The dream of building a group home in Stanley was born in the fall of 1974 in the
Bakery coffee shop in Stanley where Mae Hagen, Edra Hanson and Bonnie Erickson
met for coffee after we drop off our developmentally disabled children at the elementary
school for special Education classes. Our discussion almost always leads to our children
and the hopes and dreams we had for them, none of which included an institutional
setting. We just knew a group home was the answer, especially in a small town setting,
where they could become part of a community and not lost in it as we felt they would be
in a larger town. Several avenues were investigated such as: checking with an attorney
and even eyeing a parcel of land but money was just not available at that time' Later, in
l982 Judge Van Sickle's court order changed all of that when he ordered North Dakota to
depopulate our institutions.

Carl and Dusty Rogstad became involved as they had a developmentally disabled
child attending Special Education classes also, and several meetings took place in the
Community and eventually with officials from Bismarck. We discovered that we needed
not only one but three group homes and a training center to make our project financially
feasible. Stanley "could not support three group homes so the cities of New Town and
Tioga were added. Mainly, because of interest shown in the project by Mae Hagen and
Bill Demaree in New Town and Charles Barton in Tioga and because the distance to
these towns would means a ride of not much more than 30 minutes for the clients to come
to the training center each working day (a requirement of the State).
If you look at a North Dakota map you will find that the three cities from a
triangle, hence, the name Tri-City CARES After many meetings Tri-City was finally incorporated April 3rd, 1983.

A nine person board was set-up with three members representing each town. The original members were: from Stanley: Gary Nelson, Lila Thorlakson, and Bonnie Erickson; from New Town: Mae Hagen, Bill Demarre, and Glenda Goodbird; and from Tioga: Charles Barton, Tim Coughlin, and Allen Monson- Robert Holte agreed to act as our attorney.
Our next move was to hire Yvonne Hanzel a consultant, from Jamestown who
took us through the maze of paperwork that needed to be filled out for the State. We
were finally getting some where! We, then, selected Mr. Edmond Leonard from Minot
our architect, found four building sites and with Gary Nelson's help found three local
banks that would back us and loan us one-fourth of the $1,030,000,000 that we needed to
build our facilities. All of this was done contingent on our loan from the Bank of North
Dakota (our most frequently used words in those days were "contingent upon"). In
August, 1984, our loan from the Bank of North Dakota came through for $772,500.00
and finally papers were signed with Scandia Bank of Stanley, Lakeside Bank of New
Town, and Tioga State Bank of Tioga for the remaining $275,500.00. The feeling of
Most board members about the time was 'we have really got our necks stuck way out
there, haven't we?"

The day finally came when we held the contractors bid opening on September
12th, 1984. The contractors were awarded to Monroe Contractors from Rolla for the
general contract, Johnson Plumbing of Rolette for the mechanical, and Triangle Electric
from Williston for the electrical contact. The building was to start as soon as possible.
What a good feeling to see the buildings going up at last.

Despite bad winter weather our training center building and Stanley Group Home were nearly finished in February, 1985 and our first Executive Director, John Schiermeister of Dickinson was hired.
Our first client arrived on April 29, 1985 at the Stanley Group Home, which had just been completed. The Tioga Group Home and New Town Group Homes were completed and they received their first client on July 2, 1985. As you can see dreams do come true.