1941 Sutton High Mustang Round-up

The Mustang Round-up school newspaper of May 23, 1941 was devoted to the senior class of that year. We're not sure if there was an annual that year. People who graduated during World War II have told us that the tradition of publishing an annual was discontinued during the war but our recent receipt of the 1942 annual calls that into question.

The "in lieu of" replacement for the annual was the last issue of the school newspaper in which the normal senior stuff would appear. We received such a paper from Beth Bartell which is consistent with that story, except, May, 1941 was before the war.

Dunno. I'm confused.

Here ya go:

 

The major traditional items about the graduating seniors appeared in this last issue of the Mustang Round-up for the year. There is the Class Prophecy, Will, the graduation photos with class activities listed on a separate page and the Class History. They even had a Class Poem, though...

The lead story was Sneak Day. That was always a deal. The Class of '41 spent the day in Lincoln. Twenty years later, the Class of '61 followed the tradition of that period with a trip to Chicago. As I recall, we left on the train on Friday evening for the overnight trip arriving in Chicago in the morning. We had a bus whisk us about town to the big tourist attractions: the Shedd Aquarium, Field Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry as I recall. I don't think we made it to the Art Institute, now my favorite Chicago attraction. If we did go there it made zero impression on me at that time.

Here are the senior photos with some easily recognizable faces. This was a crummy year to be eighteen years old if you were a male. December 7th was not far off. A separate and interesting look would be to see how many of these fellows or gals were on active duty.

Annual ads are not at all interesting at the time of publication, unless you are upset with someone who didn't pony-up. There weren't many this year. Wonder what the "Mustang Special" sundae at the Central Café might have been; don't want to guess. Even stranger was "Jungle Bread" at the Nuss Bakery.

There you have it...
jj

From the Golden Age of Chickens

This ad appeared in the Sutton News newspaper one hundred years ago touting the local Sutton manufacturing business of Emil Ochsner with his egg incubator and other poultry related products.

The Sutton Museum has one of Ochsner's incubators on display. Not sure how many of the younger generation actually
understand what it was used for. Explanations generally seem to be reflected back from glassy eyes.

Clay Center had the reputation for some kind of Poultry Capital for Nebraska as the Old Trusty manufacturing plant of M. M. Johnson dominated the industry. The Clay County Sun newspaper annually serialized the story of publishing the catalog for that business over multiple weeks each spring. It was a large format and thick publication with a subscriber list numbering tens of thousands and coast to coast.

The Old Trusty plant was a huge compound employing several hundred. One story was about a traveling salesman who came to Clay Center and part of his sales pitch was that he represented a business so large that it employed nine stenographers. One Clay Center businessman listened patiently to the salesman then asked him to come along with him. The two went to the edge of downtown Clay Center and upstairs at the plant where the salesman stood in awe of a room with 90 stenographers pounding away on their typewriters supporting the various business functions of Old Trusty.

The poultry incubator was the signature product of the Old Trusty line. Emil Ochsner's Sutton operation was in competition with the Clay Center operation but much, much smaller. I've also heard that Fairfield had a third poultry incubator manufacturer but I do not know the name or any other information about it.

February, 2016 addendum:

Why blogs are superior to newspapers, magazines and other printed matter:

The Fairfield Auxiliary newspaper on February 27, 1941 ran, in their "15 years ago" section, the story of the B & H Incubator Co. that had just shipped a 120-egg incubator to Greece. The 1926 paper had applauded the company for their international outreach. The gentlemen in the "B & H" name were identified as Bayles and Hayes. ...

Someday we'll maybe dig into census and other records from the 20's and 30's to locate more info on the gentlemen - first names, for instance. But, later...

The poultry business, mostly chickens but including ducks and geese was a big deal 100 years ago through at least the 40's. A typical farmstead may have had a hundred or two laying hens and a diminishing number of roosters providing protein for the farm family and selected friends in town. The county newspapers, the Clay County Sun, Harvard Courier, Sutton Register, Fairfield Auxiliary all carried weekly columns with advice to the chicken and goose growers. There were ads for feeding supplements, medicines, equipment, etc. Large poultry shows attracted growers from a wide area. One account told of stacks and stacks of crates containing show chickens and ducks sitting on the depot platform in Sutton as farmers waited for the train to take them and their birds off to a show.

Chickens and a few milk cows produced enough eggs and cream for a small and steady revenue stream that covered the weekly grocery bill for many a farm family.

Early Sutton High Annuals - 1940 and 1942

Received a call recently from Washington State. Seems our caller was going through the belongings of a relative and found copies of the 1940 and 1942 Sutton High annuals. Having no direct connection with the flatlands, she offered to send the two volumes.

The first striking thing about the annuals are that they are in great condition. One visualizes that they have spent much of the past 70+ years packed away in something approaching a sterile environment.

Secondly, both volumes are of a physical size differing from most annuals we have from earlier and later though the 1947 is similar. These are 6 X 9 inches as you can see in the photo. Both have 40 pages. And they are hard-bound unlike the annuals of years just prior to 1940 which had cloth covers which have generally not held up well.



The 1940 and 1942 Sutton High annuals in their distinctive appearance - 6 X 9" with textured hard covers. Attractive and in great condition - a gift from a friend in Washington State.

