(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to Prairie Pulse.

Coming up later in the show, we'll profile University of North Dakota Costume Designer, Camilla Morrison.

But first, joining us now, our guest is Bruce Gjovig returning with a sequel to an earlier book.

Bruce, thanks for joining us today.

- Glad to be here.

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

- Sure.

I grew up in Crosby in the very Northwest corner, went to the University of North Dakota, got a couple of degrees there, and then ended up coming back, working for the alumni office with Earl Strenden, and then I started the Center for Innovation in 1984, one of the very first four entrepreneurial outreach centers in the nation, and spent 32 years, 33 years, actually being in entrepreneurship and innovation.

- You're here today to talk about your new book, Innovative Entrepreneurs from North Dakota.

And so, this is sort of a sequel.

Tell us a little bit about maybe your first book real quick.

- Certainly.

The first book was a collaboration with Hiram Drache, a professor emeritus at Concordia, and it was on the innovative entrepreneurs from, of rather, North Dakota and Northwest Minnesota.

The first book profiled 64 people who really were successful innovators and entrepreneurs in North Dakota or Northwest Minnesota.

The second book is profiling 46 people who are from North Dakota who went elsewhere and had entrepreneur success.

- Okay.

Well, I understand your collaborator from the first book recently passed away.

Can you maybe talk about him and what he meant to you?

- Absolutely.

Hiram and I had a 30-year relationship over basically on ag innovation and entrepreneurship 'cause he was he was a great historian.

And so, we compared notes on a number of innovation entrepreneur stories, especially in agriculture, in the region.

And we talked for several years about collaborating on this book and we finally, when I approached retirement said, "let's do it."

And so, we took two years and Hiram and I knocked out that book, which came out in 2019.

And so, and Hiram passed away last October.

And of course, and he was 95 plus years old and a great friend, and a great loss by the way, because he had so much more history in his head, and that's, but at least we got some of it down on paper, which is the good news.

- Yeah, that's, well, it's a story for my grandmother who lived to be 102.

You need to get it down.

- Yes, yes you do.

- There's a lot of history in that.

Your new book, of course, you profile, as you said, entrepreneurs originally from North Dakota who weren't your first book, but talk about the research you did in finding these entrepreneurs.

- Well, like the first one, we started out with about 200 names and got it down to 64.

I started out with about 140 names and got it down to 46, and I was looking for the innovation factor and the entrepreneur factor, so they're both, what is something they did that was innovative, in other words, unique, different, for the first, and then, the entrepreneurs, they've had 20 years at least of entrepreneur success.

And so, that's how we got it down.

And then you whittle it down a little further to which probably makes the better story, and in some cases, where can I get information?

Some of them, I was frustrated with that I would like to have included, just the information wasn't available.

I couldn't find it.

- Yeah.

We talked a little bit before we got on camera here that I guess it took you a couple of years to do the first book.

How long did it take you to do this one?

- One year.

I started in February and we cranked it out and it was on the market in December.

- How come you could do this one quicker?

- I spent more time, I was more disciplined, so that's how I got it done.

- Yeah.

- Well, plus it was 64 down to 46, so that makes a difference too.

- Yeah.

But you still had to put the time in.

- Had to put the time in.

- And so, with that said, let's get into talking about some of the individuals.

- Sure.

- I don't know where you wanna start, but I got George Hughes here.

- George Hughes is interesting because who doesn't have an electric stove?

And you have to think, somebody has to invent them.

This is one of the most important consumer items in every home there is and it was a North Dakotan who invented it, George Hughes.

He started doing it here when he was located in Fargo.

He started out as a newspaper guy in Fargo, but his father and his brother were in the utility business, electrical business in Bismarck.

He made the pitch to start the utility company here.

And when he was with utility company here, he started experimenting with an electric stove, how to make a home stove with using electricity and he perfected it actually after he sold the company and he moved to Chicago and really ended up being the leader for Hotpoint and General Electric stoves, which he did for the next 30 years of his life.

- Hmm.

Yeah, and, well, I'm gonna move through a few of these and then we'll talk more.

Billy Fawcett.

- Billy Fawcett is a most interesting character from Bismarck because he really started publishing in sort of risque magazines for World War I veterans.

And he would end up to be the largest magazine publisher in the United States, he had 63 titles at one time.

Plus he became the first one to publish soft-cover books, novels, and to become the second largest publisher of novels in the nation, out of Minneapolis and then New York.

But he was also an Olympic athlete.

He ran a large hotel at one time and the family owned it in North Brainerd, Breezy Point.

We know that.

And most people know that, but they don't tie it to a North Dakotan, somebody from Grand Forks.

