History Hotdish Ep. 40 - The Atkinson Family

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to History Hot Dish, a casual conversation about the
historic people and events that give Bismarket's unique flavor. History
Hot Dish is brought to you by the Bismarck Historical Society,
a local nonprofit whose mission is to learn, preserve, and
promote the history of Bismarck. Sit back, turn up the
volume and enjoy another helping of History Hot Dish.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Welcome to another episode of History Hot Dish. I'm your
host Kate Waldera, a member of the Bismarck Historical Society's
Board of Directors. Today's episode is a special version of
History Hot Dish where we feature another important project of
the Bismarck Historical Society, the Prairie Pioneers Early Families of

(00:44):
Bismarck Programs. The Prairie Pioneers Project is a video collection
of twenty interviews with current family members from some of
Bismarck's early and influential families and residents. The Prairie Pioneer's
Early Family Only's a Bismarck project was funded through a
donation by Chad and Stacy Walker of Bismarck, a Cultural

(01:07):
Heritage grant through the State Historical Society of North Dakota
and donations from local history enthusiasts. The project was done
in collaboration with Matt Fern and his team at the
Creative Treatment. Matt is joining me today in the studio
to help bring you another tasty helping of history hot dish,

(01:29):
and of course, another wonderful partner in this project has
been the Dakota Media Access, where you can find each
of The Prairie Pioneer's original ten episodes, along with ten
new families and their stories of Bismarck that began airing
on Community Access in December. Matt, thank you for joining

(01:49):
me today to share some of your work with our audience.
For your listeners, please take a moment to introduce yourself
from the role that you played in this wonderful collection
of interviews and videos.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
Thanks for having me, Kate. I'm Matt Fern. I'm born
and raised here in Bismarck. It's my favorite city in
the whole world, and I've been running the Creative Treatment
for about fifteen years here in Bismarck. We do a
lot of ads across the state and across the country,
as well as podcasts and documentaries. My main my main

(02:24):
passion has always been telling the stories of North Dakota.
I did a docuseries called Daily to Codin that kind
of started out my whole my whole filmmaking career, and
so when the opportunity to do Prey Pioneers came up,
I jumped on it. A lot of these names Walked
or Woodman, See, they have been around, you know, the

(02:46):
Bismarck community, my whole life, and so to put a
face to the name, to humanize and to actually hear
the story behind those names was really exciting, and so
I'm very grateful to be part of the project. And
it wasn't just me. I have a great team working
with me as well as the Bismarck Historical Society and
Dakota Media Access. But this has been just a really

(03:09):
awesome project where the Bismarck community has come together and
some of the histories.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Of these families have just been very unique, very interesting,
and as always, everyone learns a lot of about the
families and their important part that they played. Today's episode
of History Hot Dish will feature the Atkinson family, a
name well known throughout Bismarck's history, including today, we'll hear

(03:39):
stories about three generations of Atkinson family members who helped
shape Bismarck into the community it is today fourth's generation.
Atkinson family members who share their voices on this episode
include Tom Atkinson, a fellow member of the Bismarck Historical
Society Board of Directors, and familiar voice fans of history,

(04:01):
Hot Dish, his brother Tim Atkinson, their sister sister Kathleen Atkinson,
and their mother Marjorie. What special highlights do you recall
from the making of this episode.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
My best memory is probably just meeting Marjorie and talking
with her. I think she was up in her late
eighties and nineties during the interview and gave a really
great interview. And I remember her story of seeing the
Bismark capital burn may she remembers that as a little girl.

(04:37):
That was pretty incredible to hear. To just be, you know,
be in the room with history while she tells those stories, right,
A lot of these are kind of second, third hand accounts,
and so it was great interviewing her and then just
her whole family. I think everyone knows in Atkinson's one
way or the other, and all of them have made

(04:59):
such a great impact on Bismarck, you know, and you
know Patrick's in Guatemala, I forget the minister and the
Margins is started by another one of them, and just
that family really walks the walk on service and they

(05:20):
really do put family in our community first here in Bismarck.
And even Marjorie has since passed away, but after the
interview she made a donation, a small donation to help
the show continue on, and that meant a lot to
me that, you know, she she wanted these stories to
keep going. But the Atkinson family are incredible. I just

(05:45):
think of warmth and love when I think of just.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
Another fine example of giving back to the community, you know,
and making it better, you know, in so many ways.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
Yeah, and a lot of the you know, ones we
talk about are giving back financially, and I feel Atkinson's
definitely give back financially, but they really give back in
service in looking at them, and so that was really inspiring.
And again another family that you see their name around,
you see their impact around Bismarck to this day.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Well, and we can thank Myron Atkinson to their father.
His dream was the Bismarck Historical Society, you know, so
he was one of the people, if not the person
you know that got the whole organization of the Bismarck
Historical Society up and running, you know, so we can

(06:35):
thank him for that as well and enjoy the episode
on the Atkinson family from the Prairie Pioneers series.

