28 december 2023 Memories of Wannaska Cheerleaders with Donna Rose

        The last in a series of Wannaskan Almanac Thursday posts December 14-28, 2023 about the importance of hockey in the Wannaska, Minnesota community. These stories were originally published in Volume 9 Issue 4 of THE RAVEN: Northwest Minnesota's Original Art, History & Humor Journal, by Palmville Press & Publishing, Inc., (1994-2018). 

“California grape juice!
Arizona cactus!
We can beat Malung
Without much practice!”

 

The 1967 Wannaska cheerleading squad. On the days of the game, these girls lead the whole school in a Pep-Fest. From left: Linda Hess, Patricia Carlson, Diane Palm, Gloria Barber, Barb Bergstrom, Pam Rygh.

 

    Donna Rose is a legend in her own time. Daughter of Milford and Esther Olson, wife of Larry Rose and co-proprietor of Nelson’s Cafe in Roseau, Donna is a former Wannaska cheerleader and seen as the go-to person for everything ‘cheerful’ about Wannaska cheerleading. Joe and Steve interviewed Donna at her home on Valentine’s Day, 2009:

Steve: Vivian Eggen, and others, assured me that you remembered all the Wannaska cheers...
Donna: Cheers are probably my biggest thing... You want me to say that? You want my experience first?
Steve: Give us your cheerleader life story...
 

Donna: My cheer-leader life story... I was in Wannaska eighth grade in...ummm, 1967?
Joe: So you had to be in eight grade to be a cheerleader?
Donna: I don’t remember if I did it in seventh and eighth grade or just in eighth. It depended on how many kids were in eight grade because the eighth graders got first chance. Any girl that wanted to do it could do it. It didn’t matter if we had eight cheerleaders or six, or whatever, as long as every girl that wanted to do it got to do it. Which was nice back then. We didn’t have try-outs. If you wanted to do it, basically we just worked with it. And if it wasn’t for them, they’d just say, “I can’t do this.” It was that kind of thing...
 

Steve: You were elementary aged girls. Presumably there were alot of them... You couldn’t have fifty cheerleaders...
Donna: We didn’t have fifty kids total in a whole class... My siblings and I didn’t get to go to alot of things because my mom didn’t drive and my dad, he did pulp in the woods, so in the winter he was out in the woods all the time. The only time we got to go anywhere was to Thursday Night League, which was in town (Roseau) ... During the week we’d like go to Malung, Ross and Haug-Leo... during the school day and have games ...

"We’d stand on the snowbanks and cheer for our team."

Joe: Did Loyd Melby go along on those trips?
Donna: Yah, the whole school went
Joe: Was he a bus driver too? He said he had his license...
Donna: I’m sure he probably did, because back then you didn’t call-in bus drivers for that. The only thing I remember the bus drivers being called-in for was Thursday Night League when Dewey Thompson would drive. He was our bus driver at the time. And when he would drive he wasn’t to pick kids up on his way but we had no way to get there, so he said if you are out on the road waiting, I will pick you up, so we’d be out on the road waiting and as soon as we’d see his bus we’d shout,

“A BUS THAT GOOD, JUST HAS TO BE DEWEY’S!”      

Steve: Sounds like a jingle...

Donna: If you know me, there was a song for everything. I can’t sing, but I love to sing, and so I made a song for everything. So that’s what we would do, the bus drivers would take us into the games in Roseau on Thursday nights. During the weeks then, I suppose our practice would be going playing Malung and ... but we did not do it every week. We scheduled them through the year. They came once and we went to each school maybe once...
Joe: So who coached the cheer leaders?
Donna: I think we did it on our own in Wannaska. I don’t think we had a cheer leader advisor because we didn’t really travel and we’d just get on the bus like all the other kids. The hockey players, everything, all of us went together.
 

Steve: You were on skates when you were giving these cheers?
Donna:  Yes, we did, we were very good on skates back then because we... we skated all the time. We knew how to stop, we knew how to...
Steve: This was on figure skates or hockey skates?
Donna: Figure skates
Steve: Did you grind off the picks?
Donna: Yes. I checked on them all the time as I was growing up, you had to grind them off. I think those picks were for actual figure skating, doing the real spins or something. We did spins though, we just stopped ourselves like hockey players do.  

