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Unknown age/date. Maybe 16 years old, 1938?
In South Dakota before joining the US Coast Guard / US Navy (WWII) or possibly after his discharge after the war.
Was the photo above possibly taken in front of Myrtle's home in Newell? It would suggest Myrtle was married before Carl left home for the Navy or perhaps this was taken after Carl returned home from the Navy (US Coast Guard --> US Navy during WWII). Need to research. In 1945, Carl was 23 years old. Myrtle would have been a few years older which makes it very possible. The more I think about it, the more likely this is Carl after being discharged from the US Navy, Wilmington, Los Angeles, California, after vising home (Newell) on his way to Sioux Falls, SD, to catch up with his older brother, Oscar, who had also served in the war. I believe Oscar spent a considerable amount of time during WWII in India.
Carl: 2004
PREFACE
The story of Carl Oksol begins with his parents.
Photo of grandson Bruce and Paul Oksol in Oslo, Norway, 1964:
Carl was very proud of his parents and understood very well the hardships they endured immigrating to America at the turn of the 20th century. It is incredible to read about the obstacles Paul Oksol and Christine Tungvold had to overcome in their quest for a better life. [Note: throughout the blog, I spell Christine with a "C." In fact, that is incorrect. Correct spelling: Kristine Tangvold.]
The paragraphs in italics are imagined situations and conversations.
Karla Oksol was instrumental in providing typed transcripts of information from Carl.
I regret is that this biography was not begun twenty years ago when Carl’s siblings were still alive and could have provided many more personal anecdotes.
This biography is only a start. It is a jumping-off point for future Oksol grandchildren and great-grandchildren (Carl says all his grandchildren are “great”) to complete the story.
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| From l. to r.: Myrtle, Clara, Carl, Oscar, and Eddie. |
CHAPTER ONE: FIRST IMPRESSIONS
It’s two p.m. In the back seat of the trusty, green Chevrolet station wagon were four small children. They were hot, tired, and bored – really bored – six hours into the annual drive to visit the Oksol grandparents. Like last summer, and the summer before, and the summer before that, the six Oksols (Carl, Ruth, Bruce, Yvonne, Karla and Craig) had gotten up early to start the journey from Williston, North Dakota, to Dad’s home, Newell, South Dakota.
They started out driving west on US Highway 85 for a few miles before driving 300 miles straight south to Newell, South Dakota. Highway construction on US Highway 2 had delayed them for an hour or so, but Dad and Mom had come to expect these delays. There was a lot of activity in western Dakota in the late ‘50’s due to the oil boom and the continuing post-war prosperity, some of that prosperity only now reaching the Dakotas. Dad’s only complaint was that tar from the newly surfaced highway would be splashed on the side of the car. Not once did he mention anything about Manger Insurance.
Parts of the trip were enjoyable but they seemed to be at the front end of the trip. Just a few miles west of Williston they had crossed the Missouri River near its confluence with the Yellowstone River, made famous by the “Lewis and Clark” expedition in 1804. About two hours later they drove through the north unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. But after those two highlights, which probably didn’t account for more than 30 minutes of the entire six-hour trip, it was nothing but flat land, short grass, and hot sun. The air conditioning was “4-55” – four windows down and fifty-five miles an hour.
The heat was unrelenting. Not a cloud in that huge blue sky. Later I would learn that this was called “big sky” country. For the kids in that back seat it was more like an oven. But they were excited to be going to the farm.
Map of the farm, see this link. Also, here with annotations.
The farm, four miles south of Newell, just off the two-lane highway, was a welcome site. Paul, the patriarch of this Norwegian-American family, did not see us when we drove in. He was out back, working in his huge barn. He didn’t have time to watch the road for a carload full of toddlers who, after being cooped up for six hours, were soon going to be running all over his place anyway.
Even if he had been close to the road, he would have missed the sound of crunching gravel as the station wagon pulled up to the house. He was still thinking of Christine who had passed away more than a year ago. This would be the first trip back to Newell for Carl since her death. Of the children who remembered her, Bruce would remember that she was short and always with a smile, but that was about all.
Compared to Paul, Christine was short. Paul was over six feet tall; he was muscular, and strikingly good-looking, even at seventy-one years of age. His moustache and ever-present fedora made him look even more distinguished.
Dad found Paul in the barn, stacking hay. South of the Missouri River, one had to be careful of rattlesnakes but Dad never thought about them as he walked comfortably and confidently along the stalls. He felt quite at home with the cows. The cows, still about seven of them, were different, but still the same.The dry, flat, empty northwestern corner of South Dakota was a long way away from where Paul had started out in life. He had been born on the Oksål farm near Trøndheim, Norway, in 1886.
“So, the barn looks good, you’ve kept it in good shape. Dry, though, huh?”
“Hmmm.”
“It’s good to be back. The kids are all here; they talked the whole way about seeing the farm. How’s Eddie?”
“Good, I guess. I haven’t seen him this week.”
“Well, let’s go in, get something to eat, see the kids. Ruth is doing fine.
“Hmmm.”
View Larger Map
The map is dynamic: zoom in, zoom out, pan. The Oksål farm is right in the middle of the Inderøy commune.
Oksålsveet, Kjerknesvågen, Inderøya, Norway: where Paul Oksol grew up.
Photo by Ivar Moen, January, 2013.
Trøndheim, the oldest city and once the capital of Norway, is situated on the south side of Trøndheim Fjord, one of the longer fjords, and just south of the Arctic Circle. The Oksål farm was located right in the middle of the Inderøy commune, in one of the larger counties of Norway, Nord-Trøndelag. The Inderøy commune makes up most of a peninsula that juts out into the magnificent Trøndheim Fjord, surrounded by the towering Dovre Mountains rising steeply from both sides of the deep-water gorge. Paul remembers the alpine mountains being incredibly beautiful, as breathtaking as he imagined the Swiss Alps. But it was tough land to farm, and as a teenager, he was eager to find his fortunes elsewhere.
All during his late teenage years Paul scanned the notices of the Trøndheim Adresseavisen for articles on “America.” He had been enticed by the stories and advertisements in the papers and through endless conversations with his friends. In June of 1907, “tall Paul” was rifling through the paper again, looking for notices for transportation to the United States. The excitement of crossing the ocean was as rich as ever.
It appeared the best way to get across the ocean was to follow in the footsteps of his Viking forefather: island hop across the Atlantic, first sail to England, then to Ireland, and then to the east coast of Canada. But maybe this time, he would need only two islands: England and Ellis.
He could wait no longer. He bridled and saddled his horse and galloped through the gates of the family farm, along the fjord on his right, and toward the Trøndheim docks. Because he was by himself and did not need to pick up anything in Trøndheim, he did not take the cart, just his horse. He could make better time without the cart. He couldn’t help but enjoy the beautiful scenery but his mind was elsewhere. Reaching the docks after several hours of riding, he inquired at the Allan Line office about ships to America. The clerk told him he would actually be booked on a subsidiary, the Wilson Line, which would depart from Trøndheim and sail to Hull, Yorkshire, England. From there he would take the train to Liverpool to catch a ship to cross the Atlantic.
Paul took out his leather billfold, straightened out his hard-earned, weather-worn kroner, and asked for the cheapest ticket available. He had the equivalent of fifty-one American dollars in his billfold, and although that was a fair amount of money for a teenager at that time, it was going to have to last for several months. He decided to buy a ticket only as far as Hull. He would wait until he got to Liverpool to figure out how to make the rest of the trip.
He got standing-room steerage on the S/S Salmo. Eight days later Paul was on his way, with stops at Kristiansund and Allesund, his last sights of Norway, before the ship set course for Hull. Paul would not see his home again until 58 years later.Christine Tungvold was six years older than Paul and had emigrated from Norway to the United States two years earlier. Christine also lived near Trøndheim but the two had never met prior to coming to America. She was the oldest of seven children: brothers Ole and Edvard; sisters Anna, Merit, Gurene, and Petrena.
“Wow,” thought Paul. “This is easier than I expected.” But this was only the beginning; he was in for quite a surprise.
Christine, like Paul, had often dreamed of going to America, and had wanted to emigrate before she turned 21 years of age. Her dream to emigrate was delayed at age 16 when her father drowned in a pond near the family barn. She had to delay her trip so she could help her mother raise her six younger siblings. Skiing to Trøndheim to buy groceries was only part of all her responsibilities. She was proud of her skiing ability; she would tell of the time she skied the seven Norwegian miles to Trøndheim to buy groceries one particularly hard winter.
But at age 25, Christine was living her dream. She had immigrated to America. It was 1905. She had beaten Paul to America by two years.
Compared to the harbors and the ports he left behind in Norway, Hull was very uninviting. It was an industrial wasteland. It was crowded and dirty, and there were no snow-capped mountains, not even in the distance. The waves were rough, and the blowing rain was making it difficult for crew and passengers to disembark.
But for Paul, Hull was a port to leave as quickly as possible. He wasn’t alone. Almost all Norwegians making their way to America sailed first to Hull, then took the train to Liverpool, where they booked passage on ships for the final leg. Getting to Liverpool was easy but the cost of the train ticket, and now the advertised price for anything across the Atlantic was putting a severe dent in what little kroner he had. A temporary job in England to raise money for the trip across the ocean was a possibility but with so many immigrants passing through, jobs were few and far between. In addition, the English seemed about as pleasant as the weather in Hull.
Through a little bit of luck and an offer to help with the work, he talked one of the sea captains into letting him ride on a lower deck of a ship transporting horses to the United States. In exchange for helping with the horses, Paul could sail for free.
The voyage was not pleasant but at least he made it. In line with the other immigrants, he just wanted to get as far away from yet another port as possible. He did not have the energy to voice much objection when the immigration officer recorded his name as “Oksaal,” instead of “Oksål."
Paul eventually made his way to Sioux City, Iowa, via Chicago, and then on to Minneapolis. Paul was simply following the route of his fellow Norwegians: Minneapolis was the destination for most immigrating Scandinavians. So far, so good. He was in America.
In Minneapolis he found work with the Northern Pacific Railroad as part of the “B & B” (building and bridge) crew. It was not a day too soon; he was down to his last few dollars, having converted his kroner two weeks earlier.
When Paul arrived in Minneapolis in 1907, Christine was living in Zumbrota, Minnesota, with her uncle.
Christine found work as a domestic servant in Minneapolis when she first arrived. Through her employer’s recommendations, she soon found herself in Sioux Falls, SD, working for the wealthy Tuttle family living on the north side of that growing city.
Details have long been lost, but somehow, probably through mutual friends, Paul and Christine met, fell in love, and got married in Minneapolis. One can imagine a whirlwind courtship: Paul had immigrated in 1907, and by 1908, he was married.
Paul Oksol's naturalization petition:
My hunch is that "Kirknesva agen" is a misspelling / cognate of "Kirkevegen" which is on the main road between Trondheim and Inderoy Municipality, where Paul's parents' farm was. Kirkevegen is quite close to Trondheim, compared to Inderoy as shown on google maps.
CHAPTER TWO: LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE
Now that he finished milking the cows, Paul could join the Oksols from North Dakota. He had timed his entrance well; two of the rug rats, Karla and Craig, were already in bed and, if he were lucky, he might have a little bit of peace and quiet. Bruce and Yvonne were gingerly re-introducing themselves to Penny, a small black-and-white terrier-spaniel mix, who wasn’t used to all this commotion. She nipped, but would never bite, but that was enough to keep Bruce and Yvonne on the couch, at least for the moment.This was the only house that Bruce and Yvonne had known their grandparents to have lived in. They had never seen the homestead, and in fact, never even knew their grandparents owned other land.
The entry way between the living room and the kitchen had no door. From the kitchen table Paul could easily keep an eye on Bruce and Yvonne as they harassed Penny. Bruce hadn’t changed much; he still had the short blond crew cut – his dad was getting better with a barber’s electric razor. Yvonne looked different; even though she was a year younger than Bruce, she was a bit taller. But it was something else. Yes, it was the glasses. Yvonne was wearing glasses; Paul didn’t remember the glasses the last time she visited.
Paul fixed his soup; he poured some of the milk from the pail he had just brought in with him from the barn, and opened some Norwegian flatbread. Ruth had fed the children earlier, who were too hungry to wait for grandpa who was going to finish his chores before coming in. He was not one for changing his routine just because visitors drove eight hours to see him in the middle of August.
Bruce left the couch to check out the large, black grate on the floor near the inside wall of the living room. It remained a mystery for Bruce; he remembers standing on it during the winter and feeling heat but he never understood where the heat was coming from.
Penny apparently wasn’t keen on Bruce leaving the couch to check out the grate. She trundled over to Bruce, making low murmuring sounds that were just enough to send Bruce back to the couch. Penny probably still missed Christine just as Paul did.
The first house that Paul and Christine had lived in together – the two-room tarpaper shack – was twenty-two miles north of the house in which Bruce and Yvonne presently found themselves.
Back in 1907, Paul had wanted to stay with the railroad; it paid well and offered job security at a time he was going to start raising a family. But Christine, having come from a more entrepreneurial family, had her heart set on homesteading. The Trøndheim newspaper had regularly printed the official notices from the United States government promising free land to anyone who would settle on that land and improve it. Homesteaders were able to claim as much as 160 free acres of potential farmland. Christine wanted her own land.
Christine asked Paul to think about it. In the end, Paul made the first trip west alone, making it as far as Butte County, South Dakota, on the far western edge of the Dakotas, before he stopped and he claimed his 160 acres. Paul and South Dakota were about the same age: Paul staked his first claim in 1910, at the age of 24, and South Dakota was granted statehood 21 years earlier, in 1889.
