| His parents | Married 1/01/1948 | Her parents |
| Grandfather Warren Leonard Fagerland (2/19/1923 – 12/20/2019) |  ND –> SD | Grandmother Loretta Abbie Meyer (3/17/1925 – 12/17/2007) |
| Ancestor 4 (100) | Their ancestral child | Ancestor 5 (101) |
Warren and Loretta met in Noonan, ND (Divide County) in June 1947. Both of their families lived in Noonan at the time. Loretta’s brother (Warren’s friend) Vern introduced them to each other while Loretta was home for the summer. They wasted no time! They were engaged by August and married on New Year’s Day, 1948. Three children followed in the next four years.
Warren had already lived a few years of grand adventure before settling down with a family. He had joined the CCC at age 16 (lying about his age), traveled by train to California to find agricultural work, and operated Noonan’s “Alley Cat Tavern” with his brother Kenny. Most memorably of all, he was drafted into the US Army during WWII. His service included fierce combat on the European western front in the three months leading up to V-E Day.
Warren tried his hand at farming for a few years, but that didn’t work out. Loretta’s family had long been involved in forestry. By 1961, Grandpa and Vern were operating a sawmill in Bottineau County, ND. It was there that Grandpa was introduced to Stihl chainsaws. Stihl invited them to become a distributor, selling Stihl chainsaws and other power tools to retailers throughout Montana and the Dakotas. Grandpa handled this arm of the business, which he came to call Mon-Dak.
Loretta had gotten halfway through college at Minot State before marriage. She started teaching English in college, and continued for decades, even without a degree. That career path definitely slowed down while she was raising children, but she never forgot her dream to graduate from college. She actually became my first ancestor to ever get a college degree. She earned a BS in Education in 1968, at age 43 — still with two teenagers at home! She said that it earned her a raise.
In 1973, Grandpa relocated the Mon-Dak distributorship to his own shop in Rapid City, SD. It became quite a successful business, earning Warren a respectable fortune. He worked hard there (and Grandma helped with some of the administration) before retiring around 1990. At the end of his career, Mon-Dak started carrying Honda engines. Yes, the US soldier made his peace-time fortune selling German and Japanese products! These wholesale operations remained in the family until 2000.
From the late ’70s to the mid ’00s, Grandma and Grandpa lived in this house hidden away in the Black Hills outside Rapid City. They also spent several winters in Arizona, mostly in the ’90s.
Grandma’s health was never strong. They moved into senior apartments in 2004, and Grandma only lived a few years beyond that. Grandpa continued to surprise us in old age and beyond. Not long after Grandma’s death, he found a new girlfriend at the old folks’ home! He and Kathryn shared an apartment for most of their last decade.
Just months after Grandpa’s death, we learned another very interesting secret. Through DNA matching on genealogy websites, we discovered a match named Nolan Shefstad, who turned out to be Dad’s “brother from another mother”! That relationship came shortly before Grandpa met Grandma. It’s very likely that Grandpa never knew about Nolan. We’ve been told that Nolan’s mother had at least one other boyfriend at the time, and she didn’t even know which one was the father. Our paths crossed for just a moment. We got a chance to meet Nolan a few times from 2020 to 2022. He passed away in 2023.
If you are interested in learning more about Warren and Loretta, you can ask those of us who still carry them in our living memory! Contact me at [email protected].