USA > South Dakota > Who's who in South Dakota, Vol. III > Part 7
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"Time, place, and action, may with pains be wrought, But genius must be born, and never can be taught." DRYDEN
UPS AND DOWNS OF LIFE
Willard C. Lusk was born on the old farm owned by his grandfather near Freeport, Illinois, November 6, 1869. In 1875, the family removed to Iowa; and in 1883, they
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came to Dakota and settled on a homestead near Hazel in Hamlin County. Here Willard spent his 'teens.
His early education was begun in the rural schools of Iowa and continued in this class of schools in Dakota. Two winters he studied at home. Finally, at the age of seventeen, he passed an examination and secured a certifi- cate to teach school. He taught the home school.
However, at twenty years of age, thirsting for knowledge and the broadening influence of higher education, he entered Brookings State College. While in school he was made editor of the Collegian - the local college pa- per. Things went all right until he reached his senior college year. At that time Brook- ings College was in the throes of a political wrangle. The stand taken by the regents of education on certain phases of the dispute displeased the students greatly. Young Lusk wrote and published in the Collegian a fear- less attack on the regents' action. The faculty called him before them and demanded that he retract. This he refused to do; but said he would resign as editor of the paper.
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This the editorial staff refused to let him do. The attack was continued in the next is- sue of the paper. Then, the faculty ex- pelled from college the entire staff of the paper, consisting of seven members, includ- ing Lusk. Of the 200 students in the institu- tion at the time, 125 walked out. Only three seniors were left in school. Ames State Col- lege, in Iowa, accepted Lusk's credits and graduated him in the spring of 1893.
He spent the school year 1893-4 at the University of Wisconsin, taking post gradu- ate work in economics and history. In 1896, the new board of regents called him back to Brookings, and vindicated him by graduating him with the class of that year. Lusk had won - simply because he possessed :
"Courage, the highest gift, that scorns to bend To mean devices for a sordid end.
Courage - an independent spark from heaven's bright throne,
By which the soul stands raised, triumphant, high, alone."
FARQUHAR
BECOMES NEWSPAPER MAN
After a year at the University of Wiscon- sin, he returned to Castlewood in Hamlin
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County, and for two years was superintend- ent of the city schools at that place.
But, he soon saw that the teaching pro- fession, poorly paid as it was at that time, held no future for him, and so, on January 1, 1896, he quit teaching and purchased the Castlewood Republican which he converted, editorially, into a gold-standard sheet.
He supported Mckinley for president in 1896; but, after the election, he sold out and went to California, in January following. Six months later he went to Missouri Valley, Iowa, and ran the Harrison Republican for a year and a half. In July, 1898, he sold out and came to Yankton, South Dakota, where he engaged in the publishing business, as previously set forth.
Editor Lusk runs a conservative news- paper. It is wholly minus the sensational. He struggles to make it accurate. Edi- torially, the paper is fearless. It has, under his management, taken a firm stand on all matters pertaining to the social and the eco- nomic advancement of Yankton. Lusk op- posed the breweries in his home city: they are gone. He opened up mercilessly but
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logically on the debasing resorts that fringed the Missouri hills along the south side of the city : they, too, are gone.
A LEADER
He and Steve Hentges gave Yankton her Monday Evening Club. It is now ten years of age, and still thriving. This organization - an open forum - gave Yankton its pav- ing, its new school house, public library, bridge over the Missouri river, and other im- provements.
He was appointed post-master at Yankton, by President Taft and relieved by President Wilson. He has been a member of the local Chamber of Commerce for eighteen years, and he is now president of the Board of Edu- cation. Mr. Lusk is also a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trus- tees of Yankton College.
In addition to his other anxieties and re- sponsibilities, Mr. Lusk has been superin- tendent of the Congregational Sunday school in Yankton for the past three years. He is a man who has always aligned himself with things ennobling and has struggled to make the world better because he has lived.
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"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best." BAILEY
PERSONAL
While in California, in the early summer of 1897, he was united in marriage to Miss Alma V. Davies, formerly of DeSmet, South Dakota, whom he had met while they were students at Brookings College. They are the parents of four children - three boys and one girl.
Mr. Lusk is a 32nd-degree Free Mason, and Past Grand Commander of the State Commandery of Knights Templar. He also belongs to the Elks, the I. O. O. F. and other fraternal organizations.