Paul homesteaded just outside of Castle Rock, about eighteen miles north of Newell, 60 miles north of Rapid City. The nearest post office was only a few miles away at Castle Rock. When the station wagon with the four sticky, hot, bored children in the back seat had turned right earlier in the day from SD state highway 168 unto SD state highway 79, they didn’t know it, but they were within walking distance of the old homestead.
The homestead was located on some of the driest, loneliest-looking land in the world, certainly very different than his alpine upbringing. On the entire American Great Plains, possibly only western Nebraska and western Oklahoma are drier and more desolate than South Dakota.
Having staked his claim, Paul called for Christine, who was still in Minneapolis, to join him out west. His stake was just slightly more than 600 miles, almost due west, from Minneapolis.
Paul and Christine built their first “house” on that original homestead. Their first home as husband and wife was just like so many other homes at the time: a tar paper shack. Nothing more than tar paper wrapped around posts, these structures were a common sight in this part of the world at the turn of the century. Paul’s tar paper had two rooms, one room with a wood floor and one room with a dirt floor. They would live in that little shack for almost ten years, from 1910 to 1919.
Except for their fifth child, Carl, all of their children were born while living on the homestead.
The four older Oksol children were the Bobbsey twins of that era, that location, that era. The older set, Edward (“Eddie”) Martin and Oscar Alfred, were about 18 months apart in age. Eddie was born June 24, 1911, and Oscar was born November 24, 1912. The younger set, Myrtle Alfreda and Clara Pauline, were about 20 months apart in age. Myrtle was born October 9, 1914, and Clara was born June 6,1916. It would be another six years before the Oksols welcomed another baby, Carl, into the fold.
On occasion, the Oksol family shared their two-room home with uninvited guests. One day when Eddie was about six months old, Christine noticed that she no longer heard Eddie cooing in the other room. Checking in on him, expecting to find him asleep, she instead spotted a rattlesnake on the dirt floor, coiled and ready to strike. Christine grabbed the snake with her bare hands and dispensed with it before it could bite Eddie.
That’s why Carl had watched his step walking through the barn earlier in the day.
Paul and Christine had arrived in Butte County during a period of fast growth and excitement due to the “gold rush” in the Black Hills. To add to the excitement, electricity was being introduced to the area. Even more importantly, a new irrigation system was almost complete, which would allow the settlers to raise cash crops in addition to sheep. Because of the irrigation, Paul was also able to grow alfalfa for the cattle he would eventually have.
Paul actually talked of going to the Black Hills to look for gold, but in the end he decided on sticking with farming. But to continue farming he needed to take advantage of the new irrigation system that was located south of the homestead. The official name of the project was the Belle Fourche Irrigation Project.
CHAPTER THREE: BIG SKY COUNTRY
Bruce and Yvonne slept well. It had been a long trip. But now, it was a new day. They sat at the table eagerly eating their toast, but they were a bit leery of their cereal. The cereal was fine, but they weren’t used to milk coming directly from the cows in the barn to the table in the kitchen. They loved the jelly and the jam. Grandpa always seemed to have plenty, and so many different varieties, of jelly. They didn’t know the difference between jelly and jam – they only had jelly at home in Williston – but they enjoyed it all, although it took some getting used to when eating jam. They pushed themselves away from the table, rushing outside to go see if they could find the sheep.In 1919, after almost ten years on the original homestead, Paul and Christine bought and moved to an 80-acre farm about four miles south of Newell, immediately off the west side of US highway 79. Paul borrowed the money to buy that farm. This was the farm that Bruce and Yvonne were now running around on.
There were always a few sheep somewhere on the farm. The two munchkins were as curious about the sheep as the sheep seemed curious about them. But no matter how fast their little feet carried them, they were no match for the sheep. The sheep would run just far enough to stay a safe distance away, and then turn back and look at the two children. Finally, Bruce and Yvonne gave up, walking back to the house.
Even by South Dakota standards, this summer day was turning out to be a beautiful day: the sun was bright, there were no clouds, and it was already beginning to get quite warm. The wind had not picked up much yet. The air was so clear that one could almost see the Black Hills in the distance. August in “big sky” country was as good as it got. The phenomenon of “big sky” is as if God had placed a huge inverted blue teacup over the earth. The horizon is a huge semi-lunar arc, and the sky itself seems so much higher than usual.
Paul had a very difficult time making the payments but he was able to hold onto the original homestead, and even rent another 400 acres on Horse Creek, almost directly across the highway from the new home place.
They moved to take advantage of the new irrigation project. That project had begun with the construction of the Orman Dam, about 20 miles from the new farm site. There were two outlets from the dam, the North Canal and the South Canal. From these two canals, there were additional laterals, including the Wilson lateral near the farm site. Carl never remembers anyone referring to the Wilson lateral by that name, and the ditch that went through the Oksol farm did not have a name; it was simply “the ditch.”
Carl’s older brothers, Eddie and Oscar, took care of the family’s drainage projects required by the irrigation district. Eddie eventually had his own farm and owned a backhoe that he used to dig the trenches to drain the fields. Eddie and Oscar did a great job; no one recalls any problems with the irrigation ditches running through the Oksol farm.
Because of irrigation, the land was very productive for grain crops and sugar beets.
Paul had started with sheep on the original homestead, and even with the new farming opportunities, he continued to raise sheep. He generally kept about 400 ewes. Each spring, after lambing and shearing, his dad moved his 400 head of sheep to the old homestead, some 20 miles north, to become part of a 4000-head flock for summer pasture. They would be looked after by one sheepherder and at least one very busy sheep dog. Carl was always impressed with how smart those sheep dogs were. Paul paid the sheepherder about ten cents a month for each ewe.
CHAPTER FOUR: “X”
Initially he wasn’t much to look at: a skinny, scarred horse that looked like Don Quixote’s old nag “Rocinante.” But for dad, at eight years old, his first horse, “X,” could not have been a finer-looking stallion, not unlike today’s teenagers’ thoughts about their first used car.Carl turned six years old in 1928 and started school later that year. He attended a rural school about a mile and a half northeast from the farm. One teacher was responsible for all grades, first through eighth. Clara, a seventh grader, and Myrtle, an eighth grader, watched out for their Carl his first year. His other siblings were in high school. Oscar turned 16 that fall (November 24) and was a sophomore in high school. Eddie turned 17 on June 24, of that year, and was a junior in high school.
“X” belonged to the Hispanic family living down the road; “X” stayed with the Oksol horses during the harsh South Dakota winters. No one at the Oksols knew his real name, so Christine just took to calling him “X” and the appellation stuck.
“Come on “X” – have some carrots,” and after that Carl and “X” were best friends. Carl took to “X” immediately. He made sure his stall was cleaned every day; he carried hay to the bin, and when he could afford it, even treated “X” to some oats.
Over the course of several weeks, “X” improved remarkably. Carl’s mother had not been paying much attention to Carl and “X” and so was quite surprised when she looked out the window one day and saw Carl on a beautiful chestnut quarter horse. She hurried out the door – interrupting her leftse-making which was not going so well anyway – the day had gotten too warm for good lefse-rolling – to ask Carl where he had gotten the new horse.
“Mom, don’t you recognize “X”? He’s all better.”
“But how do you get up on him? He’s so big.”
Carl led “X” to the fence, where Carl stepped up, getting him high enough to make it easy to swing his leg over the bare back.
“Now I think I can race the neighbor’s horse.”
The following year, as a second grader, Carl walked to school with Clara while the three older kids rode to high school in the family’s 1922 Model T Ford.
Carl remembers the walk to grade school being uphill both ways, and often covered with snow, several feet deep.
By third grade, Carl was on his own. With no one available to walk with him to school, his folks had him ride a four-year-old buckskin stallion which they “wintered” for another family. Christine named the stallion “X” because no one in the Oksol family knew its real name. Generally, a young stallion would be too much for an eight-year-old to handle, but “X” had been badly abused and mistreated by its owners, and was very thin and “without much pep.”
“X” thrived under Carl’s care. When Carl first rode “X,” the stallion was unable to keep up with a large gelding white horse owned by a Spanish family in the area. According to dad, that gelding was “all horse,” rearing up when it was eager to go. However, before the year was over, Carl’s “X” was outrunning that Spanish gelding.
After school, Carl had chores. Clara and Carl would go to the wheat bin every night with a large cup to pick out anything that wasn’t supposed to be in the wheat, including mouse droppings. They would then grind the wheat with a small gristmill which became our breakfast after mother cooked it. They would each get a bowl of wheat meal mush for breakfast with whole milk.
Carl was also responsible for keeping the homestead warm. One of his responsibilities was to ensure that there was plenty of wood in the vestibule, leaning next to the house. The wood came from the Black Hills. The logs were cut into stove length pieces and then it was his responsibility to split those logs and haul the split wood to the house. My dad had to provide enough wood for the evening until the next night.
They also burned lignite coal, along with the wood, but lignite was “poor” coal. Clinkers would form – “the coal would explode, so to speak” and my dad carried out more ashes than the coal he had brought in.
On the other hand, every night my grandfather would stoke the fire with anthracite coal so it would last until morning. Anthracite coal, a hard coal, was much better, but was very expensive.
His siblings had their own chores. Clara gathered the eggs and both Clara and Myrtle helped their mother in the house.
The Oksol family had about six to eight milk cows and his dad and two brothers, Oscar and Eddie, did the milking. According to my dad, my grandfather felt that the women should never get involved with the milking. I never asked why. Perhaps it was such hard work and it was so cold during the winter months.
CHAPTER FIVE: THE WINTER OF 1935 – 1936
“The winter of 1935 -36 was one of the worst winters on record,” Carl remembered. “ I turned 14 on February 6, 1936. I was in the eighth grade attending Milberg School located in South Highland District.
“1935 was very dry and hot. Temperatures of 106 degrees were reported that summer. Not much green grew on the dry land except Russian thistle. I saw my dad cut the corn and grain and stack these cuttings along with the Russian thistle.
“We kept our cattle, usually about eight head, the five horses, and about 400 feeder lambs on the home place. My dad tried to keep about 400 head of ewes on the land he rented across the road about two miles distant (these were the ewes that had summer pasture on the old homestead).
“Then around the end of January the terrible winter struck. It was 40 degrees below zero for three weeks straight. We watered our cows and horses out of the ponds. It got so cold that the ponds froze solid to the bottom. It was then necessary to haul water from our neighbor’s well, about 2 miles from our place. We put chains on our 1928 Model “A” Ford. A 50-gallon barrel was placed on the front bumper and leaned against the hood. Two 5-gallon cream cans were hauled inside the car. We made many trips a day to water the cattle. The horses and sheep could get by on snow.
“The roads would drift but that didn’t stop us. If we got stuck we would get out with scoop shovels and shovel ourselves out.
“I was home all this time as the schools were closed for three or four weeks during the worst of the winter.
“Every day we had to go to the rented farm land with a team and hayrack to haul out hay for the breeding ewes. W always used Prince and Dick. We would haul out a large hayrack load of Russian thistle for the 400 ewes and then we would haul a hayrack load of alfalfa. The sheep got along fine as they were near Horse Creek with lots of wind breaks from cotton wood trees. It was terribly cold – 40 degrees blow zero. My dad and I had sheep skin coats that were warm but very clumsy, bulky and heavy. We would ride on the hayrack at times and wrap ourselves in canvas to break the wind. When our feet got cold we would walk. Prince and Dick were a good team. They really didn’t need much driving. Dad would wrap the lines around the rack and they would take us wherever we were going.
“My dad was a big strong raw-boned Norwegian who could out work two or three men. When he loaded the wagon he would take off his coat. He would work up a sweat and when he was done he would put on his coat. I was just a kid that couldn’t keep warm.
“Every day we fed the sheep and then hauled a load of hay home. We would load it with good alfalfa hay and get up in the hay where it was warm. Dad didn’t’ have to drive the horses. He wrapped the lines around the post on the hayrack and lay back on the hay. We had about 2.5 miles to travel. We had to go up a steep hill. When we were about 1/8 mile from this hill, Prince and Dick would gallop and run to about half way up this steep hill. Then they would stop and rest. After they had rested for maybe 10 minutes away they would go.
“The feeder lambs that had been born in March about a year earlier had been placed in the corral at the home place for fatting, as usual. Despite that very cold winter they survived. We grained them every day and gave them a lot of hay. At the time they went into the corral for fattening they averaged about 50 pounds. One year later, the following March, they were ready for market. We were paid by the weight so the idea was to get them as fat as we could. They were weighing around 110 pounds at the highest but eventually we kept them around 100 pounds. Buyers had learned that the fattest sheep had too much fat that was eventually wasted and learned to make their purchases based on factors other than weight alone.
“The ewes were at the rented farm land. Sheep are a good animal but maybe a little naive. During the winter we had to watch them really close as they would bunch up and the snow would drift over them and they would smother. Many mornings my dad had to shovel them out of a large snowdrift that had covered them (maybe as many as 50). I don’t remember losing any.
“Around March, we would bring the ewes home and lamb them out. It started around March and lasted for 6 weeks or so. A ewe would have one or maybe two or possibly three lambs. I guess we could average about 1.5 lambs per ewe. They had to be constantly watched. They would lamb out in the corrals. We would take the mother and her lamb or lambs and place them in a small pen. We would watch them all day and then at night we would probably check them at 9:00 p.m., go to bed and get up at midnight, again at 3:00 a.m. and then around 6:00 a.m., when we were up for the day. I relieved my dad many nights so he could get a god night’s sleep. I was rather tired the next day in school.”
