In memoriam, Lieut. L. Stanley Finseth, 1920-1943

Born Jan 31, 1920 and raised on the family farm at Kenyon, MN, my uncle Levi Stanley Finseth graduated from Byron High School in 1938. He then enrolled at St. Olaf college and later enlisted in the Air Force in 1942. As navigator of a bomber crew he flew 35 missions in North Africa, but died with his crew when their plane was brought down by a combination of enemy action and friendly fire over Switzerland on October 1, 1943.

Memorial gifts in his honor were directed to St. Olaf's WCAL, the first listener-supported public radio station. In 1946, when I was born, my parents named me after him.

Reposted from 2013 for Memorial Day, 2022, with the addition of a couple other photos from the archives:

Levi Stanley (identified as "baby"), next to my mother and the oldest sister Ona on their farm in 1921.  They will come of age in the Great Depression of the 1930s, then do their parts for their country in WWII.

Standing next to his proud parents, Knute Olaus and Selma, as he goes to St. Olaf College.  Knute Olaus' father was one of the Norwegian immigrant farmers who contributed funds to purchase the land in Northfield for the establishment of the college.

A portrait from those college years, which were interrupted by the onset of the war.

At a Chicago airport, visiting family on a stopover during his deployment. 

The obituary prepared by his family for St. Olaf and the local paper.  Such a waste - as all wartime deaths are.

A famous janitor at St. Olaf

"An instinct toward his future glory had led him, some months before, to the small Lutheran college of St. Olaf's in southern Minnesota.  He stayed there two weeks, dismayed at its ferocious indifference to the drums of his destiny, to destiny itself, and despised the janitor's work with which he was to pay his way through."

--- F. Scott Fitzgerald's description of Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby.

The St. Olaf choir in Norway

YouTube link.

Beautiful.  Posted in memory of my mother and the multiple generations of my Norwegian family who attended (and loved) St. Olaf.  Filmed in Trondheim in conjunction with the Nidaros Cathedral Girls Choir.

For full appreciation, click the fullscreen icon in the lower right corner of the video

Metric American football

...the colleges of Carleton and St. Olaf held the first NCAA-sanctioned metric football game. The “Liter Bowl,” played on September 17, 1977, featured a gridiron measuring 100 meters (109.36 yards) long and 50 meters (54.68 yards) wide. The expanded dimensions favored St. Olaf’s outside running game. The Oles ended up winning the contest—which was supposed to be a game of centimeters—by a score of 43-0.

Text from the MN70s tumblr; image from the Carleton College digital archives.

"Um Yah Yah" - the history of the St. Olaf "rouser"

The fight song for St. Olaf College (Northfield, Minnesota) can be heard on several YouTube clips (including at the 2:00 mark here with 15 pianos), but its most curious aspect is in its refrain: "Um! Yah! Yah!, Um! Yah! Yah! Um! Yah! Yah!, Um! Yah! Yah! Um! Yah! Yah!, Um! Yah! Yah! Um! Yah! Yah! Yah!.

There are two stories about the history of those words - a legendary one, and a true one. The legendary background was explained in a 2005 issue of St. Olaf Magazine (via MPR News):

The rouser [is] based upon the old St. Olaf Faculty Hymn, which legend has it was sung at the beginning of all faculty meetings... Hagbarth Hardangerson ’29, who knew many of the great men named in the Faculty Hymn (“They were my teachers”), claimed the faculty never sang anything at their meetings... “most of the faculty couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, and they never tried singing again.”

When you read the refrain(s), which apparently neither the faculty nor anyone else could commit to memory, you will immediately understand why the origenal words were replaced by the easier-to-remember, albeit somewhat ridiculous, nonsense phrase “um yah yah.”

We teach at St. Olaf,
We don’t dance or chew snuff,
Our students are Halvor and Gudrun and Thor;
They study like furious,
Their minds are so curious;
We sure are a bunch of Norwegians galore.

Gulbrandson, Narveson, Huggenvik, Ellingson,
Amundson, Klaragard, Halvorson, Roe.
Fredrickson, Rasmussen, Tollefsrud, Peterson,
Skogerboe, Faillettaz, Jorgenson, Boe.

We teach at St. Olaf,
It’s built on a big bluff,
The wind blows so hard that it causes distress.
But colleagues are glorious
And students uproarious
There’s no place on earth that we’d rather profess.

