THOMAS ELLIG Narrator

JAMES E. FOGERTY Interviewer

THOMAS ELLIG Narrator

JAMES E. FOGERTY Interviewer

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Thomas Ellig.

THE INTERVIEW  

 

 

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Thomas Ellig

Narrator

James E. Fogerty

Interviewer

November 19, 2013

Redwood Falls, Minnesota

Thomas Ellig -TE

James E. Fogerty -JEF

Today is November 19, 2013. I am James E. Fogerty, and today I am interviewing Thomas Ellig

for the Minnesota Historical Society. The interview is taking place at Tom’s home in Redwood

Falls, Minnesota.

JEF: We are going to talk mainly, as you know, about your career at MHS, but I always like,

whether I’m doing an interview with somebody at MHS or the Federal Reserve Bank, or

wherever, to put them a little in context, because nobody was born at the organization. So, tell

me a little about where you grew up and where you went to school and all that sort of thing.

TE: Actually, I was born in a hospital that no longer exists. My dad was a state game warden up

in Ely. I was born in the little town of Winton, which is literally at the end of the road on

Highway 169 by Ely, at a little community hospital. I was born there, and that building is all

gone. Right now, most of the town of Winton is gone.

When I was about two years old my dad took a new station down in Pine City, and we lived

there as I was growing up. That’s where I started school, finished school, and that’s what I

consider to be my home town. And that, too, is where I got involved and started my career with

the Society.

JEF: I do have to tell one thing, though—I heard that in grade school one of your teachers was

Duane Swanson’s mother.

TE: That’s correct. My seventh grade history teacher was Duane Swanson’s mother, and at that

time, for a lot of history teachers, history was the rote memorizations of dates and places and

events and people, but it wasn’t for her. The real value of history is not learning about major

events, but putting them in the context of the people involved, the times involved, the locations,

etc. And that’s where I really got interested in history. I was, in today’s vernacular, probably a

history geek in those days. At that time I can remember when Stumne Mounds and the fur post

were both uncovered and found, and Leland Cooper, who was an archeologist in the

anthropology department at Hamline University was doing the excavations on both of those sites,

and I thought—gee, this is kind of interesting. And my dad had an interest in it, too, so when he

was out on patrol—and those are the days when I could go along with him—we’d stop at those

places, and I kind of got to know Leland. Then, if I had some time, I’d ride my bike out there just

to be a gofer, to watch them and see what was going on. It would have been the summer of 1968.

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That was my junior year in high school. That spring I found out that the Minnesota Historical

Society had acquired the property. Joe Gimpel, who was a long-time representative for that area,

had gotten the money and the appropriation to buy the property and to fund the reconstruction of

the fur post. Our high school counselor was hiring kids, and was kind of the person to go talk to

about getting hired out there. I talked with him, and talked with Leland, and I got hired and

started in the summer of 1968. That was my first year with the Society.

JEF: How old were you at that time?

TE: I would have been sixteen. Then we did reconstruction work there for three years in the

summers, and then I worked a couple of summers there as an interpreter’ When I got done with

college, I worked for two summers as a field worker on the archeology program at Fort Snelling,

and in the fall of 1974, I got on with a permanent position.

JEF: Where did you go to college?

TE: UMD [University of Minnesota Duluth]. I started at the University in the Twin Cities. I

loved history, but I also loved the outdoors, and I thought maybe I’d be a wildlife biologist.

Well, I found out early that my lack of aptitude in math was not going to make that happen, so I

went to my second passion, and transferred up to UMD. I wanted to stay in the university

system, but I didn’t want to stay on the big campus, and actually my brother was graduating at

about that time from UMD, too. So I went up there, enrolled in the history program, got my BA

in history, and went from there.

JEF: So in 1974, what happened to you then? What work did you do at the Society?

TE: I was a cataloguer in the Archaeology Department, and that’s when we were still out in

buildings 27 and 28, the old mule barns. Another fellow, Dean Anderson, and I got hired on a

permanent basis, in the fall of 1974, and our job was to take the artifacts from the excavations at

the Fort Snelling, wash them, clean them, go through them, identify them, and catalog them by

the bags, etc., according to the different levels and different locations that the artifacts were

found. We would do kind of first run analysis of the cultural material that was being found as

part of the excavation work.

I did that for two years until the summer of 1976, when the Society, through legislative action,

acquired the administrative responsibility for the original 7.6 acres of Split Rock Light Station.

That was going to be transferred to MHS and that portion of the station become one of the sites

in our system. I had applied for the district manager position down here at Redwood Falls, as the

southern district manager, in May. I didn’t get hired. A lot of people in the sites division—Donn

Coddington, John Ferguson, Al Galbraith—all knew of my interest in getting back into historic

sites. I had talked to them about that before, and they decided that for the interim when we

acquired the site or took over the administration of Split Rock, we’d have somebody go up there

in a temporary position as site manager, until they could kind of see how all of this was going to

work.

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By the end of that legislative session in May, they knew that they were going to get the site, but

the actual transfer date was the first of August of 1976. And so one Friday afternoon Al came up

to where we were working out at the Long Barracks, I think. He said—why don’t you stop in

during your lunch hour—I want to talk to you. And I thought—what the heck. Al and I knew

each other personally. Who knows what Al was going to talk about? So I popped in, and John

Ferguson was sitting there in his office. John said—how would you like to go up to the North

Shore? And, you know, I didn’t know what the heck they were talking about. And then they told

me that the Society had taken over Split Rock Lighthouse. John told me that they planned to

assign a site manager on a temporary basis. He said he knew I was interested in it. He also said,

“If you’re interested in relocating up there, I can’t guarantee it, but I can tell you that when it

comes time to hire a permanent site manager, there is probably a ninety-nine percent chance

you’re going to get it.”

You know how we operated in those days. I kind of felt like I’d died and gone to heaven. So Al

suggested that I go home and talk to Char about it. So I did that afternoon, and Char and I both

looked at each other, and I think it took us all of about five minutes to decide that yes, this is

what we wanted to do. I enjoyed the Society, and wanted to work with the Society because of its

reputation. Neither one of us were big city people. Char grew up in Duluth, so when we went up

there we thought—boy, we’re going back. Her mom lived there, two of her brothers still lived

there, and this was just a dream come true for us. And so I agreed to take the job. It turned out

that that was the same day that my dad was retiring from the conservation department as a game

warden, and we were having this big retirement party. So, when we went to that retirement party

it was kind of funny, because my mom and dad could sense that there was something going on

with the two of us, but I didn’t want to announce it then and ruin his party. So at the end of the

night, before Char and I went home, they both said—what’s going on with you two? And so we

told them, and it was kind of funny how it all worked out.

JEF: That was a big move for you at that time.

TE: It was. It was a big move. I remember Char and Al and I went up one day, just to see the

layout, get to meet some of the DNR people there and get a feel for it. Al and I went up another

day to start planning and working out some details. When the weekend came for us to make the

actual move, my brother and his wife came and helped us. We rented a U-Haul, packed up our

meager belongings, at that time, and headed north.

JEF: Where did you live when you got up there?

TE: We lived at the light station. There were three dwellings built as part of the original light

station. At the center house of the three, DNR had done a lot of restoration work and a lot of

renovation, and the park manager was living in that house. The third house, the one farthest from

the lighthouse, was vacant, and we moved into that one and then the one closest was one that we

had plans to do restoration work on and make it a part of the visitor experience. Right from the

first, really, there was an awareness that we were going to take over the station. We didn’t get to

that until about 1980, but we lived in that third house. Then—it would have been about two years

after we were there; the park manager who was there was taking a new position. At that point

MHS was going to take over all of the buildings there, and so Char and I moved into the middle

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house, and then the third house we converted into our office and storage area and kind of our

work center for the Society.

JEF: What was the relationship like with DNR? This was kind of a new relationship, wasn’t it,

for MHS, taking over a site on what had been DNR property?

TE: It was, and you know, Jim, that was the era from about 1975 and 1976 through 1980, when

we had a lot of sites that became part of our network that were originally state parks. We

administered sites within state parks with the park operating around it. When we first acquired

the site, the original light station acreage was 7.6 acres. And about three years after we were

there, we passed some more legislation that gave MHS the administrative control of the parking

lot, because that was all built to be used for visitors coming to the lighthouse. And so we ended

up with the site, right now, at about 25 acres, or thereabouts.

I would say our working relationship depended a lot on the people who held the respective field

positions. I think what I observed was that both on the part of the Society and on the part of

DNR, central office people basically recognized the fact that if this is going to work it’s going to

depend on the ability of the field people to get along on a day-to-day basis, and so they basically

said—you guys figure out how to operate this, and whatever you need, you come to us. And

that’s basically how we operated.

The park manager’s name was Earl Jernigan, and he was the manager when I got up there. The

first park manager that had been at Split Rock – Frank Watring - was still living in the area. He

was actually the park manager down at Gooseberry, so he was still in the area. He was a valuable

resource in terms of asking questions about how did you do this and where did you get that. And

we did, we all got along real well. Obviously, we didn’t always agree on what was going to be

done, but we worked things out, and it was, I thought, a pretty smooth transition.

JEF: Tell me a little of what it was like, because as you just mentioned, the MHS Historic Sites

Network was—I don’t think they even used the word at the time—was just evolving at that time.

