FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Scott Schaffnit
November 10, 2007
(701) 328-2794

AWARDS HONORING HISTORY ACHIEVEMENTS PRESENTED
AT GOVERNOR’S CONFERENCE ON NORTH DAKOTA HISTORY

BISMARCK – Awards honoring individual and group achievements in history were presented at the recent 19th Annual Governor’s Conference on North Dakota History in Bismarck.  The conference was sponsored by the state’s history agency, the State Historical Society of North Dakota.

The 2007 recipients of the State Historical Society’s Excellence in Local History Award were co-winners Leonard Berce of Williston and Gertrude Reep of Stanley.  This award is given to those whose activity in local and regional history serves as a role model of excellence to others.

Leonard Berce has helped lead the charge in preserving, interpreting, promoting and researching the history of Fort Buford State Historic Site.  In 1962, he co-founded the Sixth Infantry Regiment Association to interpret the history Sixth Infantry stationed at the fort in the 1870s.  Today, the Sixth is the longest-lasting regiment that reenacts the Army soldiers of the Indian Wars.  The 92-year-old Berce is the only survivor of the co-founders, and the only active member of the regiment’s 31 charter members.  He was a primary force in the reconstruction of the infantry barracks at the site.  His leadership and knowledge contributed to the meticulous research that allowed for an accurate interpretation of the barracks.  He has participated in 45 years of special events at the fort; these living history events have educated tens of thousands of Fort Buford visitors.  Since 1993, Berce has served on the management committee of the North Star Caviar Board that supplies the primary financial resources for the Friends of Fort Union/Fort Buford.  A veteran of the First Cavalry Division during World War II, Berce served in the South Pacific and fought in a series of fierce island-hopping campaigns, where he received a battlefield commission and was seriously wounded.  After evacuation from the war front, he returned home to Williston where he worked for the Great Northern Railroad and then the oil industry.  Although he retired in 1986, he continues to actively support and promote the Fort Buford State Historic Site.

Gertrude (Dudy) Reep is a major driving force in preserving the history of Mountrail County in northwestern North Dakota.  She has been a director of the Mountrail County Historical Society since the 1970s.  She was part of a team which compiled information on the history and culture of the county, resulting in two volumes, entitled Tales of Mighty Mountrail.  The books have since been made available to the public in DVD format.  She is an enthusiastic supporter of a local author who is researching the impact of the Garrison Dam on the residents of Mountrail County.  She assists families with ties to the county who are seeking information.  She also works as a volunteer at Flickertail Village, a collection of buildings and artifacts in Stanley that provides a picture of the past.

Three others were also nominated for the Excellence in Local History Award.  They were Keith Johnson of Ayr, North Dakota; Judy Neidlinger of Hampden, North Dakota; and Ray Pladson of Hatton, North Dakota.  Johnson began restoring historic buildings in Ayr in 1980 as a living tribute to his son, Lonnie, who died that year.  Among the buildings he has restored are the Ayr State Bank, the Ayr General Store, the town’s original one-room school house and the train depot.  Beginning in 2003, Neidlinger was instrumental in researching and assembling the Hampden Centennial book, which covered the history of the area, including family histories, and military, school, church, farm and business issues.  She also created a detailed map of the local cemetery, and collected film for creation of a historical program about the area in DVD format.  Pladson spent numerous hours during the past three years compiling a 333-page spiral-bound history book entitled “Hatton’s Veterans Scrapbook.”  It commemorates the lives and heroics of the veterans of Traill County, and was printed at the time the Hatton Veterans Memorial was dedicated in July 2006.

Also honored was the late William D. “Bill” Snyder of Fargo, (1916-2007), who received the State Historical Society’s 2007 Heritage Profile Honor Award.  This award is given to those who have made a significant contribution in preserving, interpreting, promoting, researching or otherwise extending the knowledge and understanding of the history of North Dakota.

Snyder founded the first professional commercial film studio in North Dakota in the late 1950s following several years at WDAY Television as photography director, having been hired by the then-radio station to “put pictures to sound,” as he later recalled.  WDAY Television went on the air June 1, 1953.  Bill Snyder Films produced industrial films, television commercials, animations and documentaries.  The company’s more than 800 productions, many of them award winners, is a catalogue of the business and political life of North Dakota and the region.  Working with then-State Archivist Frank Vyzralek in the 1970s, the studio produced the “Flickertail Flashbacks” series of films from the Hjolmboe Film Collection.  The studio also restored and produced the films of Casselton, North Dakota filmmaker Angela Murry Gibson.  Snyder assisted State Historical Society of North Dakota (SHSND) staff in acquiring the television news film holdings of WDAY Television, complete with the indexing system that had been set up by his wife, Evelette (Evie), whom he married while at WDAY.  After selling his business, he donated the Bill Snyder Films collection to the SHSND.  Following retirement, Snyder began writing about his experiences, contributing an article on the early years of television in the state to the SHSND’s quarterly journal, North Dakota History.  He also wrote a number of articles for other publications on his experiences, including his work as a stringer for Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Club.  He also served on the board of the Cass County Historical Society.  He remained active up until the time of his death on September 14 at the age of 90. 

