorson, HAI Chairman, Driving Spirits for the Helicopter Industry,” Rotor, Summer 2002, 4-5.

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Professionally, things were booming for Halvorson in the 1960s. Personally, he had vowed to establish Godly priorities in his life—in line with Christ’s teaching that he had learned at Hillcrest Academy and from reading LeTourneau’s book God Runs My Business. He set out to establish an order for his life and it was to be: God first, family second, and others third. In his professional life, he meant to prioritize his time so that work came first; then comfort and enjoyment.

Psalm 90:8 (NIRV) “You have put our sins right in front of you. You have placed our secret sins where you can see them clearly. “ But he felt he was beginning to slip from his established priorities as difficulties began to mount and the hustle and bustle of life created distractions for him.

The hardest thing for Elling and his wife Barbara to handle came in 1963, when they discovered that their twin sons, who were five years old, were frequently tripping and falling for no apparent reason. They set up appointments to see specialists at the University of Washington Medical School. After extensive tests, the physicians discovered that Randal and Rodney suffered from Duchenne muscular dystrophy, considered to be the most deadly dystrophy known to medicine. This rapidly worsening form of muscular dystrophy typically weakened a patient’s muscles so severely that they would be confined to a wheelchair by age twelve. Life expectancy was only into

the mid-teens. The boys would be fortunate if they could live to be as old as twenty. Duchenne muscular dystrophy began in the legs, then weakened the arms and neck, and eventually, weakened the lungs and heart.

After hearing the prognosis, Elling and Barbara left the hospital and wandered in a nearby flower arboretum, where they “cried like babies.” Elling confessed that he was afraid to go home and even look at his twin sons, for dread of what would transpire.

Work provided an avenue of escape for Halvorson, and his work took up a great deal of time. Halvorson’s most challenging project came in 1965, soon after the twins were diagnosed, when Elling Halvorson won a bid from the National Park Service to build and bury 13.5 miles of water pipeline in the Grand Canyon. He proposed a daring plan to use helicopters to transport water pipes, crew, equipment and supplies along the rim and down into the canyon— previous projects used pack-mules. Halvorson’s proposal was the “largest helicopter-supported [single] construction project ever attempted in the U.S.” up to that time.7 The National Park Service awarded the contract to Halvorson’s company and, at a cost of $3.2 million, it was the most expensive contract the National Park Service had ever granted.

The logistics were daunting. The pipeline had to carry water from Roaring Springs at an elevation of over 5,000 feet, dropping 3,500 feet down along the Kaibab Trail

to the Colorado River near Phantom Ranch; and then ascend “almost straight up for a 1,000 foot climb” to Grand Canyon Village.8 The staging area for the helicopters was Yaki Point, a visitor viewpoint closed to the public for the project.

Workmen rolled the pipes to the edge of the canyon, hooked them up to the helicopter, and then the aircraft lifted off. The loads were calculated according to the maximum lift capacity from the hovering position. Once the pilot attained air speed, the lift capacity increased.

The operation was dangerous due to the wild terrain.9 Halvorson’s crewmen had to follow strict rules to preserve the beauty and natural scenery of the Canyon. No plants or rocks outside the trails were to be disturbed. And when the job was complete, “hikers and mule riders should be able to travel the trail without knowing the pipeline” was there.

The project was so unique that Halvorson Construction, Inc., had to build smaller versions of heavy equipment that could “operate within the confines” of the trails. They made “several dwarf backhoes, tiny bulldozers,” and a “traveling rock crusher mounted on a special chassis made with a Jeep front-wheel drive,” and a Chevrolet front-wheel drive behind that. Workmen had to dig a trench with a rock-crusher, install and weld the water pipe, and then cover the trench with the crushed rocks—an agonizinglyslow process that sometimes resulted in as little progress as 25 feet per day on the slowest days.

When Elling Halvorson first brought his family to see the Grand Canyon, one of his kids, knowing how Elling handled big projects, looked down at the Grand Canyon and asked, “Dad, are you going to dig it deeper?”10 All the construction went according to the plan for twentytwo months—from March 1965 until December 1966— and then came the deluge when eighteen inches of rain filled the Colorado River Basin. This was not a 100-year maximum flood; this was a 1,500 year historic flood. About 8.5 miles of pipeline already installed were washed away.

The immediate message from the federal government to Elling Halvorson was that it was Halvorson’s responsibility to replace the ruined pipeline out of his own pocket, because it was an “act of God.” The government was not going to pay twice for putting in the pipeline.

Federal officials stopped all payments of money owed to Halvorson. They would not pay any money to Halvorson until he put the lost 8.5 miles of pipeline back in place.

Worse still, he didn’t have insurance on the lost construction equipment, because his men put it above the 100-year flood plain every night. He had no funds to replace the machines.

Elling Halvorson was crushed financially at that point. He had to lay off his entire crew of men on December 5, 1966.

A week later, on December 12th, Halvorson climbed into

FOOTNOTES FOOTNOTES

en Avery, “Pipeline Strictly Space-Age,” Arizona Republic, August 9, 1965, 12.

B Nancy Green, “Grand Canyon Aviation History,” 2.

10 Elling Halvorson, interview by Rich Iverson at the Grand Canyon, March 18, 2011.

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Pociask, 4-5; Nancy Green, “Grand Canyon Aviation History,” The Bulletin: Grand Canyon Pioneers Society 6, no. 10, (October, 2002), 2.

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the helicopter to “go down and survey the damage.” He felt then that “everything was going wrong.” And when the wire cable entangled the rotor and then the back rotor of the chopper, it smashed the craft and its three occupants into the floor of the Grand Canyon.

When Elling Halvorson’s helicopter crashed, his body was “broken physically;” he was as wrecked as the helicopter.

As he lay near death at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, barely able to breathe, Halvorson was ready to bargain with his Maker.

“God,” he prayed, “if you will please spare me this time, I promise, Lord, that I will share the Gospel anytime I have the opportunity.”

Likely he would not have any opportunities.

But then, God had mercy on Elling Halvorson that day.

Providentially, there was another person in the Grand Canyon other than the three men in the chopper. In a span of 277 miles, there was just one man near to the crash site.

He was a flood investigator from the US Geological Survey, and he was using a movie camera to record 8-millimeter film of the flood aftermath. He filmed Halvorson’s flight as the helicopter flew past him and hit the wire, and then he stopped filming and came to provide help.

Advantageously, there was a telephone wire that had survived the flood’s washout. Halvorson’s construction workers had installed telephone lines along the entire pipeline so that the crew could tap into the line at any point and have an outside phone link. Almost all of the line had been lost in the flood, except for the Phantom Ranch phone line, just one hundred yards from the crash zone.

Elling Halvorson had been knocked unconscious by the crash-landing, but he “came to” very quickly and “realized he was drowning in his own blood.” Elling asked the filmmaker to move him and to help him turn his head. The USGS man was “afraid to touch” or move him, so Elling somehow gathered the strength to turn his own body “so that the blood would drain.”

anyone,” recalled Halvorson later, “I had put an all-risk insurance policy on the pipeline project with Lloyd’s of London.” And Lloyd’s fulfilled its promise on the policy, for the insurance adjuster delivered to Halvorson a check for $100,000 (the equivalent of one million dollars today), and told him that the insurance “underwriters wanted him to deal” with the National Park Service officials “in strength.”

A rescue helicopter responded to the phoned-in call for help and came to lift Halvorson from the canyon floor.

Onboard was “Dr. Thomas, a young physician,” who “had grabbed his satchel and came down” within minutes.

When the doctor took a blood pressure reading and found Halvorson’s blood pressure was thirty over zero; he just shook his head—Halvorson’s heart was giving out.

In complex negotiations, federal negotiators finally decided to release funds to pay Halvorson for the lost pipes, and to pay him to complete the pipeline. Both sides came to understand that the flood had been an “act of God,” and Halvorson understood the deeper meaning of God’s watchful care over him, even when his whole world seemed to be crashing down around him. Eventually, Halvorson’s workmen re-installed the pipe, with the whole “waterline re-engineered to better withstand floods.” They completed the job in 1970.11

Halvorson knew he was dying. He felt his body growing cold. He had the wherewithal to tell those around him “what to tell my family, what to tell my children, my wife” about his love for them.

Dr. Thomas gave Halvorson pain-killing shots, one in the chest and one in the arm. Halvorson started going in and out of consciousness as the doctor wrapped him in a sleeping bag to keep him warm on the chopper ride out of the canyon.

Immediate care came at the Grand Canyon Hospital, and then Halvorson’s condition, while critical, was stabilized at Flagstaff Community Hospital. Recovery came slowly, and he was in a full-length leg cast for half a year.

Halvorson had heavy medical expenses and no income.

But two months after the helicopter accident, hope came to Elling Halvorson. In February of 1967, an insurance adjuster from Lloyd’s of London, the legendary insurer of last resort, arrived at Elling’s home in Washington state, where he was regaining strength.“Unbeknownst to

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And what good came out of all of this?

Strangely enough, though a helicopter was instrumental in Elling Halvorson’s fall, a whole fleet of them brought an eventual rise of his fortunes.

When the helicopters began hovering over the Grand Canyon in 1965, bringing workers and water pipes to its depths, tourists began clamoring for aerial tours to view the magnificence of the world’s largest chasm. Inspired, Elling Halvorson created a brand new company—Papillon Grand Canyon Helicopters—to give sightseeing tours

over and into the National Park. At first, he had just four choppers, flying from his heliport, which was located along Arizona Highway 64. Demand for the thrilling helicopter tours grew and grew through the ensuing years.

Halvorson later expanded Papillon, the French name for “butterfly,” into Hawaii, where a second fleet of helicopters gave tourists a close-up view of Polynesian island vistas.

Elling Halvorson’s entrepreneurial energy knew few bounds, and his construction company rose like the proverbial phoenix from his nearly fatal crash in December 1966. His horizons broadened into investments in an expanded Halvorson Osborne Construction Company; Halvorson Boshaw Properties, a real estate development company; Grand Canyon Airlines, using fixed-wing aircraft for flights over the park; several shopping centers; an IMAX 3D theater and Grand Canyon Squire hotel near the national park; and other enterprises.

Elling and his wife, Barbara, came to grips with the disabilities of their twin sons, Randy and Rod. After getting over the shock of the diagnosis of Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy, they resolved “to try and give Rodney and Randy as much of a normal life as possible.”12 When the boys were ten, they were chosen as the Muscular Dystrophy Association Poster Children for Washington State. By this time, they were wheelchair-bound, but the disease did not define their lives. They outlived the expectations of the experts, graduating from Redmond

FOOTNOTES ichael F. Anderson, Polishing the Jewel: An Administrative History of Grand Canyon National Park (Monograph: Grand Canyon Association), M No. 11, www.nps.gov, accessed September 1, 2011.

12 Carol Edwards, “Halvorson Twins Prevail Despite Challenges With Muscular Dystrophy,” Northwest News, August 30, 1999, www.nwnews.com, accessed July 16, 2007.

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High School in 1978 and taking classes at Bellevue Community College.

Randy and Rod were active in their local church fellowship and youth groups, boy scout activities, and summer camps.

When the muscles in their lungs weakened and each of them lost the ability to breathe under their own power at age twenty, they became dependent upon respirators.

Despite their bodily limitations, they continued to serve as softball coaches for teams in their hometown.

