Donna Clark was a beautiful girl when she was young; she was still a good-looking woman when she married Wayne Clark in 1944, though beginning to thicken up a bit. Her honey-blonde hair was starting to lose a bit of its luster, and by 1949, it had turned prematurely gray, no doubt at least partly due to the stress of the feud with her ex-husband. By the summer of 1975, she was ready for social security, and looked it.

The years had been hard on her, or perhaps, as some would say, she had made them hard on herself.

Donna had always thought of herself as a respectable person. Though she had never admitted that her dalliance with Wayne Clark on the day that Battery D left had not been a respectable impulse, she had been rather distraught at the time. Once the barn door was open, though, it had been rather hard to close it.

They had tried to be discreet about their affair, but nothing of that magnitude could remain hidden for long in a town like Spearfish Lake. Once it was clear that her marriage was over with, she worked hard to regain the respectability she had acquired in nearly ten years as a banker’s wife.

There was resistance at first; and there was still resistance even today, but Donna had, if nothing else, a forceful personality, and she became a community leader in the field of good works. For thirty years off and on, she had been the president of the Spearfish Lake Woman’s Club. She had been on the board of directors of the Spearfish Lake First Methodist Church for twenty-five, had chaired the United Fund drive for about fifteen of the last thirty years, and had many other community service activities to her credit.

If a family’s house burned down, she was always one of the first on the scene, bringing blankets for all and toys for the children to take their minds off the tragedy, and by the next morning she would be starting a fundraising drive for the family. Many years before, she had been voted an honorary member of the Spearfish Lake Volunteer Fire Department Ladies Auxiliary for her efforts.

If there was need for new instruments or uniforms for the school band, or books or a new addition for the library, or whatever the community service, the organizers knew that Donna Clark could be counted on to do more than her fair share to see that the goals were met; and, in time, most people either forgot or could ignore the details of what had caused her first marriage to break up.

Kate Ellsberg, who was half Donna’s age that year, had no such cross to bear, but, as a Spearfish Lake girl, she was proof that Donna Clark’s campaign for respectability had been a success.

Even as a young girl, Kate had seen how Donna had been a community leader, was always active socially and a credit to the town, standing up for the forces of right in the face of the forces of evil. Even in high school, she had selected Donna as a model to steer her own life by, and as the years had passed and Kate gained a community respectability of her own, she had become Donna’s friend, compatriot, and ally.

Kate either had difficulty understanding why, or at least preferred to ignore the fact that she was having trouble getting some of the respectable men of the community to serve as judges for the chili contest. Bud hadn’t wanted to be a judge, but she knew how to handle him, and she had thought, correctly, that she could talk Frank Matson into being a judge without ask his mother to run interference. Harry Masterfield was a little harder, so she talked to Jane Masterfield, another member of the Spearfish Lake Woman’s Club, who volunteered her husband’s services.

With that completed, she walked up Railroad Street to the stately old Clark mansion, where Donna had lived alone after Wayne died of a heart attack in 1958.

Donna poured a cup of coffee for her friend, who reported, “I’ve got our three judges for the contest, but Frank says he’s going to disqualify any lutefisk chili he gets served.”

“Frank’s always had a stubborn streak,” Donna conceded, “though, I must admit, he gets it from his father.”

Kate knew her friend well enough to avoid that subject. “I see we had a nice story in the paper by that new reporter they’ve got. McMahon, or something like that?”

“Is he from around here?” Donna wondered.

“No, he’s from Camden, I think,” Kate said. “You know how it is. They come for a while, and then they’re gone. He seems like a pretty nice person, though.”

“Did he say anything in the story about whether the city council is going to pick up the costs for cleaning up after the festival?”

“No,” Kate replied, knowing that Donna wouldn’t get her copy of the Record-Herald until it came later in the mail. “He did say that council had to put off discussion of some items, as they ran out of time, and of course, that was one of them.”

“I don’t see why they can’t,” Donna said. “All I heard is that it cost them overtime last year that they hadn’t budgeted for, and I thought they had a budget for things like that.”

Kate nodded her head in agreement. “We’ve put a lot into this festival,” she said. “It can’t help but benefit the town. It seems like the council could put in their fair share.”