What was it like being around at that time? Donn Coddington and John Ferguson were sort of, as

I recall, making it up as they went along. There was no blueprint.

TE: No, you’re right. There certainly wasn’t. And if you were a person like I was whose mind

was set to have a career in historic sites, it was one of the most exciting times, not only to be in

our Historic Sites Division, but just to be in historic sites, period. And it was. We didn’t have

what we called our formal state Historic Sites Network, until—I think that was early 1990s,

maybe mid-‘90s, where through legislative authorization we created what we called the Historic

Sites Network. By statute, MHS is responsible for all of those sites in that network, and we’ve

got some sites that are not in it, but which we also operate as part of it. At any rate it was just an

exciting time, because we were trying to develop a concept of defining sites we needed to really

help us interpret and preserve Minnesota’s history. At the same time that we were acquiring

them, we were also trying to do either reconstruction or preservation work to take care of the

physical assets, while also developing the interpretive programming, and doing the research for

the individual sites. Sometimes it was really hard to sort all that out in terms of whether you were

doing something for a specific site as compared to something for developing the network as a

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whole. We were acquiring—let’s see—Split Rock and Birch Coulee came in 1976, Meighen

Store in 1977, and Traverse des Sioux in 1980. The Hill House was acquired in the late 1970s.

I’ll bet you that from 1975 to 1985 we had to have been acquiring a site just about every year.

And so it was exciting, but it was very challenging at the same time.

The one thing I was really starting to notice, though, which I think is also very true today, is that

people still have such a strong interest in historic sites. It’s that old well-worn cliché of “history

where it happened,” but people make that connection when they can be in the actual location

where the event took place or the person lived who they had been studying and hearing about in

history all of their life. There was a real driving force in the legislature, too. That was one of

Russell Fridley’s strengths. He was very astute. He wanted to develop the Minnesota Historical

Society. I’m not sure that Russell wanted to create one of the premiere societies in the country,

but he wanted to develop a very strong, functional, sustainable organization that people who

were interested in researching and learning more about history could come to. He wanted it to be

a public asset, so there wasn’t going to be a fee for them to do that. And Russell knew that in

terms of building a lot of facilities in Saint Paul or Minneapolis, in an urban area, he was not

going to get the support to do that unless he was giving some of his rural legislators something as

well. He recognized that a lot of those historic areas of Minnesota that were important to telling

Minnesota’s history were in rural Minnesota. So, in terms of how we acquired sites, I think that

there was probably a little bit of that political wheeling and dealing going on, but when I look at

the system now, whether people would agree or disagree, we acquired a lot of sites that were

critical to telling the stories of Minnesota. When I look back on it, I think we had a pretty high

degree of success in reaching the goals and the objectives that we were setting at that time.

JEF: Tell me what it was like—MHS had always been such a Twin Cities-centric organization. I

mean, 690 Cedar [the Society’s headquarters building in St. Paul] was there and everything, and

all of a sudden it’s got staff, like you, who are many miles away from the head office. What was

it like in those early evolutionary days, when you weren’t going even just to the mule barns, but

you were way out there in the field. You were on your own. Tell me what kind of coordination

developed. How did Coddington and Ferguson relate to their site managers at that time?

TE: Well—and again I think it comes back to management styles—but John Ferguson’s

background was in construction. John was very honest about it—he said, you know, I got hired

because we were developing a Historic Sites Network and we needed to do a lot of building

restoration and a lot of it was construction oriented. He knew it well, after the many years he’d

been with the Army Corps of Engineers. And so John’s philosophy was—Listen, as we’re doing

this physical development I’m going to be more involved and more hands-on, because that’s my

background. But when it comes to the public relations and the development of programs, etc.,

that’s one of the reasons I’m hiring you guys, the historians, because that’s what I want you guys

to do. And he said, again, how successful you are is going to be determined largely on how well

you can work with your public and your audience in the close proximity of your sites. He was

basically real hands-off. He said—if you have a problem, you come to me and let’s work it out.

If you need something, come to me and tell me and I’ll help you get the resources that you need.

But other than that, basically, it was—Here’s the key; go and do it. There was a lot of similarity

as I talked to people coming to work in the state parks at that time. A lot of their experiences

were the same thing. Guys my age would say—when I started, my regional supervisor would

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give me the keys and say, if this doesn’t open the gate you figure out how to open up the gate,

and then you figure out how to run your park. And it was a lot like that for us, too. At times I

know some people would ask if we didn’t feel like we were abandoned out there. And I would

say, no, not really, because I knew I could pick up the phone and I could call people in the Twin

Cities. One of the other things that I learned is that what was important was not only to build up

that working relationship to the people in the Historic Sites Division, but also to the people in the

archives and manuscripts department and in research and in programming—you know, all of our

MHS staff—and build that network, so that just as I could pick up the phone and talk to

Ferguson or, at that time, to Nancy Eubank or somebody else, I could do that with other staff

people in the MHS. I found that was very helpful over the course of the years. We were just

acquiring sites so fast that, if anything, we weren’t taking a breather to kind of assess what we

were doing, and we didn’t really start doing that until many years after.

JEF: How much interaction did you have in those days with Donn Coddington himself?

TE: A fair amount, because Donn was really a historian, even though he was a minister by trade

and teaching. But he had such a strong interest in history, and Donn was always interested in

terms of what was going on. Obviously I would see John Ferguson more frequently, but

whenever I came into Saint Paul, and I was in the central office, Donn always made time to ask

what was happening. He would say, “You know, I can see a report here and there, I can hear

something from John, but tell me from your perspective what’s been happening and how things

are going.” We were the FHA—Field Services, Historic Sites and Archaeology Division at that

time and Donn had responsibility for all of it. I came to understand as I took different jobs that

the demands of an administrator meant that even though your passion and the reason you got into

the field was because of your interest in history, you didn’t always get to do a lot of that history

work as you became more and more involved in administration.

JEF: In those early days, as you began adding sites, did the concept of getting site managers

together for regular or even irregular meetings—how did that evolve?

TE: When I started up at Split Rock, we had a northern and a southern district manager, and at

that time we didn’t have a lot of full-time site managers. A lot of the sites in the southern part of

the state when we acquired them had just seasonal site managers who were there while the sites

were open to the public. But from about the mid-1970s, when we started acquiring a lot of sites,

that’s when the whole concept and the recognition that if we were going to develop these sites

and interpret them and use them in the manner that we were envisioning, we needed to have full-

time staff there. Steve Osman was on as site manager at Fort Snelling. I was hired full-time at

Split Rock. John Rivard, who was the northern district manager, was also the site manager for

Lindbergh. Grand Mound came on-line about 1975, and Caprice Glazer was hired as site

manager full-time up there. We did a fall and a spring meeting in the northern district. John

Rivard put it together because we had a lot of full-time site managers. By about 1977 or 1978 we

had a number of full-time site managers, and I would say it was roughly then when we started

doing site manager meetings. Usually that was also an opportunity to bring everybody down and

get them together at the headquarters, and so a lot of our site manager meetings were there.

Over the course of time, however, we said—this is a good opportunity for us to get a lot of our

site managers out to our various sites, because we didn’t have much time to do that in the

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summertime when we were always busy working. We started doing site manager meetings, I

would say probably in the early 1980s, and started to do them out around at different sites. It was

when Rachel Tooker came on as the head of the Historic Sites Division that she said—I think it’s

important that we get our people together at least three times a year. So we would do like an

early fall, a winter, and then a spring meeting. We skipped the summer because, again,

everybody was pretty busy, so we started that three-times-a-year round of meetings, and started

to move them around the state so we got a chance to see all of the sites.

JEF: How long did you stay at Split Rock?

TE: For six years. We went up there in August of 1976. Bob Tiling, who was hired in 1976—he

was the person I’d mentioned earlier. I had interviewed for the district manager position down

here in southwest Minnesota and didn’t get it, and Bob is the one who was hired. Bob left to go

back to school in 1976, and this position came open. Well, there were some things yet to be done

at Split Rock. I’d done a lot, and I knew that, but I wanted the challenge of managing and

working with more than just one site, so when that position came open down here I applied for it

and got hired. So we were there almost exactly six years.

JEF: That must have been quite a little move. I mean, here you are moving from the North Shore

down to southwest Minnesota. Now where were you based at that time, when you moved down

here?

TE: We were based at the Lower Sioux Agency Historic Site. The site manager there was still a

part-time position. And so when I was hired and came down, I was site manager for Lower Sioux

as well as the southern district manager. My office was out of there, and at that time the sites that

I was working with were those in the southern third of the state, primarily. There was Upper

Sioux, Lower Sioux, Lac qui Parle, Mayo House, Harkin Store, and Fort Ridgely, and so my

traveling as a district manager was a little bit more confined. Then in 1996, when we had some

site manager change at Forestville—Rachel was the head of our division at that time—she told

me that she was going to add Forestville into the mix for my district. It was about two years later

when we got the money to redevelop Jeffers Petroglyphs, and so that also became one of my

sites. It became a full-time site manager position then at that time as well. And so I worked out

of here, and for most of my travel, I was out during the day and back at night, and wasn’t doing a

lot of the traveling or working with sites statewide that I did in my later years.

JEF: But it must have been quite a challenge to be charged with developing and running a site

with its own specific needs, wants, and complications, and then also being charged, at the same

time, with spending part of your time—which the other site managers did not have to—traveling

and keeping abreast of all that was going on with them. That must have been quite a job.

