Stanley Mythaler and wife, Mary Horn Mythaler, arrived in Barnes County in the fall of 1920, where he was to begin his duties as head of the Industrial Arts Department at the Valley City Normal School. They had been married the year before, August 2, 1919 and lived in Minnesota.
Stanley served two years in the army during World War I with the Ordinance Dept, nine months over seas. Mary was a high school teacher in Minnesota and County Superintendent of Schools in Howard County, Iowa, before marriage.
Stanley's outside interests were The American Legion, Boy Scouts, Masonic Lodge, fishing and hunting; Mary's interests were The Eastern Star, Dames Club, D.A.R. and AAUW (which she helped organize), was elected President of The Women's Club. Both were active in The Congregational Church; he was clerk, and she was a Sunday schoolteacher and a Deaconess.
After a year at Valley City State College, their son David enlisted in the Paratrooper branch of the 101st Air Borne division. He went through "D Day", with the "Screaming Eagles" in France, the siege in Holland, then into Bastogne, Belgium. He was with the groups that refused to surrender, with the answer "nuts". January 3, 1945, he was killed in action, buried in The Henry Chappel cemetery in Liege, Belgium.
Due to poor health, Stanley resigned from the college in 1946 and they moved to Santa Cruz, California. In 1960, they returned when a dormitory, "Mythaler Hall", was named in his honor, most joyous occasion and again in 1974, when he received an "Emeritus Award". Surely, their lives fell into pleasant places, during their years in Barnes County.
They recall some very bad weather in 1936, the coldest winter, then the hottest summer; also the bad dust storms in the 30s, otherwise, much sunshine. They recall the wonderful neighbors in their area. The Fredricksons, Rhoades, Wemetts; Zimmermans, Tates, Kolstoes, Larsons, Bergmans, Ishams and Mary Brown.
An event on their street was getting it paved, sort of a "first" in Valley City. Another, was the time when their David and June Bergman pulled Dr. Ottinger from the water at the mill dam, when Marion Kolstoe noticed he was sinking. At age nine, David sang over the Valley City radio during the time Norma Engstrom was there, also later she became "Peggy Lee".
The arrival of the V-12 boys is a never to be forgotten event, and how those, in the Red Cross, made their "whites" to fit.
How could they ever forget Chautauqua; crocus in the snow, and the Columbia Avenue Birthday Club?
Source: Barnes County History 1976 Page 166