Walt Anderson ’62
With Murdo’s impressive runner-up showing in the 1937 State “B” basketball tournament an easy remembrance for many hoop fans, many of the alumni may have forgotten that Murdo qualified for the State Tournament held in Mitchell, SD in 1935. Unlike 1937 though, the old “one class” system was in effect, and Murdo’s competition included Mitchell (eventual champion), Sioux Falls Washington, Yankton (consolation), Webster, McBride, Miller (runner up), and Lake Preston. Murdo’s team during the year included Seniors Greg “Pete” Brunskill, Gib Thune, Keith Lange, “Speck” Muck, Ken Karns, and Les Lange, Juniors, Curt England and Walt Anderson, and Sophomores, Bill Francis, Harold Thune, Roland Myers, Ellis Beckwith, Hugh Guthrie, and Bert Wendt. The Coyotes of 1935 finished the State Tournament in sixth place winning one game and losing two.
GLORIOUS Mud, Gregg Brunskill ’59
During my father’s and mother’s time at Murdo High School, basketball was the main sport and the gymnasium was located in the high school basement. There was little room for spectators so the local town fathers decided to build a big auditorium. I suspect this was done with local labor and goods and services donated by town businesses. My father brought his John Deere tractor with the farmland hay fork to help lift packets of asbestos shingles up on the huge curved roof. And of course the local ladies groups would organize lunch for the working men, served in the hot sun on the gravel pad beside the new auditorium grounds, served on 4×8 sheets of plywood supported by alfalfa hay bales. These ladies groups were pretty dawned fierce once they figured out a project. They helped put on dramatic plays and musical productions in the schools, expanded and stocked the high school library and raised money for uniforms for the high school band. It was the sort of town where your first grade teacher could stand at the exit of our high school graduation, greet us by name and give us a pencil kit present in a zippered plastic bag.
The typing classroom had dozens of ancient typewriters that went “ding” at the carriage return and on the classroom walls were formal photographs of Murdo High School graduation classes back to the 1920s, including my father and mother, aunts and uncles. Whenever I had a term paper to write, my mother would drive to the biggest nearby library in Pierre and return with a trunk full of books on the subject; for example, C. W. Ceram’s book on archeology, which I read more than once.
Those 70ish Girls 