(bright music) - Hello and welcome to "Prairie Pulse".

Coming up a little bit later in the show, we'll learn about the history of sugar beets in the Red River Valley.

But first joining me now is Dennis Beck who's here to talk about a new North Dakota non-profit called the Wall of Honor.

Dennis, thanks for joining us today.

- Good morning, John.

Thank you so much for having us.

- Well, as we get started, tell the folks a little bit about yourself and your background maybe.

- I grew up in a town in Linton, North Dakota and I joined the army national guard in 1987 to be a common engineer, went off to Fort Leonard Wood to train and basically serve the community, the country.

I was a combat engineer.

Ended up going to college on the Montgomery GI Bill, which many people are aware of and got my degree.

After completing my college career and while serving in the guard, I got asked to become a full-time recruiter for the national guard.

So, I continued to do that on and off for the next 21 years.

And I retired from the army national guard in 2011.

And since then, I've basically been serving or doing land man work for the State of North Dakota in various oil and gas, solar, wind.

Married to my lovely wife, Jane and we have three wonderful kids.

Devin's who's a junior at University of Mary, Dillon is a freshman at University of North Texas and Lauren's a freshmen at Legacy High School in Bismarck.

- All right, and thank you for your service.

What is the Wall of Honor?

- What the Wall of Honor is, it's an electronic billboard that is placed in restaurants, bars, veterans organizations, airports, hotels, just about anywhere that the public is gonna see and basically be aware of what's going on and what the Wall of Honor does it recognizes or honors veterans, active military, retirees first responders, our police officers, firefighters basically any personnel out there that is basically giving to their community, their country and selfless service.

We wanna recognize that and make sure that the people are aware of these volunteers or these service people out there.

- Well, who started it or how did it get started?

- Well, it was a brainchild of a Vietnam vet who remembers coming home and of course, they weren't very well-received and very well appreciated back in those days when they returned from service.

And he's done fairly well as a businessman in his life.

And he decided that... About a year ago, he said "We need to start something to basically a show appreciation and do this."

So, he basically started the seed money to get this off the ground and get it started.

- Well, he provided the money, but who provided the work?

- Well, we've got a number of volunteers that basically go around and solicit sites or ask if they wanna be.

We've got Dave Wyler who is a real estate agent out of Bismarck who's good at marketing and has a lot of contacts.

And we've got myself as the veterans liaison officer.

I work with the veterans organizations, try to establish some places that we can be.

We've also got Major General Mike Hogan, who was our national or state spokesperson.

And he's been instrumental in getting us into the Fargo Airport and as well as other businesses here in the Fargo area.

So, we're very pleased that he's stepped up and taken part of this.

And basically, we've got a full-time marketing person who's on salary that we're paying.

And then we have a part-time temp marketing person that will have come in if the honorees are uploaded or there's a lot of them being, we have to usually bring somebody in part-time.

So, that's sort of how we were making it now or how we're going.

- Well, so then how does it work in terms of who can get a wall, I guess, a wall named after them?

- Actually, what it is is you go to thewallofhonor.org and that's where you can basically nominate an honoree.

And on that form, you'll download a picture, you'll put in their years of service, what branch they served, maybe what ribbons awards they got, like Purple Heart, et cetera.

And you'll also put their military history and then you'll put a point of contact.

When that's submitted, our marketing people take that information and they create a slide.

And it's a slide basically with their branch of service.

And then within 48 hours, that's on every monitor that we choose to be on throughout the State of North Dakota.

- Are these people that are no longer with us or can they be living to get on the Wall?

- Yeah, basically, it's anybody who's ever served that has roots or ties to North Dakota.

So, it'd be veterans, retirees, it's active military.

We've even started a recent program where we're taking new people that have joined the service.

And we're doing a little slide on them, like what their hometown is or where they're from.

And then what we're doing with first responders, let's say we get a sponsor, an advertiser that basically wants to advertise in a region.

We'll say, "So-and-so bank is proud to sponsor the Fargo Police Department" and then we'll have a slide like that on there to recognize the first responders and the local service people in the area or the region.

- Now you said, I could call these billboards.

So, where are the billboards currently and where can they be set up?

- So currently, the billboards are throughout North Dakota.

We've got approximately 30 locations right now and they vary from restaurants, bars, taverns.

We've got some in the Fargo Airport.

We've got many in the veterans' organizations like the AMVETS and the Legions.

They can be practically anywhere.

It just depends on where they should be and where they're gonna get the most public awareness.

- Is there a fee to establish this?

- Well, basically the cost of installing one is about $1,500.