The third thing was a surprise which I expressed in the phone call. I had the impression that the school did not publish annuals during WWII. The 1940 preceded the war but 1942 came out months into the conflict. The 1946 annual is a full format hard-bound volume with a lot of pages which I remember being told was produced in response to the long dry spell. In fact, while I was on the phone the copy of the Mustang Round-up school newspaper dated May 23, 1941 was on my desk. It has the class prophecy, will, senior photos, sneak trip story and other features about the 1941 seniors. Yes, this was also before the U.S. entered the war in December but this is the format I've seen for mid-war end-of-year papers that were published in lieu of a regular annual.


So, what unusual thing do you notice about these annuals, at least the one on the left?

What is this "Blue and Gold" thing? I've been commenting that those were the school colors in 1940 though it might have been the colors for the senior class (do classes still do that? I was somewhat baffled by that tradition.)

Okay, onto the innards. Senior pictures are what these things were all about, right.



The first dozen - alphabetically. There's Fritz Bender: "If arguing were money, I'd be a millionair." Always fun to catch a 74-year old typo, isn't it. Studious fellow, Fritz. Samuel Carney would have been Sam III, his father and grandfather ran a hardware store bridging I. N. Clark and Les Bauer in that business.

Lorene Griess married Rolland Johnson ('42), a successful farming couple on the road to Harvard.
The Heinz name was quite common in Sutton with 30 graduates listed in the Sutton High rolls through 1959.

Group 3:

Here is Artis Johnson, later Lemkau and brother of Rolland Johnson (my cousins). Levander was a common name
as was Lohmeier (17 grads of our school), both names fading out. The Nuss name however persists.

and Group 4

Another distinguished looking group including down in the lower left, Mr. Roger Sheridan.

and to Zimbleman, an even dozen per page for five pages, good planning.



Gloria Yost (Griess) was President of S. N. T. (Sutton Normal Training) for her senior year.

That's the senior class of 1940. Oh, and they did have underclassmen that year:

The Juniors:

The Sutton High School Junior Class of '40. You may spot a few familiar faces here. I'll start you off with an
easy one there in the second row toward the left side, Wayne Erickson.

The Sophomores:

The note that went home to Moms on dress code met with mixed results. I am sincerely partial to the fashion statement
represented in the white shirt, tie and overalls. That's a young man just oozing self confidence.

And the Freshman Class of '40 to graduate in 1943.

What we have here is a photographer with strong feelings about style and form or maybe design. That, or maybe a
frustrated choreographer with dreams of working a major musical stage production, one with a train theme perhaps.

And there were sports in 1940:

Basketball

This is the Sutton High Basketball Team for the 1939-1940 season. The back row: Mr. George Clark, a graduate of Doane College; Morris Schneider, Junior; Milton Scheerer, Senior; Jim Barbee, Junior; and Mr. Jess Weyand, U of N grad and School Principal. Front row: Gerald Sharkey, Junior; Roger Sheridan, Senior; Frederick (Fritz) Bender, Senior; Melvin Levander, Senior and Wayne Lohmeier, Sophomore.

Football

The write-up for the football team from the fall of 1939 mentioned injuries to Roger Sheridan and Leon Scheideman as though that affected their season. Maybe so. Check below.

 

The 1939 Sutton football team had a serious Jekyll and Hyde season.


Opponent                      Sutton               Opponent

Fairfield                           32                         0
Hebron                             22                         0
Exeter                              40                         0
Clay Center                     41                         0
Friend                              14                         0
                 (pretty good so far, don't you think?)
Superior                             0                       48
Geneva                              0                        19
Nelson                               7                        21
Harvard                             3                        19
                 (kinda took a turn for the worse there in mid-season. May need to flesh out this story.)


There had been girls' athletics in the schools decades earlier but that disappeared and was not revived until the '70's. Athletics and physical activities in general were seen to be unladylike, I guess. Though can you explain cheerleaders in that context?

There was a Pep Club and this may be the highlight of the post, they were called the Ponies. Isn't that just worth the effort to get this far down the page?

The girls of the Pep Club were called the "Ponies" back in the day. Did not know that.

"Saddle your blues to a wild Mustang,
And gallop your troubles away."

Nothing personal regarding the person or persons who wrote or chose that epigram, but I think they could have worked on the question for another hour or two with good results. Just sayin'.

There were 60 graduating seniors in 1940, 60 juniors, 56 sophomores and 48 freshmen by my count, or 224 in high school enabling the music department to excel in gross numbers at the very least.

 

 

Gertrude Traeger, a grad of Wisconsin was responsible for the vocal music teacher;
W. O Sanberg, NU had band and orchestra.

Sutton Normal Training was still going strong in 1940. These were the prospective rural school teachers destined for the dozens and dozens of schools in the surrounding area (67 in Clay County alone.)



Miss Anna Moehring, far right, was the Normal Training teacher and a graduate of Midland College.

And finally, the group that put the annual together had to take a bow. This is the Applied English Class which likely was or included what we later called Journalism.

Unsure how today's graphic designers would react to this collage but it does identify the folks, tells us they were responsible for the school newspaper and likely they produced this annual. The advisor and English teacher was Marlys Bell who is pictured in the upper right hand corner and a graduate of Hastings College. And yes, she is quite young looking but that is the same photo that appears on the faculty page.