“I suppose we’ll have to fight with them about it,” Donna said. “The club will meet this afternoon. Why don’t you ask some of the ladies to go to the council meeting? I mean, it’s only a hundred dollars or so, and I suppose we could get some of the husbands to do the majority of the work, but it just seems to me like the city ought to contribute something to this project.”

“We can do that,” Kate agreed. “Oh, by the way. You know that woman from the Cooperative Extension Service who was going to speak to the club about fall flowers this afternoon? She called up last evening and said she’s got her little boy in the hospital, and she’s not going to be able to make it this afternoon. Maybe in a couple of weeks, she said.”

“Is the child very sick?” Donna asked, genuinely concerned.

“She didn’t say. Sick enough to be in the hospital, I guess. But that means we need another speaker for this afternoon. Do you have any ideas?”

“How about having your husband come over and talk about how to buy fall produce?” Donna suggested.

“I don’t think so,” Kate said. “We’ve leaned on him rather hard this summer.” And, she thought, he wasn’t too happy about having to judge the chili cook-off, either; might as well avoid a fight. “How about someone else?”

Donna thought for a moment. “I know,” she said, finally. “They’ve got a new minister at the Baptist Church who they’re considering taking on. I’m sure he would be glad to come and speak.”

Spearfish Lake Record Herald, August 13, 1975

SPEARFISH LAKE WOMAN’S CLUB MEETS

The Spearfish Lake Woman’s Club met Thursday, August 7, at the home of Mrs. Donna Clark. The fifteen members present answered Roll Call by telling, “A sign of Fall.”

The business meeting was conducted by the president, Mrs. Kate Ellsberg. Devotions were given by Mrs. Jane Masterfield. The Club Collect and the Pledge to the Flag were recited. The Secretary and Treasurer Reports were given by Mrs. Jane Masterfield and Mrs. Donna Clark, respectively.

Mrs. Ellsberg reported for the Chili Festival committee. Several items pertaining to the festival were discussed, and the final plans will be arranged at next week’s meeting of the club.

The president also reported on the meeting of the Tri-County Federation of Woman’s Clubs.

Following the business meeting, a program on “The New Immorality” was given by Kirk Wise, interim pastor of the Spearfish Lake First Baptist Church.

The founding of the West Turtle Lake Club, in the summer of 1946, was effectively the end of the brief truce negotiated by Brent Clark. As soon as word of what the Colonel really had in mind out at West Turtle Lake spread around the community, it was the start of a never-ending war between Donna Clark and her ex-husband.

Brent Clark was never able to prove that one of the reasons for the Colonel starting the club was to taunt his ex-wife, but if it had been, the strategy succeeded.

It had been a major setback in Donna’s campaign for respectability in Spearfish Lake. All too many people for her to remain comfortable realized that “that colony of deviates” wouldn’t be out northeast of town if Donna hadn’t left the Colonel, leaving him free to take up with this strange, sweet German girl.

Right from the beginning, Donna may have been the biggest enemy of the West Turtle Lake Club, and the biggest ally of those fundamentalist preachers over the years who had ranted and raved about this blotch on their communities.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the whole feud, which raged on in the community for years, was that Helga, the originator of the club, managed to remain serenely above the battle. Donna may have been big in the little world of Spearfish Lake Clubs, but Helga couldn’t have cared less; she had her own fish to fry, and usually just ignored Donna, which made Garth’s first wife even more furious.

The Colonel’s older children, of course, were at the center of the battle, and Helga, who had her own ideas about how children should be raised, realized that there was only a limited amount she could do with them, so she limited herself to being sweet, kind, gentle, and inoffensive to them to offset the ranting and raving they heard from their mother.

Though the custody agreement held, despite Donna blowing a ton of money on legal fees, Barbara never warmed to her stepmother, but the battle for Frank’s heart and mind was never-ending. It slackened a little when he left for college in 1958, but picked up even more strongly when he graduated and joined the staff of the Spearfish Lake State Savings Bank.

An even more important a battleground was the public opinion of Spearfish Lake.