That last statement may explain Dad’s academic standing when he graduated from high school.
CHAPTER SIX: FLAT TIRES AND SUGAR BEETS
“When I grow up I want to be rich,” Carl said to his mom. The other children were grown, had left home, and Carl and his mom had plenty of time to talk. “I don’t know what I want to do, but I do know I want to make lots of money.”Carl attended Newell High School, entering in the fall of 1936 and graduated in the fall of 1940.
“And what would you do with all that money?”
“Buy a big house, and a farm with horses. I think I would like a good riding horse, maybe a Tennessee walker. “X” was great for me but if you’re rich you have to have a nice horse. I wonder whatever happened to “X?” he asked rhetorically. The Spanish family had moved away some years ago and took “X” with them.
“Well, even if you make a lot of money, you need to share some of it with those who are less fortunate. Would you give to the church?”
“Oh, yes, I would give to the church. Maybe I could even help build a new church just like dad did.”
“And you shouldn’t talk about money. Just work hard, be good to others, and always help the church. By the way, have you finished your homework? You know you have school tomorrow.”
Dad graduated 39th in his class. Out of 40.
He eventually earned a college degree in industrial engineering, which is impressive for someone graduating second from the bottom of his class. Maybe Newell was the original Lake Wobegon “where all the children are above average, some are more above-average than others.” He tells his lawyer friends in Williston that the student who ranked 40th (last in the class) continues to practice law in Newell.
Dad always talked about his older brother Oscar being very, very smart, and in fact, Oscar was valedictorian of his class. His mother always told him that he should try to do better. He admits that he was the youngest and spoiled and when his mother would start on him to do better he would sit on her lap and tell her that he could do better but that his friends would not like him as well if he were too smart. Dad says his mom apparently accepted this and let him go. Despite his grades, Dad had a lot of fun in both grade school and high school.
Dad got to high school by riding his bicycle. Actually that’s only half accurate. He rode his bicycle halfway to Newell, about the distance before one of the tires would go flat, at which time, he placed the bike in the field alongside the road and then walked or hitched a ride the rest of the way to school. On the way home, he retrieved his bike, walked it home, repaired the tire, and started the process over again the next day. Too bad “X” was no longer around.
During the summer he worked on his Dad’s farm, cutting hay and racking hay, and cultivating corn and sugar beets.
The Oksols were able to raise sugar beets because of the new irrigation project. They put in about 20 acres of beets per year. Sugar beets were a good cash crop but raising sugar beets was very hard work. Nearly everything was hard manual labor. They hired Mexicans to work in the beet fields. They planted the sugar beets with a four-row planter and were planted very thick to help guarantee a good stand. When the beets were still very small the Mexican workers would use a short handle hoe and block the beets about 8-10 inches apart and, later, thin them to leave just one plant at these 8- to 10-inch intervals. If they didn’t thin them, the roots would wrap around each other and eventually kill each other. The Mexican laborers did their work mainly on their knees. The most one might be able to do, working from dawn to dusk, was one acre a day. Then the beets were cultivated. The workers took four rows at a time so they could follow the four rows that were planted.
A two-horse team was required to pull the cultivator. Carl’s dad had four or five horse to choose from, but he used Prince and Dick, as they were a light team. They were both colts from saddle horses that Paul owned. The cultivator would make a nice ditch in which the water would run. The beets were irrigated many times during the summer. During those periods when the beets were being irrigated, Paul and the others had to work all day preparing the ditches, the hoses, and the various gates for irrigation. The water was set to run at night and Paul would generally have to be check the ditches twice during the night to make everything was flowing correctly.
The beets were harvested in the fall. They pulled one row at a time with a beet puller. The team they used for pulling beets was Queen and Daisy since they were large draft mares. It was hard work pulling the beets so Paul used his heaviest team.
After the beets were pulled the Mexican workers would come along and place the roots of the beets facing each other about ten feet apart. They would run a “V” through the middle so there would be a nice clean place to place the topped beets. Each worker would come along with a knife about twelve inches long with a hook on the end. With his right hand he would hook the beets with his knife and with his left hand, grab the beet and hold it, and with one smooth move, chop off the large green top with the knife and throw it in a pile. The piles in the area provided by the “V” would be about three feet apart.
During the first few years of raising beets, they hauled beets to the Newell beet dump which was about four miles from home on a gravel road. The beet wagon was made for hauling beets. It was hinged on the left side. When the beets were brought to the dump the horses would have to pull that load up on a very steep incline. When the wagon got to the top of the incline, which was just long enough to hold the wagon, the box would be hooked on the right side and the beets would be dumped to the left.
Three horses were required to pull the beet wagon. Prince and Dick were used on the wagon tongue and Hank was used with them since it was a little too much for the two light horses. Because these horses were light, they could make good time on the road. However, in the field, Paul would put Queen and Daisy, the large draft mares, in front of the other team of three horses pulling the wagon. In other words, to load the wagon and pull it out on the highway, it would take five horses, but once on the gravel road, the three light horses could get the wagon to the dump in Newell. When Car was younger, five or six years of age, he usually went to town with the beets alone with his dad, since the older siblings had other work to do.
Prince and Dick were good horses; Paul liked them because they were quick and high-spirited. But with that spirit came a habit of running away. Dad relates a story that suggests how dangerous that could be:
“Our farm was located alongside of highway 79 and about a quarter of a mile off the road. We had a gate at the entry of this road that lead to our farm. One day, as usual, the last load of the day was about 5 o’clock. And as usual, Dad got off to open the gate and I stayed in the empty wagon. He got the horses through the gate. While shutting the gate, Prince got his bridle off and just as dad climbed in the wagon, the horses, (Prince, Dick and Hank) took off. My dad could not control them. The horses were heading for a water canal that we had right by our house. My dad was scared that they would run in to the ditch and tear apart the wagon with me in it. I was five years old at that time. Dad grabbed and lowered me over the side of the wagon and I dropped to the ground. Then he jumped out. The horses ran a little further up to the fence and stopped. I wasn’t hurt. And not much damage was done to the wagon. We had just dug a large hole for a water well. It was about 6 feet deep. The girls were home and Myrtle and Clara and mother came out of the house to witness all the commotion. Myrtle fell in this dry hole and yelled and yelled for some one to help her out but with all the other excitement she was left in there unnoticed for about 15 minutes.”
They were able to haul about a ton of beets on the wagon and generally two loads were hauled a day. This all happened in October when the weather was still very temperate. By 1927 there were a few motor vehicles in that part of the state, and some farmers were wealthy enough to use trucks to haul beets to town. But the Oksols were still using the horse-drawn wagons.
Sometime after 1928, Paul bought a 1917 model “T” Ford to haul beets. It had a truck box, similar to the box on the wagon, and as best as Dad can remember, it could haul about one ton to a load.
The beets were loaded in the truck box by shoveling them with a special fork for sugar beets.
With the truck box, they had to use a special fork for sugar beets to load the truck. But even with the truck, the horses were still needed. When loading the beets in the truck, they put Queen and Daisy in front to help pull the truck through the field and then pull it out onto the highway. They were usually able to take four loads a day with this truck. Their beets were going out 14 tons to the acre so it took them about three days to take out one acre of beets.
Carl remembers the hard work, “During those days, it was a good quality to be a hard worker. Eddie worked for a farmer called Oscar Reppen. He was one of the better farmers in the area. Eddie could probably out work three men. The summer I graduated from high school Mr. Reppen hired me. One day he told me I wasn’t as hard a worker as my brother. I told him that I had a little different philosophy on life. He asked what that was. I said I’d rather be a good old man than a good young man. He didn’t talk to me anymore.”
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE OKSOLS’ FIRST CAR
The first automobile Paul and Christine owned was a 1922 Model “T” Ford touring car with side curtains. Details have been lost on how they financed it or where they bought it, most likely Belle Fourche. They also bought a 1927 Model “A” Ford in 1928 from the Ford dealer in Belle Fourche, paying about $500 for it, cash. Carl was six years old at the time. They kept the 1922 Model “T” Ford so they had two cars by then. The new Model A was a 2-door blue sedan. Paul was used to driving a model “T” Ford that had the pedals on the floor. When he got the Model “A” Ford it had a manual shift on the floor – reverse, low, intermediate, and high. The dealer took Paul, Christine, and Carl around Belle Fourche teaching Paul how to shift. Paul didn’t seem to get the hang of it real well so he drove it all the way home (25 miles) in second gear. The reason he did this was because they had a fairly steep hill to go up before they got home and he was afraid he couldn’t shift from high to second. The Oksols weren’t the first family in Newell to have a car but they did a pretty good to “keep up with the Joneses,” according to Carl.
CHAPTER EIGHT: SOCIAL LIFE
The Oksol family loved to socialize. They did not have a telephone but kept up with news and gossip by getting out on the weekends. They usually went to Newell on Saturday nights when everyone else also seemed to be in town. On Sunday afternoons, after church, they generally went sightseeing in the local area. They would visit Sturgis once in a while and very rarely visit Rapid City.
They were very much aware of the faces that were being carved on Mount Rushmore. Carl was five years old when the sculptor Gutzon Borglum started carving on Mount Rushmore. The carving was nearly completed when Carl graduated from high school in 1940. The endeavor was a subject of much discussion and the family made many trips to Mount Rushmore to see how things were progressing. Carl remembers everyone in the area being very impressed with this monument. For more on Mount Rushmore, see appendix J.
Years later, Dad took his family on vacation to the Black Hills almost every year, and it was a real treat for him to drive the back roads in the Hills and show his children what it was like when he drove through there in the 1930’s. Not much had changed in those 20 years (the roads were still very narrow and not improved). Today that has all changed: the roads are significantly widened, straightened, and less exciting to drive.
CHAPTER NINE: RANEY’S NAVY
Summer, 1936. Hot. Very hot. A 14-year-old was stacking hay, sweating through his clothes. His hat had blown away and he knew his face was going to be sunburned by the time he got home. He was dirty, sticky, and just plain miserable. He remembered last summer being hot, but this summer it seemed much worse.Summer days in South Dakota were very long and incredibly hot. The summer of 1936 still holds the record as the hottest summer in South Dakota. (The winter of 1935 – 1936 is the coldest winter on record.) Dad would have been 14 years old that summer, very hot, and probably thinking for the first time, there has to be a better way to make a living than farming in South Dakota. Being an insurance agent probably was not high on his list, but then again, have you ever racked hay in 105 degree weather? Under those conditions, even selling insurance seemed a better alternative.
Talking to no one in particular, “I don’t know what’s worse: summer heat or the winter cold?” He wondered if his older brothers were working this hard. Eddie was working on his own farm, and Oscar was out east going to school or doing office work in between schooling. It was hard to keep up with everyone.
“When I grow up, I’m going to work in an office. I’m going to own houses and apartments and rent them out and make lots of money. I know Mom told me that I shouldn’t be thinking about money all the time, but when you’re out in the hot sun, stacking hay, there’s not much else to think about. Yeah, lots of apartments. Maybe in a big city. Maybe in California. I sure as heck won’t move to a state like North Dakota. Maybe Rapid City. Yeah, Rapid sounds good.”
Little did he know that in a few short years he would be far away from South Dakota. There is no way that a 14-year-old in 1936 could have known how events on the other side of the world were going to alter his life. Even if he had been interested in world events, he would not have paid much attention to a new politician by the name of Adolf Hitler. In 1936 Hitler had peacefully resolved the “Rhineland crisis” and was adored by the vast majority of Germans, and was internationally respected. Indeed, while Carl was stacking hay in South Dakota, Adolph Hitler was hosting the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany.
But someone was thinking about him. Uncle Sam. In 1942, Dad received a letter in the mail with a return address from the US Selective Service.
Dad did not open the envelope; he did not want to go into the army. Instead he visited the Belle Fourche Navy recruiting station.
Dad was sworn into the United States Coast Guard, November 6, 1942.
In Dad’s words, “I went on active duty December 23, 1942, and was assigned to Coast Guard Boot Camp in St. Augustine, Florida. The folks took me to Rapid City, South Dakota. Then I took a road bus to Omaha, Nebraska. I took the train from Omaha on December 23, 1942, and arrived in St. Augustine, Florida on Christmas Day 1942. I stayed in the Ponce de Leon Hotel during boot camp.”
Carl Oksol, US Coast Guard, 1943
Dad has talked often of St. Augustine. It was an impressive sight, especially after the long trip from South Dakota, to the lush, warm, beautiful, palm-tree-filled beaches of Florida. It was the first of many beaches he would see, but most of them were overseas.
“After boot camp, I went by train to Boston, Massachusetts. From Boston, the assignments were made. I was assigned to Rockland, Maine. I spent about a year in Maine and then was assigned to the USS Wakefield (AP-21). The USS Wakefield was a former liner called The SS Manhattan. In 1942 it had burned to the water line and was rebuilt and recommissioned the USS Wakefield, a troop transport, on February 10, 1943. The ship was harbored in Hartford, Connecticut. I was there living in barracks waiting to go to sea. I was on the shake-down cruise and then went to Boston, Massachusetts. The USS Wakefield was tied up to Pier 13 until February 1945.”
Dad talks often of his four years in the Coast Guard, which, during wartime, is integrated to become part of the US Navy. The USS Wakefield transported American troops to the theaters of war, and returned to the United States with American troops for reassignment, or foreign troops as prisoners of war.
Dad’s tally of his cruises during the war:
17 round trips to Liverpool, EnglandIn all, he completed 44 trips across the Atlantic, six across the Mediterranean, and four across the Pacific.