Their father designed and built devices to help them with their mobility and communications skills. They turned fifty in 2008, outliving by decades the expectancies put upon them by medical professionals from when they were young boys. As of this writing, they remain the oldest surviving Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy patients in history.

As for Halvorson’s bargaining with God when he was about to meet his Maker, Elling did not tell his wife of the pledge that he had made to share the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ when he had the opportunity.

He “didn’t tell anyone for a long time” about his deathbed talks with the Lord.

But his renewed faith and commitment to Christ allowed him to follow in the footsteps of Robert LeTourneau, whose book had been so influential in Halvorson’s younger years.

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With the income that came from multiple businesses, Elling Halvorson was able to afford the employment of fulltime healthcare attendants to assist sons Randy and Rod in their daily needs, and to help them face the challenges of mobility and breathing. This hearkened back to the time in 1966, when their father Elling was similarly bound by health issues after his helicopter crashed.

In his family life and in the challenges of the workplace, Elling Halvorson attributed his survival and perseverance to one factor: “My faith carried me through.” God provided the strength that he needed to face challenges and hardships—and prosperity.

As a token of the lessons he learned when he was a teenager in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, attending a small Christian high school located on a hillside, Elling Halvorson carries a golden ring.

Halvorson has carried his graduation ring from Hillcrest Lutheran Academy everywhere he has traveled in the sixtysome years since his graduation day in the spring of 1950.

“So teach us to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom.”

Psalm 90:20 (AMP)

Along with the ring, he has carried with him the life lessons of Christ, learned in the classrooms of Hillcrest; in the work arena in Seattle, Alaska, and Tahoe; in the stanzas of Psalm 90; and remembered as he lay near death in the twisted wreckage of a helicopter near Bright Angel Creek.

After partially retiring from his business ventures, Mr. Halvorson gave much of his time and energy to a host of charitable organizations and Christian ministries.

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Psalm 90:12 (AMP) “So teach us to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom.”

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CHAPTER

FIFTEEN HILLCREST AND GENERAL JAMES WOLD 1969

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“I know that the experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect preparation for the work he will give us to do.”

Quote from The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom, from a photocopy that Jim Wold kept in the pages of his Bible.

n his seventy-year lifetime, Jim Wold lived in a number of places—in Moscow, Russia; at an Air Force base in South Vietnam during the war; in Washington, DC; and in England.

He began his life in Minneapolis.

He died in Fargo, North Dakota.

In between, he spent two years of his life at Hillcrest Academy in Fergus Falls, where he found two of his callings in life—his identity as a Christian, and the love of his life, JoAnne Norheim.

Jim Wold took what he learned at Hillcrest about the Scriptures and about life and applied Christ’s teachings in his many roles—including his role as a husband to JoAnne.

He also applied the Gospel in his calling as a father to their four children. Jim relied upon Biblical principles in his vocation as an Air Force pilot to rise through the ranks and become a general in the US Air Force.

After he retired, Jim studied to become a lawyer and practiced law while helping his wife JoAnne run the Volden Farm Bed and Breakfast in Cooperstown, North Dakota.

How could one man have so many facets to his life? He was a man of war, flying the powerful A-1H/J Skyraider aircraft loaded with rockets, bombs, and machine guns in the Vietnam War. He was also a man of peace, serving as an emissary to communist North Korea and Vietnam in efforts to recover prisoners of war and servicemen missing in action.

As an officer, he was a leader of men.

As a man, he was also a follower—a follower of Christ Jesus.

To know the man, one can talk at length with his wife JoAnne, or simply page through his study Bible. There, in the pages that tell the Greatest Story on Earth, he jotted down many notes and comments and marked key verses with stars. Particularly dear passages with words that rang so true for him have four stars beside them in the margins; others have three stars, some two stars, and others a single blue-ink star. It seems fitting that a fourstar general would mark with four stars the very verses that helped him rise in the Air Force to the rank of general in the first place.

This, then, is a short version of how the Lord molded his servant James Wold into the man he was—with references to the Bible verses that helped him along his way.

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James William Wold was born in Minneapolis on April 18, 1932, a year that many historians consider to be in the very worst days of the Great Depression, when families and individuals were pushed to their limits by the difficulties of even making a living.

Jim’s father, Pete Wold, had immigrated to the United States in 1923 from Lillehammer, Norway, when he was sixteen years of age. Pete lived in North Dakota at first, getting jobs working for farmers, and eventually moving to the area near Thompson, just south of Grand Forks. Pete worked for a farmer and had an accident that turned him away from farming. Pete was taking a load of hay back to the farm from the hayfield, driving a team of workhorses, when the horses broke into a run and would not surrender to Pete’s control. The runaway team raced through the fields and ran into the open barn door at top speed, throwing Pete off the hay wagon and into their harnesses.

He miraculously avoided serious injury, but he felt he had “had enough” of farming after the incident. The close brush with death made him hate farming.

So, at age twenty, Pete left the farm and North Dakota and moved to Minneapolis. He joined the congregation at Ebenezer Lutheran Brethren Church and worshipped there with his fellow Norwegian Americans. It was at Ebenezer church that he met Hulda, who had come from Colfax, Wisconsin, at age seventeen to get a job cleaning houses. At that stage in his life, Pete was said to be quite a romantic who enjoyed playing the guitar and the harmonica, taking some music lessons in Chicago. He “traveled about a little bit with his guitar and his music,” performing Gospel songs, before he and Hulda got married and started a family.

Pete’s job was in a peanut butter factory, putting lids on the peanut butter jars. He did this job all of his working life.

His basic character changed as he got older; “he became very sedate, very quiet.”

Pete and Hulda became parents for the first time when Jim was born in 1932. Later, they had two daughters, Elsie and Karen, and then another son that they named Phillip.

Everyone called James Wold by the nickname “Jimmy” when he was young. Jim was a “very good student, and his teachers adored him,” for they “just thought that he was a very good boy.”

Jim was a paperboy, delivering the Minneapolis Daily Times, (a paper no longer in existence), and he was so good at his work and had such a bright smile, cheerful countenance, and appealing presence that the newspaper featured him in a fifteen-page training brochure for new paperboys. The fourteen photos in the booklet show Jim striding confidently down the street with a bag of carefully rolled newspapers; Jim conscientiously placing a copy of the Times inside a screen door; Jim counting up his collections and profits; Jim grinning as he displays the prizes won for increased sales; Jim listening attentively as his route supervisor explains a new promotion for newspaper sales; and Jim astride his bicycle gazing into a rosy future of Times news-hawking.

Jim’s family “lived close to Wold Chamberlain Field,” the major airport for Minneapolis in those days, “and so he would sit on his front stoop and watch the airplanes land.”

Fascinated by all things in aviation, Jim Wold “wanted to fly since he had been a little boy.” Growing up near an airport with the Wold name in its title may have been a spark of that inspiration to fly.

Jim and his family attended Ebenezer Lutheran Brethren Church, and there, Jim became fast friends with Dan

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Stenoien, the pastor’s son, and with Ray Seaver. Jim was the oldest of the trio, Ray was a year younger, and Dan was two years younger than Jim. Both Ray and Dan went away to high school at Hillcrest Lutheran Academy. Jim wanted to attend Hillcrest because his two best friends were there, but he did not attend until his junior year, because his parents could not afford more than two years of schooling for him in a private academy.

In Jim’s first days at Hillcrest, he helped other newlyarriving students carry their suitcases up the hill and into the dormitory. One of those he helped was a new girl named JoAnne Norheim, daughter of the radio preacher Rosenius Norheim, of Pasadena, California.

James Wold, Minneapolis Daily Times Newspaper Delivery

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At camp, Jim Wold and Betty Klucken joined JoAnne Norheim and Donny Minchinton for a moonlight rowboat ride along the shoreline after ‘lights-out’ time. Their actions were innocent enough, but they all got caught.

JoAnne was one of those preacher’s kids who had a knack for getting into plenty of trouble. Her father punished her by making her go directly to their family cabin after the evening service, and she was “banished from hanging out” with the other kids—her only communication with Jim and her other friends came by means of chatting through the screen door of the cabin.

The two young people had met once before, at Bible Camp in Alexandria, Minnesota, on the shores of Lake Geneva, where the Lutheran Brethren Church rented an Assembly of God camp. Jim was fourteen and JoAnne was thirteen at the time, and JoAnne’s father was the featured speaker of the week at the camp.

Midway through Jim’s junior year and JoAnne’s sophomore year, Jim and JoAnne renewed their earlier acquaintance, starting with “talking in the hallway.” By wintertime, the two were “going together,” and one evening they “sat together at a basketball game in downtown Fergus Falls,” as JoAnne later recalled, “and he walked me home and we stopped and had an ice cream at the bus depot. By the time we got to the school the front door was locked and so the dean had to come down and let us in.”

JoAnne was vivacious and pretty and lively. She was just so likeable, for she had the natural ability to talk to anybody and become an instantaneous friend. She was always the ringleader for finding fun things to do.

JoAnne was so musically talented that she stood out from the crowd—she had been singing solos, duets, and quartets on a national chain of radio stations on her father’s Lutheran Gospel Hour program since she was five years old. She was so easy to like.

The teens were in trouble because they had walked home together from a ball game without getting permission from the deans, who considered the ice cream stop to be a date.

JoAnne could not date because she was not yet sixteen years old. The rules at Hillcrest in the early 1950s were very strict, as JoAnne recalled later. There was to be no card playing, and there were to be “no movies, of course, and no smoking, of course.” And dating was restricted, but sparks of romance could never be extinguished by the school rules.

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After the outing, JoAnne was “campused”—restricted from leaving the Hillcrest campus—for a full six weeks.

Jim, who was older, and who therefore should have known better, was sent home for two weeks for the rules violation.

Jim came back to Hillcrest after his two-week exile and picked up right where he had left off. He was the star student and graduated as valedictorian of his senior class.

Jim played basketball and baseball, which were mostly intramural sports at that time, but when the Hillcrest teams played informal games against athletes from other towns, they became known as the “Comets.”

Jim and JoAnne continued to see each other as boyfriend and girlfriend during this time, for each had found the love of their lives. After Jim graduated from Hillcrest Academy in 1950, he gained acceptance to Augsburg College in Minneapolis. JoAnne still had a year left of school at Hillcrest.

Jim did not like Augsburg, however, and after completing his first year, he left college to become a country school teacher in South Dakota, with another of his Hillcrest friends named Marvin Johnson, living in the Johnson’s home. At that time, high school graduates with a year of college work were considered qualified to teach the younger grades of school. But this venture lasted for only several weeks when Jim came to know that school-teaching was not for him, and he went back to Minneapolis to work for an electric company, putting up electric high wires.

Again, this work did not suit him. Jim worked there for just a couple of weeks, because the workers were “just such a rough group of people.” Throughout all his time there, Jim was uncomfortable with the work situation, and at that time, he began to better understand what he wanted to do with his life. When he was again at his parents’ home, he could hear the roar of the aircraft at Wold-Chamberlain Field, and he felt the call of the air. He “then realized how much he wanted to fly.”