"A sacred burden is this life ye bear, Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly, Stand up and walk beneath it steadfastly. Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin, But onward, upward, till the life ye win." FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE
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COLONEL JAMES A. MATTISON
COLONEL JAMES A. MATTISON
Governor Battle Mountain Sanitarium Hot Springs, S. D.
A REGULAR ARMY OFFICER
During the spring of 1920, Colonel James A. Mattison, Governor and Surgeon of Battle Mountain Sanitarium - an institution for disabled volunteer soldiers, located at Hot Springs, South Dakota - took off the leg of a Civil War veteran, eighty-five years of age, under a local anaesthetic. This old soldier had developed gangrene and an operation was the only means of saving his life. He was too old to take an internal anaesthetic, and so the hypodermic needle was used in its stead.
Asked as to the efficacy of sawing off a man's leg, midway between his knee and thigh, under a local injection, Colonel Matti- son calmly replied : "I never perform an op-
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eration on any man that I would not be will- ing to have performed on me in the same manner under similar circumstances."
"Then you believe in applying the 'Golden Rule' to your surgical work," said his inter- rogator.
"Absolutely !" he replied. "Any doctor who doesn't practice the Golden Rule in both Medicine and Surgery has no business in our profession." 1
This statement sums up the character of Colonel Mattison in a nutshell. Although a regular-army doctor, he is, withal, a genuine human being; that is, his military training, experience and rank have not made a ma- chine of him.
RETURN FROM FRANCE
He is tender hearted, kind, polite, and he ยท takes a super-human interest in his work. Ten years of his devotion to duty as the Gov- ernor and Surgeon of Battle Mountain Sani- tarium have placed the institution at the head of this class of hospitals throughout the na- tion, according to the government's own re- port. His popularity with the disabled soldiers of three wars who are confined in
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the institution, was admirably attested on August 4, 1919, when he returned from France. Every soldier and civilian employee around the Sanitarium who was able to go - headed by the band and the national Colors - went down to the depot to meet him. Gray-haired veterans of the Civil War - men who had not felt able to go down town in many months - got up from their beds, under the inspiration of the moment, and joined the procession.
The Colonel was noticeably short of hands for the time being, but after shaking hands with one and all alike, he made them a neat speech.
OPERATIONS
During the ten years he has been at the head of the institution, he has performed 5000 operations, or an average of 500 a year. These operations cover every conceivable phase of surgery known to the medical pro- fession, such as amputation of limbs, removal of appendices, radical operations for the cure of hernia, operations on the gall bladder, stomach, intestines, for tumors of the brain, cataracts, and new growths, such as cancer :
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and he has been uniformly successful. The technique of his work is superb.
BATTLE MOUNTAIN SANITARIUM
The writer recalls a plastic operation per- formed on an old soldier about seventy years of age. This soldier's nose had been largely eaten away by cancer. Colonel Mattison opened the skin on the under side of the sol- dier's index finger, strapped the fellow's finger to his nose; waited until it had grown fast to it, and then sawed off the finger, using the bone of the lower joint for a bridge in his nose, pulled the skin of the finger down on both sides and stitched it to the skin of the fellow's face where it promptly grew
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fast; and he made a really handsome citizen out of him, - so much so that the old gentle- man began talking about getting married again.
PREPARATION
Colonel Mattison was born on a farm near Honea Path, South Carolina, February 3, 1870. During the summer he assisted his father with the farm work and in the winter he attended a near-by rural school. He took his high school course in Honea Path which was but three and a half miles from his boy- hood home, graduating with the class of 1890.
His parents were poor. And so, after teaching school for a year to earn some spare money, he entered the University of Nash- ville, at Nashville, Tennessee, and took a full four-year Literary course. When he entered the university, he only had $40. This was soon gone. He therefore acted as secretary to the president of the institution while school was in session, and sold books for a publishing house during his vacations, to earn money enough to pay his way through.
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After completing his college course at Nashville, he became principal of schools for one year at Louisburg, Tennessee. From these earnings he got a new financial start, and the next year he plunged into four years of hard study at Ann Arbor, Michigan, tak- ing his medical course. In order to meet his expenses he acted as steward of a boarding house during the school year and sold books during his vacations.