This post covers most of the 1940 Sutton High annual. We received the 1942 annual at the same time and we have quite a number of the collection but with major gaps. Stop in the Sutton Museum or contact us to learn what we have and which annuals are missing from our collection. We would like to accumulate as many as we can and make them readily available to graduates and friends and especially the offspring and grandchildren of graduates. Nothing brings a smile to a kid's face like a picture of 17-year old grandmas and grandpas. Deal with it.

Sutton Businesses - 1917; extract from Polk Directory for Omaha

Stumbled onto an unexpected treasure recently. While searching for a Sutton business name it cropped up in what I thought was an Omaha Polk Directory. Turns out, that's what it was. The 1917 Omaha Polk Directory had sections for many Nebraska small town businesses including Sutton.

These directories are linked to ancestry.com though for how long, I don't know. Will now have to spend some more time to see how many of these directories are linked in and do they all have Sutton business listings?

Watch this space. Or, look into it and let me know. -jj

Rev. William J. Bonekemper died 75 years ago, March 18, 1939

The Sutton Register newspaper of March 23, 1939 carried the story of the death of Rev. William J. Bonekemper in Long Beach, California. Rev. Bonekemper was the pastor in one of the Reformed churches in Sutton from 1876 through 1908.

The Bonekemper story begins on page 265 of Jim Griess' book on the Sutton Germans from Russia.

Clipping from the March 23, 1939 issue of the Sutton Register newspaper.

 

Suffrage Petition Submitted 100 Years Ago - March 14, 1914

Nebraska’s largest ever petition was delivered to the state house on March 14, 1914 by a delegation of women with a film crew recording the event. The petition with names of 42,523 voters called for a suffrage vote in the November election. Clay County contributed 599 names to the document.

 

The Sutton Register: “The suffrage fight is now on.”

NORMAL TRAINING and the 1924 Sutton High School Annual

The cover of The Champ, the Sutton High School
Annual of 1924.

The Sutton Museum has a growing (slowly) collection of the annuals of Sutton High School. We are still well short of having one half of the years representing the years for graduating seniors that began in 1884. Certainly the school did not produce books those earliest years; our oldest annual is the 1912 edition which is actually a common possession of Sutton residents. That was the year that the "new" school building was built southeast of downtown which served as a high school into the mid-1960's and as a grade school for additional years.

That 1912 annual was a "half-page" nicely bound volume that was dedicated to the new school by that year's graduating class which "just missed" the new school.

The annuals for the next decades were cloth-bound publications and while modest in external appearance were still quality products in terms of content and professionalism in design and execution.

This posting uses the 1924 Sutton High annual as a representative example of the era.

There are a number of interesting things in this '24 annual and we will update this posting to add more later. The initial version of the post addresses the Normal Training program at Sutton High in 1924.

Normal training was the term used to describe programs to train school teachers. The term comes from the notion that prospective teachers were taught established teaching standards, or norms. Some areas established separate normal schools but for much of the early days in our area high schools had a normal training program that produced teachers to meet the demand of the rural schools.

I was surprised by the size of the normal training program in Sutton in 1924. I had envisioned that a small number of the high school students, mostly girls were enrolled in the program. The vast majority of the rural school teachers were young women so it seemed logical that normal training was a girls' thing. Most of the literature spoke of women teachers seeming to confirm that idea.

There were men teachers in the rural schools but they were rare enough that I thought I knew them by name: Henry Vauck, Roy Oakley, Albert Nejezchleb appear in articles about county schools. We had a male teacher, Dick Anderson in 1953-1954, our last year at District #16 northwest of Sutton.

So imagine my surprise to learn that in 1924 fully 26 of the 33 graduating seniors including seven boys were listed as in the normal training program. It was not a minor part of the high school curriculum and it was not a girls-only program.

The 26 Normal Training students in the senior class at Sutton High in 1924. Yes, there are 27 in the photo. I'm guessing
that that is Miss Hawk, the Normal Training Instructor there front and center. The annual did not identify the individuals
in the photo but we list those below who were identified elsewhere as normal training students. Your challenge is to match 'em.

One 1924 Normal Training graduate, Clemens Chambers was listed as "Post Graduate." We also find him listed as a 1923 grad in the Alumni Directory. I'd seen references before to normal training post grads and guessed that some graduates came back for another year, the fifth I suppose probably to get that teaching credential, just guessing.

The 1924 graduates who listed Normal Training among their high school activities were: Frances Baass (later Mrs. Earl Vauck), Helen Bauer, Ralph Bauer, Blanche Bishop, Mabel Case, June Easley, Catherine Elfring, Marie Ebert, Marie Griess, Frieda Grosshans, Frances Hanson, Edna Hansen, Ethel Johnson (my Aunt Ethel Nelson), Kathleen McLaughlin, Wilbert Nuss, Ralph Nolde, Clinton Ochsner, Sara Perlenfein, Martha Rath, Helen Swanson, Mary Wells, Elizabeth West, Gilbert Wieland and Eva Zimmerman.