Jim’s “fascination with airplanes led him to enlist in the Air Force as a private” in January of 1951, and he attended basic training in Texas. Before he left, his father wanted to give him a gift of a verse from the Bible to remember as he went off to the military on an uncharted path. He read from Psalm 91: “ For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone (verses 11-12, KJV).”1 Jim’s father also gave him a verse from Psalm 31: “But I trusted in thee, O Lord: I said, Thou art my God. My times are in thy hand…” (verses 14-15a, KJV).

Jim took his basic training one day at a time, and he persevered. With his excellent study skills, he qualified for the Air Force Intelligence branch, which involved a year of college classes. The Air Force sent him to college at Syracuse University, where he studied the Russian language. This changed his life, giving him a vital Cold War language skill, and his excellent grades helped him get right into flight school. He spent a year in Moultrie, Georgia, and then in Greenville, Mississippi.

Jim and JoAnne continued to correspond. When Jim had completed flight school, he proposed marriage, and JoAnne said “yes.” And so they were married. Besides being a good husband, Jim told JoAnne that he had three career goals for his life. He said, “I’m doing three things; I’m going to become a general, I’m going to the moon, and I’m going to be governor of Minnesota.” JoAnne responded by saying, “Oh, that’s nice,” and she laughed at his audacity.

Immediately, Jim began flying B-25 bombers, and “it was very exciting for him,” as JoAnne remembers it, for it was one of his first steps toward his goals.2 Jim Wold’s Air Force career accelerated. He was assigned to a reconnaissance squadron in England, where he flew the RB-45C Tornado, the first multi-engine reconnaissance bomber the Air Force used in Cold War missions in the skies over East Germany, at that time the Communist portion of Germany. JoAnne was then pregnant with their first child, and she gave birth to a daughter, whom they named Chris. While Jim was stationed at Skilthorp Royal Air Force Base in the northeast part of England, Jim and JoAnne had their second child, a boy they named Kevin.

Jim got reassigned to receive more education, gaining admission to the University of Michigan, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from 1956 to 1958. It was there in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that their third child was born, their daughter Lisa. Then came an assignment to Mountain Home, Idaho, in 1958, and Jim and JoAnne had a fourth child, whom they called Holly.

Jim then got an assignment to the missile command system at March Air Force Base, located at Riverside, California, where they resided for three years.

In 1964, the rapid promotions for pilot Jim Wold continued as he gained admittance to the Air Force Institute of Technology in Dayton, Ohio, to study for his master’s degree in Aeronautical Engineering. It was a “very difficult course” spanning two years of study, and Jim “was very busy, he really studied,” recalled JoAnne.

The Air Force next assigned him to duty in the Pentagon, where Jim joined a team of engineers “to develop night vision capability for pilots in Vietnam,” for the Vietnam War posed new challenges for the US military and for the nation as a whole. The two-year project was accomplished while Jim, JoAnne, and their four children lived in nearby Arlington, Virginia.

Jim Wold, in a move that puzzled his wife, then volunteered to serve a tour of duty in the Vietnam War in 1969. The Air Force was in need of pilots, and Jim answered the call of duty. JoAnne and the family stayed in Minneapolis with Jim’s folks. The day Jim left for Vietnam was a whole day of tears for JoAnne, who did not know if he would even come back—this was combat, and combat in one of the more difficult jungle war zones in which the US military has ever participated.

As part of Jim’s six months of preparation, he went to gunnery school and then endured weeks of survival training in the most tropical part of Florida. There, his body and mind were put to the test in conditions that would be similar to those experienced in South Vietnam.

Humid and hot weather combined with twisted tropical vegetation to create the conditions that resembled the potboiler into which these pilots could fall if their planes

FOOTNOTES 1

“ James W. Wold,” North Dakota Supreme Court News, www.court.state.nd.us, accessed on August 22, 2007; Bible verses in a sermon

by Jim Wold, “Prayer and an Application,” February 18, 2001, typescript in personal papers of JoAnne Wold, Luverne, ND, copy in the possession of the author.

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FOOTNOTES 2

Interview by the author with JoAnne Wold, Cooperstown, ND, February 2, 2010, typescript transcript.

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were to be shot down or fail mechanically and crash. He took training in the ocean to learn the recovery techniques that a pilot would need to know if his plane would be downed in the ocean, and especially if he had to bail out into the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam.

In Spokane, the Air Force trainers gave him instruction in techniques to survive in a Communist prison if the enemy captured him. Jim had to endure time spent in a little box that simulated something of the claustrophobic feeling of imprisonment by cruel captors. He was crammed into a box so small that his body barely fit inside, and he was then “left there for twenty-four hours with no food or water . . . nothing.”

Finally, on the last leg of his training journey, in the Philippines, Jim Wold received training in how to live in the jungle for a week on his own without supplies. He learned how to find food and live off the land in the tropical zone where danger lurked in the dark reaches of the forest, and where torturous heat and humidity tested the limits of endurance of any man.

And Jim Wold always learned his lessons well. Vietnam was a testing ground for all Jim had learned during his many stopping points in life. His schoolboy days were over, but the lessons he had learned in his Bible classes back at Hillcrest Academy brought him hope and comfort in all of the stresses of the combat zone into which he had flown.

Jim Wold was the pilot of an A-1H Skyraider, and was the commander of a whole flight of the Skyraiders.

The Skyraider was a strange sort of aircraft. It was not designed to out-turn or out-maneuver any other fighter plane in the world; it was designed to fly slow and

powerfully. Nicknamed the SPAD, it was a propellerdriven plane. It was a plane that could fly as low and as slowly as was needed in order to fly cover for troops on the ground or guard a landing zone for helicopters. Because the choppers needed a clear space in which to deliver troops, the Communist North Vietnamese troops and the guerrilla Viet Cong soldiers merely had to direct their fire into the restricted space of a small, cleared-out landing zone. This meant that the enemy had concealment and the US soldiers were out in the open. The AH1 Skyraider was designed to be one of the equalizers, to make an advantage out of a disadvantage.

The Skyraider performed well because it was loaded to the gills with weaponry, and it was stocked particularly well with napalm bombs. These jellied gasoline bombs burned everything in the plane’s wide explosive path. “Its job was to put out ground fire…so it attracted enemy fire,” rather than trying to avoid it. These were the close air support missions.

Another mission for pilot Jim Wold was to search for downed helicopters and planes and to fly cover over lost pilots so that rescue helicopters could locate and lift the pilots, crews, and soldiers to safety. These were Wold’s search-and-rescue missions.

1969 was a critical year for the US forces in South Vietnam, for a new President was in office, Richard Nixon. Nixon had campaigned on an implicit promise to end the war in order to gain “peace with honor.” The problem for the United States was that the North Vietnamese had stepped up the pace of infiltrating North Vietnamese Army regulars into South Vietnam through the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which stretched through Laos and Cambodia. That meant that

The Wold Wedding Announcement from Their Local Newspaper

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Jim Wold would be in the skies over either South Vietnam or Laos. However, Laos was a neutral nation, and that meant fighting there would be escalating the war to a wider scale than ever before. President Nixon and the US military conducted the air war over Laos on a secret basis.

Their superior officers told all pilots that if they were shot down over Laos, their families would be told only that they were missing in action and would not be told the specifics of where they had been downed. All this was to avoid international attention for the expansion of the war into striking North Vietnamese bases and personnel in Laos.

Jim Wold’s first base was at Pleiku, where he was the “Commander of Detachment A of the 56th Special Operations Wing” in South Vietnam. For five months, he was “right on the border with Laos in the high mountains, or the Highlands, as they called them.” In his 365-day tour of duty, he flew 241 missions, when even one mission could be his last. He was a major when he arrived; he was in command of other pilots and responsible for their flights and lives. And on Jim Wold’s first mission, his wingman was shot down and killed. This was a pilot who had traveled to Vietnam with Jim all the way from Minneapolis, and the two men knew each other well. Each mission held this same danger, because the job of the A-1H Skyraider was to attract enemy fire, and on each combat mission, Jim came back to his base with enemy bullet piercings on his aircraft.3

for him to carry out his mission of intercepting the flow of ammunition from Laos into South Vietnam, carried by water buffalo. The water buffalo were the beasts of burden for the peasants there, much like a mule or a donkey in Southern states; or they were for food, like beef cattle in Minnesota. The Viet Cong had long strings of water buffalo lined up single-file to carry ammunition, and the first time Jim had to machine-gun them to death was a “big shock” to him. “He didn’t mind it after a while,” as he realized that using water buffalo was a military ploy of the Viet Cong.

Jim learned firsthand the military maxim that a combat fighter pilot’s life consisted of “long hours of boredom interspersed with moments of stark terror” when enemy guns were trained upon his Skyraider plane.4 Because the US military leadership wished to keep quiet its missions over Laos, there were times when Major Jim Wold was called upon for another sort of mission— to destroy evidence of US presence in Laos. One such mission became unforgettable for Jim Wold. As he told it, it was a life-defining day. His own words tell the story best:

The culture of Vietnam was vastly different from Minnesota, and Jim had to overcome some feelings within himself while flying combat missions. It was “shocking”

“I had not been in-country very long . . . [I] was still getting used to flying that airplane under those conditions of mountainous terrain and bad weather.

We had been scrambled, my flight leader and I as his wingman, to destroy an Army UH-1 (Huey) helicopter that had been shot down. It had crashed on the top of a grassy knoll, or hill. The helicopter was already destroyed, but there were papers left in it that were not to be allowed to fall into the hands of the North

The airplane bottomed out from the dive, and it seemed to me that I was literally down in the weeds as it leveled out to where I could begin to gain altitude.

And so I lived. God heard me in my helplessness.”

Vietnamese. Our job was to set it on fire so that the papers would be burned.

We were using rockets and our guns. . . . Now the steeper the dive, the more accurate you are with both guns and rockets. The downed helicopter was a pretty small target, and we had to be accurate. So after we had trolled the area and it seemed that no one was going to be shooting at us, we rolled in on the target. On my first pass, I was steep. Too steep, in fact, and at that speed as I pulled back on the stick I found myself on the edge of a stall. That means you are trying to change your elevation too abruptly, the air passing over the wings then becomes turbulent, and when you lose that smooth airflow over the wings, you lose your lift, and the airplane quits flying.

Now if you have lots of altitude, [if you] are several thousand feet up, a stall is not necessarily of great concern. But when you roll in on the target from a couple thousand feet, line up, fire your rockets and guns, and you are diving towards the ground at about 300 knots, or 325 miles per hour, you reach the point in just seconds where you have to begin to pull out of the dive.

As I pulled back on the stick and felt the shudder that precedes a stall, I knew in an instant that I was too low to pull out, I couldn’t pull back any harder without stalling out.

I was absolutely helpless.

All I could do was to yell, ‘God, help me!’

That night, after his return to the flight base, Jim Wold later recalled: “I felt fear that I had never known before or since.”

When he was in the middle of the stall, he “just knew he was going to die,” recalled JoAnne Wold, for “there was no possibility that the stall could have been turned around because of the speed of the dive and where he was and the mountain in front of him.”

And as Jim wrote later, the fear in the night after his close call with death “drove me into God’s word, to Psalm 91, which my dad read to me when I had enlisted in the Air Force some 17 years earlier, the verses where we read: ‘He will give his angels charge over you to keep you in all your ways. They will bear you up in their hands lest you strike your foot against a stone;’ and also Psalm 31: 14-15: ‘But as for me, I trust in Thee, O Lord, I say Thou art my God, my times are in Thy hand.’ And with that I gained a sense of complete peace and quiet within me.”

