Jan, I found his death notice, but there is no obituary available yet. Jim & Judy came along after I graduated, so I didn’t know them. With all of the reports that I have gotten, they were wonderful teachers and wonderful folks. Our condolences go to Judy and their family with Jim’s passing. Gary

 

Margaret, I remember you being a scholar in high school too. To go along with that, you were also a very nice person.

Lloyd, with our trips back to the area we will miss seeing your home with you guys in it on the corner of Main and the Highway 5. You lived there as long as I have known you and that has been a number of years now. I know you will enjoy your new home though. Gary

First Dunseith Alumni blog posted on December 25, 2007

 

Message from Vance Bailey’s daughter Dayna: Gary
Merry Christmas
I am Vance’s daughter Dayna.
I would like to Thank You for sending Doreen the email addresses of the
newspapers in North Dakota. I just sent his Obituary to them with a photo.
Thanks soo much.
Dayna

 

Message from Bill Grimme (65):

First of all, Merry Christmas to all my Dunseith friends. It has been a great year getting re-acquainted with everyone!

 

And second, thank you Cecile Berube for my Secret Santa gift from you. It is just what I needed in retirement-I was starting to get lazy! That’s a real easy thing to do, I have found. We’ll let everyone guess what the gift is.

 

I am looking forward to another year of email fellowship and look forward to seeing everyone again.

 

Bill

 

 

Message from Cheryl Haagenson: (71)

It is so great what you do to keep us all connected, Thank you! I am planning on the Alaska cruise I need to put my name on the list. Thanks again for all you do for us. Hope you had a great Christmas. And happy new Year

Cheryl Haagenson

 

 

Message from Ron Link (58):

Gary: Please add Ellen Myrick (Graff)(Class of 1958) to your E-mail recipients as she would certainly appreciate it. The E-mail’s are very informative. Her E-mail address is Thank you and Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.—RON LINK

 

 

Message from Allen Richard (65):

Don Lamouroux–Remember our riding our Honda 350’s together back in the day? Damn I wish I had never sold that little bike. The kid that bought it didn’t have enough brains to replace the clutch cable and used the electric starter to start it in gear. I think he had it for maybe 3 weeks before it was trash. Sad end to a sweet little machine. It had less than 8,000 miles when I sold it. What happened to yours?

 

Allen

 

 

Message from Bill Hosmer:

Bill, we all remember you and the famous Thunderbirds doing a show over Dunseith in the 60’s. When I get a chance, I’ll dig out some neat comments from some of the class of 65 folks about those performances and forward them to the Dunseith Alumni. Gary

 

Gary. The flurry of memories enfolding the sadness of our loss of
Vance Bailey is an extremely soothing and stimulating read. With
comments from my brother Bob Hosmer, and my beautiful cousin Colette
Hosmer adding to the lore, I am tempted to add my two bits worth.
I spoke to Wayne Bailey, Vances brother. He is one of the dozen of
us who meet at the Dunseith golf course every Tuesday when it isn’t
covered with snow. Wayne indicated that there will be a private
family celebration of Vance’s life on the 29th of December. Wayne
is going to manage another memorial service at the Dunseith cemetery
around the time of Memorial Day next year. There is a family plot
where their Mother, Dad, and baby sister are buried. I will
certainly be in attendance there.
The memories of Dunseith are still vivid at my advanced age of 77.
I didn’t graduate from Dunseith HS, but my days spent there won a few
diplomas of “Life in a Great Place”. Vance’s description of the swimming
places, the stock yard hooliganism and falling off the cliff at the gravel
pit when “shot while playing cowboys and Indians” in my case were
acurate. Mac Macue (spelling) used to have a bag of candy mints in his
pocket and Gene Fassett and I used to check out the Dakota Hotel for a
handout on our way south on main street where Emil Hack would be sitting
on the sidewalk curb, where we could stop at the Wilson barber shop right
next to the drug store where we would read comic books until Mrs Shelver
couldn”t stand it any more and tell us to leave NOW. So we could
continue south to the barbershop and watch hair cuts that Jess was giving
while Ludie, his oldest son shined shoes. Clarence Hagen used to work at
the stone garage owned by the Lake brothers, used to stand leaning against
the east side waiting for cars to get gas. Later he was at Anzio in the
Sicily/Italian campaign of WWII. We’d head by the Lamoureux garage and
see what was going on in the maintenance area where Charlie, Leo, Ovilla,
and Albert might be fixing a truck or car. Across the street, Uncle Ray
Wilson was the judge. He and Ovilla played chess by the hour, and Uncle
Ray would let us puff on his pipe probably in hopes we’d throw up. Think
about that nowadays. KC Sine would usually be good for a coke or a banana
or maybe both. Mom never understood why I usually did not have an
appetite.

Willow Creek always had fascination for me. In the spring we would
catch tadpoles and minnows to save in a jar. Once we caught a
couple of garter snakes and brought them to my house just south of
the Commercial Hotel while the Grassmans still managed it. We were
feeding them some small frogs we caught at the creek, and the woman
who was taking care of me. Don, and Bob while the folks were gone,
came out to see this beautiful sight and said to get those critters
out of the yard. Later, she was taking a nap in the house and I
took a mounted rattle snake which one of my uncles gave dad. It was
in a coiled posture. I put it beside her on the bed and then went
to the kitchen and made a little noise so she would wake up. Sure
as heck she woke, screamed like a siren, and came after me with a
vengance. Sure didn’t do much more with snakes after that

The old skating rink and warming house was a favorite meeting place
whether you were skating or not. There was a pot bellied stove that
heated it up grand. As a matter of fact, my brother Don and I stopped in
there after a Sunday afternoon movie at the Althea Theater, right next to
Floyd Nelson’s barber shop. He didn’t allow kids to watch hair cuts.
Anyway Don and I stopped and Vance and Wayne were there in the warming
hut and we discussed lifes strifes.