And that would be for the monitor, the marketing and the Playbox that has to be digitized or set up.

And then after that, there's about a $35 a month fee that we pay to keep the box active throughout.

And what's unique about these boxes, they're serial numbered.

So, if I have a digital box in a bar in, let's say Casselton and they wanna advertise, they advertise on their box, but the other box in Casselton would be unique and it wouldn't necessarily have that advertisement.

So, we can create that separate advertisements and keep that distinct for each area.

- Well, what's been the reaction so far to this?

- Oh, it's been very positive.

We've put it in a few taverns and the tavern owners have said that their businesses increased because of it.

They say people come in every Monday or every week to see if there's any new honorees.

And they want to see if uncle Joe got up there, things like that.

So, it's been very good.

And we've actually gotten calls from...

If somebody sees one when they're on the road in a bar or a restaurant, they'll call us and say, "How do we get one?"

And so, it's been a really cool thing to be a part of.

- With that said, though, how long do they stay up?

- They stay up indefinitely as long as we have funding and as long as we're able to basically finance the project.

We sign a contract usually for one, two or three years, just so we have some kind of contract.

And the policy is, is that they gotta be on during business hours.

And of course they can only be used to show the Wall of Honor.

They can't be used for any other means because it's something that you wanna protect and make sure it's used the right way.

So, there's really no limit to it.

As long as we have financing and we can stay funded, they'll stay up indefinitely.

- Well, you said, are they all electronic?

- They're all electronic, yes.

- So, you can change or add to them pretty easily.

- Yeah, actually, we upload somebody within 48 hours.

And every Monday we have a refresh or a new playlist that comes out on every single box.

And that's because of our marketing team.

- So, how do you see this growing?

You mentioned a little bit almost people wanting, asking you for them, but I know you want a lot of different people to get the recognition.

- And so, what's interesting about the Wall of Honor, what we do is we'll take the honorees and within a 50 to 70 mile radius, we'll make sure that those veterans or those military people stay on that box all the time.

And that represents about 50% of the playlist.

And then we sprinkle in the other veterans and the other military retirees from throughout the state.

So, we are always changing our content, but the local people always stay constant because that's important for us to make sure that the community can see their local people.

- Sure.

Well, I understand some other states have found out about this and expressed an interest or people contacting you from other states.

- Yeah, so, interestingly enough, by being in these veterans organizations, we get people that travel through the State of North Dakota, obviously.

And one of them stopped at a veterans organization.

The AMVETS, All Vets and Steele and they saw it.

And within a week we were called and said, "This is the greatest thing we've ever seen."

And he's an American Legion member.

And so, we're working with the State of Wisconsin and the State of South Dakota to possibly enter into an agreement with them to get the Wall of Honor started there.

- Now, the way I understand it, the vets first responders are honored regionally.

So, if you're sitting in Casselton, that electronic billboard or wall will be different than if you're in Williston or if you're in Grand Forks.

- That's correct, that's correct.

So, the regional sponsors or the regional honorees stay consistent and then we change out the other half every week, but what's nice about it is somebody in Casselton even though they have their local content, occasionally they'll see a member or an honoree from Wilston or Bowman because of re-changing those out.

- So, then you do rotate.

So, you said halves.

So, you use half a regional and use the other half to rotate or something.

- Correct.

Yeah, exactly.

- Well, what about hospitals waiting rooms?

Wouldn't they be perfect spots or have you looked for other spots to put them?

- Yeah, so right now, Major General Hogan got us into a Fargo Hector Airport, which is phenomenal.

It's a great location.

We are in talks with the other airports to see if we can get in there because we think that's a great audience.

We are actually in talk with hospitals and clinics to see if we can get into some of their waiting rooms.

And what you run into is of course, you run into protocol, you run into advertising issues and what can be on these screens.

So, we're working through some of those, but anywhere that we can be, we wanna be as long as the public can see it.

- Well, now you've explained a little of this, but I'm gonna maybe ask it again.

How does the installation work and what do they look like?

Is it a TV type monitor or what is it?

- So, what we've been doing is we'll go out to a site and we figure out the location, what they could fit, what they can host.

And usually what we do is our standard install is about a 55 inch TV is what's pretty standard.

And what we do then as we go back and we sort of work with marketing to make sure we get the local content or the local heroes on there.

We'll have them create some slides with the police department, the fire department, et cetera on there.

And then what we'll do is we have a box, it's a small box about like an Apple TV box or Roku or whatever.

And that gets loaded on there.

And then we take the TV, the easy ad box and everything out to the site and we do the installation.