TE: It was, and one of the things that I was looking for, was that kind of a challenge, Jim. That’s

when I had the opportunity to really start to appreciate Donn Coddington and John Ferguson and

what they did in their positions. I wasn’t responsible for the day-to-day operations and

development work and planning for all those sites, that rested with others, but I was responsible

for helping them get to the point of achieving what their dreams and goals were for those sites,

just as I did at Split Rock when I looked to others to assist me to do that. That was very

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educational, and I enjoyed doing it as well. But to be able to shift from thinking about multiple

sites in the longer term to thinking of one site in a little bit shorter time, it was a constant

challenge. And sometimes I’d find myself thinking OK, I’m going to do this and I’m going to do

that, while I was thinking about Lower Sioux, and after I thought about it I said—no, I’m really

thinking about the district manager position, and so I’d have to shift gears and kind of refocus.

I’m not sure that at the time I would have said it was fun. While I was looking for that kind of a

challenge, I’m not sure I would have said it was fun doing it, but I enjoyed it.

JEF: As a regional manager, did you have more contact with Coddington, Ferguson, and the

Twin Cities folks than you would have as an average site manager?

TE: Yes, a lot. When I was at Split Rock my focus was Split Rock, and while I did have an

interest in the larger picture of historic sites, my responsibilities were only for that site. Once I

got to this position and when, for instance, the legislature gave us bonding money to do

development work at three different sites that may have been in my district, all of a sudden I’m

working with all of those, and so I’m traveling and making those connections, whether it’s on

phone or face-to-face, with the other people involved in those projects on a more regular basis.

So I was working with Donn and was working with Nancy Eubank, who was head of our

interpretation programming for historic sites at that time. There also were the individual research

historians—when I was up at Split Rock, Steve Hall was the research historian who was doing

the research and writing and developing the interpretive programs up there. Well, when I got to a

district manager position I was working with the next level up, which was Nancy, but also Marx

Swanholm and Steve. I was working with both of them almost on a regular basis with different

sites. So that’s where I really learned how to try and keep multiple balls in the air, to become,

really, a juggler at that time, keeping all of these things in the air without letting something drop

to the ground.

JEF: Tell me a little bit about what you found when you arrived, specifically, at Lower Sioux,

because, looking from Saint Paul as I always did, MHS’s relationship with American Indian

communities evolved over the years from being fairly rudimentary to a lot more complex. And I

can remember all of the talk, even in Saint Paul, as Nancy began working with you and others to

reformulate interpretation at sites like that. Tell me what you found at Lower Sioux and how that

kind of evolved as a site, and the interpretation of its place within Minnesota history changed a

little over time.

TE: Well, I had some knowledge of American Indian history in Minnesota and the relationships,

those cultural relationships, but while I was aware of it, I didn’t have the details, so one of the

first things I did when I got here was to do a lot more research to help educate myself about the

history and about some of the challenges that we would be facing. I think one of the things that

was most surprising to me is that we didn’t do more with the site as a whole. The site is 240-

some acres, and what I came to understand was that the intent for that site was to use the

interpretive center as the primary and, in the case of some people, as the sole tool for

interpretation at the site. And it struck me that that was very odd, because here we had so many

resources available to us to have a more engaging and an in-depth program, and we weren’t

using it. That surprised me. The other thing was that Lower Sioux was first acquired in 1967, and

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then the initial development, the building, was built in 1969. The actual first full-blown exhibit

wasn’t installed until 1971 and 1972.

That was a period of time when there was certainly a lot of social upheaval, not only in the

American Indian community, also in US history, period. I was looking at how did all of that

come together, and I recognized that there was a real interest on the part of the people at the

Lower Sioux Reservation, the Lower Sioux community, to be more involved with the site. But

there were so many things going on that it was hard to get people involved. There were areas

within the center, when it was first built, that were to be set aside just for the community to come

in and say here’s what we want to do in this part of the building. I’d heard that there were some

people in the community who thought it would be great to have a stuffed buffalo in that building.

They wanted to get a buffalo, have it mounted, put it in the corner, and do some interpretation

with it, because of the importance of the buffalo to American plains Indians. And that didn’t

happen.

I learned early on that while there was the desire on the part of the Society and part of the

community to do something collaboratively, they still hadn’t figured out how to talk to each

other to make that come about. We were both living in our own separate worlds. So I tried to

start making more contacts with the community here at Lower Sioux. It was at a time, too, when

we were starting to realize the importance of more collaboration in telling those stories and

telling them from a multi-cultural perspective. And I think that was the time - at least my

interpretation is - that the guilt factor was really starting with MHS. Staff felt that if we are going

to interpret, we are not responsible and we don’t have the right to interpret and tell the story of

other cultures and other peoples. We need to engage them more and that while we’ve got the

resources to do this development, and we’ve got all of the technical people to develop exhibits

and do interpretive programming, we can’t do justice to the story if we aren’t involving the

people whose story we are telling. It was sort of coming toward the end of Nancy Eubank’s

career, but she recognized that, too, and had a strong desire to get Indian people more involved.

Coming back, specifically, to Lower Sioux, we had, as part of our system, the Lower Sioux

Agency site, the Upper Sioux Agency site, and Fort Ridgely—all sites that were directly related

to the history of Indian people, but we also had sites directly related to one of the most

significant Minnesota events, the 1862 US-Dakota war. So it was also kind of challenging to

keep those two separate, and to deal with the fact that we needed to be interpreting that event, but

that whole event was totally separate than telling the story of Dakota people. And those lines,

when we first started, were blurred, and I would say it’s been in the last ten-to-fifteen years that

we’ve really made progress on the parts of both communities and both cultures to ensure that we

separate those lines when we are telling stories, and acquiring sites, etc.

JEF: It must have been interesting finding your way into the Indian community. It’s one thing to

talk to the Rotary in Redwood Falls or something like that to get support, but here you were, I

would think, kind of treading new territory, because in some cases there hadn’t been much

conversation, as you said, between MHS and the Native communities in any substantive way.

TE: You’re right. There really wasn’t.

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JEF: When did you come into contact with Ernie and Vernell Wabasha?

TE: Very early-on, when I started with this, when I came down here. For many years, when

Ralph Shaver was hired as the first district manager down here, he hired a lady from the

community named Alameda Good Thunder to be his secretary. She had retired, probably about a

year before I came. But Alameda was just a sweetheart, and she came over to introduce herself to

me when I first moved down here, and that was a godsend, to have Alameda, because she was a

person I could go to. She and her husband Art were longstanding, highly thought of, not only as

tribal elders, but just as human beings within the Dakota community here at Lower Sioux. So I

could go to Alameda with any kind of a question or just sit down and talk with her, and she was

very willing to introduce me to other people within the community.

It was within two years after I came down here that Ernie and Vernell moved back to the

community to live full-time. It didn’t take Vernell long to get to know who I was, and vice-versa.

I had always heard of her, and I had seen her a bit when they would be back occasionally. But I

didn’t really get to know either one of them until after they moved back here. Vernell had long

connections with the Minnesota Historical Society. She had been working with them already,

and she was developing even more and more interest in the Society and working with us. So I

think she saw an opportunity to work with me locally, but also that I was going to be a conduit to

Saint Paul, so it was an interesting relationship. I would say they were the first two people who I

got to know, and the next person was Dave Larson, because Dave was very active in the

community here. I think that they started the bingo hall in 1984. The casino games started in

1987, and Dave was tribal council chairman at that time. I think he probably was elected

chairman about 1985 or 1986, somewhere in there. Dave was also a person who was very

interested in working with other communities and other organizations in terms of helping people

understand Dakota history and Dakota culture and Dakota people, and so we developed a

relationship and I would say those were probably the three key people for me in those early

years.

Then, over the course of the years I got to working more directly with the tribal council. In my

opinion there was a direct relationship between the opening of the community and the

development of the casino. It started as a professional bingo operation, and then developed into

full-blown gaming, and that would have been in the late 1980s—about 1987 or 1988. They were

working with the community around the area. It was becoming more of an open community at

Lower Sioux, in that there were a lot more non-Indian people coming into the community for

gaming purposes. A lot of the people there in the community realized that this was going to be an

opportunity to reach out and to contact a lot of white people who normally wouldn’t have any

reason to become more involved with Indian people or Indian communities. So then that started

to open up, and it just kind of evolved.

JEF: What was the relationship like in that time with Upper Sioux?

TE: You know that was altogether different. First of all, in terms of the historic site, it was a site

within a state park. The state park was a relatively small operation. Our operation up there was

relatively small both in terms of space and our commitment to it at that point. Also, what I

learned early-on is that because we had both sites, we had really made the conscious decision to

18

put all of our so-called administrative eggs in one basket, and that was Lower Sioux. In order to

tell the stories of the Indian agencies, of Indian people, that made sense, given where Lower

Sioux was located. It is outside of a state park, closer to a bigger community, closer to the Twin

Cities and a greater number of people, and that was the site we were going to develop. So, Upper

Sioux just, for lack of a better term, in my opinion, fell by the wayside.

