These stories can also be heard on Sunday mornings around 10 am on WILD 102’s “Look Back in Time” program. Each week’s radio story will be posted here on our website.
Weekly radio stories are researched, compiled, and read by Sheila Winstead, RCHS Board Member.
March 7, 2026
Another one of the photos that was given to me by Muriel Odegaard Olin from the sale of Ole Lund’s photography studio holdings was of Mr and Mrs E. O. Anderson. They had many family connections in
the Roseau community and were business owners during their time here. In 2014, Roseau Times-Region writer Jeff Olsen interviewed one of the daughters of the Andersons and wrote an entertaining article
about her which I’ll read today.
Meet Eldyne Erickson, who’s no spring chicken at 86 and lets you know she wasn’t born old. The former Eldyne Anderson, a fine and proper girl born within the city limits of Roseau on January 3, 1928, can still handle a deck of cards like Bret Maverick and doesn’t need to be chauffeured around town like Driving Miss Daisy.
Now about her card playing talents. Marian Nelson, an old pal, set the record straight recently. “I play bridge with LaMae and Eldyne every Tuesday at Oak Crest,” she said. “They’re very sharp.”
They also don’t like to be tied down. When Eldyne and her older sister, LaMae Lundbohm, 91, recently hit the road to do some sightseeing all the way to Montana, they shared the driving chores.
Eldyne has always been a traveling gal. She rode the rails and then some in her younger days. No, she
didn’t hop freight trains during the war, but she got around.
“My dad was E. O. Anderson, and he was the jeweler in town,” she said, adding that Anderson Jewelry
was on Main Street next to Gray’s Café – across the street from where Nelson’s Café is now.
Want to get her smiling? Mention that she had it pretty nice growing up as a jeweler’s daughter.
While she didn’t milk cows like the rural kids, she wasn’t exactly living like the Duchess of Cornwall. Her
memories are an insight into what we missed not being around in the good old days.
“We had electricity, but we didn’t have indoor plumbing,” she said, mentioning that right in town,
outhouses were a common sight. “We had an outhouse and cold water,” she said recalling that her
mother, Olga, heated up water on the stove so she and her four siblings could take baths in a round tub.
Telephone booths have joined the list of bygone times like taking baths in round metal washtubs.
Pick a date and Eldyne doesn’t need a diary to remember those special times. She sat in her apartment
at Oak Crest Senior Housing in Roseau and recalled the war years like a sailor detailing his colorful
tattoos. Eldyne also saw different ports – various train depots from here to Michigan.
“In my freshman year, my folks moved to Detroit to work at a Briggs and Stratton defense plant,” she said.
She went along and attended high school there.
Her parents wanted to help in the war effort and, besides, Anderson Jewelry wasn’t exactly drawing in
customers like a Sears store.
Put a smile on her face and ask her about her senior year. Those were the days!
“In the fall of ’45, I came back to Roseau,” she said, mentioning that she returned alone. “They were
exciting times,” she said. She didn’t say it, but she wasn’t some wallflower in the hallways of Roseau High
School.
“I was a cheerleader,” she said. There were six of them and she remembers them all – Liz Rygh, Norma
Lee, Nancy Harris, Eileen Johnson, Mary Lou Broughton, and herself – Eldyne Anderson. It was the
golden age or, at least, the golden year for Roseau. “We were cheerleaders at the 1946 state hockey
tournament, and Roseau won the state title,” she said. “And a couple of weeks later, we cheered at the
state basketball tournament at Williams Arena.”
She grinned when asked if she went steady with a hockey player. No way! She fell for a basketball player,
Norrell “Binky” Erickson, who played guard on the one and only Roseau boys basketball team to ever
make it to state. It’s funny what someone will remember almost 70 years later. She remembers A. J.
Kramer, the basketball coach, cracking the whip. “He was strict,” she said. “During the season, the
players had to be home by 10 o’clock on school nights.” Try that now!
Her folks returned in 1946, and Eldyne went off to Concordia College for a year. “Then I got married on
October 16, 1948,” she said. The lucky man was that basketball guard, Norrell “Binky” Erickson.
Did he buy your diamond ring at Anderson Jewelry?
“You bet!” she said. He was a Falun farm boy and she was a Roseau girl. And she had her folks back
home for a while.
“Dad ran the jewelry store until 1953 and then moved to California,” she said, explaining that her mother
had suffered a stroke and Dad thought the warmer weather would be better for her. “Mom lived until 1964
and Dad lived until 1978,” she said. “He was 84.”
Her man, Binky, died in 2010. But what a life they had together. They even moved away for a number of
years while he managed an electric cooperative in Wisconsin. But they couldn’t stay away. She started
her own accounting firm in Roseau, which she later sold to Mike Lundbohm, and Binky took on a new
civic responsibility. “He was the mayor of Roseau in the 1970s,” she said.
But there are other special memories. “I’m all Norwegian, and Binky was half and half,” she said. “He
claimed he was Swede more than Norwegian.”
Did you get along well?
“Good enough,” she said and laughed. “We had six children!” This was no shotgun wedding. It was
almost four years before Patty was born in 1952. She’s now Patty Vatnsdal and works on the line at
Polaris. Next is Roger, a 1953 model and the State Representative (DFL) for Baudette. Next is Chuck, a
1955 model and the Roseau Public librarian. Representing 1956 is Carol Larson, a Minot attorney, while
the 1957 model is Sharon Grafstrom, a Roseau High School civics teacher.
“We had the first five about 15 months apart,” she said and smiled knowingly. It isn’t like Bryan “Butsy”
Erickson, who was born in 1960, was an accident. But the family laughs about it. Even Bryan, whom
everyone calls Butsy. He’ll always be Butsy. But call him Bryan. That’s even hard for Eldyne. She watched
him play with the Broten boys in high school, at the U, and then in the NHL. And after that, he played
overseas in Switzerland and other fabulous places.
The old girl knows hockey. She and Binky had quite a run. “We were young then,” she said. And in love
and life was exciting. “He was six months younger,” she said, recalling the strokes he suffered, beginning
in 2008 and his death on February 12, 2010. They had a great run together.
Thank you to 
for letting us share our county’s history with your listeners by donating air time, studio time, and production staff every week.