Founders' Excellence Winners
Summer 2001

Founders' Day at Montana State University-Northern is a special graduation week tradition that honors and recognizes individuals who promote the ideals of service and excellence. Founders' Day is a time when alumni, friends, faculty and students rekindle the spirit of campus life and pause to reflect upon the people, places and events that have helped create an environment for lifetime learning and participation.

This year MSU-Northern Founders' Excellence Awards will be presented to three individuals who have contributed to the growth and

Right to Left: Donald L. Stainsby, Gus Korb and Turk Lords. Not Pictured: Dr. Harold E. Kleinert

After leaving Malta, Montana Gus Korb entered Northern Montana College as a freshman in 1953, beginning his career in education that spanned the next 41 years. Dr. August Korb is a 1955 and 1959 graduate of Northern Montana College. His first degree earned was an Associate degree in Construction and the second, a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Arts. He earned a Master of Science degree in Vocational Education Administration and Supervision from Colorado State University and a Doctor of Philosophy from Ohio State University. He served Northern as a faculty member and administrator from 1955 until his retirement as: Chairman of the Industrial Arts Department, Assistant to the Dean of the Vocational Technical Division, and Director of the Performance Based Teacher Education Grant Funded Project. From 1982 until 1994, Gus also served Northern as Dean of Education; Associate Vice President and Director of the Center for Vocational Education Research, Curriculum and Personnel Development; Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the School of Professional and Liberal Studies.

In 1991, the Montana Vocational Association named him Administrator of the Year. He has served as president of the Havre Kiwanis Club and is currently a member of the Montana Kiwanis Foundation. Gus has actively given his time to other educational endeavors such as participating as an Accreditation Review Team Member and as a Project Evaluator for various education programs throughout the state. He has also served on Vocational Advisory committees for high school programs.

Since his retirement from Northern, Gus has helped his son Dan in his construction business. Gus and his wife Carolyn spend winters in the Mesa, Arizona area.

Dr. Harold E. Kleinert, 1941 graduate of Northern Montana College, grew up on a ranch in the Sweetgrass foothills. He is world renown for his pioneer work in transplant surgery and has long been considered a foremost authority on hand transplant surgery. He is a founder of Kleinert, Kutz and Associates, the Louisville, Kentucky clinic that directed the first successful hand transplant in the United States in 1999 and the Christine M. Kleinert Institute for Hand and Micro Surgery named in honor of his mother.

Earning his medical degree from Temple University in 1946, Dr. Kleinert began a 55-year career that still includes a full patient load, world wide lectures, teaching as a clinical professor of surgery at the University of Louisville and Indiana University-Purdue, and national consultant to the Surgeon General, U.S. Air Force, Shriner's Hospital for Crippled Children and Kosair Children's Hospital.

Since 1968 he has given 11 lectures in 38 different countries, with lectures scheduled in Turkey, France and Brazil this year. The Kleinert Institute, in conjunction with Jewish Hospital, publishes a biannual publication on upper extremity care as well as an award winning book, The Growing Hand, that specializes in the diagnosis and management of the upper extremity in children. He has a bibliography of 205 publications, including an article in 1962 that began an extensive series of publications on the hand. His work is featured in two movies of the American College of Surgeons, and six videotapes by various medical societies. Since 1965, he has provided exhibits to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the Kentucky Academy of General Practice. He is a member of numerous medical associations and societies and has medical licenses in Kentucky, Michigan and Indiana.

He served in the U.S. Army Air Force from 1947-49 and is a retired Colonel in the Kentucky National Guard and is a member of the Reserve Officer Association and the Rotary Club of Louisville. Numerous awards and special appointments have come his way including the 1991 Commonwealth of Kentucky Distinguished Service Medal for Meritorious Achievement by the Adjutant General, Kentucky Air National Guard. Mayor Jerry Abramson, City of Louisville, proclaimed December 9, 1991 as Dr. Harold E. Kleinert Day.

