The Simple Lives We Live
Some of the most extraordinary stories don't come from celebrities or history books. They come from everyday people - your neighbor, your grandmother, the man who runs the corner store, or the woman sitting next to you at church.
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So please join me each week as we capture voices and memories that deserve to be heard and remembered. Because the truth is, ordinary people live the most extraordinary lives.
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The Simple Lives We Live
If You're Gonna Walk on Thin Ice, Dance | Stan Koppinger
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Stan Koppinger grew up one of four boys in a tiny house in New England, ND, where his dad’s whistle called them home for lunch. He started at the bank at 17 and spent 45 years as the guy they sent in when a bank was in trouble, from Dickinson and Killdeer to Wisconsin, Colorado, Beach and Medora. He tells me about meeting Lori on a John Deere roof, their KFC wedding on a 104-degree day, and the job interview he won with a legal pad and two pyramids. Stick around for the 100-point basketball game, and what one of his players said on the ride home.
Welcome to The Simple Lives We Live, where we capture the extraordinary stories hidden inside ordinary lives. I'm your host, Kylie Simiano, and each week we sit down to share memories of love, family, hardship, joy, and the moments that shaped us. If these stories mean something to you, you can help support the podcast by subscribing, leaving a review, sharing episodes with family and friends, or donating through the links in our website and social media bios. Your support helps keep these stories alive. Now, let's settle in and listen back together. Welcome back, everybody, for another episode of the Simple Lives We Live. Today's quote Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, and that is by Leonardo da Vinci.
SPEAKER_03And today, my guest is Stan Koppinger. So welcome, Stan. Well, thank you. Okay, so we're going to start off with how old are you?
SPEAKER_06Well, before I start, I just want to thank you, Kylie, for inviting me to do this. Oh, absolutely. Very um, very appreciative. I'm glad to be able to do this. I've seen a few of your other ones. I haven't seen them all, but I think I know most of the people that you've interviewed. And they're very um, some of them are old friends of mine. So I appreciate the fact that you would include me with them.
SPEAKER_03Well, and it's awesome because Josh is like, you've got to get Stan. So Josh, my brother, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And um he's like, you could just ask him how old old he is, and he'll take it from there. Let's say that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So I know you have lots and lots of stories, which I think is gonna be great because as you said, you remember everything.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So um you probably know a lot more details even than some others. So um, yeah. So how old are you?
SPEAKER_06I'm 71. 71. I will be 72 in three weeks.
SPEAKER_03Oh, awesome. Okay, so when's your birthday?
SPEAKER_06September 30th, born in 1954. Awesome.
SPEAKER_03Where were you born at?
SPEAKER_06Well, you know, I'm a I'm from New England. I was born and raised, I was born in Dickinson, though, at the uh St. Joseph Hospital. And that's where everybody from New England came.
SPEAKER_03Well, even Beach.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's where I was born.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that's right. In the old hospital in Beach. Yeah. So yeah, all four of our boys we were born in. I mean, my brothers and I were were born in Dickinson. Okay. But we lived in New England.
SPEAKER_03Lived in New England.
SPEAKER_06I mean, up till our 18th.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so you said, and you always lived in New England. You said until you until you graduated.
SPEAKER_06Right. And you there's four boys. There was four boys in our family.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so list them for me.
SPEAKER_06Okay, the oldest is Keith. Okay, and then myself, is the second oldest. My brother Marty is four years younger than me, and then my brother Wayne, who has passed on, is was nine years younger than me.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_06Eight or nine, I can't remember.
SPEAKER_03So you were the second.
SPEAKER_06I was the second, yes.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Now talk to me about your parents.
SPEAKER_06Well, kind of it's really when you say, and I like your your um, because it really is the simple life we live. Uh my parents led a very simple life, and that's not in a bad way, as you you have probably had to explain many times. A simple life is really what we all live if we think about it. Yeah, but my mom and dad, my mother was from Sentinel Butte, and that's kind of how I uh yeah, there's a story to that, and I'll get back to that. But she was born and raised on at at the base of Camel's Hump out there, and uh so that I went out there a lot as a young kid. Her name was Mina Combs. Okay, and and so she she's from from over there, and then my dad is Charlie Coppinger. His real first name is Carl, uh, but he went by Charlie his whole life, and uh he's from New England too. Um, he was from a larger family and down in New England on a farm.
SPEAKER_03He he grew up, but uh so talk to me about them. You give me um how would you describe them, your parents?
SPEAKER_06Well, they were like I say, they were low key, dad had two two jobs in his life, and um, you know, and I I know I missed a little bit of this and a little of that, but um his whole after he got out of the art service in World War II, uh he uh um came back to New England and he had left from New England, comes back to it, and he gets a job as a mechanic in in New England, and he was a mechanic for I'm just gonna be guessing, but probably about 45 years.
SPEAKER_04Wow.
SPEAKER_06All at the same place.
SPEAKER_04Wow.
SPEAKER_06Bagner Implement, it was called, and um he he worked there many years. He he was everybody in town, he's he's helped somebody in New England uh in the old times. He had helped somebody always at least once. He was the guy that they would call when they had trouble. Yeah, and if he was they were parked out in a ditch and they ran out of gas or they needed this or that, they'd call call Charlie back before um uh we had cell phones. So um remember a lot of that stuff. And but then his second job after after the the guy that owned Wagner Implement, well old Philip Wagner was his name, he passed away. And he had always told dad that dad shared a lot of these stories with me because I sat with him a long time, about four years when he was in the nursing home over in Weeble. But we got really to know each other that last four years better than I ever knew him. And but he was told that you we'll take care of you, Charlie. And we'll it didn't work out so well when when the guy died. So dad ended up um even told me in my junior year, maybe I'm gonna have to move to another town, Stan. What do you think of that? You know, and I said, Well, Dad, you know what? You're gonna have to do what you gotta do, and we'll be supportive of you, kids. And um, but then he got a job offer down at Cenex, and so they gave him a job at the um in the in the uh shop at the Cenex. Okay, and he he's a good he can do anything with an engine, anything with tires, anything with all the t tires, batteries, and accessories, he always called it. Yeah, and uh anyway, so he he did that and um um and did it well. And then towards the end of his career, he was aging a little bit and he got a chance to drive the gas truck. And that for him was was a good way to end his career.
SPEAKER_03How old was he when he retired?
SPEAKER_06I think he was uh uh he was about 60, maybe 62 or 63, somewhere in there.
SPEAKER_03Okay. And how about your mom? Was she a stay-at-home mom?
SPEAKER_06Well, this is what's interesting is I know that they met um she was a beautician. She went to beauty school in Bismarck, uh, from Sentinel, went to beauty school in Bismarck, and um, she got a job down in New England when she got out, and that's where she met dad. And so, you know, she they, you know, I don't know all the details to their their relationship or anything, but I do know that um they got married and um, you know, had us four boys, and mom kind of shortly after they got married, kind of hung it up as a beautician. I mean, she cut all our hair at home, you know, uh us boys, but she she didn't, she was a stay-at-home mom, but that's what dad wanted to for her. So and and that worked out really well.
SPEAKER_03Do you feel like she enjoyed that?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah, I think so. I mean, I think there were times when it might have been a little bit, probably was never boring with us four boys, but um, probably when we were at school and stuff, she probably, you know, and she read a lot, she read almost a book every other day, towards the latter part of her life, you know, just these paperbacks from the local library. And but she she would read books and stuff.
SPEAKER_03So your your dad, you said was in the Weibo nursing home. How old was he when he passed away?
SPEAKER_0696.
SPEAKER_0396. And what year was that?
SPEAKER_06December of 2000.
SPEAKER_032000. Yeah. And how about your mom?
SPEAKER_06Um you know that's that's going back a ways.
SPEAKER_03Um I don't.
SPEAKER_06Um that's oh, I can figure it out. It would probably be about uh started at the bank in Dickinson in 06. It was oh it was nine September 30th of 06. Somewhere near September 21st. She was nine days before my she died, I think, on September 21st.
SPEAKER_03And what year did you say that was?
SPEAKER_06Um six.
SPEAKER_03Of 06. Yeah. Okay.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03No, you said you grew up in New England, pretty much born and raised. Yeah. Um, did you grow up in town or were you guys out on a farm?
SPEAKER_06Well, it was interesting. We grew up in town. You did lived in one house for up until I was four years old, and then we moved about a block away and lived in that house the rest of our time there.
SPEAKER_03Okay, yeah. Did they always live in that house until your dad went into the nursing home? Yeah, always in that house. They were always in that house.
SPEAKER_06Yep.
SPEAKER_03How how big was that house?
SPEAKER_06It was 900 square feet.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, with four kids.
SPEAKER_06With four kids. There was two bedrooms in it, and then there was an attic upstairs where Keith and I would sleep. And you know, and at the time there was no electricity up there, no heat or anything. So um, you know, dad went to work and fixed all that. It took him a couple years to get it all done. But we we slept up there, and uh, I have a little thing I remember about it, and if Keith were here, he would laugh. But um, we'd have mom would say it's time to go to bed to be around nine, and we'd head uh to the steps that go straight up, and no with no electricity there, Keith would say, You go first, and he made me go in there first all the time, huh? Because it was dark and it was fun, but I'd make sure and make left turn at the right time, and I would just dive onto my bed because I couldn't stand up in there. It was so low, yeah. So it was the attic, yeah.
SPEAKER_03And then the other two, Marty and Wayne, did they share a room?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, okay. Yeah, they come a little later and they had bunk. We had bunk beds down there for them, and then mom and dad were next to them, and it was so kind of small and uh um that uh didn't have doors, it just had a curtain on each door. They were right next to each other. Oh, really? Yeah, there was a wall between them, but a curtain to go in the door.
SPEAKER_03Yep, yep. One bathroom. I mean, we'll see.
SPEAKER_06And then towards the towards later on, dad put a second bathroom downstairs with a shower, and it didn't have a shower or anything, so he put a shower in, and so that's nice.
SPEAKER_03But that's all you needed, and that's all we needed for six people, yeah. And you said that's where you lived, yeah, and or where you never thought twice about it, yeah.
SPEAKER_06It was what it was, and we were and we were happy, you know. We weren't a jolly type happy. We us guys, you know, we kind of our dad was quiet, and um and mom was pretty quiet too, and uh we just kind of were quiet to a certain extent.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we had our usual brother fights and do all those kind of things, but um who were you cle were you closest then to Keith just because he was older, or were you closer to Marty or who did she?
SPEAKER_06No, we weren't like that. I'm gonna say that a little maybe too often, but it and don't take it wrong, but we weren't like that. Um we weren't really that close, any of us. But my youngest brother, because he was so young, it seemed like he he gravitated to me. And I I gravitated to him because of that, because I could see that he, you know, was gravitating towards me, and I thought, well, I better be a good brother and try to help him out. And so over the years, you know, as it went, he's passed away, died of diabetes here back. Dad died in oh, I mean, excuse me, whenever it was, 2000, and he died uh not even a year later.
SPEAKER_04So wow.
SPEAKER_06He was young, yeah. He was. I mean, he was on he wasn't even 60 yet. He had lost a leg to diabetes. And when they told him that you'll lose your next leg now, we have to take it. He was he gave up. Oh so, but he followed us around. We've moved to Wisconsin, we moved to Colorado, Lori and I, and and our family, and um we uh he'd end up there, yeah, because he just loved our kids, yeah.
SPEAKER_03So he never married.
SPEAKER_06Well, later in life he did later he did, okay.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, okay. Well, now what chores, going back to your childhood, what chores did you have growing up?
SPEAKER_06Oh, what that was again wasn't a big deal, you know. I mean, um, I'd help mom around the house. We got a small allowance once in a while. It wasn't a big deal, and uh, you know, I'd help her with dishes or but only if they told me, but I'd take the garbages out and do those kind of things or the basic chores, the the household stuff that needed to be mowing yard.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, probably when that you know some of those.
