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Kelsy
Burgmaier 2002 graduate and MSUN Skylights basketball star, Kelsy Burgmaier spent 6 months in Switzerland as an International Farm Youth Exchange (IFYE) student following graduation. She stayed and worked with six different farm families. Significantly different than wheat and cattle farming in Montana, Kelsy experienced dairy farming, chicken and egg farming, horse raising and commercial apple raising.
Upon returning to Montana, she worked as a laboratory technician with the Meadow Gold Dairy in Great Falls, but in June she entered an internship program with Benefis Hospital leading to certification as a Medical Technologist. Kelsy played center for the MSUN Skylights all four of her years at MSUN proving to be a hard working, inspirational player that made an impression on all that followed her career. She plans to put all that experience to good use this fall in coaching the girls basketball team in her home town of Power, Montana.
Frank never knew a stranger. He loved to visit and made new friends wherever he went. He was an avid reader, a local historian and had a passion for sports. He had accomplished many of his life goals; he lived to be 90 and to see his family's homestead turn 100. He stated that many times "of all his relatives that had homesteads, his dad was the only one to keep his." Frank passed this legacy of love for family and the land on to his children. Frank worked for Safeway Groceries in Billings. They also lived in Lewistown and Stevensville before moving to Portland, Oregon. In 1948 they returned to the ranch where he lived until his death. As a tribute to his commitment to Northern, his family has established a scholarship in his memory through the MSU-Northern Foundation. Ross
Seger NMC was just
5 years into operation when Ross Seger from Northeastern Montana came
to After his graduation from NMC in 1935, Ross completed a degree in electrical engineering from Bozeman in 1938 and then went on to take graduate work at Ohio State University, the University of Dayton, and UCLA. For 15 years he was employed as Chief of the Propeller Vibration group at Wright Patterson Air Force Base supervising 26 engineers and technicians responsible for the vibration characteristics of all Air Force propeller-airplane combinations. He moved on to Edwards Air Force base where he served for 7 years as CEO of the High Speed Rocket Track, conducting research in high speed dynamics and acceleration and in supersonic aerodynamics. The NASA Apollo Space program then used his talents and training for 10 years monitoring Facility Development Test Site Activation and operational Logistics before retiring in 1972. Ross authored a article on "High Speed Track Testing at the Air Force Flight Test Center" which was published in the American Rocket Society publication and presented at the American Rocket Society meeting in Washington, D.C. in 1957. Ross was registered as a professional engineer in Ohio until his retirement and was awarded patent number 2,774,043 for a new terminal he designed. After retirement he tried a new career track as an instructor in Financial and Time Management at San Jose Junior College in California for a year and in selling mutual funds and insurance for 2 years. He served on community boards and committees in many communities and also with the Kiwanis Clubs. His family consists of two daughters and a son all of whom achieved graduate degrees. His daughters are now retired but his son is currently "computerizing the payroll for the country of Saudi Arabia" but plans to return to the U.S. upon retirement. Ross has returned to Havre twice, once in 1966 and again in the late eighties. He donated a package of colored photos from the Space Center that have been displayed several times and are still in the library archives. He states that he certainly could write a book about his experiences but at 80 years of age, things tend to run together. He enjoys traveling and makes his home in Houston, Texas. Tim
"The Liftoff" Brurud Tim Brurud, a '97 Northern graduate, was one of thirty teachers selected to participate in the Lift Off Summer Institute program. The Texas Space Grant Consortium sponsors this nationally competitive program. It combines the strengths of collaborators to enrich teaching and learning of science, mathematics, technology, and engineering. The weeklong series included workshops, presentations by NASA scientists and engineers, hands-on activities, and field trips, featuring presentations by NASA scientists and astronauts working on various missions. Teachers also had the opportunity to visit Moody Gardens, learn about animal super?senses, and see the new IMAX Space Station 3-D. They went inside several laboratories at Johnson Space Center including the Neutral Buoyancy and Robonaut Lab. Here, they learned first-hand how the space simulators work and how food is prepared for spaceflight. The teachers also visited the NASA Educator Resource Center at Space Center Houston to receive additional educational materials for use in the classroom. The LiftOff workshops provide teachers the rareand for some unique-opportunity to spend a week working with professional scientists and engineers. Additional information about the LiftOff summer institute is available from the Internet at the following URL: http://www.tsgc.utexas.edu/ Brurud currently directs the new Boys & Girls Club in Havre while pursuing his master's in science at Northern. This was the second time in two years that he had been selected to participate in this Institute. Gordon Obie, a 1936 graduate from NMC, grew up on a farm 30 miles north of Joplin. He went from working at the Lakeside dairy to owning the national company, Obie Media. He quotes, "My time at NMC exposed me to a wider view of the world and stimulated me to go on to do other things. It was my first stepping stone." After Obie left school, he went with a carnival, worked in grocery stores, and then started a career as a sign painter in Bozeman. With time out for war industries, he built a statewide business in Montana and later sold it to larger regional companies. After he sold out in Montana, he purchased three other companies and in 1961, he formed another company and took over two companies in Oregon. Over the next fifteen years, Obie purchased a total of 26 companies and had approximately 5,000 billboards in several states. Today Obie Media is listed on the NASDAQ stock market as "Obie." A major part of Obie's operations consist of the advertising on about 12,000 buses in major cities in the U.S. and Canada. By 1976,
he had also purchased four radio stations and the Monaco motor home manufacturing
company with Ed King. They started a company called King/Obie Design and
did the interior decor for super markets and restaurants. Obie decided
to retire later that year and his son Brian became the CEO of Obie Outdoor
Advertising. Gordon is married to Mildred Huestis of Hingham, Montana;
they have two sons and a daughter. They bought a home in Sun City, Arizona
and have traveled to 120 foreign countries. While living in Arizona, Obie
became involved in the art world and Senior Net has published 12 of his
paintings. If you wish to view the paintings, go to http://www.seniornet.org
and type Gordon Obie in the "search senior net" window. |
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Last
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Frank
"Bud" Bucklin Jr.,'36, passed away July 30 2002 in Globe, Arizona
at the age of 90. Frank was born February 23,1912 in Redstone, Montana.
He was the fourth of six children and the only surviving son. Frank graduated
from Redstone High School in 1930 and received his two-year teaching diploma
from Northern Montana College. He loved teaching and said that it was
about the most enjoyable work he had ever done. He was teaching at Thornwood
School near Reserve, Montana when he came down with polio in 1940. Doctors
didn't expect him to last the trip to Great Falls, where he spent the
next four months in the hospital. While recuperating in Havre, Montana
he met Dyllis McGill, and they married in Great Falls in 1942. Frank became
chief housekeeper, cook and caregiver for his wife when she was coming
down with Alzheimer's and did everything for her. Dyllis passed away in
2000.
college
in 1933. There was no boys dormitory so he shared a room in a boarding
house on Third Avenue and did a lot of walking to and from his pre-engineering
classes on what passed for a campus in those days. He found time to be
involved in the college wrestling program and earned a letter in that
sport. His roommate in that boarding house for college boys, Cy Morrison,
still talks about those years, the things they did for amusement and the
odd jobs they did to earn a little bit of money in those tough depression
years.