Doug Eveleth ’60

My first day of first grade was a really big deal. My brother Chuck was designated to walk me to school; probably not what he wanted to do on his first day of high school. I, on the other hand couldn’t be more excited.

I can still remember the smell of the wood floors in the old elementary school. Mrs. Sandy was my first teacher. The walls were lined with pictures of past Presidents wearing wigs. The American flag stood in the corner. The whole front wall held the big black board. Each of us were assigned our desk. A lot to take in. Then it was time for our first recess with all the older kids. I chose to watch the boys playing baseball. Especially the one at bat. That’s the last thing I remember.

The rest of the story came later from others who told me what happened. Whoever was at bat hit the ball and threw his bat, which hit me in the head knocking me backward toward the swings. Back then, the swing board was about sixteen by twelve inches by two inches thick. Two third graders, Toby Iversen and Duane Brooks, were standing up swinging as hard as possible to get the maximum height. On the downstream they hit me in the back of my head. A teacher woke me up and said I had better walk home, so I did. It was only a block away. Then I had my first seizure. Mom called Elsie Joy, who took us to the Doctor, who put me in the hospital. I remember waking one night. I knew I wasn’t home, but had to go to the bathroom. I got up and saw one light, so I walked there. It was a staircase, so I took it. At the bottom was a door, so I opened it and scared a nurse taking a break. She screamed. I told her I needed to go home. She settled down and said that no, I couldn’t go home, but she would help me. I spent the whole first week of school in the hospital. My Aunt Edith, the very first school teacher in Mellette County, wrote me a card saying that she hoped I would still like school once I got well. No perfect attendance was expected from me for the next twelve years. Duane Brooks came back for an all-class reunion 50 years later and apologized for causing me to stutter. I thanked him but said that I had stuttered from birth.

By Billy Francis ’62

When I was a senior in 1962, Murdo had an outstanding Basketball team. We won the district championship and the regional tournament before going on to the State B in Sioux Falls. Our top 5 players were Obie Brunskill, Willard Bordeaux, Roger Strait, Gordon Niedan, and Chris Anderson.

Our star defensive players and top scorers all year were Obie and Willard. I had the job of guarding Willard in practice and he kept me on my heels. If he wanted to make a basket, he found a way.

We went into our first game with Pine Ridge handicapped. Willard had injured his ankle during the Regionals and it wasn’t doing well. Obie had to take up the slack which was exhausting. Often times, you could count on one of them to steal the ball before the other team made it back down the court. They were good.

Nevertheless, Murdo hung on thanks to Chris, Roger, and Gordon. Though he didn’t score much, Obie had a brilliant defensive game. Murdo managed an 11 point lead at the end of the 3rd quarter. Some of the Pine Ridge fans admitted defeat early and started to leave.

And then Pine Ridge had a 16 point outburst in the 4th quarter. At the end of regulation time, the game was tied 47-47 so it went into overtime. Willard who only made an unheard of 2 points the whole game, fouled out in the 4th quarter. His injury was a huge factor in the overall scheme of things.

Pine Ridge dominated in the overtime. Obie fouled out when our only hope was to send  Pine Ridge to the free throw line in an attempt to get the ball back. He told me he was so exhausted he couldn’t see the difference in the colors of the uniforms and therefore, made some bad passes. It didn’t help that Pine Ridge made 8 of 10 free throws. The game ended Pine Ridge 55 and Murdo 51.

It was a tough loss for the Murdo Coyotes. Pine Ridge went on to win the tournament.

Jim Anderson, ’63

Mrs. Sorensen taught English at MHS for several years beginning in 1937, with a few years off to raise 2 children. Superintendent Gordon Diedtrich convinced her to come back to MHS in the fall of 1957 where she taught until moving to Presho after the 1961 school year.

It was early in my freshman year (1959) when Mrs. Sorensen stopped by my study hall desk shortly before school dismissed for the day. “Jimmy,” she said. “I think you would find this book interesting. She handed me Jim Bridger, Mountain Man by Stanley Vestal. I did find the book to my liking and thanks to Mrs. Sorensen and my mother, who when I had the mumps, had me read the condensed version of The Day Lincoln was shot, by Jim Bishop, I have been an avid reader ever since.

Maybe she saw some potential in the scrawny kid who lived across the alley from her home on Main Street, and who played with her son, Billy. I still recall visiting with her in the fall of 1963 as I was headed to college. I can still see that “You’ll find out soon enough smile on her face” as I told her I had everything all figured out-there was not much more anyone could teach me.

I recall a few of the highlights of the 2 years our class had Mrs. Sorensen for English. One “pop quiz” stands out because it was given the morning after we played basketball at Martin, which required us to leave immediately after school and arrive back in Murdo late. We had been assigned to read the first 25 pages of Ivanhoe. It was after midnight when I quickly read these pages. Our English class was the first class of the morning of the same day. We heard these dreaded instructions as soon as we walked into the classroom that morning. “Put your books away, take out a piece of paper, your name at the top-question number one. I got a few points that day but I could never catch up with those 2 Kinsley girls who also happened to be in my class. Mrs. Sorensen had us memorize Portia’s “Quality of Mercy” speech from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice and Marc Antony’s “Friends, Romans, countryman, lend me your ears” speech from  Julius Ceasar. I can still recite the last few lines of Thanatopsis, but I think it was where to put those commas in those compound sentences that gave me nightmares. And let’s not even talk about conjugating verbs or diagramming sentences. And I still remember my research paper on South Dakota’s ring necked pheasant.

Charles Francis’42 from Murdo Man, the memories of Charles Gordon Francis

An extremely important teacher in my high school years was Marge Swanson (later Sorensen). She pounded away teaching Shakespeare to a mostly unresponsive class and was equally energetic in all her English classes. She talked me into writing a sports column for the student section of the MURDO COYOTE (The town’s weekly newspaper) and she forced me to enter the school’s annual declamatory (oratorty) contest. I memorized a speech by Wendell Wilkie, a Republican presidential candidate, titled “Men Like War.” Compared to the piano concert debacle many years earlier, my rendition of Wilkie’s speech was an even greater disaster. I got stage fright, forgot line after line, and had to be constantly prompted from off stage by Miss Swanson. Who ever would have guessed that I would spend the later part of my life helping professional speech writers prepare material for their bosses. And to think it all started with a Murdo English teacher named Marge Swanson.