SPEAKER_06In fact, I started mowing other people's yards, you know, and probably not even helping dad as much as I could have when I look back, but but the next door neighbor's yard, dad wants you to mow August's yard, you know, he's an older man. So I'd mow his lawn and other people and another lady across town because mom and dad they were their friends, but they were their older friends.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. So I'd go do them, you know, and yeah, I'd get, you know, they maybe give me a buck or buck fifty for doing it. I mean the the people, yeah, not mom and dad, but the people I do it for.
SPEAKER_03But you didn't do it to get paid necessarily, but to help them out.
SPEAKER_06It was kind of nice to yeah, because I one thing I learned fast as you know, as a young man is I went, there's there's not a lot of money to go around, you know. Yeah, and so I um this is gonna sound weird because somebody asked me the other day about checking accounts and stuff, and when you're a minor or something, I says, all I know is I opened a checking account in Dickinson at Gate City Savings when I was a little kid, and I had to have my mom cook be a co-signer on it. Yeah, yeah, but then that turned into over the years some you know, pretty soon over 600 bucks in there.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, and at that time that's a lot of money. That was a lot of money. Yeah. Now, what was school like for you growing up?
SPEAKER_06Um I enjoyed it actually. I was very active, and uh um I just I'm kind of I found out over the years that from some of my mentors and all of my mentors and my best friends have always been usually anyway, 25 to 30 years older than me. So I found out a lot from them over the years about myself, uh, but um um um your question though was what school, school school, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Do you have any certain teachers that you really enjoyed then?
SPEAKER_06Um yeah, I mean I I enjoyed them all. I started in music pretty young. They in I took up the trombone probably in about the fourth or fifth grade. Okay, and so um I have coaches that I like and respect. I have teachers that I like and respect, and and in the music realm of things, I really got along with them really well. I happen to be, you know, um, and I hate sp saying all this I stuff, but I guess it's an interview about me.
SPEAKER_02It's all about you and you're yeah.
SPEAKER_06And if I did it, I don't feel I'm not saying all the stuff out of pride or brag, braggart, but they moved me into the high school band and and up pretty fast. And I was uh when I was I had a I would be there with seniors that were um, you know, and I'd be a seventh grader and I was playing first chair, first trombone next to a senior. And they were nice to me, they treated me well, not quote not just the uh music teachers, but the um guys themselves.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Which that has stuck with you then. In that in that interesting, right? Because a lot of times when you're in high school, yeah, those high school kids, yeah. Some I don't know how to even word this, but may think that they're yeah, too good for a seventh grader, right? Or treat them poorly. It's kind of like the um hazing in a sense, right? Yes, none of that.
SPEAKER_06But you never had staying in, I stayed in touch, I or reconnected with a lot of them over the years since I've moved back to Neumann. We'll talk about that later if you want. But um there's two, and I don't Don and Dave Cross, twin brothers. Um Dave sat next to me, and Don, and one was my baseball coach, and we were all in the band together. And um it was just it was just fun. Yeah, but they they and I don't mean to just name them because there were guys like Tim Belland and and uh I mean I could go on and on, the Hansen twins and and guys that we played in the band with that that are um also played football with or basketball with, or they were way older than me, so I watched them watch them play, yeah. But they always there was no bullying back so much in our in our time frame. We were we did we would do dumb things and we would do things we regret, just like anybody, and that's the result of being a bully is you're just doing things you'll regret. Yeah, and but when we did, um when I did, I never bullied anybody or anything, but I do know that I disrespected a couple of people and I shouldn't have, and I tried to always be nice, yeah, and but every once in a while I've kind of actually just kind of fall into the trap of being like everybody else, maybe and saying something I shouldn't.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. But but that's easy to fall into when you're younger. It is, right?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I mean, it really is, but it's not a good excuse.
SPEAKER_03How about Christmases? What were Christmases like growing up for?
SPEAKER_06They were pretty, pretty um, I I don't know what normal is. So I really don't, because I mean I think we led a simple life. Yeah, you know, and I got I never was knowing about that. Yeah, I'm leading a simple life. And it's and I think I still am because I'm not a you we'll we'll get into some of that later, but um the uh um Christmas was pretty, you know, mom would put up a tree and dad would be at work just like every other day. And um, you know, it wasn't like we went to church back then once a year and to to the Lutheran church. Okay, and it took everything to get me into a wool little jacket and wool pants because I had I had an allergy, I have an allergy to wool, and I didn't realize it, but I was just squirming the whole time and and stuff.
SPEAKER_03So um, but it was so you remember it more of like kind of miserable because you had to put on this, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Well, as soon as we go home and throw it off, and then we'd open a present on the night before, and then Santa Claus would come with another present the next day.
SPEAKER_03Okay, yeah. So it wasn't a lot of guests necessarily. Did you guys did your mom decorate a lot, or was it pretty much just the tree?
SPEAKER_06Just pretty much the tree. Okay, she'd save the tinsel, you know, tinsels and and uh she'd save it every year, and she always had it, and she'd bring it back out and put it on the tree and the lights, same lights all over the same.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but it was well lights lasted years back then.
SPEAKER_06They did, they really did.
SPEAKER_03And it was a real tree said, Yeah, okay, real tree. Did you did you go cut it down, or was it one that you would get at, say the gas station or something?
SPEAKER_06Right. In New England, they had a place back then where they'd sell trees that were, you know, and New England used to be 1200 people and it's now 600, and it had larger families and stuff, and yeah, you know, New England in its early days, the high school at St. Mary's had 250 kids in it, and knowing the public had 150. So we had 400 kids running around that little town.
SPEAKER_03Wow, yeah, yeah. But still uh you still enjoyed Christmas, you still got excited about Christmas, even with not oh, absolutely, yeah, jumping around just like any kid.
SPEAKER_06Like I said, it's excited for Christmas break.
unknownWhat then?
SPEAKER_03Christmas break, couple weeks off from school and stuff like that. Yeah, how about like birthdays? Were birthdays a big thing for you guys growing up, or were those simple too?
SPEAKER_06They were pretty simple too. I mean, we had them. I seen pictures of them, and I do remember back quite a ways, but um, yeah, it was just some of my cousins and family, yeah. Yeah, we had, like I said, larger families. I had a cousin with lived half a or about a block from us that had eight kids in it. And one was, I mean, we were just like three months apart.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And so he'd be there in all the pictures, and I remember them all, but most of them.
SPEAKER_03But and but they didn't make a big deal about it when it was mom would make me a popcorn ball for my oh yes, that would be well. That generation could make popcorn balls like that. They were amazing.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I didn't even have to ask, you know, it just on my birthday that's she made some popcorn. Balls and that was my um I mean she'd have a cake too, but then she'd give me my popcorn ball.
SPEAKER_03No, was it a certain cake that you always that she made? Obviously, homemade. I mean, everything was homemade pretty much back then. But was it an angel cook cake or anything?
SPEAKER_06It was just a you know, a plain, like uh whatever you call it chocolate cake. But I think she made it from scratch and pretty buy a box or anything.
SPEAKER_03But they tasted great.
SPEAKER_06Well, they tasted good, yeah. That's all that mattered.
SPEAKER_03Blown out. Did you always have the candles? Blow up candles. You did all that. Yeah, we did that stuff. The candles, okay.
SPEAKER_06But then like we reached a point where we're probably about, I don't even know, maybe the uh third or fourth grade and then kind of quit with that. Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah. The younger brothers would still have theirs, but you know, me and Keith had moved on.
SPEAKER_03And I think too, back then, even when I was little, we never had an expectation of like a big gift. We always got like a little gift. Yeah, it wasn't one one year for my 16th. I think I got um uh like a basketball bag, like a bag for that I could put my basketball shoes, my ball, you know, and that was like great, right? That was a huge, I remember that gift. Yep. Now there's multiple gifts, there's bigger gifts and things like that. But um, I think even your time too, it was yeah, you maybe got a gift, yeah. You know, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, we'd get more than one sometimes, but or yeah, every time, but not a lot. And yeah, I I do remember on your sheet that you had sent out, you asked about a favorite gift. And I think probably my most favorite was one. I did get a BB gun at a young age, but but one of my best ones that I used was a little um it was a pen shape of a penguin, and um you would put ice cubes in the top in his head and push it down, and it would lock in. And I had picked it out of a I don't know, Montgomery Wars or something, a book. Yeah, catalogue. I like that. Well, it was a little penguin, and you'd turn his arm as you push down on the head, and it came out as a snow cone. No way, yes, and so we generally in the summer had cool, um, yeah, it was very cool. And then you take a spoon and put it in there, and it's yeah, we we'd buy um um or there was kind of like you could put anything you wanted in there, you know.
SPEAKER_03Did they have the syrups like we do now?
SPEAKER_06It came with the syrup, and now we just went after the first time they just put Kool-Aid in it.
SPEAKER_03Oh, sure, sure.
SPEAKER_06My mom would make popsicles out of Kool-Aid and and and I make my smoke one.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's awesome. I would have never known that they had such a thing back then.
SPEAKER_06I tell you what, if it'd come back, it'd be a it might be a big seller.
SPEAKER_03I'm especially like you said you kind of had to crank the arm or whatever to like make it shaved ice or whatnot. Yep. What are some other favorite childhood memories?
SPEAKER_06Um I won't go into any of that. Um, I mean, it there it was just basic living, you know. We um, you know, dad and mom, when dad would get home for lunch from work, he only lit the block from the shop where he worked at. And when it was time to eat, he'd just go out the door and he'd whistle real loud. We'd be running around town somewhere and we'd hear dad's whistle. Okay, the whistle from get home and it's time to eat. So we had a lot of um, just a lot of simple type things. We didn't, you know.
SPEAKER_03It was riding bikes, finding friends.
SPEAKER_06Oh, yeah, what those kind of things. You know, we had a swimming pool in town and ride bike down there with my cousins, and until I got a little older, I started working on a farm in the seventh grade.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_06So summers were up till that point, you know, I'd go play baseball, we'd go swimming down at the swimming pool. Yeah, and we had a swimming pool there that was was not heated, so um, we just oh dive in, you know. It just dive in and play and then go home and eat choke cherries and plums and summer or sunflower seeds. Okay, and uh and go home and then eat raw colorabi in the garden. And then you ask yourself, why do I have stomach problems now?
unknownYeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Did you guys your dad being a mechanic and your mom being home? Did you have two vehicles or did you only have the one one vehicle?
SPEAKER_06We just had one vehicle.
SPEAKER_03The one vehicle, yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So when your mom wanted to go, or did your dad walk to work so that your mom had the car? So that way she could go get groceries, things like that.
SPEAKER_06Actually, the grocery store was only two blocks away, but she would drive to get it. And of course, back in in New England's better days, best days, it's a good, good town. And but back in the old days, that's what I meant to say. It had four grocery stores, it had, you know, um four bars, it had um schools, two uh two car dealerships, and uh it was just a thriving little town.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. All those little towns around North Dakota were yeah, that's you know, it's sad to see them kind of dwindle and whatnot. But yeah, right. Um now, what about your grandparents who had the place by San Nobiote? Yeah, and something about horses. Now, this is this is a question that Danielle wanted me to ask. Okay, well, okay, that's very general. You tell me whatever you want.
