Funeral Hotdish (24 page)

Author’s Note

I’ve had the title of this book rolling around in my head for almost twenty years. Ever since I read the recipe as my mother’s circle was preparing a funeral dinner in the basement of St. Phillip’s Catholic Church in Hankinson, North Dakota.

“Funeral Hotdish,” I yelled. “What a great name for a book.”

Finding the story that went with the title was harder. I knew it would be set in my home state of North Dakota, and I knew it had to be a funeral of anguish, and so the book of fiction inside these covers developed over the years.

I made up the North Dakota portion of this book from whole cloth. I’ve tried to fairly and honestly represent the type of people I know to be fair and honest—asking how the salt-of-the-earth types I grew up with might react if their beloved town was thrown into intolerable turmoil.

The Arizona portion is based on stories I wrote for Phoenix publications.

So many people helped me with this book, most prominently, my mother and sister, Willie and Judy Bommersbach. They created a beautiful place for me to write in the sunroom of their home in Hankinson during my summer visits in 2014 and 2015. My brothers, Duane and Gary Bommersbach, offered expertise I needed.

North Dakota classmates, neighbors, and friends were great help, including Maxine Beckstrom Atkins; Steve and Carolyn Jacobson; Alton, Mary and Corey Theede; Brandon and Nancy Hentz; Fred Beeson; Keven Frank; Barb Pankow; and Joleen Anderson.

In Arizona, thanks to Sam Lowe, my fellow writer and North Dakotan, Rich Robertson, and Henry Escobar.

The crew at Poisoned Pen Press couldn’t be more delightful to work with. Barbara Peters and Robert Rosenwald run a great house that really nurtures writers. Diane DiBiase and Tiffany White are always helpful. Beth Deveny gives my books the same care she’d give her own. And Annette Rogers is simply the best editor any writer could ever want. Thank you all.

Endnotes

These notes review the real-life incidents and situations I borrowed for this book.

Chapter One

On an Ecstasy high:
Ecstasy is a street name for a drug also known as MDMA or Molly. The description of its effects is taken from the National Drug Intelligence Center and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, as well as “The Pursuit of Ecstasy” by Matthew Klam, published in the
New York Times Magazine
, January 21, 2001. It is a popular “party drug” that is still a problem. In February of 2015, as this book is being finished, twelve young adults—ten Wesleyan University students and two visitors—were hospitalized in an apparent overdose of Molly in Middletown, Connecticut. Four other students were arrested, accused of supplying the drug.

Chapter Two

On autopsies:
The description is taken from the author’s personal experience for a
PHOENIX Magazine
story.

On Sammy the Bull:
The scene in the Tempe coffeehouse really happened, as did the police investigation and eventual imprisonment of Sammy “the Bull” Gravano. The author wrote the definitive inside story, titled “Bringing Down the Bull,” for
PHOENIX Magazine
on how he was taken down under the noses of the FBI. It was published in May of 2003 and was honored with a top feature award by the Arizona Press Club. It is available on the author’s website: www.janabommersbach.com.

On the Arizona State University fraud case:
Under the headline, “Arizona’s Broken Arrow,” the author exposed ASU’s long exploitation of the Havasupai Tribe—misusing its blood and promising diabetes research it never conducted. The story ran in
PHOENIX Magazine
in November 2008, and is on the author’s website.

On Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s publicity stunt:
On July 9, 1999, Phoenix newscasts led with the incredible story of how an eighteen-year-old named Jimmy Saville was apprehended as he tried to plant a bomb in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s car in the parking lot of the Roman Table restaurant on Seventh Avenue. The author eventually wrote the inside story of what really happened, and how a Maricopa County jury recoiled in horror when it discovered it had all been a publicity stunt. The jury freed Saville—who spent four years in jail awaiting trial—declaring he’d been entrapped. “This was a publicity stunt at the expense of four years of someone’s life,” jury forewoman Fausta Woody said. The story, “Will Sheriff Joe Stop At Nothing?” ran in
PHOENIX Magazine
in February of 2005, and won a top feature award from the Arizona Press Club. It is on the author’s website. Saville sued the county, and in 2008, was awarded 1.1 million dollars in taxpayer money.

Chapter Three

On preparing the funeral:
Extensive interviews with Hankinson Funeral Director Keven Frank, who also gave the author a complete tour of his facilities, resulted in the detailed account.