Speaker 4 (06:46):
Bismarck. My childhood was called the Avenue B Gang, and
I could walk from my house on First Street in
Avenue B three blocks to get to Cathedral School, and
without even going off that road, we had fifty eighth
grade school children.

Speaker 5 (07:41):
Timothy Ralph or T. R. Atkinson was a professional engineer
who arrived in Bismarck with his family in nineteen oh six.
Tr became the State Engineer in nineteen seven, as responsible
for upgrading the city's water distribution system, along with overseeing
the design and construction of many buildings and roads throughout Bismarck.

(08:03):
His son, Myron, was one of Bismarck's senior administrative officials
for thirty two years. Myron's son, Myron Junior, established Atkinson
Nature Park, served in the state legislature, and was a
border attorney for Sante Lexis Hospital and the University of Mary. T. R.

Speaker 6 (08:22):
Atkinson started as a civil engineer formal education on the
East Coast came to Fargo, became the first city engineer
for Fargo, then moved to Bismarck in nineteen oh four
to become the first state engineer is what we now
call him. They used to call him the water engineer

(08:42):
back then, and he had that job for four years
and got fired. He then ended up becoming the city
engineer for the city of Bismarck, the county engineer for
Burley County back then they used to call them highway engineers,
and also did other projects. Basically, no one job paid
enough to be full time, so he had to take

(09:04):
on all sorts of different jobs to do it. Okay,
I ran across some of his original survey work as
I was doing the research. He actually was responsible for
the design of the old Old Highway ten, which from Bismarck.

(09:26):
Not only is it the old Highway ten, it's the
old old Highway ten. He did the design work out
to Minoken. He was the engineer on record. He turned
out to be the engineer on record for the original
buildings to the Bismarck Indian School, which it's amazed me
the number of times I have found folks who didn't

(09:47):
even know we had an Indian School here in Bismarck.
He built several water treatment plants in small towns around
the area. He was actively involved in the fight with
Alexander McKenzie over the City of Bismarck water plant water
distribution system, and basically was the bad guy when the

(10:10):
City of Bismarck decided to take over the water treatment plant.
Got dragged through that one, got badly beat up. I
remember my Grandma Barth actually talking about how tr was
badly treated because he was an enemy of Alexander mackenzie,
and that's just the way it was back then. He

(10:31):
died of a heart attack in the office. If just
recently last Saturday here we had one hundred and fiftieth
anniversary of the City of Bismarck, and up on the
wall they had a drawing of the original airport as
laid out. Tr Atkinson was a designed engineer for that one,
so you know that's how far up to the work

(10:53):
he did. Lo And behold here I'm sitting at the
Minister of Historical Society and I run across an original
drawing from eighteen eighteen ninety nine. It is the first
plat of the city of Moorhead. Minnesota, done by Timothy
Ralph Atkinson, that had been my great grandfather. My son

(11:18):
was with me at the time, and so I sat
and said, look at this. This is an original plat
that's his handwriting everything. This is your great great grandfather
did this work. It was like.

Speaker 4 (11:34):
Wow, both of our grandfathers had died before any of
us kids were born, so the grandmothers were part of this.
But that put me into a sense of Bismarck history.
Like I grew up with the names of the school,
so Janette Myriad, Dorothy Moses. These weren't people that were

(12:01):
famous or schools or anything. They were Graham and NaN's friends.

Speaker 7 (12:05):
You know.

Speaker 4 (12:06):
I think Stella Man was not the leader of the
Bismarck Tribune. She was where I went with my grandmother
for pie after civic music. So the grandmothers had that
type of historic peace and rootedness. They also were part

(12:26):
of Bismarck's strong women. There were some very strong women,
Finny tavis Man, Sorely Atkins, and Barthon. These were the
movers and the shakers. Many of them had were had

(12:48):
come from pretty poor families, came into Bismarck and worked
their way up the Social Ladder.

