On his visit to Thief River Falls for the Section 8A hockey tournament championship game, Ralph Engelstad (center) was hosted by friends Tony and Pat Dorn. Pat (Mullen) was a classmate of Engelstad for eight years at St. Bernard's school and four years at Lincoln high school. Her late husband Allen Thompson played with Ralph in the first state hockey tournament sanctioned by the Minnesota State High School League in 1945.

State tournament team from Lincoln high school in 1945 posed for this photo which was made into a printed poster by the St. Paul Dispatch-Pioneer Press. Team members (from left) include: Front row, Lester Vigness, Wesley Hovie, Lloyd Johnson, Ralph Engelstad, Robert Baker and James Doyle; back row, Darwin Ferrier, assistant coach; Derwood Lund, Alan Thompson, James Welch, Donald Brossoit, Donald Hage, Coach Connie Stanbridge and Supt. P. L. Fjelstad. Note that although the team carried the name of the Prowlers, the uniforms were borrowed from the city league Thief River Falls Thieves. Engelstad wore a jersey from American Legion Post 117. The photo was provided through the courtesy of Pat (Mullen) Dorn, whose late husband Al Thompson was a member of the team. Pat attended St. Bernard's Catholic school with Engelstad for eight years.

Section 8A hockey tournament second place trophy was presented last Thursday evening by Ralph Engelstad to the Thief River Falls Prowlers. As the catalyst in naming the Thief River Falls arena in honor of former Thief River Falls Times sports editor Huck Olson, he was invited by the Section 8A tournament committee to present the trophies and medals following the championship game.

Prominently displaying the emblem of his Imperial Palace hotel and casino, one of Ralph Engelstad's private aircraft rests on the apron at the Thief River Falls regional airport last Thursday. The Boeing 727 carried Engelstad and his private secretary--who had never seen a hockey game in person--from Las Vegas, Nevada to Thief River Falls where Engelstad presented trophies and medals following the Section 8A hockey championship game. Also catching a ride was Bruce Brink of Thief River Falls, who was in Las Vegas for an Arctic Cat clothing show and was granted a lift so he could watch his stepson, Brett Johnson, play in the title game. Engelstad is presently having a second, newer 727 retrofitted. He hasn't taken a commercial flight in over 20 years.

Sixty years ago an under-sized nine-year-old banged around the outdoor skating rink behind St. Bernard's Catholic school in Thief River Falls, four or five copies of Life magazine wrapped around each shin to soften the bruises from errant hockey pucks.

On Thursday evening, February 25, an older but no less enthusiastic Ralph Engelstad returned to hockey ice in his home town, this time as a guest of honor to present trophies following the championship game of the Section 8A hockey tournament.

Appropriately, albeit surprisingly, Thief River Falls was playing for the right to advance to the state high school hockey tournament--a tournament with memories Engelstad treasures as a freshman goaltender on the first Lincoln high school team ever to play in the state event in 1945. The 1999 Prowlers had upset favored Warroad in overtime to advance to the championship round, but lost Thursday to East Grand Forks 2-1 for the Region 8A title.

Between that 1945 state tournament--the first ever sanctioned by the Minnesota State High School League--and Thursday's championship game in the Huck Olson Memorial Civic Center, Ralph Engelstad graduated from Lincoln high school and the University of North Dakota, went into business and has become--if wealth is a measure of business success--the most successful businessman ever to call Thief River Falls home. His name and his success are well known in the Thief River Falls community, but few know him as a person rather than an entity.

Engelstad returned at the invitation of the Region 8A tournament committee because it was his initiative that resulted in the naming of the Thief River Falls ice arena for long-time Thief River Falls Times Sports Editor Huck Olson. He flew into the Thief River Falls regional airport Thursday afternoon on his private Boeing 727 which prominently displays the name of his major business--the Imperial Palace hotel and casino in Las Vegas, NV. And he broke with a long-standing policy against talking with the media to pay tribute to Huck Olson.

"Huck was a friend of everyone, but especially to kids in sports," Engelstad said. "He helped a lot of kids so that it was possible for them to be a part of athletics. If they lived in the country, he would give them a ride home from practice or games. Not many people had much money in those days, including Huck, but he found a way to get a kid a glove or a pair of shoes or a hockey stick that he needed in order to play

"He did it on his own and never took any credit for it," Engelstad continued. "There must have been an unwritten code between him and those he helped, because I never remember the kids mentioning that something came from Huck. They would just show up one day with a glove or whatever and that was it, but we knew where it came from.

"As kids we always waited until the paper came out every week to see what Huck had to say. He never wrote about bad things. He wouldn't think of making a youngster feel bad or embarrassed. His stories and columns were always positive. There were a lot of kids in Thief River Falls who would never have been able to take part in sports if it hadn't been for Huck."

