From "Flight of the Odegard" Chapter Seven
Odegard flew into Rushford in a Beechcraft Bonanza, while several student volunteers drove the whole distance from Grand Forks towing the partially disassembled glider. As Odegard flew into Rushford, he carefully surveyed the terrain. The town was situated in a very hilly, almost mountainous part of the state. The town was 500 feet above sea level, but the airport sat on a hill about 700 feet higher. The area was dotted with steep hills and cliffs. The day of the show, excited neighbors flew or drove in from three surrounding counties. As a tow plane took off pulling Odegard into the air in the glider, a master of ceremonies on the ground named Sherm Booen kept up a running commentary for the crowd. Everyone knew Booen. He produced and hosted a weekly TV show on WCCO-TV out of Minneapolis entitled "The World of Aviation" and also published a monthly magazine called "The Minnesota Flyer." To everyone at the air show that day, he was known simply as “Mr. Aviation.” As Booen addressed the small crowd, music from “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” –Odegard’s choice—played over the loudspeakers. High above, the tow plane released the glider, and the show began. “The music is playing,” recalls Bunke, “and people are just in awe. The glider has these big silver wings. It just showed up beautifully against the sky. He was doing incredible aerobatics with it. And it was all silent.” Bunke’s father still remembers the day. “There wasn't a sound from the entire crowd,” says Rob Bunke, “only the beautiful music in the background. I have often said that it seemed like John could hear the music, and he flew as if he was directing the song. I still get the chills thinking of that beautiful performance.” Odegard went through his entire routine and started his final maneuvers. All he had told Booen was that the show would end with a spin of 21 revolutions. Booen announced this to the audience, and as Odegard began his dive everyone began counting aloud. “One…two…three..” In his pre-show survey of the terrain, Odegard had seen exactly how to plot the final revolution for maximum effect. In fact, Rob Bunke was acting as an ex-officio safety officer that day and had talked about the stunt with Odegard beforehand, satisfying himself that it was doable. Mr. Aviation and the assembly of Minnesota country folk continued to count off the revolutions as Odegard and his glider spun ever closer to the ground. When they had reached a count of 18, Odegard’s glider suddenly dipped below the horizon line. It disappeared completely from the view of the spectators at the far end of the hill on which the airport sat. Mr. Aviation stopped counting. The crowd started buzzing. The glider was nowhere to be seen. Sherm Booen began frantically trying to calm the crowd down. “We know John is a professional,” he stumbled, “and even though we can’t see him, we’re sure he has landed safely in a hayfield down there.” But everyone knew what had happened. The glider had crashed and likely killed its pilot. “Well folks,” Booen fumbled again, “there are lots of other things to do today…” Then, after another few seconds of dead air he grew ever more serious. “We’re certain the authorities will let us know, as soon as they can, that they’ve found John…” At that high moment of tension, recalls Bunke, “Poof! John comes shooting up from behind this bluff from 700 feet down in the valley. He lands the glider, and the crowd is screaming in delight. What a spectacular ending to the show.” But it wasn’t over yet. When Odegard brought the glider down to earth, he rolled directly toward the crowd, veering off at the last minute to a final stop. Bunke’s father rushed out to the runway to greet him. But he was followed by an irate man from the crowd, a man screaming about the unsafe maneuver. The two men reached the glider at the same time, as Odegard was climbing out. While Rob Bunke was congratulating Odegard, the man from the crowd identified himself loudly as an official of the FAA. He berated Odegard up and down for his disappearing act, then landing in a path directly toward the audience. “You could have wiped out dozens!” he shouted. Odegard remained calm, almost amused. He walked the FAA official to the edge of the hill and pointed out in detail his entire flight plan, including a man-made pond down in the valley that was to serve as his escape landing area. He turned and indicated where the crowd was seated and how he had calculated his landing speed and direction to the nth degree. But the FAA official wasn’t having any of it and stomped off to file a complaint at the district office. Bunkerdoodle, meanwhile, was a mass of anxiety. “I’d asked John to come all this way, and he does it out of the goodness of his heart, and he’s the chair of the program, and now he’s about to lose his license.” In fact, the complaint was filed but later thrown out, due to Odegard’s vigorous defense of that detailed flight plan—plus an endorsement of its safety from Rob Bunke. At the moment, though, not knowing what would happen, Odegard wore his usual smile and exhibited his usual charm as he shook the hand of Bunkerdoodle Sr. “I see what you mean,” Rob Bunke later told his son. “This guy is smooth.” ©2007 UND Aerospace Press
Good Medicine: Introduction
Perhaps the real question here is whether or not an account of how the two-year medical school at the University of North Dakota reinvented itself into a four-year school thirty years ago is a story at all. It sounds more like a tinder dry report, one of those wheezy bureaucratic garblings that make the eyes glaze over. Not exactly War and Peace. And in the end, who really cares about bureaucratic shell games played so long ago? Surely, most of those who would care have long since shuffled off to Buffalo.
