Duluth Armory History, Including the Role Played During Our Last Pandemic in 1918

The life of Dylan is one of legends. The man himself has become something of a mythological figure during the course of his lifetime. One of the signature stories in that legendary life is his trip to Duluth to hear Buddy Holly at the Duluth National Guard Armory the last evening of January 1959. Three days later Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and J.P. Richardson (The Big Bopper) were dead, killed in a plane crash in Clear Lake, Iowa.

The Armory encounter made an impression on the young Bobby Zimmerman, who referred to it later in interviews as well as in his autobiography. No doubt that tragedy that occurred in an Iowa cornfield made an equally powerful impression. (Read the story here.)

I mention all this because a friend who serves on the Armory board posted on my Facebook wall a link to Zenith City Online noting that this day in 1915 was the official opening of the historic Duluth Armory. [This blog post was originally published on November 22, 2015.]

From very early on the Duluth Armory had a storied existence. World War I was in effect, though the U.S. had not fully engaged. Nevertheless the Armory served as home for a full-scale regiment, comprised of the 34th (Red Bull) Division and the 125th Field Artillery.

It didn't take long for the Armory to get put to use and in 1918 our boys joined the Doughboys to engage in a war many people still don't understand. 317 Duluth soldiers lost their lives in Europe as a result.

But the worst was yet to come.

That autumn the Spanish Flu epidemic reached Duluth. The flu was so deadly that on October 8 the city commissioners put the entire city on lockdown. People were forbidden from shopping, going to church or congregating of any kind. It was a city-wide quarantine.

Four days after this edict, the Cloquet Fire hit. When I first visited Hermantown, just over the hill from Duluth's Western rim, in the late 1970's I couldn't help but notice that there were no really tall trees. I learned then about the Cloquet Fire. The reality is that the fire burned everything South to North around the entire outskirts of Duluth. Innumerable homes were lost, and more than 600 died. People who had gone to work that morning were unable to return home that night, many wondering whether their loved ones escaped or were consumed.

Where did all these people? Most were housed at the Armory and a few other structures where people could be attended to. Unfortunately, the Spanish influenza was in full force, and all these people in one place only contributed to its spread. Over 300 lives were taken by the flu. It was a dark year for the Zenith City.

As George Harrison once penned, all things must pass, and certainly these dark clouds of 1918 ultimately lifted after a season. No doubt our current quarantine and 2020 is challenging for our nation and the world, but it's not our first historic crisis. Let's pray that we avoid the worst, find our "best selves" as we come through to the other side.

Related Links
dulutharmory.org/about/
My 2013 Armory Update
The 1918 influenza pandemic killed thousands of Minnesotans

Historic Armory Post Card is from the informative Historic Duluth website Zenith City Online. Thank you, Tony, for your invaluable caretaking of Duluth's history.
PRE-ORDER an autographed copy of Tony Dierckins' Duluth: An Urban Biography

Information about our tragedies of 1918 came from a presentation by Dan Hartman at a Libations at the Library event here in Duluth.

Of Parachutes and Job Hunting Manuals

Job hunting is one of those things that is part of life. For better or worse, we can't pay our bills without an income source, and very few Americans go a full lifetime working for the same employer. That's where Richard Nelson Bolles comes in. Bolles was author of the now classic manual for job hunters and career changers, What Color Is Your Parachute?

I purchased the revised and enlarged 1981 edition featuring "The Quickie Job-Hunting Map" and have recommended it to this day in the same manner I did then as someone once said to me, "You don't have to read the book. Just do the exercises in the appendix." I took that advice and it changed my life, not in a religious conversion type of way but in the sense that I had a greater understanding of who I was an what I wanted in terms of a career.

Actually, I'd first heard about the book from an article in Radix magazine, a radical Christian periodical out of Berkeley. The mag had done a lengthy interview with the unconventional Bolles who had self-published his book to help people in a practical way to get re-connected. In the land of misfit toys, we still need to find our place.

One section in the back is titled What Skills Do You Have and What Do You Enjoy? An exercise called The Party is the first to greet you. Bolles has a side sided room drawn on the page. You are invited to a two-day party there and for some reason people of the same interests have gathered in each of the six corners. In one corner you have people who like to work with people -- to inform, enlighten, help, train, develop, or cure them or are skilled with words. In another you find people with athletic or mechanical ability who prefer to work with machines, objects, tools, plants, or animals or to be outdoors. After reading the six categories of people Bolles asks which corner of the room would you instinctively go to? After 15 minutes where would you go next? Though just an exercise, it helps increase your own self-awareness as regards what kind of career would make you happier or more satisfied.

The most helpful exercise for me was the Functional/Transferable Skills Inventory, which could take you all day or longer to complete, but is worth it because by means of this exercise you see how the things you enjoy and are good at have practical application in other settings. No one is "just a mom." They are involved in time management, project management, nutritional services and all kinds of other things.

Parachute, which Bolles continuously revises and updates, is now in its 13th iteration, I believe. And I'm certain you can find it in any library, though I recommend you just go ahead and purchase it if you're able and in need of sorting things out. Knowing what you want to do and who you are is a major component of finding a place where you can do it.

As a companion volume, job seekers might also want to look at another parachute themed job-hunting manual, Who Packed Your Parachute? The cover seems like a straight take-off on the spoof book-covers Mad magazine did one time in the Sixties. The masthead reads, "From the Two Guys who never read the NATIONAL BEST SELLER What Color Is Your Parachute?  The authors, Tony "X" and Danny "Y" were classmates in college whose unrestrained comic natures led them into a game of one-upmanship as they wrote notes to one another on this theme. First chapter deals with resumes. Their practical advice: "Donating plasma is not really work experience."

Keep in mind Dierckens is one of the pair that wrote The Duct Tape Book, which actually was a best seller. He's funny, and even if you're not job hunting, this book will bring it's share of smiles when you read it.

Tony Dierckens, whom I just met this week for the first time, is from Duluth here and has made a living writing and publishing books in the categories of humor and regional history. With regards to parachute, they cover the gamut of material covered less frivolously in other books. Topics include the cover letter, interview attire, telephone interviews, dealing with personnel managers, follow-up letters and how to interpret rejection letters. Advice: "Changing your address may be the only way to avoid rejection letters."

For the record, Richard Nelson Bolles continues to give seminars and cites Dierckens' book as highly entertaining. I can't promise that this one is in your local library, however.

Enjoy your weekend and make the most of it. There are only 51 left this year after Sunday

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