The Opheims of Enderlin
Here, some members of the extended Opheim family are photographed in front of their farm near Skatvald, Norway, sometime in the 1890s. Nick Opheim's father, tenant farmer Magnus Johanneson Ryggvold, is standing in the back row (second from the left). Nick's mother, Beret Anna Nilsdatter, is also standing in the back row and is holding a small child. Nick, who was the oldest child in the family, is likely kneeling on the ground to the far left. The others in this photograph cannot be identified. The original from which this image was scanned is in the possession of Norann Larson Carter of Lisbon, North Dakota. Norann's mother, Bertina Opheim Larson, from whom she obtained the original, was Nick Opheim's sister.
Nikolaus Magnus Opheim and Konstanse Hennigsdatter Skog were two of the 2.5 million Norwegians who participated in the great Scandinavian out migration that began in the early nineteenth century, became a flood by the 1890s, and all but came to an end with the outbreak of World War I. Norwegians came to North America in such large numbers that, by 1920, there were more people of Norwegian descent living in the United States than in Norway. Save Ireland, no European country had such a large percentage of its population depart for the New World. Upon arriving in North America, many Norwegians were attracted to the upper Midwest of the United States, in particular to the states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, North and South Dakota; and that was where twenty-one-year-old Nikolaus Opheim and twenty-year-old Konstanse Skog headed when they left Norway in the spring of 1904.
Magnus Johannesen Ryggvold & Beret Anna Nilsdatter (Nick Opheim's parents). The photo was probably taken in the mid to late 1880s. The provenance of the original photograph reproduced here is not apparent. Alma Opheim Bohm received it at some point from her mother, Constance. It was likely in the Opheim house in Enderlin, North Dakota for many years.
Nikolaus, or “Nick,” as he became known, was born in the village of Skatvald near Trondheim, Norway, on November 17, 1882 and baptized at Frosta Parish six weeks later, on New Year’s Day 1883.[1] Nikolaus was the son of tenant farmer Magnus Johanneson Ryggvold and his wife, Beret Anna Nilsdatter; he grew up in region of Størdalen, in central Norway.[2] By the time he reached adulthood, many of his relatives and neighbors had already left for America.
Nick Opheim about the time he
emigrated from Norway to the United States.
The Salmo, the small coastal steamship on which
Nick Opheim traveled from Trondheim to Hull-upon-
Tyne in 1904.
And so it was, that, by April 1904, Nikolaus, too, decided it was time to leave. This was, without a doubt, a decision that he considered for some time because his passage from Trondheim to North America had been prepaid and sent to him by an acquaintance or family member in the United States.[3]On the morning of 19 April 1904 Nikolaus boarded the small coastal steamer, Salmo, in Trondheim and, like so many other Europeans, sailed to the English town of Kingston upon Hull, situated at the confluence of the Hull and Humber rivers. During the previous three decades Hull had become the marshalling point for emigrants passing from Europe, through Britain, on their way to America and the Salmo was only one of many ships arriving from north European posts in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Germany and other places. After debarking, the emigrants, were packed aboard waiting trains at Hull’s Paragon Railway Station. Once aboard, they were transported to Liverpool via Leeds, Huddersfield, and Stalybridge. The ticket for rail passage across the UK was usually included in the “package deal” sold to emigrants bound for America. Conditions on the trains were as basic as those on the Salmo and the other decrepit coastal transport ships. Sometimes so many emigrants arrived in Hull at one time that they would fill up to seventeen small carriages alotted to the "immigrant trains." Passengers’ baggage would be crammed into the four rear cars, with the emigrants themselves filling the carriages nearer the front of the train. It is likely that the train on which Nikolaus rode left Hull on April 25 at about ten o’clock on the same Sunday morning on which he arrived in England. At between two and three o’clock that afternoon he would have reached Liverpool; there, he awaited the departure of the transatlantic steamship on which he had booked passage, SS Celtic; the ship was scheduled to sail on 1 May. It was either in Liverpool or aboard the Celtic that Nikolaus met his future wife Konstanse Skog.
Konstanse Skog at 17 years of age (about 1900). This
color sketch was made by a Flint, Michigan, artist in the
early 1960s. It was copied from an original photograph
taken in June of 1900. The work was commissioned by
Henry Opheim, Connie's son. The whereabouts of the
original photograph is not known.
Konstanse, Nick’s wife-to-be, was a “country girl,” even by Norwegian standards. She was born on 10 April 1883 at Storskog on Rolla Island, an isolated community 125 miles north of the Arctic Circle.[4] Her ancestors were hearty, independent fishermen; in written records, her lineage can be traced as far back as 1563 to one “Lauritz Fredricksen” who lived on Rolla Island and who fished the frozen arctic waters off Norway’s rugged coast in the sixteenth century. Her maternal grandfather, Henning Marinus Olsen (1832-1881) began his career on fishing boats at the age of eight. Ultimately Henning became chairman of the board of directors of a local savings bank in 1871. From 1877 until his death in 1881 he represented the province of Tromsoe as stortingsman, or representative, in Norway’s parliament. His speeches in that body covered matters concerning oceanic territorial disputes with Russia, whale conservation, and Sunday fishing.[5] Konstanse was the oldest of the five children in the family of Karl Magnus Pedersen (born 1855), a fisherman, and Olufine Konstantine Henningsdatter (born 1857). By the time she reached adulthood at the beginning of the twentieth century there appears to have been little opportunity and almost no future for her on Rolla Island. And so, when Konstanse turned seventeen, she traveled to southern Norway in search of work. She found a job assisting a forty year-old woman, Karen Amalie J. Nordbæk to care for her seventy-eight year-old mother, Ne Marie J. Nordbæk, in Sandbakken in the municipality of Ullensaker.[6] Subsequently Konstanse moved to Christiania (Oslo) where, briefly, she studied nursing at that city’s Deaconess Hospital. And at some point, she ultimately made a decision to leave Norway and emigrate to North America; almost certainly, she was inspired by tales passed along to her by friends and relatives living in the United States. Twelve days after her twenty-first birthday, Konstanse set out on the Odyssey that changed her life. It began on the morning of April 22, 1904; she awoke, checked over her belongings, and, no doubt, with a small circle of friends, she made her way to the Wilson Lines’ pier in Christiania harbor.[7] She said her good-byes and then Konstanse Skog boarded the ship that would carry her from Norway’s shore, the steam schooner Montebello.[8]. At about ten o‘clock that morning, the captain called for lines to be cast off fore and aft; and the fourteen-year-old, 276 foot-long Montebello sailed for England. After a brief stopover in Kristiansand, Denmark, the vessel made her way to Kingston upon Hull where she tied up on Sunday morning, 25 April 1904—the same Sunday morning on which Nikolaus Opheim arrived.
Like Nikolaus, Konstanse was packed into a waiting train at Paragon Station and hauled off to Liverpool. Her train ticket, like the one held by her future husband, was likely part of her pre-purchased package that included the steamship passage to Hull, her brief train ride across central Britain, and her ultimate crossing to America. Upon arriving in Liverpool, she probably took a room in one of the many available boarding houses there [9] and awaited the SS Celtic’s sailing. It was, as pointed out above, during this time, or during their Atlantic transit, that Konstanse and Nikolaus likely met for the first time. Once in the United States, Konstanse traveled to Lake Garvin, Minnesota, where an aunt lived[10] and, in the fall, went to work at City (General) Hospital in Minneapolis.
Nick Opheim headed west to the Dakotas. In fact, the destination given on his emigrant papers when leaving Trondheim was Anslem, North Dakota.[11] For a brief time, Nick took a job with a farmer named Qual who had land near Lisbon. During his first years in North Dakota, Nick apparently became more and more homesick for Norway with each passing day. According to his sister, Bertina Larsen, he went for days on end “crying his eyes out” and bemoaning his fate.[12] Then, he took a job with the Soo Line Railroad on March 28, 1907.[13] He worked for a brief time as a wiper in the town of Hankinson, but soon accepted the position of station fireman in Enderlin. In August 1907, Konstanse joined him there and they were married in Lisbon, North Dakota, that same month.[14] The young couple settled down in the relatively young town of Enderlin and Nick continued to work at the Soo Line round house in Enderlin. On March 22, 1908, the Opheims first child was born, a boy they named Olaf. Two years later, on June 7, 1910, their second child was born, a little girl they named Mabelle.
During the three years following his marriage to Konstanse, Nick concluded that life in America was not as grand as he thought it might be when he left Norway in 1904. Nostalgia warped his recollections of an abandoned homeland, its mountains and fjords, and wormed its way into his thoughts of the past. He decided that he and his young family should return to Norway. And so, in October of 1910, when Mabelle was but three months old and Ole just two-and-a-half years, Nick packed the family off to Norway where he hoped they might settle down. But only a few weeks after making the journey back across the Atlantic Nick became disenchanted with what he found and especially with the changes that had taken place in Norway since independence in 1905. He decided that his best course of action would be to return to North Dakota and reclaim his job with the Soo Line. Constance and the two children, however, did not return to the United States immediately.[15] Instead, they remained in Norway where they visited and stayed with friends and relatives. Finally, eight months after their arrival, Constance and the two children Mabelle and Ole, set sail for America. Connie’s twenty-five-year-old sister, Olga Magnusdatter Skog, accompanied them. She too had decided that it was time to seek her fortune in the New World. Constance and the small entourage sailed from Trondheim to England before departing for the United States on 14 June 1911, eight months after the Opheims had returned to Norway with the intention to stay. Now, using the anglicized spelling for her name, “Constance” and her sister, Olga, sailed out of Trondheim harbor. They watched the fjords and mountains of central Norway disappear beneath the horizon, and as the ship made its way south and west on its brief voyage to England, neither woman realized that this would be the last time that either of them would see the land of their birth.[16]
After her return to Enderlin in the early summer of 1911, Constance, Nick and their two children moved into a large, comfortable house on Railway Street. This would be their home for the next quarter century. Connie, as she was becoming known, and her husband, Nick, had seven more children: Henry (Hank), born on 19 April 1913; Edwin (Eddy), born 21 June 1916; John (Johnny), born 18 February 1918; Thelma, 21 April 1920; Bertha (Betty), 8 April 1922; Alma (Toots), 18 November 1924; and Kenneth (Buddy), born 27 December 1927.
Connie and Nick raised their large family, sending the children to school, taking them to church, and participating in the day-to-day life of a small, midwestern railroad community. In 1920 Ole, their oldest son, was confirmed in the Norwegian Lutheran Church. In June 1928 he graduated from Enderlin High School and followed in his father’s footsteps, taking a job on the Soo Line Railroad.[17] The following year, 1929, his sister Mabelle received her diploma.