Very interesting fellow, and he paid top prices, by the way, for the novels to get some of that, it was Louie L'Amour from North Dakota got his start because of Billy Fawcett and him publishing his paperback novels.

- Sure, absolutely.

How about Chester Fritz, a name a lot of us probably know.

And Mr. Silver, I believe.

- Mr. Silver.

We know him as the benefactor, the donator, the Chester Fritz Library, the largest library in the state of North Dakota.

We know him as the manufacturer of the Chester Fritz Auditorium and the Chester Fritz Scholars and everything else, but they don't know the entrepreneur Chester Fritz.

Chester Fritz went to China and spent 35 years in China and became, first of all, selling commodities, mostly wheat and food, but then silver, then gold.

And he was the very first American company that was on the New York Stock Exchange and was by far the largest in Asia on the New York Stock Exchange.

And he made just a fortune.

And because Chester Fritz totally was so respectful to the Chinese, their customs, their culture, the people, he was only one of seven people that was allowed to take his fortune out of China in 1949 when it went Communist.

And so, and he took that fortune and he ended up in Switzerland.

He was a short time in New York, short time in Rome, but he ended up in Switzerland.

And then, he made a second fortune and a third fortune, which we were the benefit of as the benefactor Chester Fritz.

But I mean, he went from the small town of Buxton and he became a international businessman.

- Yeah.

And of course, with the name on different things, and obviously-- - He was North Dakota's first large benefactor to a university, first million dollar giver.

- Wow, there you go.

And then moving on to some of these, Pat Haggerty.

- Pat Haggerty from Harvey, North Dakota ends up starting Texas Instruments.

It was in the early stages of that.

It actually started out, it was a geological testing company, but ended up being then renamed Texas Instruments.

He led it through its growth to become a multi-billion dollar company.

And of course, those of us at a certain age know it as the pocket calculator and the pocket radio dominating that market.

And it was the leading IT company.

And Texas Instruments was to Dallas what Coke was to Atlanta or what the car companies were to Detroit.

I mean, it was one of the major companies in all of Texas and from a Harvey, North Dakota boy.

- Yeah.

Well, and then on the cover of the book, obviously, you got NASA there.

Everybody's interested in space.

- [Bruce] Space, yes.

- And so, Gilmore Schjeldahl.

- Shelly Schjeldahl, first name was Gilmore, but he also went by Shelly, he was one of those kids who didn't graduate from high school in Northwood and didn't end up finishing, but still got admitted to college, didn't graduate from NDSU, finished, left, but he ended up with two honorary degrees and then ended up being a plastics and electronics genius engineer.

And it's his knowledge of plastics and electronics that allowed him to launch the Echo 1 balloon in August of 1960.

It was the first time we beat the Russians in space.

And if you remember, in 1957, when Sputnik went up, Russians sent in, our country really questioned this superiority in space technology, education, and Gilmore had that response, and he was able, and this allowed transcontinental communication from this satellite balloon.

And those of us of a certain age, and I am of that certain age, the Echo 1 balloon, usually you'd be able to go out in your backyard and they gave reports on TV and radio that the Echo balloon, you could see this glimmer moving across the sky, it was this moving star, and the sightings of Echo ballon.

I actually remember that as a child in 1960, and then that was still going on 'til 1962, the second Echo 2 went up and they were both in space for several years.

- Again, as you said, innovative entrepreneurs, that's what we're looking at.

Here's one that I might have my history a little wrong, but for Olympic divers, the diving board, Ray, is it Ray Rude?

- Ray Rude from Stanley, North Dakota.

Left North Dakota when he was 16, then he didn't finish high school, went out to California during the Depression to make his way and joined a couple of brothers out there, and worked for Lockheed and when part of being at Lockheed, he decided he didn't like the corporation, so he spun out with a tool and dye company.

And then what he did is he happened to be making panels for wings.

One of his manufacturing neighbors out there was having a pool party and it was humid out there and his new swimming pool and with this board that was varnished wasn't drying because humidity was so high and he said, "Ray, I need help, I'm gonna have, "I have the University of California diving team coming over "to demonstrate in my pool.

"What am I gonna do?"

And he had rejected a wing panel earlier that day made out of aluminum, so he says, "well, let's try this."

He drilled some holes and they put on some material on the cover so it wasn't quite so slippery, the aluminum, and that was the invention of the aluminum diving board, which has dominated the sport ever since the 1950s.

He's going on seven years of dominating a sport with the aluminum diving board.

It changed diving, their performance in diving.

And a lot of people tried to copy them and never were able to really copy the functionality of it and the perfection of it 'cause he was always trying to make it better.

And so, it's an amazing story how somebody can dominate an industry for seven decades.

