Interview with Aldrich C
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Aldrich C. Bloomquist Narrator James E. Fogerty Interviewer May 24, 1990 & May 15, 1992 James J. Hill House & Minnesota History Center Saint Paul, Minnesota Aldrich C. Bloomquist -AB James E. Fogerty -JF JF: I'd like to begin by asking where you were born and grew up.Bloomquist AB: I was born in Willmar, Minnesota in 1921. My dad hadC. a shoe store in Willmar, and my mother was one of a large family from Nebraska. They had met in the northwest corner of Nebraska, where Dad had gone before World War I and Mother was teaching school there. Mother was a graduate of Peru State Teachers CollegeSociety in Peru, Nebraska. John Sterling Morton Tree Arbor Day was foundedAldrich in Peru, Nebraska. Mother taught school, and Dad had the shoeof store. My dad's education was country school, and they had a commercial school in Willmar. My dad had excellent penmanship, and I remember that even up in the days afterHistorical he retired, he would still be making nameplates and little cards for the county fair--his lettering was so good. I went through grade schoolinterview and high school in Willmar and participated in athletics. I played everything, I guess, that anybody could play. I went to Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota, and I should have finished in 1943. I graduated from high school in 1939 and should have gotten my degree in the spring of 1943, but in December of '42, I went into the service.Minnesota So ultimately, I had my final semester to finish when I came out of thehistory service. JF: OralAnd that was in... AB: I think it was 1946 was when I got my degree. It was one of those war-era classes where you're almost given a choice--they said, "What class would you like to be a member of?” I still attend class reunions with the class of '43, because those are the people I knew. I came back and finished school, and I didn't know ninety percent of the people who were at Gustavus at that time. You know, schools have all changed, but by the time the first semester was over at a school like Gustavus, you knew everyone, at least who they were. 10 By the end of the first year, you probably knew everyone by name and mostly where they were from. After I went into the navy in December of 1942, I was sent to Farragut, Idaho. One of the early camps was Camp Ward, and I remember arriving there on Christmas Eve and going through the typical reception for new recruits--the haircut and the whole bit. And I remember the first big meal I had in the service was Christmas dinner, and everyone who's ever been served remembers that you got the ice cream on top of the mashed potatoes and gravy--I'll never forget that. I finished boot camp at Farragut and was sent to physical instructors school, and I often thought that I was probably the least qualified to go to physical instructors school of anybody in that group. But the thing was I had had some experience in college in editing a newspaper, and the fellow who was in charge--the officer in charge of the camp newspaper at Farragut--grabbed hold of me and said, "You know, if you'll stick around and do this, why, I'll send you to a better school." Bloomquist I was designated to go to signalmen school at the UniversityC. of Illinois in Champaign, but he decided that I should stay and put out the camp paper for a month or two or three. Then I was sent to Bainbridge, Maryland, and that was the longest trip across the country I'd ever taken. We went from Idaho to Bainbridge, Maryland,Society by way of California and so you can imagine the length. [Laughter] But ultimatelyAldrich we got there, and I wound up in a physical instructors school. of We had Olympic divers, the Riley brothers, Adolph Keifer; baseball players like Wally Berger, the home run king, boxers, an unbelievableHistorical motley collection. As I say, I certainly should not have been in with a group like that, and there was another fellow who had been commandeered to help out on the newspaper, a fellow by the name of Jim Wood from Iowa. The two of us interviewwere absolutely --well, when you'd run the hundred-yard dash, if there were a hundred in the class, Jim and I would wind up ninety-nine and one hundred. One thing that I'll never forget is that in this physical training course, they'd do everything by the alphabet, and so whenMinnesota they were teaching boxing, it made no difference what my size was. I thinkhistory I was 140 pounds and the guy next to me was--well, in fact, he was a boxer. He had boxed on the Olympic team--Costino, or something like that. A nice Italian boy fromOral New York City, and he tried to treat me kindly when we had our boxing, but... [Laughter] That was the way it went. I finished the training station at Bainbridge, Maryland, went to the Great Lakes training center, and trained a couple of companies of recruits as a Specialist First Class. That was when my ulcers--which I guess I never knew I had--acted up, and ultimately I got a medical discharge. So I came back to Minnesota and started newspaper work. I worked on a newspaper for almost six months in Saint James, Minnesota, the Plain Dealer, and at Christmas of that 11 year--December 24, in fact--I got married. The individual who was president of Gustavus at the time asked if I would come back and do some public relations work for the college and get my degree, which I then did. Back at Gustavus, we lived in one room. It was not an apartment. We shared a bath and a kitchen facility with a half dozen others in a big, old house that the college had bought. And, of course, the college was full because they had the veterans programs at that time. Ultimately, I finished school. It took one summer session and I took two courses--very concentrated. I had one in the morning and one if the afternoon. I did very well. That took care of my grade point average and got it up where it should have been. I think my diploma says "1946," if I remember correctly, and I went to work then and taught journalism at Gustavus for one year. I had two classes in journalism. I finished my degree work, ran the news bureau at Gustavus, did a few other public relations jobs, and then took a job in Mankato on the Mankato Free Press. With a small-townBloomquist daily like that, you get a pretty good cross section of everything, and so I did everything from being wire editor--which meant that you got there first thing in the morningC. and more or less opened up--to winding up as a sports editor a couple of years later. I then went into sales work. I started doing it part time when SocietyI was working for the Free Press. Then Josten's of Owatonna had opened upAldrich a yearbook division, and I worked for them for a couple of years. I went to Minneapolis, again working for a fellow by the name of Larry Brings, who owned the Brings Press.of We did a number of yearbooks. At Josten's, I was assigned the southwesternHistorical part of Minnesota and traveled that area. With Brings there were no borders. I did the General Motors Institute yearbook from Flint, Michigan, and did the University of Chicago Maroon one year. At that time, Chicago was getting the "whizinterview kids," and most of the staff were fifteen- and sixteen-year- olds--brilliant kids. I did their yearbook. JF: Were you headquartered in the Twin Cities at the time? Minnesota AB: Right. Wehistory had moved to Minneapolis in about 1952. We moved up in 1952, because it was in 1955 then that my ulcer acted up again. I wound up having surgery to repairOral the ulcer, and the doctor thought it would be a good idea for me to get out of selling. So that's when I left selling and applied for the job as public relations director for a regional office. The ad was in the Minneapolis paper. I was interviewed by a fellow by the name of Harold Belknap, who was the manager. It was a public relations organization, funded and supported by the beet sugar industry. I was hired in September of 1955 and ran the Minneapolis regional office. I had the Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Iowa, and Wisconsin region. Later on, the fellow 12 who had the Chicago office with that organization became ill, and in addition to doing the region that I had been assigned to, a couple of days a week I'd go to Chicago and run that office. JF: Now, what organization was this? AB: It was Western Beet Sugar Producers. There was a regional office in Chicago, one in Minneapolis, one in Denver, one in Salt Lake City, and the head office was in San Francisco. For a time, there was also an office in Los Angeles. I was called a regional manager, and each office had someone doing the same type of work. Most of our backgrounds were either in newspapering or radio or television-- mostly some news background.