Speaker 8 (13:00):
For our guests that have joined us. You're listening to
a special serving of History Hot Dish on Radio Access
one or two point five FM. I'm Matt Fern, a
producer of Prairie Pioneers, and I have joined the host
of History Hot Dish, Kate Wildera in the studio here
at Dakota Media Access to discuss the Bismarck Historical Society's

(13:21):
video series titled Prairie Pioneers.

Speaker 9 (13:27):
He loved his work, He really enjoyed it. He didn't
do any that he didn't love. He didn't do custody
or anything like that. He liked development so much and
business and I never worked so well when he was

(13:49):
in the service for two and a half years when
we were first married. After four years of college and
two years of being trained to be a lawyer, he
had graduated, and then the Army and their wisdom put

(14:09):
him in the medical Corps. He could say he could
deliver a baby, he could do anything, and that's not
what he wanted to do it. He managed to get
into the legal department and from there he got into
the jag and that was what he loved and was
good at and spent his time and service and the

(14:33):
judge advocate car came home and loved, loved the law,
but he didn't want to be doing anything mess that
he would like to be doing the.

Speaker 6 (14:46):
Oh, you know.

Speaker 9 (14:48):
Business law.

Speaker 4 (14:50):
My sense of the Atkinson family really gets described in
a couple of words, and one is a weness, okay,
a group. Not only were there six of us born
in eight years, so that puts you all moving together,
and then a seventh one coming along, but the Atkinson

(15:12):
family lived with our two grandmothers and they were a
part of the family. So having both moms mom and
dad's mom, so you start with a group of about
nine and that's how we functioned. We were active. We
were always encouraged to be very active. And I think

(15:33):
because of who mom and dad were and who we
were just born in to be. You I say, some
people are academic families and some are maybe music families
or athletic families, and the Atkinsons weren't any of those.
We were groupies. We were joined. We were Girl Scouts

(15:57):
and Boy Scouts and four age and projects and clubs
and always involved in that type of stuff.

Speaker 6 (16:06):
My dad was actively involved in Bismarck. Sister Kathy and
I one of her stories. We would joke because my
dad would sit there. Sometimes he'd get very frustrated with us.
He was a very loving man, very compassionate man, but
he would get frustrated, and ever so often he would
suddenly get mad and go, that's it, you know, either

(16:27):
tell me yes, no, or go to hell. Kathy and
I often speculated what would happen if we picked door
number three and see what would have happened there.

Speaker 7 (16:37):
I was a little bit older, but I remember I
was out with my dad's car, probably I was a
senior in high school and sitting at the breakfast table,
and he went out to leave goodbye. He said, I'm
going to work. And he came back in and he

(16:58):
had a can of beer and he put it on
a breakfast table in front of me and said, I
think you forgot this in the car, and then he
left and went to work. That's sort of the way,
you know. The message was across without any hysterics, so
pretty even yielded. It took a lot to get something

(17:20):
more drastic than that.

Speaker 5 (17:24):
Helped tell the stories of Bismarck's past and become a
financial sponsor of this program. Contact info at Bismarckistory dot
org to learn more.

Speaker 6 (17:38):
When you talk about a person, I always think of
a person in terms they talk about a person donating time,
talent and treasure. And in most cases people get kind
of focused on the treasure. You know, how much did
you donate here? How did you do that?

Speaker 9 (17:59):
Well?

Speaker 6 (17:59):
I believe my dad's real ability was his ability to
do time and talent. You take something like the Clem
Casey estate. Clem Casey developed a lot of this land
up in this area where this building is. He had
the talent to start that development, and then he developed

(18:19):
in a state that had a lot of money in it.
My dad was able to take his time, dedicated a
lot of time to the Clem Caasya state, and his
talent to develop continue developing the Clem Casey estate. Well,
the money from the Clem Casey estate over the years
has gone to the Catholic schools in Bismarck. That donation

(18:43):
has worked up to around twenty million dollars, not brought
forward for inflation. Those are actual numbers. It's a beautiful
gift that's been given to Bismarck. And my dad was
able to use his talent and do needed his time
to make it work. Same with the University of Mary
Saint Alexis Bismarck State College. We weren't able to donate