On Bagg Farm:
This National Historical Site near Mooreton, North Dakota, is one of the last remaining Bonanza Farms—giant farms of thirty thousand acres or more that covered the wheat-growing plains of Dakota Territory from the 1870s into the early 1900s. The farms grew out of the financial collapse of the Northern Pacific Railroad—as investors took land in place of worthless rail bonds and sold it to financiers who created the largest corporate farms in the world. Bagg Farm was originally five thousand acres. Today it is a preserved and fascinating look into mega-farming and early Dakota life. It is open Fridays through Sundays, Memorial Day through Labor Day. The author’s maternal grandmother, Magdalena Schlener, cooked and cleaned at the Bagg Farm when she was a girl.

On the Missoula Children’s Theater:
This summer theater program—built on the vision of Jim Caron and Don Collins—has been touring since the mid-1970s. Annually, its red truck full of costumes, sets, and scripts visits nearly twelve hundred communities in all fifty states, three Canadian provinces, and sixteen countries. It is funded by the Montana Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Chapter Four

On the Don Bolles sabotage:
The revelation that the Phoenix Police Department sabotaged its own investigation into the murder of
Arizona Republic
Reporter Don Bolles comes from a nine-month investigation by
Phoenix New Times
, published on the tenth anniversary of the assassination in June of 1986. The author was a member of that investigative team and co-wrote most of the thirty-six-page special report with reporter Paul Rubin and editor Mike Lacey. We discovered that while Don lay dying, someone inside the department’s Organized Crime Unit was purging its files of intelligence reports on several high-profile people in Arizona, including leading politicians and some of those Bolles named as his executioners. No one ever discovered exactly who did the purging, although the intent was obvious—to protect and conceal.

Chapter Five

On Funeral Hotdish:
This is the recipe from St. Phillip’s Church, Hankinson, North Dakota:

Funeral Hotdish—FOR 175

3 lbs. bacon

20 lbs. lean hamburger

16 lbs. macaroni

3 bunches celery

8 medium onions

7 20-oz. bags mixed vegetables

8 cans cream of onion soup

8 cans cream of celery soup

4 big cans tomato soup

9 large cans tomato sauce

8 tall cans tomato juice

Boil water. Add macaroni and bring to a boil. Cover and let stand 5 min. Drain.

Brown hamburger. Cut bacon into small pieces and fry. Fry celery and onion in bacon grease until transparent. Drain. Add to hamburger and macaroni.

Set water to boil. Add vegetables for 3 min. Drain and add to hotdish. Mix all soups and juices. Add to hotdish. Add salt, pepper, and a little sugar. Divide mixture into electric roasters.

Bake gently at 350 degrees for 1 ½ hours.

(The recipe does not specify the amount of salt, pepper, or sugar because, as Mother says, “you just know.”)

Chapter Six

On the church bell:
The funeral bell used in this book is based on the bell that still rings at St. Phillip’s Catholic Church in Hankinson.

On the cemetery: The author modeled the cemetery in this book on the Catholic Cemetery in Hankinson.

Chapter Eight

On Sammy the Bull:
The “article” Joya is writing is based on the author’s award-winning
PHOENIX Magazine
piece.

Chapter Eleven

On legend stories:
The stories the town tells about itself are based on true stories that happened in Hankinson and Gwinner, North Dakota.

The blizzard tragedy is based on the true story of the heroism of thirty-one-year-old John Wolfe in the 1923 blizzard that took his life. His wife lost both her frozen hands. Both of their children came through the ordeal unscathed. The family lived just outside Hankinson. Sadly, they were just a stone’s throw from her parents’ home the entire time they endured the storm, which was declared the worst in North Dakota since 1887. The Hankinson Centennial Book includes a complete record of all the stories published about the Wolfe family in the
Hankinson News
.

The thwarted bank robbery is based on the true story of the August 1929 attempt to rob the Gwinner State Bank. The Bentson brothers—Ruben, Robert, Elmer, Victor, and Leonard—led the “shotgun brigade,” helped by Carl and Ben Meinhardt, and many others. Ruben and Leonard Bentson received a five-hundred-dollar reward from the North Dakota Bankers Association. The Gwinner Centennial book said this: “Perhaps the most exciting thing that ever happened in the ‘old days’ of Gwinner happened in August of 1929…when the Gwinner State Bank was robbed…or nearly robbed….” The book included a full page of headlines from the extensive coverage of the incident in the
Fargo Forum
—perhaps more stories than the
Forum
has ever published about this small town.