It was tough, because it was a site within the state park, so potential visitors who wanted to come

just to the historic site had to buy their vehicle permit, etc., and there was a cost to it, and that

was a time when we really weren’t charging an admission fee at many of our sites. And there

really wasn’t that much of the physical site left. There was one of the duplexes, and so we

restored that and used it as kind of a quasi visitor center, but one of our challenges with Upper

Sioux was—OK, now that we’ve got this building, what do we do with it? It was an historic

structure that we had reconstructed, and so from a visitor perspective that building didn’t really

have visitor amenities. We didn’t have any restrooms up there—visitors had to go down to use

the park building. We had no air conditioning in the building, etc. And the building was the

restored original structure, so it really wasn’t designed to be used as an interpretive center or for

exhibit spaces. We struggled for years with how to deal with that. Do we restore it as a

functioning building of the period? We knew that even that would be limiting to the work of

interpreting the history of that site.

At the same time we were questioning the difference in terms of the historical story to be told

between Upper Sioux and Lower Sioux. They were both Indian agencies, both had been built by

the government to oversee the same Indian reservation, and were both involved in the US-

Dakota War of 1862. If we’re going to focus on Lower Sioux, should we really be putting that

much more money into Upper Sioux? And I would say that we finally came to the conclusion

that what we needed to do with Upper Sioux was not use it so much as an interpretive tool, but to

preserve the historic structures of the site. There was only one there, but through the excavations

that were done there by Dave Nystuen, we knew where the foundations were. We exposed a

number of those, and so that was the site where I think we decided that its real value was just in

preserving the cultural resource and the physical resource and decided really not to do any

further interpretation with it. Subsequently, when we were facing some of our first budget cuts in

the mid-1980s, and we closed three or four sites around the state, Upper Sioux was one of those

that we decided to close and just to hang onto and preserve it.

JEF: How did all of those factors affect your relationship with Upper Sioux? You mentioned the

tribal council and the people at Lower Sioux—how did it affect your relationships—the

Society’s relationships—with the Upper Sioux people, as well?

TE: You know, at that time I would say that there was so much going on within the Upper Sioux

community and a lot of the Dakota communities as a whole that there wasn’t the interest in the

site shown by the Upper Sioux community that there is now. I think the park, while it was still a

relatively small park in the state system, was of more interest because it was a larger entity that

had a lot more activity at it. There wasn’t a great deal of interest in terms of the site at Upper

Sioux. When we closed Upper Sioux, I went and I talked to the community there to see if they

would be interested in managing the site through management contract, and they were not. I

talked with DNR Minnesota Department of Natural Resources]. They weren’t in a position to do

19

it. I talked with the Yellow Medicine County Historical Society. They decided that they didn’t

want to do it, and I think all that was also indicative of the decision that we had come to—that it

was just going to be a very difficult site to try and work with and to do anything other than to

preserve the resource.

JEF: Talk a little, from your perspective out here with your feet on the real ground, about the

society’s evolving relationship with Indian communities around the state. I remember very well

when the Indian Advisory Committee was first created, and this was a big new deal, sort of a

new chapter in trying to formalize the Society’s relationships with both the Ojibwe communities

in the north and the Dakota communities in the south. Did you see any immediate effect of that?

How did that evolve, and how did that affect, do you think, the Society’s work, from the

perspective of someone managing a specific number of sites?

TE: Well, first of all, I think I want to go back and say that the driving force behind that

initiative and that vision was Nina Archabal. Nina is the one who recognized that it was the

Society’s responsibility to work with all people, all cultures, and to work with them as much as

possible, so that what we could offer in terms of preserving and interpreting Minnesota’s history

was useful for all the people of Minnesota. I can remember her talking about that, that very

initiative, that we need to do this. Then it came back down to, specifically, within our Historic

Sites Division, the realization that we’ve got all of these resources and assets spread around

Minnesota, and we’ve got sites, specifically Lower Sioux for Dakota history and Dakota people,

Mille Lacs for Ojibwe people, and some other sites that had more of a connection to Dakota or a

connection to Ojibwe people. Specifically for us in historic sites, we had to figure out how to do

that. I think that’s when we really started to understand, too, that we needed to talk more with

both Ojibwe people and Dakota people and expand our thought process and look at it more

holistically.

I think that, first of all, we needed to be doing something as an organization to send a message to

Indian people in Minnesota that we were serious about this. Our Indian Advisory Committee was

patterned after that of the Science Museum of Minnesota’s, and they had had an Indian Advisory

Committee for quite a few years before MHS started theirs. It was certainly important at that

time to kick-start our initiative and to tell Indian people that yes, we were very serious about this,

that we wanted to do this, that we were committing people and money and time and energy and

resources, because this was important to the Society. And it started to trickle down through the

organization.

At that time I was working primarily with sites in southern Minnesota, but while I was focusing

on the sites in my district, I was still being asked by Donn, by John, and by other people who

were administrators within historic sites to offer opinions on what I was learning here. We were

using all of our sites people more collectively at that time and putting together some working

groups of site managers from different areas to work on sites other than their own. So I started to

get a bigger picture of that and a better understanding of it. But in the early stages I would say

that again it came down not only to individual sites, but to the two district managers and their

respective areas. A lot of that development really started that better communication. I think that

was one of the values of the Indian Advisory Committee. It not only got MHS staff to be

thinking about how do we bring those two different cultures together, but also as we were sitting

20

around the table and perspectives were being offered by members from the Ojibwe communities

and Dakota communities, it dawned on them, too, that they really hadn’t been working or talking

together like they should. I think that, in its own way, contributed to more communications

between those two respective cultures as well. But, again, it was working in a way where I would

say the larger vision was being created in Saint Paul with input from sites people from around

the state. So while it was being created from the bottom up to a degree, it was also from the top

down, and when a decision was made, then it came back down and we were implementing it as a

part of the Society’s bigger vision.

JEF: Talk a little, if you would - you sort of obliquely referred to it a few minutes ago - about

the realities that when you’re dealing with any community, even the one here in Redwood Falls,

I am sure, but particularly with the Indian communities as they evolved and as the casinos grew

and the political realities changed. You must have had to negotiate some of those waters, too,

because even within those communities they were not monolithic, and they didn’t always agree

within themselves. Vernell and Ernie were with one group of people, but they didn’t necessarily

represent everyone, and yet you had to somehow deal with everyone, insofar as you could.

TE: Vernell was very instrumental in helping me understand the realities, because she did not

grow up in the Lower Sioux community and so she knew she was also an outsider in that

community. She was always very careful that unless she was specifically directed by their tribal

council to represent the community, to make people aware that whatever she might say was her

personal opinion, not necessarily the community’s. What I saw really as the casinos started to

develop was the fulfillment, for the Indian communities here, of a dream that they had always

had. They had felt that, here we are as a community, but we don’t have the political strength and

we don’t have the economic power. We don’t have what it takes to really be heard in the white

community—and that all changed with the casinos. Once they started to develop the casinos they

became an economic driver, not only for their respective areas, but that gave them the fiscal

resources to have a much stronger political voice as well. As we all know, money drives a lot of

things, and when they were in a position to have that economic background and to have the

strength of money behind them, then a lot of people outside of the Indian community started to

stand up and to listen to them much more.

As you just pointed out, the Indian community has never been a monolithic community, and

what I see is that when the Indian community is trying to project itself out of its respective

communities into other cultures, they make a conscious effort to try and make it appear that they

are. So while they’re trying to do that, they know full well that they aren’t. While they were

projecting unity on one level, they were also struggling with the internal politics of their

respective communities, and from my perspective I would say it got pretty ugly internally at

times. They were struggling with that. What I tried to do, and again with advice from both Ernie

and Vernell, was first of all to understand what you’re dealing with, but be very honest. Indian

people are very honest people as a whole I would say, and there are a lot of Indian people who

wear their personalities on their shirt-sleeve. And so they told me—be honest with them. Sit

down and have open discussions and don’t be afraid to disagree, but don’t do it with just this part

of the community or that part of that community. Let people know that MHS’s responsibility is

to try and figure out how they work with Dakota people. Not the individual factions within the

Dakota community, but to help the Dakota people as a whole. And so, sit down and make it

21

visibly and politically evident that you are talking to everybody in the Dakota community and be

honest with them. At that time I don’t think anybody was really sure whether that was the right

approach or not, but there was consensus that if there was going to be an approach that was

going to work, that’s the way that you needed to do it. So that’s how we tried to approach it, by

getting as many MHS staff people involved with working with the Dakota community as

possible, and working with as many of the different interests within the community as well. I was

here in 1987 when we were working with the 125th

anniversary of the US-Dakota War. I

thought—I’ll never be here when the 150th

rolls around. By God, I was! But I noticed that as we

were working and developing all of our programs and looking at the 150th

anniversary of that

event, that by then there were a lot more of the different interest groups and different factions

within the Dakota community that had started to surface and become more public. I think the

general public as a whole was starting to have a better understanding that the Indian community

wasn’t as monolithic as they thought at one time. You started to notice that, but boy, we worked

with everybody on the 150th

, and I did recognize that there was a greater appreciation for doing

that from within the Dakota community as well. We had learned our lesson, and we had learned

it well. We were still practicing it and the Dakota community respected us for that.

JEF: Can you comment briefly on the various thoughts that have evolved over time about

whether Lower Sioux, in particular, would actually be operated by the Lower Sioux tribal

government as an entity. Did that idea arise during the various budget crises?

