Fort Dodge Junior College

I look back on the two years I spent at Fort Dodge Junior College with nostalgia and fond memories. The first year I was there I had the companionship of Howard Nelson, Harlan Anderson and John Woodard. They rode along with me and my father in his daily drive to his work in the courthouse. Harlan of course was a good man with the off-the-cuff quip and an engaging conversationalist. Howard too was an individual who cam up constantly with fresh ideas and opinions. John had been my spare-time playmate all the time we were on the farm.



John Woodard, high school graduation photo, 1938

Part of the time we walked from the courthouse to the junior college (which had its classes on the top floor of the high school building — I think it was part of the Fort Dodge school district). But at least part of the time (in winter) we drove to the school and my father continued on back to the courthouse. Come to think of it I believe was another student riding along, Darwin Liljegren. At least he participated in the Essex memorial drive in 1988, the year of the Strand family reunion and my 50th high school class reunion. Darwin may have ridden with my dad some other year however. John wasn’t available for the memorial drive — he had died in the meantime.





I found the above two photos in an envelope labeled “Essex Memorial Run.” Unfortunately, there were no notations on the back to identify any of the individuals. Thus, the only one I can identify is my dad, who is standing second from left in both pictures in the blue “gimme” cap, blue windbreaker, beige shorts, and handknit diamond pattern socks. I think the person in the far left of both pictures wearing the straw boater is Harlan Anderson. I don’t know why I think that, but I just have a feeling. Who the other two/three gentlemen are, I have not a clue. —Laurel

The last time I saw John was shortly after the end of WWII. He had driven out west in his new Ford from Michigan (where his half-sister lived). I was living in Berkeley at the time and he looked me up — must have gotten my address from my parents. He wasn’t impressed with California and said that he was headed right back east. I tried to dissuade him to try out California for a while but he was adamant. I don’t think I ever had any further contact with him.

Howard was a year older than I and thought I sort of lost track of him our relationship was renewed sometime in the 1950s and we have corresponded ever since — particularly in recent years after he retired from teaching at UCLA. Harlan had been in Clarice’s class in school, but he lived in the old Woodard place adjacent to the Peterson homestead for several years so I was well acquainted with him. Later he moved to the Twin Cities, got a degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Minnesota, and founded an independent business.

The members of the ride group all carried their noonday lunches along and we would eat together and then, when the weather was nice, we would go for a stroll. There was a nice part nearby that we often visited and the school was close enough to the outskirts of Fort Dodge that we could reach the actual countryside. On these walks we often had along with us Gaylord Van Alstine. He was an ardent chemistry student and on some of our walks he tried to detonate some of his lab products — such as a flask of nitrobenzene http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrobenzene. Sadly he did not survive WWII.