(19:08):
a lot of money. We didn't have a lot of money,
but my dad was able to donate his time and
he had the talent to develop things. One of his
favorite sayings was he says, everybody says whatever I touch
turns to gold. He goes, they're right. It only takes
thirty forty years to have that happen. And you look
back and you think in terms of my dad developed

(19:31):
Tatley Meadow mobile home Court, very nice mobile home court
on the south side of town. He developed a lot
of the stuff on North State Street, just south of
the Interstate that was all Clem Casey property. He was
involved in the development up on Washington Street and forty
third Avenue. He had property up there again that was

(19:54):
somebody else's property, but he was able to take his
time his talent to develop it and the end result
is very nice additions to Bismarck and good profitable projects
for all involved. So I feel that's what he That
was his unique ability time and talent.

Speaker 9 (20:20):
My earliest memory I can tell you that because I'm
I'm I think the only survivor. I can remember when
the capital burned and we looked out, my mother and
I was three and a half, I think, and I
looked out and there was this black stuff going by

(20:41):
the window, which I told my mother about, and we
she'ld be a good sort, put a code on my
quote on and we went up to the Capitol and
watch it burn. And that's I don't remember coming home,
but I sure remember running up.

Speaker 7 (21:00):
I wasn't born here, but almost and lived here in
the fifties, and lived here in the sixties, lived here
in the seventies, and I absolutely loved Bismarck. At that
time it was much simpler. One of my favorite memories
of earlier Bismarck. We lived in the Cathedral neighborhood, pretty
close to downtown, and almost all commerce at the time

(21:24):
took place in the downtown area. There were a few
little outlying areas, but for the most part, when you
did Christmas shop bang, or birthday shop bang, or just
wanted to have fun, you went to the core of
the downtown for record albums, for school clothes, for boy
scout stuff, for bike tires, even for automobiles. Because the

(21:45):
car dealerships were mostly located right in the center of
downtown back then. So I liked all the vibrancy of
the downtown as it was. And there were so many
little family type restaurant and cafe operations on every corner
and in the middle of the block. And they'd be
little family operations, one to specialize in sloppy Joe's, one

(22:07):
in an apple pie with ice cream, one in meat loaf.
And I think I was talking to Mom recently and
I said, I don't know if you can buy a
tunea melt sandwich in downtown Bismarck today, And I said,
but I And then we listed the different aw Lucas
and fw Wolworths and the Drumstick and Fink's Cafe and Wrestlers,

(22:30):
and we came up with twenty five places where you
could buy a tuna melt sandwich with a plate of
chips and a coke and it was thirty five cents.
And so there was all of this the crazy days
and different things that would take place downtown, and downtown
has sort of contained as it has had very colorful

(22:52):
sections to it which were wonderful for us to ride
our bikes down and explore his kids. Now, those are
the days when you'd go in the alley and you'd
climb the fire escape up to the top of the buildings,
and then you'd scamper around on the roofs and nobody said, hey,
what are you doing up there? You know, it was
just a whole different, more casual environment. Or we could

(23:14):
go down in the basement of the GP Hotel and
that whole block was connected from store to store to store,
and I think that a lot of the connections were
related to the old steam tunnels that used to provide
municipal steam up into the city, and so there were
all these places to explore. The east side of Fifth

(23:35):
Street was a lot rougher than the west side of
Fifth Street, so moms told their kids. You know, it
was a time when they didn't say only go here
and come back, or I'll give you a ride. It
was be home by dinner time or be home by dark,
and then the rest was up to us. We just
filled it with whatever we wanted to do. But the
west side of Fifth Street downtown was pretty stable. The

(23:59):
east side had a small tavern and a small bowling
alley and a little pool hall and It was the
kind of place where if we were on the west
side of Fifth Street, on the east side of Fifth Street,
at ten o'clock in the morning, the doors would fly
open on the tavern and somebody'd come scooting out onto
the sidewalk, or a couple of guys had come out.

(24:20):
We loved it, right, I mean, it was just this
whole different environment we shouldn't. I don't think it's any
secret to mom, but it was a time when if
you were eleven years old, you could go into Finny Drug,
into the big elaborate cigar gowner and buy a fifteen
cent white owl cigar and go smoke it in the
in the alley, and all kinds of fun things to do,

(24:42):
at least fun things to do for people our.