TE: It was a budget crisis, but it wasn’t one of the most difficult ones that we faced around —

when was it? About 2002, or 2003, I believe. It actually goes all the way back to 1992, which

was the first time that the Lower Sioux community came to us to ask us about taking over the

Lower Sioux historic site. We were going through some budget short-falls, and in 1992, in one of

the legislative sessions, for whatever reason, we were being threatened with a substantial

reduction in our state appropriation. At that time the society’s standard response was—well,

we’ll have to close some historic sites to deal with our budget decrease.

When we announced that we were going to close like a half-dozen sites, Lower Sioux was one of

them. And so Dave Larson—Dave was tribal chairman at that time—he and Vernell came to the

society and asked if the Society would be interested in transferring the Lower Sioux site to the

community rather than closing it? We didn’t think about it for all that long a period of time,

primarily because we knew we weren’t going to have to close any of our sites. This was just one

of our tactics to increase our appropriation. But we thought about a little bit and said no, we’re

not going to do this. We’re not really interested in doing that right now. It didn’t have anything

to do, that decision, with the ability of the community to operate the site or not. It had to do more

with the fact that we knew we were going to have the money to operate it. It was then part of the

State Historic Sites Network, and we knew that it was going to be a lot of work to try and

transfer it. So we went to the community, we had a meeting with them and said, you know, thank

you, but at this point we are not interested in transferring the site to you. Let’s get through the

legislative session and see what happens, because their initial request had been made before the

legislative session was over that year. And so it turned out that we got our money and we said

thanks, but no thanks, but we would consider it. So that whole discussion goes back all the way

to 1992. Every once in awhile, whenever anything would indicate that something might happen

to Lower Sioux or that MHS was going through difficult times, the Lower Sioux community

22

would come and ask us—Well, have you thought about Lower Sioux—would you be interested

in transferring the site? And we said no, until 2004.

That was the year that we were facing the worst times and worst difficulties that we had ever

faced, and we went through almost a decade of that. We had seven sites that we were proposing

to close in that year, so at that time the Lower Sioux community came to us again. We thought

the likelihood of closing these seven sites was very high, and so the community said—Would

you be interested in transferring the site? They came to us with a better developed plan and

concept of what they were going to do with the site and why they wanted to do it, and we

thought hmm—maybe this is the time. I think we were more interested because there seemed to

be a greater degree of thought in planning and preparation behind their request than what we had

seen in previous times. So we said—Yes, let’s talk about this.

Internally we also talked about it from an organizational perspective, but we also went and talked

to a number of people within the legislature to see if there would be the political will to do this.

We got a favorable response from a couple of key legislators, Senator Denny Frederickson, in

particular. Denny said that it made a lot of sense to him. He had been working with Dakota

communities here for a long, long time, and he knew where they were at, what their seriousness

was about working with and being involved with the site, and I think he felt, along with a couple

of other legislators, that the communities were now in a position, economically, that they could

handle operating the site. So we said yes, let’s pursue this and see what might happen.

The community funded one year’s operation of the site totally, and then the site closed. We got

some money, we reopened it, and now we’ve been managing it through a management contract

with the Lower Sioux community for going on six years now. When we started this management

contract the community said—We’re interested because it didn’t work out ten years ago. They

said that they would still be interested in having more involvement with the operation there at the

site. Because it didn’t work through a direct transfer of the property to the community, they

wanted to discuss other options of trying to ease into that total transfer. So we proposed trying

the management contract, and I think it has given people in the area, and in the legislature, an

opportunity to see what the community can really do, and I think there is a greater comfort level

on the part of a lot of people. There are still some issues out there, but the community has said

that they are interested in trying the management contract, not to operate the site in perpetuity

through that system, but with the hope that we could try and transfer the site back to the

community at some point. There’s greater level of interest in doing that now.

JEF: That’s an interesting transition point to talk about your perspective on the changes that

have inevitably overtaken the Society itself, and, of course, the Historic Sites Network. There

was the huge boom era when you came in and I came in, and it seemed like everything was

nothing but growth. We were adding staff, adding sites, and adding buildings. But then there

came the inevitable reality that an organization changes as it reaches maturity. And there were

the budget issues and even retrenchment. What are your thoughts on that as it has affected the

sites network. There has been talk of deaccessioning sites, as there has been the forging of

management contracts with other organizations in more places than Lower Sioux to operate

them. What’s your perspective from within sites of how that’s changed the views of people

23

involved directly, as you were, in managing sites within the network, and of the organization as a

whole?

TE: I’ll go back to something I’d mentioned earlier. In all of those boom years as we were

expanding faster, almost, than what we could handle, we didn’t take the time to stop and kind of

look backward and to assess what we had done. This has forced us to do that. In that period when

we were closing sites and after the worst of the economic times had settled in, it did. That’s what

we started to do - to go back and say—OK, let’s assess what we did. In terms of the Historic

Sites Network, specifically, did we get the right sites? Do we need to deaccession some sites

because they don’t fit the mission well - not so much to make the network smaller, so it’s less

costly. We also asked if we are missing some sites? Do we need to add some other sites?

What I saw in the last few years, as we were doing that, is an interest on the part of the Society as

an organization and on the part of the Historic Sites Division to go back and do a study of the

sites and evaluate the history of that operation. What did we learn from it, and where do we want

to go in the future. I think the key to that, though, Jim, is really for MHS - the senior

administration - to say first of all is that we are operating a state Historic Sites Network, a system

of sites. Do we want to continue to do that? And if we do, then what is our objective, why do we

want to do that? If it is to fulfill the Society’s mission for the people of Minnesota, then the

determination needs to be made about what sites we need, what are the stories we need to tell,

what are the sites that we need to have to support our ability to do that? That’s looking at it

strictly from a very narrow perspective and a very professional perspective.

What you also need to layer into that is reality that there’s still the politics involved. I know

that—I shouldn’t say I know—but I highly suspect that we have sites in our system that we

acquired solely for political purposes. Well, there was a benefit to that, and there may still be a

benefit to acquiring some sites for strictly political reasons. We went through those boom eras,

and I think we created a good system. Looking back, we created that system, and we created a

valuable resource and tool to the Society to fulfill its mission. We did quite well at that. And I

don’t say that I did it personally or that Historic Sites Division staff did it personally. You know,

the organization as a whole did it.

I think we are at that point where we were at, probably, in about 1965 when we first started

working with Fort Snelling. That was really the awakening on the part of people in Minnesota,

and at MHS, to the value of historic sites. I believe we are almost back to that point again, but

now we’re at a point where we have the ability to look back on what has been done and to assess

what it all means in terms of preparing for the next twenty-five, forty-five, or seventy-five years.

But it still comes back to the very basic question—do we want to continue to operate a historic

site system? And if we do, then we have to spend the time to clearly define what the objectives

are in terms of fulfilling the society’s mission.

For me, personally, when I ask the question, and from what I’m seeing, when the Society’s

administration asks that question - do we want to operate a historic sites network - the answer is

yes, we do. But what does it look like, what do we need to do? That’s going to be the challenge,

and in many ways I’d like to be back there and being a part of that again. On the other hand, I

24

was a part of it, and I was at that point at one time and have had my opportunity to do it, so now

it’s time for others to have their opportunity to do that, too.

JEF: Before we plunge back into our timeline, tell me about the Split Rock story that I just heard

while we took a brief break in the interview. I’m fascinated to hear this.

TE: I have two stories that are somewhat related. Now the original operating mechanism for

revolving the lighthouse was on a clockwork mechanism, and it had a series of weights and

worked just like a grandfather clock. The series of weights would descend down through the

hollow steel column and had a great big plate that the lens sat on and revolved on. The plate

floated on a bed of mercury and was operated through this clockwork mechanism, and it had a

governor on it. It was a little brass ball with a cork on it that, through centrifugal force, the faster

it would go, this cork on top of this brass ball would revolve on the bottom of a brass plate and

you could adjust the speed and the timing of the light. But also the amount of mercury and how

clean it was could affect the rotation speed, and there were all kinds of variables involved.

Well, the lighthouse was electrified in 1939, so then they discontinued using it, but the whole

mechanism still was there. The original weights were still in the column. Down at the bottom

there was a door on the column that you could open up to watch the weights descend and get at

it, and I had taken that steel plate off, put Plexiglas over it, put the weights down, so that people

could see the weights. It made it easier to interpret that whole operation. At any rate, all the time

I was there I thought how I would just love to have this light operating again on the old

clockwork mechanism. So one day, and this was a couple of days after we had moved up there, I

was in Two Harbors, and I thought about visiting the jewelry store. The jewelry store had been

owned in the family for I don’t know how many generations, and it was two young guys that

were brothers that were now operating the store. One was kind of the salesman, and knew the

jewelry, etc. The other was the clock person and did all of the watch repair and everything and

had a lot of training in doing that. One day I was in there and we were talking and I said, Tom—

his name was Tom Gould. I said—Tom, would you be interested in taking a crack at a great big

clock and seeing if you could make it work? And he looked at me, so I explained the situation.

He said—Hmm. I could see there was a sparkle in his eye. He was kind of interested. I said—

come on up. So he did. We opened up the doors, took it apart as much as we could, so he’d have

an idea of how it operated and what we were dealing with, and he said—Two hundred bucks. For

two hundred bucks I’ll come up and I’ll be your expert and we’ll take this thing apart and we’ll

make it work. And I said—You’re sure you can do this. He said—I know I can. So I said OK. I

called John Ferguson and told him that it would cost two hundred bucks and a little bit more for

whatever. He said—OK, let’s do this.