JoAnne and Jim met in Hawaii just after that life-changing mission when Jim got a twenty-day leave. As JoAnne beheld it, “from that time on, he was a different person, in many ways,” for had known how close he was to death and what a gift from heaven it was that another day had been granted him.

When Jim got home again from Vietnam, it was a deep relief for his wife and family. And upon his return, Jim was

FOOTNOTES 3 4

“ Wold Receives Administration Appointment,” Faith And Fellowship, vol. 61, no. 10, July 21, 1994, 8.

“James W. Wold,” North Dakota Supreme Court News.

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on a fast track to promotion in the Air Force. As a pilot, he had received many combat decorations, “among them six Distinguished Flying Crosses, sixteen Air Medals, and the Bronze Star Medal.”5 In order to achieve his goal to go to the moon as an astronaut, he applied to NASA to become a test pilot on track to join the astronaut program. NASA accepted him for its test pilot program; however, the Air Force did not release him for this duty. Instead, with his background as an aeronautical engineer, he got an assignment to Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, where he served as Chief of the “Test Division for Operational Test and Evaluation of the Minuteman III missile.” It was a very “good move” for his career, even if it did not lead him to the moon, and even though it was only for a year.6 When the Vietnam War was over for the United States in 1973, the Communist leaders of North Vietnam agreed to release the US pilots they had captured and imprisoned throughout the war, in what became known as Operation Homecoming. Jim Wold was assigned to serve in the Pentagon for the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, “personally and professionally involved in the reception

and resettlement” and reassignment of “all senior Air Force Prisoners of War.”7 That prominent duty of helping these men “make the necessary readjustments so that they could resume their lives and their military careers” led to his promotion to Brigadier General. At age 41, this made him “one of the five youngest general officers in the Air Force up to that time.”8 His superiors in the Air Force and in the Pentagon chose Jim Wold to become the military attaché in Moscow in the U.S.S.R., having need of the Russian language skills he had acquired early in his career at Syracuse University in upstate New York. The Air Force enrolled both Jim and JoAnne in language school. For him it was a refresher course. For JoAnne, who as the wife of the attaché would be the hostess for a multitude of official receptions and functions at the US Embassy in Moscow, it was a full language course. Jim’s official position was as the “Defense Attaché, and running the Defense Intelligence Agency’s operation there during 1975 through 1977.”9 JoAnne played her role as the general’s wife with verve and gracious hospitality at the many receptions and official functions at the embassy.

FOOTNOTES “James W. Wold,” North Dakota Supreme Court News.

“Wold Receives Administration Appointment,” Faith And Fellowship, July 21, 1994, 8; test pilot in interview by the author with JoAnne Wold, February 2, 2010.

7 “Wold Receives Administration Appointment,” Faith And Fellowship, July 21, 1994, 8; Interview by the author with JoAnne Wold, February 2, 2010.

8 “Wold Receives Administration Appointment,” Faith And Fellowship, July 21, 1994, 8; “Statement By Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (POW/MIA Affairs James W. Wold,” Congressional Hearing of U.S. POW/MIAs in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” House Subcommittee on Military Personnel, www.aiipowmia.com, accessed on August 22, 2007.

9 Interview by the author with JoAnne Wold, February 2, 2010; “James W. Wold,” North Dakota Supreme Court News; “Wold Receives

Administration Appointment,” Faith And Fellowship, July 21, 1994, 8.

5

6

James and JoAnne Wold, Moscow, Russia

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Both Jim and JoAnne got to know some of the dissident artists who were eager to sell their paintings to these Americans from the Midwest. Jim and JoAnne came to understand the oppression felt by these rebels, who wanted to live out their Christian faith publicly in a nation that was officially atheistic. The art showed their dark fear of the police state imposed upon them.

After two years of duty in Moscow, Jim and JoAnne came home to the United States. It was at that point that General Jim Wold decided to retire from the military. After having lived in so many places and on or near so many military bases, the Wolds decided to get back to their roots in the Upper Midwest. JoAnne’s family, the Norheims, had close ties to a farm located midway between Cooperstown and Luverne, North Dakota. The 320-acre farm, situated on the bluffs on the edge of the Sheyenne River Valley, had a beautiful grove of trees as a windbreak, and deer and wild turkeys roamed in and out of the grove.

They built a new addition onto the old farmhouse. They hired Russell Dunker, who had been a friend of Wold’s children when they were neighbors in Virginia, to enlarge the house and feature in the new rooms the many works of art and other artifacts they had brought back from Russia.

Russell made a number of built-in bookshelves to store their numerous art and history books. Russell helped them transform the old farmhouse into a bed and breakfast.

They called it Volden Farm—“Volden” was the long version of the Wold name as it was pronounced in Norway before being shortened in America. The guests enjoyed the sunken living room, which descended toward a massive stone fireplace that was the centerpiece of the inn. Visitors to the Wolds’ place ate their meals at a uniquely designed corner dining table. The table sat beside many windows overlooking shade-trees along the driveway circle, as well as the beauty of the Sheyenne River Valley coulees that sloped a mile downward to the river and meandered snake-like in its oxbows and curves.10 Jim, ever with the inquiring and active mind, determined that he was going to take up the study of law at the University of North Dakota. He did it so that he and JoAnne could live on the farm, with another source of income to supplement his Air Force retirement pay. The first year was difficult for him; he had previously studied as an engineer, but the emphasis of the law courses was on reading rather than experimentation. But even though it was so different from his earlier studies in science and technology, Jim caught on to the rhythm and rhyme of the law, after his initial struggles with legalese. He became the state’s attorney for Griggs County, and also had a private practice.

Finally, there was more time for family, and time for Jim and JoAnne to participate in the lives of their grandchildren. Jim also helped JoAnne host hundreds

FOOTNOTES 10

mail message from Dr. Jim Edwards, theologian, Spokane, WA, to the author, March 16, 2010. Dr. Edwards and his wife Jane got to know the E Wolds in the fall of 1978 when Jim Edwards first came to North Dakota as Professor of Religion at Jamestown College. Over the next nineteen years, until Dr. Edwards left Jamestown College in 1997 to become Professor of Theology at Whitworth University in Spokane, WA, Jim and Jane Edwards and their two children, Corrie and Mark, often visited in the Wold home.

Volden Farm, Sheyenne River Valley

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of couples and families at Volden Farm. He was heavily involved with the Sons of Norway Lodge in Cooperstown, and he became a leader and elder of the Zion Lutheran Brethren Church. Occasionally, he would preach a sermon.

One especially memorable sermon was when he told of his close brush with death when his Skyraider aircraft stalled in the Highlands of Vietnam.

Among his duties at Volden Farm Bed and Breakfast was keeping up the grounds. One of his especial joys was to plant trees to augment his farm grove, and he planted them by the thousands. Another necessary job was mowing the extensive lawn and keeping the driveway road ditches trimmed with a tractor and side-mower. It was in the carrying out of these duties that Jim Wold had another experience of God’s mercy.

In July of 1992, when Jim was sixty years old and had been living and working on Volden Farm for fifteen years, he made a mistake while driving his tractor. Jim was mowing the roadside grass along the quarter-mile-long driveway, as he had done several times each summer for all of those years. He tended to get lost in his thoughts and lose track of time while on the tractor. In fact, just a week before, in late June, he had missed supper while driving the tractor, oblivious to time and hunger and JoAnne’s meal schedule.

She had requested that he be more aware of the time and his responsibilities. He responded by asking her to be sure to come and get him if he was ever late again.

On the evening of July 11, he was late for supper again— but not without reason. What follows is a memorable story of a tractor rollover, best told in the words of Jim Wold himself:

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“At 5:25 a.m. on Saturday, July 11, while I was mowing the ditch out to the mailbox at our farm, our lives were turned upside down. And my C Allis-Chalmers [tractor] was literally upside down with me pinned underneath and lying face down in the only possible space available as near as I could tell—and feel.

I had a very quiet—and hurting—one hour and fortyfive minutes to reflect on a lot of things in my life.

When the dust settled and the engine died of fuel starvation within a few seconds, I took stock of my situation. It took about two seconds of straining to realize I wasn’t going to move the tractor even one millimeter off my back and chest. I had movement in head, arms, and shoulders. My right leg was free, but somehow my left leg was bent up at the knee where I could feel sharp pain, and my foot feeling stuck in place for some reason which I couldn’t see, and the leg otherwise pinned to the ground with a lot of weight on it. I could generally move everything except that foot, which went totally numb within about five minutes.

About twelve inches to the right of my head was the jagged edge of a culvert. And there was a lot of pressure on my chest, so breathing took an effort.

No problem. There was generally a fair amount of traffic on the Hannaford Road which goes past our farm. It was Saturday, there was a big picnic at Luverne, and somebody would soon drive by and see the tractor upside down (and maybe my right leg which I had decided I would wave frantically to help attract attention). Wrong. Forty-five minutes passed and— nothing. Finally I heard a car coming. Up and down goes the good leg, and I am praying (there was a lot of that).

But the car goes by, and I am getting more concerned.

The pressure on the chest is increasing, so I try to dig out as much dirt from under my chest as possible. I can’t reach as far as the sternum where there is most pressure. My mouth feels like cotton, and I start chewing on grass for whatever moisture I can get. The ground is damp from the rains we had the past week or two, and I think, ‘that makes for easier digging.’ But for some reason I do not seem to be making any headway, and the pressure is increasing. Then I realize that the tractor must be slowly settling into the moist ground— and more onto my back.

Now the situation is really getting serious. After another car passed by without any success [in getting their attention], I try to prepare myself mentally for the ultimate. Continuing prayer for JoAnne, kids, twelve grandchildren, friends, neighbors, parents, sisters and brother, relatives—interspersed with loud, angry shouts of ‘God, where are you?’ Until I calm down some and realize that had it not been for God, there were at least six hard, unyielding directions pressing in on all sides of me where I could just as easily have been left lying with a badly broken body, or worse.

After an hour and forty-five minutes, after debating with herself for about ten minutes after supper had been prepared, JoAnne decides to drive out to get me.

A week earlier I had completely missed supper with JoAnne and her folks because I was too preoccupied with mowing the grass, not being too concerned about the time. That had generally been the pattern of our Saturday evenings for the last ten years. We had a nice conversation when I finally got in that evening, the outcome being that if I could not keep track of supper

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time, the next time I was late on a Saturday evening, she would come and get me. And she did.

Never was I so glad to see someone else, although my feeling of relief was considerably tempered by the stricken look on her face as she slammed to a stop and got out of the car. I told her to call . . . our neighbor Vernon Johnson [who rents the Volden Farm cropland]. After about six maneuvers to get the car turned around on our narrow driveway, she sped back to the house.

Vernon and Luella must have been there within ten minutes. With the first stroke of his handyman jack I could take a deep gulp of air, and I knew that all was right with the world. Our guest from Germany, Oliver Knab, pulled me out from under the tractor. Vernon told me the flashing lights of the law enforcement cars and the Cooperstown Ambulance could be seen approaching from across the river. Within minutes I was being examined, placed on a backboard and into the ambulance by our skilled, super EMTs, and rushed to the Cooperstown Emergency Room where for the next couple of hours, in particular, and for the next three days in the hospital our wonderful doctors and medical staff did what they do so well—get hurting people back on the road to recovery.