That’s a fair reaction—in fact, it was my reaction when I was approached by Bob Eelkema and Tom Clifford about reassembling all the salient details of this old paper chase into a coherent and readable story. But it took only one afternoon with the spirited, anecdote-rich Dr. Eelkema, and one pleasant evening under the Hibernian spell of Tom Clifford’s twinkling understatement for the weight of the story to sink in. It went way beyond a mere report of outflanking legislative committees and outfoxing ponderous politicians. This was a genuine story chock-full of cowboys, Indians, gamblers, fakers, Marines and handball players. It was packed full, not just of people but of characters: rounded individuals full of contradictions, beset by flaws and bolstered by inner strengths. In other words, the kind of mavericks that North Dakota grows with pride and nurtures so well.
Consider: There’s a pilot in this story who is flying some key people from North Dakota to Washington, D.C., at a particularly critical moment, and he gets lost. But using common sense instilled by his North Dakota rearing, he drops down out of the sky to rooftop level and follows some recognizable Washington landmarks to the airport. The FAA later raises holy hell and says this isn’t at all the way we do it back here. But no matter. The mission is accomplished and there is lots of chuckling up in Grand Forks.
There’s a wild young boy in this story who shoots the neighbor’s cat from a bedroom window. The neighbor later rewards him to the tune of $575,000.
There’s a wily old man who does nothing more than build a swimming pool without anyone’s permission. Perhaps if he hadn’t, the highly regarded medical school might not exist today. There’s a doctor who has a gift for securing federal grants and an even greater gift for his creative disbursements of those monies. Such creativity today might earn him a vacation in a place like Leavenworth. Back then it ultimately earned medical degrees for deserving young men and women of North Dakota.
In this story there’s a man known by some as “a crooked son of a bitch” whose bluster and bluff, nevertheless, carried many a day.
There’s a man called Moses. There’s a very excellent fistfight scene. Even a dish called Finn and Haddie plays a role along with numerous instances of outrageous fibs and truth stretchings, of arm twistings and pressure points skillfully pressed.
The characters in this story are three-dimensional and human enough to lapse into the occasional night of drinking or blackjack or both. Most display equal parts of courage, wit and ruthlessness. Always they are driven by the righteousness of their mission. Ultimately, this is the story of a very well thought-out end run around the pompous, bean-counting establishment that stands in the way of progress for the sake of i-dotting and t-crossing. Yet it happened so fast, the question remains today: did anyone see it? Does anyone really appreciate the happy mincemeat that was made of rules and decorum in accomplishing this most worthy goal?
The answer: probably not. Which is why on one level this does remain a dusty, bloodless report of votes cast and bills ratified. But not too far beneath the surface, it’s basically a story about people, about characters, about a leadership style whose time has probably, and regretfully, passed.
This book is divided in two parts. The first half, “A Marvelous Medical Adventure,” borrows its title from a favorite phrase of Dr. George Magnus Johnson, a mainstay of the pediatric department at the School of Medicine for more than thirty years. Dr. Johnson is one of the true role players in this story of how a bold and clever university president led an unlikely assemblage of doctors, educators and legislators in a battle against political hardheads, ultimately guaranteeing North Dakotans a higher level of health care. Armed only with the purity of altruism and the ruthlessness of guile, their quest was certainly marvelous.
The second half, “Good Medicine,” is a title inspired by the Hidatsa name given to Dr. Monica Mayer, a Native American graduate of the UND School of Medicine, now practicing in New Town. The inspiring story of her selfless dedication to the people on the Fort Berthold Reservation where she grew up, is precisely what Tom Clifford and Bob Eelkema had in mind when they envisioned a modern, degree-granting medical school that would address the real health care needs of rural North Dakota. In this half of the book, in the stories of UND doctors such as Monica Mayer, comes the ultimate proof that not only were the unusual strategies employed to effect the expansion of the medical school justified, but that they came none too soon.
Patrick A. McGuire, Abingdon, Maryland, 2003
©2003 CliffElk Press
Tales from,"North Dakota, Heal Thyself"
Johnson’s Liver Problem
I had trouble studying the liver. We had a female cadaver and I did what Dr. Hamre told us never to do. He opened the class by saying, “If you take any human tissues out of the laboratory, you are out of medical school now.” Well, in all the stresses of this, I forgot his admonitions, stern though they were, and I took the liver to my dormitory room in Sayer Hall to study all the hollows and curves of the liver, of which I was certainly unsure. I was the last one before the Christmas vacation to finish the anatomy exam and I never heard sweeter words before that or since, than when Dr. Hamre finally said to me, ‘Johnson finish up, you’re going to pass anyway.’ I hurried home to Bismarck, forgetting the frozen liver right outside the window at Sayer Hall, which was on the ground floor.