Mabelle was an athlete in high school and her exploits on the basketball court have always been the stuff of family legend. And like most legends, this story’s details had become blurred and nearly obliterated by time. But an article in the 8 July 2009 Enderlin Independent demonstrated clearly that Mabelle was a hometown heroine during the late 1920s and especially during her senior year at Enderlin High School. In a lengthy quote from the EHS yearbook for 1929, the Enodak, columnist Susan Schlecht related how:
The story of the past season for Girls’ basket-ball can be told in one sentence. Out of eight games played our girls lost only two. In other words, the past season has run true to form, for during the past four years the girls have lost only seven games. Much of the credit for that excellent record is due to Mable [sic] Opheim. A veritable Valkyrie of the courts with her amazing energy and deadly accuracy, she could be depended on to play her position in a superlative way at all times and in emergencies to come to the rescue of the game. Perhaps a more dramatic moment was never experienced in the annals of girls’ basket-ball upon our courts than in the game with Nome. Mable was on the bench because she had not fully recovered from an attack of the ‘flu. Slowly but surely by dint of a fast passing attack, Nome surged ahead. About the beginning of the third quarter the score was Enderlin 7, Nome 14. The crowd had been demanding “Opheim! Opheim!” Now with defeat almost a certainty, there was but one possible chance to save the game. Miss Stoubt [the coach] hesitated to allow Mable to enter but at last yielded. Such a roar greeted her when she ran out to her position had never been heard in the hall. The team took on new energy.[18]
The final score, Enderlin 19, Nome 19. The Enderlin girls won five games, lost two, and tied one that 1929 season. After graduation in late May, Mabelle spent the summer in Michigan with her aunt and uncle, Martin and Olga Forbord.
The Opheim Farm, the Move to Michigan, and
the Return to North Dakota
In 1936, Nick Opheim reached the conclusion that his family should leave Enderlin and move onto a farm in the country. He began to talk incessantly about owning land. He harangued his wife, Connie, into selling their “nice house in town” and into moving onto an available farmstead a few miles northeast of Enderlin, near Leonard—a place with a rundown house with no modern facilities. Like so many immigrants, the European peasant fetish for land ownership undoubtedly possessed Nick Opheim. And, when an opportunity finally came to buy a farm, he jumped at it—notwithstanding the fact that he had no experience working on or running one, and notwithstanding the fact that the nation was in the midst of a massive depression. Acquaintances and family members could not understand why Connie consented to this move or why she eventually “signed the papers.” Nonetheless, she did, and the Opheims moved to the country. In so doing, the family abandoned a house in town that had sewer service, electricity, running water, and telephone service for a place in the country where the toilet was of the outdoor variety, one had to go outside to pump water and then carry it into the house; the family now had no electricity and they had to give up their telephone.
All the while, Nick hung onto his job at the roundhouse. Somehow, he believed, he could work his night shift servicing locomotives Enderlin and, during the day, run a farm in the country. No doubt, he believed that he could rely on his sons, in particular Eddy and Johnny, to help take care of the place. But like their older siblings, these young men saw little future in farming, or in the State of North Dakota for that matter. Following the advice of their older sister, Mabelle, they, too, fled east to Michigan in search of good jobs. The children who remained in Nick’s dwindling work force, Betty, Alma, and Buddy were really too young and lacked the kind of experience necessary to do the work he expected of them.
Nonetheless, the Opheims struggled to make a go of it. Situated a dozen miles from town, Nick had to commute to work every day down unpaved country roads. In the winter, he had to negotiate his way into town on snow-covered, icy roads, that in modern terms can only be described as hazardous driving conditions. Alma recalled one winter when conditions were so bad that all the roads were closed and it was so cold that the family car would not run. In the 1930s during the Great Depression there was no question of missing a day of work. One’s pay would be docked and a note of the absence might well go into one’s permanent record. Being that the Opheim farm was located near the Soo Line track, Nick decided that if he bundled up, he could walk the twelve miles into Enderlin following the track line. Putting on several layers of his warmest clothes, he fashioned a mask out of old newspapers into which he cut slits for “eye holes.” Donning this jury-rigged costume, he headed east down the Soo Line tracks with the blizzard’s winds at his back. Two or three hours later, he arrived at the round house in Enderlin in time to work his evening shift.[19] In all likelihood, he spent the night in town, which, of course, highlighted the dilemma he faced. Back out near Leonard, farm chores needed to be tended to. Animals had to be fed and watered. Many years later, Nick’s youngest daughter, Alma, outlined succinctly her father’s problem:
When my dad moved onto the farm, all of the boys, except for Bud, left. Even Bette was not around very much. She spent her summers during high school with Mabelle [the oldest of the four Opheim sisters] in Michigan. That left Buddy and me on the farm and Buddy was too young still to do much.[20]
Alma told of having many of the farm chores herself, including the raking of hay. This particular task involved harnessing and hitching up the family’s team of horses behind the rake, raking the field, as well as backing up the team and the rig to pile hay into rows. On several occasions Alma also recounted the chilling tale of the time her mother instructed her to climb to the top of a sixty-foot windmill to connect a pumping mechanism linkage that had somehow become detached. With the windmill out of commission, the pump would not work and neither the farm animals nor the family would have water. Alma said that she could scarcely believe what her mother was suggesting. Nonetheless, she made the climb and connected the mechanism. All the while she said that she was “scared to death.” She said that her brother Buddy, who had just turned eight when the family made the move, was less than useful. About all he could do, she said, was to hitch up the family dog to a wagon or sled and force the animal to pull him around the yard.[21]
Most of Alma’s recollections of life on the farm were neither pleasant nor happy. She often told of being picked on and threatened at the Leonard school by “farm kids” who made fun on her and her sister, Bette, for being city girls. On several occasions, she and Bette had to defend themselves against attacks from “farm girls” who wanted to beat them up.
One touching incident did occur during that brief, three-year interlude on the farm. That was the day her mother received a letter from Norway with sad news. Alma went to the post box to retrieve the mail. On her return to the house, handed the correspondence to her mother. Connie, who was sitting on the porch at the time, opened the envelope, read briefly through the contents and started to cry. It seems that Connie’s mother and sister, both still in Norway, had died at nearly the same time. The person who mailed the letter, not only outlined the details, but also had enclosed a photograph of the coffins containing the women’s bodies lying side by side. Alma said she never discovered what had happened to the two deceased women. Her mother, Connie, she said, never discussed life prior to emigrating to America. “Perhaps it was because we never asked.” Alma speculated.[22]
On another occasion, Alma recalled that carload of drunken businessmen from nearby Leonard drove into the farmyard. She and her mother came out of the house to see what was going on. The men announced in a loud voice that they had been hunting and that they were going to spend the night sleeping in the Opheim’s barn. Connie did not think this was a good idea and ordered the carload of drunks to leave the property. At this point the car’s driver told her to shut up and pushed her. Connie yelled at her daughter, go to the house and call the sheriff. Alma turned and ran for the house and waited for a couple of minutes and then returned outside to see the car, loaded with the besotted hunters, speeding down the driveway headed for the main road. The ruse had worked. The Opheims had no telephone. Connie’s quick thinking and Alma’s response fooled these men and had avoided a potentially ugly situation.[23]
All the while Nick commuted to Enderlin putting in his shift at the roundhouse. But, with time’s passing, the enthusiastic Norwegian farmer increasingly left farm chores to his wife and children; the situation on the farm deteriorated. Then one morning, so the story goes, while driving home, Nick fell asleep at the wheel; his car veered, leaving the road at a high rate of speed. Down into a ditch he went, careening up and onto a newly mown field. He crashed into a parked hay rake, ramming the tongue (the long pole onto which horses were hitched) through the car’s passenger compartment. He was seriously injured, nearly killed in fact. In addition to the various bruises and lesser injuries, he sustained badly broken hip; physicians said that, never again, would Nick Opheim walk without crutches. This medical prognosis led to his being cashiered from his roundhouse job. Without railroad wages, without the means to support himself and his family, Nick’s predicament seemed precarious indeed. But Nick Opheim was a “tough old bird,” as has already been shown. He persevered, insisting that he would, one day, walk again. At first, he crawled around the house, dragging his damaged leg behind him. Then he pulled himself outside. Eventually he made it to the woodpile where he stood up to chop firewood. After many months he regained the full use of the damaged limb.
His son, Johnny, one of the last to abandon North Dakota for opportunities to be found Michigan, encouraged Nick to give up on his farming pipedream. Even though the worst of the Great Depression was past, North Dakota’s economy was far from making even a partial recovery. So, in 1938, with his agrarian fantasy in shambles, Nick Opheim decided to move his family to Michigan. His daughter, Bette, balked at the idea of leaving Enderlin High School as she was ending her sophomore year. Arrangements were made for her to live with one of her girlfriends during the upcoming year. Alma and Bud were not so fortunate, however. They were taken to Michigan where, for a time they had to live with their parents in a small apartment while more suitable accommodations were located. Shortly, a house was found in Monroe, just south of Detroit; they remained in Michigan for less than a year.
As had happened on his return to Norway, Nick Opheim soon took a disliking to Michigan in general and to the city of Monroe in particular. At fifty-six, he no doubt found that it was difficult to make new friends. What made matters even worse for him was the fact that Michigan’s industries, with their vast, untapped labor force of poor, young southerners flooding into the state, were not interested in hiring men of his advancing age. Time hung heavy on his hands.
Bud had been enrolled in school and, to use a handy euphemism, was able to “keep up.” Alma was not so fortunate. Nick and Connie concluded that because she was a girl, she need not enroll in classes, which meant that she lost a semester. Although she ultimately was able to “catch up” with her high school and confirmation classes upon the family’s return to Enderlin, her having to drop out for a semester undoubtedly contributed to her decision four years later to drop out of high school to get married at the end of her junior year.[24]
Bette, meanwhile, appeared to be having the time of her life in Enderlin. She did well in her classes, was active in school activities, including participating in drama club and she was a cheerleader. At one point, she even entertained the idea of going on to get a university degree. But, as she declared many years later, “That was out of the question. We didn’t know about scholarships and our family didn’t have any money.[25]
In the early summer of 1939, Nick convinced his son, John, to accompany the family on a return trip to Enderlin. In many ways Nicks prospects in North Dakota were as bleak as those in Michigan. He had no job at the Soo Line. He was, however, able to find odd jobs and ultimately he got on with the local Works Project Administration (WPA). With the WPA, he worked on a variety of community and conservation projects while he cooled his heels waiting for a Soo Line opening. Finally in 1941 a job opening became available and, once a second medical examination had been performed to demonstrate that he had recovered from the 1937 accident, Nick was free to return to railroading. The only problem was that the vacant position was in Chippewa Falls, Minnesota. But, at his age, Nick had to think about retirement, a pension, and the many years he had put in with the Soo Line, so he accepted the work. For the next six years, until he was killed in 1947, Nick commuted between Enderlin and Chippewa Falls, returning home once or twice a month to visit Connie and the remnant of the family that remained in Enderlin.