I had always thought that if a tractor was going to roll, I could jump clear. In my case it rolled before I realized what was happening, even though I had anticipated a hundred times before that if it were going to happen it would be at that particular spot. I had become complacent, and almost another victim of a farm accident that would never have been fully explained.

Not even a broken bone—just mighty sore, and a bad lower left leg.”

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The tractor rollover was akin to the time when his plane had almost stalled—it was Jim’s second close call with death. Such times bring reflection as to God’s watchful providence over us all the days of our lives.

As he was lying on his hospital bed, Jim Wold examined the Scriptures for words that told of his rescue from grievous injury or death. In his Bible, Jim wrote a notation next to the verse Psalm 119:50: “This is my comfort in my affliction, that Your Word has revived me [preserved me alive]” (NASB). He wrote the date and a few words: “July 11, 1992, ‘given me life.’”

Jim’s leg turned black, and he was unsure he would get the full use of it back. When he was able to come home, he “lived on the front porch for a few weeks,” and he had plenty of time to reflect upon his health and his life. He wondered what it meant for him to have survived the tractor rollover. JoAnne well remembered his recovery and the day when he called her to the porch, “Come here, come here, I can wiggle my big toe. I can move it!” As she recalls it, she “couldn’t see that he was moving it but he thought he was.”

Once he got the use of his limb back again, recalled JoAnne, Jim “was ready for the call. He didn’t know what it was going to be, but he knew that there was going to be something extraordinary that his life had been saved for and he said: ‘I don’t know what this means,’ but he was ready.” And JoAnne was ready, too.

When the call came, in January of 1994, it came from a close friend of the Wolds named Gene, who lived in Washington, DC, He said to Jim, ‘There is a job that’s got to be yours. They’re setting up a new office for prisoners of war and missing in action and this is exactly what you need to do. So here is what you do. You get your resume ready and you send it to President Bill Clinton.”

Jim did it. And, afterward, Jim spoke about this mission and its timing, saying: “This is exactly what everything I have done in my life has prepared me for.” Jim Wold traveled to Washington, DC, for an interview, and shortly thereafter, he was appointed by President Clinton to head the office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Prisoners of War/Missing in Action and the Director of the Defense POW/MIA Office.

Since the official end of the Vietnam War in 1973, the Defense Department had an office that worked on the compilation of case files for POWs and soldiers missing in action, but it was a disjointed effort frustrated by lack of cooperation by the Communist Vietnamese, who made Vietnam one nation in 1975 after the fall of Saigon and South Vietnam. Jim Wold led a united effort with authority to accomplish the mission. It started with the missing from the Vietnam War and expanded to include the POWs and MIAs from the Korean War (1950-1953) as well. There were over 8,100 Americans still missing from the Korean Conflict.11

James and JoAnne Enjoying a Summer Barbeque

FOOTNOTES 11

“James W. Wold,” North Dakota Supreme Court News.

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The work entailed negotiations with Vietnam and North Korea to examine crash sites for aircraft in which the pilots and crew were considered missing in action, and to examine the records of all unrepatriated prisoners of war.

Forensic scientists went to the crash sites to identify any possible remains of the aircrews, and investigators visited the prison sites and examined prison records in order to trace the ultimate fate of those who were lost in both wars.

It was a massive effort to “search for the fullest possible accounting of missing Americans from all previous wars.”12 Within the United States, General James Wold traveled extensively to meet with family members of those who were missing, and he began to build bridges of reconciliation to those families who felt that their government had betrayed them by not fully disclosing the files of their loved ones, and who had neglected them by not doing more in their behalf. Many of these families held anger directed toward the US military or US government over the conduct of the Vietnam War.13 Jim Wold’s way of helping them overcome their anger was to write letters of invitation to these families in every region of the United States, and to then hold meetings in a large city in each region, such as in Santa Monica, Seattle, San Francisco, or San Antonio. Each family was informed that their particular case had an expert who was in charge of that individual investigation, and were assured that investigator would be there at the meeting to answer their questions.

Twenty or thirty people came to each of the many meetings, and Jim Wold brought every staff member who had worked on the various case files. Those files would then be shared with the concerned members of the family.

The meetings helped bring closure to families who had suffered from their loved ones being listed as “missing in action,” and who had suffered even more as time did nothing to relieve their ordeal.

And the experiences of Jim Wold in wartime and peacetime, as well as in his Bible studies and his life, helped many to deal with their loss. The families trusted Jim Wold to do his best to help them. His personality helped them, for he was “so low key and yet so earnest” in his desire to bring closure to these stories.

It was not a complete success in that not all of the family members of those missing in action found peace and rest in their souls, and some carried their resentment and regret for the rest of their lives. Regardless, Jim Wold believed that this was the work that he was to do, for he had helped in rescue missions of his fellow pilots during the Vietnam War, and he knew the sorrow of losing those who flew beside him in Skyraiders in the Highlands of Southeast Asia. He knew the sacrifices that military families were often called to make, and he had a sense that his own wife and children could very well have been called upon to mourn his loss if he had died in 1969 instead of having lived. General Wold worked on the MIA cases from 1994 to 1997, and brought great progress to the effort.

After that work was done, Jim resumed his life at Volden Farm and continued to practice law from his little office at the farm. The focus for Jim and JoAnne Wold was on the lives of their children and grandchildren. Jim had a goal of taking each of their fourteen grandchildren to Colorado and giving each a tour of the US Air Force Academy. He had taken seven of the grandchildren there, and Peter, who was the son of Dwight and Chris Dyrud of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, was the one who most enjoyed the trip, and who was deeply interested in going to school at the Academy. When Jim and JoAnne would take the grandkids on trips to or from Minneapolis, they would stop at Hillcrest Academy so their grandchildren could feel what their Grandma and Grandpa had experienced, walking up the front steps by the entrance to “hear the echoes,” and seeing the graduation photos on the walls of the hall by the front office.

Jim Wold had a profound influence on his grandchildren, for five of them joined the military—three in the Air Force and two in the Army, with one serving in the Iraq War. Peter, an exceptionally good student, gained admittance to the Air Force Academy, became a pilot, and was qualified for aerial search-and-rescue, just like his grandfather.

Jim was especially faithful in praying for his family. “He was a man who got up at 4:30 every morning,” JoAnne said. “He always an early riser and the longer he lived the more definite it was—it was always 4:30 every morning, no matter what. He made himself a pot of coffee and sat in his big old comfortable recliner chair in the corner of the music

room. And he sat there and he read the Bible and he prayed.

And he prayed for his grandchildren and he had a burden for the Cooperstown community. And he would read and he would pray until seven o’clock,” when he would bring a cup of coffee upstairs for JoAnne and wake her up.

Jim taught a number of Bible study classes in the Zion church. Active in Officer’s Christian Fellowship while in the military, a “large organization that crosses all church boundaries,” he had participated in a multitude of Bible studies while in the military, and he shared this bounty of in-depth study with the Cooperstown church.

Jim and JoAnne enjoyed discussing deep matters of faith with friends, especially with theologian Jim Edwards, at that time a professor at nearby Jamestown College. They and their friends would sit together in the evenings by the fireplace in the sunken living room. According to Professor Jim Edwards, Jim “brought a depth of experience in international affairs” and a “level of informed intellectual integrity to Cooperstown that was unusual, and widely appreciated.” Jim and JoAnne, together, “were magnets of an intellectual and cultural life that was combined with love of the land.” The comfortable couches around the crackle of the fireplace was a manifestation of the Wolds’ desire to create “a place where books were read and discussed; where Christianity was discussed from a critical perspective, but a faith perspective; where the significance of Christianity for larger societal issues was discussed.” Russia was often a central topic, as well.

FOOTNOTES 12 13

“James W. Wold,” North Dakota Supreme Court News.

“James W. Wold,” North Dakota Supreme Court News.

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General and Mrs. Wold established “a space for the whole person—mind, soul, and body—on the severe but beautiful prairie of Cooperstown, North Dakota.” Volden Farm was the “locus of countless meetings and discussions on wonderful and heady subjects.”14 The Wolds “once invited a couple of professors from the Lutheran Brethren Seminary in Fergus Falls to a dinner,” recalled Edwards, and the professors, joined by Professor Edwards, “discussed Reformed and Lutheran theology until late in the night by the fire pit.” Such discussions happened often at the Wolds’ place, and were uncommon in their liveliness and warmth.

The Wolds were quite an interesting couple to be operating a bed and breakfast located in a quiet area ninety miles from the busy city of Fargo. Jim’s high standing as a general and JoAnne’s natural ability as a hostess made them quite a pair, for their personalities were so different, yet complementary. As described by their friend Jim Edwards, their contrasts stood out: “JoAnne was the extrovert, par excellence, and Jim was quieter, more subdued, the anchor player in the family and marriage. Jim was articulate, but not verbose; he was interested in and conversant on a wide range of topics, and enjoyed both listening and speaking, but he was not a jabberer or small talker, per se. By temperament and training in the military he was measured, thoughtful, and

careful. He was used to conflict and stress, and was unruffled by either. He was the perfect, and necessary, ballast to JoAnne, who was wildly gregarious and effervescent.”

In their extended family, Edwards also noted, JoAnne was the “matriarch of the clan in many respects, but I think most people knew that Jim was the solid, final rock in the marriage and clan.”

Such observations and events were of the time that turned out to be the twilight of Jim’s years. When he was seventy years old, in January of 2003, Jim was taken terribly sick on Friday the 17th, while driving home to Volden Farm from Bismarck, where he had participated in the States’ Attorneys annual meeting. He had gotten nearly halfway home when a severe wave of pain struck him suddenly, and he could not continue driving. He pulled over to the side of the highway and called 911, but it took 45 minutes for the ambulance to come to him. The medical team took him to the Jamestown Hospital, where he called JoAnne and told her that he had pancreatitis, and that though it would take some time for him to recuperate, he would likely be better

by Tuesday. He told her that she didn’t have to bother to come see him, because he couldn’t talk anyway as the pain was too severe. JoAnne did not go to Jamestown that night, but went the next morning, and Jim “was in terrible pain the whole day, pushing the morphine button” in order to get relief. They talked very little due to his condition.

FOOTNOTES 14

ere and below, email message from Dr. Jim Edwards, theologian, Spokane, WA, to the author, March 16, 2010; Interview by the author with H JoAnne Wold, February 2, 2010.

James and JoAnne at the Family Farm

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JoAnne returned home that day and then came back to Jamestown after receiving a call from Jim’s doctor. The doctor told her that Jim had gone into renal failure, and that she should come right away and plan to stay overnight.

When she got there, recalled JoAnne later, it was “the last that we talked together, a little in the morning, too, but not much, the condition was just so painful for Jim.” He had to be transferred by helicopter airlift to the Meritcare Hospital in Fargo, as his blood pressure was severely low.

There, he was placed on life support.

The next morning, a doctor took JoAnne and her daughter Chris, who was with her, into a special family room, where he said to JoAnne, “Your husband is as sick as a man can get, call all the children and all the family to come home and see him.” The family gathered in Fargo. The Wolds’ grandson Peter traveled from the Air Force Academy, wearing his uniform. All of them had time only to say their goodbyes. The pancreatic failure led to a total breakdown of Jim’s body, and he passed away on February 11th, after having been unconscious for several weeks.