It is apparent that Huck Olson's methods and attitude left an impression on Ralph Engelstad. In some ways he has emulated that spirit of quietly helping others, never seeking publicity but often unable to avoid it because of his largess. Witness his recent staggering donation of $100 million to the University of North Dakota. He flew into Grand Forks, made his presentation, and flew home. The brief announcement ceremony was at UND's request, not his. He would have been content without it; even would have preferred no public acclaim. But he admits that being able to make a gift like that, to "help somebody out," is a personally "good feeling."

No one will ever know how many times and to what extent Engelstad has shared his success with others through his gifts. Nor will anyone realize how hard he worked and how much of his life he devoted to building his business and his wealth--how difficult it was to go to sleep at night when a buzz of business dealings and ideas filled his head.

Second in line in a family of five children, Ralph has worked since he was 12 years old. He spent his summer vacations at that tender age working for a grocery or the AGSCO farm supply company where his father, Chris Engelstad, was employed. Hockey was a pleasant diversion in the winter, and he became the regular goalie on the high school team as a freshman. He doesn't recall a lot about the regular season, but his memories of the 1945 state tournament are still vivid.

Engelstad's Prowlers defeated Williams 8-4 and Roseau 3-1 to gain entry to the state event. At the state tournament Thief River Falls edged a stubborn White Bear Lake team 3-2 in the first round and St. Cloud Tech 12-0 in the semi-finals to meet tournament favorite Eveleth in the championship. Eveleth scored two goals in the first period and Thief River Falls one. In his story in the Times, Huck Olson described the second period:

"In a sensational second period, the Prowlers moved into the lead. After goalie Ralph Engelstad had made three remarkable saves, with Eveleth's Finnegan and Grant carrying the puck to the goal -mouth before booming off their shots, Les Vigness, at the 5:21 mark, and with Eveleth's Milan Begich serving a penalty, recovered his own rebound and whipped the puck past goalie Drobnich, tieing the score at 2-all.

"Five minutes later, (Bob) Baker and Vigness, on a two-man breakaway from center ice, skated in on Eveleth's goalie and Baker, after feinting Drobnich out of the net, flipped a pass to Vigness, and Les, from four feet out, pounded the shot into the net."

In the third period, Wes Hovie of the Prowlers took a hooking penalty (Engelstad believes it should never have been called) and Eveleth scored two quick goals by Wally Grant on the power play--the first on a rebound and the second when he picked up a loose puck. "At that time the penalties were for two minutes and did not end if the opposing team scored," Engelstad said. The final score was 4-3 as Eveleth won the first state high school hockey tournament.

Ralph has his own explanation for his spectacular game. "During the warm-ups I got hit by a puck right between the eyes," he chuckles in retrospect. In those days goalies had no protective face masks. "Les Vigness said they should hit me between the eyes all the time because I had never played that good."

In his ˆKeeping Score" column, Huck Olson wrote:

"While the Prowler squad played like All-Stars, several of the boys were exceptional. Bob Baker, who was playing with referee Don King's skates, having broken the blade on one of his own skates, was the tournament's outstanding performer.....

"He's a young Turk Broda,' that's what one of the fans called the locals' Ralph Engelstad after the freshman goalie had kicked out four shots in the second period. Four times the Eveleth first line was right in on the goalie and drove shots at him, and four times he made unbelievable stops. On a couple of those shots you could hear the echo all over the auditorium as the puck boomed off Ralph's pads.

"Coach (Cliff) Thompson (Eveleth coach), after the game, said that Engelstad had no business stopping three of those shots and he, Thompson, who has coached such goalies as Frankie Brimsek, Mike Karakas, Sam LoPresti and Oscar Almquist, should know what shots a goalie should be able to block. Almquist, who attended the tournament with three of his Roseau players, said that he'd have picked Engelstad for all-state goalie ahead of St. Paul Washington's Okoneski...."

Rumor has it that Engelstad was denied the all-state selection because he was a freshman and could be expected to return to the state tournament again for another chance. As it turned out, that never happened. Thief River Falls never returned to the state tournament while Engelstad was in high school.

Engelstad went on to play for the University of North Dakota for two seasons, earning a scholarship through the assistance of Ben Gustafson, a UND professor who, like Engelstad, was working during the summer in Grand Forks unloading boxcars.

"I didn't have any money to go to school," he said. "My parents didn't have any money to send me to school. The only reason I could go to college was because Professor Gustafson was able to get me that scholarship."

Ralph left UND after two years and moved to the West Coast to earn some money. Two years later he returned to UND, but played his hockey as a member of the Grand Forks Amerks, a semi-pro team like the Thief River Falls Thieves. He completed school in the middle of the year a couple of years after going back to the university, graduating with the Class of 1954.

He was married that same year to Betty Stocker, whose parents farmed on the River Road north of East Grand Forks, and they lived in Grand Forks while Ralph was involved more deeply in construction. He moved to Las Vegas in the fall of 1959 where he built a house and Betty joined him in 1961. They have a daughter Kris and two grandchildren--four-year-old grandson Sean and one-year-old granddaughter Erin--all living in Las Vegas. 

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