Pat and Janice Eng
Dakota Attitude #30
“All Six Eng Boys Were in War”
“My dad was a dirt farmer,” Pat says. “We lived in the outskirts of Sanger in a home built by Mr. Sanger, the founder of the town. It was very, very bleak days of my life in Sanger, because of our family situation. Absolutely, absolutely no money. Just wasn’t any. I was a carrier for Grit magazine and I had, I don’t know, eight to 10 customers, and I’m here to tell you I turned that money over to my mother so we could buy something at the store.” Sanger, previously called Bentley, was the county seat of Oliver County until 1884 when Mr. Sanger renamed it.
“I had five brothers, no sisters. The five brothers older than myself were all in World War II. They all returned. They’d all been in a battle at some time in their [service] career. [Ed] was in New Guinea and Australia. Glen and Bob were in Germany, France. Max was on the USS Yorktown and in the South Pacific. Sam was in Japan. I was at home at the time [of World War II]. I was too young, so I waited, and I went into the Korean War. I volunteered for the draft. I was with the 171st Field Artillery Battalion, 45th Infantry Division in Korea.”
The sport of boxing always held Pat’s interest. “I started boxing in the third grade, and I boxed through high school. I fought a couple of fights in the Army, but those guys were way too good for me,” he laughs. After his military service, Pat was involved in the North Dakota Boxing Commission, Golden Gloves, and he trained boxers for decades. “I instigated the Boxing Commission in the state of North Dakota,” he says.
Now 85, Pat says, “I am proud of America. I always will be. I can’t absolutely agree with the politics of America, but I’m proud of America. [Old Glory, the U.S. flag] means lot o’ heartache, tears, pretty damn proud. I’m proud. Oh, yeah. It just bugs me, bothers me, to see it being disrespected by anybody. Not taking their cap off, not standing when a flag goes by, that really bothers me. And I’m not afraid to tell them. Because it’s just—it’s something means so much to me. So much.”
– Pat and Janice Eng, Interview: November 13, 2017, County: Oliver, City: Sanger
“Feeding Soup, Bread, and Pickles to Hobos”
Timothy and Mary Ann, both born in 1929 after the stock market crash, saw a lot of hobos in their childhoods around Devils Lake. He remembers, “The stockyard and the Great Northern Railroad roundhouse was about three blocks from our place, and them hobos all lived out there. My folks always fed ’em. Mom had a lot of soup. She baked bread every other day; ’bout six to seven loaves at a time. They sat out there on the bench outside the house.
“I used to go out to the hobo pit. Sit there and drink coffee with ’em. I was just a young fella. They slept in boxcars, and they’d go there and sleep in the hay. The wintertime we didn’t see ’em. They just jumped a freight train and took off for the south. They were nice people. We called ’em hobos, but they were out lookin’ for work on the farms. They had to eat, you know, so they could find work.”
Mary Ann says, “Mom always made sure that we [sisters] weren’t outside when they were there. I remember one time when Mom had put up pickles in a big barrel. One day she went out to see what they were like, and by damn, they had emptied the barrel. ‘Well,’ Dad says, ‘if that’s all they had to eat then I guess it’s okay. God must have showed ’em how to get here.’”
“They were good people,” Tim concludes, “out tryin’ to make money to send home to their families.”
The couple met through Mary Ann’s brothers and married in 1952 during a January storm. Mary Ann and Timothy have four boys and two girls. One of the boys, David, had cerebral palsy and died at age three. She says, “It’s tough on you, but you figure, would he ever be able to live a normal life? You just don’t know.”
For 35 and a half years Timothy worked at the same furniture store, laying carpet and linoleum, delivering furniture, and fixing washers. “I had a family to feed so I enjoyed goin’ to work. I used to be there half hour ahead of time—I just felt good about it.”
– Timothy and Mary Ann (Senger) Kurtz, Interview: September 2, 2016, County: Ramsey, City: Devils Lake
“Just Love Doing My Thing”
Wanda graduated from Kulm High School in 1944, “Our motto was: ‘Tonight we launch, where will we anchor?’ It has been with me forever and a day, because that afternoon we had a great big rain. So we got the rain so we could launch. But I don’t know where everybody anchored. It wasn’t funny at the time, but it was peculiar because some of the parents didn’t even get to the graduation; some of the roads were bad.”
In 1950, Wanda Flegel married Henry “Hank” Gebhardt, having twin daughters, Connie and Bonnie. The Gebhardts lived on a farmstead just west of Monango before moving to town in 1964. Wanda lives at the same location in Monango. After teaching for 36 years, kindergarten through the eighth grade, she retired in 1995 at age 69. “They had a great big farewell party for me. I never heard so many kind remarks,” she laughs, “I didn’t know if it was because I was leaving or that I did a good job. I didn’t ask them that.”
Wanda loves the area and living on her own. In the evenings she enjoys watching TV and visiting with friends on the telephone. “When they call, we used to have cut-offs. We go for an hour and a half to two hours on the telephone.”
She plans to remain in the area, “Until they haul me out. I just love doing my thing here. I just love my privacy. It is pleasant. In the morning you get up, hear the birds; kind of loiter around. I wait for the lawn to dry and then I mow it. I have two riding lawnmowers. I service them all the time.” Wanda also owns a pickup, a car, and a four-wheeler she uses to go the two and a half blocks to get her mail. “I’m a jack of all trades. I’m not bragging. I run the snowblower in the wintertime, too. I even did the street a couple of times because I couldn’t get out. I’m self-sufficient thus far. I’m only 85.”
– Wanda (Flegel) Gebhardt, Interview: June 3, 2011, County: Dickey, City: Monango
(Editor’s Note: These profiles of North Dakota residents were collected by author James Puppe between 2004-2018, covering 617 subjects and 113,000 miles. He has given permission for his book to be serialized in North Dakota Newspapers at no charge. To find out how you can read the entire col lection of Dakota Attitude profiles go to dakotaattitude.com.)