He received his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1900, and upon a competitive examination received an appointment as interne in the University hospital, in which capacity he served for one year.
ENTERS ARMY
Asked as to why he entered the army, in- stead of remaining in civil life where he could perhaps earn $100,000 a year as chief surgeon of some large hospital, he smilingly replied : "I guess the public calls it 'patriot- ism,' but somehow I felt a call to this field of work and I have never regretted having taken it up."
In 1902, he was appointed Assistant Sur- geon of the National Soldiers' Home at
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Marion, Indiana. Nine years of service in various capacities in this Home finally ele- vated him to Governor and Surgeon of Battle Mountain Sanitarium, at Hot Springs, South Dakota, in 1911, with the rank of Colonel. He had, however, in 1905, done one year's post graduate work in Europe.
Here his work - particularly the splendid results attained from his technical surgery - soon attracted national attention. In 1916 the American College of Surgeons gave him his F. A. C. S. degree.
OTHER SERVICES
When trouble arose with Mexico in 1916, he was ordered to the border where he took charge of one of the brigade hospitals. In November he returned to the B. M. S. where he remained in charge until he received or- ders on June 8, 1917, to report for active duty.
He was made Surgeon of the Balloon School at Fort Omaha, June 15, and served until November 16. He was then ordered over-seas as Chief of the Surgical Service of the unit for the Roumanian Expedition. This
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unit was recalled while enroute, on account of the collapse of Russia, and all the members were re-assigned - Colonel Mattison going to the Base Hospital, at Camp Cody, New Mexico.
March 17, 1918, he was assigned to the Mayo Clinic at Rochester, Minnesota, where he served until he was assigned to the Sur- gical Service, at Camp Grant, Illinois, on May 12. On July 29, he was promoted to Commanding Officer of Base Hospital No. 30, with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, and ordered to prepare for over-seas duty. His unit embarked September 19. He served with this organization throughout the World War.
They sailed for France on the old "Kaiser Wilhelm II." Aboard were 5000 soldiers. Colonel Mattison was Chief Surgeon for the boat. A few days out of Hoboken, an epi- demic of influenza seized them. One thou- sand soldiers contracted the disease, yet so skilfully did the Colonel handle the matter that he did not lose a single man; and it is only fair to insert here the record of another boat, loaded with soldiers, making the trip
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across the Atlantic at the same time, which, from a similar epidemic, lost 450 men, and signalled to the Kaiser Wilhelm to loan them caskets.
Base Hospital No. 80, under his command, was operated with great efficiency in France, during the war. It had 2000 patients, and just before the Armistice was signed, when the fighting was fast and furious, this hos- pital received orders to be prepared to take in 2000 more. Just then the world was being bled to death, and America was doing her share.
RETURN HOME
In April, 1919, he was ordered to prepare his organization for return home. Before they had embarked he was assigned to a Fellowship of Medicine in British Univer- sities. These he attended until the following July when he set sail for the United States.
Upon his arrival, he reported to the Pres- ident of the Board of Managers of National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, and was promptly re-assigned to his old post as Governor and Surgeon of Battle Mountain Sanitarium.
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This is an enviable record. Here is a surgeon of national prominence -- one who made his own way in life - one who could not be swerved from the line of duty he chose to follow when he was yet young - one who is quiet, gentlemanly, reserved and will not discuss his own good works; there- fore, into his mouth let's put the words which Shakespeare put into the mouth of Othello :
"Little of this great world can I speak, More than pertains to feats of broil and battle, And, therefore, little shall I grace my cause, In speaking for myself."
The Colonel is a member of the Baptist church ; is an Elk, a Shriner, and a Scottish- rite Mason. He mingles freely with the peo- ple of Hot Springs, outside of the Home, and has become one of them. He has an inviting personality, and in temperament and disposi- tion, is an exception to the army rule.
TRIBUTE FROM AN INMATE
It seems most fitting to conclude this biog- raphy with a few paragraphs taken from an article written by Dr. W. H. Johnson, Past
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National Surgeon-General of the G. A. R., who, at one time, was confined in Battle Mountain Sanitarium. He says: "The third morning after my arrival, as I sat in my room waiting for inspection, a stranger came in, shook me by the hand, and his fingers slipped to my wrist and rested on the radical artery a moment; then a kindly voice asked me how I felt.