He's passed on and the company still survives.

- Yeah.

Well, I got Sally Wald Smith.

People may understand Buffalo Wild Wings.

- Another daughter of a banker in Grand Forks, was an accounting major expected to make her career in accounting, and was the CFO for a Miracle Ear.

And little did she guess that she would end up as a part-time job trying to be a part-time CFO for Buffalo Wild Wings, a startup company.

And she ended up being not only the CFO, full-time surely, the CEO, and grew it into the multi-billion dollar company it was.

And if you would have asked her when she was growing up in Grand Forks that she would've headed up a fast food company, she would have laughed at you.

But there she was, that was her life's work and biggest accomplishment.

Took it public, built up as a very significant company, one of the largest restaurant chains in the nation, and one that we enjoy today.

- Well, and as I said, well, we're sticking with restaurants for a moment.

Happy Joe's Pizza- - Happy Joe from Minot.

- Joe Whitty.

- Joe Whitty.

Happy Joe.

He's one of those that grew up in very modest means and ended up down in Iowa.

And he decided he wanted to go into business for himself 'cause he saw the people he was working for did, lived a pretty good life.

And so, he thought he should have that too, so he started a pizza chain and the idea of combining a pizza chain with an ice cream parlor.

And that combination was from, and actually what I think is sort of interesting, who hasn't had a taco pizza?

But he is the inventor of the taco pizza, which is now all over the place, but it made him great fame.

It's a great story.

And one of the wonderful things about him is he spent most of his adult life really paying special attention to kids with disabilities and putting on special meals and programs for them and a family foundation focuses on that today, and all because a mother came in with a special needs child and he wasn't always welcome 'cause he was a little unruly, and he brought 'em in and gave them pizza and everything else.

And this mother was so grateful because not every place welcomed children like that, and then, so he just thought, "no, we need dedicate to make sure they feel welcome "in our restaurants."

It's a great humanitarian story, as well.

- Hmm, it is.

Well, talk a little bit about, all of these, again, innovative entrepreneurs from North Dakota, but can you talk about how in North Dakota seems to be noted now for exporting talent.

- Oh, it is, yes.

There is a saying in the beginning of my book, there are more people from North Dakota than live in North Dakota.

And if we have been exporting our young talent for decades.

And I always say that that's a more important, more valuable export than either our egg or our energy.

But the good news is they can go anywhere in the world and they can compete, they do exceptionally well.

And so, we can be very proud of our education system, our family, and our communities because they produce such wonderful talent.

- Well, absolutely.

And that's interesting there, but we've talked about a pretty eclectic group so far, but you've got 46.

You're not gonna give away all the secrets, but are there a couple more maybe you wanna talk about - Ralph Engelstad certainly will peak the interest in there.

And that was a rough one for me because, and he's pictured because most people know Ralph, the benefactor, they know him because of the Ralph Engelstad Arenas and what he's even done with the Scheels Arena down here and the one up at Thief River Falls.

They know Ralph's the casino owner, but they don't really know Ralph the entrepreneur, that he started out with nothing.

His dad was, they come from a very modest family.

He had to work his way through college.

Also a hockey scholarship was a portion of that.

And he was determined and his goal was to be a millionaire, when he started contracting in Grand Forks, to be a millionaire by age 30, and he hit it.

And that was the 1950s.

And then he went to Las Vegas 'cause he wanted to be a contractor not just during the good months, but all 12 months, and he ended up really being having a huge impact on the development of Las Vegas.

But the entrepreneur story is very interesting.

- Yeah, I noticed a lot of the people in the book, I mean, some have passed away, but a good number of them are still living.

- Yes, absolutely.

And including one of my compatriots from Crosby, Scott Molander of Hats and Lids, who just a great job.

He began a farm kid and he goes to Williston and he goes to Dickinson, he heads down and he ends up going and working for Foot Locker and thinks there's gotta be something better.

And what he did at Foot Locker was very interesting is that he noticed that certain baseball and team caps were selling better some teams better than others, so those that were selling well, he got in from other stores, and he moves the performance of his Foot Locker store way up by being able to really work his inventory better, the logistics better in selling this.

And that became the Genesis of the idea to start selling just baseball caps with teams on it, and whether they be baseball teams or football or professional, or even then, other teams and basketball and football and other things, and he made a tremendous career doing a nationwide business on that.

And now he's, of course, he's the, the company's been sold, so he's retired.

And he still visits my hometown of Crosby.

His parents still live up there.

He's still that small town boy.

And so many of these people in this book come from towns that a lot of people are gonna have to look at a map to find out, where's Sanborn, and where is Leeds, whatever town it is, where's Ambrose.

- What's been the reaction to the sequel so far?

