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Kathy Austvold offered our prayer while Keith Olson served as our song leader. We welcomed visiting Rotarian Guy Olson. Announcements included a plug for World Polio Day, which occurred this past Sunday, October 24th, and a request that each group submit its name, the name of the group's facilitator, and a brief summary of your group's approach to recruiting new members to our club. As of this date, only one report has been received -- more on that at tomorrow's meeting -- and the five other groups are requested to get the information to me as soon possible. Keith Olson provided the Rotary Minute by reading from an article from The Daily Journal his mother gave him reprinting a 1946 article on the "delicate subject" raised at a Rotary meeting -- protecting non-smokers from being suffocated at club meetings. We then went into member brags, with Keith talking about a successful goose hunting trip to Canada with his brother Guy and two attorneys. Steve Andrews followed by letting us know his parents observed their 75th wedding anniversary on October 10th. Greg Darling also paid for missing last week's meeting. Keith Olson bragged some more, this time about a trip to Montana (his second favorite place) where he did 49 miles of four-wheeling in the mountains. Brother Guy followed, stating it was good to be at our meeting and that he too enjoyed the hunting trip to Canada. Ryan Welle then introduced our program, Ryan or R.T. Drews, a fifth generation Fergus falls citizen, his ancestors having arrived here from Germany in the 1870's. He has been operating a writing service in our community the last five years, reciting an impressive list of newspapers and other written media to which he has contributed. The idea of a book detailing the founding of Fergus Falls was first seriously pursued in 2018, with the Roger Dell Trust providing the first $10,000 of seed money. By January of 2019, a 43 page planning document had been drafted and then the writing process began. Previous histories have been more encyclopedic in nature, providing dates and events, but the aim is to provide something more story-like. Ryan recalled a discussion with a local sixth grade teacher who said it would be nice to have some tool by which students could be taught the history of Fergus Falls, and that is what they hope to produce. With the aid of PowerPoint slides, R.T. told us that the person for whom the town is named after, James Fergus, actually spent most of his notable life in Montana. A visit to the archive department of the University of Montana in Missoula resulted in a huge stack of informative documents being assessed and reviewed, including a 300 page biography. We also heard about Joseph Whitford and George B. Wright, with documents reviewed providing a sometimes varying account of how Fergus Falls came into existence. The thorough presentation wetted at least this writer's appetite for the book's publication, now expected in the spring of 2022, a year in which our town will be celebrating its 150th anniversary. |