3 round trips to France, including one to Marseilles
2 round trips to Naples, Italy
6 trips in the Mediterranean
4 round trips across the Pacific, including China
Carl’s commander for most of those trips was Captain Raney, who was in his early 40’s, a “full captain in the Coast Guard”). The crew was very impressed with Captain Raney and respected him very much.
One of Carl’s more memorable cruises took place in November 1945, when they picked up 5000 US Marines at New Port News, Virginia. From there they traveled to China through the Panama Canal. They refueled in Hawaii and arrived in China in February 1946. While in China they made port calls at Tensing and Sing Tau. They anchored off shore in the Yellow Sea, about 30 miles out because the Yellow Sea is a very shallow body of water. The US Marines and sailors were taken ashore in landing barges. After discharging the combatants-turned-occupation troops, the USS Wakefield picked up another 5000 US Marines destined for rest and reassignment. After about a month in San Diego they took the rested marines to Guam where battle-weary Marines there were picked up and brought back to San Diego. (Dad has a very good memory. The actual date of departure from Guam on March 13, 1946.)
After nearly four years at sea Dad was discharged. Honorably.
CHAPTER TEN: FROM BLUE WATER TO BLUE COLLAR
Carl was discharged on April 10, 1946, at Wilmington, California, near San Pedro, and now the home of one of the world’s largest ports, the Los Angeles Port. He hitchhiked to San Francisco where he met Lavina Wilson (sister of Russell Wilson, Myrtle’s husband). She showed Carl the highlights of San Francisco and then left on April 12, 1946, for Newell. Because the bus he was riding moved so slowly, he got off at Thermopolis, Wyoming, and hitchhiked the rest of the way home, beating the bus by 5 hours, arriving on / about April 15, 1946.”
On several occasions I have been able to return with Dad to visit the San Pedro area. When there, Dad always asks me to take him to Wilmington to see if he recognizes where he was discharged from the US Navy. He no longer recognizes Wellington. The Port of Los Angeles has grown into a huge port over the past forty years and the entire harbor has completely changed. I do not know how Dad feels about all the changes. Dad never seemed like someone to do a lot of reminiscing in the way others do. When asked, he enjoys telling stories about himself growing up, but he prefers talking about politics, the stock market, and the economy.
After returning in the summer of 1946 to South Dakota following his stint in the US Navy, Carl worked for his brother Ed on his farm. On Sundays Carl would take Ed’s equipment and take care of his parents’ crops. In the autumn of 1946 he hitchhiked to Sioux Falls and enrolled in Augustana College, where he wanted to “take a splattering of everything.” He had attended Nettleton Business College in Sioux Falls in 1940 prior to joining the military so he was familiar with Augustana and Sioux Falls. Industrial engineering was exactly what he wanted. He attended college on the “GI Bill,” receiving tuition, books and $65 (later increased to $75). He worked for his board at a little teashop in a department store in Sioux Falls. He wiped dishes and cleaned the café during the noon hour and at night. In the morning he put the garbage cans out and arranged the tables. He spent two years in Sioux Falls. One summer he worked for Norlin Company, pouring concrete, and one summer at Morrell & Company.
After two years at Augustana, Dad decided he wanted to get his degree in industrial engineering and he thought the University of South Dakota at Vermillion, SD, might have a better program. In 1948 he enrolled at the University of South Dakota. In business and science courses he did very well but in his senior year he struggled with mechanical engineering. He was unable to “see” and “draw” three-dimensionally: “I could draw what I could see, but I couldn’t draw the other side of an object.” He took the course with 17-year-old freshmen women (he would have been 27 years old) who were taking mechanical engineering as part of the degree work in liberal arts. The women could not understand why he couldn’t draw. In the first semester he got a “C” by but the second semester he had raised his grade to a “B.” Carl went to the instructor and said he didn’t deserve a “B” but the instructor told Carl that he had improved so much from one semester to the next, he was going to get the “B.”
During the summer of 1949, Carl hauled farm machinery from Temple, Texas, to Rock Rapids, Iowa. After graduation (graduating with a BS degree in Industrial Engineering) from the University of South Dakota in August of 1950, he had a month off. Carl was hired in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, by the Western Adjustment Company. He was assigned to Bismarck, ND. He went to work the Monday after Labor Day in 1950.
This is quite remarkable. Dad finished college in four years while holding down jobs and transferring from one college to another.
Dad never really talks about why he did not finish Augustana College. It was probably a combination of running out of tuition money and not seeing the value of a philosophy and/or drama degree. He was in good company. He tells me that Myron Floren, of The Lawrence Welk Show, was expelled from Augustana College for playing his accordion at local pubs in Sioux Falls.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT
Carl and Ruth
Undated; perhaps 30th Wedding Anniversary
Bruce, newborn, so this was Bismarck, ND, 1951
July 4, 1951. Bismarck, North Dakota. Hot and windy. Ruth was homesick for Iowa – can one blame her? Bismarck, even on good days, would have looked a bit bleak and desolate. But the wind never quit blowing, the streets were not paved, shopping was limited, and if the heat didn’t ruin your day, the mosquitoes in the evening would. The heat was particularly trying for Ruth; she was eight months pregnant. It wasn’t quite the Independence Day she remembered in Sioux City, Iowa, or even Manson, for that matter.In response to my question to dad, how he met mom, he answered, “I met Ruth Flessner in March of 1950. She worked for a doctor in Sioux City, Iowa, as a nurse. The office manager was married to a fellow I got to know in the Coast Guard. The office manager’s husband and I were very close and he and his wife brought Ruth and me together. Ruth was a very beautiful 22-year-old girl. I fell in love at first sight. We were married on November 4, 1950, in Sioux City, Iowa. I was invited to my own wedding (ha).”
But compared to Newell, Bismarck was a thriving metropolis for Carl. For the first time he had a steady income and was able to make plans for purchasing rental property, things he last remembered talking about with his mother many years earlier.
But the anticipation of their first baby cheered Ruth, and made Carl forget about his real estate plans, at least for the moment. They looked in on the nursery, actually just a small area “carved” out from the corner of the bedroom that would be the new baby’s first “room.” Ruth had done a great job getting a second-hand crib, and the accessories were starting to accumulate.
Wow! Things had moved quickly in the past year. Ruth earned her nursing degree just months before Carl graduated from USD after his summer courses in 1950. Just one month later he found a job and was transferred from Sioux Falls to Bismarck. Two months later he had returned to Sioux City to marry his bride. And now, just seven months later they were settled in Bismarck, and expecting their first child.
The $75 Carl was receiving from the government (“GI bill”) was enough to buy Ruth a diamond ring. Obviously it was very, very small. (Years later Dad recalls coming home from work and finding Mom looking for the diamond on the kitchen floor; it had fallen out of the setting. They swept the kitchen floor, found a lot of sugar crystals that looked like the diamond before they finally found the real thing. Many years later Dad did buy Mom a larger – perhaps a 1-carat ring – for about $1500.)
Mom was very beautiful. In her nursing graduation picture she reminds me of a young Jacqueline Kennedy. Dad once said the same thing, if I recall correctly. Mom was also very smart. She was elected by her fellow nursing students to represent the class at the Iowa state nursing convention based on scholarship, personality and nursing skills.
CHAPTER TWELVE: CAN YOU SEE THE END OF THE WORLD FROM NEWELL?
Truck traffic was always heavy on US-83 due to all the construction on the Garrison Dam, but today seemed particularly heavy. Maybe it was no worse than usual. Maybe it just seemed worse. Carl was already behind schedule to get to Tioga. There had been another accident on an oil rig and he had been asked (again) to look in on it by Western Adjustment. Fortunately no one had been seriously injured, so he wouldn’t have to deal with angry families, but it was always nerve-wracking to adjudicate a loss. If the insured accepted the settlement too quickly, Carl knew he had overestimated the actual dollar loss of the accident and his boss would be furious. On the other hand, if he offered too little, the insured would raise “holy hell.”Folks often joked to Dad that his hometown of Newell may not be at the end of the world, but one could certainly see the end of the world from Newell.
Then he thought about Ruth taking care of Bruce, not quite two years old, and Yvonne, who would celebrate her first birthday in a few weeks. “Maybe I don’t have it so tough,” he thought.
But the truck traffic was heavy. Much of the traffic was due to construction on the Garrison Dam just north of Bismarck. “Just north of Bismarck,” Carl said to himself, “Just. Sounds like ‘just’ a few miles.. Shoot, it must be 70 miles on gravel road.”
He thought about his days pouring concrete for Norlin in Sioux Falls, and the hot days stacking hay near Newell. At least he wasn’t still doing that.
Construction on the Garrison Dam had begun in 1946 or 1947 and the newspaper said it would still be a couple more years before it would be finished. It would be one of the largest earthen dams in the world; some said the largest. “I guess it takes a lot of trucks to build the world’s biggest dam,” Carl started talking to himself again.
Actually Carl knew it wasn’t only the Garrison Dam. The discovery of oil in Tioga in 1951 had set off a minor economic boom in western North Dakota. It meant more work for him, but these long drives were getting to be a hassle.
“Maybe I should look for something else in Minot or Williston. No, not Williston. , Minot maybe, but Williston. No way.” Carl found himself talking to himself. No radio stations this far out. “Ruth can hardly stand Bismarck. Thinking about moving to Minot is crazy; I don’t even want to think about Williston. I wonder how Williston got its name? I can’t imagine anyone living that far away from civilization.”
Many miles later, “I wonder if anyone like me can make any money in oil?”
It turned out that Newell was not at the end of the world. Williston, North Dakota, was.
How Carl and Ruth ended up in Williston is fairly straightforward, but a big gamble that paid off well for Dad in the long run.
In Dad’s words, “I was hired in Sioux Falls as an insurance adjuster and assigned to Bismarck, North Dakota. I acquired a reputation for getting losses settled without any trouble. When the first oil boom hit the Williston, North Dakota, area, two adjusters were asked to go there to adjust losses. I was one of the two. It was a rough assignment but we were accepted by the Williston people and got along fine. This was in March of 1953. While I was in Williston, I learned to know Erling Manger. Erling worked alone and had one secretary. I bought ½ interest in his business on a Sunday in December of 1955 and started working for him on January 1, 1956. One half interest cost me my life savings of $13,500. I paid Erling $12,150 and signed a note for the balance of $1350.”
Erling Manger drove a hard bargain. In today’s money, I’m sure that $13,500 must be worth $135,000 at today’s value. But it was not just the amount, but what it represented: his life’s savings.
Erling Manger never married. He and his sister lived in Williston most of their adult lives. Erling Manger was a Treasurer of Williams County. In 1945, he didn’t run again and started his insurance agency in Williston. He lived in the back of his insurance agency and Dad often talked about the odor of Erling’s cooked meals wafting through the agency, probably balanced by the thick cigar smoke from the cigar Erling would leave smoldering on his desk (in an ashtray, of course).
Carl and Erling operated as a partnership for two years (1956 and 1957). Then in January 1958 Jim Leinen joined them. Jim had been in an agency that was going broke.
Carl joined Erling in 1956 and Erling retired in 1961, at the age of 66. Carl took over and ran the agency, and in 1965, Carl and Jim bought the rest of Erling’s stock.
Erling Manger died at the age of 86. He had been born in October 1895, and died in May 1982.
CHAPTER TWELVE: ROLLING STONES (AND INSURANCE AGENCIES) GATHER NO MOSS
Erling’s first office was where the new Williston Post Office is now located, on East Broadway. In the fall of 1954, he built an office at 315 First Avenue West next to the American State Bank Drive-Up. This was the Manger Insurance building that Carl and Ruth’s children knew throughout their childhood. This was Carl’s first insurance office.
“Manger Insurance bought the Jack Huss Insurance Agency in 1968, consequently, more room was needed. The Manger agency then moved to 1st Avenue West, across from the Moose Club, to a building owned by Albert and Mary Borrud. Manger Insurance occupied half the building and Borrud’s Bakery, used the other half to bake bread.
In the meantime Carl had bought the whole block where Manger Insurance is presently located (511 West Second Street). In November of 1975, Mary Borrud (Albert had died) asked Manger Insurance to move out because she wanted to put in a restaurant where the Manger Insurance office was located, and she wanted them out by December 1, 1975. Carl told her it wouldn’t be possible to be out in a month and offered to double the rent if they could stay. She agreed and Manger Insurance remained a few extra months.
Immediately, they hired Steve Olson, December 1975, to build a new office building. Steve said he could have the building ready to be moved into by April 1, 1976. It was a very bad winter with more snow than usual but Steve kept his word. The Manger staff moved into their new office at 511 West 2nd Street by April 1, 1976.
Those hardy Norwegians. Steve Olson started building a new building from scratch in the middle of winter (December, 1975) and completed it in three months despite a harsh winter, very cold and lots of snow. The agency is still at that same address on West 2nd Street.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: WILLISTON HOMES
When Carl was transferred to Williston in March 1953, housing was very tight. Ruth and Carl had just bought a new home in Bismarck, and had moved into the new house in November 1952, just four months before the transfer to Williston. Carl commuted between Williston and Bismarck but was home every weekend. He rented a new 3-bedroom home (no basement) in Williston, on the far west side, on 14th Avenue. It sold for $11,000. Rent was $100 per month. Ruth, Bruce, Yvonne, and Carl moved to Williston on August 10, 1953.
Williston was very hot that August, and there was no lawn, just big clods of dirt for a yard. Bruce turned two years old on August 14, 1953, and Yvonne turned one on October 5, 1953. It wasn’t a very pleasant home but they adjusted. The four of them lived there until September 1956, when they moved to a “Larson and Stang” 4-bedroom house at 722 17th Street West. It cost almost $15,000. The homes were selling for $14,500 but Carl had pink fixtures placed in the bathroom and installed a fan in the kitchen which increased the price to just under $15,000.”