Jim Wold had lived in a manner that showed the he was reconciled with God through Christ. And he had lived his life in a way that he was not afraid to die, being assured of eternal life. The tractor rollover in 1992 made him, according to his friend Professor Jim Edwards, “clearly aware that he had been very close to death, and I think it caused him both to be grateful for his life, and also to prepare for his death.”15

The funeral for Jim Wold was in Cooperstown at Zion Lutheran Church. Pastor Mark Erickson gave the invocation prayer, and Pastor Robert Overgaard, the former president of the Church of the Lutheran Brethren of America, delivered a scripture reading and meditation. The Psalm for the day was the one that Jim’s father had given to Jim when he joined the Air Force, with the promise that: “If you say, “The Lord is my refuge,” and you make the Most High your dwelling, no harm will overtake you…For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone (Psalm 91:9-12). And it ended with the verse: “I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him. With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation” (Psalm 91:15-16).

Pilot Jim Wold had relied on Almighty God to guide him through his life, his marriage, and his homes in many places, as well as during 1969, his most trying year, when he had served in Vietnam. Jim had put his faith in the Lord to help him get through war and his own fears. In his Bible, he had put stars as notations beside the words of Psalm 56, verse 3, “When I am afraid, I will put my trust in Thee” (ASV).

“When I think I’m goin’ under, part the waters, Lord.

When I feel the waves around me, calm the sea.

When I cry for help O hear me, Lord, and hold out your hand.

Touch my life, still the raging storm in me.”16

Jim’s grandson Pete Dyrud, wearing his Air Force uniform, gave a reading of the classic poem “High Flight,” which tells of the soaring exhilaration of aviation: “Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wing . . . sunward I’ve climbed . . . and done a hundred things you have not dreamed of . . . . high in the sunlit silence . . . . I’ve chased the shouting wind along.”

The poem ends with a correlation of flight with faith: “And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod the high untrespassed sanctity of space, put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”

FOOTNOTES 15

Part the Waters, by Charles F. Brown, text of a song that Jim Wold pasted into his Bible.

mail message from Dr. Jim Edwards, theologian, Spokane, WA, to the author, March 16, 2010; Interview by the author with JoAnne Wold, E February 2, 2010.

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FOOTNOTES 16

Charles F. Brown, Part the Waters, Word Music, Nashville, TN, 1975.

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CHAPTER

SIXTEEN THE LEGACY OF E.M. STROM 1969

Erwin Martinius (E.M.) Strom

CHAPTER 16: THE LEGACY OF E.M. STROM — 1969

“The branch can never grasp the meaning of the whole tree.”

H

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

illcrest Lutheran Academy has a long history, dating back to its founding in 1916, and continuing to the present day. The Lutheran Bible School had an even longer history, dating back to its establishment in 1903. Through the years, leaders of the schools have had different talents and emphases. The founder, E.M. Broen, had a vision for the mission of Lutheran Brethren Schools. Broen did his work for the schools faithfully until his death in 1938. However, the Broen family did not continue to have a close relationship with the school or synod after Pastor Broen’s death.

Broen was the visionary who started the Bible School and high school, but a larger sense of continuity and permanence for Hillcrest Academy came from E.M. Strom and his family. Strom was the second major leader in the Lutheran Brethren educational system, and was the one who served the longest of all the presidents of Hillcrest Academy, starting as a teacher in 1919 and continuing for thirty-nine years as a teacher or administrator to 1963.1

Erwin Martinius Strom, born in Benson, Minnesota, was of the second generation of Norwegian-Americans in Minnesota. Born on April 24, 1891, to immigrants, he did not know Norway’s fjords and mountains and forests as his father, Edward, had. He knew the prairies and cornfields of Swift County in western Minnesota while growing up.2 E.M. Strom learned Norwegian at home, and also learned English as a boy. Edward Strom worked in Benson as a “day laborer,” according to census records. Erwin was the eldest child; then came a brother and two sisters (Robert, born 1893; Mabel, born 1894; and Annie, born 1898).

Their mother died in 1898; their father Edward Strom, at age thirty-four, then married twenty-four-old Maria, who had been born in Norway and had immigrated to the United States in 1876 with her family. Edward and Maria then had two other children (Henry, born in 1898, and a daughter).

Erwin Strom with Friends in the Streets of Grand Forks, 1920's

FOOTNOTES “ Reverend Strom Served Schools For 39 Years,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, May 6, 1969, 3; technically, it was more like thirty-four years, for he spent five years away from the school as a pastor.

2 U.S. Census 1920, Swift County, MN, city of Benson, p. 26.

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When E.M. Strom was a child, he contracted rickets, due to a lack of vitamin D and calcium. He lived with his grandparents for a period of time during his illness, which was marked by a weakness of the bones.3 Strom got his elementary education in the Benson public schools, and then he enrolled at the recently established Bible School of the Lutheran Brethren Church in Wahpeton. Strom began school there in 1909 and had Pastor E.M. Broen as his teacher for many classes.4 Erwin Strom graduated from the Bible School in 1914, and was among three outstanding students who were chosen by synod leaders to pursue further education in theology in order to become Bible School teachers. However, the financial aid program was controversial within the synod and was not repeated.5

Strom received an investment from his church and gained a wide-ranging and useful education. He studied theology at Chicago Lutheran Seminary in Illinois from 1914 to 1917; then at Red Wing Seminary in Minnesota from 1917 to 1918; and finally at Augsburg Seminary in Minneapolis from 1918 to 1919.6 As agreed, Strom began teaching at the Bible School and Academy, in its Grand Forks location, in the fall of 1919.

Strom taught Bible classes, psychology, and pedagogy (principles of teaching) in his first year, and also took undergraduate classes at the University of North Dakota in order to gain status as a certified teacher.7 E.M. Strom gained ordination as a pastor, having served as pastor at Kenyon, Minnesota, while attending Augsburg Seminary. He was then called to Bethel Lutheran Brethren

FOOTNOTES une Strom Soholt, interview by David Strom, Fergus Falls, MN, August 13, 2012; notes in the possession of the author.

J M.E. Sletta, “A Farewell to My Friend, E.M. Strom,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 36, no. 11, June 5, 1969, 4.

5 Joseph H. Levang, The Church of the Lutheran Brethren: 1900-1975 (Fergus Falls: Lutheran Brethren Publishing Company, 1980), 101-103, 130; “Rosters of Graduates, 1907-1921,” Lutheran Brethren Bible School Records, University of North Dakota Special Collections, #649-1-1, Box 1, p. 2.

6 Levang, History of the Lutheran Brethren Church, 130; June Strom Soholt, a daughter of E.M. Strom, indicates that E.M. Strom had a major health problem in the time of his seminary training, and there were also theological controversies between different Lutheran synods and their seminaries: “During this time, E.M. Strom suffered a ruptured appendix, and was hospitalized for some time in Minneapolis at the Deaconess Hospital (my brother, Everald, and I were both born in the same hospital). Before he completed his education at Red Wing, he was asked to leave the seminary because he was serving the Lutheran Brethren Church in Kenyon, MN. They did allow him to transfer his credits on to the Augsburg Seminary, however, so he did not have to repeat classes as far as we can determine.” [June Strom Soholt, interview by David Strom, Fergus Falls, MN, August 13, 2012.]

7 Lutheran Bible School, Grand Forks, North Dakota, General Catalogue, Announcements for 1920-1921, in “General Catalogs, 1920-1924, Lutheran Bible School Records,” University of North Dakota Special Collections Library, Grand Forks, ND, #649-1-2, Box 1, 4; Levang, History of the Lutheran Brethren Church, 130.

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Erwin Strom Standing Outside His Grand Forks Home, 1920's

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Church in Grand Forks in 1920. In 1920, the twenty-eightyear-old Strom married Bertha Hanson, who had just graduated from the Bible School the previous year. Her family had a farm near Wahpeton and were members of the Lutheran Brethren Church located there.8 Mr. and Mrs. Strom soon started their family; they had two children— a son, Everald, and a daughter, June.

The teaching career of E.M. Strom eventually encompassed thirty-nine years of lecturing, discussing, writing, grading papers, leading, guiding, encouraging, disciplining, and correcting. Pastor Strom delivered short talks in morning chapel; led prayer meetings in dorms and churches; gave guest sermons in host churches from the East Coast to the West Coast and in the Midwestern churches of the Lutheran Brethren; married young couples; and presided over funerals and burial services. He was both a pastor and a teacher during his career.

But Strom was also an administrator in his tenure of thirty-nine years—serving as president of the Lutheran Brethren Schools when E.M. Broen was gone and after Broen passed away in 1938.

Strom became the public face of Hillcrest Academy (and the seminary and Bible School). And it was a kindly face, framed by snow-white hair for many of his years. Luther Frette, who was just a youngster when he met President Strom, later wrote that he “had never seen a man with

Confirmation of E.M. Strom, 1914 [Front Row (Left to Right): Finn Larsen, Caesar Ask, Lorent Asheim; Back Row: Martin Valderhaug, Gilbert Stenoin, Marie Skovault, Berge Revne, E.M. Strom]

such white hair before.” He looked wise, for he wore eyeglasses that gave him a scholarly look. At first, Strom had eyeglasses that were round and horn-rimmed, much like those of C.S. Lewis, Harry Truman, or Sinclair Lewis.9 E.M. Strom was very short and slender, perhaps from having been ill with rickets when he was a boy. Children who met him for the first time during his many church visits throughout the synod vividly remembered his physical stature, partly because it seemed in contrast with his spiritual stature.10 He seemed to be a living contradiction, for this small man, wrote Luther Frette, had a “deep, clear, and forceful” voice that commanded attention. At the same time, this preacher with the powerful vocal projection had a “warm style” of sermonizing that “enveloped the congregation,” and “people truly listened to this wonderful man of God.” Strom “spoke with such authority” that “each message became a gem of Biblical exposition.”

Pastor Strom had a way of paying attention to young people, as if he could look into the soul of a child and make him or her feel as though he or she was someone who fit right into the Kingdom of God. Strom was a “people person,” wrote Luther Frette, whose “appeal was his personal touch” and who had a “twinkle in his eyes.” In the greeting time after a church service in Grand Forks, recalled Frette, “Suddenly Pastor Strom turned to me and asserted that he wanted to see me at Hillcrest Academy

FOOTNOTES “ Rev. Strom Served Schools for 39 Years,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, May 6, 1969, 3; Hannah Broen Hoff, The Bridge, (Fergus Falls: Lutheran Brethren Publishing Company, 1978), 55.

9 Here and below, Luther Frette, “The David and Jonathan Pair,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 67, no. 10, October, 2000, 8.

10 June Strom Soholt, interview by David Strom, Fergus Falls, MN, August 13, 2012.

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E.M. Strom

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one day,” and his “manner made me realize that he meant what he said . . . [he] really seemed interested in me. . . .

His comment was not just a casual remark. In fact, Pastor Strom repeated the imperative to me on at least one other visit” to the Grand Forks congregation. “Those words,” wrote Luther Frette, “planted a seed in my mind. I began to dream about becoming a Hillcrest student one day.” Frette attended “three nurturing years . . . at Hillcrest Lutheran Academy,” years that “enriched [his] life immeasurably.”

Frette graduated from Hillcrest in 1965.