Sunday School at the Stone Church was a must and at Christmas time
(Which is as I write this) we all were at some time in a play or
pageant. One time Dee Nelson (son of Floyd), Spencer Teal (son of
Bill and Irene who lived at the depot) and I (son of Jack and Inez
Hosmer) were THE THREE WISEMEN. I was the bearer of Myrh and still
remember the words I had to maneuver through the cotton beard we all
wore which would slip quite a bit while singing in the bathrobes which
were supposed to look like Arab garments.

The Johnson family, Mr and Mrs JJ, Bud, Bob, Warren, Roger, Chuck,
Walter, and Shirley were a family I knew well. Chuck and I were same
age, and the other guys were around and vocal so we learned alot of
good man-talk words. There Mother Carie was a beautiful and talented
citizen who lived a long life. Bob, Walter and Roger were at the
125th Celebration.

Another family I grew to know was the Ole Evans family at the mill.
Grandpa Gottbreht was still alive and Joe Evans and I ran over a
stack of newly sacked flour which was milled there. It was a mistake
because we had muddy boots on and left black tracks on those beautiful
white mounds. He shook his fist told me to get home, and he knew who
I was. Wow, I thought I’d be put in solitary, but no one ever
mentioned it again except me and Joe. We used to get in a buggy
powered by a horse called Mike and go out west across the creek to the
pastures west and north of the homestead to bring the cattle in for
milking. Then all the men including Uncle Frank, Ole, Myron, Joe, and
Rod would milk the herd. Celia Evans would operate the separator in
the milk house, by hand crank, and then it would be bottled and
delivered by Myron. The cream at the top of the bottle was divine on
breakfastfood, and the milk was delicious.

I’ll leave it here for now, and will do so with my warmest and most
serious hope for all your years to come, including the next one, to be
fulfilling, at peace, and in a grip of happiness and satisfaction. My
email in Arizona is Thank you all for being
who you are and for being from where we all were at one time or
another, DUNSEITH FOREVER. Bill Hosmer

 

Bill Hosmer’s follow up message:

Gary. The bundle of great mail you initiated is most interesting
and poignant with our loss of a terrific historically oriented
Dunseith citizen named Vance Bailey. A distant cousin of mine, and
a long time friend.

Your latest which I read today was terrific. I tried to add a few
memories and hoped that it would go to all the folks you had
addressed yours to, but it bounced at the “undisclosed recipient”.
Hopefully it did get through to you. (Bill, with such a big list I have

to send out 4 mailings with each of these messages.

The max is 100 names with each message) If it did and you don’t
object, perhaps it could be forwarded to your original addressing.
If you did or did not receive my input, could you give me a short
reply letting me know? I noticed in something you sent out that
there was a way to get to all the people with one shot, but now I
cannot locate it. My computer knowledge is in the dark ages zone.
If you did not get it, I can try again because I have the complete
(and valuable)listing of all known computer addresses, thanks to
forwarding by Bob Leonard.

You have opened a beehive of good reading, and I appreciate what you
have gifted us with.

Merry Christmas Today, here in AZ. Happy New Year as well. Bill
Hosmer

 

 

Message from Allen Richard:

Merry Christmas everyone–Gary–maybe you should look at a way to make all the e-mail available to everyone on an annual basis some how. Like in a massive e mail or in print in a way we could all subscribe to.

 

Allen

 

 

Allen, The easy way of doing this would be to set up a WEB site for all of these messages that folks could access for review. We could also post the many pictures that everyone has provided too, into this WEB site. I still want to send this stuff out to the Dunseith list though. It’s more meaningful when folks get these messages together at the same time and can make their comments. Then they could be placed into the WEB site. Folks often times don’t review WEB sites on a regular bases. It would be nice for folks to be able to access things like the class lists too. If I keep at this long enough, I’ll have them all. I have never looked into a WEB site and I’ll have to admit, I don’t have any idea what is involved in setting one up and maintaining it. Over this last year we have sure generated a wealth of information that could be placed into a WEB site.

 

Are there any suggestions from any of you out there? Is anyone interested in setting up a WEB site and maintaining it?

 

Our list is growing to a point that I have to send out multiple sendings with each message. Most email providers limit their number to 100 for each message so as not to overload their server. That is not a real problem yet, but it would be nice to be able to throttle these messages to the recipients with so many being sent every few seconds enabling one sending to the whole list. Do any of you know of any email providers that provide this service or know of any way this could be done. I know this is how major corporations send their email. Most email providers set daily limits too. So far I’ve been able to get around that by using several providers. It would be nice to have a provider that did not set limits though.

 

Any suggestions that any of you have would be greatly appreciated.

 

Gary

 

PS – As I was putting this message together, I received Cheryl Haagenson’s message that is included with this sending. She mentioned going on the Alaskan Cruise in July of 2009. Folks, this will be a great time for all of us Dunseith folks to get together and enjoy each others company for a whole week. We’ve got Sandra Trevers from the class of 60 that will be making all of the arrangements. She’s been in this business a long time and knows well how to arrange our travel and group activities. The 2009 cruise line schedules will not be posted until the April/May time frame, but we can be making plans. This is being planned for late July 2009 departing from Seattle. We chose late July to maybe accommodate some the farmers that may be interested in going. A summer cruise also accommodates the many Dunseith Alumni folks that are teachers or work for the schools. We will be sending out detailed info when the schedules are out and we have a cruise in place.