Okay, if you've been counting along with me you are rightfully telling me I have some wrong info here. I wrote that 26 of the 33 grads were in Normal Training. The class photo has 27 faces but I came up with a plausible, perhaps correct hypothesis that the instructor is in the photo and I guessed which one she might have been. But I just listed the 24 names of graduates who listed Normal Training among their activities. I did not list Mr. Chambers as he was a post grad and was listed as a 1923 grad. That would make 25.  However, Miss Helen Swanson was also listed in 1924 annual as a post graduate and her name does appear with the Class of 1924 in the Alumni Directory.

So, I guess someone in the picture of 26 senior normal training students (plus instructor) did not graduate to make the Alumni Directory. Suppose?

Point being: this historical research thing veers off of the straightforward path especially when you are working with two sources, here the 1924 annual and the current Alumni Directory. There is a sound saying from the information technology world: never put your data into two databases; they will so quickly diverge and you will expend a lot of time and energy determining which is right and which is wrong. The real disgusting thing about that illustration is that too often both of your databases will be right as the purpose of each will also diverge from the other in the slightest way.

Just so in the case of the number of normal training seniors in 1924. The photo of the class was the snapshot of the group at some point in the school year. The senior pictures in the annual were a similar, but not exactly the same group at another point in the school year and the 1924 high school annual is the historical record of the members of the group who also received a diploma that year, at the end of the school year.

These are the kinds of things generate coffee shop discussions and bar fights. At another level, these kinds of things make reading Daily Kos and World Net Daily such unlike experiences.

But I digress.

Here is the image of the Normal Training page of the 1924 Sutton High Annual where the curriculum and the requirements for completion of the program are listed.



This page from the 1924 Sutton annual gives us the four year curriculum for normal training
and college preparatory work at Sutton High. Twenty-six of the thirty-three graduating seniors
appear to have followed this program and were identified as normal training students.

Here's hoping that you enjoyed this article and that if you were interested in knowing more about Normal Training in Nebraska schools in the 1920's we have helped you better understand that topic. If you do not have an interest in this topic, then howjaheck did you get this far in the post?

Thanks for visiting the Sutton Historical Society blog.

Sutton Historical Society
P. O. Box 92
Sutton, NE 68979
suttonnehistory@gmail.com



Our Blog Activity

Blog hosting sites provide statistics on how many visits the blog is attracting and from where. These are interesting statistics even if it is hard to figure out why or how people from all over the world stumbled upon your blog.

As of March 1, 2014, we have had over 33,000 "page views" on this site. We began very quietly and modestly in 2008 and there had been 12,000 as of October, 2012.

Certainly the bulk of our visits come from the U.S. - about 21,500 as of March, 2014. But there have been over a thousand page views from Germany and China. Russia, Canada, the U.K., France and Ukraine are next followed by Malaysia (380 visits?) and The Netherlands.

We can offer some explanations for these visits. Sutton has a large population with connections to the Germans from Russia with about a half of those from villages near Odessa in Ukraine. Certain related searches will lead to this site. And well, China has a large population and will logically show up on a list almost anywhere I suppose.

We see stats for the day, week, month and all-time so the shorter intervals reveal individual visitors from less common locations. This week's visits include folks from Brazil, Indonesia, Indonesia, Poland and Spain.

We hope that our postings about the history of the Sutton community communicate an interesting and useful picture of rural America over the past several decades. The relatively recent (a century and a half) of settlement and development of the Great Plains while not unique (Canada, Australia, South America and parts of Africa are not dissimilar) this story does contrast with the millennia of history in Europe and Asia. Just as Americans are struck by standing in the Pantheon with its 2,000+ years of history we can try to appreciate the reaction of someone from Rome to cities and towns located where small isolated American Indian villages stood fewer than 130 years ago.

Sutton's Surviving World War I Vets in 1988

by Jerry Johnson and the Sutton Historical Society

The Clay County News recognized the county’s surviving veterans of World War I in the issue of November 10, 1988. Sixteen of the fellows remained, five from Sutton, Jack Helzer, Harry Hunnell, Albert Krause, Carl “Jack” Nolde and William Peter.

World War I began on July 28, 1914 and lasted until November 11, 1918. It was not called by that name at the time – it was the “war to end all wars” as President Wilson called it though H. G. Wells invented the term. “The World War” was the common term, after all, it was supposed to be the only one, a numeric designation wouldn’t have made sense.



This monument in the Sutton Cemetery is in honor of World War I veterans and was donated by Carl H. (Jack) Nolde

The first use of “world war” was in German as early as 1904 in an anti-British novel, “Der WeltKrieg,” meaning “world war.”  The point was that a large enough conflict involving multiple nations over a large territory, possibly multiple continents deserved special recognition.

So our Clay County veterans of 1917-1918 were a part of something new, big and different and they should be remembered for that.

The war was triggered in July, 1914 with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A network of treaties and agreements were invoked and soon every European nation was either mad at, or aligned with everyone else. It’s a good, if complicated story and instructive in human nature.

Americans were not at all interested in playing a role and worked hard to stay neutral. But German submarine attacks on shipping and the discovery of the Zimmerman telegram which exposed a German plot to bring Mexico into the war with promises of the return of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona (another cool story) led Congress to declare war on April 6, 1917.