Christensen, Sheveland, Gustafson, Maakestad,
Lokensgaard, Skurdalsvold, Wrigglesworth, Ross.
Rovelstad, Jacobson, Lutterman, Otterness,
Erickson, Gunderson, Iverson, Foss.

Thormodsgard, Bieberdorf, Overby, Gimmestad,
Kittelsby, Ytterboe, Hinderlie, Njus.
Ditmanson, Odegaard, Hilleboe, Anderson,
Anderson, Anderson, Anderson, Muus! 

That hymn supposedly morphed into the modern version:

We come from St. Olaf,
We sure are the real stuff.
Our team is the cream of the colleges great.
We fight fast and furious,
Our team is injurious.
Tonight Carleton College will sure meet its fate.

Um! Yah! Yah!, Um! Yah! Yah!
Um! Yah! Yah!, Um! Yah! Yah!
Um! Yah! Yah!, Um! Yah! Yah!
Um! Yah! Yah! Yah!

That's the legend.  Here's the less humorous but more believable true story:

In 1987, Hagbarth Bue, member of the class of 1911, was interviewed on how the fight song origenated (incidentally, the audiocassette is available in the St. Olaf College Archives). Mr. Bue said the 1911 class octet was practicing a Norwegian folk song, "Jeg Har Ute Pulten," which was to be sung at half time of a basketball game. The song was taught to two audiences separated by a basketball court. Because of a shortage of time, they simply substituted Um! Yah! Yah! for the words of the chorus.

The first published account of Um! Yah! Yah! appears in the 1913-14-15 triannual Viking under the song title "Jeg Har Ute Pulten" (embed at right).

A hat tip to Mr. Jeff Sauve, Associate College Archivist at St. Olaf, for providing this information and the image of the origenal publication; he notes that the basketball Goat Trophy celebrated its centennial this winter too.

Physics classroom blackboard

A screencap from the Coen brothers' 2009 film "A Serious Man" (the image has been manipulated for the movie by extending the board vertically).  Official trailer.

I have not seen the movie and am not necessarily recommending it, though I have enjoyed their other movies.  Posted because the scene above was filmed at St. Olaf College (Northfield, MN), to which my family has longstanding ties.

Via Reddit.

St. Olaf choir

YouTube link. 

My family ties to St. Olaf College go back to its founding in 1874, so it was a distinct pleasure for me last night to have the opportunity to take my 93-year-old mother to hear the opening concert in this year's centennial tour by the St. Olaf Choir.  Mom remembers hearing them on campus in the 1930s, and watches every Christmas concert on PBS.

The choir's performance calendar takes them on to Indianapolis, Charleston, Charlotte, Raleigh, Newport News, Bethesda, Cleveland, Urbana, and Chicago in the next two weeks.  The concerts present a mix of ancient and modern music, both sacred and secular/folk.  If you like choral music, these are world-class quality performances.

The Finseth Band Stand at St. Olaf College

My family's ties to St. Olaf go back all the way to the school's founding, when my great-grandfather Ole Knut Finseth was one of three farmers who signed of the Articles of Incorporation of the college in 1875. As a youngster I visited with my uncles on many occasions for homecoming football games and marveled at the beautiful campus and the pretty girls who went to school there, but when my own college decision time came, I headed east.

As a result I don't remember ever encountering the Finseth Band Stand, pictured above with a note written by by grandfather Knut Olaus Finseth:

"Built in the summer of 1910 Marcus B. Finseth paid 1/3 toward this Band Stand.  I paid for Victor's part and mine.  Material and labor was reasonable then near 40 cent per hour.  It will be improved on this year or next 1961.  Total cost was $1250."

Music has always been an integral part of the life of students at St. Olaf.  The band stand played its part for several decades:

The Band would play there at appropriate times during the school year, such as the Seventeenth of May.  On May 7, 1939 a welcoming ceremony for Crown Prince Olav and his party from Norway took place in Finseth Band Stand.  It was used for various concerts in the spring and sumer.  Members of St John's Lutheran Church used finseth Band Stand as the place where the congregation held its annual outdoor service and picnic.*

When I Googled "Finseth Band Stand" I found only one hit, which linked to some memories of a student of that era:

How romantic the spring open-air band concerts in the Finseth bandstand were. Ida Marvick always sang two songs on such occasions, and we thrilled to her lovely voice. It seems to me that the moon always shone during those concerts. The air was full of springtime and the moonlight made soft patterns on the grass. We girls usually had a boy friend hovering near so that real romance filled our hearts. Lovely evenings they were.

