Midwest Roadtrips Bond Father and Children

With a smile on his face, Bruce Odson reminisced about the 11 years that he planned one-on-one roadtrips for he and each of his three children.

"I decided it'd be a great way to get to know them. And when you get married at 35, and you have twins at 40, and you start this program about 41 or 42, it's a real educational process," Odson explained. "And, the kids still talk about it. They still remember things."

Bruce met his wife Susan while working in his hometown of Huron, SD. After their first daughter, Catherine, was born, the couple decided that one more child would round out the family. However, mother nature brought them two surprises - twins!

With twins on Bruce's father's side, the South Dakota couple shouldn't have been too surprised when their family had grown bigger than planned.

"When Catherine celebrated her 2^nd birthday, we brought the twins home from the hospital," Bruce explained. "For at least a day, we had three under 2."

With three small children at home, this South Dakota dad decided to make sure he spent quality individual time with each of his three children; Catherine, Charles and Ellen.

When Catherine was 3, Bruce started a tradition that would live in the hearts and memories of all three of his children to this day.

Fueling his love of travel and research, Bruce packed the car, one child at a time, to explore his family history and scope out some less traveled roads in the Midwest.

"I'm a big believer in back roads. So we cruised across Southern Minnesota and Iowa, saw some relatives," Bruce explained of his first trip with Catherine.

As an added incentive, the children would earn a dollar or two for each stop they made to a church, a bank or a newspaper office. And those hard earned bills weren't spent on candy.

"The only place they could spend it was a Borders or Barnes and Noble, or a comparable book store," Bruce explained.

When Catherine was a mere 8 years old, her own curiosity about her family began to shine through.

"She wanted to see where I lived in 8^th grade, so we went to Fargo and then we went up to Lake Itasca and she walked across the Mississippi, just like I did," Bruce explained.

"And then we went down to Minneapolis. I think we were going by St. John's University when she made a comment that she needed three more newspaper stops in order to get the book that she wanted when we got to Minneapolis."

After several stops at newspaper offices and discovering the sites of the Midwest, it isn't surprising that Catherine has turned her love of research and reading into a career. She currently works for the Kansas City Community Newspapers.

Bruce's trips with his son, Charles, always involved airplanes.

One year their travels took them to the airport in Kansas City. The two were delighted to check into their hotel and find they had been upgraded to a room with a glass wall, perfect for viewing the world of aviation.

"He just laid there watching planes land and take off and the only time we left was when we went over to private aviation terminals, or we took the courtesy van to the airline terminals," Bruce recalls of the trip with Charles. "Usually his trips, we always incorporated an airport into them."

Today, Charles has just finished his 3^rd year in aerospace at the University of North Dakota. He would like to become an air traffic controller in a suburban area, perhaps Kansas City.

Ellen, the youngest of the twins, by about 30 seconds, is finishing her junior year at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. She is studying Education and Biochemistry.

One of Ellen's trips with her father took a turn that nobody expected.

En route to Marshalltown to visit Susan's uncle, the two took a detour through the Des Moines area. With a steady rain pounding on the windshield, Bruce decided to get off the interstate and travel the local roads.

"All the underpasses were getting full of water, and it took us, to get from the East side of town back to the West side, about 2 hours because of the detours," Bruce explained of the increasingly bad weather.

The two found refuge in a local hotel, and witnessed the patrons being ushered into interior rooms. A Tornado Watch had been issued, and little did the two know, that rain was the precursor to the memorable Des Moines floods of 1993.

Each trip that Bruce made with the children was curtailed to their specific interests, and allowed the children to visit relatives or explore something educational.

Bruce's wife Susan felt the trips were good for both the children and their father.

"She was all for it because she spent time with the other two then," Bruce noted.

In the early 1990's Bruce and Susan traveled to Norway to discover their family lineage.

"We have spent time learning family history, so when we came back from Norway I put together picture packs for all my dad's cousins in their 70's and 80's, to show them where there family lived and where some distant relatives were that we actually met," Bruce explained of his travels.

Armed with more information about their family, Bruce again hit the backroads with his children to spread the information he and his wife discovered during their trip to Norway.

"We spent a couple of years delivering picture packs to all my dad's cousins so they could look at where they came from because they all remembered the great grand-father's," Bruce explained of the trips that allowed his children to visit relatives and talk about family history.

Perhaps Bruce's love of travel and teaching his children about the world around them stemmed from his own father's rearing.

Bruce's father, Urban Odson, played professional football for the Green Bay Packers.

"He had a program that when we would go in to see a game, we always stayed where the visiting team stayed," Bruce explained.

And as a young boy, being able to see the players up close was a dream come true.

"At that time, you had access like that," Bruce noted. "The first years we stayed where the American Wrestling Assoc (AWA) was headquartered. The Matchmaker had played with my dad in Minnesota and Green Bay."

Once Bruce was old enough to participate in sports himself, his love of track flourished. Bruce became a runner and has earned gold and silver medals from state track meets.

"When I was in high school he was very supportive of whatever sport we tried," Bruced noted of his dad with an NFL career. " He taught me to listen to the coach."

"In high school he would drive to Watertown or Aberdeen to watch me run. He'd sit at the top of the bleachers, and then come down and shake hands as I got on the bus," Bruce reminisced.

And although Bruce didn't play football, his father was proud of his athletic achievements. Bruce went on to coach the track team at Riverton High School on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Riverton, Wyoming while student teaching for his Education degree from the University of Wyoming.

"It wasn't that I had to be a football star, it was be the best at what you could. And that was the same that I did with my kids."

"I think the most important thing that he instilled is just be the best that you can be and you're going to go someplace where somebody is better than you are, but if you're doing 100% or 110% of what you're capable of doing, that's what you do."

Now that his children are grown, people may recognize Bruce for his community involvement.

In his 13^th year of owning newspapers, Bruce Odson is the Publisher of Sedgwick Publishing, which produces the Dakota Dunes / North Sioux City Times, the Hawarden Independant / Ireton Examiner, the Southern Union County Leader-Courier in Elk Point and the Areawide Advertiser. Sedgwick Publishing is also involved with the Eastern South Dakota Peach and The Country Guide.

Bruce's personal interest is in local economic development. Serving as President, he is in his10^th year with the North Sioux City Economic Development Committee, his 3^rd year with the Elk Point Economic Development Committee and serves on the board for the Economic Development Committee in Hawarden.

And, he is a father to three well-rounded children.

***This article was originally published in the North Sioux City / Dakota Dunes Times and the Hawarden Independant / Ireton Examiner by Sedgwick Publishing.***