The U.S. had a small military capability and needed to fix that quickly. The Selective Service Act passed in May and on June 5, 1917 the first WWI draft registration was held, all on one day to find all men between the ages of 21 and 31.

A second registration was held on June 5 and August 24, 1918 to pick up new 21 year olds. The third registration on September 18, 1918 caught everyone from 18 to 45.

Twenty-four million men, about 25% of the total population were recorded in those records which are now on the “must-have” checklist for genealogists. Height, build, color of eyes and hair, residence and other information appear on those cards. It is often the only place a guy owned-up to his middle name.

Jack Helzer

John “Jack” Helzer (Aug 7, 1900-Feb. 24, 1992) was a young soldier having lied about his age being just 16 when he enlisted in Omaha. His father retrieved him three weeks later and he enlisted again when he became of age. He “got stuck in the Hawaiian Islands” and served two years and 11 months. He later became one of the youngest WWI vets to go to the Veterans Hospital for surgery. He was also the youngest of these vets in the article at age 90 in 1988.

Harry Hunnell

Harry Hunnell was homesteading near Sheridan, Wyoming when he was called up and spent 13 months in Europe attaining the rank of sergeant. Part of his duty was in the Army of Occupation. Hunnell lived in Sutton several years and was living in Henderson at the time of the article.

Albert Krause

Albert Krause enlisted in 1917 and was one of nearly 50,000 recruits to train at Camp Funston on Fort Riley near Manhattan, Kansas. He was in France from May to July in 1918 and in Germany on Armistice Day in November. He served in the Army of Occupation and was discharged in July, 1919. Albert Krause was the oldest of these 16 Clay County vets in 1988 at the age of 98 ½.

Jack Nolde

Carl H. “Jack” Nolde typed his way through the war. He was in the first group of 10 to be drafted in Sutton, took the train Lincoln, to Junction City, Kansas and then to Camp Funston. On the second day at Funston he was assigned to duty as a typist and never participated in drills. He also did typewriter repair and served for 29 months, much of it at Plattsburg Barracks in New York.

William Peter

William Peter was a Corporal in the 163^rd Depot Brigade at Camp Dodge, Iowa. He was discharged December 8, 1918 and was living at the Sutton Home in 1988.

An early donation to the Sutton Historical Society was booklet titled the “Complete List of Clay County Men Registered for Military Draft listing the 1,237 from that first registration of June 5, 1917. Names are sequenced by “Order No.” identified as the order the names came in a drawing suggesting this was the order called for duty.

Number One in Clay County was Frank M. Korgan of Inland. He was followed by Lawrence E. Nelson of Verona, Geo. H. Harms of Glenville (sic), Cecil Jackson of Edgar, etc. Arthur Hornbacker, No. 11, John Wolf, No. 13, Phillip Roemmich, No. 16 and Arthur Schwarz, No. 17 led the Sutton registrants.

The booklet states that the First Draft had 306 men “examined” with 113 drafted meeting the criteria for service. If I’m interpreting the information properly, Reinhold Heinz of Sutton was Order No. 306 just making the list for the first draft.

By the time U.S. forces were significantly engaged in WWI there was just over one year left of hostilities. A relatively small percentage saw combat as is true in most conflicts but especially true in this one. One of our family folklore stories is of an uncle called to active duty who was with a bunch of recruits on the train platform in Edgar on November 18, 1918 as word came of the armistice. After a period of confusion, someone, the story goes, probably without actual authority to do so told the recruits to go back home and wait for further instructions. It was a good call as their orders were later cancelled.

The other Clay County WWI veterans and their home towns in the  1988 article were: Jack Stratton, Fairfield; Ward Haylett, Clay Center; Earl Buchtel, Clay Center; Emil Skalka, Spring Ranch; Merle Shafer, Edgar; Rolland Kreutz, Harvard; Robert Smith, rural Lone Tree; George Harms, Fairfield; Charlie Hazelton, Clay Center; Louis Goldenstein, Glenvil and Ervin Spencer, Clay Center.

Our WWI veterans enjoyed continued camaraderie as members of the Clay County World War I Barracks engaging in civic activities, holding business meetings and gathering for dinner monthly. Jack Stratton was the last Quartermaster of the Barracks who in April, 1984 distributed a letter to all members stating the obvious that they were all slowing down, eye sights were failing and enjoyment was becoming a chore. A few responded agreeing to disband and the final treasury of $21.73 was donated to the Care Campaign for Africa.

There are two special memorials in the Sutton Cemetery commemorating World War vets. Pearl J. (Cassell) Bender, wife of Major John R. Bender dedicated the cemetery flag pole to The Unknown Soldier in 1933 in memory of Major Bender. He is likely better known for athletic endeavors (star halfback at the University of Nebraska) and coaching success at St. Louis University, Kansas State, Tennessee, Houston and Washington State.

Jack Nolde purchased a special monument for the cemetery in 1940 to remember the comrades. That monument stands next to the Benders’ flagpole.

These gentlemen had lost a long list of comrades in the years preceding 1988. The Sutton Historical Society has a continuing, intermittent project to remember and document the stories of local veterans of each of the nation’s wars. Any help in researching, writing or organizing such information is always appreciated. Contact Jerry Johnson at 773-0222 to join us if you think this is worthwhile.

