Sara Vollmer is living out her dream.
“You can’t not love the ranch,” she says.
The Leonard native met her husband, Troy Vollmer, while both were obtaining animal science degrees at North Dakota State University (NDSU).
“We both had the same advisor,” Sara recalls. “(The advisor) told Troy, ‘I’ve been to Wing, Troy. You best find a wife before you leave Fargo.”
Troy, it turns out, was a good student.
I don’t remember ever watching my mother, grandmothers or great-grandmothers (how lucky am I to have memories of each!) use pressure cookers. I don’t have a lived traumatic pressure-cooking experience. Yet still, I am downright terrified of pressure cookers!
Why?
I hypothesize we suffer from the generational trauma of pressure cookers. Although I never directly experienced a traumatic pressure-cooker explosion, it’s possible the fear has been passed down from one generation of my family to the next.
The story of a professional chef in New York City moving to small-town North Dakota for love seems the perfect plot for a Hallmark Christmas movie.
Except it’s not so far-fetched for Sheri Shockman.
When Sheri joined an online dating service about 15 years ago, she was not looking for a relationship. Rather, she wanted to help a loved one who had fallen victim to an online scam.
“I went on (the online dating site) to find this scammer. Instead, I found my husband,” she says.
“They needed people, and we were just kind of a link in a food chain,” Westhope native and Vietnam War veteran Dennis “Denny” McKechnie says. “I didn’t have a choice. I got No. 19 in the lottery, and my buddy got 18. … We knew where we were going, right?”
They were just boys when their country called them.
“I didn’t want to be there, but yet, here I am with 30 guys. They don’t want to be there neither,” Denny recalls of the plane ride to Vietnam in May 1971.
He was only 20 years old.
The greatest responsibility I have as editor is to tell stories that do justice for the people who experienced them – and so bravely share with others. That responsibility has never felt greater.
This month, North Dakota Living presents its first cover-to-cover tribute to veterans.
Earlier this year, a friend and mentor, Rob Keller, suggested North Dakota Living be considered as a media partner on the Western ND Honor Flight. Getting his endorsement alone was an honor.
“When I left for Vietnam and flew out of Bismarck, that's the first time that I saw my dad cry,” Vietnam War veteran David “Dave” Logosz says. “My mom and dad were there, and my grandparents were there, and they were all in tears. I'm sure they didn't think I was going to come back alive.”
But he did.
A bear hunt. Jiu-jitsu. Hitting the gym. Simply opting for a few extra steps at work instead of sitting or standing. These are all ways electric cooperative employees have incorporated movement into their lives.