Holiday Train makes a visit to Glenwood

Dec. 13, 1962 – The Glenwood High School choir, under the direction of Harold Skilbred, presented a program of Christmas music on the Alexandria television station. The Villard choir, under the direction of Donald Erickson, also was to appear in this series of 30-minute concerts presented by the station and local advertisers each Christmas season. 

Nearly 200 Masons and their wives from this part of the state saw the Sincerity Lodge 161 of Villard receive the Grand Master’s Award in the Villard High School auditorium. Accepting for the Villard Lodge were the Russ Torfin and Art Engelbrcht. The Sincerity Lodge received one of 17 such awards given in the state for exemplifying the aims and objectives of Masonry. 

Several Glenwood Girl Scouts received their curved bar awards in local ceremonies. They included Diane Femrite, Teresa Stone, June Gandrud, Sally Wittwer, Becky Austvold, Kristin Kinney, Diane Graves, Diane Miller, Patricia McCarty, Debra Ostrander, Diane Stromenger, Vicki Lund, Linda Carlson, Lola Sharp and Sandra Fjoslien. Leader was Mrs. Louis Robards. The awards were presented by Mrs. James Sharp, President of the Girl Scout council. 

Dec. 14, 1972 – Local residents were involved in a production of Charles Dickens’ The Christmas Carol. Included were Steve Nestor, Jim Kinney, Mike Stackpool, Marvin Messenger, Larry Lommel, Debbie Whittemore, Kraig Kaufman, Jordan Stradtman, Ruth Whittemore, Joyce Elvehjem, Dan Busch, Erma Sivertson, Steve Hagen, Jack Messenger, Rob Robinson, Bud McMillan, Rick Kleinschmidt, Gordon Amble, Rodney Wolf, Danny Schliesman, Dave Lee, Kathy Strommen,  Marie Wold, Laura Doughty, Tom Mork, Rick Wheeler and Curt Bol. The play was directed by Nestor, who also portrayed Scrooge. 

Mayor Oliver Hoplin suggested the possibility of building a new medical clinic building during a regular meeting of the Glenwood City Commission. He had also brought the matter before the local hospital board. 

Dec. 9, 1982 – The Glenwood school board agreed to set up a chemical dependency program to begin to meet the needs of a variety of students from those who needed treatment to those who just wanted to “say no.” Don Swenson had served as coordinator of the project’s advisory committee. 

A real warm spell saw the fish houses on Lake Minnewaska suffer. Cable, rope, wires, and even boats were used to rescue the units from the lake. A total 17 ice houses apparently were sunk in temperatures which actually reached 60 degrees one day. 

Dec. 14, 1992 – After several months of consideration, the Pope County Commissioners had decided to divide its 1993 mental health budget between the Lakeland Mental Facility of Fergus Falls and the Community Counseling Center of Glenwood. 

The sound of a computer spitting out address labels were constantly being heard in the third grade classroom of Julie Critz and Marlene Nelson’s fifth-grade classroom. These students at E.N. Nordgaard Elementary School were into big business – the business of taking orders and printing address labels. The name of the business was “Labels ’R Us.”

Dec. 16, 2002 – Two men, each with a lifelong passion for aviation, died Tuesday afternoon after the plane they were flying crashed in a remote area near Villard. 

Don’t lug those big fish houses out just yet. That is the word from Sheriff Tom Larson on Friday, two days after responding to a report of two men falling through the ice on a four-wheeler near the DNR landing on the northeast corner of Lake Minnewaska. 

Dec. 17, 2012 – In a public hearing held on Dec. 6, the Pope County Board unanimously upheld Pope County’s tobacco ordinance and the fines associated with selling to a minor. The County is responsible for issuing licenses to vendors who wish to sell tobacco. State law requires periodic compliance checks to make sure it isn’t being sold to minors, with specific procedures that must be followed. In Pope County, it is the Pope County’s Sheriff’s Office that does the compliance checks.

Glenwood city property owners apparently did not have any questions about the proposed 2013 city budget or tax levy. No one showed up for the Truth in Taxation public hearing at city hall last Tuesday evening. The Truth of Taxation hearing lasted just a few minutes, and the city then unanimously approved the 2013 levy and budget. 

The Canadian Pacific Holiday Train arrived in Glenwood on Friday with a huge crowd on hand for a Christmas celebration. The band, the Claytones, performed about an hour of rockin’ Christmas songs that kept the crowd dancing and warm on a cool December day at the Glenwood Canadian Pacific Depot.