This article first appeared in the December, 2013 issue of Sutton Life Magazine. Contact Jarod Griess for more information about the publication at 402-984-4203 or neighborhoodlife@yahoo.com

Fifty Years ago - November 22, 1963

Few historical events have the impact that generates the comment, “I remember where I was when I heard that.”

Those of us growing up in the ‘50’s remember people recalling where they were and what they were doing when the heard about the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor on the Sunday morning of December 7^th, 1941. The assassination of President Kennedy on Friday, November 22, 1963, fifty years ago had such an impact, that and maybe 9/11, little else.

 

White House portrait of the 35th President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy

I was in an English literature class at the University that day in 1963 as hallway buzz began to ramp up over the tinny sound of transistor radios. The young prof declared that he’d always wanted to be known as the one who kept lecturing as the bombs dropped.

The Clay County News was a Thursday paper in 1963 so mention of the assassination had to wait nearly a full week, well after other news sources had examined thousands of details. The local slant in the November 28^th issue was the first person account of H. C. King, the elder partner in the paper’s publishing family.

The “Old Man” and his wife had been visiting their daughter and her husband at their home in the north Dallas suburb of Richardson and had chosen not to join the crowds along the motorcade route. They learned the news just like the rest of us. Television news coverage was a tiny fraction of what we have today and it took the three networks some time to go from “News Bulletin” to the continuous coverage of that weekend. Images of Walter Cronkite and Chet Huntley are burned into millions of memories.

King’s son-in-law worked at Texas Instruments where employees were released for the afternoon, as were people across the country. H. C. described the near hysterical reaction of his daughter’s neighbor who kept repeating, “Dallas people will never be able to lift their heads again. We are to blame.”

Mr. King proceeded with his plans to return to Sutton on a midnight bus leaving his wife in Dallas for an extended visit. That Sunday morning back in Sutton, H. C. and his son Roy, publisher of the local paper joined the rest of the country to watch a Dallas nightclub owner murder JFK’s assassin live on TV. Dallas authorities were transferring Lee Harvey Oswald from the basement of the city jail to the county court house through a crowd of reporters and, as it turns out, anyone else who happened to wander down the auto ramp to the basement. I may remember that, “What the #%!@ is going on” feeling even more than the impact of the assassination.

Jack Kennedy was the 35^th president of the United States elected in 1960 at the age of 43. He struck a note with, and for younger citizens represented by the line, “…the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans…” Kennedy’s predecessor President Eisenhower graduated from West Point in 1915 two years before Jack Kennedy was born.

Kennedy’s 1960 campaign tapped into the energy of high school and college students most of whom were not old enough to vote – the 26^th amendment lowering the minimum voting age from 21 to 18 was not effective until 1971.

Shortly after taking office Kennedy found an old executive order by Theodore Roosevelt challenging Marine officers to walk 50 miles in 20 hours. He repeated that challenge to the White House staff. They took it up including his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy who completed the walk in his dress shoes.

Somehow, the public thought the challenge extended to them and 50-mile hikes broke out all over the country including the popular Lincoln to Nebraska City route on Highway 2.

Presidential assassins had struck three times before 1963. Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D. C. on Good Friday in 1865 by the Confederate sympathizer and actor John Wilkes Booth. James Garfield was shot just four months after taking office in 1881 by Charles Guiteau who was probably deranged and was upset about being passed over for appointment as ambassador to France. Garfield survived for 11 weeks.

William McKinley was shot at close range by Leon Czolgosz, a self-proclaimed anarchist and one-time Scrabble champion (sorry, I made that part up) while attending Buffalo’s 1901 Pan-American Exposition.

There is a long list of failed presidential assassination attempts from the house painter who tried to shoot Andrew Jackson when both of his pistols misfired and Jackson beat him severely with his cane to at least six threats on President Obama including two ricin poisoning threats.

JFK’s assassination takes the prize for generating conspiracy theories. People find it hard, if not impossible to believe that one person operating alone could have such a massive impact on the nation and the world, especially a squirrely little reprobate like Lee Harvey Oswald, or as someone in the Warren Commission said, a “pip squeak.”

It seemed like a bad movie from the 1930's. Nightclub owner
Jack Ruby shoots assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement
of the Dallas Police Station on live TV, Sunday, November
24, 1963.

A major cottage industry is still alive 50 years later contesting every official explanation of the assassination. My invitation to doubters that Oswald pulled this off as the record describes is to offer them my copy of Vincent Bugliosi’s 1500 page, small-font tome, “Reclaiming History.” That’s 1500 pages of text; the Endnotes and Source Notes come on an enclosed CD. Bugliosi and his staff worked until 2007 tracking down every far-fetched idea they could find on this topic before going to press.

News of the assassination disrupted activities throughout the nation. Businesses closed, public events were cancelled as the country essentially shut down. Pete Rozelle was the young commissioner of the National Football League. He consulted with several team owners, most of whom thought it would be appropriate to cancel the weekend games. Rozelle called Pierre Salinger, Kennedy’s press secretary who felt JFK would have wanted the games played. They were. Rozelle often lamented that decision. The infant competing American Football League called off the weekend.

