October is Archives Month, when archives around the country celebrate the records in their holdings and recognize the archivists who assess, collect, organize, preserve, and provide access to information of lasting value. The North Dakota State Archives is part of the State Historical Society of North Dakota.
Dr. Gudmund Gislason was born in the northern part of Iceland in 1877. His family moved to North Dakota in 1883. He grew up and attended school in Pembina County, then studied at the University of Manitoba and later at the University of North Dakota. He eventually settled in Grand Forks to pursue a medical practice. He sought further education, studying abroad in London, Edinburgh, Copenhagen, and Vienna, where he became a specialist in medical care of the eye, ear, nose, and throat.
In 1919, Gislason pulled together a meeting at the Columbia Hotel in Grand Forks that led to the creation of an organization for similar specialists in North Dakota. It was called the North Dakota Academy of Ophthalmology and Oto-Laryngology. Its mission was to “inspire study and research in Ophthalmology, Otology, Rhinology, and Laryngology, and to serve as a … forum wherein such individual study and research” could be presented and discussed. Gislason served as its first president. Other charter members included Drs. McCannel and Carr of Minot; Dr. Golseth of Jamestown; Drs. Arneberg, Marsden, and Friesen of Grand Forks; John, Martin, and Elizabeth Rindlaub, all doctors and siblings located in Fargo; and Fred L. Wicks of Valley City.
In 1944, Dr. Wicks, himself an oculist, assisted in putting together a 25-year history of the organization, for which he had served as secretary for many years. His care and love for the profession and his colleagues are obvious throughout the book.
His documentation of the organization’s history helps shine a light on historical medical practices and the desire for education and inspiration within North Dakota. But his words also resound with the reality of all historical work and research. As he wrote in the foreword: “Twenty-five years is a long time when looking forward but years flit by with amazing speed, when the glance is backward. It would seem, in these years of honorable existence that many things of interest and some perhaps of importance must have happened.”
Wicks’ book was donated to the North Dakota State Archives in 2026 by his family so that his words could continue to be accessed by researchers in the future.
Dakota Datebook by Sarah Walker
Sources:
- The North Dakota Academy of Opthalmology and Oto-Laryngology, 1919-1944
- North Dakota History and People; Outlines of American History - by Clement Lounsberry, VIII, p. 721 <available online: https://archive.org/details/northdakotahisto03loun/page/720/mode/2up>
- Who’s Who for North Dakota, 1955, p119