I have two vivid memories of that first house, our house on 14th Avenue. The first memory is that of the crawl space under the house, probably about two feet in depth with a dirt floor, which could be used for cool storage for vegetables and for exploring by small children. A much more vivid memory is being rocked to sleep by my dad. By the time I would have been old enough to have these memories, Mom would have had her hands full with three children, a toddler (Yvonne), an infant (Karla) and a newborn (Craig). I remember seeing the airport tower beacon coming through the window, cycling rhythmically and reassuringly while being rocked to sleep. It would have been a north-facing window since the airport was about three miles north of our home.
The Oksol family of six needed a larger house and on September 1, 1956, they moved into a four-bedroom house with a huge basement at 722 17th Street West. They lived there until October 1978. That home was the only home that most of Carl’s children knew.
In 1978, Carl made one last move, to 1901 University Avenue. He had long dreamed of moving to the east side of Williston; I remember him talking about that a lot. The eastern side of Williston was a bit more upscale and a “University Avenue” address was quite prestigious.
A lot had happened in the 22 years between 1956 and 1978. But by 1978, we were all moving on. Ruth’s father, Ekke “Ike” Flessner, passed away the month we moved to 1901 University Avenue. Bruce was at medical school at USC. Yvonne had graduated from college in 1974 and married Terry Braun in 1975. Karla graduated from college and was married in 1975. Craig had also graduated from college but lived at home in Williston for a short while before he bought his own house west of Williston. At that time Kathy was still in college, having graduated from Williston High School (WHS) in 1976. In 1978, only one child was still living at home: Jan was in high school and living with Mom and Dad at 1901 University Avenue.
Jan was the only child to live in that house on University Avenue. The University Avenue house was a big, beautiful house. He was very proud of that house on University Avenue. He paid attention to the smallest details, including special tile from Italy for the front foyer, and when one of the tiles cracked while being placed, he was not upset. He just convinced the contractor to order a complete second set of tiles in case they would be needed in the future. They were not needed, but supposedly those (very expensive) tiles are still stored somewhere in Williston.
Jan graduated from college in 1982. Carl and Ruth saw all six of their children successfully complete college. It was the first time in 24 years that they had no children in school! At one time they had four children in college or post-graduate education all at the same time.
I think Dad enjoyed building houses. He built an addition to the house on 17th Street, and sometime in the 1970’s he built a beautiful retirement house on Flathead Lake, Montana, just outside the western entrance to Glacier National Park.
It seemed Dad had a great knack for timing. He happened to see some “virgin” property along the most beautiful lake (Flathead Lake) in the most beautiful part of Montana. He bought a lot in a new development, one of the very few on Flathead Lake at the time, and then had a house built to his and Mom’s specifications during a time when contractors were looking for work, and thus built at a very good cost. Today, there is no more land available along that lake, except for a very high price. I often wonder about Dad’s knack for good timing. He has always said he would rather be lucky than smart.
Carl is generally not that modest but in this case he is very modest when he says he was just lucky. When it comes to real estate Dad just seems to have both luck and smarts.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: OPERATIONAL STYLE
Carl always seemed to be very quick. He often talked about school of hard knocks and that experience served him well.
For example, as mentioned earlier, when he got the letter from the Selective Service Board, there was no law that said he had to open the letter. And he didn’t; he enlisted in the Coast Guard before opening the letter that told him to report to the Draft Board.
On another occasion, several years ago Dad received a nice letter from the government of Norway, a copy of which had been sent to all members of the Oksol clan. This letter stated that as a relative to one of the Oksols, he was entitled to a part of the estate left by a recently deceased relative as well as party to any liabilities. Dad knew that this particular relative did not have a large estate, but he did not know about the liabilities. He returned the letter, signed it, but drew lines through that part of the “contract” which stated he was also party to any liabilities. There was no law that said he had to sign the letter without making changes. (He never heard back.)
More recently, he delivered a liability and casualty policy to one of his more successful clients. The premium was very, very expensive but absolutely necessary if the individual planned to stay in business. The client stated that the premium seemed to be very, very expensive. Dad agreed, “I agree with you. It is expensive. You know, I don’t even buy insurance any more, it’s gotten so expensive.” The client signed and paid anyway. (Dad knows he could not have done that when he was younger and just starting out, but he knew this client very well, had a friendly relationship, and they both knew that each was joking. Nevertheless, it was an expensive policy.)
Unfortunately he has that same attitude with regard to speeding laws. He feels speed limits a) apply to others, or b) are recommendations. At age 80 he almost lost his driver’s license due to all his speeding tickets. He was able to convince the judge that he would take a “safe driving course” if he could get his license back. He took the course – there are rumors he slept through most of the course – and kept his driver’s license. Most of his children feel uneasy riding with him. But he does try harder to obey speed limits and stop signs.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: DAD’S ROUTINE AT 87 YEARS OF AGE
If I did not know better I would say that dad suffers from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) – the condition that is diagnosed in school-age boys who drive their teachers and parents nuts.
Dad, at 87 years of age (in 2009) gets up at 6:00 a.m. He reads the morning paper by 6:30 checking the business section and checking the stock market using a magnifying glass with a handle that is loose, and likely to fall off any day. By 7:00 he is out the door and having coffee and donuts at a local “Mom and Pop” (pop has died, so it is just “mom”) donut shop. At 7:30 he is back home, freshening up before he goes into the office at 8:00 a.m. He flies in with a flurry, his long overcoat blowing in the wind, checking things at the office, and doing a few things at his desk. By 9:00 a.m. he is downtown starting his daily rounds.
No one really knows his daily rounds but I suspect it goes something like this: 9:00, coffee with his peers; 9:45 at the local broker checking the stock market; 10:00, check the mail; 10:15, bringing the mail to the office; 10:30, taking a policy to an important client; 11:30, driving past his apartments to make sure they are still there. At 12:00 he is back home or at Gramma's or one of the other local restaurants for lunch. At 12:45 he takes a nap until 1:30. Freshening up, he returns to the office from 2:00 to 2:30. Then he checks the stock market at the broker’s office, stops by the various coffee shops to see what his friends are doing, and stopping for a quick chat, but nothing to drink or eat. Not enough time. By 4:00 he is back home, taking a short nap before dinner. He then starts getting a dinner ready and more often than not has one of the children (Craig or Karla) or grandchild (Robbie and wife, Toby) over for supper. After supper, until 10:00 or later, he alternates between short naps, surfing through television stations (less and less television these days), and catching up on old newspapers and reading the dozens of free financial newsletters asking him to subscribe. It is difficult for me to catch him at the office; no matter when I call he is out of the office, unless I call exactly at 9:00 or sometimes at 1:00, but not often.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: DAD’S MEMORIES OF HIS FATHER
I asked my dad about his dad, my grandfather Paul.
“I guess the two things that have stuck in my mind about my dad is the way he worked. He didn’t get started too early to do his farm work in the morning as there were the chores to do – feed the horses and harness them. So he would get out in the field around 7:30-8:00AM. He would come home for lunch. It would be very hot—maybe close to 100 degrees. He was sweating as were the horses. He would eat lunch and then lay down on the kitchen floor for about 2 hours. I thought he needed the rest but his big concern was that the horses get a good rest. Then he would probably work till 8 or 9 PM as the evening was cooler.
“The other thing I remember about my dad was how he handled the cattle buyers. At that time, there were no livestock sales rings like there are now. Cattle were bought by individuals who made their money buying as cheap as they could from the farmers and then haul the cattle to market.
“It was all done by guess. The animals were not weighed. The weight and the price were estimated.
“Dad knew that the buyers would tend to bargain you down. So dad would always start by asking a much higher price than he expected to get and would say they weighed more than they did. I think my dad was able to deal with the best of them. The buyer would offer his price and if dad didn’t think it was enough, he would say “Oh Ya?” and start walking to the house. He seemed to usually get the price he wanted. He never got excited. He was very calm and collected.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: DAD’S MEMORIES OF HIS MOTHER
I also asked dad about my grandmother, Christine.
“What I remember most about my mother was how cheerful she was. She never had much but was always cheerful. It didn’t take much to make her laugh. She loved to dance and was a good dancer. My dad never danced. I danced many times with my mother in the kitchen. Our radio was our source of music.
“My mother and dad were very honest Christian people.
“My mother wouldn’t allow alcohol in the house nor would she allow us to play cards. However, she was a very good whist player and played at the neighbors’ house. The reason she was so strict about alcohol was that her dad was an alcoholic. When he (Peter Tundvold) was 46 years old and drunk, he drowned in the little pond below the barn (you may remember this barn) Mom was 16 when her father (my grandfather) drowned.
“Mother was a very good singer. I was told by Myrtle that she was scheduled to sing in Oslo, which would be the equivalent to our Metropolitan Opera in New York.
“When she was a teenager, her dad would take her to the bar and she would entertain the customers by singing.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: GREATEST IMPACT ON CARL'S LIFE
IN DAD’S OWN WORDS
IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
1) Growing up on the family farm about 4 miles south of Newell, South Dakota, and leaving home to find out how the rest of the world lived. I spent 18 years on the farm and have wonderful memories.
2) Leaving home in the fall of 1940 at 18 years old and leaving a small farm and going to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which was a city of 40,000 people. I didn’t know a soul in Sioux Falls. I had $14 in my pocket. I had no job and it was costing me $7 per week for room, board and wash. After the first week I was wondering if I would get a job. I did and thing worked out well.
3) Enlisting in the US Coast Guard to avoid the draft. It was a say day when my folks took me to Rapid City to catch the bus for Omaha, Nebraska. We all realized I might never be back. I did enjoy my time the Coast Guard and happy that I was able to serve.
4) I didn’t get married until I was 28 years old. I was married on November 4, 1950, and turned 29 the next February 6th. Ruth was 23 years old and a very pretty girl. She was good for me and I loved her very much.
5) When I was 26 years old, I was involved in a serious automobile accident. I was thrown from the pickup I was driving and landed on my shoulder. My two passengers did not get hurt. I suffered a broken back but the doctor released me the next morning. I was attending college at the University of South Dakota. I didn’t realize I had a broken back for 6 weeks until I had the campus doctor take an x-ray. The cartilage was holding my back together. I drove to Sioux Falls from Vermillion, South Dakota where I was attending school. I was put in a full body cast, which I wore for 8 weeks. I recovered perfectly and have had no problems since then. I think of this every day. (Author’s note: this is the first time I ever heard this story!)
6) Going into business for myself. When I went into business I was 34 years old. It cost me my life savings. I had 4 children at the time. I am very glad I did. I have enjoyed it very much and have had a better standard of living than had I stayed an employee. Plus I am able to leave something for my 6 wonderful children and grandchildren.
7) In 1988 at age 66 when a lot of people retire, I bought out my partner. Because of bank contracts that we had guaranteed, I signed a personal note at American State Bank for $275,000 to clear these up. I paid Jim Leinen $2400 per month to buy his half interest in the agency. And I also gave him $50,000 down. Then to give me more grief, I got the Highland Manor Apartments back after 15 years. They of course were run down and back taxes of $50,000 were owed. There were 10 apartments to redo to make them rentable. Thanks to Bob Osborn for doing a great job and also thanks to Craig and Karla for sticking with me and encouraging me.
CHAPTER NINETEEN: ROTARY
Dad was a big supporter of the local Rotary Club, elected president at least once, and I believe he was the District President.
He always enjoyed telling jokes at Rotary Club. Being a Norwegian, he often told Norwegian jokes as well as Swedish jokes. Apparently one time someone voiced his displeasure at Dad telling jokes about the Scandinavians. Dad figured he better talk about a group of people that no longer existed so he would not get into any more trouble. I suppose because of his liberal arts background at Augustana College (and maybe the reason he transferred from that college) he had heard about the Hittites, long extinct. At the next Rotary meeting he told the group that he had a Hittite joke, “One day Sven and Ole were driving….”
CHAPTER TWENTY: COUNTY COMMISSIONER
Dad often talks about his years serving as a county commissioner. It is obvious that he really enjoyed being a county commissioner. It is very clear that he is very much a “people-person.” I think he enjoys getting things done, he enjoys the camaraderie, he enjoys being the center of attention.
He had an advantage over his opponents when running for county commissioner. He “hired” his four oldest children to go door-to-door handing out little brochures on why voters should elect him. I believe he paid us a penny for each circular; it could have been a nickel, but I think it was a penny. (Thinking back, I do not remember ever seeing that money, but I am sure it is just my bad memory.) Dad would troll the neighborhoods, dropping us off one at a time, and then circling back and picking us up. I always found it kind of remarkable that he never lost any one of us. I took it very seriously and made sure I handed out each card to the person who answered the door. Years later, Dad tells me he learned much later that Craig just threw the cards away when he got out of eyesight of Dad.
I think Dad could have easily risen to state level in politics, and from there, who knows. There was no question that Mom held him back. I was certainly not aware of their discussions about his running for elected office, but there is no question that she was not in favor of him doing that. Early in my adult life I was “sad” that Dad did not get the opportunity to do what he probably really wanted to do. However, over the years, having seen the destroyed lives of some failed politicians, and the problems facing the families of successful politicians, I think it was a blessing that Dad did not pursue those options.