And so I called Tom before the purchase order was even filled out – and you’ll remember that

was a no-no. You didn’t commit to anything until you had the purchase order in hand. But I

called Tom back and I said—we’re going to do this, so let’s get it scheduled. He said—I can start

next week. This was in the spring, because I had said that I’d really like to do it then because I’d

like to have it operating when we opened the site. He said—OK, and next week I’ve got some

time. So we scheduled two days and he came up, and that first day we took the glass enclosure

off from around it and just took the whole thing apart, piece by piece. I could tell Tom was being

very meticulous when he laid every piece on the floor in terms of putting it in the right place in

25

its relationship to the whole system. We got done late that afternoon, and everything was all

brass. The whole system was out all over the watch room floor up there, and I was looking at it

and thinking—oh, my God, what have I done? There’s no way in hell this thing’s going back

together. And Tom said—Don’t worry about it. This is going to work. So the next day we started

to clean up everything and started to put it back together.

Well, at the same time I thought—Hmm, you know, this would be a good time to take the

mercury out of the mercury float and to get it cleaned. And from my research, what they used to

do is that you would take and put it in a container and you would mix kerosene with it and that’s

what would bring the dirt and the foreign material that was mixed in with the mercury, and it

would make it float to the surface, and you could just skim it off. The float’s got a little petcock

in the bottom of it. I got a bucket and started draining all of this mercury off. It turned out it was

a plastic five-gallon bucket. It never dawned on me, really, as to how heavy mercury is and how

much pressure that puts on a container. I got the thing about half full, and I thought—hmm, I

think I’ve got a problem here, because I could see it bulging, and all of a sudden it split and the

mercury was pouring out onto the watch room floor. I got something, I can’t remember what,

Jim, and I just contained it in one area. And then I got a dustpan and swept it all up and put it

back into a steel container and took it and we cleaned it. The long and the short of it was that on

the third day about noon we had this whole clockwork mechanism back together again. You

wind up the weights and then there is like a little system where you can lock it in place so that

the weights can’t descend. You flip that thing and the weights start to descend, and so we

wheeled the weights up to the top and cranked them up, and we both looked at each other and

said—OK, let’s let her go. We released the lock on it, and the weights started to descend, and

that thing was just humming as pretty as could be.

We put the mercury back into the float, and the timing for that light at Split Rock was one flash

every ten seconds. We were at about nine-point-seven seconds. I was amazed at how close that

thing was in terms of the precision and the quality of the system itself. Well, the end of this story

was, you know, that we had it back in operation in that summer. We were able to do it on a

regular basis, to crank it up and show visitors.

The other part of this was that when you put the mercury back into the float you’d put some oil

on the top of it, which was to act as a sealant to help prevent the escaping of mercury vapor, and

so we did that. The more I got to thinking about this I thought—I’m sure I got all of the mercury,

but maybe we didn’t. And maybe we’ve got more vapors coming off of this thing than we think.

Ironically, somebody was there one day, and we were telling them about the float, how it worked

with the mercury, and they said oh, you know the Minnesota Department of Health has got an

inspector who can come up and do some testing in an area to see if you’ve got problems with

mercury or other chemicals. So this person gave me the number to contact, and I called the

Department of Health and said—I’ve got this site, it’s the historic site, Split Rock, etc. We’ve got

mercury in our float and we use it and we’d like to have it tested to see if we’ve got mercury

vapors. And they said that they could do that.

Six weeks later, nobody had showed up. Two months later, nobody had showed up, and I

thought, hmm, this is odd. One day—it was a Saturday—I was gone. I came back that night and I

had a bunch of staff people who were just beside themselves, because during the day an

26

inspector from the State Department of Health had shown up and walked up to the staff at the

lighthouse, opened his jacket and pulled out this big badge and put it in their face, and said—I’m

from the State Department of Health and we have heard that you’ve got a complaint of mercury

vapors in your building. And they just froze and didn’t know what to do. In retrospect, I thought

there was probably a better way to talk to the Department of Health, to let them know, really,

what I wanted. They assume everything is a complaint that needs to be checked out. So, the long

and the short of it was that he did his test and everything, and we were fine. It was no problem,

whatsoever. I don’t know what would have happened if there was, but there wasn’t a problem.

As I look back, of all of the stuff that I’ve done and that I have gotten the most enjoyment from,

one of the biggest was to be able to put that clockwork mechanism back into operation.

JEF: Oh, I can believe it.

TE: When we were done doing that I thought there was no way anybody could figure out that

mechanism without a manual, but they did.

JEF: Your jeweler from Two Harbors managed to do it.

TE: He did. And then I thought—God, he did all of this for two hundred bucks? That guy really

was a consummate clock repair person.

JEF: Well, that is a story. That is a story. When you talked about the mercury coming out!

[chuckles] Whoa!

TE: [chuckles]Yes, and that’s one of those things you look back on and even from your high

school days of fooling around with mercury in science class, you know that it’s heavy, and

whatever possessed me to use just a plastic bucket, I don’t know. I should’ve known a lot better,

but …

JEF: Well, as you say, in those days things within MHS were a little more loosely done.

TE: [chuckles] Exactly! Even John Ferguson, basically John only knew that for two hundred

bucks I was going to have a person come up and look at the clockwork, and that was pretty

innocent.

JEF: Things change, things change.

TE: Yes, don’t they.

JEF: Tell me one thing, Tom. Did you feel, from your perspective, that in 1992 when the

History Center opened that it changed anything? I know there was a lot of speculation, even

among the staff in the Twin Cities, that this was going to change the equation, because suddenly

everybody in the Twin Cities, more or less, was brought together in one place, and that it was

also going to change the focus of the institutional administration from its more statewide

perspective to a more Twin Cities-centric thing, because suddenly they had this huge building.

Was that felt within historic sites? Was it talked about within historic sites? Was it something

27

you all felt, that maybe the building of this new multi-million-dollar building was going to affect

your work?

TE: There was certainly a feeling there, Jim, that, while we had been spread out in the old

buildings, the public wasn’t aware of that. MHS’ public face was 690 Cedar Street. Now, our

public face was going to be this one building that was three times or four times bigger than 690.

We were going to be able to centralize our operations. Internally, we all thought—this is great,

because it’s going to be a lot more efficient and effective, and we’re going to be able to work

with more staff, because we were going to be getting more staff, and they were all going to be in

one location, so it would be easier. But there was also the feeling that the new building would be

much more visible and that it would allow MHS to do a lot more programming and provide more

for people right in the Twin Cities.

But there was also going to be the cost of it, in terms of the resources that would have to be put

into just maintaining this building. I can remember, as we were going through the process of

trying to get the capital appropriation to build that building, there was a lot of focus on the brick

and mortar money. And it was—I don’t know, what was it, around fifty million, forty-five, fifty

million? But nobody wanted to talk about so how it was going to impact our annual operating

budget, just to maintain it. And tucked away in some information was a figure about the one

million dollars that this building was going to add to our annual operating cost, just to sustain it. I

don’t know about the rest of MHS staff, but in historic sites we were, I think, an operational area

that was more accustomed to looking at a greater variety of cost factors that impacted the day-to-

day work. And boy, that figure jumped out at a lot of people in historic sites, and they said—a

million bucks? How are we going to be able to afford that? Is the legislature going to be willing

and able to appropriate an additional million dollars a year for MHS to operate it? So there was a

lot of concern about that.

I remember an interesting little story that really brought that to heart for site managers. The first

site managers’ meeting that we had after the building was opened was held in the History Center.

I remember—who was it at the time—Ferguson or Coddington saying specifically that this

meeting is going to be in the History Center by Nina’s directive, because she wants all of the

staff to be able to see the new facility. Jim Frober at the time was the plant manager for the

History Center, and Jim started off by giving us a tour. We were walking down the staircase

from third floor, from the galleries down to second floor, and Jim stopped at the brass handrails

going down. He wanted to make a point about how nice this building was, and he commented

that the brass handrails cost thirteen dollars per running foot. And Jim thought this was just an

innocent statement to show how wonderful it was, and to emphasize the grandeur of the building.

And I remember Mike Budak in particular, I thought he was going to jump up and just wring Jim

by the neck. He looked at that and he said—There’s more money in this brass handrail going

from third floor to second floor than I get in my whole annual operating budget. So it was a real

concern.

I don’t know all of the particulars about whether the funding for the History Center was all state

or non-state, or a combination of whatever funds to help sustain that building on an annual basis,

but obviously it had an effect on the Society, and it had an impact on our operations. But I don’t

think it ever became quite the issue that a lot of people were concerned about. From my

28

perspective, it was an awareness of how important facilities are to the organization. And it

allowed us as an organization to serve the public better and fulfill our mission, there’s no two

ways about it.

JEF: Well, and as you said very well just a few minutes ago, in the case of sites, it brought you

together for the first time with the rest of the staff in education and exhibits and all the other

departments. Of course I know, as you do, there were some people who weren’t thrilled about

that. My good friend Susan Roth was never happy about it. [chuckles] Although, even she, in

later days, told me that she realized that although she didn’t want to move to the History Center,

it was the best thing that had happened, because, she said, if they had continued to work out at

Fort Snelling, they would have been completely isolated from everything.