SPEAKER_06I actually wrote down um the names of the horses, Duke and Riley, but I'll come back to that. Um, my grandma, my mom was a young girl. I have two uncles, Jerry and John. John was the oldest, and then Jerry, and then Maina is my mom, and their last name is Combs. And my grandma was a combs for those three kids, and then at mom at a young age, and I don't remember how old she would have been, she'd have been a little girl. I I don't know if she remembered her real dad, but he passed away. And he's buried in Sentinel Butte, and uh um and then grandma um combs, Doris Combs was her name. She married um an omley, a guy by the name of Ole Omley. He had raised his own family up in Trotters area. He's a rancher and a cowboy, a real cowboy. And um he uh but he was the only grandpa on that side I knew. And so I kind of really took to him because he was just a big, tall, thin cowboy. And we'd go out, and I was a little kid, and there was no running water or anything or nothing, so we'd go to the outhouse in the middle of the night and all that stuff, you know. And um, but I would watch my grandpa and grandpa Oli. And he came in from from working all day and riding that horses, and and uh um he'd sit down in his easy chair and he'd light it. First, he'd put a pack of uh Copenhagen in his lip, and then he'd put his his pipe in his mouth, and he'd light the pipe also, and he'd just sit back in his chair and he'd almost make the sound of ah he just was so comfortable.
SPEAKER_03And that's all it took was a little uh Copenhagen.
SPEAKER_06But I have pictures where I was on the horse with him. I don't know if it was Duke or Riley, but I would always tell my daughter Danielle when she'd see that picture, or I'd share that picture. Um, that I was I was on that horse teaching my grandpa how to ride. And she'd get a tick out of that when she finally figured out what I was saying. But uh that picture, not with the one with me on it, but I got it over to the cowboy cafe on those wall of their little wall of fame, wall of cowboys. Oh and he was up there, and they were next door neighbors to to Matt Tesher, who had all the Tesher kids. Okay, so my mom grew up with the two boys, two of the two cowboys. Yeah, well, they were all cowboys, but yeah, two of the main ones, yep, yeah. I can't is Jim and Tom.
SPEAKER_03Tom, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Mom knew them pretty well. They only lived probably as crowflies, maybe less than a half a mile from each other. Wow, the section line and half and no, but anyway, all that's gone now. That even the whole place is gone where mom grew up. I mean, it's been burnt to the ground and used now as hunting spot.
SPEAKER_03Who owns that land now?
SPEAKER_06Uh I think his name is Kevin Fuger.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, do you know him? That would be cool's uncle.
unknownKevin.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, oh really, yeah. Well, I know it's him.
SPEAKER_03Oh, okay. Oh, interesting.
SPEAKER_06Names I should throw on.
SPEAKER_01Interesting.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, it is. A small very small Morris Lardy had it for a while, and then and then um um Rodex might have had it for a little while, and then um now Kevin does.
SPEAKER_01Okay, wow.
SPEAKER_06But but yeah, the grandpa Oli was was how often did you go?
SPEAKER_03Did you go to see them? Really not that often.
SPEAKER_06Okay, you know, it like I say, one car, and yeah, you know, it was uh, you know, I imagine it was kind of hard for because I think we'd go out for maybe once a year. Okay, yeah, or maybe twice.
SPEAKER_03How long would you stay? Because you said you remember in the middle of the night going to the outhouse and only only one.
SPEAKER_06I would kind of go along with mom during the course of the year when I was her second one, you know, and Keith was probably in school. I remember going out with her and stay they I stayed overnight then with her.
SPEAKER_03And that's a whole other experience then. Because you said no, no running water, was there electricity in the house? There was electricity, there was electricity though.
SPEAKER_06They had just gotten it actually, and and uh, but yeah, they got they had that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and probably a very small house.
SPEAKER_06Very small.
SPEAKER_03So were you sleeping on the floor?
SPEAKER_06No, actually, I think I if I remember right, I slept upstairs. It was they had a similar setting as what I grew up in. There was an attic up there, and that's where their brother uh her brothers slept, you know. And mom was up there too. And I still to this day have I have an apple cart that you turned upside down, and that was mom's dresser. Mom and John's.
SPEAKER_03Really?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, the top part was John's, is he was older, and then mom, the second bottom one spot for it was an apple cart. I still have that to this day. I somehow ended up with that by probably just by grabbing it one day when it was up there. And I put my shoes on it every time I come into the house now.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's so neat.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, it is. And my uncle John had written down a quote on there of John 3 16. Yes, and mom had written her name, Mina Combs, on the floor part, and that was their dresser for their clothes, and probably all the clothes that they had.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, that was, yeah, because nobody no nobody had closets, you didn't need the big closets. There wasn't enough clothes to put in the closets.
SPEAKER_06That's what they knew, yeah, the simple life they were living.
SPEAKER_03That absolutely yeah. How about going back to school? Did you have some favorite subjects, favorite teachers?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I mean, I did. I I like I said, I enjoyed the music stuff and and um kind of took to that like a duck to water, actually. And I've been accused of that for more than once of of probably anything I would do, I would throw myself into it entirely.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and was trombone the only instrument you played, or did you I could do other things too? You could okay.
SPEAKER_06I'd play like I played snare drums or or um um harmonica I've played since I was seven years old. And um, I could play jump on a trumpet and play a scales, you know. Yeah, and so I read music, you know. I play harmonica by ear, but I read I can read music.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. How about any other subjects? Were you really good in math?
SPEAKER_06I mean math. I had a teacher, and his name was his he actually had the same last name as me, but I didn't know him. But he also was our basketball coach. His name is Red Koppinger, Don Coppinger. Okay, yeah. He ended up down there my junior and senior year, but he was a fantastic math teacher. Um, trigonometry, uh, statistics. When I went went to college at UND, um, I got there, I was because of him, I was probably knew more about math than anybody else in the room. Yeah, a good teacher, good teacher, really good teacher, right? They all caught up to me, but I still that was you started off ahead though. Yeah, I did.
SPEAKER_03Did that make it though easier when you did go to college? No, because you had that, yeah. Yeah, wasn't you didn't feel behind at least. Right.
SPEAKER_06No, I didn't. And you know, I I even learned typing. We'd learned typing, I think, as a sophomore or freshman in the old ways with the machine, you know. So um that I was pretty ambidextrous and could do that pretty, and I I could type 65 words, correct words per minute.
SPEAKER_03Well, now how about you talked about the band and stuff, and you did mention that Red Koppinger was also your basketball coach. What age did you start playing basketball?
SPEAKER_06Oh, that's a good question. Um, down in New England, uh there was a superintendent down there by the name of James Broten, and he uh was he was a super guy and very good disciplinarian, but we started in the first grade. First grade and he was our coach. Very first day of practice, he took us out there. It was a Saturday, and uh um he just said, guys, you're gonna we're gonna go out there, I'm gonna give you a ball, I'm gonna teach you how to dribble with one hand. And then we did that. And then and he would walk around with it a little bit, and he'd just get us started, and then he said, Next Saturday, we're gonna dribble around in a circle and round the gym. Well, the third Saturday he said, Now I'm gonna ask you to throw it up and try and hit the net. And then the fourth or fifth Saturday, um, he says, We're gonna try and get it in the hole now, you know. So he just did that with us from first grade through probably about the third grade, he just during the during the but no games, just fundamental, like learning to dribble, that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_03Okay, okay. And that was basketball. How about like baseball? Did you start baseball at a young age too?
SPEAKER_06Okay, we did, not quite the first grade, but we played baseball. Uh, we got a picture down in New England that hangs in a number of places where our our uh baseball team was the was the fourth through the sixth grade, and there were 80 kids on it on the picture. Wow, they had a panoramic picture of how many of us play in baseball.
SPEAKER_03One team or did were they eventually divided up?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, they were divided, we were divided up, but then when you know, like the fourth graders and then the fourth and fifth and fifth and sixth and stuff, and um different teams and everything, but we yeah, that was and that was in the summer in the summer baseball, yep.
SPEAKER_03Basketball was throughout the school year, just each Saturday that you would that was no, that was just during basketball season.
SPEAKER_06Just during basketball season. So they tied it in with that, and then football was the same way, things like that.
SPEAKER_03Was there any other sports that you guys could play?
SPEAKER_06Track. We track track teams, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Was that more high school or was that started earlier as well?
SPEAKER_06Um, that started earlier. Okay, yeah. Let me give you an example of what Mr. Broten doing with us the first grade through the fourth, is all of a sudden we become fifth and sixth graders. And I think it was either in the fourth or the fifth grade. And this is you know, my friends from Bowman, if you're listening. Um you got even with us the senior year, but we beat Bowman in New England in the fourth grade, 50 to nothing because of that being taught at a first grader and a second grader. And then we played them in Bowman, then we beat them 52 to 2. Well, you know, they're all friends of our ours now. Yeah, we talk a little bit about it, but they got the best of us. They were class A at the time, but when we were seniors, we only had four losses, but one was to Bowman. Oh, and I'm thinking as I think back that they remembered the big losses that they took, yeah. And we weren't thinking that we were running up a score, you know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and you just love playing.
SPEAKER_06So they I think they understood.
SPEAKER_03I think that goes to show too that just because some team is really good when they're young, yeah, doesn't mean another team's not gonna catch up when they're older. Yeah, they can't. You know, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Because I mean we were really, really tough. We had a good group of guys, there were nine of us and boys. And we just I mean, our I could go on and on about the the high school athletics that we had. I mean, let's take our senior year in football, and we had some really good ones, three or four of them went on to play college at Dickinson State or Wapton or Bismarck State, and uh, but I mean the final score of our senior year was um New England 229. And um the next the rest of the six teams that we played, the combined total was 22 points.
SPEAKER_01Wow, yeah.
SPEAKER_06We were pretty dominant, pretty dominant, yeah. And um so and our basketball team was pretty much because of those same guys, we were pretty tight, you know. Yeah, not tight, tight like you'd think or like you want, or like it should have really been, but when it came down to when we got on the floor, we were tight, and yeah, there we were tight, and competitive, and competitive, yeah, yeah. Because our basketball season was finals, uh, was 20 20 and 4.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. So did you did you take we're gonna talk about sports too in a little bit? Yeah, so did you take any um vacations as a kid? Do you remember any vacations?
SPEAKER_06No, I mean I I remember one where we went up to the garrison dam. Okay, we had a tent that uh that held all six of us, yeah, and it was pretty pretty tight. But yeah, we we did one that I remember, and we weren't people that would go to the hills or something, or um, you know, yeah. Um a vacation might be to run up Patterson Lake and swim for the afternoon, and then you know, and we didn't even do that very often, maybe once every couple of years or something.
SPEAKER_03But it at the time you never thought that you were missing nobody was doing any right.
SPEAKER_06Um there were some that were maybe, you know, you know, I don't know what my friends even did there, you know, because it wasn't like that, right?
SPEAKER_03Nobody knew what other people were doing, really didn't.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_03You talked about mowing a little bit. What other and then you talked about working on a farm, right? Yeah, starting in seventh grade, seventh grade. Did you do that throughout high school, or were there some other jobs that you had?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, this was interesting. Um started in the seventh grade for a guy named Ernie Nielsen. Excuse me. I worked seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth grade summers. Okay. And then the 11th grade summer and the 12th grade summer, I worked for a guy by the name of Alan Ruston.
SPEAKER_03And what did you do? Was that still farmer?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that was all farming. Okay. As a young guy, I was just, you know, when I was seventh grade, I could only do things like um, excuse me, clean the clean the uh the corrals with pitchfork or or um I couldn't drive anything, I was so young. But I'd haul bales or I'd do whatever took, you know, whatever they needed done that you could, yeah. Shovel grain or something, clean out a building or wash a car when it's raining or babysit three, four younger kids even.
SPEAKER_01Really?
SPEAKER_06When they'd go out. Uh you know, I stayed out there. It was six miles from town, so grand dad would uh drop me off at six in the morning on Monday and come and get me at six p.m. uh Saturday. So I was out there.
SPEAKER_03So you only had Sundays?
SPEAKER_06Only had Sundays. Only had Sundays off with the family. Got six dollars a day and uh was happy with it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Until the second year when I asked the guy, I said, What are you gonna pay me this year? I'm asking him as a little boy, yeah, two weeks into it, because he only paid us once a month. I said and I got it, I look back, I kind of chuckle at it because he's he he was being funny, but I says, What are you gonna pay me this year? And he said, Well, you did so good last year at six dollars a day that I think I'll pay that again. And I went, Oh, and he heard my oh, and then he started to laugh. He said, I'll give you eight.
