Carl Otis Dahl

DAHL HICKS

Posted By: Connie Swearingen (email)
Date: 4/19/2010 at 21:38:15

Woodbury County History 1984

Carl Otis Dahl
By Marilyn Dahl Whitney

Carl Otis Dahl, Jr, is not really a junior, but they always used that to distinguish their mail, telephone, etc. After the Dahls moved in to Sloan in 1919, Carl had many odd jobs; his first real job was working for Jim Hennum in hs grocery store. He was an important part of the Sloan High School football team during his years there.

After graduation in 1928, he had many jobs. He helped build Hight 30 across western Nebraska; the trucking business was just starting and he drove trucks hauling flour, corn and many other goods in South Dakota and Iowa. Gail, his brother, started Dahl Truck Lines about that time. He hired his brother because he couldn’t afford to pay him anyway! In 1937, Carl joined Chris and together they bought out the brothers and brothers-in-law and formed Dahl Brothers Oil Company. The station was in business in Sloan longer than any other business, before or since.

Carl married Viola Mae Hicks on October 28, 1934. She worked for Iowa Public Service in Sloan over ten years. They bought the house on the corner of Fourth and Barnard, across the street from the Christian Church. They had one daughter Marilyn, and Viola passed away suddenly in December, 1942 of complications in her second pregancy.

Early in 1943, Carl Enlisted in the US Army. Less than a week before he was due to ship out to the Pacific, he met Gaynell McLeod in the Base Exchange of Camp Ellis, Illinois. Carl spent over to years in the Philippines and New Guinea as a heavy equipment operator. His unit was one of the first into an area after the Marines had retaken it, to repair and rebuild roads and runways so other troops could be brought in and could maneuver. He was wounded by schrapnel in the back and leg and began the long arduous journey home by ship, near the end of the war.

Gaynell, an Alabama girl, and her older sister, Ruth, a nurse, joined the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps and spent the war in such places as Fort Des Moines, Camp Ellis, and Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan. Carl and Garnell were married February 23, 1946, in New Orleans, Louisiana, and returned to Sloan and Dahl Brothers.

Marilyn, in the meantime, had been living with her grandparents and aunts and uncles around Sloan and Sioux City. The summer of 1945, she moved to O’Neill, Nebraska, with the Coil family and started her school days there. Nine months later she returned to Sloan and the Sloan Consolidated School system. The family were members of First Christian Church; they were active in all areas of churchwork and were always the best of friends and neighbors with the ministers’ families, who lived two houses away. Carl served on the School Board before he entered the service and after, and both he and Gaynell have been very active in American Legion and Auxiliary, Smith-Rhodes Post #295.

March 1, 1967, Chris and Carl sold the station to Cliff and Bud Ping but continued to operate the tank business another six years, selling that to the Ping brothers on March 1, 1973. Carl still drives for them on occasion and helps with some farming in the Sloan-Whiting area in the spring and fall, but for the most part he and Gaynell are retired. Retirement includes fishing, woodworking, maintaining a large garden and spending lots of time with the great-grandchildren, Matthew and Denise Struble and Natasha Vanston.

For many years, Carl has been the unofficial sexton of the Sloan Cemetry. He has all the records and maps and hardly a month passes, summer or winter, that someone doesn’t ‘pass through town’ looking for long-lost relatives and he accompanies them to the cemetery on their rounds.