E.M. Strom contributed a “lifetime of service” to the Lutheran Brethren Schools. Strom was “pre-eminently a teacher,” according to church historian Joseph Levang, for he established a “pattern for Gospel-centered, Biblebased teaching and preaching at the Bible School, and indeed, in the Church of the Lutheran Brethren.” Strom was a major factor in “keeping the school and the Synod on solid theological foundations and practices in a time of growing apostasy” and ‘easy grace.’11 Strom’s “psychology classes, mission hours, studies in personal evangelism, exegesis hours in Hebrews, and . . . his devotional Bible studies and his chapel talks, were teaching ministries that opened . . . treasures from the Word and cast new light on God’s dealing with men.”

If there was a difference of opinion, recalled Levang, Pastor Strom “quietly expressed his position based on the Scriptures as he understood them,” and he won over the “argumentative student by godly teaching, unchanging friendliness” so that the “doubter became a loyal supporter

of that very teaching” that he had formerly opposed.12 E.M. Strom taught in Grand Forks at the Lutheran Brethren Schools from 1919 to 1925 before serving as a pastor at Bethesda Lutheran Brethren Church in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Strom and his family were in Eau Claire for five years, from 1925 to 1930.

In the fall of 1930, Pastor Strom returned to Grand Forks to teach at the school there. As written elsewhere in this volume, Strom came in the time of the worst economic storm in American history—the Great Depression. He taught full-time at the school while serving as the fulltime pastor of Bethel Lutheran Brethren Church. It was a struggle to keep the school afloat and to keep his household intact in those hard times.

When the Lutheran Brethren synod considered moving the school from Grand Forks to the building of the bankrupted Park Region Luther College in Fergus Falls in 1935, E.M. Strom had an opportunity to visit the prospective property and look it over. Strom brought his entire family—his wife, Bertha, and young Everald and June—to visit the city and to see the tall red-brick building. The building had been standing empty for three years, and the wooden floor in the front hall “was so warped,” recalled June later, that “it resembled an old washboard.”13

Minnesota. It was unclear if the school had truly left the state of upheaval previously experienced during the earlier Great Depression years. Once again, Strom pastored the local church, Bethel Lutheran, while teaching classes. He also assumed the position of vice president of the schools, assisting E.M. Broen in administering the educational enterprises. When Broen died in Norway in 1938, the synod placed the mantle of responsibility of the school’s presidency upon E.M. Strom. Things did not get any easier for Strom, for the trials of World War II came to the schools, as some students went overseas into battle in the Pacific and European theaters of combat.

It was Strom who presided over the formal naming of Hillcrest Academy in 1948, and it was Strom who supervised the post-World War II stability of Hillcrest and the other Lutheran Brethren schools, as wartime savings could be used to invest in improvements to the buildings, grounds, and facilities of the schools. The 1950s might have seemed like reaching the Promised Land after wandering in an economic desert of Depression and maneuvering through World War II’s trials. Strom taught at the seminary and Bible School until he suffered a severe stroke in 1962, and he formally retired in 1963.14 After the war years, others had taken on the presidency of the Lutheran Brethren Schools. In 1950, Pastor Adolph

A. Pedersen assumed the role of president as E.M. Strom rejoined the faculty. Pedersen, originally from New Zealand, brought his distinctive accent to the role of Lutheran Brethren preacher in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and Grand Forks, North Dakota, before teaching at the seminary. Pederson was president of Hillcrest and the Bible School and seminary through 1955.15 Strom had worked in the schools for a total of thirty-nine years on the faculty and thirteen years as president, while also teaching. In 1964, he was awarded the Lutheran Bible School Golden Alumnus pin, marking the fiftieth anniversary of his Bible School graduation in 1914.16 E.M. Strom’s health declined during his retirement, and he died in his sleep at the Broen Memorial Home on May 4, 1969. And so, the second long-term president of the Lutheran Brethren Schools died in the retirement home named after the first long-tenured president. Strom had lived in the Broen retirement home for three years prior to his death. The preacher at the memorial service at the Broen Memorial Home was Pastor Adolph Pederson, Strom’s successor as president.17 The Lutheran Brethren Synod had built a new seminary building just to the west of the Hillcrest school building, completing it in the year of E.M. Strom’s death. The

E.M. Strom witnessed the renovation of the “washboard” floor and the rest of the big Fergus Falls building, and helped supervise the big move from Grand Forks to FOOTNOTES June Strom Soholt, interview by David Strom, August 13, 2012. “ Heads Bible School,” Austin Daily Herald, October 24, 1950, 11; Omar Gjerness, “A.A. Pedersen, A Prince Among Preachers,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 65, no. 2, February, 1998, 18.

16 “Reverend Strom Served Schools For 39 Years,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, May 6, 1969, 3; “Reverend E. Strom Died Sunday,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, May 5, 1969, 7.

17 “Reverend Strom Served Schools For 39 Years,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, May 6, 1969, 3.

14

FOOTNOTES oseph H. Levang, “E.M. Strom, God’s Gift to Lutheran Bible Schools,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 36, no. 11, June 5, 1969, 5.

J Levang, “E.M. Strom,” 6.

13 June Strom Soholt, interview by David Strom, Fergus Falls, MN, August 13, 2012.

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E.M. and Bertha Strom, 1936 and 1938

E.M. and Bertha Strom's Christmas Card

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building was named “Sletta-Strom Hall,” after Strom and his longtime friend and fellow pastor M.E. Sletta. Sletta and Strom met at the Bible School in 1909, and worked together on church business thereafter. Sletta was a longtime seminary professor and synodical president.18 The Strom name lived on in church history as the name of the seminary building, but it lived on still more significantly through the work of E.M. Strom’s son, Everald Strom. Everald Strom, born on June 7, 1921, grew up “under the church school influence of his father, who taught in Grand Forks when Everald was young. Everald saw the education going on at the Lutheran Brethren Schools as a “work of grace,” and he harbored a “growing longing to one day be numbered among those who could sit in class” under the tutelage of his father and the other faithful teachers there.19 Everald attended his freshman year at the deteriorating high school building on Belmont Drive in Grand Forks.

He was in his sophomore year when the school relocated to Fergus Falls in 1935, and so he saw firsthand how well the big old “Castle on the Hill” building served the student body. Everald later wrote about the “precious days” at the high school when he and his friends had “shared in many wonderful experiences,” especially that a “large percentage of [them] had met God in a new and living

way.” He believed that the “rich background of spiritual training . . . gave stability and the courage of convictions” when “times of crises” arose in later years.20 It was at the Lutheran Brethren High School that Everald met Sylvia Kilde, daughter of John Kilde, the visionary businessman who had helped bring the schools from Grand Forks to Fergus Falls back in 1935. Everald and Sylvia graduated together as part of the Class of 1938.

Sylvia then went away to Minneapolis to earn a degree as a nurse, studying at Fairview Hospital. After gaining her nursing credentials, she and Everald Strom were married on June 5, 1943. Significantly, Everald and Sylvia held their wedding ceremony in the auditorium/gymnasium at Hillcrest, the place where the Crown Prince and Princess of Norway had visited back in 1939. This time, the decorations were for an exchange of wedding vows, not the trappings of royalty. Theirs was the first wedding held in the Hillcrest auditorium, and, according to June Strom Soholt, “there has never been another wedding in the old gym since that time.”21 Everald had felt the call of ministry and attended the Lutheran Brethren Seminary, becoming ordained as a pastor in 1944 and serving churches in Staten Island, New York; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Scarsdale, New York; and Moorhead, Minnesota, in the years from 1944 to 1968.

FOOTNOTES “ New Lutheran Brethren Schools Hall Now Occupied,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, February 26, 1969, 5.

Everald Strom, “It Has Been A Blessing,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 26, no. 10, May 15, 1959, 3.

20 Everald Strom, “It Has Been A Blessing,” Faith and Fellowship, 3.

21 “Everald Strom, 87,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, December 2, 2008, www.fergusfallsjournal.com, accessed August 7, 2012; “Sylvia Strom, 91, of Fergus Falls,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, September 27, 2011, www.fergusfallsjournal.com, accessed August 7, 2012; June Strom Soholt, interview by David Strom, August 13, 2012.

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Sletta Strom Building Construction, 1960's

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After twenty-four years of parish ministry, the synod elected Everald Strom as its president, a position to which he would be elected for five more terms. He would serve as synod president for a total of eighteen years, before his retirement in 1986.22

Erickson, and greatly appreciated interacting with him both outside of class and in choir. Erickson was “open and direct,” recalled Strom, “and showed a real concern for those in the choir, even though he put on a gruff exterior from time to time.”23

The Strom family became important for continuity in the Lutheran Brethren Church, for a small church denomination needed stability and a sense of history. E.M. Strom and Everald Strom helped establish a collective memory for the synod, as well, both having served as editors of Faith and Fellowship magazine.

After graduating from Hillcrest Academy in 1973, David Strom attended Concordia College in Moorhead for his freshman year and then transferred to Fergus Falls Community College for his sophomore year. There, he took vocal lessons from the highly talented Geneva Eschweiler, a St. Olaf graduate influenced by her time in the choir there under the direction of F. Melius Christiansen.

Everald and Sylvia Strom had two sons, Edward and David, both of whom were born when the Stroms lived in Minneapolis. Edward was born in 1950 and David in 1955.

Both sons graduated from Hillcrest Academy and from the seminary in Fergus Falls.

David carried on his grandfather E.M. Strom’s legacy in the Lutheran Brethren Church in a direction that differed from the elder Strom’s path. While E.M. Strom was noted as a speaker and administrator, David Strom was gifted in music. He started playing the piano when he was seven years old, and kept developing his piano-playing abilities from then on.

David attended Hillcrest Academy from grades ten through twelve, for Hillcrest did not have a ninth grade program at that time. He “really liked” choir director John

Strom then transferred to Moorhead State University, where he studied History Education. After his graduation from Moorhead State in 1978, David spent a year traveling and singing all across the United States for the Church Missions organization of the Lutheran Brethren Church.

He played piano and sang for a Gospel music group called the Liberation Singers. Strom was the music director and team leader for the young singers. He spent nine months on the road, driving a big old Dodge fifteen-passenger van and presenting evangelistic services.24 David Strom studied theology at the Lutheran Brethren Seminary, graduating in 1983. While at seminary, he met his wife, Laurie Van Loon, who was an orchestra teacher in the Fergus Falls school system. Strom’s first pastoral call was to Faith Lutheran Brethren Church at Briarcliff Manor

FOOTNOTES “ Everald Strom, 87,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, December 2, 2008; “Reverend Strom Re-Elected L.B. President,” Fergus Falls Daily Journal, June 22, 1977, 7.

23 David Strom, email to Steven R. Hoffbeck, August 17, 2012.

24 Andy Dawkins, “A Man of Music,” HLA Today, vol. 11, no. 9, March 15, 2006.

Erwin Strom

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in New York, where he served as an associate pastor, assisting Pastor Joel Egge. Located in upstate New York, just an hour away from midtown Manhattan in New York City by train, the affluent Westchester County village of Briarcliff Manor offered all of the beauty and history of the Hudson River Valley.

Pastor David Strom was involved with the young adults ministry there, and served as its youth pastor. Mr. and Mrs. Strom also became involved in the music ministry at Faith Church, singing in the choir under Director Dennis Port.