SPEAKER_03Oh, nice, yeah.
SPEAKER_06And it was, it was nice. Like I was able to save it all because I would eat there and sleep there, you know. Yeah, and so I almost made a hundred a month for three months.
SPEAKER_03I mean, so I made $300, which once again back then was doing really good.
SPEAKER_06That was done pretty good, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um, after high school, you well, let's ask this first. What did you want to be when you grew up? When you were little, what were your ambitions?
SPEAKER_06Well, that was kind of weird because that's where I go back to it's it was such a simple life that um I didn't get a I mean, and I don't say this like um in a bad way, but it was is it was just a fact is that I didn't get a lot of um encouragement one way or the other, yeah. What to do? So I never Really thought about it until came time that we graduated from high school. I started thinking about it. And all my friends were going to college, literally, all but me, you know, the ones I knew. And I was working a part-time job down at uh Cenex with my dad. And um and anyway, I'm I'll need to back up to something before that, but I'll do that later.
SPEAKER_03But anyway, um so there wasn't anything you were like, oh, I really want to do be this or that, you know, it wasn't like you saw your dad being a mechanic and thought, I want to be a mechanic.
SPEAKER_06It created itself, I I thought, you know. I think I had somebody else else watching out for me. And uh, well, I know I did, and but yeah, I um when I graduated, I was 17. And I was the youngest guy in our class. And I probably should have really been held back, but they didn't have kindergarten back then, so I know mom must have put me in, or mom and dad put me in and I was five years old, first grade. Okay, and um so but I'm glad they did because these guys that I was able to play sports with and run hang around with were they didn't even know I was quite a bit younger, man. But it just helped me work, make me work harder. Yeah, and so I did that. But when I graduated at 17, I uh they took off, went to college, and I I didn't go anywhere. And finally, um I talked to a friend of mine and I said, How did you do that? Because I know you come from a family that uh he says, Well, they got loans and stuff, and I said, Well, you mean you get a loan then to do this? Because he didn't have guidance counselors and things things like that, and yeah, so I um um told dad, you know, I said I'm gonna try school next year, college. And and dad did in a very simple, nice way, said, Well, that that's great, Sam, but you know, you got a good job already. You know, and I didn't want to hurt his feelings or anything because that's what he was doing. So I said, I just want to give it a try, Dad. You know. And so I did. And so, but in there, there was a period of time in there where I I was 17 years old and I worked the summer. The actually the summer of seven, when I was 17, I worked at the bank in town. Okay. And um guy by the name of Alan Anderson, who became my mentor. He he um um, and then Morris O'Connell and even Mr. Ruston, and and to later years, uh George Aylis, uh, were all good mentors of mine. And uh, but they got me started at 17 years old. And this Alan Anderson, I'll talk about him a little bit later, but like I said, all my friends were 30 years older than me, and they're all gone now. So, but um, I have such great memories of them all, but I stand on those shoulders. You know, it's nothing that I did, I just got those opportunities, yeah. And when I got those opportunities, then I I was uh Mr. Anderson one time said to his one of his kids who was a classmate, she told me two weeks ago that at a at a reunion that you know my dad said about you that you were like you took the banking like a duck to water at 17 years old, yeah. And I said, Elizabeth, that's because I always thought that's what you do. Yeah, you throw yourself into it. Yeah, and and that's so that's kind of the way I lived. And sometimes I'm called anxious, sometimes I'm called um uh name, you know, a name or not a name, but a word that I realized that I maybe am. But it was because I just was always on the stage, yeah.
SPEAKER_03And so So when you went to college, did you take a semester off then basically, or did you start in like the spring semester instead of the fall semester by the time you're gonna be?
SPEAKER_06I started in the second semester at Wapaton. Okay, and I only went to Wapton. One quarter one quarter there, actually. They were on quarters, and I I lived in Wapaton for a little while, and then somewhere in there there, I'm gonna sh share with you how I met Lori and I ended up at UND, Lori and I both did years ago. Okay, a couple years later.
SPEAKER_03So just went a quarter at Wapaton. Yeah, and then went right to back then and now it's summer again.
SPEAKER_06Okay, and so that's when I worked at the bank there. Okay, and no, no, I worked when I was 17. I'm I am a little hazy on that one because there was a time when I also worked at John Deere style dealership. Yeah, and it was because I was around, you know, and everybody else was gone. There's a 17-year-old kid that'll work, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_06But the the thing at the bank was um they really did take to it. I liked working outside and putting the other farm equipment at John Deere, and I liked everything I've always done, but um, so then back to that question about where did you get you know any motivation to do anything? It was it I I realized I found out too that I think I can do this pretty well. It's a banking thing. So I went to college at UND. I took up uh business classes.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Were you take did you take business classes at Wapatin? Or what kind of classes?
SPEAKER_06They called just a general classes, just general classes, okay, okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_03And then went to UND and then I got into the business okay college.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Do you so was that was that yeah, two years, four years? I'm assuming four, but maybe it was two back then. I have no idea for UND with business.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, UND, yeah. I graduated there, graduated there in 1978, and uh um it was a four year four years. I had I had a um I man um my major was management and my minor was marketing and economics. Okay, yeah. And um, so in the way I picked where I was gonna go, it was really kind of a silly thought at the time, but I thought to myself, if you're gonna go to college and you don't know what you really want to do, started thinking, well, every place in town of New England must need somebody to run it. So that must be the way it is everywhere. Because we didn't go a lot of places, but it must be the same way everywhere. So when I got to college, I was pretty naive, still am sometimes, sometimes intentionally, and sometimes not. But um I I just thought everybody needs a manager, management major.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_06So I went into management and and uh I wasn't one of those that uh did things the way everybody else did. I went into my classes now. I get no fast forward a little bit, got in there and we I got married in my junior year with DeLorean. I'll come back to that. Yeah, but um um I told many uh a professor that you know what, I probably won't make many classes. I'm working eight hours a day where I work till they needed to pay for all of this. Yeah, you know, and um and so I I told as long as I know when the tests are and I have a book or I can find a book, um you're gonna be okay if I just show up once in a while because I I won't take your class if that ain't gonna work. And so I did. And I the I think the teachers back then kind of almost like honestly, they didn't like it, but they respected it. Because you were still working, and I was not only working, but I I cleared it with them.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And uh front with them, but they also knew I probably wouldn't take it if they didn't, yeah, you know, I wouldn't be in their class, but I enjoyed it. Let me give you an example. It was a management, higher-level management course, and and I can't remember and what it was called, but I told this guy that, and this is just a little sidebar, but I told this guy that that story that I I won't make it, and if you're gonna have a problem, he says, the only thing, Stan, is this every morning when we have class, I will look down at the book, the roster, and I'll shut my eyes and just touch. And if I call that name, I will ask um you a question about your assignments and stuff. And if you're willing to take that chance, because if you don't, you'll get a zero for that day and it will affect your grade. I says, I'll I'll have to be taking that chance. I didn't come very much. I did go once in a while. One day I was there and I watched him, and he didn't even, he just went like this, didn't shut his eyes or nothing. He just said, Stan Coppinger. And you were there because I was there, so he was helping me out. Oh he really did. He helped me out because he knew he called on me. Yeah, because if he would have done that and called on me and I wasn't there, he would have had to give me a zero, and which would have impacted my grade considerably.
SPEAKER_03Did you do well in college?
SPEAKER_06I did fairly well, fairly well, yeah.
SPEAKER_03But are now are you just being humble?
SPEAKER_06I did fairly well.
SPEAKER_03Okay, okay. So who let's talk, who in your family influenced you the most while you were growing up?
SPEAKER_06In my bigger family, the the entire or not.
SPEAKER_03Well, or just anybody, really.
SPEAKER_06It's like I said, it's not that way and our wasn't that way in our family. We weren't like close. But over the years later, I got closer to um on my mom's side, let's, for example, John, my uncle John, up and killed me. Uh, he he became a like a friend.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And um, and like I said, I gravitate to older people because I like all their experiences, and I can bypass 20 years of mistakes if I go to them. Yeah, just ask. And then on the dad's side, it was my his youngest brother, he was almost like a brother to me, Uncle Harry. He was only 10 or 12, 11 or 12 years older than me. Um, he was a Vietnam vet and uh um special forces, green beret kind of guy. Wow, and so one of my kids actually went to the 82nd Airborne, Joel, and because of him, because he got to know his great uncle, Harry, who was a very um honorable man.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Is he still with us?
SPEAKER_06He just passed away. Uh it's now about a year and a half ago.
SPEAKER_03Oh, wow. Okay. And how how old was he?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, he was, well, you know, Vietnam vet. He was probably, if I'm not mistaken, he might have been 82. 82. Somewhere in there. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03All right. Now, how did you meet your wife?
SPEAKER_06Oh, that's that's you know, I knew of her. I'm a year older. Yeah, year older than her. And uh, I had graduated, and during this time period where I said I worked at Cenex and at John Deere, um, I was up on the roof uh working on the shingles up there in the John Deere dealership. And there were these two ladies, I mean high school girls, that would walk by every day. And and I I gotta be careful, but they'd walk by almost every day for a period of time, and they were going to the post office, and John Deere was between the dorms. There was dorms at St. Mary's and and the post office, and I yelled, they'd yell up hi to me, and I'd yell back hi. And I um found out years later, many years later, that uh well Stan, you know why we because I ended up asking Lori out, and Lori Thomas was her name, and and this other lady, um Louise at uh, if if you're listening, Louise at this is all fun, but um I asked Lori, what was that about? And she said, Louise at had a crush on you, and then you asked me out, and like a great friend, I accepted.
SPEAKER_03So that's all so you were 17 when you met, or how old were you?
SPEAKER_06I was now I was uh 18, 19, no, 18 probably.
SPEAKER_03And then she was 17 and she was going to St. Mary's? Is that where she was?
SPEAKER_06She was a senior at St. Mary's, okay, and I had just graduated a year ago before that, so met her, and of course, then uh so you guys didn't know each other before, but you were both living in New England. But well, she lived on a farm south, 15 miles. Okay, so she came to and she knew who I was, but um there was a a real rivalry between St. Mary's and New England public. So I knew more of her classmates and people down there than she ever did because she'd get on a bus and then go home. Yes.
SPEAKER_03Oh, she did every night, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Every night, because they were only 15 miles from town, but they had a dorm down there, and back then I was just uh I it was a girl's dorm and a boys' dorm.
SPEAKER_03Okay. So what did you guys do for your first date?
SPEAKER_06Well, do you remember? Yeah, I kind of remember. She was walking one day, and I just got in a car, and uh, it was a 1973 or 72 capri, you know, just a little car. I was driving around town and it was my first car, obviously. And um, I think I was probably 18 or now, maybe pushing 19, excuse me. And uh she was walking, and she she was going down this road that I thought she's walking towards this clinic, and I should just pull over and say hi to her. And I pulled over and said hi, you know, and you going somewhere? Would you like a ride? I just got a new car, you know. I didn't say that, but I'm like yeah, pretty bold, you know. And uh she said, Yeah, I'd take a ride. I'm going to the clinic, and there's a clinic in town, still there. It's for Headinger from the Headingger Hospital Clinic. Gave her a ride there, and and uh ended up somehow or other, I had her phone number and I called her one night out there. Why didn't I think I just just jumped into that? I didn't get her phone number, it was always in the phone book. Oh, okay. And uh called Lawrence Thomas's house and asked speaking with Lori and I asked her if she'd ever be interested in going on a date. And she said, Yeah. She asked her parents and said, Yeah. So I took her to the AW in um Dickinson here, brought her up to Dickinson, and we went there and and went out for supper, and then I think we well, we did, we went to a a movie then.
SPEAKER_03And uh it's like great first date.