And then the minute we have it up, it's up and running, we hook it up to the internet and it's capable of receiving live feeds.

And usually what we do in return for that business hosting, we'll put on like some advertising forum if they have a Thursday special or if they have something for Veterans Day that they wanna do, we'll put that on their forum.

- Are you able to do this remotely?

Are you tied into it?

- Actually, our marketing person has her laptop or computer back at the office and she can actually see if they're up and running and she can change out the slides instantaneously on the run.

As long as we're hooked up to their internet, it can be done like that.

- Yeah, well, it's interesting.

And tell us a bit more about yourself and your experience in the military.

- Well, like I said, I guess, young Linton native and we were very rich in military history down there.

At one time they said the City of Linton or the Emmons County led the nation in military membership because of so many people joining the service down there.

So, we had a very active national guard unit and I'd always been intrigued by that and wondered what they did.

So, I went in and talked to a recruiter one day and the next thing you knew I was enlisting in the army national guard.

So, they helped me, army national guard was instrumental in me getting a college degree and basically showing me a career.

And the opportunity to recruit was probably the most rewarding experience of my life because I got to work with young men and women that wanted to serve their country and they genuinely wanted to make a difference.

And after 911, it even became more prevalent.

A lot of people don't realize that the younger generation if given the opportunity, they will step up and do what their calling is.

So, that was very rewarding.

And of course, the tough parts over the years was of course having a young man or woman or young man in this case killed in Iraq.

And I still live with that every day, but the comforting thing is knowing that that's what he wanted to do and there was no stopping him.

And then basically, after my military career and retiring, I had the opportunity to go to work as a land man and getting involved in some of the veterans organizations, the Legion, the DAV.

And so, that's part of also the secondary mission here, is to help those veterans organizations that are maybe struggling right now due to COVID.

We wanna make sure that we have those billboards in there and also trying to help them basically come out of this and still stay relevant to this day and age.

- Well, I know you said that your original donor wants to remain anonymous and we respect that, but can you tell us a little bit about his background and maybe his experiences in Vietnam?

Of course, you mentioned that he did this partly because when he came back he just didn't get the reception that probably he had hoped for and wish for, but that was a different era back then.

- It was for sure and I think he's well aware that times have changed and it's a lot different now and there's definitely more respect and more admiration for military members that deploy and go and serve.

And I think just because of his experience in Vietnam being a veteran, seeing that era and then also with his success in business, I think the vision is is that we can get this going and we can do something to recognize those people on a daily basis.

And so, that's sort of his vision.

- What a projects like this, the Wall of Honor and even things like the Vietnam, the Korean war and the World War II Memorial in Washington do for veterans?

- Well, it's a sense of pride.

A lot of times it's selfless service.

They don't ask for much.

And when they have these things put up in their honor or they can see their fellow soldiers that were maybe KIA or whatever, it's just a sense of pride in the sense of, "I did this for my country.

I did this for my family.

I did this for my community."

And this allows us to have a better place to live.

So, it's very appreciated.

- Well, I agree with you, obviously that I loved going to the monuments and I'll look forward to seeing that your Walls of Honor.

And then what are things like that do in terms of outreach and of course sharing the knowledge to the young and to the more experienced seasoned people?

- So, what the Wall of Honor does is like, we'll have a special week maybe for Veteran's Day where we just do something for Veterans Day the whole week.

And it's a special slide that our marketing people put together.

And December 7th for Pearl Harbor Day, we'll run a special feature for them and Memorial Day.

And the other thing we do through our Wall of Honor is we'll do like a pro-bono or a free advertising to the American Legion or the AMVETS.

If they wanna try to recruit young military people into their organizations, we try to assist them with that and try to gain membership to make sure that we can keep that going so that we can have our color guard and our honor guard and we can provide a proper funeral and burial for veterans.

So, those are some of the secondary missions that we have.

- Can you tell us the story of a veteran or first responder maybe that you didn't know anything about until you got involved with this Wall of Honor?

- Well, this sort of happened to us this last fall.

This is a story that was told to one of us after it happened, but we had a Wall of Honor installed at the Bismarck, Alex.

And we were told of a story where a lady was sitting with a man and she noticed the Wall of Honor.

And she seen the veterans, she seen the slides, she's seen everything that was coming across.

And she stated, "Well, this is really neat.

What a wonderful way to honor our first responders and veterans."

And then all of a sudden, the slide with Cody Hilti came across the screen and unbeknownst to a bystander, tears started rolling down her eyes.

And of course, it was very moving and she was very appreciative.