Nebraska was scheduled to play Oklahoma on Saturday the 23^rd. There was strong sentiment to postpone that game but Oklahoma Coach Bud Wilkinson lobbied for the game to be played. Wilkinson was the Director of Kennedy’s Physical Fitness Program and carried the day. Nebraska won that game 29-20 earning the right to represent the Big 8 in the Orange Bowl where they defeated Auburn.

University officials recognized that they had lost control and on Saturday declared that the Thanksgiving break had started; classes were cancelled for the whole week.

We can find two Sutton stories related to Kennedy’s death. The first concerns Neil Cronin, a Sutton native who died in Minnesota on October 15^th. John Kennedy signed a proclamation recognizing Cronin’s military service and his legal career in Minneapolis. His widow received the proclamation the week of the assassination.

Sutton native Theodore Wenzlaff was one of the last cavalry officers in the army and during his service at Fort Reno, Oklahoma, Col. Wenzlaff filled a request from Arlington Cemetery for horses to be used in military funerals. Four of those horses were part of the cortege which carried President Kennedy’s body to Arlington. Both stories can be found at suttonhistoricalsociety.blogspot.com.



Kennedy's funeral caisson, November 25, 1963. Three of the six horses pulling the caisson plus the escort rider's horse were acquired for Arlington Cemetery by Sutton native Col. Ted Wenzlaff. 

Two full generations of Americans have come along since President Kennedy’s death. For those who have never taken an interest in history, the Kennedy story might be a good place to discover just how interesting history can be. Jack Kennedy’s father had a controversial career in business and in public service. He had great ambitions for his children including grooming one to someday become president, but that was not supposed to be Jack. Oldest son Joseph Kennedy Jr. was the chosen one but Navy Lieutenant Joe Jr. was killed in July, 1944 during Operation Aphrodite, a Hollywood-worthy operation well worth checking out on Wikipedia.

After Joe Jr. was killed, second son Jack became Joe Sr.’s presidential son and after him it was Bobby’s turn. More Kennedy’s followed in public service. Joe Kennedy III, Robert’s grandson represents Massachusetts 4^th District in Congress; Jack’s daughter Caroline was just named ambassador to Japan. The Kennedy family story continues.

This article deviated from our usual practice of telling Sutton related stories but no excuses, it is the 50^th anniversary of that tragic day and it is on the minds of many of us. The search for the “truth” about Kennedy’s assassination has generated almost 1400 books and this kind of story does not go away quickly. After all, we still aren’t sure Richard III killed his nephews in the Tower of London in 1483.

This article first appeared in the November, 2013 issue of Sutton Life Magazine. Contact Jarod Griess for more information about the publication - 402-984-4203 or neighborhoodlife@yahoo.com

 

The Royal Highlanders

by Jerry Johnson of the Sutton Historical Society 

A few weeks ago the folks at the Allegro Wolf Arts Center stumbled onto a small box containing several badges with a Scottish tartan design and labeled DUNDEE Castle No. 11, Royal Highlanders, Sutton, Nebr.

No one in that group or others we spoke with knew of the Highlanders. It was another Sutton story lost in the fog of time. Therefore, research happened driven mainly by the mystery of how a Scottish themed organization appeared in this German town.

There were a lot of common features to the towns that developed out here on the plains. One of the common characteristic of those early settlers was a propensity to form and belong to a variety of organizations, lodges, clubs, social groups, church groups and other forms of comradeship. Sutton was no exception.

The Royal Highlanders continued their Scottish theme with tartan badges
and cities of Scotland for chapter names.

There were the Masons and the Eastern Star; the International Order of Odd Fellows and the Rebekah; there was a bicycle club and a walking club. Women had sewing clubs, book clubs, P.E.O., W.C.T.U, and many more. The Ancient Order of United Workmen  was a labor union with chapters in most towns.

The Sutton Farmer’s Grain and Stock Co. was a mutually owned early elevator of a type that late spawned Co-op’s. The Grange and the Farm Bureau Federation organized farmers early on. There was a movement in the mid-20^th century to organize hog producers by the National Farmers Organization (NFO) which still exists as well as well as the National Farmers Union (founded 1913 – you can check out their Facebook Page today.)

 

The Royal Highlanders was a group that was sometimes referred to as a “Society” or an “Association” a “Lodge” or perhaps most telling, a “Fraternal Insurance Order.”

The Royal Highlanders originated in Aurora as a fraternal insurance organization in August, 1896. The first lodge or “castle” was established by F. J. Sharp with the help of his brother, W. E. Sharp while the brothers were operating hardware stores in Aurora and Stockham under the name of F. J. Sharp and Bro. I think we can infer the relationship between those brothers from that description in the organization’s documentation. F. J’s official title was “Chief Secretary” and his brother was “Most Illustrious Protector.” I’m thinking F. J. was the alpha brother in the family.

The goal of the organization, stated in the language of the time was “to unite for mutual benefit and fraternal protection all white persons who are in good health, of exemplary character, and between the ages of 16 and 65.” I guess I wouldn’t have made that cut. I’m too old, have some health issues and though my character is not often in question “exemplary” could be a tall order if the In Crowd wished. I am “white” but let’s not dwell on that at this time. One piece of documentation included the phrase, “Sickness and Death in the Old South.” ‘Nuff said.

