The program, free and open to the public, is sponsored by MSU’s multicultural affairs office in recognition of Black History Month.

As a preview of Morgan’s visit, the 1995 movie "Tuskegee Airmen" starring Laurence Fishburne will be shown free at 2 p.m. and again at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 28 in room 227 of the university’s student union.

The Army Air Corps, in 1941, began a program in Alabama to train black Americans as military pilots at the Tuskegee Institute, a college  founded by black American educator Booker T. Washington in 1881.

At the time, Morgan said,  the United States military didn’t have a program to train blacks pilots. But pressure from black organizations, the NAACP and enlightened whites cracked the Jim Crow wall and laid the foundation for the Tuskegee Airmen.

By the end of World War II, 992 black men had graduated from pilot training at Tuskegee, 450 of them sent overseas for combat assignment. They flew 15,553 sorties and 1,500 missions over Europe,  and the pioneer aviators returned home with 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses and Legions of Merit. About 150 lost their lives while in training or on combat flights.

Their success helped lead to the 1948 decision by Pres. Harry Truman to end racial segregation in the military, Morgan said, giving blacks and other minorities the opportunity to reach their full potential.

Morgan, now 78, was in the last class to graduate from the Tuskegee Flying Cadet Corps. "I never had a chance to fly combat missions," he said. "But I sure did learn a lot about myself and my potential."

Raised in the all-white western Pennsylvania mining town of Yukon, the Morgans were the only black family in the community. "I felt like a speck of pepper in a field of rice," he said.

After his father died in a mining accident when he was young boy, Morgan’s  mother bought a farm.

"I remember as a youngster lying in the haystacks and looking up in the sky at the planes flying over," he said. "Becoming a pilot was my ambition and dream."

But being black, the prospect seemed impossible.

After graduating from high school, Morgan began a career as a door-to-door salesman, but returned to the farm after seven months and also took a job as a steel worker. His critical jobs in the steel industry and in farming earned him a deferment from military service. But by chance, he came across a copy of the Pittsburgh Courier, an all-black newspaper, where he saw an Army Air Corps advertisement for an experimental program to train black pilots.

"I applied and was accepted, a pleasant and rewarding surprise," Morgan said. "I was a bit scared. All my life I grew up around whites and was a stranger to my own race. Now I was going to join an all black military outfit.  Worse yet, the first base we were trained at was in Mississippi, then we went to Tuskegee in Alabama. I wasn’t looking forward to leaving the bases because I heard talk of discrimination and tales of abuse."

Of the 435  candidates admitted for the pre-aviation cadet corps in Morgn’s class, only 35 were accepted as cadets and earned their wings in the Army Air Corps.

"In the beginning, most of the instructors at Tuskegee were white," he said. "A lot of them resented us and were tough on us. But that changed as blacks came back from combat and filled the instructor pool."

But when he completed his training, the war had ended. "I was disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to fly combat missions. But the whole experience changed me a great deal. I’m just proud that I was part of that piece of history."

Morgan then went to the University of Pittsburgh, earning his degree in dentistry. Soon after, he set up a practice in Pittsburgh. "But after nine years, I yearned to get back to the country. I was raised in a small town on a farm. And I liked that."

He responded to an advertisement in the American Dental Association journal for a job opening in a small Minnesota town called Wanamingo, 50 miles north of Rochester.

"I was a little curious about moving to the Midwest and this  small Norwegian community," he said. "So I took my wife and children on  a little summer vacation to visit this place. At first, we drove right through the town and missed it. Then we turned around and finally found the place. It was deserted on a Saturday afternoon. Then we saw this gentleman coming out of the co-op store and he approached us. ‘Are you Morgan?' he asked. ‘By golly, you’re not as black as I thought you’d be.’ He happened to be the mayor and after that we became very good friends. He got the town out in great numbers to welcome us and make us feel at home."

That was 1967. He was the town dentist in Wanamingo for 13 years, then moved to Fergus Falls and worked at the state hospital for six more years until he retired in 1986.

"During World War II, the military brass, as I recalled, were reluctant to send the Tuskegee Airmen into combat," Morgan said. "Then First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt publicized their plight by going to Tuskegee and having one of the black pilots take her for a plane ride."