"I said: 'Sir, I have not had the pleasure of meeting you before.'
"'No, I have been very busy the last two or three days; I'm the Governor.'
"Six feet tall, broad shouldered, smooth faced, modest, unassuming, low voiced - a typical Southern gentleman. Suave and polite; sympathetic in voice and action; a penetrating eye. The first impression is that he is an ideal gentleman and officer. Firm- ness, too, is shown in his eye and lip. Fur- ther acquaintance proved he was gentle as a child, but could be firm and iron-willed as Hercules. A strict disciplinarian, a warm and sympathetic friend. There are 385 in- mates here, and in that number the 'Gov- ernor and Surgeon' has 385 friends. Uncle
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Sam made no mistake when he appointed James A. Mattison Governor and Chief Sur- geon of Battle Mountain Sanitarium."
(Since the foregoing article was written, Colonel Mattison has been promoted to Chief Surgeon for the Ten National Home Hospitals for disabled volun- teer soldiers of America, with headquarters at Day- ton, Ohio. South Dakota regrets his departure.)
REV. A. C. MCCAULEY
REVEREND A. C. MCCAULEY THIRTY-FIVE YEARS IN THE SAME PULPIT
Thirty-five years in the same pulpit - and still serving in it-is the record of Reverend A. C. McCauley, pastor of the First Presbyterian church at Bridgewater, South Dakota.
Length of service in any position in life is the highest test of a man's efficiency. This is especially true in teaching and in the min- istry where one's retention from year to year is based largely upon public sentiment.
Incidentally, we think of good old Solomon Stoddard, for over fifty years pastor of the Congregational church at Northampton, Massachusetts; of his famous grandson, Jonathan Edwards, who for twenty-three years was pastor of the same church which his distinguished grandfather had served for so long ; of William Ellery Channing occupy- ing the same pulpit in Boston for twenty- three years; and of Henry Ward Beecher,
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pastor of Plymouth church, in Brooklyn, for a period of forty years.
Then, our memories begin to operate near- er home, and instantly we think of the famous Butt brothers - two preachers of the Presbyterian faith in the northern part of the state, in pioneer days. D. M. Butt was pastor at Britton for twenty-eight years, and his brother, J. S. Butt, served in a similar capacity at Groton, nearby, for almost as long. Marvelous records! Marvelous men !
But for continuous service in the same Protestant pulpit in South Dakota, it is evi- dent that Reverend Mr. McCauley holds the lead. And he has not only served one church continuously for this great period of time, but rather two churches, for he has preached in Canistota as long as at Bridgewater. The two churches, fourteen miles apart, consti- tute his pastorate.
He has preached, on an average, two ser- mons each Sunday for thirty-five years, or 3,640 sermons in all. During this time, in addition to other addresses which he has been called upon to deliver, he has, in all probabil- ity, preached several hundred funeral ser-
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mons. All told, he must have delivered ap- proximately 4,000 addresses in the same neighborhood. If these addresses averaged thirty minutes apiece, he has talked 2,000 hours - eighty-three and one-third days of twenty-four hours apiece; or, day and night, week days and Sunday, for a period of three months; and he is still talking !
Thought loses itself in thought and ram. bles off into a labyrinth of conjecture when the average mind tries to comprehend this, to decipher what it all means, and what must ultimately be the reward for such unusual service.
Again, one must consider the total number of miles he has traveled in his official work. It is fourteen miles from Bridgewater to Canistota, making twenty-eight miles he has driven each Sunday for thirty-five years. Then, too, there are his special trips to Can- istota, for funerals, weddings and special oc- casions. All told he has averaged sixty-five round trips a year for thirty-five years, mak- ing the total distance traveled in this work alone, to date, over 63,700 miles, or two and
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a half times around the world; and he is still traveling !
PREPARATION AND DEVOTION
Instantly one begins to wonder where this marvelous preacher came from to Dakota, what was his preparation for such a life's work, and the impelling motive that has held him so firmly to one task. Perhaps 'tis true, as Shakespeare said :
"But heaven hath a hand in these events;
To whose high will we bound our calm contents."
