This academic year is the 150th anniversary of the founding of St. Olaf College. The college has invited anyone who wishes to submit a personal story about their St. Olaf experience. Here’s mine.
For all the things that I value about my relationship with St. Olaf College, the one at the heart of the matter is family centered. I am part of the second of three generations of Oles and we can count 13 members of our extended family that have matriculated on the Hill: parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, siblings, children, and nieces and nephews. I know there are other families with a longer St. Olaf legacy than ours, but I’ve been proud of my family’s contributions to St. Olaf and our common experiences on campus over the generations. (Personally, in addition to my student day at the college, I managed the St. Olaf Bookstore for several years.)
I have often wondered why my parents chose St. Olaf for their college experience. My mother was a first-generation college student in her family and I’ve always assumed that there were three reasons that she picked St. Olaf: music, Norwegian heritage, and religious faith. My father came to Northfield just months after mustering out of the U.S. Army Air Corps at the end of World War II. For him I believe that it was friendships from his Chicago church and his activities in the Boy Scouts during high school that drew him to St. Olaf. We never actually talked about it and there may have been others, but those seem obvious to me.
Doing genealogical work some years ago, I found another possible factor in my dad’s decision-making when thinking about schooling beyond high school.
I discovered a letter in the archives of the Norwegian American Historical Association that revealed a surprising piece of information that I hadn’t known before. My grandfather, Ragnvald Bergeson, wrote a letter to Dr. Kenneth Bjork in the St. Olaf History Department in 1943 with a synopsis of his educational background and career work. It may have been in response to some research that Dr. Bjork was doing on Norwegian-American settlement in the United States.
In the letter, my grandfather admits that when he mustered out of the United States Army following World War I, he wanted to continue his education at St. Olaf. However, he had been a radio operator during the war and he had chosen to make a career in electrical engineering. Unfortunately, St. Olaf offered no such option and he enrolled instead in South Dakota State University.
I’m certain that Ragnvald’s knowledge of St. Olaf and the quality of education it offered must have been conveyed to my dad. Ragnvald was a very persuasive person as I heard many times from my father and his two brothers. Just ask them about the summer canoe trips and other camping experiences that the boys had with him during their school years!
Nuclear family, extended family, friendship family, musical family, professional family, classmates’ family: St. Olaf is a place that fosters family relationships and I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy many of them. I think I owe a debt of gratitude to my Grandpa Ragnvald for his wisdom and foresight.