SPEAKER_06It was took her back to the farm, and well then that started to I it thought that went well, and I could tell she thought it went well, and so I kept kept pursuing it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so did she follow you to uh uh Wapatin? No or to UND?
SPEAKER_06Well, and that's the what this is this is kind of for her ears right now. She always says that I followed her to UND. And I'm gonna have to admit, uh, since I'm kind of under oath, that um I did. I followed her up there, and uh, you know, we got married probably our junior year.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_06We got in we got married sophomore junior year, and uh we were young. I mean, I was just a few months short of 21. Okay, and she was just a few months short. Well, she was just uh the same, she's only five a year and five years, a year and five days younger than me. But for a while, and she was she was just about 20 when we got married, but she was still in that 19 right now.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and uh and it all worked out great, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, and you know, I mean, we've been married 51 years 51 years and a couple of months. I mean 51 plus two months, so our rollers will be 50.
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's crazy, huh?
SPEAKER_06He'll be 50 in January, Joel will be 47 in January, and Danielle will be 45 in January, and just to have a little fun, and I don't think this is too x-rated, but over the course of time I realized that to you is Stan, you took Mother's Day pretty serious, and when you do the math oh funny when you do the math, I did. I love that, yeah. And if you do the math, it's not by nine months, but it's about how many weeks? Yeah, and that she was 30 days early on almost all on all three of them.
SPEAKER_01Really?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, and that's the math part of it. Wow, she was she had to be induced, and a couple, you know, a couple times she put water broke, but she wasn't ready on that, you know, and that was the way it pretty much was on all three.
SPEAKER_03Wow, yeah, that's hilarious. So, did you get married in New England?
SPEAKER_06Yes, we did. You did.
SPEAKER_03How did you how did the wedding day go? Did you guys do um like reception and wedding? Did you do bachelor parties, bachelorette parties?
SPEAKER_06We did do all of the above and we we went pretty well out, you know, on it. Um like I said, we were just still in college, and um, but I we had I think we had seven or eight um attendants, attendants and bridesmaids. And we we uh um we had the full bore, we had a bachelor party, and Lori had the friends and the girls thing, but it's not near like it was, you know.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_06And where you go ahead down to a place and schedule the bachelor's party. Yeah, we didn't do any of that. It's like you go out for a night and yeah, we yeah, we had a nice time locally, just right in town. And then, but the the wedding was really nice because Lori Lori's dad was a pretty successful guy, and he uh very successful guy, and and he had a they milked 120 cows and he had an insurance company and they farmed, so he had a full-time hired man, and but they they um Lori had worked at KFC, Kentucky Power J. Yeah, and so we used them as a caterer. Oh no, yeah. So we had KFC, but the thing is it was July 25th, 1975, and it was 104 in the shade, and green green tuxedos, dark green tuxedos, dark green black, yeah, almost black. It was a hot day, no air conditioning in the memorial hall, but nobody knew the better for it. Yeah, they're all just happy.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, what song did you dance to?
SPEAKER_06Well, this is the thing, too, and that's a great, great question, but it's not a great question. It's a great question because now I have to tell you that our and I do this with all due respect, our band was Ray Kurtz, and that was accordion.
SPEAKER_03Oh, you know, okay.
SPEAKER_06So there isn't a song I think of, yeah, yeah. But it makes me see the song I think of when I've danced with my daughter, Danielle. And what song is that? That was when she got married in Billings, and that was I Loved Her First.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, that's a great one.
SPEAKER_06And it had just come out, you know, when they got married. So that was that was my dance song with her, but with Lori and all that, you know, everybody did the we did it, but we didn't know what the dance was. It would have been um pop pa.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you know, I forgot that a lot had more of the live band, yeah.
SPEAKER_06And yeah, we you know, there was only certain options, you know, that they could play in his quartet, you know, and they just did the you know, like the Lichensteiner polka, yeah. Yeah, we that's what the parents did, yes, not what we did, because I mean I could do chubby checkers, twist and shot the best of them, but yeah, I forget that.
SPEAKER_03I forget that. But it is funny because even when you go to dances um nowadays, I I remember my mine was 20 years ago, but we would make sure that our DJ would put some polka songs and stuff in there in the first like hour or maybe two, yeah, because the older people love to dance polka and stuff, so that was two step and the walls and yes, right? So we always had to make sure they put some of that in there, which I don't know if a lot of people do anymore, but um yeah, I know we had we had done that. So you and Lori end up with three kids. Yeah. Uh when the kids were little, did Lori stay at home or did she work?
SPEAKER_06Well, there again, that's yes and no. Um she uh she had she got a degree in speech therapy. Okay, I was gonna ask that. Okay. And she she taught for for a while, and I how to frame this a little bit. Then we moved to Hedinger right out of college. And one day, you know, we had Matt, and Joel was on the way coming in, and and uh I don't remember quite yet if he had been born yet. But Lori and I had a nice talk talk and she started it and she says, Stan, what would you ever think of this? And she said that if I were to stay at home, I could take in some kids and babysit them and stuff. And she I said, you know what? I am, and I've never regretted my answer, and that was absolutely yeah, I I'd love it if you'd stay home with them. It made it a little different for us, and that's what made our simple life sometimes even more simple, is because we didn't have that two income family like a lot of our friends did. And that's okay. I mean, I don't regrudge them anything. And I certainly, it was fun with doing what we did with those kids. And now it's not like Lori didn't work because she would work uh over the years, she'd work in retail over in the Dora when we moved to Beach in '95 and somewhere in after that. She'd help out Bobby Hildebrandt down at the spider web. Well, in fact, she was out on the flying G.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And Bobby was in one, and Lori was in the other one. And they were good friends and still remain good friends. And so, um, but she it's not like she and she worked in Madora at the uh a number of different places. The home merchant, uh, she'd help out uh um uh the White House, she'd help out that coffee shop with Bonnie Juma and and Wilhelmie. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Oh, so she did, yeah.
SPEAKER_06She did. She she she did a all that stuff and then take care of things at home too. Yeah, yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03So what now I gotta let's go through because you were talking about when you graduated and you guys were in Headinger, and then Lori, you guys decided Lori's gonna stay at home. Yeah, you guys have moved all over though.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_03So let's let's go through some of that. Can we do that? I kind of want to like track that. Yeah, that might be a good time to put this in.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Uh the moves, the career change, maybe not even career changes, but branch changes or whatever.
SPEAKER_06So no, I have a different way of explaining it, but it took time for me to realize what it was.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And what it was is, you know, I started at the bank in Headinger and worked there three years. And then we uh moved to to uh there was a there was a bad situation at the Dickinson Bank. It it's the same bank as I started at in Citizen State Bank in New England. That was that's the tap root to the system that's now Brevera. That was the bank, and then it had opened in Dickinson and then killed her.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_06So there was tragic accidents, things like that, um, or not accident, tragic uh event. And um anyway, I ended up back in in uh um at that bank out of out of need. Okay, my need and theirs, and uh, but I'd been at Headinger for three years, then at uh bank in Dickinson, and over the course of from there on, I spent the decade of the 80s there in Dickinson, pretty uh Dickinson and or Kilder.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_06I would run up to Kilder. I was at one time I was the president of the bank in Kildur as a young man. Pretty young man, but it was a pretty depressed time and a lot of things that were going on. And I would I've as I started, as I looked back over my career, I found that I would become kind of like um what you might call, I mean, it wouldn't be known even today that someone could do that, but I became a troubleshooter that for places that were having problems, and I would try to go in and I mean normal most of the time I take because I needed the job, but then I also realized that I'm putting my need over theirs, and I need to um I need to do good things for them and and help them make them better. And it became then I I went into a place and they might have a oh in the banking field, they have um executive orders from their regulators. Okay, and sometimes they got would get in trouble. Now that wasn't the case of any of the ones, current ones I just mentioned, but it happened in other places. I went to Wisconsin to open de novo, Latin for new bank or new business, and um and found out that when I got there that they were under orders, and I had already moved my family. So I said, Well, I can do one of two things, give up and go back, or um help fix it, and so I helped fix it, and then I got moved around with with other banks and I was when I got to beach, and I had um wanted to get back out last.
SPEAKER_03How long were you in Wisconsin then?
SPEAKER_06I was in Wisconsin for five years, it was five years, okay, okay, and then so then you come back. Then I come back to Beach, yeah. Okay, and and um my brother, the one I told you that kind of tagged around with me, told me that they're looking for a president of the bank in Beach, which has Beach and Mentora.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Well, I looked at it and I went, Oh, that they had passed with the resumes. So I I picked up the phone and called the president of community first. And they had 41 banks at the time. I asked for the big boy, big boy. I knew his name, Don Mingendo. And they says, Well, you won't be able to talk to him, but I'll have somebody call you back. And well, he had this other guy call me back, and I says, Have you? I'm pretty forward, you know, and have you um filled that thing in beach yet? As a matter of fact, we haven't. So he said, Well, so I came over. I says, I'm in Amory, Wisconsin, but I'm kind of from that area, that region. And uh, if you haven't filled it, I'd sure like an opportunity for an interview. Well, I took, he said, can you make come over here Saturday? Well, Amory, Wisconsin was was maybe 250 miles from Fargo, but it was the office is Fargo. Oh, okay, where I met him. So I met with a guy there, and I'll never forget it. This is gonna sound again um uh a little overboard. Uh I I'll come back to that. Um if you did it, you know, you did it. And uh so I drove over there on a Saturday morning real early and got there. And this guy is sitting at his desk and he's interviewing me. He's gonna be my boss, and he says, um, oh, about five minutes into it. Stan, what is your management style? I looked at him, Mr. Hansen. I said, I've been waiting 30 years for someone to ask me that question. Do you have a piece of paper? And he said, I said, just a legal pad would do. And he said, Yeah. And he reached under his desk and grabbed it. And I went like, now, people on the radio or whatever, this aren't gonna, I went like that. I went like this and I made a big X. I said, This is two pyramids balancing on top of each other. I said, I'm so glad you asked me this because I have thought about it for 30 years. These are two pyramids balancing on each other on a BB. And on its best date, it's not easy. And then you add wind from the top, and you add wind from the bottom, and all kinds of problems here, and all kinds of problems from you guys, and keep that thing balanced. That's my philosophy. I will keep you in balance. He says, When can you start? Because he said, We can't find anybody in the beach. And so I started. I gave my where I when I've left the place, I've in a bank, you always got to kind of give them a little heads up because it's generally they're gonna let you go the same day you you mention it. Yeah, so I told him uh, you know, I'm gonna be moving on, and I'll give it, you know, I know probably I'll go today, but I'll give you two weeks, I'll give you six weeks if you need it. I don't want to leave you in the lurch, but I know it, and I can leave today if you want. They've all taken me up so far in six weeks, and many have tried in their biggest power to keep me. But the but the issue had already been done that I made my decision, I'm done with it. You know, done with you. I was never rude about it or anything, but I told one place I was at that the guy was interviewing me. By the time I was done, I was interviewing him and he didn't know it. And I said, um, I said, bud, if you I take this job, I said, the uh day that I get more than a hundred emails from corporate, or the day that my keys weigh more than I do, I will be gone. I will let you know. In other words, I took his hand away, which they generally don't like, but if they can live with that, then it makes for a good relationship.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And they could live with it. I interviewed one time, I won't say where the bank was at. They had gone through 19 people. He was the president of Marquette Bank in Minneapolis. He was handling the interview, but it was for another community in North Dakota. But that was his assignment. His name was Doug Heil. He interviewed me for about an hour, and he was about my age at that time, so we're in this probably the same age group. And uh when he got done and everybody went to their corners, he leaned over to me and said, because the owners were sitting in their went to their corner, and he went to he stayed with me a little bit, and then he says, Stan, you're gonna enjoy this job. Your problem was sitting in that corner over there. That'll be your problem. I says, He says, I wish I then he said to me, and he's the president of Marquette Bank, said yeah, I wish that I had your background. I am blown away with that kind of a comment. Because I never heard something like that before. And I just thanked him and stuff, and and sure enough, I got the job and I worked there for four years or so. They had problems.
