Trista Raezer-Stursa

During this week in 1996, Roosevelt Elementary School in Fargo, North Dakota, celebrated its 75th anniversary. Among the honored guests was one of the school’s most beloved retired teachers: 91-year-old music instructor Martha Hook.

Actively investing in the stock market can be intimidating for most people. There's a steep learning curve and the constant fear of losing money. But a group of women in Bismarck faced that fear head-on, pooling their resources and knowledge to take on the stock market. On this date in 1999, Fargo newspaper readers learned about the Big Time Operators Investment Club in Bismarck. Known as the BTO Club for short, the twenty women met monthly to discuss stocks they were researching and vote on what to buy and sell.

Small towns in North Dakota reached their business and population peak in the 1920s. While cities like Bismarck, Fargo, and Grand Forks continue to grow and draw shoppers from miles around, many small towns have struggled, losing businesses, schools, churches, and their reason for being.

On this date in 1998, The Fargo Forum ran a photo of Miss North Dakota 1997, Roxana Saberi, showing a student at Fargo’s Nativity Catholic School how to wear a kimono. Roxana was giving a presentation about appreciating cultural differences and similarities. Promoting cultural appreciation during her year-long reign as Miss North Dakota was very important to the Fargo native.

It’s hard to remember why there was fear that the world might end on January 1, 2000, when we now know that nothing happened. During the late 1990s, computer programmers around the world worked hard to fix computer software to ensure that computers did not mistake the year 2000 for the year 1900, which could have caused infrastructure crashes. Despite reassurances from experts that nothing bad would happen, many people reacted in panic, hoarding supplies or foreseeing an apocalypse.

A love triangle is an age-old story, and it makes for good gossip. In 1912, a reporter in Mandan heard about the fallout from a local love triangle and knew it would make a juicy tale for the newspaper.

When the United States entered World War I in April 1917, suspicion fell on German Americans. Anti-German sentiment led to the prohibition of teaching German in schools, the closure of many German-language newspapers, and persecution for speaking German in public or on the phone.

Frank O’Brien was born in 1892 in Fargo. At 18, he began working at the Fargo Mercantile Company, a wholesale grocer. Like many young men of his time, Frank was drafted after the United States declared war on Germany in 1917. He was among the first draftees from Fargo and was inducted in September 1917. After arriving at Camp Dodge, Iowa, Frank wrote a letter to his former colleagues at the Fargo Mercantile Company, describing his training as a member of an infantry supply company.

On this date in 1989, The Bismarck Tribune reported that Dick Gerlach of Bismarck was taking advantage of the sudden popularity of potpourri. The 80-year-old Mr. Gerlach harvested the petals from his 87 rose bushes to make potpourri, which he sold at the downtown Bismarck giftshop The Plum Tree.

On a cold December day in 1990, the Bertsch family of Buchanan went to a neighbor’s farm to help clean turkeys. While the parents were busy working, the three Bertsch siblings, Waylon, Jarrett, and Andrea, played on the banks of the Pipestem River. Five-year-old Andrea walked about 10 feet onto the river ice and fell through. Quick thinking ten-year-old Waylon sent his brother Jarrett to tell their parents as he tried to help his sister.