Mrs. Roosevelt helped put pressure on the establishment and soon after her visit, the airmen were assigned to combat duty.

"She was a great advocate and supporter for the rights of minorities," Morgan said.

By the end of the war, the black airmen destroyed or damaged 409 enemy aircraft, including the last four victories of the Army Air Corps in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations. Two hundred of those missions were as heavy bomber escorts deep into the Rhineland.

The black squadron was called Red Tails because the tails of their planes were painted red. But the bomber pilots referred to them as "Red Tailed Black Angels" because they never lost a single plane to German fighters while the black airmen were on escort duty.

"I’m so proud they went on to play an important role in World War II," Morgan said. "Long live the memory of the Red Tail Airmen. Amen."

That’s because the health of this 32-year-old Moorhead State University senior and an enrolled member of the White Earth Indian Reservation is failing.

It’s palpable—in his sallow, sunken face; the medicines, herbs and vitamins that surround his bedside; and the sweet smell of sage that lingers in his apartment from his daily religious ceremonies.

He’s convinced his illness is a result of Gulf War Syndrome, a term coined by the media that covers a variety of ailments and symptoms. Veterans Administration doctors have told him it’s rheumatoid variant disease, an acute arthritic condition.

Whatever it is, within three years this former 220-pound Navy veteran, captain of his high school swimming team, now weighs 140 pounds and is confined to a wheelchair. The cartilage in his hips has deteriorated, most of the vision in his left eye is gone, and he’s plagued by night sweats, joint pain and a litany of other ailments.

"It’s so discouraging," he says. "That’s why I’m taking this journey."

Shores intends to drive his wheelchair along Highway 10 from Moorhead State to the steps of the Capitol building in St. Paul during the second week in May. His goal: to draw attention to an array of mysterious maladies that he says affect more than 186,000 Gulf War veterans who have registered their health complaints with the Department of Defense and Veterans Administration. (The DoD and the VA, however, say 131,968 veterans participated in the two registration programs, and not all are ill.)

Depending on the weather, the trip should take about eight days, with a little help from some friends.

"There’s a Kevin Shores in every city we visit," says Joyce Riley vonKleist, a former Air Force nurse who’s spokesperson for the American Gulf War Veterans Association. "He’s an inspiration to thousands of other Gulf veterans fighting the same fight. The tragedy is that this wonderful man has been ignored by the government he once served."

The American Gulf War Veterans Association is one of several organizations pushing the military establishment to admit there is a malady called Gulf War Syndrome that’s both real and treatable. And now more than 145 projects and clinical evaluations under way to find the explanations for the symptoms reported by Gulf War veterans.

More radical than most, however, AGWV and its spokesperson vonKleist believe that many Gulf War illnesses are caused by sinister biological experiments carried out by the United States government.

"It’s the worst story in American history," she claims.

vonKleist, a graduate of the University of Kansas, served as a captain in the United States Air Force and flew on C-130 missions in support of Operation Desert Storm. She also says she’s a victim of the Gulf illness.

Gulf War Syndrome is a non-scientific term used to describe the unexplained ailments of thousands of Gulf War veterans who exhibit symptoms ranging from fatigue and debilitating joint pain to skin rashes, memory loss, night sweats, headaches, neurological disorders and gastrointestinal problems.

A number of potential causes are under investigation, including exposure to chemical and biological agents, pesticides, depleted uranium and smoke from oil well fires. Other possibilities include side effects of vaccines or medications.

Although vonKleist, who spoke in Fargo this winter, has been a bur  on vestments of the military establishment, she dismisses her critics and continues to dedicate her life to Gulf War veterans.

"How can a government just ignore and throw away thousands of veterans like Kevin Shores?" she said. "It’s an abomination. I’ve been around the country speaking to audiences about this problem, and you just can’t believe how many victims there are out there."

Shores is firmly in vonKleist’s camp. "There are so many questions and no answers," he said. "Just look what happened to me. If this is the result of a biological experiment, I just couldn’t express my despair."

Gulf War illnesses aren’t confined to the 697,000 troops who served in the Gulf. It extends to soldiers who didn’t even get close to the Middle East.