And she said to this gentleman that this is the most wonderful way I could ever imagine to honor my brother and her brother was Cody Hilti.

And so, that was really something that made us believe or we knew that this is making a difference and this is the right thing to do.

So, with that said, what are the goals for the Wall of Honor for the future?

- Well, the goals going forward would be, we wanna be at a hundred locations by the end of 2021.

And we wanna grow by 100 additional locations, 2022 and 2023.

And so, that's that long-term goal.

And the other thing we wanna be able to do if we get to that point, we wanna be able to directly help the veterans organizations across the state to make sure that they can stay open and stay there for our veterans too so they can have a fellowship and have a place to go where they can basically be in a place.

- Well, Dennis, if people wanna get involved or want more information, where can they go.

- Best place to go is thewallofhonor.org.

It's a wonderful website.

And it's a great place to donate, it's a great place to advertise, be a sponsor, upload honorees.

If you know somebody that served that you wanna get on there, please submit them.

And we try to have them up there within 48 hours.

- Dennis, we're out of time, but good luck and thanks for joining us.

- Thank you very much, John.

- Stay tuned for more.

(bright music) The story of sugar beets in the Red River Valley is a long and interesting one.

Here's a brief look at the history of the beet crop.

(bright music) - In 1918, a guy from Michigan moved here and he'd raised sugar beets in Michigan.

He brought some seed along and he planted in a garden up on the North edge of Crookston.

From there, it's gone to hundreds of thousands of acres in the Red River Valley.

In my first few years, we got a German-Russian immigrants that were down in Southern Minnesota.

I understand that came up here and did the work.

When eventually the company had a recruitment agency down in Texas and they recruited workers to come up here.

The farmers paid a fee to the company to get the workers.

Earliest, I remember is somebody would have a truck and they'd build a wooden box on it and cover it with a canvas top and have benches along each side.

Imagine riding on a wooden dance all the way from Texas to Minnesota.

There was thousands of them that came up to the Red River Valley.

(bright music) - My parents didn't tell me a lot about the fields and this makes me wonder how hard they did work.

The older brothers and sisters would always take care of us younger ones on the side of the fields.

That's the length that these families went through, but you didn't drop them off at the babysitter.

You didn't call in sick because you had a cold, there was no excuses.

You were in the fields.

My father spoke about seeing posters advertising for workers, he responded.

They came for what they thought would be a better life, a more secure life in 1927, that was the first year the plant in East Grand Forks was being built and an operation.

So, it's kind of amazing to know that mom, my father was one of the first of the families that came up here.

(bright music) Grapes of Wrath took you West and the sugar beets brought you North.

(bright music) - We had a farm labor come up in the early 70s.

We had two different families that would come.

We would house them up in Northcote, just a mile and a half away from here.

The family included moms, dads, kids and the whole gamut.

They come up to do weeding and thinning for us.

In the advance of technology and devices, thinning came along and they were primarily used for weeding then.

We would run them through our fields too, three times a year to control the weeds in the sugar beets.

They would put in eight hours or so, two o'clock in the afternoon, the peak heating time of the day.

They would quit and go home, but they'd be right back out again the following day.

If it was gonna be hot, they would be out there at the crack of dawn, tremendous work ethic.

- Well, the original seed was multi-German seed which meant multiple plants would come up from a single seed and maybe have to crawl along on their hands and knees and then thin them out.

Grab one plant and then with the other hand, big, the extra beats away and then crawl ahead a little ways and leave another plant, which was hard work.

(bright music) Then use the machete, knives like this to pick the beets up off the ground, grab them with her left hand, cut the tops off.

And then we'd throw them into that area where the four rows that then.

Then a farmer would come with his beet fork and fork them up onto a wagon.

And they'd haul them to the receiving site and have to fork them off the wagon again.

They were handled four or five times by him.

(bright music) - The biggest thing that took out the migrant working people is the onslaught of roundup.

That certainly killed the whole system is the roundup industry that came into the late 80s, early 90s.

(bright music) - It's amazing what has happened from when my father came up here when he was 17 to the individual stories now generations later through my own kids.

I have a daughter that has an agronomy major.

I have a son that's an IT major because of the hard work of my mom and my father.

If my dad had any ounce of, I don't wanna say fear, but in Mexico when he saw that poster, if he would have said, no, we wouldn't be here today.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Moving Lives Minnesota Stories of Origin and Immigration is made possible by the State's arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

- Well, that's all we have for "Praire Pulse" this week.

And as always, thanks for watching.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Funded by the Members of Prairie Public.