World War II
World War II came quietly to eastern North Dakota. Whatever tragedies might have beset foreign countries, whatever “hostilities” may have been about to break out on other continents, surely they would have no impact on far-away Enderlin; Europeans and Asians bent on settling old scores ought to be left to their own devices and to suffer their own consequences—that was the conventional wisdom bruited about by most upstanding Enderlin citizens at the end of the third decade of the twentieth century. When Japan invaded China in 1937, and when Adolf Hitler launched Germany’s Blitzkreig attack on Poland on 1 September 1939, few North Dakotans were willing to entertain notions that the fighting across the Atlantic or the bloody struggles in far-off east Asia, might escalate and involve Americans as well; fewer still imagined how these wars in lands far away soon would affect their personal lives in almost every way. Nearly all serious thinking in Enderlin, and throughout the upper Great Plains of the American Midwest for that matter, was given over to those perennial topics of agrarian concern and discussion: the harvest, grain prices, and the weather.
It was on one of the last of those lazy, late-summer days in 1939 that, for some unknown reason, Hartha Sallen, daughter of Herman and Ida Bohm and sister of Fred Bohm, Senior, sat down for one of the few times in her life to record personal thoughts about affairs both large and small. Seated in her tiny kitchen at 14 Railway Street in Enderlin she wrote,
Today is the third day of September. War was declared on Germany by Great Britain. I set my alarm clock for 5 A.M., but low and behold I was late at that.
It had all taken place “over there.” By now three foreign countries have declared war. It is real exciting. We are only hoping we don’t get our foot in it.
Quickly, however, she shied away from the enormity of further speculation and troubled her mind with more mundane things.
Alma [her sister] and I are going to wash tomorrow. We had a very nice wash day. We were busy all day long as usual. Well the war news is really getting serious and prices are going sky high. How long it will go on this way no one knows.[26]
In her next diary entry, three weeks later, on 25 September, Hartha noted tersely, “War is still going on over there.” Then, on 12 December, Hartha tried, once again, to assure herself that the United States would not be drawn into the conflict. “Well the papers are full of war news but we Americans don’t pay any attention to it any more because it is getting old. They will have to change the subject pretty soon.”[27] Unfortunately the papers did not change the subject; the war did not go away; Hartha’s wishful thinking, just like that of other American isolationists, lay sadly misplaced. Within two years, Japanese bombs fell on the American naval and army bases at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and United States was in the largest, deadliest struggle in human history—World War II.
In one way or another, almost everyone in the extended Bohm family, their friends, and their neighbors was affected by this conflict. For some, it meant dramatic career changes; for others, the lethal reality and ultimate insanity of organized killing were experienced first hand.
Among the earliest of these “first-hand” war experiences occurred when an Enderlin widow, Japanese by birth, Mrs. Mitsuya, and her daughter Misao, or “Minnie” as she was called by her friends, moved back to Japan in October 1938 after Mrs. Mitsuya’s Uncle died. Young Minnie Mitsuya was an Enderlin-born Japanese American and was in the eighth grade when she, her mother, and two sisters emigrated to Japan. Misao was heartbroken at the thought of leaving Enderlin and the United States; like most children her age, she was fiercely loyal to her community and friends. Had she stayed in the United States, she would have graduated at the head of her high school class and with honors; she was a brilliant child. One Enderlin resident, Misao’s eight-grade teacher, remembered, “It was a sad morning for Minnie as the westbound Soo Line passenger train pulled away from the station early that morning in October 1938.”[28] Upon arriving in Japan, Minne was appalled with what she discovered—in particular the virulent hatred for Americans that was being preached by the government. Soon, she began to send letters to former teachers in Enderlin, Effie Selvig and Mrs. J. G. Griffin, warning that Japan was planning an attack upon the United States. In one of the last, written just a few weeks before she was arrested by Japanese authorities, Misao said:
Dear Miss Selvig:
America be on the awake! I am very alarmed of America’s safety. Preserve, save and do not waste products. Do not use so much coal, iron and such things. You will need them later. Forest products in America are scarce so you must save, plant and take care of your young trees. Save on coal and oil. Take good care of clothes and do not be extravagant. Run and play and build up a strong body.
Are America’s boys willing to die for their own dear country? Will they keep true to their own dear country? Do they keep faith in their own country? Over here the soldiers are glad to give their life for their country. As the boys and if they say “no” teach them that if they are not willing to give their lives for their country, the country will be in ruins in 100 years or so. If this doesn’t reach you it may be taken by censors and I shall be imprisoned or something but that is nothing to what might happen to U.S.A. I would gladly give my life for America.
Your sincere pupil,
Misao Mitsua
Japanese censors were, in fact, onto Minnie. The stream of correspondence soon stopped and, shortly before her sixteenth birthday, Minnie was arrested and subsequently killed on February 22, 1941. Nine months and two weeks later, the Imperial Japanese Navy bombed Pearl Harbor. Eventually, Minnie’s story appeared in Life Magazine at the end of December 1941 and for a brief moment, her brave act received national attention. Enderlin native Misao Mitsua was not only an American patriot but she was one of the earliest American heroines of World War II.[29]
Minnie had been one of Alma Opheim’s best friends when the two little girls were growing up. Alma recalled spending much of her time playing with Minnie and helping out at Minnie’s family laundry. She recalled Minnie’s uncle’s efforts to teach her the rudiments of the Japanese language over shared meals, and of how the two little girls, the black-haired, brown-skinned Minnie and the blonde-headed light-skinned Alma would elicit comments from adults wherever they went.[30] The discovery of Minnie’s death shocked the community and in the spring of 1942 the junior class at Enderlin High School memorialized her heroism with a plaque that would be on display in the school.[31]
Events of World War II also touched Constance Opheim well before President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave his, now immortal, “Day of Infamy” speech, the stinging declaration that ushered the United States into World War II on December 8, 1941. After Hitler’s armies invaded Norway in the summer of 1940, Connie began to send packages to the relatives she left behind on Rolla Island four decades earlier. Concerned for their well being, she sewed packets of coffee and cocoa into handmade quilts she hurriedly and lovingly stitched together. These were sent so that her parents and the rest of her family there could supplement meager wartime rations with these small luxuries. All too soon however, it became apparent that her packages were not making it through. Undoubtedly German censors became adept at discovering such a simple desception. Later she learned that her brother Hennig, had been shot by German soldiers for participating in the Norwegian underground.[32]
By 1940 America’s own preparations for war were becoming more apparent. Support was openly and clandestinely supplied to European allies and at home the economy was being transformed to churn out war materiel—tanks, planes, ships, guns, and bombs. Recruitment into America’s woefully understaffed and unprepared military intensified and, soon, the Roosevelt Administration reintroduced the military draft. Henry Opheim was among the first of the early volunteers; his brother Eddy soon followed.
As soon as she graduated, Bette Opheim left Enderlin for Michigan where she moved in with her oldest sister, Mabelle. Bette took a job and soon met Edsel Hazzard, a young man who had come north from Louisiana with his family in the late 1920s.[33] They were married on 18 October 1941 and, almost simultaneously, Edsel’s “number was up,” his draft number, and he was inducted into the U.S. Army and was instructed to report to basic training in Mississippi. At the time, Edsel thought that he might have to put in “a year or so” of active duty and then some time in the Army Reserve. After his departure for basic training, Bette traveled south to join he new husband. By her own admission, she was ill-prepared for the journey. Growing up in almost completely Caucasian North Dakota, she was unaware of the extent to which America in general and the South in particular were segregated. After boarding the train in Detroit, she had to be escorted from the “colored” where she had found a seat. “I’d never heard of such a thing,” she said many years later[34]
The deep south was a wild and chaotic place when Bette arrived; she said that she was “scared to death” when she took a room in a hotel that was booked solid with young soldiers coming and going from the local military training facility. The drinking, loud behavior, the fights, the bravado, made it a wild and crazy adventure. The hotel was a crackerbox affair with small poorly insulated and inadequately ventilated rooms; restroom and bathing facilities “down the hall.” At one point, Bette demonstrated her naïvete when she washed her underwear in the sink in the common bathroom and then hung them there to dry. They were stolen immediately. Bette was so afraid of this new environment that she spent her days huddled in the hotel room waiting for Edsel’s visits when he was able to receive a pass. After each of these all-too-brief encounters he would hitchhike back to camp in the evening.
By the time Edsel’s basic training was complete, America had declared war on the Axis Powers and he was shipped off to the South Pacific. Bette returned to Michigan. The newlyweds would not see each other for five years.
Many other Opheim and Bohm relatives would have their lives transformed by the events of World War II. Bette, along with her sister Thelma went to work in defense industries in Michigan. Hugh “Tubby” Wilson, Thelma’s husband worked on contract installing military assembly lines in the automotive factories in and around Detroit. Notable among these was the installation of equipment at Ford Motor Company’s famous River Rouge plant near Dearborn. In fact, Tubby had his photograph included in a feature spread in Life Magazine of the River Rouge installation.
Four of Nick and Connie's five sons served in the military during World War II. From the left, Henry, Eddy, and Johnny all served in the U. S. Army. Kenneth, or Buddy as he was known, joined the U. S. Navy late in the war. Of the four, only Hank saw combat. Beginning in 1942, his unit was shipped to North Africa. From there, he participated in the campaign in Sicily and in the invasion of Italy, including the landing at Anzio Beach. Note that Hank's photograph is inscribed to his mother. "With Love, your son Hank."
Four of the five Opheim sons served in the military during Worl War II. Eddy, Johnny, and Henry served in the U. S. Army. Kenneth, or Bud as he was known, enlisted in the U. S. Navy. Neither Eddy, Buddy, nor Johnny saw combat. Hank did. Like his brother-in-law, Edsel Hazzard, Henry “Hank” Opheim joined the United States Army before the attack on Pearl Harbor. And just as in Edsel’s case, this early enlistment meant that he would become a part of the America’s first World War II military adventures. In Hank’s case, that adventure meant being shipped off to North Africa as part of the first American military engagement against Nazi Germany. Hank participated in the struggle against Rommel in North Africa, the invasion of Sicily, the subsequent amphibious landing at Anzio, the bloody struggle for Monte Casino and the vicious combat that took place as Allied forces made their way up the Boot of Italy.[35]
In the Bohm family, Russel Henkel, Cecelia’s son enlisted in the Army. A number of Lindemanns served in the war. Ben Boehm, a grandson of August Boehm and a second cousin of Fred, Junior, and Byron Bohm, was a pilot in the U. S. Army Air Corps. As a fighter pilot, he was trained to fly the P-47 Thunderbolt. Ben was shot down and killed in Europe while flying air cover during the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944. As we soon shall see, World War II changed the lives of other members of the Bohm and Opheim families, as well.
