Mervin A. TUNTLAND

TUNTLAND, ANDERSON, NESSET, DEPLAZES

Posted By: Sarah Thorson Little (email)
Date: 11/9/2008 at 12:17:43

Bismarck Tribune, The (ND)
October 26, 1994

COLEHARBOR, North Dakota -- Mervin A. Tuntland, 88, Coleharbor, died Oct. 24, 1994, in a Bismarck hospital. Services will be held at 2 p.m. Friday at First Lutheran Church, Washburn, with the Rev. John Nilsen officiating. Music will be provided by Jerry Brenneise, organist. Burial will be in Riverview Cemetery, Washburn. Visitation will be from 2 to 9 p.m. Thursday and 9 a.m. to noon Friday at Goetz Funeral Home, Washburn, and will continue at the church one hour before services.

Mervin A. Tuntland was born April 26, 1906, at Leland, Ill. to Omar and Emma (Anderson) Tuntland. He attended school in Leland and Thor, Iowa, before moving to his grandfather's farm outside of Sheyenne in 1920. He graduated from the Benson County Agricultural Training School in Maddock in 1926. He received his bachelor's in Agriculture from the North Dakota Agricultural College in Fargo in 1931 and his master's in agricultural economics in 1950 from the same college. He then taught vocational agriculture at Cooperstown from 1933 to 1935. He was assistant County Extension Agent in Ward County from October 1935-February 1936 when he became the McLean County Extension Agent in Washburn. He held that position until 1941 when he resigned to begin operating the farm he purchased near Coleharbor. In addition to his other pursuits he continued to operate and work on the farm until his death. He taught vocational agriculture and coached basketball at Benson County Agricultural Training School during the 1944-1945 school year. From 1946-1950 he taught agricultural economics at the North Dakota Agricultural College in Fargo, and took graduate work in agricultural economics. In 1950 he bought a half interest in the Washburn Leader at Washburn and served as editor of the paper for two years. From 1952-1956 he was engaged primarily in farming but also taught winter quarters at NDSU in 1955 and 1956. In the fall of 1956 he enrolled at the UND Law School in Grand Forks and graduated from there with a Juris Doctor Degree in June 1959. He built his law office in Garrison during the summer of 1959 and practiced law there from the winter of 1959 until he retired from the law practice at the age of 79 in 1985.

He served as the McLean County Justice for 16 years and also operated McLean County Realty. During all this time he continued to operate the farm. Following his retirement he moved from Garrison back to the farm outside of Coleharbor. He married Constance Nesset in 1933 at Maddock. Merv was a member of Masonic Lodge in Washburn and the Order of Eastern Star in Garrison and Minot. He was a founder and the first Master of the Sunrise Masonic Lodge in Fargo, and was a member of the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity at NDSU in Fargo. He had a life-long commitment to education and established two scholarship funds to help McLean County and Cooperstown High School graduates attend college. His pride in farming and his love of growing trees can be seen at his farm home outside of Coleharbor, which is served by a private half-mile road between two handsome rows of Russian olives and surrounded by a beautiful shelter belt of elm and ash trees that Merv grew from small trees.

Survivors include his wife, Constance; one daughter, Patricia Tuntland, Tucson, Ariz.; two sons and daughters-in-law, Richard and Donna, Houston, Texas, and Tom and Michel Deplazes, Mandan; one brother, Orrin, Sheyenne; seven grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his parents; one son, William John, who died of leukemia shortly before his fourth birthday; and two brothers, (infant Harold) and Ivan.