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After attending to our and the Canadian national anthems, Keith Olson gave the invocation and Mary Pettit led us in song. We introduced Karen Peters as our guest. Club members voted to accept the Nomination Committee's almost complete slate of candidates for the 2022-23 'Rotary year, consisting of Ken Harty as President, Zack Stach as Vice President, Brian Tjaden as Treasurer, Kathy Austvold as Secretary, and Dean Monke and Mark Bring as Board members. The presiding officer forgot to include himself as Past President and we did not have a Vice Presidential candidate at the time of the meeting, but since then Katie Johnson has agreed to serve in that capacity. These additions will be taken up at tomorrow's meeting, with the election to occur on May 4th. Paul Harris Fellow recognition was presented to Karen Peters and to her sister and brother-in-law, Kitty and Steve Syverson, in accordance with Dave's wishes. Dave was a Multiple Paul Harris Fellow and decided this was the best way to acknowledge the importance of these individuals in his life and their shared commitments to doing good in the world. Karen then presented donations given in Dave's memory to support our efforts to raise funds for the Splash Pad. She said this was a particularly appropriate project for honoring David because of how much he loved his grandchildren and how they both loved to interact with all children. She talked about how Dave was appreciated by her day care children and how one of the infants, with autism, was heard to utter his first words when one day he said goodbye to David. Spring raffle tickets were distributed to Rotarians in attendance and hopefully more will be able to be handed out tomorrow for those who didn't get any or have already sold what they took. (I'm trying to be optimistic.) Chris Schuelke, Executive Director of the Otter Tail County Historical Society, was our speaker and gave an entertaining presentation on milestones in Fergus Falls' 150 years of existence. James Whitford was the one responsible for naming the community after his employer, James Fergus. While Fergus visited in 1859, he actually ended up settling in Montana and has a county named after him, with its county seat being Lewiston. Chris went on to talk about George B. Wright, a Vermont native who was a contracted government surveyor. He broke ground for the sawmill (at the site of what is now Carlson Chiropractic), constructed the damn and built a bridge in the area where the Concord Street bridge now stands. Wright promoted the heck out of the city, describing it as the "coming city of the northwest," and offered three city lots to anyone who started a business here. Wright also made a personal appeal to Henry Page, an investor, to support city development and legend has it that Page was enticed to do so by a promise that a local lake would be named after his wife, Alice. Page was one of the founders of First National Bank and built both the flour mill and one of the town's first ornate homes -- the Page House of course. An effort to break off what were then the western townships of Otter Tail County and add some more to the west, naming it Holcomb County, was defeated in November of 1871. When the railroad bypassed then county seat Ottertail Town, however, the relocation to Fergus Falls was authorized by the legislature and approved by the electorate at the November 1882 general election. Chris said it is amazing to him that the divide between east and west Otter Tail County has persisted for so long, helped along by the notion that Fergus Falls stole the county seat. A new courthouse was built in 1879, with bank buildings constructed in the first half of the 1880 decade. Construction of the Fergus Falls State Hospital started in 1888 and it opened in 1890, ultimately becoming the flagship of our state hospitals. When it reached maximum capacity, it would hold 1800 patients. To feed all of them, a breakfast of bacon and eggs would consume 400 pounds of bacon and 12 crates of eggs; 500 pounds of ground beef went into their meatloaf. Chris went onto talk about Prince Honeycutt and the arrival of 18 African American families (85 people) in 1898. This occurred through the work of two realtors in Fergus Falls who attended a Grand Army Republic reunion in St. Paul and recruited the families to move here. The descendants of these families now have a group called "The First 85" and hold reunions. A presentation on milestones in Fergus Falls would not be complete without reference to the cyclone that devastated the town on June 22, 1919, with 60 individuals killed and two-thirds of the town damaged. This was the first and the only time that the National Guard was called to serve in our town. Chris ended his presentation with the 1919 cyclone and then asked those in attendance what milestones in the city's history they would name. References included visionaries who brought us Otter Tail Power Company and the hospital system and the fire that destroyed Medallion Kitchens and the resulting Project 500 (which John MacFarlane chaired). Chris has been a frequent presenter at our club, and we thank him for always bringing us interesting programs. Rumor of him being a Green Bay Packer fan should not keep us from inviting him again and again. |
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