Fred C. Bohm, Jr. and Alma Opheim
Frederick Carl Bohm, Jr. was born on April 25, 1922, the first son of Fred, Sr., and Gladys Bohm. He spent his early years growing up on the family farm in Pontiac Township in Cass County. From 1928, when he was six years old, until 1937, when the family left the farm and moved into Enderlin, Fred attended the one-room Pontiac School, the same place his father received an education. At an early age Fred, Junior, became interested in ranching, farming, and horses. He obtained his first pony when he was five; at the age of fifteen, he worked hauling thrashing bundles to buy his first horse, a bronco mare.[36] At the same time, he developed a fondness and taste of old-time, country music, the music that was played and sung in the rural Deep South and the Appalachian and Blue Ridge mountains. Early on, he listened with his uncle Max to broadcasts of the “Grand Ole Oprey” broadcast on radio station WSM from Nashville, Tennessee, beginning in the late 1920s. There he heard the now legendary Carter Family sing songs like “Keep on the Sunny Side” and “Wildwood Flower.”
A second influence on Fred Junior’s musical tastes came from another family member. For a number of years in the late 20s and early 1930s a first cousin, Russell Henkel, stayed with Fred’s family. And as Russell assisted with work on the farm, such as raking hay and other chores. And because the family had little money with which to pay him, Fred Senior would buy phonograph records, in particular Jimmy Rodgers recordings, and bring them home as gifts whenever he would go to Fargo. Russell had a taste for country music and listening to his Jimmy Rodgers only helped to fuel Fred Junior’s interest. Over the years, Fred’s passion for country music grew. Fred bought a used guitar in the late 1930s and learned to play. In the late 1930s, one of his high school friends christened him with the nickname “Tex” when he watched Fred ride bucking bronco in a summer rodeo in Ransom County. Over many years Fred was part of the growing vanguard of followers who listened passionately to the Delmore Brothers, Bill Monroe, Hank Williams, and countless other country musicians.[37]
In the summer of 1939, two years after moving into Enderlin, Fred met Alma Opheim at a Lisbon, North Dakota, Fourth-of-July celebration. Alma, who had only recently returned with her father, mother and brother, Bud, from Michigan, had gone to the festivities with her older brother, John. According to Fred, “ . . . during the day John and his friends drank a lot of beer so she didn’t think it was safe to ride home with him so she looked for someone to ride home with and she had seen me in high school. She asked if there was a chance to ride back to Enderlin.”[38 Fred had gone to the Lisbon Independence Day festivities with the Sly boys, so he asked them if it would be o.k. if Alma rode home with him. They didn’t care, so when the time came to leave, he and Alma climbed in the rumble seat of the Sly car and Fred rode all the way back to Enderlin with her on his lap and her hair blowing in his face.[39] He was smitten, it seems. “The next night,” Fred recalled, “I took her to a movie & from that time on I started dating her. She was just 14 at the time. I would say it was pretty young to start dating.”[40]
Fred, who by this time was acquiring the nickname “Tex,” because of his interest in horses[41], and Alma, who was called “Toots” or “Tootsie” by friends and family, began dating. For the next two years they went together. Nearly sixty years later, Fred recalled, “There hasn’t been many days of our life that we have been apart. I went to see her every day till the day that I married her.”
Alma’s recollections of what happened after her return from Michigan are somewhat at variance with Fred’s version of events. She said she had a “couple of other boyfriends” before she started going out with Fred. One in particular, a young man named Stuart Niles had a crush on her and, in fact, would not leave her alone. As far as Alma was concerned, Niles had one particular problem; he liked to drink. He disguised the odor of alcohol on his breath by chewing Sen-Sen, a breath product of the time. The event that brought their dating to a halt occurred on a summer’s weekend when Stuart came by the house, picked up Alma and, with a bunch of other kids in the car, drove out to the Bohnsack Ranch for some summer event. On the way out, it became apparent to Alma that Stuart had been drinking. And against her better judgment she decided to go home with him anyway at day’s end. On the way home, and in the dark he eventually drove his convertible into the ditch. Alma said that, if the car had flipped over, they all would have been killed. Badly shaken, Alma got out of the car, told Stuart that she was through with him and that he should not bother to try to see her any more. She took off running across wheat fields, making her way back to Enderlin by moonlight. It was two o’clock in the morning when she arrived at the house on Railway Street exhausted, her dress and coat soaking wet from dew and covered with chaff from the grain through which she had just made her way. Her mother asked what was wrong and why she was so late. Alma replied, “Nothing, everything is o.k. We were just late. That’s all.”[42]
The next day, however, Stuart Niles came by the house and tried to apologize. Alma told him to “get lost” and gave him back some the gifts he had given to her. Undeterred, the besotted young man kept hanging around the Opheim house calling out to Alma. Although Alma ignored it, but the caterwauling annoyed her brother, Johnny, who was at home from Michigan at the time. Johnny complained to his sister, Alma: “Tell that guy to get lost or I’ll go out there and knock his block off.” The next time Stuart came by the house, Alma went outside and passed on Johnny’s warning and he despondent young man departed. But Stuart Niles would not give up. He went so far as to stalk Alma, following her around town, popping out from behind fences and bushes when she was out walking or coming home from school. Alma said that the stalking continued all the while she and Fred went out in high school. She concluded by observing that, “even when Tex and I were married, we were concerned that Niles would “show up at the wedding” to make some kind of fuss” Alma speculated that some people thought that Stuart Niles might try to shoot her, or Fred, or both of them.[43]
Fred graduated from Enderlin High School in 1941. Throughout the time that he and Alma dated, he maintained his interest in (some would say obsession with) horses and horse culture, ranching as he saw it, and, incidentally, with farming. During the summer between his junior and senior years in high school, Fred took a job working on the Bohnsack Ranch, a 2,500-acre spread south of Enderlin in the Sand Hills country of Ransom County. And, as it happened, Frieda Bohnsack decided that year to drive 600 head of cattle to the stock yard in Fargo. Fred was at the right place at the right time as far as he was concerned and was able to participate in what was probably the last of the “old-time cattle drives” in the region.
Late that summer a Fargo Forum reporter wrote a feature on the ranch and the cattle drive; it carried the headline “600 Cattle From Grasslands Within 70 Miles of Fargo; Owner Rides Herd, Is Undaunted By Rustlers.” Fred, Jr. clipped out the story and an accompanying photograph captioned “Milling Herd in Bohnsack Corral” and pasted it into his scrapbook. In the middle of the photo one can make out the indistinct forms of three riders on horseback. Fred has drawn a circle around one of the riders and, with an arrow, has added the label “Fred Bohm.”[44] In the article, the reporter, Jack Ottum, declared:
Were you to blindfold a man and take him from any part of eastern North Dakota to Miss Bohnsack’s establishment, drive him through the cattle-guard gate at the north entrance, set him afoot and whip away the eye covering that it’s doubtful if you could convince him he was still in his home state.
Ottum goes on to say:
If he were a movie goer, especially one who’d attended some of the western thrillers full of mesquite, sage, sand dunes, rolling grass, and, beckoning cattle trails and rail fence corrals, he’d say it was Arizona or New Mexico.
If you took him to Miss Bohnsack’s ranch house; if you seated him on a rustic bench in the shade of trees which flank her home, he’d look out through the neatly designed rail fence and his gaze would take him to the undulant downsweep of tree-cluttered grazing land rolling gently toward the ranch house.
Then, when the faint “Yip-p-e-e-e!” of cowboys came floating over a ridge with the reverberations of impatient “M-ba-a-a’s” from driven cattle, he’d probably ask, “How’d you get me so far in such a short time?”
This cattle drive, which took place in the summer of 1940, was one of Fred’s early defining moments and, over the years he would sprinkle his conversations with references to it. Occasionally he would provide additional details about the trip. In one brief discussion he described the convoluted route that the cattle drive was forced to follow because of the fact that so much of the land in the area was developed, fenced, or cultivated. Fred pointed out that along all of the section and township lines there were “rights-of-way" of significant width down which the cow punchers could herd the 600 cattle. The idea was to keep the cattle within the right of way and prevent them from straying onto adjacent cultivated fields or pastureland. This was no easy task and it extended the length of the drive significantly as the herd could only be moved at right angles, to the east and eventually to the north, rather than following a simple diagonal from the Bohnsack Ranch to Fargo.
Fred also recalled that one of the “wranglers” on the drive was “an old Indian” who rode sidesaddle. When Fred asked the older obviously “seasoned” cow puncher why he rode sidesaddle, the young, wet-behind-the-ears teenager was told that it was a lot more comfortable to ride that way if you had hemorrhoids. Fred was bemused by the answer because, as he said many years later, “I didn’t know what hemorrhoids were then.”[45]”
Fred’s experience on the Bohnsack Ranch seems to have crystallized in his mind, convincing him that it was possible for someone to live a life conjured from silver screen fantasies, a life in which Hopalong Cassidy, Tom Mix, John Wayne, and Gene Autry might coexist with the day-to-day modern world. This life in Fred’s mind ultimately meant “freedom” from having others tell him what to do, freedom to do what he wanted, freedom to be out of doors, freedom to ride horses whenever he wished. It was, in fact, a dream life, grounded in notions of a past that never really existed. While many young men and women his age, including his brother, focused on the future, Fred was drawn to yesterday and to the day before, and to the day before that for his inspiration. He thought of horses, herding cows, and life on the range. In an interview in the Enderlin High School student newspaper printed only a few months after his summer on the Bohnsack Ranch Fred made his intentions clear; he was hooked on his dream.
When did you enter E. H. S.? When I was a freshman.
Where did you go before? I can’t remember.
What’s your favorite subject? Physical education.
Who’s your favorite teacher? Mr. Roy [the physical education teacher].
What are your ambitions? I’ll be a rancher.
Any schooling? Nope, I know all there is to know about it now.
What do you think of yourself? Oh! I think I’m pretty good.[46]
His answers were short and to the point. They were also accurate. Horses and ranching seemed to inform everything he would do subsequently. Although ranching would remain his ultimate goal, he found it necessary to find other kinds of jobs in the interim. And so he after graduating trom high school in 1941 he took a job on the Soo Line Railroad, working a split shift servicing passenger trains that came through town.[47] All the while, he continued to date and go out with Alma. At some point, he "poped the question" and they agreed that they would get married in June 1942 after Alma completed her Junior year at Enderlin High School.
The Opheim-Bohm Wedding
Fred married Alma Opheim on June 5, 1942. The Enderlin Independent carried the following story:
Alma Opheim Becomes Bride of Fredric Bohm
Ceremony Took Place in St. Luke’s Church
Friday Morning
Before an altar decorated with baskets of flowers at the St. Luke’s Lutheran church of Enderlin, was the setting for the service read at 9 a.m. Friday at which Miss Alma Opheim, daughter of Mr. And Mrs. Nick Opheim of Enderlin became the bride of Mr. Fredric Carl Bohm, Jr., son of Mr. And Mrs. Fred C. Bohm of Enderlin. The ceremony was performed by the Rev. O. H. Schaible, pastor. Family members and close friends witnessed the ceremony.