Running for county commissioner, and his desire for higher elected office, validates the infinite optimism of my dad. He was a compassionate conservative before George W. Bush popularized that phrase. Dad was a registered Republican, fiscally conservative, but he was very sensitive to those in need. With the farmers in North and South Dakota historically being such strong Democrats, I wonder what caused Dad to not only register as a Republican but also taking such a very active interest in the Republican Party, donating a fair amount of money to the party over the years. I am sure his own father was a stalwart Democrat; I believe I recall Dad talking about his own father’s admiration for Franklin D. Roosevelt.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: OTHER STORIES OF NOTE
I asked my dad for any other stories he would like to see in this biography. He was only too quick to respond.
“My parents started the First Lutheran Church in Newell, South Dakota. This church was built in 1933 by the men of the church at a cost of $800. Today that same church would cost $500,000. I was 11 years old at the time. Before the church was built the members would meet at different locations.” In the “Golden Anniversary, Newell, SD, 1910 – 1960,” Paul Oksol is mentioned as one of the 22 founding members of the First Lutheran Church in Newell but knowing him and my dad, I do believe that it was Paul Oksol who was the leading advocate to build the church. Paul was a very religious man. I remember my dad talking about his dad reading the Bible every evening and praying before every meal.
“Another thing that I think was interesting to note (this was the old west) was that the ranchers were split. Some ranchers ran cattle and the others ran sheep. The cattle ranchers hated the sheep. My dad had both cattle and sheep but didn’t really go with either, and seemed to be friendly with both sides. The ranchers on the irrigation project kept breeding ewes. My dad had around 400 head. Every spring the ranchers would put their herds together and have about three to four thousand sheep band together. They would hire a herder to stay with them all summer. One time a sheepherder brought the banded sheep to a dam to water them. While he was doing this, a cattle rancher claimed the dam (pond) for himself and claimed the sheep rancher shouldn’t have been there. To teach the sheep rancher a lesson, the sheepherder’s legs were tied together and he was tied to the tail of his horse. He was dragged for a long way across rocks, cactus and the like. He lived but was in terrible shape. The cattle men, who were members of First Lutheran Church, served time in the pen.
“My dad and mother were very moral people and wouldn’t allow us to swear or even use slang. One time Myrtle told me dad was visiting with the neighbor. She came in the house and told my mother that dad had said a swear word. Mother asked her what the word was and Myrtle said he used the word “gosh.” Mother was very kind and thoughtful and said to Myrtle that he should not have used that word but it could have been much worse.”
“Mother would not allow alcohol in the house. My dad kept a bottle of Black Berry Brandy in the garage. I used to sample it and thought it was pretty good. One time I drank more than I should. I decided to fill that bottle with water. I wasn’t worried because I knew that dad would never say anything about it because he wouldn’t want my mother to know about the alcohol. And I never heard anything about it.”
Paul and Christine moved to the new farm in 1919, but they did not have indoor plumbing until 1954. That year Carl bought his parents indoor plumbing fixtures through the Sears Roebuck catalogue. He had a choice of “good, better, and best.” He bought the “best.” Eddie and Oscar installed the indoor bathroom; Eddie used his backhoe to put in the outdoor plumbing. (Carl’s sister Myrtle remarked that her mother said she felt she had died and gone to heaven when she had indoor plumbing for the first time. Unfortunately, she did not enjoy it for long; she died just a few years later.)
The Last Day
From my journal:
Williston — Carl’s Funeral - May 20 - 28, 2018
I received the phone call from Jan on Sunday, May 20, 2018, about 1:45 p.m. Dad had died sometime in the previous two hours. Details to follow, I’m sure.
Jan had visited Williston last week when she heard Dad was doing poorly, but by Friday he was back to his “old” self and even spoke to me on Facetime. Less than two days later, he had died.
I rented a car at Enterprise in our neighborhood, a Chevrolet Sonic.
I left at 4:40 p.m. Sunday afternoon. En route I learned the funeral is not until Friday, so I immediately “slowed down.” No need to hurry. Stayed overnight in Concordia, KS, north of Salina.
Beautiful, beautiful drive. It would have been a nice drive to take with Dad. The route would have held many, many memories for him, as a truck driver from Sioux Falls, SD, to Temple, Texas, and back.
FINALE
For many years Carl had wanted someone to write his life story so that his children and their children could become familiar with their heritage. Carl was part of the “great generation” chronicled by Tom Brokaw in his book.
This short history should provide a jumping-off point for Carl’s grandchildren to do further research on the Norwegian contribution to America.
With the advent of the Internet, future research is much easier. It is the hope of the author that at least one of Carl’s grandchildren will return to Norway to do further research. And, of course, all of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren will have a ready resource when elementary grade school teachers ask them for an essay on their heritage.
END NOTES
In 2015, Dad moved into a private room at Bethel Lutheran Home, Williston, North Dakota. My most recent visit back to see him was on his 94th birthday, February, 2016. He was as active as ever. In fact, I think he has improved immensely now that he back among people, as opposed to living alone so many years on University Avenue. As much as he said he never wanted to leave his home, he said he was quite happy with his new home at Bethel. He has a captive audience to whom he can tell all his stories.
The Trøndheim Adresseavisen is still published; it is the oldest active newspaper in Norway. It was founded in 1767.
Lief Ericson, a Viking credited with discovering the North American continent in 1000 A.D., had a settlement in Trøndheim at that time.
Of course Paul did not know it at the time, but ironically, 1907, the year he emigrated to the United States, was the year in which Ellis Island recorded its peak immigration year: 195,540 immigrants were processed through Ellis Island that year. In addition, the hospital on Ellis Island, which had been originally been built in 1902, was expanded in 1907.
There is a bit of irony here. Many years later Paul’s daughter, Myrtle, would marry into the Wilson family, a prominent family in western South Dakota. It is a fact that Paul most likely would have taken the Wilson Line to England, the only line from Trøndheim to Hull in 1907. The most common destination for Norwegians immigrating to America was through Hull.
Norway replaced its “Thaler” with the “Krone” as a result of the Scandinavian Monetary Union, which came into effect in 1873 and lasted until the First World War. The parties to the union were the Scandinavian countries, where the name was Krona in Sweden and Krone in Denmark and Norway, which in English literally means Crown. After dissolution of the monetary union Sweden, Denmark and Norway all decided to keep the name of their respective and now separate currencies.
During the trip back to Norway in 1965, Paul was able to meet Christine’s siblings for the first time. The only two he did not see were Ole and Anna.
A Norwegian mile is equal to approximately seven US miles.
On July 2, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed an Act of Congress creating the Northern Pacific Railroad Company. The railroad was chartered to build from the Great Lakes to Puget Sound and its route followed the journey of the 1804 - 1806 Lewis and Clark expedition across the West. By 1900 it had extensive operations from Minnesota to the Pacific Coast. In 1907, the company extended the Fargo Division (Fargo, ND) eastward to Dilworth, MN.
Zumbrota, MN, is located on US Highway 52, about midway between Minneapolis and Rochester, MN.
When Oscar started Augustana in about 1932, the Tuttles were still living in Sioux Falls and he did get to see them.
Castle Rock is at the junction of State Highways 168 and 79. Today, Castle Rock and Newell share the same zip code, 57760.
They were also within a few miles of the geographical center of the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii – just west of Castle Rock, Butte County, South Dakota; latitude 44 degrees 58 minutes north, longitude 103degrees 46minutes west. There is a marker on US Highway 85 just south of SD Highway 168 that turns off to Castle Rock marking this landmark.
Eddie was named after his mother’s oldest brother Edvard. Norwegians didn’t have a “w” in their alphabet.
The coordinates of the Milberg School are 44.66667 (latitude) and –103.41139 (longitude). It is located on Horse Creek, just southeast of the US Highway 212 and SD State Highway 79, approximately one mile east of SD State Highway 79.
Today, in western North Dakota and eastern Montana, trucks are hauling 20 tons of sugar beets in one load. Farmers expected to harvest about 20 tons per acre in 2004, which means that one truck can haul out one acre of sugar beets each load.
On July 5, 1936, the temperature officially hit 120 degrees Fahrenheit in Grann Valley, South Dakota, just east of Pierre, SD. In that same year only months earlier, February 17, 1936, the thermometer registered –58 degrees Fahrenheit in McIntosh, SD, north of Pierre, on the ND – SD state line. This represents the record for extreme temperature difference in SD.
Recall that Liverpool was the port Carl’s father sailed from in 1907 when he immigrated to the United States.
Twenty-eight years later the author hitchhiked from Los Angeles to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, following my interview with the admissions committee at the University of Southern California Medical School. I started back with $4.00 in my pocket, probably about the same amount of money dad has in his in 1946. Except that $4.00 then probably seemed like $40.00 in today’s money.
Arthur Norlin was the founder of Acme Construction Company, Sioux Falls, SD.
Dad was working in Bismarck, ND, and would have received a wedding invitation from Ruth who was still in Sioux City, Iowa. She had not yet been out of Iowa.
The author watched that beacon night-after-night as a toddler and ended up in the US Air Force years later. The author has spent his entire adult life around runways and towers and beacons. And rocking his own two children.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX A: IMMIGRATION RECORDS
One can find Paul Oksaal and Kristine Tangvald at the Ellis Island website.
APPENDIX B: THE OKSOL FAMILY
Paul Oksol was born June 22, 1886, on the Oksol farm near Trøndheim, Norway.
Christine Tangvold was born March 31, 1880, twenty-one American miles from Trøndheim, Norway.
Paul and Christine are buried at the Wilson Cemetery, five miles south of Newell. Christine died March 18, 1956, and Paul died November 19, 1965. Christine lived to 75 years old and Paul lived to be 79 years.
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Myrtle's 80th Birthday; Carl in the middle, front.
Front row: Myrtle, Carl, Edward
Back row: Clara, Oscar
Siblings
Edward Martin was born on June 24, 1911.The children attended Milberg School, grades 1 – 8, a one-room, one-teacher rural school, 1 ½ mile northeast of the homestead. Milberg School was located one mile east of County Highway 79, and one mile south of the US Highway 212 / County Highway 79 intersection.
Oscar Alfred was born November 24, 1912.
Myrtle Alfreda was born on October 9, 1914. Died, November 19, 2003. Obituary.
Clara Pauline was born on June 6, 1916.
Carl Harold was born February 6, 1922.
They attended Newell High School, at the corner of Dartmouth Avenue and 6th Street. Dartmouth Avenue is US Highway 212 that runs north/south through Newell. It is not the business thoroughfare of Newell, which is Girard Avenue, three blocks east.
Cy Bump, Clara’s husband, was in World War II and was in the first wave to invade France on June 6, 1944 which was Clara’s birthday. She was 28 years old.
Historical highlights of 1880, the year of Christine’s birth:
Gold was discovered in Juneau, Alaska.Historical highlights of 1886, the year of Paul’s birth:
The modern bicycle, with two wheels of equal size, chain drive to rear wheel, was invented.
The Salvation Army established its first branch in New York City.
The Second Afghan War ended.
Gold was discovered in the southern Transvaal, South Africa.
The Chiricahua Indian chief Geronimo is captured by General Cook; he escaped two days later.
Sam Clemens (Mark Twain) addresses a US Senate committee considering copyright legislation.
The Statue of Liberty was dedicated by President Grover Cleveland.
The first ocean-going tanker, the 3,000 ton Gluckauf, is built in Great Britain.
APPENDIX C: NEWELL, SD
Newell: population, 675, 1990 census; 646, 2000 census.
Newell is located at 44°42'59" north, 103°25'23" west.
Newell High School, number of graduates in 2000: 35.
Gold in the Black Hills: Black Hills Gold history actually began in 1874. An expeditionary force of one thousand men were led by George Armstrong Custer into the Black Hills area, a 1000-square-mile region held sacred by the Sioux. A few months after the group's arrival, a man named Horatio N. Ross discovered gold along French Creek in the central Black Hills. One of the last great North American gold rushes inevitably followed.
From http://cityofnewell.com/main.asp?SectionID=5. 29 Apr 05. Information the rest of this appendix was taken from two sources: "GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY - Newell, S. Dak., 1910-1960" compiled by Reverend William Reitmeier; and, Newell Museum pamphlet, written by Linda Velder.
When General George Custer made his exploration of the Black Hills in 1874, he camped near Newell on his return to Ft. Abraham Lincoln. General Crook, on his gruesome “Horse Meat March” to the Black Hills from the 1876 Battle of the Slim Buttes, passed close to the east of Newell. The famous Bismarck Trail, established in 1876, traveled through the neighboring town of Vale.
Newell sprang up from the construction of Orman Dam, the largest earthen reservoir in the world at that time. Newell is the center of the Irrigation project that began in 1904 and was established in 1910.
Although first rumors had it that the new town would be called “Craig” after James T. Craig, who represented the Clay Banking Institutions and headed banks at Belle Fourche, Camp Crook, Nisland and Newell. The town of Newell received its name in honor of Frederick Haynes Newell, who at that time held the office of Chief Engineer of the United States Reclamation Service.
Newell came in contact with the outside world when the Northwestern Telephone Company ran their line from Nisland and Belle Fourche; it was later extended to Vale. This was reported by the Valley Irrigator, which was published in Vale, on April 14, 1910.
After 1911, there were several years when few new developments were recorded. But in 1917, the Consolidated Light and Power Company planned to bring electricity from Deadwood to Nisland and Newell.
In 1918 there was a Spanish influenza epidemic that struck the entire country. In November 1918, all meetings and gatherings were forbidden, and citizens were ordered to wear masks when out in public. Miss Mary Olson of Black Hawk came to Newell to help nurse flu patients. She worked such long hours, without rest, that she contracted bronchial pneumonia and died. She gave her life for this community.
