SCHMID: LOOKING BACK FROM THE LEFT COAST - JANUARY 3, 2014
Grand Forks was awarded a long-sought designation as one of the FAA’s six unmanned aerial systems (UAS) test sites. Five other states were also designated; 24 applied. The site will be synergistic with UAS activities at UND, GFAFB, private business and federal agencies in the GF area.
The economic benefits from UAS, also known as drones, may be far reaching. The Minneapolis Star Tribune headed an article "Minnesota stands to gain from North Dakota drone tests." The article noted Northland Technical College in Thief River Falls had partnered on the ND proposal. The community college trains technicians to maintain drones and also offers a degree in imagery analysis, interpreting the data drones send back.
Casselton closed out the year with a bang. A 100-car grain train derailed and was struck by a 100-car oil train. The result: the biggest rail fire and explosion in ND history. The crash happened west of Casselton and there were no injuries.
“He came across refreshingly unpolished in a profession that can produce personalities that border on politician and used-car salesman. It sure seems that what you see is what you get with Bubba.” -- GF Herald sports writer Tom Miller, who was clearly taken aback by new UND football coach Bubba Schweigert. Miller said, “We’ve never seen a press conference produce that many laughs or that many tears.” Through no fault of his own Bubba is getting a late start -- UND recruiting is behind other schools in the region and Big Sky.
The Jamestown Sun had no reservations about Bubba. Last Saturday their weekly bravos included the following: “Bravo to Zeeland, N.D., native Kyle “Bubba” Schweigert for becoming the head coach of the University of North Dakota’s football program. He played collegiately and served as an assistant coach at the University of Jamestown (then Jamestown College).”
Forum Communications made top level personnel changes at yearend. Korrie Wenzel (44), publisher of the Forum’s Daily Republic newspaper in Mitchell, S.D., will succeed retiring GF Herald publisher Mike Jacobs, who has been with the Herald since 1979. Grand Forks and ND will be a new experience for Wenzel, who never lived more than 50 miles from Mitchell. He grew up in a newspaper family in Wessington Springs, SD, and joined the Daily Republic in 1991 after studying journalism at nearby SD State in Brookings.
Another long-time Forum executive is retiring -- Lloyd Case is CEO of Forum Communications where he has been for 31 years. The Goodrich native is a CPA who had earlier been the Forum’s CFO. Case will be succeeded by Bill Marcil Jr., a member of the family which owns Forum Communications, who will remain publisher of The Forum in Fargo.
“We have a bit of a public relations challenge in front of us, both internally and externally.” -- A consultant for Dickinson State trying to pull the school out of a nose dive following an academic scandal. Enrollment has dropped 40 percent in three years.
Don’t look for ND stories in the Miami Herald, but there it was: “Football players from Miami’s Northwestern High venture to rural North Dakota in pursuit of a college education and a new life.” The article is about high school football players from tough ghetto backgrounds who didn’t rate attention from Division 1 schools. A black assistant coach at Mayville State gave them scholarships to come north because he was unable to find talent in high schools in the Mayville region.
The article describes how the black players adjusted to Mayville, which reminded them of “a Western frontier town.” The Florida guys persevered and Mayville State began to have winning football seasons. Their experience encouraged more Florida players. This is a good story if you consider it important that Mayville, a school with about a thousand students, needs to have a winning football team. Why does a school this size need a football team, and why does it have to go to Florida to find players? Mayville earlier got in financial trouble after granting tuition waivers to foreign soccer players. Is the nation’s smallest public university abusing taxpayer money?
Coumnist Lloyd Omdahl pondered and pondered the ND oil boom, but reached no definite conclusion. He said “many untallied costs” make it difficult to determine the “cost-benefit” ratio. Omdahl contended “North Dakota is on a euphoric high.”
I’ve often spoken of the ND way of death: early in the morning, a pickup, a driver without a seat belt, and usually some alcohol. An accident Christmas morning in the heart of the oil country was one more example. Two Dodge pickups, each driver not wearing a seat belt, collided head on at the crest of a hill on a Mountrail County gravel road -- one dead; one injured.
It’s encouraging, but counterintuitive -- ND traffic deaths are down sharply from 2012. Despite an increase in population and economic activity, traffic deaths decreased from 168 in 2012 to 146 in 2013. Not so in the Oil Patch -- the northwest region of the state had more traffic deaths than the state's other three regions. About 40 percent of state deaths involved alcohol and over 50 percent of the victims were not wearing seat belts.
Maybe they flew away. A Bismarck pet store reported four flying squirrels were missing, along with three purses. The day before, two teenage girls admired the squirrels and purses. The squirrels were valued at $600.
When Leland Grosz (77) completed the eighth grade in country school, his father died and Leland took over the family farm near Turtle Lake. Leland made it go, expanded his skills and became the proprietor of Grosz Wrecking -- 50 acres of stuff he kept inventoried in his head. He lost a leg to bone cancer, but maintained full speed. Leland’s obituary said he was a force -- one of his favorite sayings: “Let’s do something, even if it’s wrong.”
DAKTOIDS: The salaries of the ND governor and elected agency heads are set by the Legislature. Many deputies, especially professionals in technical areas, make more than their bosses or, for that matter, the governor . . . ND’s population is estimated at 723,000 up from 700,000 at the beginning of the year . . . A Tribune editorial said ND “will be hopping” in 2014, the 125th anniversary of statehood and a year in which the population will pass 725,000 and oil production will top a million barrels a day.
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