The bride wore a gown of white sheer Ninon, floor length, with fitted bodice. Her dress had a sweetheart neckline and short puff sleeves, with a full skirt trimmed with bands of lace. Her veil was floor length and she carried a bouquet of pink roses and Lilies of the Valley with ribbon streamers.
Her bridesmaid was Miss Ardis Fretland, a cousin of the groom. She wore a floor length gown of pink Moire taffeta, hort puff sleeves and full skirt.
Byron K. Bohm attended his brother as best man.
The wedding march was played by Mrs. Ole Opheim, sister-in-law of the bride.
The bride’s mother was dressed in a blue pink crepe and the groom’s mother wore a dress of dusty rose coin dot knitted jersey.
Immediately after the ceremony a reception followed. A three tier wedding cake and tall lighted candles were used for the table decorations. The wedding cake was baked by Mrs. Oscar Sunby, a close friend of the bride.
Assisting in the reception were Mrs. Frank Sallen, Mrs. George Fretland, Mrs. Ceclia Henkel and Miss Alma Bohm. Byron K. Bohm was in charge of the bridal register.
Mr. And Mrs. Bohm left immediately after the reception for a week’s honeymoon trip to the Minnesota lake region. When they return they will make their home in Enderlin.[48]
As the Independent reported, “Toots” and “Tex,” the new bride and groom, departed Enderlin that Friday, their wedding day, shortly after noon. Tex had just celebrated his nineteenth birthday at the end of April; Toots was still seventeen. The young couple headed out east on Highway 46 in Fred’s eleven-year-old 1931 Chevrolet convertible coupe. Fargo was their intended first stop; the next day they planned to drive on to Detroit Lakes, Minnesota.
They reached Fargo by two o’clock and took a room at the Hotel Powers.[49] On Saturday morning at 8:30, and before continuing on to Detroit Lakes, they grabbed a quick breakfast—Wheaties, egg sandwiches, and milk—in the Hotel Powers Coffee Shop.[50]
Several hours later they arrived in Detroit Lakes, where they rented a cabin in the Tom Thumb Court, a small resort facility just outside of town on the west shore of Detroit Lake.[51] They picked up some groceries—tomato juice, peas, ground beef, potatoes, bread, and bran flakes—at “Norbys,” and spent the next several days enjoying themselves on the beach at Detroit Lake, shopping, and attending at least one movie at “The Lake.”[52] The newlyweds had a wonderful honeymoon and, as Alma wrote in her wedding album, they were, at that moment, “the happiest guys on earth!”
Heading West
After the brief honeymoon, Fred and Alma returned to Enderlin. Once again, Fred took a job with the Soo Line Railroad working in the yard. But after just three weeks on the job, he drew his pay check, and quit. Shortly after the Fourth of July the young couple packed their belongings and headed west.[53]
Although they were undoubtedly drawn in that direction by several family members who had preceded them, including Fred’s uncle and aunt, Russell and Florence Anderson, it was brother Byron’s enthusiasm that caused them to leave.
Unlike his older brother, Byron, or B.K. as he was becoming known, saw early on that there was no future in farming, or in the state of North Dakota for that matter. He accurately observed that there were only two ways to make a living around Enderlin; the first required that your family owned land and the second that one’s father worked on the railroad. In his case neither rule applied, and so he decided that he would leave as soon as he could.
Byron’s interest in the future was one decidedly outside the State of North Dakota and his passions were aviation and being a pilot. During his four years in Enderlin High School, Byron, unlike his older brother, participated in school activities and applied himself to his education. In 1941, he played the role of “Aesop” in the senior class play, a parlor-room drama called The Green Light. In the spring of 1942 during the early days of World War II, he was one of fifteen young men who participated in a shop-class project to construct aircraft identification models for the U.S. Army.[54] Even the epigram that appeared after his name in the Enodak, Enderlin High School’s student yearbook, identified him as “P-40.”[55]
Adhering to his plan to “get out of Enderlin,” with his suitcase in hand and five dollars in his pocket, Byron left the house on the morning of June 6, 1942 and made his way out to Highway 46 just north of town. He crossed over to the north side of the roadway, stuck out his thumb, and caught a ride with a driver heading west. It was the morning after he had served as best man in his brother Fred’s wedding and two days after his high school graduation; he was seventeen years old.[56]
Once in Bremerton, he immediately landed a job in Puget Sound Naval Shipyard despite the fact that he was only seventeen and technically under age. His letters home were addressed to the entire family and he admonished them to move to the Pacific Northwest. On June 27, ten days after arriving, he wrote to his parents and to Fred and Alma:
I wish all of you would come out and see how it is out here. When Russel [gets] his house a little more along they’d find a place for you all to sleep and Pop could get in[to] the yards. I’d be making enough so we could get along alright. There’s lots of jobs out here. All a person has to do is get ‘em.[57]
Two days later he wrote:
If he hasn’t left for Mich. and I hope he hasn’t tell him he better not go their [sic] and to come out here instead. You and daddy should come out to[o]. If dad came out he could get in the Yard. He could get a trade out of it anyway and he’d make more money at that than he would in any garage.[58]
He told his brother, Fred, that the wages in Bremerton were twice what he was making working for the Soo Line in Enderlin. A week after Byron wrote on June 29, Fred recalled that he and Alma “. . .took off for the golden west as Byron called it. We left on the 5th of July in our little 1931 Chevrolet convertible coupe.” Because of wartime conditions, new automobile tires were generally not available. Fred recalled that “. . . the tires on our car were smooth and we dared not drive over 35 to 40 mph, and during the day it was well over 100 above in Montana, and the roads were all real narrow and a lot of construction was taking place.”[59] He also recalled . that:
. . . it took us 5 days to drive out as in July it was so hot across N.D. & Montana we only drove early in the morning & later in the evening so we would only make 300 miles a day.
We got started late the first day & only got west of Bismarck the first night & stayed at a roadside cabin & the proprietor didn’t want to rent us the room as we looked too young. So we had to prove we were married.
The next day we made it to Miles City, the next to Bozeman. Then we made it to Helena & I even drove all night to get to Idaho. We ran into a herd of wild horses at Vantage, Washington & they were so many we had to stop at times. We arrived in Bremerton towards evening & the next day I applied for a job in the Navy Yard & went to work the next day.
. . . .
I must tell you about the cost going out west in 1942 . . . 100 gallons of gas for 1,600 miles cost $19.00 and the lodging in hotels & cabins was $20 & our food on the way out was $30. Oil for the car was 15¢ a quart and the car used a quart every 100 miles. The roads were crushed rock and oil & [that] was real tough on tires as I blew 3 of them out & one could only buy used tires as new tires were rationed. Our trip out in 1942 cost less than $100.[60]
When they arrived in Bremerton in mid-July 1942, jobs were plentiful. On July 11, Fred put in his application at Puget Sound Naval Ship Yard; and, as pointed out above, he was hired on July 12.[61] In fact, the U. S. Navy was crying for shipyard workers. It had been less than a year since the United States had been drawn into World War II by Japan’s bombing of U.S. military facilities at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Fred hired on as a driller.[62] The yard humming with activity as workers toiled night and day to repair damage done to U.S. Navy warships at Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway.
Fred and Alma moved into a small, 24-by-8-foot house trailer adjacent to Fred’s aunt and uncle, Floss and Russell Anderson. They remained there for four-and-a-half months, Fred working in the shipyard and Alma keeping house. Then, in the middle of November, Fred’s North Dakota draft board ordered his to return to the Midwest where he was to prepare for induction into one of the armed services. Fred and Alma left their automobile in Bremerton and returned by train to Enderlin where they stayed with relatives. Fred followed his draft board’s instructions and traveled to Minneapolis for his pre-induction physical. Almost simultaneously he received a second telegram, this one from the United States Navy ordering him to return to Bremerton where he was to go back to work at Puget Sound Naval Ship Yard; it superceded his draft instructions.[63]
Given the fact that Alma was five months pregnant, the young couple decided collectively that additional travel might prove hazardous for her and that she should remain in Enderlin at her mother’s house. It was during this brief stay in Enderlin, Alma said in 2003, that a touching event touching event occurred. Her father, Nick, who happened to be home from his job in Chippewa Falls, came upstairs to Alma’s room, gave her a big hug and told her that he loved her. Alma said this one little act meant a great deal to her because her family was not at all affectionate, nor was there a great deal of compassion shown for the children by either parent64].
With time’s passing it became increasingly difficult for Fred and Alma to remain. Fred, all alone in Washington pined away in letter after letter about his being separated form his wife of six months. So, in January 1943 Alma was take to Fargo where she boarded a train headed west.[65
These were trying and difficult times for the young couple as, indeed, they were for the entire nation. They were trying to begin a life together and to start a family. Alma was to deliver a new baby in four months; they had no money. The nation had been at war for nearly a year and the massive industrial complex was being mobilized for the war effort. Trains were put at the service of the military and soldiers, sailors, and Marines jammed the passenger cars and strained the capabilities of American railroads. Here they were, like countless other Americans, caught in the middle of historical events larger than themselves, trying to create a life. Nonetheless, Alma recalled that her trip west was not unpleasant. The soldiers, sailors, and Marines aboard the train made sure that the young, mother-to-be was comfortable; they made sure a seat was available and that she had blankets to keep her warm and plenty to eat.
Upon her arrival back in Bremerton she rejoined Fred in the tiny trailer house in Tracyton. Four months after Alma’s return, she and fred prepared for the arrival of their first child. Then, on the evening of 12 April, Alma began to feel labor pains. She and Fred became alarmed and Fred ran outside to get the car ready; unfortunately the old 31 Chevy convertible refused to start. The battery was dead. And so, Fred ran next door to call on Uncle Russell, who drove Alma and Fred to Harrison Memorial Hospital in downtown Bremerton. They arrived finally at nine o’clock that evening. After about eleven hours labor, at eight o’clock the next morning, Fredric Carl III was born; weighing in at eight pounds, thirteen ounces, he was a big boy.[66]
For the next ten days she spent in Harrison Memorial Hospital in bed, one of those days in a hallway because there were no rooms. Alma recalled that there were many sailors’wives in having babies at that time.
