The Fargo Forum reported the astonishing accomplishments of a recent immigrant to the state on this day in 1928. Ida Keber, originally from Possenheim, East Prussia, surprised her Kenmare schoolteachers by completing a full twelve-grade general education course only one year after her arrival to this country. This feat is even more impressive when one learns that Miss Keber had not known a single word of English before her arrival.

Miss Keber’s hometown of Possenheim was only twelve miles from the Russian border, and during the first World War, she and her family were forced to flee from the invading Germans. Several residents of her village spent a large portion of the war living in the nearby forests, surviving on potatoes and roots. They were forced to maintain constant vigilance, as both friendly and enemy planes flew bombing missions overhead. After obtaining command of the English language, Miss Keber was able to tell the horrors and depredations of her story to fellow North Dakotans. Although the worst effects of the war were felt between 1914 and 1916 in her area of East Prussia, she claimed that the aftermath of the war was also an ordeal on her and her family. Germany was “…in the throes of revolution and of readjustment.” It was during this period that the young woman met Father Wagner of Kenmare. Miss Keber was teaching alongside Wagner’s niece in Germany when the Father paid the girl a visit. Hearing Miss Keber’s ambition to learn English and attend school in America, Wagner invited the girl to Kenmare to study at the St. Agnes’ Academy.

Miss Keber took Wagner up on his offer, and arrived in Kenmare in 1926; she immediately began attending school in order to learn English. Her teachers were taken aback by the rapid progress that the young immigrant made in her coursework. After only a year, Keber completed the twelve grades of elementary and high school work, and began attending the Minot Teachers College, hoping to earn a degree in order to teach in the United States. When the World War landed on her doorstep, it is doubtful that Miss Keber believed that she would ever be able to realize her dreams of teaching in this country, but with the help of a kind North Dakota priest, she was able to do just that.

Sources:
The Minot Daily News (Evening ed.). January 28, 1928: p. 5.
The Fargo Forum (Morning ed.). February 1, 1928: p. 3.

--Jayme L. Job

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