I’ve written a lot about my mother’s father, Don Hall. 

In his almost ninety years, I learned a lot about him.  He’d been a superstar athlete at Jamestown College in the thirties; he’d worked on a CCC project to build the college stadium that still stands there.  He coached the last undefeated regular season/playoff/championship string (1940, Grand Forks Central) in the history of North Dakota high school hoops.  I drove with him at least once as he drove about the hinterlands of western North Dakota, selling drugs [*].  I had the benefit of being nearly forty when he died; I spent plenty of time with him; long enough to introduce him to his great-grandkids. 

I was never that lucky with my Dad’s father, Oscar Berg, who’d be celebrating his 114th birthday if he were alive today.  He – along with my grandmother – was the proprietor of “Berg Studio”, a photography shop in Jamestown for 30-odd years.  Oscar was a great photographer; some of his work still floats around central North Dakota, in thousands of senior photos and wedding pictures hanging on walls crammed with shots of peoples’ grand and great-grandparents, and panoramic shots of towns and National Guard units and Masonic Lodge picnics hanging in local museums and city halls.

He died, apparently of a heart attack, in March of 1942, leaving my grandma to run the photography studio and raise Dad.  I know him only from photographs; my brother Jim inherited the looks, the lucky sod (and my son Zam got his eyes, I think). 

He’d done a bunch of other things – I’m still not entirely sure about what, although I know he lived in Saint Paul for a while; my Dad has an old photo of him in a streetcar conductor’s uniform. 

 He was born on this date in 1893.  It’s strange, sometimes, thinking I’m just two generations removed from the nineteenth century. 

[*] to pharmacists, of course.