Three months later, in July of 1943, the family moved to Orchard Heights, a workers’ housing project in Port Orchard, a small community just across the bay from Bremerton. Then, in October, they moved briefly into a house in the country, but then, in November, they moved, again, to another workers’ housing project, Sheridan Park in Mannette so that Fred could be closer to work.[67
But then, the federal bureaucracy intervened, for a second time. Somehow, it was decided that Fred’s shipyard deferment should be superseded and, once again, he was classified as 1-A and instructed to return to North Dakota immediately. Thus, in early December Fred, Alma, and young Freddie III traveled by train to Enderlin. But immediately upon reporting to his draft board, Fred’s classification was changed to 2-B because he now had two dependents; that meant that, for the time being, he would not be drafted. But rather than return to his shipyard job in Bremerton, Fred and Alma decided they would stay in the Enderlin area. In the spring of 1944 they bought some livestock and rented a farm on the Northern Pacific line the near community of Sheldon. Upon becoming a farmer, Fred’s draft status was changed one final time, this time to 4-H, a farmer with dependents. In 1944 the military was no longer drafting farmers with dependents.
Six months later, sometime in the fall of 1944, Fred and Alma moved away from Sheldon and into an area known as “the Sand Hills.”[68] During the next six years lived on three different Sheyenne-River farmsteads in Sand Hills: first on the Ed Christman place, next on the Mamenga place, and finally, on what was known in the family as the Freddie Christman farm.[69].
A New Family Member
By the early spring of 1947, while on the Mamenga farm, Alma and Fred began making plans for the expected arrival of their second child. Then, at the end of March and shortly before the expected delivery date, a powerful winter storm blew across the northern Great Plains, dumping large amounts of snow in the Dakotas. Fred and Alma decided that, rather than stay on the farm risking the possibility of being trapped by a storm, he should drive her to Fargo, seventy miles away and the nearest town with a decent hospital. There she would take a room and wait for her delivery, just in case the weather failed to break. So, they set out in the morning in the Willys Jeep that they had purchased recently. Fred had chains on all four tires and they made the seventy-mile trip to Fargo in four-wheel drive. Once there, Alma managed to find a boarding house room, one she shared with another young Enderlin woman; it was only a couple of blocks from the hospital.[70] Meanwhile, Fred returned to the farm to care for the livestock.
Alma’s mother, Constance, had gone to the farm from Enderlin to watch her four-year-old grandchild, Freddie III shortly before Alma and Fred Made their trek to Fargo.
In the days immediately following, yet another, unusually harsh spring storm front blew through. On Saturday evening, April 5, the night before Easter, it hit southeastern North Dakota, snarling transportation, knocking out communication and power to at least fifty communities. Under the headline, “Sleet, Windstorm Leaves 50 Towns in Darkness,” the Enderlin Independent carried the following front-page story:
Enderlin, along with 50 other towns in southeastern North Dakota and adjoining Minnesota territory were left without light or power when a sleet storm accompanied by high wind struch here Saturday afternoon. Temperatures dropped to a chilly 20 average and a “blue” Easter became actuality in hundreds of homes. Most of the towns and hundreds of rural patrons lost their current about five o’clock Saturday evening. Snow and ice gathering on the high lines broke wires and poles as the storm gained in intensity.[71]
The Independent went on to report that “. . . 15 miles of the main transmission line is “hopelessly snarled” and a week or more may elapse before full service will be restored.[72]
On April 6, on that “blue Easter” evening, Fred wrote to Alma and described the situation on the farm:
Got your letter today as I couldn’t get the mail yesterday because of the storm but I got up to Venlo [today] with the team. It was sure miserable, I tell you. It snowed about two feet last nite and it is sure hard walking in the yard now. . . . I will try to get down [to Fargo] Tuesday if I can get out. The roads are blocked so bad now but maybe I can ride horseback up to Hank’s. He said he was going in that day. . . . Tomorrow, I have to try to get some coal from Anselm as the wood is so wet around here and everything is snowed under. We played a team [of horses] out today in the snow pulling a load of corn home from Pete’s, so you can see how deep the snow is. . . . I bet the [Sheyenne] River will flood now, since all this snow came, as it is up to the banks now in places. I suppose it will come up clear behind the house this year, that is if it thaws real fast.[73]
Inside the house, it appears as if Grandma Opheim also had her hands full. In addition to restraining young Freddie’s Easter morning enthusiasms, her grandson’s antics presented special challenges. Fred, Jr., reported that:
Freddie was so excited when he got up this morn[ing] and found his baskets all over. He was just about as bad as Christmas Eve. . . . he gets a little ornery just to show off. But I guess he is better when I am out. That’s what your mother says. Anyway, I hope he is. She was going to grease him up tonite and he turned the dish of camphorated oil upside down on the stove. It smells like it around here now, ha-ha. I can just see you about that time. But he said he was sorry afterwards so that’s all that matters, I guess.[74]
On the morning of 7 April Fred, Jr., managed yet another trek all the way to Fargo in the Jeep. As he was making his way down nearly impassable roads, Alma began to feel labor pains and trudged off down the street through snow and slush to check into the hospital. But after a cursory examination the attending physician instructed her to return home with her husband when he arrived. It was his expert opinion, he told her, that she would not be ready to give birth for a week or more. But in light of the circumstances Alma could not simply “return home.” Shortly, Fred arrived, and after discussing the situation; they decided that Alma would remain in Fargo; Fred would return to the farm. Weather conditions being what they were, a drive from south of Venlo to Fargo while Alma was in labor could certainly be dangerous.[75]
Soon after Fred’s set out for the farm, Alma, once again, began to feel labor pains. She made herself as ready as she could and, once again, walked the block from the rooming house to the hospital in knee-deep snow. This time she insisted on her being admitted; it was seven in the evening of Monday, April 7. Twenty-four hours later, on Tuesday, April 8, 1947, the baby arrived; she named him Dwight Keith; Dwight because she liked the sound of it—it was the name of a radio personality of the time, Dwight O’Keefe; Keith because it was Fred’s brother Byron’s middle name.[76]
Within a couple of days, because of the recently fallen snow and because of a warming trend, the Red River and most of the other streams in the area, flooded. Bridges and roads were washed out and Alma and baby Dwight were evacuated from the hospital to a nearby rooming house. After about ten days in Fargo, Fred and his uncle Frank Sallen made the fifty-mile trip from Enderlin to rescue the mother and new baby and bring them a far as Enderlin. Once there, Dwight and Alma stayed at the with Fred’s parents until driving conditions on the country roads improved.[77] Fred returned to the farm. Finally, in early May, the rural gravel and dirt roads were deemed safe enough and Fred came into Enderlin and brought Alma and baby Dwight all the way home. Alma had been away for more than a month.
Of course, during the entire time that Alma had been away, her mother Constance, “kept house” and took care of four-year-old Freddie. One of Alma’s most vivid recollections of her homecoming was, the moment she walked through the front door of the house carrying baby Dwight. On seeing his mother, Freddie immediately turned to his grandmother and said, “You can get your clothes and go home now Grandma.”[78]
Nick Opheim’s Death
The joy associated with the birth of a new family member was soon diminished by the senseless, tragic death of Nick Opheim, Alma’s father, just two months after she and Dwight returned home from the hospital. At the time of his death in mid June, Nick had been working in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, at a Soo Line facility there; in fact he had been employed since 1941, and, as he did nearly every month, he had returned home to Enderlin for a visit. Nick arrived by train in Enderlin on Monday, June 16 to visit with family and friends. Two days later, on the evening of Wednesday, June 18, he walked downtown to a local bar to spend the evening with old friends from his Enderlin “roundhouse days”. After an enjoyable evening, he left the bar and headed home.
Shortly after midnight, while walking down Railway Street, Nick Opheim was struck by down by a car occupied by two men, Charles Hanson of Cogswell, a passenger, and Enderlin resident, twenty-nine-year-old Frank Gray, who was behind the wheel. It was widely reported that Gray had been drinking heavily; some said he was completely drunk and that he lost control of his vehicle, permitting it to veer from the street and onto the sidewalk. Nick was struck down in an instant and died shortly.
Alma recalled that at 5:30 in the morning of June 19 that Fred’s Brother, Byron, who had just returned home from the service, was the bearer of the tragic news. When she went to answer his early morning knock on their farmhouse door, Alma said that she knew something was wrong.
Eight days later, on Friday, June 27, the Ransom County coroner, Dr. A. Veitch, convened an inquest into Nick’s death in the council rooms of the Enderlin City Hall. Herman Shirley, A. N. Hofland, and I. N. Jones, all of Enderlin, were selected as jurors. Charles Ego, Ransom County States Attorney assisted Veitch in the conduct of his investigation. During the course of the proceeding Veitch and Ego interviewed Dr. S. C. Bacheller, the Enderlin doctor called to the accident scene; Charles Hanson, the passenger in the vehicle; Conrad Fredericks and Marilyn Nelson, both of whom claimed to have been with Gray and Gogswell the night of the accident; A. J. Rishel, whose house was at the corner where Nick Opheim had been killed; Melvin Severson, the first person to arrive on the scene, “Mrs. Pete Redman,” operator of a local beer parlor; W. J. Bell a friend who had been with Nick earlier in the evening; A. P. Tiedman, the Ransom County Sheriff; and Frank Gray himself.
Incredibly, the juried inquest ruled Nick Opheim’s death to have been “accidental.” A front-page story in the July 3, 1947 Enderlin Independent reported that “The jurors held there was no evidence of criminal negligence on the part of the driver of the car, Frank Gray of Enderlin.” This was undoubtedly a case of small-town justice at its worst. In an era before sobriety tests, there was simply no way to prove drunkenness. In the aftermath of this decision, Nick’s wife of forty years and his nine children and their families had to grapple with the fact that he was gone. A sixty four-year-old father, a husband with a far-away job home for a brief visit, a man preparing for retirement was dead. Frank Gray, the man who killed him with an automobile, was free to walk and drive the streets of Enderlin.[79]
The reality and consequences of the tragedy were immediate and dramatic and were represented eloquently in a scrapbook that Alma maintained throughout the first years of her marriage. Among the many pieces of memorabilia, there along with birthday, anniversary, Valentine’s Day, and Christmas cards, the letters, post cards, and newspaper clippings is the “June” page ripped from a 1947 calendar. White, block-typed numerals stand, reversed out from the page’s stark, black background. This symbolic “Black June” page is folded and carefully inserted into one of the many sympathy cards Alma received after her father’s death. In many ways, that black page says more than any words. The family’s collective life had been altered completely in June 1947. One of its members had been senselessly and needlessly killed.
Although Nick Opheim’s death marked the most dramatic and shocking change in 1947, several other events occurred that year that, each in its own way, marked a clear demarcation with what had gone before. Byron, who returned to the Enderlin area briefly in early 1947, traveled once again to Seattle where he took an engineering position at Boeing Airplane Company. Fred and Gladys Bohm also went west, first to Oregon and then to Bremerton where Fred took a job in a grocery store. Fred, Alma, and family moved from the Mammenga farm where the lived when Dwight was born, to the Fred Christman farm, a few miles away. By 1950 they, too, were heading west.
End Notes
[1] “English translation of the Certificate of Baptism” for Nikolaus Obtained from the pastor of Frosta Parish, Norway on the 2nd day of December 1937,” by Reverend O. J. Lutness, Pastor, Enderlin Lutheran Parish, November 28, 1941.
