Renowned music educator posthumously awarded North Dakota’s highest citizen honor

DUNSEITH, N.D. — Merton Utgaard, the founding father of an influential youth music camp within the Worldwide Peace Backyard close to right here, lastly acquired an immortalizing award many North Dakotans

consider he ought to have gotten throughout his lifetime.

Utgaard’s three kids acquired the North Dakota Tough Rider Award on behalf of their father from Gov. Doug Burgum throughout a ceremony on the Peace Backyard on Friday, July 29. Utgaard, who died in 1998 at age 84, is the forty seventh recipient of

the state’s highest citizen commendation.

His portrait can be hung within the North Dakota Capitol at a later date.

Initially from Maddock, Utgaard established the Worldwide Music Camp on the Peace Backyard in 1956 as a option to carry music schooling to his residence state in the course of the summer season. The camp began with about 100 college students in its first yr, nevertheless it grew quickly as college students from all over the world flocked to the North Dakota-Manitoba border.

Since its founding, the camp has hosted greater than 140,000 college students and administrators from 84 nations. Along with music schooling, the summer season camp now provides applications for different positive arts disciplines, together with dance, inventive writing, portray and theater.

Burgum mentioned Utgaard’s ardour and imaginative and prescient led him to craft a novel instructional alternative for aspiring musicians in North Dakota.

“Beneath Dr. Utgaard’s steering, the Worldwide Music Camp has grown right into a nationally and internationally recognized program supporting arts and tradition in our communities and sharing North Dakota with the world,” Burgum mentioned in a information launch.

Utgaard’s daughter Karen Rolston mentioned her father cherished North Dakota and would have been honored to obtain the award.

“He was a person of few phrases, however somebody who made his voice heard together with his love of music,” Rolston mentioned in a information launch. “He by no means stopped sharing this love of his, with the residents of North Dakota, the USA, Canada and plenty of locations all over the world.”

Earlier than his music schooling profession took off, Utgaard served as an officer within the Military Air Corps for a number of years and stayed on as a reserve for the subsequent 20 years.

Early in his instructing days, Utgaard labored because the music director for Carrington Public Colleges. He later sought superior levels, together with a doctorate in music, and taught on the College of South Dakota, Ball State College and Northern Illinois College. Utgaard took the helm on the camp in 1960 and continued as its full-time director for 28 years.

Utgaard’s posthumous reception of the Tough Rider Award coincides with the ninetieth anniversary of the Worldwide Peace Backyard. The ceremony was adopted by a live performance carried out on the camp.