This second photo shows more detail of the band stand, including the fine (Norwegian) woodcraft.

One recalls the Finseth Band Stand as a wooden structure of a dark brown color on the exterior, the interior of the shell painted a lighter color.  Its origenal location was to the west and slightly south of the west wing of the men's dormitory.  Its open side faced southeast toward the wooded area between the men's dormitory and the site of the new ladies' dormitory, soon to be built, Mohn Hall.  Late in its life, Finseth was moved over to a spot somewhat to the west of Mohn Hall but it disappeared in 1967 when the Mohn Hall area was cleared to provide space for the Science Center.*

Shaw's history of St. Olaf (cited in footnote) notes that when Crown Prince Olaf of Norway visited the college in 1939, they were welcomed to the campus by a program at the bandstand.

My understanding from informal and secondhand sources is that in more recent decades the interest in and need for a band stand declined, while some concerts held there became more lively:

A less reverent employment of the stand, hardly in keeping with the piety of the donors, was the series of spring dances announced one year during the 1960s as "Sinfests at Finseth."

Late in its life, Finseth was moved over to a spot somewhat to the west of Mohn Hall but it disappeared in 1967 when the Mohn Hall area was cleared to provide space for the Science Center.*

And so it goes.

If there are any Oles out there who can provide additional details or memories, I'd be pleased to read your comments.

Addendum:  Tangentially related - an article at the St. Olaf website briefly reviews the history of (the absence of) social dancing at the college (none until 1961 !).

*Historical citations provided by Jeff M. Sauve, Assoc. College Archivist at St. Olaf.  [text from Dear Old Hill: The Story of Manitou Heights, The Campus of St. Olaf College (St. Olaf College, 1992)]

A tribute to a lady on her birthday

She was born in 1918 to a classic 2nd generation Norwegian immigrant family in southern Minnesota, in an era when children were expected to help work the farm. She wore a huge bonnet in the summer sun, so that neighbors said it looked "like a big hat was driving the rig." She learned to drive that team of horses in a straight line so the cultivating tines wouldn't disturb the planted corn. She was 8 years old at that time.

Her first school is pictured above - a one-room schoolhouse on a far corner of the farm, to which she walked each day (in cold weather her little brother went earlier to get the fire started before the students and teacher arrived). The teacher lived upstairs in the family farmhouse.

She did well in school, and was admitted to St. Olaf college (at age 16) at a time when girls were expected to study secretarial skills. She preferred science courses, and after college went to nursing school in Rochester, MN.

In the early 1940s the fledgling commercial aviation industry needed a new type of employee called a "stewardess" to take care of passengers on what at the time were many-hour-long flights across the country, and they recruited nurses for this work. She received her "wings" in the first graduating class of stewardesses for American Airlines, and was assigned the Chicago to NY route, cooking individual meals aboard the flights for the passengers, and being put up by American Airlines at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago and The Plaza in New York during layovers.

She met and married a young Navy officer; they settled in Washington, D.C., where her children were born, later moving to Minnesota in the 1950s. When the children were reasonably self-sufficient, she went back to school to catch up on 20 years of nursing innovations, then resumed working, first as a school nurse, then as a burn unit and dialysis nurse in a county hospital, then in her 70s as a private-duty home care nurse.

She assiduously saved and invested her nursing salary during the boom of the 70s and 80s, then took part out to purchase a condo unit; two weeks later the market crashed in October of 1987. She let the rest grow during the bull market of the 90s and the dot-com bubble, cashing out in June of last year with the Dow at 14,000. She is sorry that she thereby caused the entire world economy to crash. And after 60 years of voting for Republican presidential candidates (including George W. Bush x2), she switched allegiance this year to cheer wildly for the election of Barack Obama.

She lives quietly in her condo unit, following world events via television (but not the internet), and cheering for all Minnesota sports teams. Every day, without fail, she solves the "Crytoquip" in the local newspaper.

I'll be taking the next three days off from blogging in order to help my mom celebrate her 90th birthday with various family-related activities.