[2] Nikolaus Opheim, “Certificate of Baptism’” as translated by Reverend O. J. Lutness on 28 November 1941. Magnus Johanneson, (born 1856) the eldest of three sons in the family of Johanes Johannason (born 1819 and Beretmarta Andersdatter (born 1818). Digitalarkivet: 1865—telling for 1717 Frosten (http://digitalarkivet.uib.no)
[3] Digitalararkivet: Emigranter fra hele Norge located at web address: Digitalarkivet.uip.no/cgi-win/wc/webcensstor.exe.
[4] Den Norske Kirke Kirkboka for Ibestad prestegjeld viser at konstanse marie. . . .
[5] Helmer Ericksen, Det Gamle Astrfjord og Ibestad, 1962.
[6] Norwegian Census. 1900. Municipality of Ullensaker. Norwegian Historical Data Centre. Univ-ersitetet I. Tromsø. Ullensaker is situated just a few miles to the northeast of Oslo in Akershus.
[7] Digitalararkivet: Emigranter fra hele Norge located at web address: Digitalarkivet.uip.no/cgi-win/wc/webcensstor.exe, and “Wilson Line Kristiania Hull (London) Sailing List for 1904,” www.museumsnett.no/mka/ssa/index.htm. The Wilson Line began regular passenger service between Norway and England in 1852 when it inaugurated the Christiania (Oslo) route via Christiansand to Hull. Although early emigrants debarked on sailing ships departing directly from Norway, this pattern gradually began to change in the late 1860s as transatlantic steamship companies operating from British ports began to attract Norwegian passengers.
The primary reasons for this shift were obvious; better shipboard living conditions, larger, faster ships, speed and reliability. As competition increased, steamship fares became less and less expensive with each passing year. As a result, a need soon developed for passenger service between the Scandinavian countries and Britain; the Wilson Line filled this need. In fact, the Wilson Line was so successful that it transported more Norwegian emigrants than any other shipping line. Over the years, however, the Wilson Line developed a monopoly, which, in the end permitted them to lower the quality of their service to the point where conditions in steerage drew many complaints from passengers. After the end of the American Civil War the large transatlantic companies, the Allan Line, Cunard, American, Inman, Guion, Dominion, State, and the White Star Line all established agencies in Norway and elsewhere in northern Europe. All were dependent on the “feeder companies,” such as the Wilson Line, that ran feeder services from European ports to Britain. See: Arthur G. Credland and Michael Thompson, The Wilson Line of Hull: 1831—1981 (London: Hutton Press, 1981).
[8] The Montebello was built specifically to serve the commerce in emigrants from the Scandinavian countries to England. According to A. G. Credland & M. Thompson, The Wilson Line of Hull, 1831-1981 (London: Lloyd's Register of Ships, n.d.), the SS Montebello was the first Wilson Line vessel to carry the name. The vessel was constructed by Richardson, Duck & Co. in Stockton, and launched in 1890. The Montebello displaced 1,735 tons gross, 1,634 under deck and 1,116 net; her dimensions: 276 feet from stem to stern, 35 feet across beam, with holds of 15.6 feet. The ship’s hull was of steel construction, and the vessel was classified as a single screw steam schooner. In June 1910 the Wilson Line sold Montebello to a Spanish company, and the vessel was renamed Barcelo. After 39 years of service the Montebello/Barcelo was scrapped in 1929.
[9] The various steamship companies, Cunard, White Star, and the rest, all maintained boarding houses for emigrants in Liverpool. Nick Evans, “Transmigration via the port of Hull,” has an excellent article devoted to immigrant passage through England. It can be found on the World Wide Web located at: http: //www.museumsnett.no/mka/ssa/index.htm.
[10] According to Alma Opheim Bohm, the Aunt’s last name was “Johnson.” “Telephone conversation between Fred C. Bohm III & Alma Opheim Bohm, 27 November 2000.”
[11] Digitalarkivet: Emigrants from Trondheim 1880-1930. http://www.digital-arkivet.uib.no.
[12] Alma Opheim Bohm said that her aunt and Nick’s sister, Bertina Larson (wife of Henry Larson), told her that Nick longed to return to Norway and talked constantly of it. “Telephone conversation between Fred C. Bohm III & Alma Opheim Bohm, 27 November 2000.”
[13] “R. G. Greenseth, Mechanical Superintendent, Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie Railroad Company to Mr. O. B. Opheim,” 29 July 1947; and “B. N. Lewis, Mechanical Superintendent, Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie Railway Company to Mr. Nick Opheim,” 9 September 1941
[14] Mike Martin, editor, “The Skog Family,” Enderlin Centennial History Book, 1891-1991 (New Rockford, North Dakota: Transcript Publishing, 1991), pp 182-183. This work cites the following sources: Records of the Ibestad Church, Rolla Island; the Ibestad Cemetery; Helmer Ericksen, Det Gamle Astrfjord og Ibestad, [n.p.,] 1962.
[15] Curiously, Nick Opheim’s “Personal Record Card” on file with the Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste Marie Railroad (and as reflected in abstracts prepared by the company’s mechanical superintendents on 9 September 1941 and again on 29 July 1947) gives no indication that he quit his job in late 1910. The card does indicate, however, that Nick resigned his station fireman’s job two years later, on June 23, 1912, and was rehired as a Machinist’s helper three months later on September 30. This is yet another curious anomaly in the extant information about Nick Opheim’s life.
[16] Digitalararkivet: Emigranter fra hele Norge located at web address: Digitalarkivet.uip.no/cgi-win/wc/webcensstor.exe. By 1911 Connie no longer used the Norwegian spelling of her name, “Konstanse,” but confidently inscribed the Americanized spelling, “Constance” on the Norwegian immigration papers. She listed herself as a resident of “Amerika” and “Enderlin, N.Dak.”
[17] According to an Enderlin Independent story on 1 March 1973, Ole actually started his long career working for the Soo Line five years before he graduated from high school, on 20 August 1923 when, at the aged of 15, he hired on as a call boy. On August 20, 1928, five years later to the day, and just after his high school graduation, Ole became a brakeman. On July 10, 1946, he was promoted to conductor. During his fifty years on the Soo Line, Ole was in twenty different train wrecks. "Some were close,” he said, “like the Lucca wreck, and some weren't so close. I just looked up and thanked God I made it through them.”
[18] “Did You Know….” a column in the Enderlin Independent, 8 July 2009. Fred Bohm, Jr., send a copy of the article to his son Fred Bohm III in a letter postmarked 13 July 2009.
[19] Alma Opheim Bohm in a conversation with her son, Fred Bohm III, in Enderlin on 25 January 2004.
[20] Dwight and Fred III visited their parents in North Dakota for four days in 2003 (31 July-3 August). During that time, the two of them had conversations with their mother about her life as a child and young woman.
[21] Dwight Bohm and Fred Bohm III, conversations with their mother, 31 July-3 August 2003.
[22] Telephone conversation between Fred C. Bohm III and his mother, Alma Opheim Bohm, on 20 August 2003. Although there were a number of stories about her youth, such as the “windmill story” (above), which Alma told on a number of occasions, this was the first occasion on which she related the details of this event. Its telling was inspired by a question about Connie and her life in the “old country.”
[23] Alma Opheim Bohm in a conversation with her son, Fred Bohm III in Enderlin on 25 January 2004.
[24] Conversation with Bette Opheim Hazzard and Alma Opheim Bohm in Enderlin, North Dakota, 6 July 2001.
[25] Conversation with Bette Opheim Hazzard and Alma Opheim Bohm in Ebnderlin, North Dakota, 6 July 2001. Bette was effusive in her description of her high school days. She enjoyed school, she said, and she believed that she received an outstanding education. She then demonstrated her ability to decline Latin verbs in more than sixty years after she had studied the language in Enderlin. She talked of that long-gone community where people were actively involved in each other’s lives.
[26] Hartha Sallen’s Farmer’s Pocket Ledger, pages 42 and 44, Bohm Family Archives.
[27] Hartha Sallen’s Farmer’s Pocket Ledger, pages 32-33 & 44-45, Bohm Family Archives.
[28] Effie Selvig, “Misao (Minnie) Mitsuya,” Enderlin, North Dakota: 1891-1966 Diamond Jubilee (Enderlin: The Anniversary committee, 1966), p. 111.
[29] “Japanese Girl’s Letters Warning to United States,” Enderlin Independent, Enderlin, North Dakota [undated clipping in Bohm Family Archives].
[30] Various conversations between Alma Opheim Bohm and Fredirc C. Bohm III.
[31] A plaque presented by Minnie’s classmates to Enderlin High School in her memory reads, “Minnie Mitsuya—whose high ideals were an inspiration.” “Japanese Girl’s Letters Warning to United States,” Enderlin Independent, Enderlin, North Dakota [undated clipping in Bohm Family Archives].
[32] Rolla Island was strategically situated in relation to the Norwegian fjord at Narvia. During the early days of World War II the British attempted an ill-fated invasion at this location..
[33] Conversation with Bette Opheim Hazzard and Alma Opheim Bohm in Enderlin, North Dakota, 6 July 2001. Edsel Hazzard was born in Bigpoint, Mississippi, a small town northeast of Boloxi. He was one of nine children in a family that moved north from Mississippi to Michigan during the 1920s to find work in the automobile factories. At one point, Edsel's father severely injured his leg on the job and Edsel's oldest brother was "permitted" to take his father's place on the assembly line so that the family would continue to have an income.
[34] Conversation with Bette Opheim Hazzard and Alma Opheim Bohm in Enderlin, North Dakota, 6 July 2001.
[35] Henry Opheim suffered severely as a result of his World War II experiences. A number of anecdotes shed light on the horrendous ordeal he endured. One story survived about a night when Hank and five or six other soldiers set up their camp and went to sleep. German commandos crept into the camp and, so the story goes, slit the throats of five men sleeping on either side of him. He alone survived unscathed. The others all died. In another situation, Hank smuggled food and cigarettes to German soldiers he was assigned to guard because he felt sorry for them. They were just young boys, he thought and they were starving.
Hank had a difficult time upon returning to civilian life after 1945. He drifted into alcoholism; his wife, Adeline, divorced him. He was involved in an automible accident that caused damage to one of his legs, damage that plagued him the rest of his life. After 1947 he met a Salvation Army worker, Dorothy White, who he subsequently married. Dorothy helped Hank get himself “straightened out” and they settled in Flint, Michigan where they raised a family.
[36] Ultimately, he raised seven generations of horses from her (Socks was her name).