Donna may have had public outrage on her side, but again, Garth held a pretty good hand, especially as he was the bank president and majority shareholder after Caleb’s death in early 1946. Ever since the founding of the West Turtle Lake Club, many people considered the Colonel a grade-one nut case, but only rarely did anyone make an issue of it.

Banking-wise, the Spearfish Lake State Savings Bank was the only fish in the pond. In the late forties and early fifties, some of the people who had gotten upset with the Colonel and Helga had taken their business to the bank in Albany River, but in 1953 the Colonel bought it out.

The real hard noses went on to bank at Northwoods Savings in Blair, until the local merchants discovered that a check from a Spearfish Lake resident, drawn on Northwoods, could take up to five weeks to clear if deposited in Spearfish Lake. Even many years later, some Spearfish Lake merchants were reluctant to take out-of-town checks, especially from Blair.

While there was a lot of opposition to the West Turtle Lake Club, there was not as much as might have been expected. After all, there were a lot of “D” Battery veterans in town who, even though they may not have been personally inclined toward sunshine and health nudism, had at least witnessed it briefly and had seen that it was a lot more innocent than it appeared on the surface.

The character of the community helped. Much of the really hard-nosed criticism of the club came from the Anglo-Saxon elements of the community, who were more sensitive about such things than the majority, who tended to be of north or middle European descent. It may have mattered that there was a large Finnish population, which had enjoyed their mixed saunas for years and would continue to do so, no matter what the Baptist ministers preached.

Wags said that about as many Spearfish Lake marriages were made as a result of saunas as were made in back seats of Fords and Chevys, and there may have been a ring of truth to it.

It is perhaps interesting that the existence of the club only rarely became a public issue, and never in print, or at least not directly.

Somehow, the Record-Herald never once in thirty years used the word “nudist” in connection with the West Turtle Lake Club, though it sometimes took Virginia Meyers or old man Sanderson or some young reporter a lot of skirting of the issue to make their point.

Several prominent Spearfish Lake families, in addition to the Matsons and the Brent Clark family, eventually became members of the club over the years.

When it became known that Roger Przyzlya, the Ford dealer and a “D” Battery vet, had joined the club, he protested that it was more for the golf course, rather than any big desire to get out in the sun bare-assed. Some people switched to Chevies, noting cynically that Przyzlya didn’t even play golf, but he picked up some sales, too.

It balanced out.

Virtually every new preacher who came to the community felt duty-bound to take a swing at the club, at one time or another. It was Colonel Matson’s policy, learned from Helga, to ignore such creatures, and sooner or later they would go away.

One Methodist brought in by Donna back in the mid-fifties had proved especially obnoxious, and it had been necessary to inform the church board through intermediaries that the Methodist Women’s Club could hold bake sales from now until the resurrection, but unless they canned the preacher and shut up Donna, they could just whistle for a donation or a loan for their new church building from the Spearfish Lake State Savings Bank.

The building committee had been counting on both, and it did not take long for reason to return. The Colonel was not above using muscle when he had to.

In time, the West Turtle Lake Club achieved a degree of acceptance, at least as one of those things that have to be lived with.

In time people learned to put up with the Colonel; like him or leave him. Things got a lot easier when Frank Matson got involved with the bank in the early sixties; people who couldn’t bear to deal with the Colonel, thanks to Frank’s mother, could deal with him.

Spearfish Lake Record-Herald, April 23, 1959

OPEN HOUSE HELD FOR NEW METHODIST CHURCH

The awesome grace of Ursula Mandenberg Clark’s vision of grandeur for the new Spearfish Lake First United Methodist Church was open for services for the first time Sunday, when a huge crowd of Spearfish Lake Methodists and well-wishers jammed the beautiful sanctuary of the new church for its dedication ceremony.

Architect Ursula Mandenberg Clark said in a brief statement that the striking design was intended to be a testament to the glory of God, with its upswept spire and glorious glassed-in sanctuary …

… Pastor Rinqvist stated that many had contributed to the construction of the new church, but that the contributions of the architect, Clark Construction Company, builder of the church, and the support of the Spearfish Lake State Savings Bank had been very important toward the successful completion of the project.

Other important local contributors to the project included …

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