Accepting the award on Snyder’s behalf was his daughter, Mary Liz Davis of Velva, North Dakota.

Named as the recipient of the Person of History Award was Linda Slaughter (1843-1911).  This award is given in recognition of those individuals who have had a prominent role in the history of North Dakota.  It posthumously honors those individuals who have made a lasting or significant contribution to the growth, development and progress of the state, or the social well-being of its citizens; who have achieved acclaim or prominence in their chosen fields of endeavor and/or have had a profound effect upon the history of the state or the lives of its people.  To be eligible, a nominee must have been deceased at least 10 years.

An early resident of Bismarck (1872-84), Slaughter was the first woman postmaster, first school teacher, and the first woman elected to public office in North Dakota, as Burleigh County Superintendent of Schools in then-Dakota Territory, 1873.  She was also the first woman to cast a vote at a national political party convention for a presidential candidate, at the People’s Party convention in 1892, which nominated James Weaver to run against incumbent President Benjamin Harrison, who was seeking a second term, and his Democratic challenger, former President Grover Cleveland.  The third party candidate Weaver received 22 electoral votes in the election that resulted in Cleveland’s return to the White House.  As the nationally famous “Doctor’s Wife,” Slaughter challenged the limitations placed on married women, successfully demanding the right to post a bond so that she could become postmaster of Bismarck.  She eventually reexamined her position on American Indians and wrote history which fairly represented their interests in protecting their homes and families.  She was a founder of the first historical society in North Dakota (the Ladies Historical Society of Bismarck and North Dakota), and was elected vice president and corresponding secretary of the State Historical Society of North Dakota in 1895.  She collected historical documents and published several histories of the state.  All of her efforts bore the mark of her gentle disposition, generosity and Christian charity.  She championed the poor, African-Americans, Civil War veterans, and destitute women.  As postmaster, she read letters to those who were illiterate and wrote their letters to distant families.  She often provided a home for the ill and poor and sought help for alcoholics.  She challenged political corruption and the unfair treatment of Indians.

Accepting the award for Slaughter was Betty-Jo Wilson of Minneapolis, Minnesota, a great-great granddaughter of Slaughter.  North Dakota entrepreneur and businessman Doug Burgum is a great-great grandson of Slaughter.

The National Register Award was presented to the owners of North Dakota properties listed between October 2006 and September 2007 in the National Register of Historic Places, which is the federal government’s list of properties it considers worthy of recognition and preservation.  Listing in the National Register offers such benefits as eligibility for restoration and stabilization funding, and historic rehabilitation tax credits for commercial buildings.  The 2007 recipients were the North Dakota School of Forestry’s Old Main Building at Minot State University-Bottineau; the Sprunk site in the Maple River Valley in Cass County; the Union Storage and Transfer Company Cold Storage Warehouse, and the Armour Creamery Building, both in Fargo; the Neuburg Congregational Church in Hettinger County; and the William E. Metzger House in Portal in Burke County.

The winner of the 2007 Editor’s Award for best article during the preceding year in North Dakota History,the State Historical Society’s quarterly journal, was State Paleontologist Dr. John Hoganson with the North Dakota Geological Survey.  Hoganson was honored for his extended article in Volume 73.1 & 2, “Dinosaurs, Sharks, and Woolly Mammoths.”

The award presentations were made during the November 2 conference banquet at the North Dakota Heritage Center.  The theme for the 19th annual Governor’s Conference on North Dakota History highlighted the impact of the railroad on North Dakota and the region.  Lincoln Legacy: The Railroad, is the first part of a two-part theme for this annual history conference.  The Fall 2008 history conference theme, Lincoln Legacy: The Homestead Act, will examine the Act’s impact on the state and region.  The themes are part of North Dakota’s observance of the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth on February 12, 2009.  The state’s commemoration will be held in conjunction with the official national observance, which begins with a major event at his birthplace in Kentucky on February 12, 2008 and continues through February 12, 2010.  President Lincoln signed the charter for the Northern Pacific Railroad on July 2, 1864, and signed the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862.

The conference was funded in part by Lincoln Bicentennial appropriations from the 2007 Legislative Assembly.

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