That’s why vonKleist insists that more than 75 percent of veterans who suffer Gulf War Syndrome contracted the disease from a series of experimental biological immunizations that contained a microorganism that may have been genetically engineered by the government.

She also has official federal documents  proving that the Iraqi government purchased the mycoplasma from a  United States firm and that it may have been spread to American troops through the air when the military exploded hundreds of weapons facilities during the 43-day  Desert Storm effort. That’s assuming the Iraqis used the mycoplasma in biological weapons.

That microorganism, one variety of a bacterial subclass called mycoplasma fermentans incognitus, has gained some credence through research by Dr. Garth Nicolson, chief scientific officer of the Institute for Molecular Medicine in Huntington Beach, Calif., and a professor of internal medicine at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston.

He’s found that about 50 percent of Gulf War Syndrome patients have an invasive mycoplasmal infection that can be treated with antibiotics such as doxycycline. "This infection is so unusual and contains such unusual gene insertions that we suspect that it has been genetically tampered with and may be a biological weapon," he’s stated.

Mycoplasma, however, cannot exist outside the body, and scientists have been unable to culture the mycoplasma associated with Gulf War illnesses.

Shores sent a sample of his blood to Dr. Nicolson for testing, and it came back positive for mycoplasma. "No wonder the anthrax vaccine is so controversial in the military today," Shores said. "If I knew then what I do now, I’d never have taken those immunizations when I was in the Navy."

Worse yet, vonKleist claims, the mycoplasma is infectious, which could explain why so many wives and children of Gulf War veterans are also showing symptoms of this strange malady.

Last year, the Veterans Administration allocated $20 million for a series of  trials on Gulf War veterans who have tested positive for mycoplasma infection. They are being given the antibiotic doxycycline for several months.

The Fargo Veterans Administration is one of 25 sites in the country selected for these trials.

"It’s hard to determine any single cause of Gulf War Syndrome because it’s a disease defined by its symptoms," says Cindy DuBord, a research coordinator for Gulf War illness studies at the Fargo VA . "There are just so many possible explanations. But these mycoplasma infections are systemic and may well have caused Kevin Shores’ medical problems."

Gulf War veterans who have questions about these trials or anything about Gulf War Syndrome can contact the Fargo VA office at 1-888-298-2121 for information. It is the only testing site for this study in the Upper Midwest.

Although the Fargo VA is no longer recruiting subjects for the mycoplasma study, it is still recruiting veterans for another study to determine the effects of cognitive behavioral therapy and exercise therapy in treating victims of Gulf War Syndrome.

But after conducting over 145 studies and spending more than $160 million, the federal government still doesn’t know what causes the illnesses of Gulf War veterans. An ongoing Pentagon investigation found no evidence so far of possible exposure to Iraqi chemical or biological agents.

Yet last year the government reported that a pill 250,000 soldiers were ordered to take (pyridostigmine bromide, or PB) to protect them against nerve agent soman during the Gulf War may play a part in the disease. But no conclusive evidence has yet been found.

A Senate veterans committee supported the military’s assessment that there doesn’t seem to be any single cause for these illnesses.

Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, an independent consultant working as a medical advisor in the Office of the Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Gulf War Illnesses, says the government knows Gulf War veterans are sick, but it’s unsure why. Of the 117,000 Gulf War Veterans given medical evaluations by the Department of Defense, 90 percent showed symptoms of more than 100 different kinds of ailments.

He said all the vaccines administered to veterans were approved by the FDA, except for a botulism vaccine that was given to 8,000 soldiers.

"I know people are sick and they want to be made better," Dr. Kilpatrick said. "That’s natural and we encourage veterans who are sick to find a physician they trust and to work with the Veterans Administration."

He also said that the death rate of Gulf War veterans is no higher than it is for other segments of the population.

That’s no consolation for Shores, who grew up in Minneapolis and enlisted in the Navy after graduating from Kellogg High School. Trained as a radio operator, he was stationed on the USS Fox when his ship was the first dispatched to the Persian Gulf in 1987 after a missile hit the USS Stark, a U.S. frigate that was attacked by an Iraqi air-to-sea missile and severely damaged. Thirty sailors were killed in the attack, which was apparently accidental.

