10/15/2007:
Father Elwood Cassedy died on this date in 1959. He was synonymous with the Home On The Range near Sentinel Butte, North Dakota, which he founded in 1949.
Cassedy was born in New Jersey in 1908, the oldest child in his family. He completed the eighth grade and then went to work as a messenger and bank teller, working days and attending night school to earn his high school diploma.
He became a seminarian at Notre Dame and at St. John’s in Minnesota. While at those institutions, he worked in boys’ homes and developed strong ideas about how to treat kids from broken homes and how to make them feel that someone cared about them.
Ordained in Bismarck in 1944, Cassedy served the Wing, Menoken and Driscoll parishes and as assistant chaplain at St. Alexius Hospital, Bismarck. In 1947, he was superintendent of St. Mary’s Cemetery and a teacher at St. Mary’s High School in Bismarck.
Cassedy started the Home On The Range to take boys away from a life of street crime, offering them instead work, education, spirituality and responsibility. In 1948, he spoke about his dream to a South Dakota meeting of the Fraternal Order of Eagles. The Eagles committed to the project, raising $5,000 by January the next year.
In the June 22, 1949, Bismarck Tribune, Ed and Emma Lievens read about Cassedy’s plan to start a farm where delinquent boys could be rehabilitated. The article said he needed land and buildings so the Lievens deeded their 960-acre Golden Valley County farm for Cassedy’s project.
A granary on the ranch was converted into living quarters, and Cassedy and his first three boys moved into it on July 28, 1950. The first brick dormitory, built in 1951, increased the capacity to 28 boys. In August 1990, after 40 years of serving only boys, Home On The Range opened its doors to 20 girls.
Cassedy was always quick to point out that Home On The Range was not a correctional institution, but rather a place that supplied love and care in a healthful environment.
Since 1957, Home On The Range has sponsored the annual Champions Ride Match Rodeo, where only the top bronc riders and the top bucking stock in the world are invited to participate. The saddle bronc match, begun in 1957 by Tom and Jim Tescher and Ray Schnell, is a major fund raiser for the facility.
Cassedy died in 1959 from heart problems, and Father William Fahnlander took over as director. After 57 years, Cassedy’s dream lives on at Home On The Range. Thousands of boys and girls have found help at the Sentinel Butte, Fargo and Glendive, Montana, sites.
by Cathy A. Langemo, WritePlus Inc.