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“Lost” paper tells the history of Ambrose
By
Cecile Wehrman
When Del Gorecki chose
Ambrose as the subject of a 1962 college term paper, he never
suspected his would one day be lauded as the definitive work on the
town's history.
As Gorecki himself wrote more
than four decades ago, “Facts are hard to come by in a dying town.”
Even more so today, when
there are just a handful of residents left.
But just as amazing as the
survival of Gorecki's college term paper -- which today is
circulating among members of the Ambrose Centennial Committee -- is
the continued survival of the town itself.
Ambrose is not a ghost town,
but there is even less left of it now than when Gorecki married an
Ambrose girl, Yvonne Cowley, after service in the U.S. Air Force at
the Fortuna radar base.
After getting out of the
service, Gorecki went to college in Minot, returning frequently to
Ambrose to visit his in-laws.
“We used to go back there
when Yvonne's parents were living,” Gorecki said. “There
weren't too many exciting things to do in Ambrose. I don't think
there was even good television at that time.”
When Gorecki was assigned a
term paper to satisfy some history requirements, he figured Ambrose
was a good subject on which to focus.
Vince and Borghild Cowley
knew the community, and if they didn't know, they were able to
steer their son-in-law to someone who would.
“They were a good resource
for writing the paper,” Gorecki said.
Gorecki still recalls how
surprised he was to learn that Ambrose was once considered the
Queen City of Divide County, with a hospital and thriving Main
Street, including banks, implement dealers and many stores.
“By the time I was writing
the paper, those were all gone,” he said.
At that time, the school was
about to close, and pioneers were starting to die.
So Gorecki became an expert
on Ambrose, interviewing a couple of dozen original homesteaders as
well as researching local newspapers and any other documents he
could find.
“I'm not aware of anyone who
has done anything like it,” Gorecki said.
While he enjoyed meeting the
pioneers and writing the project, after he finished it and left a
copy with the county museum, he gave it little thought.
“I could see I wasn't going
to make a career in North Dakota,” so he chose to pursue a law
degree in Minnesota.
After working four years for
the Great Northern Railroad, he became a felony prosecutor in St.
Paul, Minn. He retired after 25 years, and he and Yvonne made their
home in Dickinson, where she worked in the health care field.
Six years ago, the couple
retired to St. Augustine, Fla.
Now at age 68, Gorecki isn't
sure he's up to journeying back to Ambrose for the town's
Centennial July 8, 2006, but he's happy to hear his term paper --
and Ambrose history -- has survived. His own copy has
vanished,
“I kept a copy and loaned it
to someone and never got it back,” he said.
Luckily, Everett and Bernice
Hanson of rural Ambrose saved the copy they had. She shared it with
Donna Haslett-Nelson, who is a member of the Ambrose Centennial
Committee.
“Somehow, Everett ended up
with the copy Vince had,” Nelson said, but a mystery remains.
Gorecki's original 115-page
manuscript also had dozens of historical and contemporary
photographs of Ambrose. Those have not surfaced, but they could yet
be found in the collection at the Divide County Museum.
So far, Nelson has reproduced
more than a half-dozen of the books for people interested in having
a copy, and if there is enough interest, the booklet may be
published either for the Centennial, or after.
Gorecki is just glad people
are finding the history useful.
“I was hoping it would last
for awhile,” he said.
He didn't figure anyone else
would ever get the chance to record what some of the old
homesteaders remembered about the Queen City of Divide County.
Now, 44 years after Gorecki's
report on the dying town of Ambrose, the story could use an update,
but it will be up to someone else to put it on paper. |
