Joseph and Olive Asbjornson pose with their oldest daughter, Sigridur, born in 1876. Known as Hannah in the United States, she married George Lhamon and died in Portland, Oregon.

Eric and Boots give little Norm some fresh air outside their house in 1936. Behind them is the house of Ted Bergum. He worked with Eric for many years as school principal and superintendent. The wood walkway ran under a clothes line, allowing Eric to pin up laundry without getting her feet muddy. Norm, age 1, in 1936.

Norman Harold Asbjornson was born in Winifred, Montana, on December 10, 1935. The first son of Julian "Boots" Asbjornson and Dorothy "Eric" Asbjornson, Norm was the fourth generation to live in Winifred, but the first in his line to be born there. Norm's great-grandmother, Olive, born in Iceland in 1856, and grandparents, Oscar and Thora, lived a short walk from Norm's childhood home.

At the time of Norm's birth, Winifred was a hardscrabble town. Many of the homesteaders that settled the land above the Missouri Breaks had been driven from it by persistent drought and the economic hardships of the Great Depression. In 1935, Winifred counted a scant 200 residents, horses trotted down the town's dirt streets, and nighttime enveloped the unelectrified town in darkness.

 

 
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