The Royal Highlanders built their three-story headquarters building in downtown Aurora modeled after Balmoral Castle in Scotland, an interesting choice. Balmoral Castle is still important in the United Kingdom as the summer residence of Queen Elizabeth II – good to know if you ever want a tour of Buckingham Palace in London available only in August and September during those Balmoral stays.

Unfortunately, according the folks at the Plainsman Museum, the old Highlanders headquarters building burned down a few years ago after being vacant for some time but never fear, there are postcards depicting the building available on ebay for about five dollars each.

The Royal Highlanders used Balmoral Castle in Aberdeenshire, Scotland as
their model for the organization headquarters building in Aurora. The building
is no longer standing having burned down a few years ago.

Local chapters or “Castles” of the Royal Highlanders were named after Scottish cities and personalities and were assigned a number. Sutton’s Dundee Castle was No. 11 preceded only by castles 1 thru 10 at Aurora, Hampton, Marquette, Arborville, Phillips, Giltner, Harvard, Fairfield, Clay Center and Trumbull. It was mainly a Nebraska phenomenon but around Castle No. 145 began to penetrate neighboring states and by the time No. 281 was organized chapters extended as far away as Vancouver, Washington.

So who were these Sutton Highlanders? Fortunately, we have some clues. Dundee Castle receives prominent mention in a book titled, “Historical Sketches of the Royal Highlanders” available at Google Books. In fact, “Dundee’s Grand Banquet” in April, 1898 is the very first story told in a section of the book about notable meetings reported in the Highlander’s newsletter. The venue for the gathering was Castle Hall which had a banquet room as well as other rooms. Where do you suppose that was?

Officials from headquarters attended the grand banquet including F. J. Sharp and the Chief Treasurer, A. E. Siekman. Dundee’s Worthy Evangel was Rev. H. W. Stenson; Rev. Fowler addressed the group and Mrs. Fowler offered a toast to “Women in Fraternal Societies.” Other toasts came from Clansmen Hanke, Tower, Lewis and King. Mrs. F. L. Keller favored the group with a song. We’ve encountered several of these names elsewhere while digging in Sutton’s past.

Another entry in the historical sketches recounts the evening thirty-five Sutton Highlanders traveled to Fairmont to assist organizing the Loch Doon Castle No. 13 in that town. The Dundee drill team led a parade of Sutton and Fairmont highlanders into the street under the direction of Captain P. F. Nuss. Sutton Clansmen Loving was the main speaker making “an eloquent appeal for fraternal insurance in general and the Highlander plan in particular.” J. B. Scott of the Sutton chapter closed the program.

The third Sutton related story in the book describes the first Highlander picnic in Sutton on August 19^th, 1897. There apparently were a number of castles represented in a full costume parade described as the “finest parade of any single Secret Society ever seen upon the streets of that city.”

There was an item in a local 1913 newspaper that mentioned that Fred Hanke of Sutton attended the district convention of the Royal Highlanders in Denver and was re-elected to the board of directors. The History of Hamilton and Clay Counties tells us that Mr. Hanke (better known in Sutton as “Hanke the Tailor”) was a member of the Executive Committee of the Royal Highlanders for some time.

So w

The Royal Highlanders had their own grave
markers that are found in Wyuka in Lincoln.
Are there any locally?

hat became of the Royal Highlanders?

The lodge and secret society aspects of the organization faded as actuaries took over and an insurance company emerged. The Executive Castle moved from Aurora to Lincoln in 1937 and became the Mutual Legal Reserve Life Insurance Company with a string of other names to follow over time.

Almost concurrent with the Royal Highlanders’ story Security Mutual Life was organized in Fremont and Woodmen Accident Association started in York. Mergers of those three organizations, name changes and re-organizations led to the Assurity Life Insurance Company at 2000 Q St. in Lincoln today. The details of the company history is summarized at http://www.assurity.com/Pdfs/2013history.pdf

The Plainsman Museum in Aurora celebrates their hometown Highlanders in an exhibit about to be moved and updated. We donated a Dundee Castle No. 11 badge to include Sutton in the new exhibit.

The tartan on our Royal Highlanders badges remains a mystery. As a one-quarter Scotsman myself with ties to the Cassell sept of the Kennedy Clan and to the Maxwell Clan (a particularly ugly plaid) I made a serious attempt to figure out what clan tartan was used in the badge but to no avail.

Also I was disappointed to find no Kennoway Castle among the names of the almost 300 individual chapters, Kennoway being the home of my great grandparents and not that far actually from Dundee. Most disappointing. But discovering a Scottish themed organization in Sutton was pretty cool.

No, there's none more Scots
Than the Scots abroad
There's a place in our hearts
For the old sod.

(Chorus from a raucous Scottish song called, “The Old Sod” found on youtube if you’re brave enough. Another offering by your Sutton Historical Society to expand the cultural vocabulary of our community.)

Our research is almost finished for this project with only one remaining question, “Has anyone ever found bagpipes and a kilt in the attic?”



The Royal Highlanders distinctive costumes mimicked kilts. This woman's dress is on display at the Plainsman Museum
in Aurora sporting the Douglas Castle No. 1 badge of the founding Aurora chapter.

This article first appeared in the October, 2013 issue of Sutton Life Magazine. Contact Jarod Griess at 402-984-4203 for further information about this magazine.