Speaker 4 (24:44):
Age this much. My childhood was called the Avenue B Gang.
And I could walk from my house on First Street
and Avenue B three blocks to get to Cathedral School,
and without even going off that road, we had fifty
eight grade school children seven here, Churchill, eighth, Thorndall Homel,

(25:08):
these big six seven eight children family, and you played,
You had the neighborhood, you played in the street. I
had a sense I did have a sense of, yeah,
of safety, and I almost had a sense that, you know,
Bismock was here, it was here for us. We never

(25:30):
questioned whether or not we should be playing in the street,
you know. It's kind of like, well, that's what you
do in the neighborhood. On the block that we lived in,
I think one of the most significant places was we
had a vacant lot.

Speaker 6 (25:47):
I think they had envisioned alleys at one time, they
never built them, and so consequently it was a vacant lot.
Somebody owned it, but we all called it the vacant lot,
and we'd go play softball out there. The older kids
couldn't do it because they could drive the ball easily
over the fence, but us younger kids good. We'd also

(26:08):
build forts out there, snow forts, and do little things
like that.

Speaker 7 (26:13):
I remember we'd go over for Mass in the morning
sometimes and there'd be women that would come at about
four four point thirty in the morning and start from
scratch to prepare the hot lunch for the day. So
right during Mass, the aroma from the whatever castrole or
something they had gotten up early to make it start

(26:34):
working its way up into the church. And if you
go to Cathedral to day to the eight o'clock mass,
you can still often have that aroma come on up
and you know it's for hot lunch.

Speaker 6 (26:45):
Part of the history of Bismarck that I think we
are losing is some of the stuff that went on
very early on on what Edmund Hughes worked on on,
some of his electrical stuff, on the our plant that
used to sit down by the railroad tracks on ce
B Little, how hard he tried to save the river

(27:08):
boat industry that was dying because the railroad basically took
it over, but he worked so hard. Those are things
that we're starting to lose. I mentioned the Bismarck Indian School.
It is very tough to bring up a discussion of
the Bismarck Indian School without having some very strong emotions
about it being brought up.

Speaker 4 (27:30):
I really am a firm believer, and I'm learning it.
Maybe it's part of my aging process, or it's also
part of my formation as a family member. That the
more we look and claim the history of Bismarck, the
more that we can really lift up those values and
that these are new times, but we've we've been through

(27:50):
them before. I think that's really important to call upon
the traditions of some of those people that that did
the hard work of watering the trees during the depression.
You know, I was blessed to hear those stories, the
people that just took buckets of water and kept trees going.

(28:12):
And that's why we have parks now. You know, who
are the people that are in to water the trees today.
That's significant. That's about about being in Atkinson, about being
a bit Edictine, and about being a Bismarcker. We've got
a long, great history of growth, and I do think

(28:33):
that some of those early pioneers would come back because
I could go up to Saint Mary's Cemetery, a mom's
side of the family, it really goes back five generations,
and then on dad's side of the family goes three generations.
And then we have all these other families that we
just take flowers too because they've been part of us.

(28:55):
And that's you know, that's part of honoring the past,
honoring the past, and just I think believing in the
present in the future. That's it, and it's a good one.

Speaker 9 (29:09):
I had a very happy life. I'm very grateful, good family,
good friends, good marriage, good kids. I'm also very sentimental.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
Matt, Thank you again for joining me today. Please tell
our audience where they can find the video versions of
each of the Prairie Pioneer programs.

Speaker 3 (29:49):
Yeah, everyone can. The best place to go is going
to be Bismarckhistory dot org, the Bismarck Historical Society's website.
There you'll have a link to the YouTube page, which
is Bismark Historical Society, and there you can watch all
the past episodes of Prey Pioneers, as well as other
programs produced by the Bismarck Historical Society.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
Thank you for listening to History Hot Dish If you
like what you heard. The Bismark Historical Society hosts programs
and events throughout the year. We welcome all those with
an interest in local history to join us. For more
information about programs or membership, visit our website Bismarkhistory dot
org or find us on Facebook. You can find History
Hot Dish on one o two point five FM, Radioaccess

(30:31):
dot org and anywhere you find great podcasts. History Hot
Dish is produced by the Bismark Historical Society in partnership
with Dakota Media Access