And Mrs. Browning muses appropriately in the "Drama of Exile," when she exclaims :
"Through heaven and earth God's will moves freely, and I follow it, As color follows light. He overflows The firmament walls with deity, Therefore, with love; His lightnings go abroad, His pity may do so, His angels must, Whene'er He gives them charges."
Evidently God gave Reverend A. C. Mc- Cauley a "charge," and he is going down through the years singing :
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"A 'charge' to keep I have, A God to glorify, A never-dying soul to save And fit it for the sky. To serve the present age, - My calling to fulfill; O, may it all my powers engage, To do my Master's will."
He was born near Altoona, Pennsylvania, February 24, 1858, - the son of a well-to-do lumberman who operated his own sawmills. The boy's early eduaction was acquired in the public schools of Altoona. Then he put in two years at the Chambersburg (Pa.) Academy, and later completed his classical course at La Fayette College (Easton, Pa.), graduating with the class of 1881. He was as yet but twenty-three years of age. He felt that the larger the foundation which he laid for his life's work, the larger would be the final structure. And so he put in three years at Union Theological Seminary (New York), finished the course, came west on a visit and then returned to the same institu tion and took post-graduate work for a year.
Young McCauley had just one ambition in life, and that was to be one of the substan-
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tial Presbyterian preachers of his day and generation. Thirty-five years at Bridge- water attest his faith in his own undertaking. In the language of the poet :
"The man who seeks one thing In life - and but one May hope to achieve it Before life is done. But he who seeks all things Wherever he goes Only reaps from the hopes Which around him he sows, - A harvest of barren regrets."
ALBERT AND THOMAS
A passenger train pulled into the then vil- lage of Parker, Dakota Territory, in Septem- ber, 1885. Two young eastern preachers stepped off together. They were Albert C. McCauley and Thomas B. Boughton. They had entered La Fayette College together as "freshies" in the fall of 1877; were class- mates; became great friends, - their affec- tion for each other being as binding as that of David and Jonathan -, and graduated to- gether in 1881.
Boughton took the Presbyterian pastorate at Parker and McCauley went to Bridge-
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water - only a few miles away. They saw each other often and became companion sources of mutual uplift. Boughton suffered a severe nervous breakdown in the fall of 1899 - after fourteen years of continuous service in the same pulpit - and had to give up his work. McCauley took him in, nursed him for ten long years with the tenderness and constancy of a mother; and, when the end came, laid him gently away.
"O friend! O best of friends! Thy absence more Than the impending night Darkens the landscape o'er." - LONGFELLOW
Reverend Mr. McCauley believes in three fundamental things - the Bible, Prayer, and Service.
1. BIBLE - With Dr. Craig Thoms he be- lieves : "Go to the Bible with your need, and your need will be met; go with your discour- agement and you will be cheered; go with your cross, and you will be strengthened ; go with your doubts, and you will gain as- surance ; go with your sins, and you will find
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rebuke and correction ; go repentant, and you will meet forgiveness."
2. PRAYER - Prayer is the dynamo that charges a man's spiritual batteries. Through it, Reverend Mr. McCauley keeps his charged. He believes if Christ, in sinless devotion, found it necessary to remain in a constant at- titude of prayer, that sinful man cannot es- cape it.
3. SERVICE - His devotion to duty is best attested by the length of his faithful service at Bridgewater. Again, no service is too humble for him to perform. If Christ - the son of God - volunteered to wash his Dis- ciples' feet, McCauley thinks there is nothing too menial for him to undertake. And so he goes about the town - the most familiar fig- ure in it - praying for all, loving all, serving all.
A BACHELOR
When asked why it was that he never mar- ried, he smilingly replied: "God made some men for husbands and fathers and others for bachelors." Evidently, the three martyred Jews - John the Baptist, Jesus the Reform- er, and Paul the Apostle; Jefferson the states-
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man, Irving the novelist, and Whittier the poet, thought likewise, to-wit: that God in- tended some men to be bachelors.
Three years after Reverend Mr. McCauley became pastor at Bridgewater, he succeeded in building a parsonage. Then, an unmarried sister of his came west and kept house for him for almost a third of a century until she passed away a little over two years ago. Now he lives alone; thinks of Boughton and his sister ; dreams of the Past and contemplates the Future, while he still labors on.
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