On Gordon Kahl:
“North Dakota’s most notorious crime” is a 1983 tragedy that is still hotly debated. Patriot or fanatic. Murderous federal agents or lawmen doing their job. Two impressive books have been written about this tragedy: James Corcoran’s
Bitter Harvest: Gordon Kahl and the Posse Comitatus Murder in the
Heartland
, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and a self-published book by former Medina Police Chief Darrel Graf and Officer Steve Schnabel,
It’s All About Power
, that raises serious questions about the handling of this case.

The author also studied versions advanced by the extreme right wing.

On Ruby Ridge:
Randy Weaver was indicted for making and possessing illegal weapons. When he didn’t show up for trial—he was given the wrong trial date—a bench warrant was issued. Fearing he was being set up by the government and that a conviction would seize his land and leave his family homeless, Weaver hunkered down. The Randy Weaver family was pinned down by federal agents in their home in northern Idaho from August 21 to 31, 1992. In the end, Weaver’s son, Sammy, was shot and killed, as was his wife Vicki, and U.S. Marshall Bill Degan. Outrages over the showdown led to the Senate hearing and a report calling for reforms in federal law enforcement to prevent a repeat of this tragedy.

On Waco:
Attempts to end a fifty-one-day siege at David Koresh’s Branch Dividian compound near Waco, Texas, ended in tragedy on April 19, 1993, when the complex was attacked and firebombed by the FBI and ATF—some of the same officers, using the same tactics, as Ruby Ridge. Historians say that Ruby Ridge and Waco were the two events that greatly widened the militia movement in the United States.

Chapter Twelve

On Sammy the Bull:
Sammy Gravano was arrested in February 2000, and pled guilty in 2001. He claimed that police totally overstated his role in the ring—that he was involved only to protect his son. Police didn’t buy it, nor did they think it was all bluster, as Sammy insisted, when he’d bragged that he “owned Arizona” and wanted to establish a new “Arizona Mafia.” Sammy was eventually sentenced to twenty years as the ringleader. His son, Gerard, was sentenced to nine and a half years, as was Karen’s boyfriend, David Seabrook. Sammy’s wife and daughter got probation. And Mike Papa, the original ringleader, turned on Sammy, much as Sammy had turned on John Gotti. Papa escaped prosecution and went into the federal witness protection program.

Chapter Sixteen

On the Public Records Test:
Although North Dakota has not had such a test, it has been held in several states—including Iowa, Indiana, South Carolina, and South Dakota— to test the availability of public records. Reporters pose as “ordinary citizens” trying to get records. The portrayal here is based on the history of this test—reporters in most of the states had trouble getting information from law enforcement officials.

Chapter Eighteen

On the sanctity of confession:
The description of the confession being forever secret is based on the teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church.

Chapter Nineteen

On the Fourth of July parade:
Many small towns in North Dakota hold special celebrations and parades on the Fourth of July, including the Hankinson festivities the author has often enjoyed. They’re as fun as presented in this book!

Bibliography

Corcoran, James.
Bitter Harvest: Gordon Kahl and the Posse
Comitatus Murder in the Heartland
. Viking Penguin,1990.

DeCelle, Marc.
How Fargo of You—Stories from the Northern Prairie That People Who Haven’t Been Here Will Never Believe
. Self-published, 2010.

Erdrich, Louise.
The Master Butchers Singing Club
. Harper Collins, 2003.

Eriksmoen, Curt.
Did you know that…47 fascinating stories about people who have lived in North Dakota
. Vol.7. Forum Communications Printing, 2013.

Graf, Darrell and Schnabel, Steve.
It’s All About Power.
Graf was Medina police chief and Schnabel was a local police officer wounded in the first attempt to arrest Gordon Kahl. Published by the authors, 1999.

Hipp, Ron.
Getting Started.
A memoir of growing up in North Dakota in the 1950s, as well as a history of Richland County. Self-published.

Hoffert, Melanie.
Prairie Silence: a rural expatriate’s journey to reconcile home, love, and faith.
Beacon Press, 2013.

Lamb, Margaret.
Grasshopper Tales: Stories from North Dakota.
Privately published, 2011.

Marguart, Debra.
The Horizontal World: growing up wild in the middle of nowhere.
Counterpoint, 2006.

Norris, Kathleen.
Dakota—A Spiritual Geography.
This was the 2014 North and South Dakota One Book selection. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993.