- Excellent.

We've sold probably close to 300 books in the first three months and so, we're very happy about that.

- Yeah.

- It's excellent.

But then, I appreciate this exposure because people need to know about it.

They can find it on the shelves of the bookstores that are selling it or maybe by word of mouth, but I think there's a strong interest in people knowing about business history, entrepreneur history.

- Well yeah, so what is the business climate in the state right now as we hopefully enter sort of a post-COVID world?

- Well, certainly this last year has been a disruption for small business, and even for entrepreneurs.

I think we're gonna return to real opportunity again because the fundamentals of North Dakota are very strong and our business climate, taxation climate, business support, people, it really has improved so much and it's really quite good.

Having said that, of course, financing is always an issue.

Equity is an issue.

Money is always very conservative when there's uncertain times.

And we are in uncertain times.

- Well, and unfortunately we're out of time.

Real quick, what's next for you?

- Next?

A third book.

I'm working on it now, the North Dakota Innovators, people who are innovators, but not entrepreneurs.

- Well, and you said, if people want a copy, where can they go?

- Well, they can certainly go into several bookstores in North Dakota.

Ferguson Books.

I've had three books signings there.

They can also go on the website: www.dakotabooknet.com, dakotabootnet.com.

- Thanks so much for joining us today.

- Thanks, John.

- Stay tuned for more.

(upbeat music) Camilla Morrison is an outstanding costume designer and college professor whose designs grace all of the stage productions at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks.

Her vibrant personality and equally vibrant costume designs contributed to her being the North Dakota Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellow for 2021.

(slow orchestral music) - One of the things that I would love people to know about costume design is all of the work that goes into each tiny decision that's made about what you see in movies, on the screen, on the stage.

Everything has a very purposeful and meaningful decision behind it.

(slow orchestral music) I grew up in the Republic of the Marshall Islands on an island named Kwajalein.

On the islands, it's a very colorful culture that has ceremonies where different things are celebrated in different ways.

And I always found that to be really beautiful and very theatrical.

Before I even realized it, I was interested in how we represent ourselves through clothing.

That's ultimately the very beginning how I got started with costume design.

I moved to Grand Forks to take the job at UND to become their costume designer instructor.

I love teaching.

That's one of my greatest passions.

I always knew I wanted to be a teacher in some capacity.

One of the greatest joys of teaching is helping people to realize that everybody has a creative streak and everybody has the capacity to have ideas and to grow in their own designer identity.

- One of my favorite things is pattern making and draping and she's taught me everything about that.

From the beginning, she's kind of thrown me into projects like that that I didn't know would lead into pattern making and draping.

Not having that knowledge, and then her being like, "try this thing out" and then it works out and I'm like, "wow, I wanna do this again."

- And then, just go for it.

This involves cutting.

- On the same side?

- I think yeah.

There are so many things that happen during the planning of your favorite shows and things that you see on stage.

We have a process before anything hits the stage where we will read the script, analyze the script, we have meetings with the director and other designers, but the costume designer stays involved in choosing fabrics if we're going to be making some costumes, which we do here in this shop, and we also will find things that we might use from storage or we might buy or alter things that we found.

There have been many fittings that I've been in where the actors will come in and put on their costume and say, "wow, I really start "to feel like my character now."

I got my MFA in Costume Technology and Design from Louisiana State University.

And as a part of that program, we have to do a thesis project, and I knew coming into the program that I wanted to do something outside of the ordinary.

I have always sort of had this question of what does it mean to be a woman in the world?

I think it's partially because I grew up in another country and I got to see that culture and kind of how women fit into that culture.

My master's thesis, Nightmares Are Dreams Too, is a reflection of at the time what I felt it was like to be a woman in the world.

My individual artist fellowship from NDCA focuses on a project that I'm doing where I'm interviewing people who identify as women who grew up in North Dakota or who are from North Dakota.

I'm asking them to tell me some stories about their ideas about what does feminism mean, what are their views on aging, what are their ideas about being a woman, thinking about just the environment of North Dakota.

I'm creating a series of avant-garde costumes to reflect these stories.

The stories are not going to be told word-for-word on stage.

Rather, they're going to be reflected through the costumes.

I think that I find a lot of inspiration just in nature and the world that we inhabit.

If I have an opportunity to go somewhere else, I find meeting new people to be really inspiring.

We choose to put something on every day.

Often, our clothing is a reflection of how we feel.

And I think that if we mindfully are curating our clothing and putting on things that really are reflecting how we feel, our clothing tells us a lot about who we are.

- Well, that's all we have on Prairie Pulse for this week.

And as always, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funded by the North Dakota Council on the Arts and by the members of Prairie Public.