A native of Great Falls, Montana, Dr. Donald L. Stainsby graduated from Northern Montana College in 194, Montana State University in 1943, and the University of Oregon Medical School in 1946. He served his internship at City Receiving Hospital in Detroit, Michigan and returned to the University of Oregon Medical School for his residency in Neurological Surgery. He began his private practice in Neurological Surgery in Eugene, Oregon in 1954 and practiced there until 1969 when he moved to Portland, Oregon. During this time he attended the Northwestern College of Law at Lewis and Clark University; attaining a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree. During this time, Dr. Stainsby was also associated with a group of medical specialists who carried out examinations for Workman Compensation carriers, lawyers and insurance companies. Returning to Eugene, Oregon in 1976 he continued his practice until 1980. From 1980, until retiring in 1988, he worked in Seattle, Washington with a group of physicians who carried out similar examinations for Workman's Compensation carriers.

After retiring, he began another career of service, volunteering with the U.S. Peace Corps and for the next four years served in Malawi, East Africa, The Marshall Islands, and the Ukraine in the former Soviet Republic. While in Malawi, he conducted an active neurosurgical practice and trained physician's assistants, nurses, x-ray technicians and newly graduated physicians from The Netherlands to assist him. The only neurosurgeon in Malawi for the two years he was there, he also served as the neurosurgical consultant for the Queen Elizabeth General Hospital. As a Peace Corps Medical Officer in the Ukraine, Dr. Stainsby, set up and organized their medical office in Moldova; another former Soviet country, and was the medical consultant for the U.S. Embassy in the Ukraine. While in The Marshall Islands, he was the neurological-neurosurgical consultant for the local government hospital in Majuro. He was in ASTP (Army Special Training Program) in medical school from 1943-1946 and following his internship he served two years in the Army Medical Corps attached to the Air Force. He was discharged as a Captain in May 1949 and returned to Oregon where he was accepted as a Neurological resident at the University of Oregon Medical School. Dr. Stainsby is a diplomat of the American Board of Neurological Surgery and a pervious member of a numerous of professional organizations, including the American College of Surgeons and held licenses in Oregon and Washington. He has had a life-long interest in Lewis & Clark and the Corps of Discovery and has explored a number of the Corps' historical sites; such as Fort Clatsop, the Great Falls portage, Camp Disappointment, The Blackfoot Fight Site, etc. He is currently working as a medical consultant for Wal*Mart's claim department in Bentonville, Arkansas reviewing problem liability workman's' compensation cases to determine if the present regimen of treatment is proper for the suggested diagnosis.

Turk Lords, 2001 MSU-Northern graduate, is being honored with the first Chancellor's Excellence Award given in recognition of his extraordinary achievement. For four consecutive years, from 1998 - 2001, Lords has been the NAIA National Champion ...only the sixth NAIA wrestler in 44 years to win four national titles and one of only eight wrestlers in all divisions of wrestling, in both the NCAA and NAIA to do so.

This culmination of wrestling excellence began 16 years ago in Cascade, Montana, where the Lords family farmed. Turk, coached by his dad, Ron and community people, was enrolled in the local AAU program for several years before entering junior high and wrestling on the school team. He wrestled for only one year at Cascade High School when the family purchased a ranch between Belt and Great Falls leaving the Cascade area. After attending Belt High School for one semester, Turk transferred to CMR because of the availability of a wrestling program. During his four years at CMR, Turk was a 2-time Montana State Champion, compiling a 78-2 record and several prestigious awards in the summers of 1994 and 1995. Football played a strong second for this athlete who won high school state honors as a linebacker. Graduating from high school in 1995, he took a year off and trained at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado competing in open tournaments and fine-tuning his talent.

Northern Coach, David Ray offered him the scholarship that brought him to Havre in 1997. The championships, win-loss records and pins all lead to an excellent and exciting college career. A career record of 126-10 with never a loss to an NAIA, NCAA II or NCAAIII or NICAA opponent, a total of 50 pins and a career dual record of 51 wins and 2 losses demonstrate an unparalleled achievement in a Montana collegiate career. He graduated this spring with two Bachelor of Science degrees in Diesel Technology and Farm Mechanics.