On this day in 1990, the Fargo Forum ran a profile on the pastor of Bethel Evangelical Free Church in Fargo, not for his ministry, but for his work two decades earlier as a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter.
The Reverend Robert Page grew up in Ashtabula, Ohio, and graduated from Kent State University with a journalism degree in 1968. After graduation he started working at the Akron Beacon Journal as a reporter and assistant state editor. He had chosen journalism at a volatile moment in American history. The country was fractured by the Vietnam War, political assassinations, and a generation of young people in open revolt against the establishment.
By spring 1970, the tension had reached a breaking point. President Nixon announced plans to invade Cambodia and end draft deferments for undergraduates. Campuses erupted. At Kent State, protests began peacefully on May 1, but by nightfall violence flared, police flooded the streets, and the governor deployed the Ohio National Guard. Over the weekend, the campus ROTC building burned.
On Monday, May 4, 1970, roughly 2,000 students gathered for a peaceful protest. Guardsmen moved in with tear gas, then advanced on foot, pushing the crowd across campus. In the chaos, one soldier opened fire. Others followed. Four students were killed and nine more were wounded.
Robert Page and another colleague were alone in the newsroom since everyone else was gone for lunchtime. Robert drove immediately to the hospital. The building was locked downed and the emergency room entrance was flanked by guards. Outside, a woman hurled an insult at the guards. When one lunged at her with a billy club and was then surrounded by an angry crowd, Robert slipped through the unattended ER door. Inside, he found the bodies of Kent State students laid out beneath white sheets.
Robert and another reporter who arrived obtained the names of the dead and injured through a stroke of ingenuity. They distracted a congressman present at the hospital with talk about politics while glancing at a list of casualties he was holding. Robert reported the names to the newsroom.
A year later, Robert Page and the rest of the staff of the Akron Beacon Journal won the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. After the initial excitement of the award, he began to grow disillusioned with his career. He felt, as he later described it, that he was failing God. In 1973, he entered seminary.
Page came to Fargo in 1983 to lead Bethel Church, which grew significantly under his guidance. He left in 1991, having shaped the community he served.
Dakota Datebook by Trista Raezer-Stursa
Sources:
- Author Unknown. “Beth Church will Install Pastor Sunday,” The Fargo Forum, January 21, 1983, pg. A10.
- Author Unknown. “Church Installs New Reverend,” Northwest Herald, February 19, 1994, pg. 21.
- Author Unknown. “Page Leaves Bethel,” The Fargo Forum, May 17, 1991, pg. A11.
- Author Unknown. “The Heritage of Bethel Church,” Bethel Church, https://www.bethelfc.com/about/ accessed April 20, 2026.
- Hilgers, DeAnne. “Church Expansion On,” The Fargo Forum, February 9, 1990, pg. A7.
- Hilgers, DeAnne. “Kent State Alum Remembers,” The Fargo Forum, April 29, 1990, pg. C6.
- Wyss, Cyndi. “Pulitzer to Pulpit: Pastor Hears His Calling After Career as Newsman,” Northwest Herald, March 21, 1994, pgs. D1, D3.
