Part 3

Part three takes Judy from her teen years into young adulthood — first hearing the Beatles, the day President Kennedy was shot, a church trip to the 1964 New York World’s Fair, and her first job at the Fergus Falls mental health center for 50 cents an hour. Along the way we learn more about her parents, who worked at the two institutions that defined Fergus Falls for a century: her mother, Eunice, at the State Hospital, and her father, Herb, at Otter Tail Power. Plus summers at the family cabin on Ottertail Lake.

Two institutions

“My mom worked at the state hospital. My dad worked for Otter Tail Power.” As Judy puts it, in Fergus Falls that was about as typical as it got.

The Fergus Falls State Hospital

• The Kirkbride building on the hill opened to patients on July 29, 1890 — one of the last asylums built on Thomas Kirkbride’s plan in the US. It peaked at 2,078 patients in 1937, was for decades the town’s biggest employer, and closed in 2005.
• Two superintendents ran it for more than 75 years: Dr. George Welch (1892–1927) and Dr. William Patterson (until 1968). By law, Fergus Falls was staffed by homeopathic physicians, making it the first Minnesota state hospital to formally adopt a therapeutic approach to mental illness.
• Eunice started on the hospital’s teenage ward — work Judy says changed her, making her noticeably more empathetic at home — then spent most of her career in rehabilitation, helping patients prepare to go out and find jobs. Judy believes she earned her LPN and went through a nurses’ capping ceremony. Dr. Patterson was still in charge during her years there.
• “The Kirkbride Cycle”: Judy’s son Ryan wrote a scene for this community play staged on the hospital grounds — a dinner party with Drs. Welch and Patterson and their wives. (Ryan’s scene may be posted here with his blessing.)
• Christmas caroling: as a grade schooler, Judy went caroling in the hospital’s halls — a little scary for an eight-year-old.

Otter Tail Power

• Founded in Fergus Falls in 1907 to build a hydroelectric dam at Dayton Hollow on the Otter Tail River.
• The 1909 dam failure: on September 24, 1909, the city’s own dam upstream gave way, causing the only recorded flood in Fergus Falls history. The young Otter Tail Power Company stepped in to supply the city’s electricity — and kept its headquarters in Fergus Falls as it grew across three states.
• Herb, paymaster: payroll ran once a month, and he signed every paycheck for the whole company. As a little girl, Judy loved going along on Saturday mornings to sit at a desk and pretend to be a secretary. (When he told her he “made out checks,” she pictured him writing check marks on paper.)
• Early programmer: around 1966–67, Herb was one of a few employees picked for computer programming training on the company’s first computer — “the size of a room” — and then trained others. Machines at companies like Otter Tail in that era were typically IBM systems such as the 1401 or System/360.
• The gold brick: when Herb retired in the early ’80s, the company gave him a gold brick.

A bit of the era

• November 22, 1963 was a Friday. Judy was in fourth-hour English when word came; the principal announced it over the speaker, and her choir teacher, Mr. Hazenmuller, sat and wept. That night’s Sadie Hawkins dance — where the girls ask the boys — was canceled. (She was secretly a little relieved.)
• “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” two ways: in the UK, the B-side was “This Boy.” In the US, Capitol paired it with “I Saw Her Standing There” — likely why Judy remembers those two together. They were on the same 45.
• “Please Mr. Postman” by the Marvelettes (Tamla 54046, 1961) was one of Judy’s favorites and became Motown’s first #1 pop hit. She couldn’t remember the label’s name, but she remembered it was yellow. She was right.
• Tamla and Motown: Berry Gordy founded Tamla in Detroit in 1959 (he wanted “Tammy,” but the name was taken), then launched Motown and ran both as sister labels. Tamla was home to the Marvelettes, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, and carried on into the ’70s before being folded into Motown in the early ’80s.
• The 1964 New York World’s Fair: Judy, Curt and Joyce went with their church’s Luther League after the national Luther League convention at Cobo Hall in Detroit. Leader Linwood Beck added New York to make the trip worthwhile — and marched everyone out of the first hotel, where the boys’ rooms had mattresses on the floor and no sheets. They also saw the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building.
• Class of ’66: at their 50th reunion, the DJ kept playing late-’60s rock, assuming that’s what they wanted. They kept asking for older — for this class, the music was 1957–62.
• Taped dictation: at the mental health center, psychologists recorded reports on tape and staff like Judy transcribed them by typewriter, headset on.

Names & Places

Curious who’s who, or where these places are? See the full names and places index for this part.

Theme song by Kevin Hahn.