In 1921, Butte County began construction of the Fair Grounds at Nisland. The next year, the Newell school board let bids for a new high school building. Seven years later, in 1929, Nisland dedicated a new gym in connection with their high school. At that time it was one of the largest gyms in the Black Hills.
In 1927, President Calvin Coolidge accepted an invitation to spend the summer in the Black Hills. Rapid City High School became the Presidential offices; the State Game Lodge did not only become the site of many conferences but also the White House. The President and Mrs. Coolidge took time to come to Newell, and to attend the Butte County Fair at Nisland.
World War II was affecting Newell, as it did every other community. Men, and young women, were going into the armed services from town and the country.
In 1942, the high school started holding classes six days a week so that school might be out sooner and release students for farm work.
In 1949, there came a blizzard that will be remembered until a worse one comes along. Starting late in the afternoon of New Years Day, it struck over a large area of the Plains states. Roads were closed, trains blocked, and schools stopped. Ranchers could not get to town for supplies; and in many cases, they could not get their livestock to feed, or vice versa. The U.S. Army sent in bulldozers to assist state and county highway crews in opening roads to overwhelmed ranches, and to hay stacks. Airplanes were also pressed into service to carry supplies to isolated families, or to get someone to a hospital. For almost three months, everyone joined in the battle to beat the blizzard. Eventually the roads were open, communications resumed, dead livestock were disposed of, and life resumed.
APPENDIX D: HOMESTEADING
Homesteading information for Paul Oksol and Henry Wilson
Source: http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/sd/butte/land/butte-no.txt
Meridian 07: western South Dakota / eastern Wyoming
Case: 251000 = Homestead
Meridian TWP Range Section Acreage Case Type DOCID DATE
OKSOL PAUL 07 011 N 006 E 029 280 251101 PA 630704 05/20/1918
OKSOL PAUL 07 011 N 006 E 030 40 251101 PA 630704 05/20/1918
OKSOL PAUL 07 011 N 006 E 028 160 251104 PA 777282 10/13/1920
OKSOL PAUL 07 011 N 006 E 029 80 251104 PA 777282 10/13/1920
OKSOL PAUL 07 011 N 006 E 030 80 251104 PA 777282 10/13/1920
TOTAL for PAUL OKSOL: 640 acres (1918 – 1920)
WILSON HENRY C 07 008 N 006 E 021 80 272002 PA 597 09/21/1886
WILSON HENRY C 07 008 N 006 E 021 80 272002 PA 597 09/21/1886
WILSON HENRY C 07 008 N 006 E 021 40 251101 PA 1073 02/18/1892
WILSON HENRY C 07 008 N 006 E 021 120 251101 PA 1073 02/18/1892
WILSON HENRY C 07 008 N 006 E 022 160 251105 PA 22 03/01/1892
TOTAL for HENRY C. WILSON: 480 acres (1886 – 1892)
WILSON HENRY J 07 008 N 006 E 022 40 251500 PA 444652 11/25/1914
TOTAL for HENRY J. WILSON: 40 acres (1914)
WILSON JOHN P 07 008 N 006 E 024 40 276402 PA 115548 11/09/1955
WILSON JOHN P 07 008 N 006 E 024 40 272002 PA 3897 03/06/1899
TOTAL for JOHN P. WILSON: 80 acres (1899 and 1955)
APPENDIX E: NORWEGIANS AND THE DAKOTAS
According to “The Encyclopedia of the Great Plains (2004),” based on percentage of population, the Norwegians were the second largest group to immigrate to the United States during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Only a higher percentage of Irish immigrated to America during this period. The largest percentage settled in North Dakota.
Current statistics regarding the Norwegian populations and the various states – these are the percent of the total state population that is Norwegian:
North Dakota: 30 percentAt the time of the great migration, the country of Norway, unlike Germany, for example, required all students to take English. The Germans put more emphasis on farming than on education. The result was that most Norwegian emigrants to America spoke English, whereas most German emigrants still spoke the mother language.
Minnesota: 18 percent
South Dakota: 16 percent
Montana: 11 percent
Wisconsin: 9 percent
Washington State: 6 percent
Iowa: 6 percent
APPENDIX F: BUTTE COUNTY, EARLY 1900s
Source: Black Hills Power
Butte County was booming in 1910 due to the “gold rush” in the Black Hills. One can get a feeling of the boom by looking at the population in the early 1900s in this area. Note the significant increase in population in these western South Dakota counties between 1900 and 1910:
County 1900 1910 1915
Butte County 2,907 4,993 5,895At the turn of the century, about the very time Paul was staking his claim near Newell, SD, the natural center of the Black Hills was Deadwood, which was being widely advertised as “The Center of the Richest One Hundred Square Miles on Earth.”
Custer County 2,728 4,458 3,452
Lawrence County 17,896 19,694 17,710
Meade County 4,907 12,640 8,724
Pennington County 5,610 12,453 10,040
Gold mining was the principal industry of the Black Hills. The State Mine Inspector’s Report showed 3,974 men employed in mines during 1911. A comparative statement of the gold and silver production compiled from the annual reports of the State Inspector of Mines showed the following values:
1897: $5,730,487 1906: $6,986,900 1986: $25,000,000
1900: $6,470,156 1908: $7,544,850 1987: $34,600,000
1902: $7,342,277 1911: $7,625,506
1903: $7,159,400 1912: $8,000,000
1905: $7,191,553
To learn more about Newell, South Dakota, at the turn of the century, and what it must have been like for Paul and Christine, consider visiting the history of Black Hills Power and Light Company, at http://www.blackhillspower.com/bhphist.htm#toc. This is an illustrated history of this company, written by R. E. “Dint” Furois, and published February 9, 1989.
With regard to Newell specifically and electrical power: “ In the August 23, 1917, issue of the Newell weekly paper the headlines read, "Light Line Coming Soon." The article stated that the Consolidated Power and Light Company was extending their lines from Belle Fourche to Nisland and Newell and hoped to be there by September 15, 1917. After months of work under adverse weather conditions and against a war-caused labor shortage, the "Irrigator" of February 25, 1918, carried the headlines, "Newell Is On The Great White Way," and stated that the "Irrigator" was the first customer to be turned on in Newell. They received lights on Sunday, February 21, at 5:00 p.m. In 1932 the 11,000 volt line was built south from Newell to Vale.” Source, R.E. Furois, “Illustrated History of the Black Hills Power and Light Company, 1989.
APPENDIX G: BEAR BUTTE
Technically Bear Butte is not a butte. It is solidified volcanic magma that never reached the surface to generate an eruption. This geologic structure is a laccolith, and Bear Butte is at the east end of a linear belt of volcanic centers that continues westward about 60 miles to the most famous laccolith, Devils Tower, in Wyoming. The magma intruded to a shallow level and then stopped, cooled, and solidified. Erosion then stripped the overlying layers of rock away.
Bear Butte is the most striking geologic feature in the immediate area of the Oksol homestead. It rises 1,253 feet above the surrounding plain. Bear Butte was a sacred site for the Cheyenne Indians before they were pushed westward out of the area by the Sioux.
APPENDIX H: HONYOCKER
The word “honyocker” was applied to the early homestead shacks, as well as to the immigrants themselves. Although originally a derogatory word, it is now a symbol of pride for many of the descendents of those early immigrants. It is not clear where the name came from but appears to have been first used in America by free-range ranchers to describe the farmers, who they despised, in Montana and the Dakotas.
Some argue that the “hon” comes from Hungary and there are many references stating that “honyocker” is a disparaging word coming from eastern Europe, Hungary and /or Poland.
Others argue that the word may have first been used by Montana cowboys, upset with homesteaders who came in after the cowboys and getting “free” land from the government. These cowboys viewed homesteaders as “rubes” or “hayseeders” who were despoiling the good earth. Some argue that “honyocker” was a corruption of a German expression meaning “chicken chaser.” And to native Montanans, the newly arrived farmers were “honyockers.”
In the June 7, 1941, issue of the Saturday Evening Post, an article said “Yankees” called their central European immigrant neighbors “Honyocks,” and the term eventually was applied to any farmer who tried to raise grain and livestock in the high prairies of the Great Plains.
APPENDIX I: FIRST LUTHERAN CHURCH, NEWELL, SD
(Golden Anniversary, Newell, SD, 1910 – 1960)
(Golden Anniversary, Newell, SD, 1910 – 1960)
There were no regular Lutheran church services or Lutheran resident ministers in Newell in the early years. The congregation known as First Lutheran Church held services in the Congregational Church to begin with and later in the Methodist Church. When activities conflicted with those of these churches, it was decided to rent the Lodge Hall for a meeting place, at one dollar for each meeting.
The early members were the families of Andrew Erickson, Hans Amunson, MJ Varland, CO Holt, Thore Johnson, Paul Oksol, Ole Boe, Lewis Boe, Old Tysdal, Henry Beckett, Hugo Reiche, John Wilson, Oscar Reppen, William Schmele, OG Westre, Ben Carlson, Louis Larson, I Severson, Emil Milberg, William Laumer, O Christopherson, and Selmer Lee.
Reverend Skipstad, a student, came to Newell for the summer months in 1921. HE served here as well as other places. It was during his stay that the church was organized. The first group to organize consisted of Andrew Erickson, Paul Oksol, OG Westre, CO Holt, Selmer Lee and Thore Johnson. These men met with Reverend Jensen from Rapid City at the Anderson Lumber Company office of which Mr Holt was manager.
Reverend Trygstad, resident pastor in Lead, served as interim pastor until December (1924?) when Reverend JJ Heie, located at Arpan, took over. Services were held every two weeks. Often Reverend Heie walked the 16 miles; later he moved his family to Newell. Reverend Heie served until the spring of 1926 when Reverend EW Sihler came. Reverend Sihler helped write the constitution and be-laws for the church. He saw the beginning of the present church building which was supervised by OG Westre. Reverend CE Grevstad served Newell and Lead from July, 1928, until the church was completed in 1930 when he moved his family to Newell.
Reverend PB Stensland came in December, 1933, and remained until August, 1937, when he went to DeSmet, SD. The next five years First Lutheran was served by Reverend OM Skinrud and Reverend RL Oakland, resident ministers from Sturgis. Luthard Eide, a student minister, served during the summer of 1942. Then Reverend George Anderson served for six years. It was during this time that ht mortgages and indebtedness were finally paid off.
APPENDIX J: ORMAN DAM AND THE BELLE FOURCHE IRRIGATION PROJECT
The Belle Fourche Irrigation Project was started on May 18, 1905, as a federal irrigation project following a letter written in January, 1903, by P. P. Vallery to Eben Martin, the US Congressman for northwestern South Dakota.
The irrigation project called for a concrete diversion dam across the Belle Fourche River two miles below Belle Fourche; a six and a half mile canal; and Orman Dam, an earthen structure 6,262 feet long and 112 feet high across Owl Creek Valley, about six miles north of Fruitdale.
When completed in 1911, Orman Dam was the largest earthen dam in the world. The dam held back the Belle Fourche Reservoir which covered 8,010 acres and had a storage capacity of 200,000 acre-feet of water.
The Orman Dam has two outlets, the North Canal and the South Canal. As of 1960, there was a total of 665 miles of canals and laterals to distribute water, and 260 miles of drainage ditches. Irrigation started in 1907 – the very year Paul Oksol arrived in the United States – when the first unit of the irrigation district was opened for settlement. The fifth unit was opened January 8, 1917.
At capacity, the Orman Dam has 52 miles of shoreline and holds 60 billion gallons of water.
APPENDIX K: MOUNT RUSHMORE (“The Faces”)
1926 – 1941
Mount Rushmore National Memorial is located 23 miles southwest of Rapid City. It was sculpted by Gutzon Borglum.
The mountain itself was originally named after Charles E. Rushmore, a New York lawyer investigating mining claims in the Black Hills in 1885. Gutzon Borglum chose this mountain due to its height (5700' above sea level), the soft grainy consistency of the granite, and the fact that it catches the sun for the greatest part of the day. Borglum selected the presidents on the basis of what each symbolized. George Washington represented the struggle for independence; Thomas Jefferson represented the idea of government by the people; Abraham Lincoln represented the principles of equality and the permanent union of the states; and, Theodore Roosevelt represented for role of the United States in world affairs in the 20th century.
The work on Mt. Rushmore began on August 10, 1927, and spanned a length of 14 years but only six and a half years were spent actually carving the mountain. Periods of no work were due to weather delays and Borglum's greatest enemy - the lack of funding. It was dedicated by President Calvin Coolidge in 1927.
The total cost of the project was $900,000. Work continued on the project until the death of Gutzon Borglum in 1941. No carving has been done on the mountain since that time and none is planned in the future.
APPENDIX L: THE USS WAKEFIELD
Carl Oksol served on the USS Wakefield, a troop transport, during WWII. The USS Wakefield was originally a commercial passenger liner called the SS Manhattan. The USS Wakefield was the largest ship ever manned by US Coast Guard personnel.
The SS Manhattan was one of three large, fast liners leased by the US Navy in June of 1941 (the others were SS Washington/USS Mount Vernon and SS America/USS West Point). Prior to WWII it had been planned to convert the trio to aircraft carriers, but instead they became troopships. As the largest and fastest US troopships, they were very busy throughout the war, and often operated together. The USS Wakefield was manned by the US Coast Guard, the largest ship to be so operated.
The SS Manhattan was built for United States Lines at Camden, N.J., by the New York Shipbuilding Company and was launched on 5 December 1931. Mrs. Edith Kermit Roosevelt, widow of former President Theodore Roosevelt, sponsored the ship.