SPEAKER_03And where was that when I that was in Minneapolis?
SPEAKER_06I gotta be careful. Um but the that was in rugby.
SPEAKER_03Oh, but the um made the like where you're doing the interview was in Minneapolis. Minneapolis. Oh, okay, gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you were you were in beach. When were you in rugby?
SPEAKER_06Oh two to oh six.
SPEAKER_03Oh two to oh six, you were in rugby.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03Is that where you went after beach? How long were you in beach?
SPEAKER_06Well, see, uh well, no, that's okay because see when when I was at beach in '95, I was stayed there until they asked me if I would take a transfer to Colorado. There's a two banks down there that need some help, and your kind of help. And so I I said to Lori, we're empty nesters. We had just become empty nesters. Why don't we just go do it?
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_06And so I left Beach, and that's when um uh another guy came. He had already been there, Rusty. Okay, he had been there, and so he took over what I was doing, and I went down to Pueblo, Colorado. Okay, and they had a branch, or not a branch, a bank, a separate chartered bank up there um in Solida. So I I managed those two banks.
SPEAKER_03And how many years?
SPEAKER_06Two years two years, yeah. Okay, and you know, it kind of took the it it was getting better. I knew it was. He was that was one of the guys that I had told that once my keys weigh more than me, or I get more than a hundred emails, and I was getting tired, and I was only 40 years old, yeah. And so I I had been at that since I was about 18, and I was 40 years old, and I'm tired, and um I was I was fortunate enough to be able to do what I'm gonna about to say, and what I'm about to say is I took the summer of 02 off. I have never taken three months off. I had barely taken a vacation, yeah, and um, so I took the summer of 02 off, and then as I was coming through after a wedding in in Minnesota, I stopped at the North Dakota Bankers Association to say hi to some old friends over there and um uh in Bismarck, and uh I was leaving his office, the the head of the NDBA, and he said, Would you um I was just about shutting his door and he said, Hey, come back here, Stan. He said, Would you ever consider um checking out? And that was the one that I ended up in rugby then. Okay, and I went back to the car. I said, Well, I'm gonna, I told Laurie, I'm gonna have to go back to work sooner or later. And that's the one where I met with the president of Marquette Bank.
SPEAKER_03Okay. And um so then rugby for about four years. Four years, yeah. And then did you retire after that, or where did you go after that?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, no, then uh that's when I um came back. My mom and dad went down pretty much almost on the same day down in New England, uh, from health problems. Okay, and I was at my in my desk in in rugby, and I got a call and I said, Dad, I'll be down there tomorrow morning. Uh got down there and uh I gave them you know six-week notice too. I got dad situated, they were both in the hospital and heading, got them both situated, and they were literally in different rooms heads or head down. Oh, sure. So the mom had Alzheimer's and dad just exhausted from taking care of her and wouldn't wouldn't really admit that to give up enough.
SPEAKER_03So anyway, um went down there and I and then um kind of just so you were taking care of them, making sure they're all good, right? Were you working during that time then?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I was still working at in rugby. So working in rugby, okay. So I gave my notice. I I knew that I didn't know where I was gonna. I've quit many, not many, but a few jobs without another job. Yeah, because I always just felt that you know God's blessed me to this point, he's not gonna quit.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I like that kind of faith.
SPEAKER_06And uh so I quit, and um then an old friend from back in citizen state bank days, who is Mr. Aylis is still around, but his his his son is now running the bank, uh, the role that I was doing there okay uh up till 2020. Then I retired. I'm still on those bank boards um that we have, and it's grown quite well, and he is he is doing a fantastic job. Um but I um back then, Mr. Ahlis, George Ailis, asked I stopped in to say hi to him and a couple of other friends over there because I'd be familiar with that system. I wasn't really looking for a job. I really wasn't, and and George asked me if I'd consider coming back, and that's when I came back to in uh to American Bank Center, it was back then. Okay, and it was uh a smaller system, um, but not much. I mean, it's a good it's a good system, and we're up to 30, 32 banks now. But when I was there, we probably had about 12, 13.
SPEAKER_03So then after Rugby you were able to move back to New England.
SPEAKER_06Um or was that I had well see, we that's the that's what's kind of kind of like a deceiving or a slight almost a sleight of hand is I owned a house in Beach for 28 years, and but I didn't live there for 28 years.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_06I always kept it so yeah, never owed me nothing. I had it all paid for and everything, so I kept it when we went to Colorado. I kept it when we went to um hadn't known, I mean, when I went to Wisconsin, it but that's a different story. But I kept it when I worked at Dickinson and and uh Kielder and all these different places. So yeah. But we sold it, you know, when when we moved to New England when I retired.
SPEAKER_03When she retired, yeah. So were you did you ever go back and live there? Like after rugby, you guys when lived there for a while and then that's where I lived, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I'd do some driving.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so I was gonna ask you, could or could you work remotely a little bit then?
SPEAKER_06Or no, you couldn't. No, okay. No, not not then. But you know, I when I worked in at the bank in Dickinson, I would just drive in from Beach. Beach and then got a place in town here, excuse me, apartment at one time, and then um, you know, you know, I I've owned two homes at the same time because the ones paid for, and then rugby, I bought another one. Didn't know how long I'd be there. And but I, you know, um did okay.
SPEAKER_03So how how long have you lived now in New England again?
SPEAKER_06We've been four years now.
SPEAKER_03It's been four years, four years.
SPEAKER_06Okay.
SPEAKER_03Well, and it's funny, um, totally off topic, but I love when I go back to beach and I'll see Lori at Robin's Nest having coffee with everybody and stuff. So I just love that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_03Um, so how many years total were you because you kind of still are in banking in a sense. I know you're retired, but if we go from say your actual, you said you're retired six years now, so 2020 you kind of retired. Yeah, how many years were you in banking total then?
SPEAKER_06Pretty much close, pretty close to 45.
SPEAKER_0345, okay.
SPEAKER_06And then when you add the excuse me, the six years because um on the board and stuff, you know, I'm at 50. Yeah, a lot of years, a lot of years, a lot of years, and it's starting so young, you know, even though I wasn't there from 72 until you know, I went to college in between there. But even when I was at college, I worked at the KC Club, that's where I worked my eight-hour stuff. Um it was a barn. Yeah, I worked from five until one in the morning, but then I worked at a bank, little bank in East Grand Forks, Minnesota. And um what was that called? Citizens Bank in East Grand Forks. I'd worked there a little bit, so I had I dabbled around in the banking all the time. All the time. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Now, how many grandkids do you have?
SPEAKER_06Two.
SPEAKER_03Two grandkids.
SPEAKER_06Levi and Lincoln.
SPEAKER_03Where are they at?
SPEAKER_06They're down in Huntsville, Alabama.
SPEAKER_03Alabama.
SPEAKER_06Joel's works for the Department of Defense. Okay, and uh Lindsay, Lindsay and Joel. They moved from Raleigh to Huntsville a few years back.
SPEAKER_03Okay. And so do you get to see them very often?
SPEAKER_06Well, we get to see the kids. We try at least once a year.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_06We we go down there once a year because it gets so hot in the summer. You know, we don't go in the summer, we might go in May or June at the latest. Yeah, they were just up here this summer. We had a great time.
SPEAKER_04Oh, yeah, a little bit.
SPEAKER_06They came our way, but normally we go that way. Yeah, but we just once a year, and we get lucky a couple times a year.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. Well, no, okay, so you and Lori have been married for 51 years.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I want you to tell me what you think has led to you guys having a successful marriage for 51 years because you haven't been miserable. Some people are, you know, maybe they've been married for 50 years and been miserable. You guys have not, you guys are both um you seem very happy, yeah. And not in a fake way.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03So what do you feel like things that you've done or whatever?
SPEAKER_06You know, really it kind of again is a simple thing and yet complicated. But let me just do the simple thing. Um, being married is one thing, staying married is another thing, and we have over the years uh chose every morning to stay married. We don't know we did that, but we did do that. And um, some it's not like something that hey, we're walking around and skipping around, laughing and lying and talking and saying, well, let's choose to be married yet. It's just something you do.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_06It because it's to go the other way on it is also a choice. And and so we've always over the years, just I know we chose to just stay married. I mean, and and yes, we have a great time. We we have our problems like everybody, we have our issues just like everybody. Um, there are times that uh I think that if oh, if the neighbors heard me, and they probably did, because sometimes I'm a little more um oh, what's the word, um, anxious or uh driver than she is. And yet she's very social and uh and and she can she can walk, she's walked me off many a ledge, you know, yeah, and helped me through a lot of stuff.
SPEAKER_03You get to where you know that person really well though, and you know how to yeah and
SPEAKER_06And I know that she knows me. Yeah. So I she doesn't sometimes even know that I'm asking her um uh for help.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_06She might not even catch it that I'm needing some help. Or she she most times does catch it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But uh or doesn't realize she's helping you with what you need in that moment. Yeah, in that moment, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_06It is. It's it's it's unfortunately and fortunately, it's situational at times, you know. And uh and I think she'd say this.
SPEAKER_03I was just gonna say that she would say the same probably about you.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, you know, yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think I hope so. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Now I would like you to talk about you did some coaching in the past. Yeah. So what have you all coached? You coached some basketball?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, coach basketball for three years.
SPEAKER_03You coach basketball for three years. Okay. At what level? What how old?
SPEAKER_06High school, high school, varsity, JV. When we moved to Wisconsin, um I think well, Matt was in the eighth grade. Were you done asking?
SPEAKER_01Yep, I am, yep, yep.
SPEAKER_06Eighth grade, um, and got over there. And anyway, to make it kind of a longer story short, the head coach, well, Matt moved up to the varsity his freshman year. And there was a group of kids coming that the other coach that when I got there, he was the football coach. He didn't want to coach him uh the next year because he knew they were going to be down. So the head coach, who is a great man, had he asked me if I would consider taking a JV. He said, I know you played basketball because I played some City League over there, and but I um he said, I said, only if I don't have to coach my son. And well, Steve is he's kind of like the grandfather of basketball in western Wisconsin. The um that high school at an Amory had 550 kids up, it was in the second class. There's four classes in Wisconsin back then, and it wasn't just under the Milwaukee, Green Bay, Amory, uh, River Falls, uh, some of these other towns um were in the second class, and that's from 550 kids to a thousand.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Okay. So that was the school school that Matt was in. And that was the where he wanted me to, that guy that asked me to coach. I said, why Huckham coach uh XYZ doesn't want to take this. He's he says, I'll be brutally honest with you. He says he's he told me they're gonna be 0 and 20, and I don't want anything to do with it. So I says, So I'll be happy to take it. And so I did, and because Matt, he had moved him up the end of his freshman year, and uh anyway, um it's nothing that I did. It might be a little bit about how I went about it, but that team that was going to be oh and 20 was 6 and 14.
SPEAKER_03So you had some wins.
SPEAKER_06We had some wins, yeah. The next year we were 14 and 6 with some of the same kids and some not the same kids. The third year, and again, this isn't about me, but we went we were 20 and 0.
SPEAKER_03And um um so did you win the state title then?
SPEAKER_06Well, no, I was a JV coach.
SPEAKER_03I just want to make sure. Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_06I was the first and only assistant. Oh, okay, yeah, wow to Steve Wilhelm. Steve Wilhelm is a great man, he was two years older than me. To this day, he's still the 29th leading scorer in the state history.
SPEAKER_04Wow.
SPEAKER_06When I got there, he was the ninth leading scorer in in hit Wisconsin history in high school. Okay, yeah, he averaged 28 points a game for four years.
SPEAKER_04Wow.
SPEAKER_06But anyway, he played for the Badgers, played against Bill Walton, those kind of guys. Yeah, he he knew Bobby Knight personally.
SPEAKER_03Oh, really?
