North Dakota
Burgum announces International Music Camp founder Dr. Merton Utgaard as recipient of Rough Rider Award
INTERNATIONAL PEACE GARDEN, N.D. – Gov. Doug Burgum right now introduced the late Dr. Merton Utgaard, award-winning musician, educator, and founder and long-time director of the Worldwide Music Camp, because the 47th recipient of the North Dakota Theodore Roosevelt Tough Rider Award, the state’s highest commendation for its residents.
Utgaard (pronounced UHT-gard) based the Worldwide Music Camp in 1956 on the Worldwide Peace Backyard alongside the U.S.-Canada border close to Dunseith in north-central North Dakota. Utgaard served because the camp’s full-time director for 28 years, overseeing great progress and gaining worldwide recognition for the music program, the Worldwide Peace Backyard and North Dakota.
“With ardour and imaginative and prescient, Dr. Utgaard based the Worldwide Music Camp to supply a singular academic alternative for younger musicians in North Dakota, throughout the US and around the globe,” Burgum stated. “For greater than 60 years, performers on the Worldwide Music Camp have spent their summers growing their musical abilities and making lasting recollections. Underneath Dr. Utgaard’s steerage, the Worldwide Music Camp has grown right into a nationally and internationally identified program supporting arts and tradition in our communities and sharing North Dakota with the world.”
Utgaard died Dec. 19, 1998, on the age of 84. Burgum offered the Tough Rider Award, symbolized by a bust of President Theodore Roosevelt, to Utgaard’s three youngsters earlier than a live performance carried out tonight on the Worldwide Music Camp throughout this weekend’s celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Worldwide Peace Backyard.
“We’re extraordinarily proud to just accept this award on behalf of our father Dr. Merton Utgaard. He could be honored and humbled to be counted among the many recipients of the Tough Rider Award,” stated Utgaard’s daughter Karen Rolston of Mesa, Ariz. “Our father liked North Dakota. He was born and raised right here, and though his instructing profession took us to a number of different states, he returned to North Dakota within the late Nineteen Fifties and has all the time considered North Dakota as his dwelling. He liked music, instructing and younger folks. With this being the place the place he bought his begin in music, it was the logical location for him to start out a music camp. He was a person of few phrases, however somebody who made his voice heard along with his love of music. He by no means stopped sharing this love of his, with the residents of North Dakota, the US, Canada and lots of locations around the globe. We thank Governor Burgum and the Tough Rider Committee for this superb honor and thank the Peace Backyard for the spark you gave Dad, so he may make his dream come true.”
Initially from Maddock, N.D., Utgaard was launched to music at an early age by his father, who performed alto horn in native live shows. Utgaard started enjoying the coronet in sixth grade and continued by highschool. Upon graduating in 1933, he enrolled within the Academics School in Valley Metropolis incomes his instructing certificates. In 1940, Utgaard earned bachelor’s levels in music and physics from Valley Metropolis State College in furtherance of his profession. From 1943 to 1945, Utgaard served as a commissioned officer within the Military Air Corps. After his honorable discharge, he enlisted with the Military Air Corps Reserve, serving for 20 years and retiring with the rank of main.
Early in his profession, Utgaard taught at Aneta Elementary College, organizing its first faculty band, and served as music director for Carrington Public Colleges. Following his energetic navy service, Utgaard was the marching band director on the College of Minnesota whereas enrolled as a graduate pupil incomes his grasp’s diploma in music training in 1947. He went on to show in Rochester, Minnesota, and on the College of South Dakota (1949-1953), Ball State College (1953-1957) and Northern Illinois College (1957-1960). Utgaard earned his doctorate in music in 1950 from the College of Northern Colorado at Greeley.
Utgaard and his spouse, Noella, based the Worldwide Music Camp in 1956. The thought for a music camp in North Dakota first got here to Utgaard whereas instructing in a summer season program at Ball State. After some thought and analysis, he remembered attending the dedication of the Worldwide Peace Backyard in 1932 as an Eagle Scout and felt that it might be a super location for a summer season music camp bringing collectively college students from each the US and Canada. After personally recruiting for the camp at faculties throughout North Dakota, and with help from the Worldwide Peace Backyard and the College of North Dakota, Utgaard launched the primary Worldwide Music Camp on July 1, 1956, with 113 college students and 19 administrators attending. This system grew shortly, and in 1960, he was appointed the camp’s first full-time director – a place he would maintain for 28 years.
The imaginative and prescient, perseverance and tireless efforts of Utgaard helped to develop the Worldwide Music Camp to a world-renowned program serving greater than 140,000 college students and administrators from 84 international locations around the globe. At this time, along with music training, the Worldwide Music Camp offers weeklong packages in dance, artistic writing, portray, drawing, theater and a number of other different effective arts disciplines, with practically 1,000 college students this yr served by a workers of over 150 artist-teachers from mid-June to early August.
Along with his work founding and main the Worldwide Music Camp, Utgaard was a devoted public servant. He served on quite a few native, state, nationwide and worldwide boards and commissions, together with the North Dakota Financial Improvement Fee and the North Dakota Federation of Music Golf equipment. Amongst many awards, Utgaard was honored with the North Dakota Excellent Music Educator Award and is a member of the North Dakota Music Educators Corridor of Fame.
The Theodore Roosevelt Tough Rider Award acknowledges current and former North Dakotans who’ve been influenced by the state in attaining nationwide recognition of their fields of endeavor, thereby reflecting credit score and honor upon North Dakota and its residents. Established in the course of the 1961 Dakota Territory Centennial, the award was initially given as an honorary rank of Colonel within the Theodore Roosevelt Tough Riders. North Dakota Secretary of State Al Jaeger and State Historic Society Director Invoice Peterson each concurred with Burgum’s collection of Utgaard for the Tough Rider Award.
Utgaard’s portrait will likely be unveiled and put in within the Theodore Roosevelt Tough Rider Corridor of Fame on the North Dakota Capitol in Bismarck at a later date.