Bob Lind column: Neighbors: Medical student was a hero

It was not your average college student's vacation day.

This student's name was Henry Wheeler. He was studying medicine at the University of Michigan. And this day, Sept. 7, 1876, he was on vacation at home in Northfield, Minn.

That was the day eight outlaws, allegedly led by Jesse James, held up Northfield's First National Bank.

Neighbors has had several items about that robbery in recent months, largely because of the rumor that brothers Frank and Jesse James came to Emerado, N.D., right after the robbery. Readers insist, no doubt correctly, that this never happened.

Now Wayne Allard, Fargo, weighs in with his opinion and with a sidelight on that medical student who found himself playing a key role in fighting the robbers.

Wayne has researched the James gang and its cohorts, the Younger brothers, for nearly 50 years. He agrees it's highly unlikely the James brothers ever were in Emerado.

But consider this: Wayne writes that "no evidence has ever surfaced to conclusively prove that Frank and Jesse James were the two who eluded capture or death at Northfield." Still, Wayne believes the known facts strongly indicate they were.

Now, concerning Henry Wheeler. He eventually became a doctor and set up a practice in Grand Forks, N.D.

But that day in 1876 in Northfield, when he was a young student, he saw the robbery taking place. He got his gun, went to an upper floor of a hotel across the street from the bank and fired at the robbers. He shot and killed Clell Miller, one of the robbers, and wounded Bob Younger in his foot.

Years later, Henry acquired a skeleton of one of the robbers. It was either Miller or another robber, Bill Chadwell, also known as William Stiles; nobody seems to know for sure.

Henry kept the skeleton in his Grand Forks office for years until a fire destroyed the building and its contents.

In 1954, young Wayne's Cub Scout pack toured the Grand Forks home of Henry, who died in 1929.

"The gun Dr. Wheeler used in defense of the Northfield community was mounted above the fireplace," Wayne writes. "My fellow Scouts and I gazed at it as we sat on the floor by the hearth, mesmerized while listening to the tour guide's story of Dr. Wheeler's close encounter with the most notorious criminals ever known in this country."

That visit sparked Wayne's lifetime study of the James and Younger gangs.

The name is Prody

In the name of accuracy, Neighbors must correct a recent item about the girlfriend of O.J. Simpson, who had family members in Kent, Minn.

Neighbors was told the woman's name was Christine Purdy.

Wrong, writes Pat Colliton, a native of Kent. The family from Kent is Prody, not Purdy, Pat says.

Voice from the past

The Rev. Arlen Svare received a couple of positive feedbacks from an item here recently about his officiating at the wedding of the grandson of presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan.

A friend stopped by Arlen's home in Detroit Lakes, Minn., and gave him two first edition copies of Bryan's speeches, printed in 1909.

Then he received a call from Clarice Ethen, Binford, N.D. She told Arlen she'd been his babysitter when he was 6 months old. She saw the article about him and decided to contact him.

"She was just a stripling girl herself," Arlen writes, "so it is remarkable that she remembered my name.

"She told me many little details about my brother, who died when he was 2½ of scarlet fever, before I was born, and about my parents' efforts to survive the Depression, which was at its worst about then."

Would you like to hear from your babysitter? Maybe.

But then again ...

If you have an item of interest for this column, mail it to Neighbors, The Forum, Box 2020, Fargo, N.D. 58107; fax it to 241-5487; or e-mail rlind@forumcomm.com