Port became a major influence for David Strom, for Mr. Port was the choir director at nearby King’s College. Port’s musical background included an undergraduate degree and M. Div. degree from Bethel College in Minnesota and a M.A. from the University of Minnesota and a Ph. D. from New York University. Strom observed Director Port’s conducting style and enjoyed the choral literature Port brought to the congregation.25 After being a parish pastor for two years, Strom “felt that God was calling him elsewhere, so he left the ministry” for music studies at the University of Northern Iowa. He earned his Masters in Music Education, with a choral emphasis, graduating in 1987. Strom began in the jazz program for the piano, but found that his calling was more as a choir director than as a jazz artist. He sang in the top choir of choral director Graeme Cowan, who had a

Masters and Doctorate in music from Indiana University, and Dr. Cowan became his musical mentor there. Cowan conducted a mix of secular and sacred music, with the most memorable being Johann Sebastian Bach’s motet “Jesu, Meine Freude.”

Strom wrote his master’s thesis on Johann Sebastian Bach’s music. Strom’s “Analysis of J.S. Bach: Cantata Number 4,” examined the concept of “text painting”— how the Gospel text influenced Bach’s music. The theme of Cantata Number 4 was “Christ lag in todes banden,” translated as “Christ lay by death enshrouded.” Bach was in his early twenties when he wrote the cantata, which told of “Christ’s pain and subsequent victory, the conflict of life and death,” and Strom wrote about how Bach expressed the pain of Christ on the Cross through this music. Bach “employed the most hidden secrets of harmony with the most skilled artistry,” and his melodies were “always varied, rich in invention, and resembling those of no other composer.” Bach wrote “music that was serious, elaborate, and profound,” full of “every intricacy that artistry could produce” in the treatment of how “Christ lay in the chains of death,” but from that “agony came deliverance.” Bach wrote music to be used for the worship of God, “inscribing his scores of sacred music with the letters J.J. (Jesu, Juva: “Jesus, help) at the beginning, and S.D.G. (Soli Deo Gloria: “to God alone the glory) at the end.”26

FOOTNOTES

Erwin Strom

ennis Port “began his teaching and conducting career in 1971 as a high school director of choral music in Cambridge, Minnesota, and also D served for six years at The King's College in New York, where he was named Teacher of the Year in 1987. He joined the faculty at Bethel University in 1995 as conductor of the Bethel Choir and chair of the Department of Music after teaching for eight years at Northwestern College in Roseville, Minnesota.” “Dennis Port,” http://evangelionchorale.org/our-people, accessed September 13, 2012.

26 The New Bach Reader: A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents, ed. Christoph Wolff (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998), 16, 305.

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Strom’s sensibilities about the language of music became enriched by his study of J.S. Bach. Knowing the language of theology from his seminary studies informed his musical education, and his experience in working with young people as a pastor gave him many tools for directing students in a choir.

However, upon his graduation from Northern Iowa in 1987, no choral-directing teaching positions were immediately available. So Strom worked as manager of the Carlson Music Store in Fergus Falls for two years after graduating, selling pianos and musical instruments.

In 1989, Strom returned to the ministry, serving as a pastor in Eagan, Minnesota, at Community of Joy Lutheran Brethren Church. While there, Pastor Strom received a communication from Hillcrest Principal Bill Colbeck, saying that Hillcrest wanted him to come there to direct the choral program. At that time, Erik Vigesaa was in charge of both the band and choir programs, and the school wanted to add Strom to the music faculty. For David Strom, his Fergus Falls connections, his seminary and musical education, and his family heritage came full circle when Hillcrest Academy hired him as its choir director in 1991.27 At Hillcrest, David Strom continued the strong choral tradition of Norwegian-Americans in the Lutheran Brethren Church. Especially noteworthy in the choral line at Hillcrest was C.F. Erickson, who studied under

the direction of acclaimed choir director F. Melius Christiansen (1871-1955) at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, and who began his choral-directing career at the high school and Bible School in 1931. Erickson conducted the Hillcrest choral program from 1931 to 1942; and then from 1955 through 1969. When he retired from Hillcrest in 1969, he was 69 years old.28 The second notable choirmaster was William Windahl, from the Bible School class of 1929, who studied for a bachelor’s degree in music at the MacPhail School of Music in Minneapolis. Windahl taught music and music theory at the Lutheran Brethren Schools from 1932 to 1955; he was the choir director from 1942 to 1955.

John S. Erickson, a Concordia College (Moorhead) graduate in music, assumed the choral director position at Hillcrest from 1969 to 1978. Erickson had been David Strom’s choir director at Hillcrest. John Erickson had studied choral music and had sung in the renowned Concordia Choir under the direction of Paul Christiansen, who carried on the musical traditions of his father, F. Melius Christiansen. “Erickson revered the St. Olaf and Concordia choral tradition,” Strom noted, “and continued to model that approach in his music for the nine years he taught at Hillcrest Academy.”

When David Strom came to Hillcrest as the choir director, he brought his gifts as a pastor to the choral music program at the school. This was a true rarity, for the vast majority

FOOTNOTES

of high school choral directors had earned a bachelor’s degree in music, but had little background in theology.

Few schools could ever have a choir director who had also been a parish pastor and youth pastor. The understanding of human nature, human fallibilities, and spiritual gifts given by God that came from practical experience in ministry made Strom an agent of God’s grace in the lives of his students. As director, he became a shepherd to those in his choir.

Strom greatly enjoyed directing the Hillcrest Choir right away in his first year. He also gave private voice lessons and piano lessons and taught one Bible class as a part of his teaching contract. Pastor Strom often taught a class on the Book of Proverbs, and sometimes taught the Wisdom Literature of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. For some years, he was the teacher for a “Christian Worldview” class.

Director Strom sought to gain a “blended sound” for his choirs, in the St. Olaf College tradition, in that he did not want individual voices to stand out. He did not wish for his singers to strive for a perfect straight tone, without any vibrato in their voices; instead, he had the choir temper their vibrato to fit into a blended whole. For Strom, his choir was to be a “microcosm of the Body of Christ, for everyone has a role to play, all of the singers are important,” and he did not wish to “set up someone as a choral star, for everyone’s voice contributes to the sound of the group.” He viewed choir music as worship, for in a choir, “everyone works together in honoring and praising God,” and he worked to “draw attention to the message in the music.”

And the choir and its music was to be “Christocentric—a reflection on Christ in us and for us.”

In accordance with his theology of choral music, in the fall semester David Strom accepted a large number of students into the choir, including a number of juniors from Norway, and led them through the bass and treble clefs, with harmonious results. The fall choir season culminated in a Christmas concert in the main sanctuary of Bethel Lutheran Brethren Church, a place with the “best acoustics” of any venue in Fergus Falls, according to Strom.

David Strom got more selective with the Spring Choir, because that group went on tour, either in the Midwest, to the West Coast, or to the East Coast. These tours continued a Hillcrest tradition of bus tours by the choir to Lutheran Brethren Churches in other states.

Each year, Mr. Strom directed two choral groups—the large concert choir and a smaller ensemble. The small group was at first called the Choraliers and became called Vocalise (singing a mix of sacred classics and secular vocal jazz). The choir sang spirituals like “Ain’t A-That Good News” and “Ain’t Got Time To Die;” and classic choral numbers, including one each year written by either F. Melius Christiansen or Paul Christiansen. Strom, as a student of J.S. Bach, sometimes had his choir sing Bach’s “All Breathing Life,” and an English translation of “Come, Sweet Death.”

Strom’s spring choir started a tradition in 1994 of singing “Expression of Gratitude,” a composition by David Schwoebel, as the last song at the commencement worship service. The choir “grabbed onto it,” recalled Strom, “as a goodbye song.” The song was based on a New Testament verse: “I thank my God on every remembrance of you” (Philippians 1:3). The choir performed it every year for departing seniors and their families.

“ David Strom,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 58, no. 9, May 8, 1991, 11; “Welcome On Board,” Hillcrest Happenings, Fall, 1991, 3; Andy Dawkins, “A Man of Music,” HLA Today, vol. 11, no. 9, March 15, 2006.

28 Levang, History of the Lutheran Brethren Church, 136; “Erickson to be Honored,” Faith and Fellowship, vol. 36, no. 9, May 5, 1969, 3.

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Hillcrest Academy has had a strong musical tradition, harking back to its founding in 1916, as an expression of the Gospel through hymns and spiritual songs. Through the years, the school sent out quartets and choirs on tours throughout the United States. Four-part singing was a mainstay among the Norwegian-American customs brought to America from Norway and has prospered in Minnesota and in the Upper Midwest. It was a means of expression among Lutherans, who believed, as J.S. Bach wrote, that “the aim and final reason of all music should be nothing else but the Glory of God and the refreshment of the spirit.”29

Out of his unique combination of pastor, teacher, and choir director, David Strom provided his students not only vocal instruction but soul instruction, in keeping with the work of his father and grandfather before him, as a musical branch of the Strom family tree.

One of the best choral pieces ever done by Mr. David Strom’s choir was the heartrending song entitled "Mary Looks Upon Her Child" by Fred Pratt Green.

Ultimately, these twin aims, to glorify God and to refresh the spirits of singers and audience alike, reveal the true measure of a choir director. For Director David Strom, the very nature of his legacy came from the way he led all the voices to collaborate in the beauty of praising God in song.

Strom selected a musical repertoire that refreshed the souls of both those in his choirs and those in the concert halls. His teaching reached posterity through the musical inspiration he instilled in his singers and for the exemplary instruction he had given them in rhythm, melody, and performance, step by step, directing them with the sweep of his arm and through his love and aptitude for music. He gave his students the gift of a lifelong love of music and singing.30

Mary looks upon her child (Birth is a mystery); Her thoughts are deep and undefiled (Love is a mystery); A candle throws its kindly beam (Light is a mystery); Upon a child without a name (Self is a mystery); Soon a sword shall pierce her heart (Pain is a mystery); Love knows the end before we start (Death is a mystery).

O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.

O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, grant us your peace.31

FOOTNOTES ine Arts Society of Indianapolis, “J.S. Bach,” www.fasindy.org/education/composers/bachjs.php, accessed September 18, 2012; The New F Bach Reader: A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998), 16-17; on these pages, the whole quote appears: “The thorough bass is the most perfect foundation of music, being played with both hands in such manner that the left hand plays the notes written down while the right adds consonances and dissonances, in order to make a well-sounding harmony to the Glory of God and the permissible delectation of the spirit; and the aim and final reason, as of all music, so of the thorough bass should be none else but the Glory of God and the recreation of the mind. Where this is not observed, there will be no real music but only a devilish hubbub.”

30 The New Bach Reader: A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998), 320.

31 Fred Pratt Green, Later Hymns and Ballads and Fifty Poems (Carol Stream, IL: Hope Publishing Company, 1989), http://www.hopepublishing. com/html/main.isx?sitesec=40.2.1.0&hymnID=3477, accessed on August 13, 2012.

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“Mary looks upon her child (Birth is a mystery); Her thoughts are deep and undefiled (Love is a mystery); A candle throws its kindly beam (Light is a mystery); Upon a child without a name (Self is a mystery); Soon a sword shall pierce her heart (Pain is a mystery); Love knows the end before we start (Death is a mystery).

O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.

O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, grant us your peace.” 31 "Mary Looks Upon Her Child" by Fred Pratt Green

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