"I received innumerable inoculations during my time in service and just before we were sent to the Gulf," Shores said.  "I had no idea what they were for and I’ve had no luck getting my medical records from the Navy."

After three years in the Navy, he returned to Minneapolis and worked a variety of odd jobs before earning a scholarship to a Minneapolis cosmetology school.

"I worked as a hair stylist in the Twin Cities for eight years," Shores said. "That’s when I began to notice some health problems—muscle aches, joint stiffness, night sweats, muscle twitching, chronic fatigue. I lost 70 pounds. So I went to the Veterans Administration Hospital to find out what was wrong with me."

Doctors diagnosed rheumatoid variant disease and prescribed a variety of treatments, including steroids and pain killers. "Nothing helped. Within three years, I was confined to a wheel chair."

No longer able to work, he earned an associate degree at Minneapolis Community and Technical College and started classes at the University of Minnesota. That’s when he was introduced to the American Gulf War Veterans Association and began his quest to get the military to answer his questions.

In 1998, Shores hit a wall. "I was finding no answers so I decided to focus on school. I started wondering if I was crazy or paranoid."

Shores moved to Moorhead last fall to enroll at Moorhead State University where he expects to earn a degree that will allow him to teach Native American studies at the White Earth Indian Reservation.

"I own land up there," he said. "I’m tired of being a concrete Indian and I want to return to my traditional roots."

Today Shores is battling his illness with alternative medicines and diets while receiving some treatment from the Veterans Administration.

His religious interest in Native American beliefs began in earnest after his sickness hit. He now wears his hair in traditional braids and around his neck hangs a medicine pouch and  hemp bag filled with spiritual stones and a bear claw indicating his clan.

Shores prays daily and burns sage, sweet grass, willow and tobacco in his apartment as part of traditional religious ceremonies.

"You can smell it all the time," says Philip Kelsven, a junior history major at MSU who lives in the next apartment. "He’s very serious about his traditions."

Shores calls Kelsven his guardian angel, and Kelsven said he’ll accompany Shores on his trek to St. Paul.

vonKleist will also be on the steps of the St. Paul capitol with Shores, demanding answers about Gulf War veteran illnesses

"In one respect," Shores said, "this disease has been a blessing of sorts, opening my eyes to a spirituality that I never would have discovered. On the other hand, I want some answers and I want a future."

Anyone willing to support Shores’ effort may e-mail him at: nindoogitchidaa@aol.com. (Nindoogitchidaa is an Ojibwa phrase that translates as "I am a warrior.")
 

Neil Simon’s "Plaza Suite," the second show of the summer, opens on Tuesday, June 27, and runs through Saturday, July 1.

"The Last Night of Ballyhoo,"  a comedy/drama by Alfred Uhry, is the third show, opening on Friday, July 7, and running through Saturday, July 15.

Closing the season is the Michael Stewart and Jerry Herman musical comedy, "Hello, Dolly! " It opens on Friday, July 21, and run through Wednesday, July 26. All shows begin at 7:30 p.m.

Season tickets go on sale Monday, May 15, at the theatre box office located in the Center for the Arts main lobby, on the corner of 9th Avenue and 14th Street South. Box Office hours are from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 11 a.m. until curtain time on performance days.

The box office telephone number is 218-236-2271; FAX: 218-236-4612; e-mail: tickets@mhd1.moorhead.msus.edu.

The 40-acre plot of land, located six miles south of Lake Park, Minn, is covered with roughly 20,000 trees that have been planted over the years by the Neufelds.  The wide variety of trees that cover the property including spruce, oak, birch, willow and black walnut.  The property is also partially covered by wetlands.

To complement their recent gift, the Neufelds are making a bequest in their wills of an additional five acres of land, which includes their house and additional buildings.  The five acres, which border Bergeson Lake and sit adjacent to the tree farm, will provide additional educational and research opportunities for students and faculty.  In addition to serving as an educational facility, the Neufeld’s home will be used as an MSU retreat center.

