FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jeff Blanchard
May 9, 2008
(701) 825-6840

MEMORIAL DAY PROGRAMS SCHEDULED
 FOR PEMBINA STATE MUSEUM MAY 26

PEMBINA – A series of programs commemorating Memorial Day will take place at the Pembina State Museum Monday, May 26.  All programs are free and open to the public.

The day’s events begin with a memorial service at 10:30 a.m. at the Veterans’ Monument located on the grounds of the Pembina State Museum.  Participants in the ceremony will include the Kern-Thompson American Legion Post 77 of Pembina, Canadian Legion Posts, and families of prisoners of war, those missing in action and soldiers deceased.

In case of inclement weather, these programs will be held in the Pembina State Museum, which is managed by the State Historical Society of North Dakota (SHSND).

The monument ceremony will be followed by visitation to area gravesites, where wreaths will be laid by a Legion Honor Guard, and a wreath ceremony on the Pembina River Bridge, honoring those lost at sea.

The day’s programs are sponsored by the SHSND and the Kern-Thompson American Legion Post 77.

The Pembina State Museum is a 12,000 square-foot facility housing two museum galleries.  The permanent exhibit gallery features 100 million years of regional history from the Cretaceous Period to contemporary times.  The second gallery houses temporary and traveling exhibits highlighting regional and state history.                                                          

Visitors will also see an exhibit that opened in January, Emigrants from the Empire: North Dakota’s Germans.  This exhibit investigates what it means to be German in North Dakota before and after both world wars.  Artifacts, photographs, and documents tell the story of who they are, how and why they emigrated, and how their culture and traditions still thrive in North Dakota.  Also available for viewing is the exhibit, Looking Back: Pembina’s Flood Battles, which examines the struggles the city’s residents have faced with flooding during the past 150 years, including battles both won and lost.  Pembina’s location at the confluence of the Red and Pembina Rivers was of strategic importance to early fur traders, but it has had its disadvantages as well, as the exhibit illustrates.  It will be at the museum through Spring 2009.

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