North Dakota Law Review Volume 68 Number 3 Article 8 1992 Proceedings of the Ninety-Second Annual Meeting of the North Dakota State Bar Association North Dakota State Bar Association Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.und.edu/ndlr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation North Dakota State Bar Association (1992) "Proceedings of the Ninety-Second Annual Meeting of the North Dakota State Bar Association," North Dakota Law Review: Vol. 68 : No. 3 , Article 8. Available at: https://commons.und.edu/ndlr/vol68/iss3/8 This Bar Proceeding is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Law at UND Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in North Dakota Law Review by an authorized editor of UND Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. PROCEEDINGS OF THE NINETY-SECOND ANNUAL MEETING OF THE NORTH DAKOTA STATE BAR ASSOCIATION OFFICERS JAM ES S. H ILL .......................................................... President JOEL W . GILBERTSON ............................................. President-Elect GARRY A. PEARSON ..................................... Immediate Past-President RALPH R. ERICKSON .......................................... Secretary-Treasurer SANDI TABOR ................................................. Executive Director PROCEEDINGS JUNE 11, 1992 (Thursday) PRESIDENT JAMES S. HILL: I would call the meeting of the State Bar Association of North Dakota for 1992 into order at this time. We will start the meeting today with a Presentation of the Colors and the National Anthem by the United States Air Force Detach- ment 19 Honor Guard and accompaniment is by Lorraine Dikama. (Presentation of Colors and National Anthem.) PRESIDENT HILL: While everyone is standing, Phil Brown, a member of our Associa- tion, will give the invocation, and I am delighted personally to have him. (Applause.) FATHER PHILLIP J. BROWN: That's okay. You can all be seated. I want to explain very briefly our convention theme is "Riding the Winds of Change" and I thought, there- fore, I would begin our opening invocation with a brief scripture verse about the wind, from God's call to Elijah, one of the greatest of the Old Testament prophets. The setting of our reading is that of the People of Israel have turned away from their God, whom we designated Yaweh, to worship Baal, a Canannite fertility God. In doing so they had slain. all the profits of Israel, who guarded not only the worship of Yaweh, but justice in the land, as well. Elijah was the only prophet left, and now they were looking for him as well, to kill him. He was a hunted man, alone and isolated. Let us pray. "There Elijah came to a cave, where he took shelter. But the word of the Lord came to him, 'Why are you here, Elijah?' He answered: 'I have been most zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, but the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, torn down your alters, and put your prophets to the sword. I alone am left, and they seek to take my life.' Then the Lord said, 'Go outside and stand on the mountain before the Lord; the Lord will be passing by.' A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountains and crushing the rocks before the Lord - but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake - but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake there was a fire - but the Lord was not in the fire. After the fire there was a tiny whispering sound. When he heard this, Elijah hid his face in his cloak and went and stood at the entrance of the cave' where he heard the voice of God." Lord God, help us to listen to your voice as the winds of change swirl about us. Help us to not mistake the raging winds, the trembling earthquake and searing fires of change for your voice but, rather, to listen patiently for the tiny, whispering voice of justice and com- passion that speaks to our hearts more powerfully than all of the force of nature or human passion. Give us the courage to respond to change with that same creative spirit that is the surest sign of your presence in our lives and in the world. 822 NORTH DAKOTA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 68:821 We pray this all to you, God of earthquake, wind and fire, who speaks most eloquently in the quietness of our hearts. Amen. PRESIDENT HILL: Thank you, Phil At this time I would call upon Fred Gengler who is on the City Commission here in Dickinson for a few comments concerning our visit to his community. MR. FRED GENGLER: Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Father. I attended seminary thirty years ago. I could have used your services back then. FATHER BROWN: Maybe it is not too late. (Applause.) MR. GENGLER: Thank you. On behalf of the City, I would like to welcome each and every one of you to the City of Dickinson. Welcome to the Queen City of the Prairie, the fifth largest city in the State of North Dakota. We would like to thank you very much for choosing Dickinson as your site and hope that you come back soon. I hope that those of you that participated in the golf tournament yesterday enjoyed our challenging and beautiful 18-hole course. Traffic out there has been getting very heavy and there is talk of the possibility of adding another 9 holes, which is a good sign for Dickinson. They tell us we are going in the right direction. Dickinson has been through a lot of problems. We have taken a lot of hits over the past ten years. You know we have had some downturn, but we are coming back. That was kind of evidenced when Judge Schmalenberger was looking for a Commissioner to welcome your organization and the Mayor is fishing in Alaska and another one is gambling in South Dakota. So things are looking up. They finally got to leave. I couldn't afford to leave town, so I certainly enjoy doing this. We have had a strong housing market in Dickinson the last year or so which is another good indication that it is turning. We see most of our major businesses in the manufacturing sector expanding. We are seeing some nice additions to TMI, Steffes Manufacturing, Baker Boy. Fisher Industries is now looking at a large expansion and, by the way, some of these companies are now world-wide manufacturers. Their products can be found around the world. So we are extremely proud of that. Another way we can tell Dickinson is turning the corner in southwestern North Dakota and hopefully northwestern North Dakota is that Dickinson has added over 150,000 new square feet of retail space just since November of 1990. That certainly was good news. Not only did it create employment, but it expanded our trade area way out into Montana and into northwestern South Dakota. So now it is not uncommon to see many more Montana and South Dakota license plates in our area. And, of course, the additional Canadian traffic that we have experienced has also been a help. Our retail sales in Dickinson have been on the increase for the past number of years. 1991 we were up again. So these things are all encouraging. I hope that you have been able to find everything that you need in Dickinson. If you can't, we have a lot of friendly people in our Convention and Visitors Bureau who know what is around here and the Chamber of Commerce and they would be more than happy to oblige. I hope that you leave our city with very good memories and that you hurry back soon to enjoy our western hospitality. Thank you again for coming to Dickinson. We appreciate it very much. (Applause.) PRESIDENT HILL: Next I would like to introduce you to Rod Tjaden. Most of you, I 1992] BAR ASSOCIATION MINUTES 823 think, know who he is. We were entertained royally last evening with the first performance of the season at Medora. But, Rod, please come up and greet our group, if you will. MR. ROD TJADEN: Thank you, Jim, and friends of the Bar. We appreciate very much that you included Medora in your agenda this week. We appreciate that you have been friends of Medora, most of you, for years and years and years and have come often and enjoyed Medora. We especially appreciate those of you that have helped us with our latest project in Medora that most of you saw last night, the renovation and reconstruction of the Burning Hills Amphitheater, a four million dollar investment in tourism for North Dakota. I comment about that because most of you know the last few years I have done work around our state on behalf of our state in terms of economic development and growth. We said - we told ourselves, North Dakota is dying and if we don't grow and create jobs and dynamic economic viability, we will die. And so this is our little effort in Medora. Fred told you how much Dickinson has grown and what's happening here. I don't think it is anything like Medora has grown. Judging by the elections this spring there are far more people in Medora than I have seen or heard of for a long time. And that's - to those of you that are considering running for office, I want you to know that you need to know who lives in your precinct, town or district before you venture into the arena. It is nice to see that your theme is Riding the Winds of Change.