SPEAKER_06Okay, he went to his clinics and stuff. Okay, he taught me so much that it's unbelievable, especially about basketball, but um about life too. Yeah, and uh here he helped me.
SPEAKER_03So, but anyway, that group there, then um I don't know how far you want to get into this one, but um you can text me, yeah, for sure. Yep, and then we're gonna do, like I said, after we're gonna do another little thing on just the coaching and sports and whatnot, but yeah, go ahead and share this for sure.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, well, and I would would like to share a couple of little things on that that basketball deal. Um, we had a real rivalry. We were we were pretty good. We made it to the sectional finals. They called them sectionals, it'd be like the regional championship. Okay, we made it there twice when Matt was a senior and a junior, and uh, but so I was coaching that the group that wasn't getting to play in JV, but they were all getting getting okay, you know. And uh we uh one time with this, we have a town called Ellsworth, and we were playing them, and we had Coach Wilhelm had brought into the to the system over there these kids that don't get to play much work just as hard. And uh let's have a varsity reserve game. And Stan, would you coach that? And I said, Yeah, I'd be happy to. It sounds fun. So I do my JV stuff, but then we take grid group of kids, and basically sometimes let's push. I'm gonna take make a long story short. Ellsworth, we had beat Ellsworth on our floor in in Amory, and it was always a battle, but we beat him that night before. So we have this varsity reserve game. Get down to the varsity reserve game at Ellsworth, and we just beat them. I got guys that are gonna dribble the ball off their foot. I got I got a guy that I think can at least get the ball up to the floor against some hard pressure, yeah. But I walk in the gym, and he's got the coach over there, had three starters from the varsity dunking the ball, warming up. And I got guys that are five, six that to make a long story short, I went, oops, there there's something going on here. Didn't say anything. Well, game starts. I mean, I knew what was gonna happen, and I call it the hundred-point game. And what happened was they are full court pressing us the first half, we can't get the ball up to the floor, and they're dunking the ball, they're making a mockery of us, and so go, it's halftime, the score is 58 to 18, and so get down in the locker room. I said, guys, we got two options here. I says, first one is we can throw the towel in, not even go back up there, or just go back up there and just continue what we're doing, or we can suck it up and do the best we can and improve on this, make it better. But there's one thing I want you to be thinking about, and it's this it seems that if these guys what they're doing are trying to do is hit a hundred points, I want you, all of you, thinking about which one of you want to make their hundredth point for them. I says, because obviously this isn't right, and the uh kids kind of went, hmm. So and I says, and I'll explain that later if that we get to that point, and uh so we go up there and by golly, we're I said, if they if those guys want a shallow victory, we're gonna help them with it. And sure enough, they come out and they're still full court pressing us. There's no um back then there was no three-point shot, and it, but we got we played a little quite a bit better, and we got up to where we got about 48 points from 18. They're full court pressing us, and and actually it gets down to like 30 seconds on the clock, and they uh they got they just hit 96 points, and I got a chance to get a timeout in there. I got the timeout in there, and I says, Okay, guys, here's what's gonna happen. First of all, which one of you wants to make their basket for them? And just don't say yet. But here's what's gonna happen when we go back out, it's their ball, they're gonna go down score, it'll be 98. We'll be under their basket when we do take it out. There'll be a guy that um we were gonna throw it to, and you're just gonna turn and put it into their velvet, and they'll get their hundredth point. And this guy that this kid, his name was Tim, Tim Sondro. He was the same age as my son, but he just never made the um the you know the team as well at where he could get much playing time. And uh, long story short is Tim says, I'll do it, coach. I said, Okay, good. Well then to to end this story, what happened? We didn't have to because I don't know what happened, but they got religion with about 30 seconds left in the game and they just dribbled the ball out. Oh, geez, yeah. I want I wish I could have thought of it faster as I look back over the years as we should have gone and followed them.
SPEAKER_03Oh a little hindsight, yeah, 2020, right?
SPEAKER_06I would have just kept falling them until they hit hit 98. And I wish I would have, I didn't. It's a little bit of sore sour grapes on my part, but if you know I wanted to help them out with their shallow victory, and so but on the way I mean those those games like stick with you, right? Because you're just like well, see, and here's the deal on the way home, we're driving, and I'm driving the van that we're taking the kids to it in it, and they're kind of pretty dejected. And I said, guys, as we were driving, get they were coming in and getting in there. I said, Don't worry about it. I said, um, I made a lot of mistakes tonight. I I probably didn't have the right guys out there at the right time. So don't don't hang this on yourself. This one's on me. And uh, and so I'm driving along, and all of a sudden from the back, this Tim I said, guys, how are you doing back there? Tim says, you know what? That's okay, coach, because I replayed this game in my head, and we still lost by 30. It's kind of kiddie, it was. If he got somebody handed him grapes, he turned them into lion.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah. You and you need that on every team, yeah. So just stay positive.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So anyway, that was my basketball career. We went 20 and 0, and by golly, that had never happened before in Amory for the JV.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_06And uh um they even put it in the paper and a nice picture of our team in the papers.
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's great. Yeah, they got some recognition for it. Did you spend any part of your life traveling?
SPEAKER_06No, I mean that wasn't a deal. I mean, yes and no. I mean, I I don't fly well, I never could, I get sick. So kind of never did any of those. I did it for a while and I'd pay the price. I'd get to a meeting and find out I have to sit it out, I'd be that sick. Oh, that's kind of sick, I get.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, not worth it.
SPEAKER_06I got I got um vertigo issues anyway. Yeah, and it's not worth it. So we drive to places, but I mean, our our biggest vacations were just going to meetings. I'd go to San Diego for a meeting, though. You know, I'd go to um uh Denver for meetings and stuff, and and bring Lori along all the time and sometimes as kids if we could.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So any unique talents that people would be surprised to hear about you?
SPEAKER_06Well, I think one of the big ones is just that I play the harmonica too. And uh that's you know, a lot of people. My dad threw the harmonica in my lap, he played harmonica, and he threw it in my lap when I was about six years old and said, learn to play this. And I did.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. Now you were saying before we started the interview, though, that you've done a lot of marathons.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03How many marathons?
SPEAKER_06Well, I've done 11.
SPEAKER_03Eleven marathons.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I did grandmas 10 times. That's that was from two harbors down to Duluth. Oh right along Lake Superior.
SPEAKER_03Wow. And you've done some 10K's, you said, and some of those.
SPEAKER_06And I did the Twin Cities that I did 10 grandmas and then the Twin Cities once. And then I've done a lot of 10Ks and and uh like where did you find the time to train? That that was the thing, is the time is because I have a um people would ask me, I mean, say I ran every day. I still run every day. God. Um, it was just a habit. And people over the years, when they saw that, saw the way I was being stan or something, they'd ask me, Do you have any hobbies? And I say, I I had I Close this answer, and I I probably won't say it right anymore. I haven't had to say it for a while, but I says, I guess I don't have any hobbies. I says, you know, here's the deal with me. I love I love God, I love my wife, I love my family. Um I run every day. I don't have time to um um bowl on a Thursday every Thursday. It just doesn't interest me. I have way too much going on. I want to learn one new thing a day, and so I I do things that help that out. I but I don't have need a hobby or want a hobby. My life is my hobby, yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's what I it's pretty great, yeah. Just doing the that's it, yeah.
SPEAKER_06And it that is really it. My life has been my hobby. So when you because I like what I do, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03And yeah, you have nobody to you're not trying to impress anybody either. So which makes us a little happier, right? Yeah, right. When you see you run every day, how far do you run?
SPEAKER_06Do you do like three miles or yeah, during those those time, I during the time, and again, this I don't want anybody to take this as pride or anything, um, but um I ran 1250 miles a year for 10 years training in the marathon for the marathons, yeah. So every day I'd run 4.2 miles, but I just would never skip them. Once in a great while I'd take a Sunday off and not go run, but other than that, I'd get 25 miles a week easily. And that was enough. And then I'd when the marathon started getting closer, I might go out and run nine, 10 miles.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, kind of perfectly.
SPEAKER_06But then and then once in a while I'd I knew that if I could be comfortable running a half of a marathon, 13, that I'll be fine.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you'll catch that second wind. Yeah, you kind of do. You kind of third or fourth.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah, you kind of do. You know, then Dorphins will kick in. Um, yeah, I mean, not always, but sometimes.
SPEAKER_03What's an important life lesson that you've learned?
SPEAKER_06Well, let's see. There's quite a few of them. One is I resigned as a center of the universe way back in the 80s. I tried, tried, I knew I just trying to do all this on my own, you know. So I resigned as a center of the universe, and and uh didn't mean I everything went well, but I did a 180 of the way I was living, all face, you know. And uh so that's that's one of the things that I um I just I just knew I needed to make some changes. I quit drinking probably what is this yeah? I think it's probably been 46 years ago or so that I haven't had a drink or anything. And uh things you know, just just made some changes. And uh some of the things that I I feel pretty good about, and it's I don't remember what your question was, but pretty good about was I got the chance to deal with a lot of people. And uh I was on a lot of because of my best friends were always 30 years older than me, I was on big shoulders. I learned from them people. I could skip 29 years of mistakes and just ask them what I should do. Yeah, they'd help me out. But there was many a time when I got to be with I my own, you know, people I work with, and they maybe stop in my office or something and have an issue. And I'd get a chance to coach them, I get a chance to help them. Because I always got along better with with people at the bank. And I'm gonna be brutally honest, and I get along better with most of the janitors than I ever did the owners. Yeah, and that's just kind of the way it went. But I'd get people stop in and they'd say, you know what, uh, because I always felt like they respected me, and then that's probably why they wanted to talk to me. And maybe sometimes it was because they had to or something, but sometimes if they came in and just wanted to talk, I knew they were this was important, and when they got done telling me something, I'd I'd say, guess what? Don't do anything stupid, don't worry. You didn't invent it. It's been happening for thousands of years. You didn't invent it, just don't do anything stupid, okay? I don't want to lose you. And yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Was there a piece of advice you uh because you have had so many mentors? Yeah, is there a piece of advice that you feel like really impacted your life? Maybe more than other advice that you would give to others? And I'm just thinking of that one because since you've had so many, like you said, instead of 25 years of mistakes, you can learn and skip some of those. Yeah. So is there one one thing um that really sticks with you that you did follow? You followed some advice or something that yeah.
SPEAKER_06I again I I don't think I could pinpoint that one. I just it's it's kind of a culmination of all those things, and so many of those things would come to my mind when it was appropriate for them to rather than trying to remember everything. Yeah, and and so yeah, I just I had you know, like out in peace, it was like, oh, you Al Eckert, you know, right across the street. I don't know if you even would remember him, but he came in the bank and he made the first step on that one, and um Don Bringle and uh Bringle the Chevrolet dealership and uh or whatever it was was back then, and um even even Canon Joyce Westrom, just down home type people, they were all um always had good advice. They didn't know they were given at some point right. You're just listening. I'm just listening to them. I have I have people that I'd mentioned the ones in in the bank here, and um, you know, they're those Alan Anderson um things like that. I I was able to take stuff that they didn't know they taught me and and kind of spin it back on them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And um one day this Mr. Anderson said, Stan, you need to come in my office. And he was reading the Wall Street Journal. He said, um, I need to, he says, This man is me. And I says, What are you talking about, Alan? He says, Well, here, everything he knows doesn't matter anymore. I says, Hey, wait a minute, Alan. In fact, I called him Mr. Anderson. Wait a minute, Mr. Anderson. Let me read it first. I read it and I says, you know what, Alan, that isn't you. I says, This guy is he's on his way out, and he says, None of nothing he knows matters anymore. I says, Alan, you know what was, and you now know what is. The difference between you and him is that little piece in the middle, and you I said, you know what, you know why it changed. And it made made him feel better, made me feel better, that he felt better. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um, what do you feel like has been your greatest accomplishment?