TE: That’s interesting, Jim, because I think that was part of it. As the organization evolved, we

were at that point where if we were going to continue to survive we needed to be brought

together, not only just physically, but for the work that we were doing. I have seen over the

course of the years the benefit that having all of those resources at your immediate hand. That is

one thing that I would say, too, that I’ve seen in terms of a lot of our site managers as they are

developing programs. A lot of research needs to be done, and for just about every one of them

their starting point was the library at MHS. And so what did they have to do? They had to travel

to the Twin Cities. They had to come to 690 or Kellogg Boulevard, and they had to come to the

Twin Cities to do that. So they understood, too, the advantages of having all of those resources

on one location and being able to talk to people. If you’re the type of individual who likes to do

your communication more face-to-face than through a phone or through e-mail, boy that made

big change for those people, too. Even more so, because you could walk down the hall or go up

and down a couple of floors in the elevator and have all of those resources at hand in one

building.

JEF: Talking about the Society’s over-all administration, and you kind of touched on it briefly

earlier, in your time there and in mine there were two huge presences—Russell Fridley and Nina

Archabal. Talk about it from your perspective, as a site manager, as a regional manager, as

someone involved, really, out in the state in a way that those of us in Saint Paul weren’t—talk

about them as the heads of the Society and the impact you think they had on historic sites and the

network, their interest in it, their views of it, and the roles that sites saw them playing. Because

they were very different people.

TE: They were. Very dynamic, but totally different. In their perspectives, their approaches, etc.,

the common thread was to serve the people of Minnesota and provide the best resources that they

could to do that. And I think it’s interesting—the historic sites network, for the most part—that

whole concept was started by Russell. It had a big boost in the arm from him, and while we

acquired a number of sites after Russell left, we were doing that based on the vision that Russell

had created. Russell was a historian, first of all, which was a little bit different than Nina—her

background was, I think, in art history. But Russell’s background was in Minnesota history and

American history. He, I think, had more of an interest in talking to a lot of people and saw the

organization as more a common organization that appealed and was valuable to all of the people

of Minnesota. And so Russell was the kind of guy who would get in his car at four o’clock and

drive for two hundred miles for a meeting some place, and then drive home. He was always

29

going out into Greater Minnesota. And Nina was the opposite. Nina liked to work and, from my

perspective, she was more focused on building the core of the organization, of trying to figure

out how to sustain this whole thing. I always felt that she was more interested in working with

people who had money, who had power, who had connections that could help create that. And,

you know, they’re both important, and it’s not to pass judgment on one or the other. That is just

who I saw them to be. Russell, I think, as I mentioned earlier, saw the true value in historic sites

as both being able to preserve and interpret Minnesota’s history, but also as a political tool, and

Russell was not afraid to make a decision based on one or the other at any given time. He had the

ability to very quickly recognize what the value of a particular site was going to be. And if we

didn’t necessarily need the site to tell Minnesota’s story, but he saw some real political

advantage in it, which in turn would help support the organization as a whole, he wasn’t afraid to

do that.

I never, personally, got the feeling that Nina had the interest in historic sites and their value to

the organization as a public tool. I remember a comment from her one time, that I think was

important to help understand her attitude toward sites. She said that, as she looked at

membership and one of the first membership surveys that we did such a high percentage of

members that time said that their primary reason for becoming an MHS member was because

they could get free membership to historic sites. And the historic sites program that MHS had,

coupled with the fact that they could get free admission to historic sites was a fulfillment of that

interest in history where it happened. And when she recognized the importance of historic sites

to building membership, that’s when she kind of shifted gears and said—OK, maybe we need to

pay a little bit more attention to our historic sites, and I need to be more involved with it.

But here’s a common thread between the two of them—when it came time, if MHS was facing

budget constraints, both of them, as directors, looked at historic sites to absorb the lion’s share of

the organizational cut in that one division. I think the primary reason was because we were the

largest division, and we had the biggest budget, and that’s only natural. You know you’d go to

the biggest pot of money, first and foremost. Russell was director at a time when the political

winds were such that—he knew so many politicians. He knew so many of the legislators, and

had a personal relationship with them that Nina didn’t have. He knew that he could go to talk

with anyone above him, and he could say—Listen, I understand we’ve got a problem in the

state—here’s how MHS is going to handle this. We’re basically going to go and we’re going to

say we’re going to close a bunch of these historic sites. He knew what the reaction was going to

be, and the legislators knew, and it was a pretty smart tool. Nina, I think, found herself, just

because of timing, with budget reductions that were a lot more serious, they were a lot bigger,

and she was not in a position where she could do that with the legislature. I’m not sure that she

had the relationships so that she could do that and be honest with people, but even if she did, it

was two different people facing the same economic realities but in different contexts and in a

different magnitude, too. I think that kind of defined what people would say as to how each of

them felt about historic sites and the value of the historic sites program to the organization. There

were some variables like that, and I think you’ve really got to get into the depths of it to fully

understand it. But overall, regardless of what their individual reasoning’s were, the historic sites

program is still with MHS. It’s a very strong program within MHS, and it’s one that is still

desired by our members and by the public.

30

JEF: Well, it’s an interesting series of contrasts. Very, very interesting. Talk a little bit, too,

Tom, about your own change in duties, because you became program manager for historic

properties—what did that entail? In fact you had a whole bunch of titles later on.

TE: I did! [chuckles]

JEF: I looked at those and I thought—my God, I didn’t know that! [chuckles]So that’s what he

was doing!

TE: Well, I started back in 1974 with the archaeology department, because at that time, too,

MHS had a very strong commitment to promoting from within, and I knew if I could get my foot

in the door I had a better chance of getting back into historic sites. I really started with sites back

in 1976 as a site manager up at Split Rock, eventually coming down here [to Redwood Falls] as a

district manager and site manager. Over the course of the years, as we went through the

evolutionary process that was driven by budgets, by economics, by reorganizations and a change

in visions and objectives, etc., I was district manager, and then there was what was called

program manager, and then in the last position I was community outreach and programs

manager.

Basically, when I was here as a district manager, that was when Rachel was historic sites

director. I was the only district manager, because when John Rivard left we did away with the

northern district manager position. Rachel found herself being a supervisor to twenty-some

people, and that just wasn’t practical. So we had talked about it a lot, she and I, and I know that

she talked to other people in terms of how to administratively structure this division. That’s when

we created three district managers. We had the metro, northern district, and southern district.

And then again, when we went through the severe budget cuts back in the early two thousands,

we couldn’t sustain all of those positions, so we eventually ended up doing away with all three of

those district manager positions.

At that time, we were already managing a number of sites within the state of Minnesota through

contract management. With all of those budget cuts we knew that we couldn’t sustain all of these

positions, and we were going to have to reduce our staffing levels. We considered the possibility

that we would have to close sites, and that maybe we should be thinking about operating more

sites under contract management. So at the same time that we were reducing the number of staff

to be able to support a system where MHS was staffing and operating all of the sites, we were

also increasing our number of management contract sites. When we had the three district

managers, those managers were responsible for all of their sites in the district, whether it was a

site staffed and operated by MHS or if it was contract management.

When John Crippen became sites director, he said—OK, here’s where we’re at. We can’t afford

to have district manager positions. He proposed that we think about structuring our sites division

by taking all of the contract management sites out, and having our next layer of supervisors and

managers within historic sites being just responsible for those sites that are staffed by MHS. And

that, at the time, was about thirteen sites. We talked about it and said that would still be quite a

few sites for a supervisor to oversee. But that was about as good as it was going to get, so John

said—Let’s create this position of community outreach and programs manager. I don’t even

31

remember what the other position was called that was supervising and overseeing the MHS-

operated sites. I’m not sure that we ever even created a title for it. And so in that position, then,

my primary responsibilities were to work with our contract management sites, of which we’ve

got ten or eleven right now, as well as working with our other sites and having responsibility for

those sites that we call “preservation only” sites, like Stumne Mounds and Morrison Mounds,

those sites that we had acquired with the primary or sole intent of just preserving them. And so

while they obviously didn’t require a lot of attention, there were things that came up that had to

be addressed, and so we needed to have a position with oversight for those. So in that last

position that’s primarily what I was doing.

I was also doing a lot, because of my years with the society, in working with DNR and parks

people in particular. When we had a big issue or a new initiative with a site within a state park, I

got involved with that, because I had the connections. Having done a lot of public relations work

over the course of the years, I was also doing some of that for our division. If John Crippen had

issues that required some little public relations finessing, (and I don’t know whether my

strengths were in actuality as strong as they were being perceived as being), I got involved with

those as well. So it was changing, and it was totally different in that I was no longer working

directly at a site or supervising MHS-operated sites, but I was doing something that I thought

was very important to the Society and to our historic sites network. We were starting to build the

number of sites that we were operating under contract management, and that operation was

taking a lot more time and needed a position.

JEF: Well, it sounds like an interesting evolution of responsibilities.

TE: It was, Jim. Over the course of the years there were some positions that came open at the

History Center that I had some interest in. I didn’t really have a desire to move back to the urban

area—neither Char nor I did for our personal lifestyle. That made me really think about what it

was that I wanted to do over the course of my career, and it made me realize that I didn’t want to

be in a position where I was withdrawn from public contact. To me, the district manager position

was an ideal position, in that we used all of our district managers as part of our senior

management team for our Historic Sites Division, so I was involved in helping to set policies,

visions, goals, objectives, and missions for our entire division. I was able to be back here and

working with some individual sites where I could have that direct contact with the public, and

that, I learned, was what my primary interest was. I had such a passion and interest in history that

I wanted to be in a position where I could still have an opportunity to be directly imparting that

passion to the general public.