[37] Telephone conversation between Fred C. Bohm, Jr., and Fred III on 9 November 2008. Fred, Jr., said that, because his father could not afford to pay Russel Henkel, he would buy him Jimmy Rodgers records whenever he went to Fargo. Russel1 was one of seven children of Fred’s widowed sister Cecelia Henkel. Russell’s father, Fred Henkel, died suddenly in 1920 leaving his wife penniless and with seven children to raise. Fred and Gladys Bohm “took in” Russel as a way of assisting her
[38] Fred C. Bohm, Jr., to Fred C. Bohm III, February 28, 1994, Bohm Family Archives.
[39] Fred C. Bohm, Jr., in a telephone conversation with Dwight Bohm on 17 July 2009.
[40] Fred C. Bohm, Jr., to Fred C. Bohm III, February 28, 1994, Bohm Family Archives.
[41] In a telephone conversation on January 30, 2005, with his son Fred III, Fred Junior stated that the person who actually gave him the nickname “Tex” was a friend named Richard Johanneson. Johanneson began calling Fred “Tex” after watching him ride a bucking horse at a rodeo on the Bohnsack Ranch where Fred had a summer job. Initially people tried to tease Fred with the nickname. But he took it as a badge of pride and, over time, he became “Tex Bohm,” despite the fact that he never even visited the state of Texas.
In the phone conversation Fred Jr., related that he recently learned the above-mentioned Ritchie Johanneson had been placed in a nursing home by his daughter because the old man was suffering from dementia and had Alzheimer’s Disease.
[42] Dwight Bohm and Fred Bohm III, conversations with their mother, 31 July-3 August 2003. Alma also stated in this conversation that she never told her mother what had actually happened that night and, apparently her mother asked no more questions.
[43] Dwight Bohm and Fred Bohm III, conversations with their mother, 31 July-3 August 2003.
[44] “600 Cattle From Grasslands Within 70 Miles Of Fargo; Owner Rides Herd, Is Undaunted By Rustlers,” by Jack Ottum, an undated news clipping from the Fargo Forum, from Fred Bohm, Jr’s. scrap book, a yellow, spiral-bound volume with a picture of a young Ginger Rogers on the covers, contains a plethora of material, assorted news clippings, photographs, lore, and memorabelia about farming, animals in general, and most of all horses. Most of the material is taken from magazines and newspapers dating from the mid 1930 through the early 1940s.
[45] Two telephone conversations: the first between Fred Bohm, Jr., and Dwight Bohm on 3 August 2009; the second between Fred Bohm, Jr., and Fred Bohm III, 3 August 2009
[46] Undated clipping titled “Senior Interviews” from the Enderlin High School student newspaper published during the 1940-1941 school year found in Fred C. Bohm, Jr’s “Ginger Rogers scrap book.”
[47] Fred worked from five until seven o’clock in the morning and from seven o’clock until ten-thirty in the evening and was paid for eight hours. Fred C. Bohm, Jr., to Fred C. Bohm III, February 28, 1994, Bohm Family Archives.
[48] Enderlin Independent, June 11, 1942. Another article, in all likelihood from the Fargo Forum, titled “Alma Opheim Becomes Bride of Fredric Bohm, Jr.,” also was published about the wedding. It contains information identical to the Independent piece, but is much shorter in length. Both are preserved in the Bohm Family Archives.
[49] Alma wrote the following on the back of an un-mailed postcard affixed in a wedding album: “June 5, 1942. Arrived in Fargo at 2 p.m.—Got a room in Hotel Powers (room 126). Swell time and we are the happiest guys on earth!” In addition, her album contains a post card illustration of the “Hotel Powers and Coffee Shop, Fargo, N. Dakota” on which she has written room 126 with an arrow pointing to the appropriate window.
[50] A paper napkin is glued onto one of the page’s in Alma’s album. On it she wrote: “Fargo cafe June 6, 1942. Had breakfast at 8:30 am. Wheaties, egg sandwich, milk.” That first breakfast bill, according to the prices listed in a Powers Coffee Shop menu included in the album, probably did not total more than 45¢ each.
[51] Alma’s album also contains a cutout advertisement for the Tom Thumb court. On it she wrote, “No. 11 our cabin” and drew an arrow pointing to the appropriate small structure. The printed brochure includes a description of the tourist facility:
Tom Thumb Court
is located 2 miles from town, half way between Detroit Lakes and the municipal golf course, south on highway 59 and on the west shore of beautiful Detroit Lake. The only cabins with private beach and no highway to cross . . . .
Completely equipped for housekeeping, linens, gas and electricity furnished. Inner-spring mattresses insure you a good night’s rest. A natural flowing well provides the purest water for drinking and cooking. Modern rest rooms and hot and cold showers. Plenty of shade trees, green grass, and flowers make our court a pleasant place to relax. Our beach is ideal for sun bathing. There are no drop offs which insures safety for small children....
Cabins may be rented from $1.50 per day and up.
Cottages $5.00 per day and $30.00 per week....
Mrs. Marie Forsyth Diles
Detroit Lakes, Minnesota.
[52] Alma’s wedding album also contains these mementos of their honeymoon: a cutout photo of The Lake Theater, a ticket from a scale in the local F. W. Woolworth store (she weighed 119 pounds), and a receipt from the L. J. Norby Co. Department Store, Detroit Lakes, Minn., which she has labeled “our first grocery bill.”
[53] Fred C. Bohm, Jr. to Fred C. Bohm III,” December 28, 1998, Bohm Family Archives.
[54] “High School Shop Classes Helping War Department: Fifteen Model Planes Built with More in the Making,” Enderlin Independent, (Undated news clipping from a scrap book maintained by Gladys Hill Bohm)
[55] The Curtiss P-40 “Warhawk” was the aircraft flown by Clair Chanault and his volunteer group of American pilots who flew for the Nationalist Chinese in their struggle against Japan. These were the planes of the famous “Flying Tiger” Squadron.
[56] Byron set out on morning of June 6 with $5.00 in his pocket and hitchhiked west. “Fred C. Bohm, Jr., to Fred C. Bohm III, February 28, 1994,” On June 18, Gladys Hill Bohm’s brother, Buss, sent his sister a telegram informing her that Byron had made the trip successfully. It read: “Bremerton Wash. 6-18-42; Mrs. Fred C. Bohm; Enderlin N. [D.]; Byron arrived 7 p. m. Looks fine. Buss. “James Hill to Gladys Hill Bohm,” June 18, 1942, Bohm Family Archives.
[57] “Byron Bohm to Fred Senior, Gladys, Fred, Junior, and Alma Opheim Bohm,” June 27, 1942, Bohm Family Archives. Byron’s concerns about Michigan were due to the fact that most of Alma’s brothers and sisters and their families had migrated to that state in the 1930s. Her own father and mother had gone off in search of work in Michigan in 1937. They had returned, however, in 1938.
[58] “Byron Bohm to Fred Senior, Gladys, Fred, Junior, and Alma Opheim Bohm,” June 27, 1942, Bohm Family Archives.
[59] “Fred C. Bohm, Jr. to Fred C. Bohm III,” December 28, 1998, Bohm Family Archives.
[60] “Fred C. Bohm, Jr., to Fred C. Bohm III,” February 28, 1994, In this correspondence Fred said, “ I am sending a couple of pictures. The one of Mom [Alma] was taken shortly after arriving in Bremerton. She was 17 and alone in a place with no phone. As I reflect back, I wouldn’t ever want her to go through that again. Her mom [Constance Opheim] didn’t like it that we left & her being so young. The picture of me was taken by Grandma Opheim in 1941.
[61] “Fred C. Bohm, Jr., to Fred C. Bohm III,” December 28, 1998, Bohm Family Archives.
[62] His rate of pay upon being hired was $6.64 a day. Six months later, that rate was raised to $8.64 per day.
[63] Fred traveled to Minneapolis with Gene Thompson, a man who would become one of his life-long friends. Gene and Fred failed to pass their induction physicals, although they were not aware of this decision immediately. Telephone conversation between Alma Opheim Bohm and Fredric Carl Bohm III, August 29, 1998; “Fred C. Bohm, Jr. to Fred C. Bohm III,” December 28, 1998, Bohm Family Archives.
[64] Telephone conversation between Fred C. Bohm III and Alma Opheim Bohm, 20 August 2003.
[65] “Fred C. Bohm, Jr., to Fred C. Bohm III,” December 28, 1998, Bohm Family Archives.
[66] Telephone call. Fredric C. Bohm III with Alma Opheim Bohm, 13 April 2004.
[67] “Fred C. Bohm, Jr., to Fred C. Bohm III,” December 28, 1998, Bohm Family Archives.
[68] “Fred C. Bohm, Jr., to Fred C. Bohm III,” December 28, 1998, Bohm Family Archives.
[69] Because their ration for gasoline at the time was only three gallons per month, the move from near Sheldon to the Christman farm was done with a horse-drawn wagon (Telephone conversation between Fred Bohm, Jr and Fred Bohm, III, 30 April 2000).The Christman brothers, Freddy and Ed, both moved away from the Dakotas to Casper, Wyoming. Subsequently, Robert McRitchie, the son of one of Fred Bohm, Jr’s long-time friends, Pete, bought the Freddy Christman farm. Dwight was born while the family lived the Mamenga farm.
[70] Notes from a telephone conversation between Alma Opheim Bohm and Fredric Carl Bohm III, April 13, 1997.
[71] “Sleet, Windstorm Leaves 50 Towns in Darkness,” Enderlin Independent, April 10, 1947.
[72] Ibid.
[73] Fredric C. Bohm, Jr., to Alma Opheim Bohm, April 6, 1947.
[74] Ibid.
[75] Notes from a telephone conversation between Alma Opheim Bohm and Fredric Carl Bohm III, April 13, 1997.
[76] Fredric Carl Bohm III recollections of conversations with Alma Opheim Bohm many years ago.
[77] Alma stayed with her in-laws, Gladys and Fred, for nearly three weeks. And even while the relationship between Gladys and Alma was “chilly“ since Fred Jr.’s and Alma’s wedding in 1941, it became icy cold during this extended visit. Alma, it seems, became ill during the stay. Gladys, who for much of her life suffered from a variety of maladies (some real, most imagined), proved unhelpful and even resentful of Alma’s affliction and did little to offer support. To make matters worse, Alma’s and Gladys’s views on caring for infants differed dramatically. They had words on several occasions and the hostility that reared its head during that spring of 1947 endured for many decades. And while this assessment is based only on Alma’s commentary over many years, the end result was that after three weeks together, the two women, though strictly proper in their relationship with each other, made it clear that there was “no love lost” between them. Notes from a telephone conversation between Alma Opheim Bohm and Fredric Carl Bohm III, April 8, 2009
[78] Notes from a telephone conversation between Alma Opheim Bohm and Fredric Carl Bohm III, April 13, 1997
[79] Accounts of Nick Opheim’s death and its immediate aftermath are contained in two articles, both appearing on Enderlin Independent front pages: the first on June 26, 1947; the second on July 3, 1947.