SPEAKER_06Oh, you know, that one, I don't know. That that's uh, you know, when you say your life is your hobby, you know, that.
SPEAKER_03Life has been going to come.
SPEAKER_06Well, I I think in a way it kinda has, because you know, when everybody has a cliche here and there and I have my own and use other people's as well. But the fact of the matter is it is just a dash, you know. Yeah. And if if you got one thing that you can really hang something on, I I don't. I mean, I hang it on all the above.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And but you're getting the most out of your life. That can be a a big accomplishment, you know.
SPEAKER_06And you know, I'm going to um run until I can't run anymore. I run two miles a day now. I'm 72 almost. Um, I ran four the other day and three the other day, and but I try and always get two in. And um, I run around New England, around the outside of town, or I'll go up to their new track up there and I'll run 16 laps if I want to get four miles, and I'll run eight laps if I want to get two.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And uh and but I just that's me, I guess. Yeah, and um so I you know what I do when I when people ask me stuff like that, I say I call that Tuesday, yeah, you know, which you just asked, and or I call it Thursday, but I don't know. And so um I'm just looking down at a couple of notes that I made. Um but uh I think probably that uh that's probably enough from me.
SPEAKER_03What do you you still take in a lot of like local sports, high school sports? Yeah, why is that?
SPEAKER_06Oh, that's just Lori and I both just um really have a you know, Lori wasn't athletic, she she admitted, you know.
SPEAKER_03But um Stan has sat by me at a basketball game, and then I'm like, I'm sorry, Stan, I get a little too into bed.
SPEAKER_06No, I like that the way you get into it.
SPEAKER_03I'm loud, I you're loud for everybody though.
SPEAKER_06Yes, you do. No, and that's a good thing. But um, no, we just we go to the games because we we definitely like to support the kids. And and you know, it's funny you mentioned that because we picked up a a lady last night for a volleyball game that is known around New England, and she's in her in her 90s, and she was we pick her up and take her to the games, and she's just a trooper.
SPEAKER_04Oh, that's awesome!
SPEAKER_06I know. And when Lori called her yesterday and she said, Um, you know, I'm thinking about maybe making some changes this year. Well, Lori slowly coaxed her to try it. Come, you know, on the ride home, Mrs. Mrs. S, uh, Mrs. Swartz said to Lori, oh Lori, I'm so glad you pushed me on this. It felt so right. Oh, she says, I want to support the kids. Yeah, and that's really that's an example of a mentor that you didn't know was a mentor, yeah, until you had that situation and you go, Oh, yeah, yeah. It was so right.
SPEAKER_01Did she like being around everybody and the the noise and the excitement and stuff? Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Kids play some of some of my friends, like you, you know, like you would know them like Jerry Schwartz. You remember that name? Randy Schwartz, the name, yeah. Yeah, they're they're all good, good people, and um and Patricia Schwartz and uh her all her kids, so she has got it in the system, her system, and she is uh very active for a 95-year-old.
SPEAKER_03That's awesome, yeah. If you could go back to any point of your life and redo, say a day or a a stage, or even just a memory, what would it be and why?
SPEAKER_06Um you know, I always I always kind of took on the concept of no regrets. So you're you're kind of asking me to delve into do I have any regrets or or maybe it was like one of your most favorite days.
SPEAKER_03And you just love to do it again.
SPEAKER_06That's kind of what I'm getting at is I took anything that was that I didn't take the mistakes you make, and um could be your worst day. And it could also be your best day. Yeah, and and that that goes back, that one goes back to that that TV show um where that one was said in a TV show, but this guy was being pressed about what was his worst day and what was his best day, and he told the story, and he says, so that was my worst day and my best day, because he he learned from it, he made a change from what he had done wrong. So I've got like things like that, yeah. But I tried to turn them, and I believe I have turned them into my best day, so I'm I don't have any awesome.
SPEAKER_03Um, is there anything? Oh, we you said there's not really anything you wish you would have done. Yeah, that no regrets really with that.
SPEAKER_06That's like almost like grading yourself and saying, you know, that you didn't have it right or do it right, or I just felt like I always lived in a day that you know I was getting an A or a B on it.
SPEAKER_03What's your all-time favorite song?
SPEAKER_06Well, there uh again, um music is I you know, I might have hundreds of favorite songs. Yes, I really do because I do you have a favorite style? Well, no, because all genres are I mean, I mean, I really do mean that. You know, Lori and I, when we got married, um, when I gave her the ring, and she had a record player, Seals and Crops, and then there was a song in there called Diamond Girl, and it was a ring, it wasn't a very expensive ring when I asked her to marry me. But that was became our song. Oh yeah, Diamond Girl is by Seals and Crops. But you know what? When I was 21 years old, and Old Dog's Children and Watermelon Wine by Tom Hall has such a story to it.
SPEAKER_00What's it called?
SPEAKER_06Old Dogs, Children, and Watermelon Wine. Um, I mean, I just love I mean, I love the bee gees. I mean, I love I love rock and roll, I love all genres to the point that I I play the blues uh with my harmonica. I play along with blues songs or chords, and uh um I mean I just I kind of I have hundreds of favorite songs. Everyone almost everyone I hear that if I know, ah, that's my favorite, you know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I love the song. Everybody be quiet, right?
SPEAKER_06Right.
SPEAKER_03What's one thing you would want people to remember about you when you're gone?
SPEAKER_06Oh, I don't know. I I I guess maybe a way to say it is if if they don't know, no, it wouldn't make any sense to say it. If they know me, they probably kind of already know. I don't have any magic, you know. I don't I don't have any magic that that everyone else doesn't have, but that I I worked hard at what I did. And um, but I know that um it wasn't me doing it.
SPEAKER_03Are there any other memories that you want to share?
SPEAKER_06Um let me uh they're just they're just minuscule little things. One time I um every everybody come visit me at the bank, you know. Give me a cup. I had 250 cups in my garage in in Beach.
SPEAKER_03Coffee monks.
SPEAKER_06Coffee mugs. Oh my gosh. And what I would do is they could give me one and I'd say, you know what? When I retire, I'll pull this cup out and have coffee with you because we will be not be able to see each other again. Yeah, probably.
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh, that's a lot of coffee.
SPEAKER_06Well, I got rid of them when we moved four years ago, but things like that. Um, I only have about four, 20, 30, 40 of them left. Um, um, some other little thing to tell you is once a month we have a group down there in New England that we meet, and a bunch of old friends of ours. It didn't matter if you went to St. Mary's or New England public. Um, we have anywhere from like yesterday we had a meeting, we have 12 guys showed up for it. We have lunch and coffee together, and then lunch goes from 9:30 till about two in the afternoon. And we, you know, like I say, uh when we get there uh the first time, I said, you know what? If you caught a fish and you said it's say it's this big, we don't care. You can say it's this big. We don't have any fact checkers, and we really don't care.
SPEAKER_03We really don't care, yeah.
SPEAKER_06And so now that group of people sometimes is up to 20. And one time during the all-school reunion, there was 25 there, and uh, but we do it once a month, second Thursday of the month. The name of our group is called the nauseating group, and we mean that in the kindest way, but we are nauseating, yeah. But we're fun nauseating, yeah, yeah. And so another guy is wants to rename it to the second Thursday, you know, because it gets hard to explain to people what that means. Um, just I want to just quick uh one of the things I did want to do, and I was looking at the list you gave me, and I I got that one, got to do that one, and that's uh I went always wanted to hit a New York Yankees game.
SPEAKER_04Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_06And they were playing in Minneapolis, and I had a bond salesman that kind of had an extra ticket. He said your whole family could go to that game, and so we did, took him up on it, and it was in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Minnesota, and not only did I get to see a Yankee team, but there was a fall ball. We were right behind third base, and as it's coming down, we had hey, get up, Matt, stand up, and it landed right in his chair or would have hit him on the head. Oh my god, grabbed it real quick, got it, and we, you know, got it and yeah, still have it.
SPEAKER_03So how long ago was that?
SPEAKER_06Oh gosh.
SPEAKER_03Um because Matt was younger then, yeah, right.
SPEAKER_06He was a kid, you know, he's probably eighth grade, and that might have been in when we moved to Amory, pretty close.
SPEAKER_04Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_06I uh I like sharing this story just because it's not because it's about me. It I guess it's gotta be if it's about me, but um, I did always here's one thing I did want to say, I'd always did fight for the little guy, even though I was a little guy. But man, I would never want to, and I'd never let that happen in my presence. Yeah, or I tried to stop it.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_06And sometimes they try to diffuse it, or else I'd or else I'd flat out just I've had it, you know. And it was because I was one of them. Yeah, you know. Um, but there was one thing I did want to tell you, and it was real kind of a funny thing, but it when I I do speak to groups of people and at times over my career, I have anyway. And uh the North Dakota and South Dakota Bankers Associations do a joint meeting. And we were in Bismarck one year, and we were we they have a a walk run. Uh it's not a 10K, it was a three K, like three about 5K, three miles.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, about three miles, yeah.
SPEAKER_06And um, so we're the morning of that walk run, we get there, and there's probably a hundred people there, and it's in the park in Bismarck over there. And um getting ready to start, and the the young lady said, Okay, we're getting ready to start. Line up. The walkers, you guys get in the front, and then you runners, you go to the ones that are gonna run, you go to the back, and and uh and I says, I realize she's getting ready to start this. And I says, Ma'am, can I catch you here? I says, you know, could we reverse this? When when they're walking, we're gonna run over each other. Yeah, why don't you move us to the front and then them to the back? And she said, Oh, yeah, okay. Well, and anyway, while that's going on, then it's all lined up again, we're ready to go. I says, I notice she's not saying something, so I need to stop her again. And this is vintage stan copying her. I said, Ma'am, I need to just ask you one more thing. Well, Ma, by then she goes like this. What now? I says, Well, there's a fork in the road up about a half a mile. I see it on that sheet, it goes to the left or to the right. Which way do we go? Well, like I said, about then she had had it, and she said, sir, just follow the leader. I says, but ma'am, what if I'm the leader? I will then take everybody down the wrong path, and when we figure that out, we'll turn around, and instead of me being the leader, I'll be the last.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_06I didn't say that part, but that's what would have happened.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And she when she got my drift, that oh, yeah, that could matter. Um, so then she says state of the right.
SPEAKER_03Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_06But it's it's those kind of things, you know. It took me a I didn't think of that that day. I thought of that five years later when I'm thinking about it, was thinking about it. You know, she really um accidentally taught me a lot of stuff. Yeah, yeah, because I just sure wasn't mad at her or begrudge her, you know.
SPEAKER_03I I would have been she was annoyed by you though, and I would have been annoyed by me, you know, too.
SPEAKER_06So yeah, things like that. But that's pretty much if there was anything else I had to say. Uh just those little things, you know. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Anything else? Any other stories? Yeah, I mean I know how it goes.
SPEAKER_06I'm the only guy that studies for an interview. Things like this, things that you can't see are still real. Winning is not equal to success, and losing is not equal to failure. Some of those were coined by other people.
SPEAKER_03That's a great one.
SPEAKER_06But that first one, um, some of them I I pretty much said out loud to a lot of people. Here's one, if you're gonna walk on thin ice, you might as well dance. You know, I've been in that chair a lot of times where um there you're your throne on thin ice. You know what? Might as well dance. Now, I'm not a jolly fun guy when I wake up in the morning. I wake up hard. I wake up, it's hard for me getting up in the morning. Lori can just bounce out of bed, and I'm like, oh man, you know. But once I get going, then it's that's different. Then you can hit the ground going.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, you have to.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_06Well, thanks, Kylie.
SPEAKER_03Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02Thanks for spending a little time with us today on the Simple Lives We Live. If these stories mean something to you, one of the best ways to support the podcast is to follow, share an episode with someone you love, or leave a review. You can also support the show through the links in our website or social media bios. Until next time, don't forget ordinary lives often hold the most extraordinary stories.