Of all the wonderful songs written by Chuck Suchy, none is more compelling than “The Story of Hazel Miner.” It begins in lyric style, gauzy and ethereal, and suddenly, just in time, transitions into solid 4/4 and into the rhetoric of traditional balladry:
Up in Oliver County On the North Dakota plains Lived a farmer’s daughter Hazel Miner was her name
We all know this is going to end badly. We know the story of heroic 15-year-old Hazel, who with her younger brother and sister were pulled off into a deadly blizzard by the panicky horse hitched to their sleigh. When it tipped over in a coulee, Hazel saved her two siblings, but perished herself, lying atop them in the snow, sheltering them with a blanket and her body.
This took place east of Center, North Dakota, on 15-16 March 1920. Whereas the legend of Hazel Miner is well-known, because it appeals to the fatalistic sense of who we are on the northern plains, the story of her remembrance is not well-known, nor is it entirely edifying. I have visited her monument on the Oliver County courthouse square, and I know its story by means of the research of one of my fine seminar students, Andy Simek.
Shortly after Hazel Miner’s death, people in Oliver County stirred themselves to make some sort of memorial for her. Well, actually, the memorial suggestions originated from persons in Fargo who read about Hazel and sent donations.
Since Hazel had held aspirations to become a nurse, the original plan was to build a hospital named for her. A Hazel Miner Memorial Committee in Center began raising money, but the results were meager. Seeing this, the Miner family suggested a simple monument, rather than a hospital. Then the whole effort lapsed.
And it remained inert, until sixteen years later former Governor Louis B. Hanna intervened. As governor, Hanna had been a great monument-maker, which could be interpreted as political. His involvement with the Hazel Miner memorial, however, shows that he also had a personal sense of history. He gave the funds to purchase the monument. Burton Wilcox, state’s attorney for Oliver County, also seems to have been involved. A crowd of some 1500 was in attendance for the dedication of the memorial on 19 July 1936.
Inscribed on the monument are the lines: “To the dead a tribute / To the living a memory / To posterity an inspiration.”
And below that, these words: “The story of her life and of her heroic tragic death is recorded in the archives of Oliver County on pages 130-131 Book-11 Misc. Records. STRANGER READ IT.” And if you follow that citation into the office of the register of deeds, you find an elegant handwritten account of Hazel’s life written by Anna Dunn, wife of a former state’s attorney who had been involved in the unsuccessful fundraising campaign. It is hardly possible to read this document without dropping tears upon the record book.
-Tom Isern