I’ve had over the course of the years, an opportunity for a lot of changes. Some of those position

changes were forced upon you—or I shouldn’t say forced, because I always had the opportunity

to leave and go someplace else. It was a part of the evolution of the organization. While there

were times when I looked outside of MHS, there was always an opportunity for new challenges

within the organization.

JEF: Well, as you narrated it, you clearly found at the various times, at useful times, as they

came along, that opportunities did open for you. You didn’t become a site manager and

somehow find that opportunities to move on to be a district manager and then to even broader

32

responsibilities didn’t open. You never were pigeon-holed as a site manager forever. Not that

that would have been bad, but you had many opportunities open to you above and beyond

managing a single site.

TE: Yes, and it was … I always knew that I could move on and go to other organizations, and I

knew, too, that every organization has got its own environment and its own way of doing things.

But, in terms of a public history organization, there was never any better in the country than

MHS was, and I made a conscious decision to stay with MHS at some point because of that, too.

The opportunities were there, as you said. I also knew it was not only a great organization, but

also a very disciplined and very professional organization that set high standards and created

high-quality outcomes. There was always going to be a lot of opportunity within MHS to do

some new and different and exciting things as well. And it spoke well of the Society and what

the Society is.

JEF: What made you decide to move on when you did, when you resigned? Did you reach a

certain point where you sort of thought—been there, done that? What kind of precipitated that?

TE: As I looked at myself I said—OK, I’m not one that can do the same thing for a long period

of time. I come to a position because it’s got something that appeals to me that I want to do to

satisfy my personal needs or my professional desires. I was getting to a point where I’ve done a

lot of things, I’ve learned a number of things, and I’ve got the opportunity to take what I’ve

learned and apply it to a different position where I may be able to impact more resources, more

people, and in a bigger sphere. For me it was more that I was always kind of looking for a new

challenge, and that opportunity was always there within MHS.

But, as I mentioned earlier, some of the challenges came because there are, for whatever reasons,

variables that impact all operations. Something changes pretty drastically, and it causes the

organization to restructure or to change in ways that it hadn’t thought of, or to change sooner

than it really wants to. So that was a part of it also. As I look back on it now, it was very

informative. I’m recognizing the value of it more now, as I look back, than as it impacted me to

begin with. I remember three different times that I was in a position that, as we went through

budget cuts, my position was one that was going to be eliminated. And the first two times that

happened, I hadn’t reached the rule of ninety yet. Then the third time it happened I had reached

the rule of ninety, and I thought—hmm, this feels a whole lot different, because I know I can

retire, and it’s not that big an impact in terms of your life. It’s the same level of impact, in terms

of your professional life, because you would have been withdrawn from that profession and

something that meant so much to me over all the course of the years, but in my personal life I

was going to be OK. So it was kind of interesting to see that evolution as well.

JEF: Which is a real consideration.

TE: Yes, I mean that’s a human consideration.

JEF: And a very real one.

TE: Yes.

33

JEF: A very real one that influences those things. Well, I’ve kind of reached the end of the path

leading you through your career. As you look back on your career at the Society, who … do you

have any particular names that jump out as you think about it… people you found particularly

influential? The fact that you dealt with them and also their effect on things you were doing and

things the Society was doing? You’ve probably mentioned many of them already.

TE: Boy, there were some. Looking back is much more helpful to recognizing those influences

that than the recognition as you’re involved in the daily work of doing it. For me personally the

impacts were certainly Russell, Nina, Donn Coddington, Dave Nysteun, John Ferguson, Rachel,

and John Crippen. And it’s interesting, because John’s been with the Historic Sites Division for a

long time, and it’s been toward the tail end of my career that he was our historic sites director,

but I still learned an awful lot from John in this position, as well as all of the time that I’ve had

with him over the course of the years.

Pat Gaarder was another person from whom I learned, particularly about how to work with

people. She taught me how to understand and appreciate how and why people differ from one

another, and how to accept those differences. And another person, probably because of her

strong personality, was Maureen Otwell, in education, because she was our education director

during my formative years. Being the very highly opinionated but strong personality that

Maureen was, I’d learned a lot about education and interpretation. Nancy Eubank, whose

personality was entirely different, also had a strong passion and I saw how that came through,

and how she delivered that passion. And I’m sure that there are some others that are missing, but

those are the people who really jump to my mind as I think about it over the course of the years.

JEF: What about people outside the Society that you saw, too—and once again you’ve probably

mentioned a number of them already—but people whose interaction with you, looking back, is

particularly meaningful, both to you, personally, and to the Society, because of the role they

played in helping determine the course of things you were involved in?

TE: Well, from all my years down here and very specifically oriented toward Lower Sioux, there

is Vernell Wabasha, and also Ernie – again with totally different personalities. You know them

both very well. But each of them was very influential and very helpful in their own way. There

have been some people that I’ve worked with on a peer level, or people who have been a level or

two up that can be mentors and I’ve learned from, but also people who I have worked with who,

in a structural perspective are at a lower level in the Society than I am at. [chuckles] And one of

them, interestingly, is the person who is going to be replacing me in my old position—Ben

Leonard. Ben worked for MHS for years at Mill City.

JEF: I didn’t realize that.

TE: He went to Nicollet County Historical Society as their director.

JEF: He also worked for me for awhile.

TE: Did he? I didn’t know that!

34

JEF: We hired him to be one of our people on the big National Historical Publications and

Records Commission project on the Red River Valley. He was stationed up in Moorhead. He

worked for me on that.

TE: I didn’t realize that.

JEF: I know Ben pretty well.

TE: Ben came down to Nicollet County Historical Society, and they manage four of our sites

now, so I got to know Ben. Ben’s passion and his creativity and his energy, I mean it just comes

through his professionalism. Just watching people at all different levels, Jim, over the course of

the years, I’ve learned a lot from them. Also, there was another, at a county historical society

level, and I think you probably knew her also—Cathy Juni, who used to be at Brown County.

There was a person who was very interested in history but was also kind of the consummate

local politician. I always had a lot of respect for her, because she could fill both of those jobs by

working with people and being respected for being very honest while serving totally dynamically

different positions and doing them very well. I’m sure, too, if I were to think about it, that there

are probably some others.

JEF: Those are good ones. That’s interesting. But I didn’t know that Ben was taking over that

position. That’s interesting, and I’m glad to hear that.

TE: Yes, John told me about two weeks ago, after they’d done the interview, that Ben was kind

of at the top of their list, and they were doing reference checks, etc., and I just got a note from

him last week saying the announcement that Ben will starting that position the middle of

December.

JEF: That is good to hear. He’s a good kid and he’s proved his chops, too.

TE: Yes, he has.

JEF: He has not been afraid to get down in the trenches and work.

TE: He hasn’t and he does. He’s an enjoyable person all the way around, so I’m excited that he’s

coming back to MHS to be with the organization. Very much so.

JEF: What haven’t I asked you about that you thought I should have or wished I had?

TE: Oh, God. [chuckles] That’s really reaching into the recesses of the memory. Toward the end

of my career and when I was getting ready to retire, people would ask me—So, what advice

would you have? Or what would you have to say? The last management team meeting that we

had happened to be on the day when they were having my farewell get-together. And so at the

end of that, [MHS Director] Steve Elliott stood up and said—Well, I think it’s only appropriate

that today we end the meeting with somebody who is ending their long career, and turned it over

to me. And I thought, Geez! [chuckles] But you know what came to me at that moment, and it

35

was interesting, Jim. It just came to me naturally and came off the top of my head. I said that as I

look back on it, probably what has driven me all this time is that we don’t do this work because

we want to get rich. We, the people who do history, do it because we’ve got such an interest in it,

and such a passion, and I look back and feel how fortunate I was to have some key people in my

life at various stages, starting with Duane’s mom when I was in seventh grade.

Along with that, you do it because of your interests and your level of passion for it, and you do it

at that intensity level that comes naturally to you. Get into it, and don’t be afraid to speak your

mind. But more than anything else, even on the toughest days, look at it in terms of what’s

enjoyable to you, what’s fun to you, and just have fun—day in and day out. I can honestly say

that, yes, there were days when it wasn’t fun, but the majority of the days were, and I enjoyed it.

As I told people, I was one of those fortunate people in that I worked for an organization, and I

worked in a field where even after forty years with the Society, my last day when I was going to

work, I looked forward to doing that, when I got up in the morning, as much as I did the first

day. There are a lot of people who are in positions and in jobs who are not able to say that.

MHS is not only a great organization, but I’ve been here long enough and have been involved in

a lot of things, and I’ve got a tremendous sense of ownership in this organization. It’s not just an

organization. I mean, I was really, truly a part of it. As I looked at MHS over the course of the

years, too, where I saw the greatest turnover was in finance, was in HR, was in those business-

related operations, but in the historical discipline side of it, in libraries and archives and

manuscripts, and in sites, and in education and in collections, when people come to MHS, I

mean, they really, truly want to stay. That’s due to the great organization.

JEF: That’s true. Well, Tom, many thanks for a terrific interview!