"We skated every recess, every recess. That was the one thing at Wannaska, it didn’t matter how poor you were, you had skates. If you went to school, you had skates. You had to skate every recess. So that’s what we would get for Christmas, was used skates... A lot, because--you had to skate. It was like, “You get out and get fresh air.”
 

Joe: So there was no girls hockey in Wannaska at that time?
Donna: No. Well, we did play ... I was goalie for the boys and Melby was goalie for the girls. The boys were at a disadvantage having me in the net because I wasn’t very big then--and Mr. Melby, well ... So, yes, we did play hockey too, but we didn’t have a team.
 

Steve: The all-girls hockey teams were gone by your time? There were Wannaska girls hockey teams in the late forties and early fifties...
Donna: That was not when I was there. We played hockey but we didn’t have a team...
 

Steve:  Who thought of your cheers and choreography? You make them up?
Donna:  Yah, but some were written a long time before, like the school song. I don’t remember how many we made up, our actual squad or anything, but we had little short ones like:

“California grapejuice,
Arizona cactus
We can beat Malung
Without much practice!”

Laughter
Donna: Things like that, and I can remember one really bad one. I don’t know why we were even allowed to do it,

“Pull ‘em in the whiskers
Sock’em in the jaw
Drag ‘em to the graveyard
Rah, rah, rah!”

Donna: Nowadays, you probably wouldn’t be able to do those cheers...
Laughter. Joe:... No, no...
Donna: I don’t think we even thought about the ramifications, it was just something that rhymed...
 

At this point Donna breaks into a rousing rendition of something just as all three of her little dogs began barking shrilly bounding toward an outside door, all but drowning her out.
 

Steve: Was that, ‘The Wannaska School Song?’
Donna: No, but I know The Wannaska School Song...
Steve & Joe:, Very good... Wow!

 

Hurrah For The Maroon and The Gold
(sung to the tune of Star-Spangled Banner)

Hur-rah for
 The Maroon and The Gold
(clap clap)
We’ll fight to the verry finn-ish
We’ll never, ever give-in
(clap clap)
No we’ll never will give-in
We love our Wannaska team
(clap clap)
And we truly hope they will win
Together we fight to the end
(clap clap)
No we’ll nev-er  give-in
(clap clap)
Rah, rah, rah, rah, rah
Rah, rah, rah, rah, rah
Rah, rah, rah, rah, rah
Rah! For the grade school team!

Joe: Wow! We have some slides here of the cheerleaders that Loyd Melby has given us, are you in any of them?

 
Donna: These are not the jackets we had. We had kind of lined ones and we had to use an extra one. One of the boys in our class had a burgundy coat and we had to use that because we didn’t have enough. It didn’t matter, you know, you just got out there. You just supported your team. It wasn’t all about looks, you know. It was about having fun. I loved it. I loved cheering. I still love it. Do you want to know anymore cheers?

From, left: Connie Hess, Gail Palm, Debbie Deisen, Kenneth Eggen (Hockey coach) Sharon Bergstrom, Roxanne Eggen, Carolyn Severson.

 Steve: We want to hear all of them that you remember. We’ll use all we can..

V-I-C-T-O-R-Y

 
That’s the Wannaska battle cry!
I! I!
The Wannaska battle cry!
I-O!
The Wannaska battle cry!
V-I-C-T-O-R-Y
That’s the Wannaska battle cry!

 

Wannaska Grade School
 

Hats Off To Thee
True Our Colors To Thee
We’ll ever be
Firm and strong
United are we
Rah, rah, rah, rah
Rah, rah, rah, rah
Rah! For the grade school team!
 

Blood and Thunder
Bricks and Tar
Wannaska Grade School
Up to par
Blood and Thunder
Bricks and Tar
Wannaska Grade School
Here! We! Are! 

Hey, hey, whattya say?

Let’s go back the other way!!