Neufeld, raised in Manitoba, Canada, came to MSU in 1967 and retired in 1995 as an education professor. Along with colleagues Joe DiCola and Wilva Hanson, he was one of the original founders of MSU’s Professional Fourth Year Program for teachers, which combined classroom studies with applied teaching.

While working with PFY students, Neufeld first used his property for educational purposes. "The students would come out to our property in the morning and stay until night," he said. "They’d have a variety of experiences during the day and in the evening we’d visit around a big bonfire."

A lay preacher since the age of 18, he’s now a pastor at the Hewitt United Methodist Church near Wadena, Minn.

His wife Lorraine, also a Canadian native, taught at the MSU Preschool in Weld Hall for part of her career.  She is now the secretary of the United Methodist Church in Detroit Lakes.

"Our family has enjoyed and received much pleasure from the property over the years, and we wanted to share it with others, so they could have similar experiences in the future," Neufeld said.  "Moorhead State has been very good to us, and this is one way that we can show our appreciation and give something back to the university."

Although the Neufelds hope to see students using the property soon, by making their gift through a retained life estate, they retain the full use of and any income from the property during their lifetimes.

In the future, the Alumni Foundation will be able to harvest trees from the farm with the proceeds being used to maintain and make improvements to the property.  Additional income from the tree farm will establish the Neufeld Family Endowment for student scholarships.

The Neufelds’ three children attended the MSU Campus School and Moorhead State University.  Jon, who earned a biology degree at MSU, is an emergency medical doctor in Upper Michigan.  Joanne, who graduated with a chemistry degree, is practicing family medicine at Grand Forks, ND, and is a faculty member at the University of North Dakota.  Tom, who studied biology at MSU and later transferred to the University of Minnesota, is directing research there in cell biology.

Harris’s talk, "Neither Saints nor Devils: Problems of Interpretation in Missionary History," focuses on the findings in his new book from Oxford University Press, "Nothing But Christ: Rufus Anderson and the Ideology of Protestant Foreign Missions."

Harris, who chairs MSU’s history department, writes and speaks regularly on the topic of American Protestant missionaries.

She’ll be honored at a 2 to 4 p.m. retirement party Thursday, Feb. 24 in the student union’s Comstock Room. The  program starts at 2:30 p.m.

Ferris joined the MSU staff in 1965 as secretary to then academic dean Maurice Townsend (who went on to become president of West Georgia College). When Roland Dille became academic dean the next year, she served as his secretary until Dille was named president of the university in 1968.

Ferris then became administrative assistant to academic dean Robert Hanson, who became president of Winona State, and three MSU academic vice presidents—the late William Jones, F.C. Richardson and Roland Barden, all who eventually became college presidents. She was appointed director of academic support services in 1993.

Originally from Devils Lake, N.D., Ferris holds an undergraduate degree in office administration from MSU and a master’s degree in educational administration from Tri-College University. She and her husband have two grown children.

Produced by Danish vagabond and photographer Jacob Holdt,  who spent five years capturing the faces and feelings of America’s poor, gives an outsider’s analysis of the dynamics of poverty and oppression in the United States. A Campus Activities Board event.

The show runs from 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., but are broken into a 6 to 7: 30  p.m. segment, and an 8 to 9:30 p.m. segment. The audience is invited to attend the entire program, or any of the segments, which run together.

 During their visit, the company will offer two days of community workshops at the Plains Arts Museum on Monday and Tuesday,  Feb. 21 and 22. They will also give a performance  for all 1,800 Fargo-Moorhead second graders at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 23 in the Roland Dille Center for the Arts Hansen Theatre.

Ragamala has been selected for three years in a row as one of the top ten dance companies to have performed in Minnesota.

The 224-page anthology, released in 1995, won a Minnesota Book Award that year along with The Critics’ Choice Award from the San Francisco Review of Books as one of the best books published in 1995.

It’s a collection of original essays from some of the region’s best-known authors writing about how their values and attitudes were shaped by the Midwest. Included are selections from Jon Hassler, Patricia Hampl, Carol Bly, Paul Gruchow, Bill Holm and Larry Watson.

"Imagining Home" is the second award-winning anthology of Midwest writing edited by the two MSU professors. Their first, "Inheriting the Land," won a 1993 Minnesota Book Award.