After trials in and off the Delaware River, the SS Manhattan departed New York City at midnight on 10 August 1932 for her maiden Atlantic crossing. Arriving at Hamburg 10 days later, she made the return voyage to New York in 5 days 14 hours and 28 minutes a record for passenger liners. Proudly carrying the title of "the fastest cabin ship in the world," the liner continued to ply the North Atlantic from New York to Hamburg, via Cobh, Ireland, Southampton, England and Le Havre, France, into the late 1930's. When Germany recalled her ships from the high seas during the Munich crisis in September 1938, the SS Manhattan was en route to Hamburg but immediately came about and put into British and French ports instead, to bring back anxious American travelers who feared that they would be engulfed in a European war.
After war broke out a year later, she made voyages to Genoa and Naples, Italy. Following the Allied collapse in the lowlands of Western Europe in the spring of 1940, she made a transatlantic crossing in July to repatriate American nationals from Portugal. With the European war endangering commercial shipping of neutral nations, the SS Manhattan was then withdrawn from the once lucrative transatlantic trade and placed in inter coastal service from New York to San Francisco, via the Panama Canal and Los Angeles.
In February 1941, during her third voyage to California, the SS Manhattan ran aground off West Palm Beach, Fla., but was pulled free by tugs after the ship was lightened. After the ship was repaired at New York, the Government chartered her on 6 June 1941 for a two-year period and renamed her the USS Wakefield. Converted to a troop transport at Brooklyn, N.Y., by the Robins Drydock Co., her costly furnishings and trappings of a luxury cruise liner were carefully removed and stored for future use. All of the ship's external surfaces were painted in Navy camouflage colors. On 15 June 1941, the USS Wakefield was commissioned, with Comdr. W. N. Derby, USCG in command.
On 13 July 1941, the USS Wakefield departed New York to participate in joint Navy-Marine-Army-Coast Guard amphibious training exercises at New River Inlet, N.C., in late July and early August. In early November, the troopship proceeded to Halifax, Nova Scotia, to take on board British troops. The USS Wakefield, with 6,000 men embarked, and five other transports got underway on 10 November for Cape Town, South Africa. Escorted by a strong screen - which, as far as Trinidad, included The USS Ranger (CV-4) - the convoy arrived at Cape Town on 8 December 1941, the day after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. This drastic change in the strategic situation prompted the convoy to be rerouted to the Far East. On 29 January 1942, the USS Wakefield and the USS West Point arrived at Singapore to disembark troops doomed later to capture by the Japanese upon the fall of the city in the following month.
On 30 January 1942, the USS Wakefield commenced fuelling at Keppel Harbor for the return voyage and awaited the arrival of some 400 British women and children who were being evacuated to Ceylon. At 1100, lookouts spotted two formations of Japanese bombers-27 planes in each-approaching the dock area at Keppel Harbor. Unhampered by anti-aircraft fire or British fighter planes, the enemy bombers droned overhead and released a brief rain of bombs on the waterfront. One bomb hit 50 yards off the USS Wakefield's port quarter, and another blew up in the dock area 40 feet from the transport's bow before a third struck the ship's "B" deck and penetrated through to "C" deck where it exploded in the sick bay spaces. A fire broke out, but it was extinguished in less than one- half hour. Using oxygen masks, fire-fighting and damage control crews extricated five dead and nine wounded. Medical assistance soon came from the USS West Point.
Completing her fuelling, the USS Wakefield embarked her passengers and got underway soon thereafter, burying her dead at sea at 2200 and pushing on for Ceylon. After disembarking her passengers at Colombo, the ship found that port authorities would not cooperate in arranging for repair of her damage. The USS Wakefield, therefore, promptly sailed for Bombay, India, where she was able to effect temporary repairs and embark 336 American evacuees. Steaming home via Cape Town, the transport reached New York on 23 March and then proceeded to Philadelphia for permanent repairs.
Underway on 11 May 1942 for Hampton Roads, the USS Wakefield arrived at Norfolk two days later to load cargo in preparation for Naval Transportation Service Operating Plan "Lone Wolf." This provided for the USS Wakefield to travel, for the most part, unescorted- relying on her superior speed to outrun enemy submarines. On 19 May 1942, she embarked 4,725 marines and 309 Navy and Army passengers for transportation to the South Pacific and moved to Hampton Roads to form up with a convoy bound for the Canal Zone. Arriving at Cristobal on the 25th, the USS Wakefield was released from the convoy to proceed west. After USS Borie (DD-215) escorted her out of the Canal Zone, the USS Wakefield proceeded independently to New Zealand and arrived at Wellington on 14 June 1942. Departing one week later, the transport steamed via the Panama Canal and reached New York on 11 July 1942.
On 6 August 1942, the USS Wakefield departed New York with Convoy AT-18-the largest troop convoy yet assembled. A dozen troop transports made up the bulk of the convoy, escorted by 12 warships-cruisers and destroyers. After proceeding via Halifax to Great Britain, the USS Wakefield received orders routing her and three other transports to the River Clyde, where they arrived without incident. On 27 August 19424, The USS Wakefield departed the Clyde estuary as part of Convoy TA-18, bound for New York.
While the transport was en route to her destination, on the evening of 3 September 1942, fire broke out deep within the bowels of the ship and spread rapidly. In the port column of the formation, the USS Wakefield swung to port to run before the wind while fire fighting began immediately. Ready-use ammunition was thrown overboard to prevent detonation, code room publications were secured, and sickbay and brig inmates were released. The USS Mayo (DD-422) and the USS Brooklyn (CL-40) closed to windward to take off passengers, a badly burned officer, and members of the crew not needed to man pumps and hoses. Other survivors were disembarked by boat and raft, to be picked up forthwith by the screening ships.
At 2100, the USS Brooklyn again came alongside to remove the remainder of the crew, while a special salvage detail boarded the ship. On 5 September 1942, towing operations commenced, and the big transport nosed aground at McNab's Cove, near Halifax, at 1740 on the 8th. When fire-fighting details arrived alongside to board and commence the mammoth operation, fires still burned in three holds and in the crew's quarters on two deck levels. Four days later, the last flames had been extinguished, and the ship was refloated on the 14th.
While the USS Wakefield was undergoing partial repairs in Halifax harbor, a torrential rainstorm threatened to fill the damaged ship with water and capsize her at her berth. Torrents of rain, at times in cloudburst proportions, poured into the ship and ca used her to list heavily. Salvage crews mean while, cut holes in the ship's sides above the waterline, draining away the water to permit the ship to regain an even keel. For the next 10 days, the salvagers engaged in extensive initial repair work-cleaning up the ship, pumping out debris, patching up holes, and preparing the vessel for her voyage to the Boston Navy Yard for complete rebuilding.
Temporarily decommissioned, the charred liner proceeded for Boston with a four-tug tow, and was declared a "constructive total loss." The Government purchased the hulk from the United States Lines and stripped the vessel to the waterline. Construction began and a virtually new the USS Wakefield arose, Phoenix-like from her ashes.
The repairs and alterations began in the fall of 1942, and lasted through 1943. On 10 February 1944, the USS Wakefield was re-commissioned at Boston, with Capt. R. L. Raney, USCG, in command. She departed Boston on 13 April 1944, beginning the first of 23 round- trips in the Atlantic theatre and three in the Pacific. Between 13 April 1944 and 1 February 1946, the USS Wakefield transported 110,563 troops to Europe and brought some 106,674 men back to America-a total of 217,237 passengers.
In many cases, the USS Wakefield operated as a "lone wolf," except for air coverage a few miles out of a port. Her primary port of call in the European theatre was Liverpool visited so often in fact that the transport's crew nicknamed her "The Boston and Liverpool Ferry." The average round-trip voyage took 18 days.
After D-day, 6 June 1944, the USS Wakefield began the first of her trips as a casualty-evacuation ship, bringing home wounded GI's. On occasion, she also brought back German prisoners of war for internment in the United States. Sometimes she even carried both evacuees and prisoners on the same voyage. After 13 trips to Liverpool, the USS Wakefield was sent to the Mediterranean theatre to carry men and equipment to Italy. She made three visits to Naples and a run each to Marseilles, Oran, Taranto, Le Havre, and Cherbourg. Returning from her 22d voyage to Europe, the transport departed Boston on 4 December 1945 for Taku, China, and a "Magic Carpet" mission-returning to San Diego, Calif., on 1 February 1946. Two round trips to Guam, in February through April 1946, rounded out the ship's active service as a Navy transport.
Mooring at New York on 27 May 1946, the USS Wakefield was decommissioned on 16 June 1946, five years to the day since she first entered service. Laid up in reserve, out of commission, at New York, she remained there into the 1950's, until disposed of by the Navy in 1957. After a brief tour with the National Defense Reserve Fleet, the USS Wakefield was struck from the Navy list in 1959 and scrapped in 1964.
The USS Wakefield
List of USS Wakefield Sailings
First person account of a fellow sailor on the USS Wakefield
Comprehensive history
Boston University School of Theology
APPENDIX M: US MARINES and USS WAKEFIELD
In the course of working on this biography of my father, nothing was more exciting than to cross-reference another source that linked a historical event with my dad’s life. This is one example. Dad mentioned that his transport ship, the USS Wakefield, transported US Marines to Guam at the end of WWII. Bernard C. Nalty has recorded that event at this webpage: http://www.nps.gov/wapa/indepth/extContent/usmc/pcn-190-003132-00/sec12.htm.
In case that page is removed at some later date, here it is verbatim:
Hostilities against Japan ended on 15 August 1945, and four days later, the 52d Defense Battalion at Guam began a transition from combat unit to support organization. The change received official confirmation on 30 September when the battalion came under the 5th Service Depot, which also controlled the black ammunition and depot companies still on the island. A detachment from the 52d sailed to the Marshalls in October, relieved the 51st Defense Battalion at Eniwetok and Kwajalein, and returned to Guam in January. Some of the Marines not yet eligible for discharge cast off the role of depot troops and formed the Heavy Anti aircraft Group (Provisional), based at Saipan until disbanded in February 1947. The Marines of the 52d Defense Battalion, who remained on Guam after the group departed for Saipan, sailed for San Diego in the transport USS Wakefield (AP 21) on 13 March 1946. As a rule, the Marine Corps discharged on the West Coast the men with homes west of the Mississippi River, while those living to the east of the river received their discharges on the East Coast. The men of the 52d Defense Battalion not discharged at Camp Pendleton returned to Montford Point, where Lieutenant Colonel Moore relinquished command on 21 April. The end came on 15 May when the wartime unit was redesignated the 3d Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion in the postwar Marine Corps.
APPENDIX N: COMMANDER DEMPSEY
Jack Dempsey first started boxing professionally in 1914. He first started boxing under the name of "Kid Blacky" and later boxed under the name of the "Manassa Mauler" after his home town of Manassa, Colorado. Throughout the 1920’s and 1930’s he was extremely popular and is probably one of the most popular boxing champions of all times. He knocked out Jess Willard in 1919 to win the heavyweight boxing title. He lost the heavyweight boxing titles in 1926 to Gene Tunney. He lost again in his second fight with Gene Tunney because of a long count. He knocked Tunney down in the seventh round but because he did not go to a neutral corner immediately the referee delayed the count. Tunney got up at the count of nine and went on to win the bout on a decision. He retired from boxing afterwards.
During World War II Dempsey joined New York State National Guard and was given a commission as a first lieutenant. He resigned that commission to accept a commission as a lieutenant in the Coast Guard Reserve. He reported for active duty on 12 June 1942 at Coast Guard Training Station, The Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, New York, where he was assigned as "Director of Physical Education." He also made many personal appearances at fights, camps, hospitals and War Bond drives. He was promoted to lieutenant commander (temporary) in December 1942 and commander (temporary) in March of 1944. In 1944 he was assigned to the transport USS Wakefield. In 1945 he was on the attack transport USS Arthur Middleton for the invasion of Okinawa. In July of 1945 he assigned to the Commander, 11th Naval District for assignment to Military Morale Duty. He was released from active duty in September 1945.
Jack Dempsey was given an honorable discharge from the Coast Guard Reserve in 1952.
APPENDIX O: The Wilson Family
Henry C. Wilson marries Caroline Peterson: six children
Henry born in Sweden, 1850William C. Wilson marries Hannah Milberg: 5 children
Emigrates to the United States, 1869
Marries Caroline Peterson, 1877
To Black Hills, 1877; stakes gold claim #17; lives in Central City
1879, wife Caroline joins him in Black Hills
Shortly thereafter move to Vale, SD (near Newell, SD)
One Wilson son and one Wilson daughter wed Milberg sister / brother
One Wilson son and one Wilson daughter wed Glover sister / brother
The six children: William C. Wilson, John Paul Wilson, Charles Wilson, Anne Wilson, Henry J. Wilson, and Caroline Wilson
HaroldJohn P. Wilson marries Hattie Halvorsen: 3 children
William
Leonard
Lillian
Evelyn
Infant dies in infancyCharles Wilson marries Una Dell Glover: 2 children
Russell H. Wilson, marries Myrtle Oksol; son John Paul and Charlotte
Lavina Wilson (She showed San Francisco to Carl after his discharge from US Coast Guard, 1946)
RuthAnne Wilson marries Emil Milberg
Esther (died in infancy)
Henry J. Wilson marries Alice Kirk: 3 children
HowardCaroline Wilson marries William Glover
Ken
Eleanor
APPENDIX P: Video
YouTube video of Trondheim.
APPENDIX Q: Extended Oksol - Flessner family links.
See this link.
