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The Day Our Teacher Was Shot
by Archie Rosenquist
from Autobiography of Archie Rosenquist, Sr. 1967
Article from
The Fargo Forum
and Daily Republican
- March 5, 1913
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We had to walk about two
miles to school. One year, we had a teacher by the name of Anna Skeim.
One day in February her boyfriend came to the schoolhouse to see her.
It was a one room schoolhouse with an entry way for cloakroom and for
storing coal. During the first recess they went out to the cloakroom
to talk. We heard a couple of shots and the teacher came running in
and ran to the back of the room behind the stove. The man, Benny Fingum,
came a few feet inside the door and stood there with a gun in his hand.
All of us kids, of course, were scared to death. We piled out the door
and started for home without coats or caps in zero weather.
After most of the kids were out, the guy walked to the back of
the school and the teacher ran out the door. He shot at her a couple
of times while she was running. There was a church across the road from
the school house. The teacher ran toward the church and he followed, shooting
at her. The church door |
More Details
by
Frithjof Rosenquist |
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was locked, so she ran around the church
and back to the schoolyard. One of the shots hit her in the neck and
she fell to the ground. He came up beside her and shot himself in the
head, fatally. She crawled into the schoolhouse and was sitting at her
desk when help came. She was shot in six different places but lived through
it.
We had to go by the church on the way home and one of the bullets,
shot at the teacher, hit Victor in the arm just enough to make it
sore. He froze both hands on the way home and I froze my ears. He didn't
lose any fingers but all his fingernails came off. I didn't lose my
ears either. But they were sore for a long time.
The School Board had a hard time to get another teacher, but finally
got a married woman to finish the term. |
Archie's recollection of this remarkable
event (which occurred while the family lived in Spring Prairie) seems
fairly consistent with these records. His February dating is understandable
- the paper reported March 1913 to be one of the coldest on record. His
handling of the names is no worse than the Forum's. (The assailant's
name went from Bennie to Bernnie to Bertie; and Ina's went from Skein
to Skeim.)
The Fargo Forum printed at least nine follow-up
articles, mostly relaying reports from "Dr. Hagen" and the nurses on
the recovery of the young teacher. Despite the possibility of complications
like lockjaw or paralysis from having a bullet lodged against a nerve
at the back of her head, she displayed "no sign of discouragement". Her
doctor reported that she "continually is telling her mother that she is
going to get better and will be able to go home with her."
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March 6, 1913
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March 22, 1913
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Ina Skeim's condition went from
"precarious" on March 5th to "uncertain" on the 6th to "considered good"
on the 15th to "feeling fine" on the 18th. She was sitting up by the
18th, and walking by the 19th. She went home on the 22nd, in time to
spend easter with her parents.
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