Clan William: Capt David Minard, MC, USN, MD

Capt David Minard, MC USN MD

Yesterday, we talked about Gladys (a Munson descendant) and Archibald Ellison Minard. Today, the
subject is one of their sons, Captain David Minard, MC USN MD. 

Capt Thomas Munson > Samuel Munson > Samuel James Munson > William Munson > Martha Munson > Rueben Doolittle > James Rood Doolittle > Sara Lovinia Doolittle > Gladys May Pease m. Archibald Ellsworth Minard > David Minard

David Minard was born 23  May 1913 in Fargo, North Dakota, where his father was a professor at nearby North Dakota Agricultural College. Minard grew up in Fargo, then attended college at the University of Chicago with a PhD in Physiology in 1937. He received his medical degree at UoC in 1943 and joined the US Navy (MC) as a physician. In 1954, he completed a master's in public health from Harvard University (his father's alma mater).

David served in the military from 1943 until 1963, attaining the rank of Captain (0-6). During the war, he was assigned to various command assignments such as Flagship 67/Division 23 and Group 10 staff on temporary duty as part of medical staff. 

Beginning in 1946, David headed the physiology department at the Naval Medical Research Center in Bethesda, MD. David met and married Sarah Prince "Sally" Zimmerman and their first child, a son, arrived in 1949; two more boys and a girl would follow before 1956. During the 1950s, he'd attained the rank of Captain.  In 1957, along with Constantin Yaglou, he developed a wet globe termperature index for Marines training at Parris Island, South Carolina. This had applications beyond the military - steel plants, in foot racing, and industrial environments, where humans were exposed to high temperatures.

Mercury 7 Astronauts

In 1960, David used the Index to evaluate the astronauts of Mercury 7, the.first manned space flights in the United States.  The program, started in 1958, ended with six manned flights between 1961 and 1963. 

David's most newsworthy research occurred in 1962 when the news of the experiments hit the newspapers across the country.  The research involved taking a group of 98 sailors and two officers and medical personnel into a 25x48 concrete shelter built on the grounds of the Research Center at Bethesda. They stayed in the shelter for 14 consecutive days. The purpose was to test psychological, physical, and physiological effects of long stays in such environments. 

The experiment included TV cameras which could continually monitor everything that happened during the process. Two individuals would exit the shelter on a daily basis to take Geiger and other readings. And, while being equipped with electricity there was no heat other than body heat. Food was provided at 2,000 calories each day. There was no real recreation other than books and magazines. 

For their part, the sailors, from the US Naval Training Center at Great Lakes, Illinois, each received a 72-hour pass after their release from the shelter and follow-on testing. David called it a "great success."

Capt Minard about to enter
fallout shelter saying goodbye
to his family

In 1963, David left the military and moved on as a Professor at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate
School of Public Health. He was named Professor Emeritus in 1974. 

David and his wife Sally divorced. Son Nicholas, aged 21 died in Pittsburgh in 1975. At about the same time, David remarried, this time to Dorotha J Rittenhouse Fallong, mother of two.

Sally went on to marry Walter Limbach. She lived to the ripe age of 90, dying in 2014. After her divorce from David, she worked as a family therapist working with women who survived domestic abuse at the Women's Center and Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh. 

David went back to clinical work at US Steel and at the Easton Memorial Hospital in Easton, Maryland. He finally retired in 1980. On 09 Oct 2005 after a stroke, in Cambridge, Maryland. His wife Dorotha died in 2012.

Clan William: Gladys Pease and Archibald Ellsworth Minard

Sen. James Rood Doolittle with
children (Sara seated)

Those Munson women seemed to attach themselves to some high-achieving men. In this case, Gladys
connected herself to Archibald Ellsworth Minard, a Harvard graduate who would travel west to North Dakota. The Clan William connections is as listed:

Capt Thomas Munson > Samuel Munson > Samuel James Munson > William Munson > Martha Munson > Rueben Doolittle > James Rood Doolittle > Sara Lovinia Doolittle > Gladys May Pease m. Archibald Ellsworth Minard

Gladys came from "good stock." Her grandfather was Senator James Rood Doolittle, an attorney, who had hailed from Hampton, Washington County, New York. He had relocated to Racine, Wisconsin in 1851 where he was elected judge of the first judicial circuit in 1853 and then in 1857 began serving two terms as a US Senator. He later was a professor of law at Chicago University and was a trustee of same.

The marriage of her father, Edwin Hatfield Pease and mother, Sara Doolittle, was the social event of the year in Racine in 1879. Edwin had served as a private in the Civil War in Company F of the Illinois 93rd Infantry Regiment. A manufacturer/businessman of good repute in Racine, he died of complications of the flu/pneumonia at age 49 in 1890. Gladys was the fourth of the five children, born in 1887.

Archibald Ellsworth Minard

Sara Doolittle Pease married John Adams Prindle, a widower with five surviving children in 1895. In 1900, the family moved to Springvale, Stark, North Dakota to pioneer. Sadly, John died in 1907 in Fargo, North Dakota.  In 1910, Sara relocated to the Sioux City, Iowa area and lived with her son the veterinarian, Edward Pease, for a few months, then she moved in with son H. T. Pease in Deer Park, Washington, where she died on 27 Jul 1911.

Daughter Gladys had made a "good marriage" with Archibald Ellsworth Minard, a native of Novia Scotia born in 1878, who had emigrated to the US when he was 11 years old.  Archibald received his degrees from Harvard and became a professor of English and Philosophy at North Dakota Agricultural College (now North Dakota State University). The couple had married in 1908 and proceeded to have four children; two boys and two girls. 

Professor Minard served as interim president for three months in 1929, then became the Dean of the School for Applied Arts and Sciences the same year. He would hold that position until 1949. 

Gladys died in 1939 at the age of 48. She had just seen her daughter Lois married in 1936 and son Edwin in 1938. 

Archibald remarried in 1941 to a widow with two grown children, Elita Gustava Olson McArdle. 

One of the noteworthy things that Archibald did while at NDAC, was to write the school song, the lyrics of which are today, quite awful, but for the time, far less offensive:

...He wanted to incorporate the school colors, yellow and green, with North Dakota’s landscape and characteristics. Minard thought he could use his song as well for the State’s song. Minard wrote the lyrics and then took the song to Clarence Putnam, the head of the music department at the time. “The Yellow And The Green” did become the University's official school song, but it did make it as the state’s song as Minard would have hoped. Instead, Putnam wrote the music for what became the state's song in 1947 and used the lyrics from James W. Foley’s “The North Dakota Hymn.” There has been some controversy surrounding the school song. In the third stanza of the song, it speaks of the red man scavenging the land for scraps, while the white anglo saxons prevail and conquer the prairies...https://pocketsights.com/tours/place/Archibald-Minard-6511:809

In 1949, Minard retired as Dean, but continued to teach philosophy at the School. The former Science building, built in 1902 and which had a fourth floor added in 1919, was named after Minard in honor of his 46 years of service at NDAC. The fourth floor of the building was where dances were held. In 2011, the building collapsed in on itself and would not be revived until 2013. It is still in use.

Minard died on 09 May 1950 died at Bethesda Naval Hospital, where he had been hospitalized for four weeks. Son David lived nearby.

Minard Hall, former Science Hall at NDAC