I called Lyle Hillman, my lifelong best friend and I said, “Oh, my God, Lyle, that liver is sitting there in the snow!” He was there in Mountain, North Dakota, his home, and I said, “Are you going to go to Grand Forks to see if you can find that liver?” And he said, “No, I’m not going to Grand Forks.” So I had the most uncomfortable Christmas vacation I ever had. I just didn’t have the wherewithal to get all the way back up to Grand Forks. And I thought that even though Dr. Hamre told me what he told me, I’ll be kicked out of medical school because some dog will pick that liver up and drag it across campus and put it right in front of Dr. Hamre’s door.
Well, lo and behold, when I got back to Grand Forks there was the liver frozen solid. The next day I enlisted Lyle Hillman, who had a car. There was a big snowstorm that day. Right where the aeronautical engineering building is, just southwest of the campus, we decided we had to get rid of the liver. Lyle said I had to do it, so we put the liver in the road and I drove over it. I could feel a bump and we got out and the liver was totally intact. It was still frozen. So Lyle had a try at it and it was still frozen. We hauled it out of the trunk, and in the midst of a semi-blizzard, we chopped the liver up in the ditch with shovels and that is the end of the liver story.” George Magnus Johnson, class of 1958, earned his medical degree in 1960 at the University of Washington. He was the co-discoverer of the Johnson-Reyes syndrome while working for the Centers for Disease Control in the 1960s. He later chaired the Department of Pediatrics at the School of Medicine
The Way We Were
I grew up on a farm up in the northeast corner of the state between Langdon and Walhalla near a little village called Olga which consists of a Catholic church, a bar, a dance hall and a gas station. I went to a country school and I believe my interest in medicine was born out of watching our doctor from Walhalla, a country doctor named L.H. Landry.
As a young kid I would marvel at watching this doctor travel from Walhalla to Olga by horse and sleigh in the wintertime. We would watch him go by our house and a day or two later he would go home after he had delivered a baby. He would go out to stay with the family when the baby was expected and it might take a couple of days and then the baby would be born and he would go back home. I can remember as a young child of 10 to 12 years old just being in awe of this and thinking there would never be any possibility of my becoming a doctor.
By the time I finished high school, I was convinced that somehow or another I was going to try medical school. I spent a year or two making a little money so I could start at the University of North Dakota. Through some pushing by my mother, I began pre-medical school in 1948 and I kept at it. Some relatives and personal friends from the town of Walhalla contributed money so my financial resources were wide spread. I had many obligations when I was finished, as I owed a lot of people a little bit of money and I am forever grateful to them for getting me into medical school.
Dr. Ralph Dunnigan, Class of 1953, completed his medical degree at Creighton University and practiced for years at the Mid-Dakota clinic in Bismarck
On being a young prairie doctor
It was the most wonderful feeling in the world to start my own practice in a small town. My patients were all my friends and my guinea pigs. I studied a lot and they were very patient with me. I remember when I first came to town, I was very young for a practicing physician and I looked even younger, more like a high school kid to some of my patients. There were three ladies in town who started off being friends and we have always been friends.
They were all pregnant and they were waiting for this young doctor to come to town so they could have him deliver their babies. We had a maternity home in the town of Mott for 5 to 10 years. It was the last one in the state that was licensed because the health department said they would continue to license that maternity home as long as I took full responsibility for it. The nearest hospital was Elgin 24 miles away, so the maternity home was great for the people who lived there.
In fact, when I first moved there we didn’t have any paved highways so we had to drive over gravel roads to Elgin, Richardson or Hettinger to a hospital. They were pretty happy, especially in the wintertime, to have a maternity home and a doctor who would serve there. The maternity home was Mrs. Grasses home. She was married and her husband was old. She was a good old German lady who had this home for Dr. Mercline and other doctors over the years. She must have had some training, but her experience was such that she could sit with these ladies in labor and she could encourage them and at the time they were due to deliver, she could tell exactly what stage they were in. I don’t think she ever did a rectal or vaginal examination but she could tell by timing, feeling the belly and the attitude and she could get me there in time for a delivery every time. I don’t think we ever had a precipitate delivery at her place. Never did. Dr. Bob Hankins, Class of 1948, earned his M.D. degree from Loyola University, Chicago. He practiced for 22 years in Mott, N.D. and was the first head of the family practice center in Minot.
©2005 University of North Dakota School of Medicine Press | |
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