В штате Миннесота пройдет празднование 80-летия закрытия детского приюта с экскурсиями и живым музыкантом

Over 80 years after the institution closed, history is still unfolding at the state school. The Steele County Historical Society is hosting its annual Orphanage Museum Fall Celebration on Sept. 12, inviting visitors to see its ongoing preservation efforts and learn what life was like for the thousands of children who once lived there. The family-friendly event will feature indoor and outdoor activities, including live music, tours, a scavenger hunt and more. During the celebration, visitors can also meet reenactors playing various figures associated with the orphanage, like Superintendent Galen Merrill and the infamously strict matron Miss Morgan. Inside the Owatonna Arts Center, Twin Cities folk duo Curtis and Loretta will play live music, including songs inspired by Harvey Ronglien and Pete Razor, two notable state schoolers who later wrote about their experiences at the orphanage. The orphanage, formally known as the Minnesota State Public School for Dependent and Neglected Children, housed over 10,635 children between 1886 and 1945. For Museum Manager Anne Peterson, part of preserving those children’s stories is finding new people to share them with. “I just like to get people up here who have never been here before, to learn the history a little bit. Especially if they’ve got younger children,” said Museum Manager Anne Peterson. Kids are often fascinated by the experiences of children at the orphanage, which were defined by a strict sense of order. Children went through the same routine nearly every day, and went to bed at 7:30 p.m. To cope with the monotony, they played games. When things got especially boring, some of the bolder ones tried running away. Ronglien reported that every day was almost exactly the same except for Christmas and the Fourth of July. “That still leaves standard 363 days that everything is the same, so I think they just plotted to run away and talked about it,” Peterson said. “It was mostly an adventure.” Ronglien himself ran away a few times. Most kids didn’t get far before having second thoughts. Hunger, or simply not knowing what to do once they’d escaped, led most of them back to the orphanage in short order. Some new arrivals did make earnest attempts to get back home and find a surviving parent. Local newspapers reported frequently on runaways, indicating some got as far as Waseca or Albert Lea before they gave up or were caught. These stories have a timeless appeal, according to Peterson. Just like readers a century ago, young visitors to the museum gravitate to these tales of scrappy runaways, even if they usually ended up back where they came from. While few state schoolers are alive to tell their stories, many of their descendants are still around. During the celebration, Joyce Steen is planning to give a talk about how she discovered her family’s roots at the orphanage. Steen, a retired social worker from Kansas, knew her father grew up in an orphanage, but she didn’t know which one for many years. Digging into her father’s files with the museum’s help, she discovered her father had a younger brother that he’d never mentioned before. Her previously unknown uncle, Arthur Anderson, died young and was buried in the orphanage’s cemetery. Peterson said it was common for state schoolers to be tightlipped about their upbringing in adulthood, leaving their families with many unanswered questions. She’s hoping to locate more people like Steen, to fill in the story of how state schoolers’ experiences at the orphanage ultimately affected later generations. For people looking to discover family connections at the orphanage, the historical society will be offering genealogy assistance during the celebration. The museum has a list of children who attended the orphanage, but it cuts short in the mid-20s due to privacy laws. Records of children who were adopted are sealed for 100 years, while records for those who weren’t adopted are sealed for 75. With the school having closed over 80 years ago, it’s only a matter of time until everything is made public. Several surviving state schoolers have died in the past year, although Peterson was pleased to discover one living earlier this year. Bill Schulz, now 89, visited the museum in July, returning the grounds for the first time since he was a child. After he was adopted, Schulz attended the University of Minnesota and went on to work for a confectionary company, where he was assigned to develop the candy now known as Laffy Taffy. Cemetery restoration The celebration will mark the public debut of the restored children’s cemetery. Peterson and museum volunteer Tim Shea are now three years into an extensive restoration project. Shea is mid-way through fixing incorrect names on some of the later graves. These children were originally buried with only case numbers rather than names. Volunteers later added memorials to these graves in the 90s, but the orphanage’s handwritten records proved difficult to read and some names were inscribed incorrectly. Shea previously restored the older headstones by hand, and recently finished straightening them with help from local boy scouts led by Zavier Trager. Before this project began, many of the stones were crooked and unreadable from decades of built up grime. The museum has also planted new trees in the cemetery to replace the ones blighted by the emerald ash borer last year. When visitors stop by during the celebration, they’ll find the cemetery looking better than it ever has. There are still a few items on Peterson’s to-do list that will come later, like restoring a cemetery monument and planting a garden. Added in the 90s, the monument features a quote from Ronglien inscribed in granite. While the granite slab remains in good condition, the rest of the brick memorial has aged poorly. “I’m sure they thought it was permanent when they put it in it 1993 or so, but it’s really been deteriorating the last couple of years,” Peterson said. Peterson said the museum has found a mason that can rebuild the monument with less porous materials. The restored monument will still be composed of red brick, to match the historic character of the campus. Peterson expects to have the monument done by late September. She’s also planning to establish a garden with help from the Steele County Master Gardeners, which will include low maintenance pollinator-friendly plants.