Roseau man, 95, chronicles life, family and adventures in ‘Dr. Bob – The First 100 Years’

BELTRAMI ISLAND STATE FOREST, Minn. – The stories were flying and the coffee was flowing on this picture perfect November afternoon, the day before Minnesota’s 2024 firearms deer season.

The radiant warmth of the old cookstove – wood-fired on one side with LP gas burners on the other – created a cozy ambience in the cabin that serves as headquarters of the place they call “Camp Casualty.” Once a very large fish house on Lake of the Woods, the cabin was hauled down from Minnesota’s Northwest Angle to its new home on a patch of private land surrounded by Beltrami Island State Forest.

One can only imagine how they got the cabin here, but “got it here” they did.

Dana Byfuglien was host for this afternoon of story-telling and bull-slinging. Joining him was brother-in-law Mark Harris of Eagan, Minnesota; Mark’s older brother, Rob Harris, who splits his time between Eden Prairie and Detroit Lakes, Minnesota; and the Harris brothers’ father, Robert Harris, a retired dentist known affectionately to many as “Dr. Bob.”

Back in the early ’70s, Byfuglien – the uncle of retired NHL star Dustin Byfuglien – and the Harris brothers were teammates on the Roseau Rams high school hockey team. And, like so many deer camps across the North Country, hunting season brings them together, if only for a few days.

So many memories. So many stories. So many laughs.

“Dr. Bob” hasn’t hunted deer in several years, but traveling through Beltrami Forest on this Friday afternoon brought back a slew of memories, like the hunting shack he and three other Roseau men once crafted from an old granary and set up on a flatbed trailer. They hauled the camp on wheels to their hunting spot near Penturen Church, a Beltrami Forest landmark.

“We darn-near froze to death the first night because it had so many leaks,” Bob Harris said. “We couldn’t see them in the night, but as soon as you got in there during the daylight, the sun was shining in from all corners.

“We had a milk carton on the floor beside the little stove we had to heat the place, and it froze overnight.”

‘The First 100 Years’

There’d be no risk of freezing on this perfect afternoon as Harris shared stories over coffee, doughnuts and “boughten” cookies – as the old-timers called them. Now 95 years old, Harris recently published a book aptly titled, “Dr. Bob – The First 100 Years.” It’s the story of a life filled with adventures and misadventures that earned the elder Harris renown not only as a dentist, but as a golfer, hockey referee, amateur baseball player, pilot and avid outdoorsman.

“A Lifetime of Flying the Northern Skies in Search of Wilderness Adventures and Challenges in Golf and Hockey,” is the book’s subtitle.

Harris has been featured on several occasions in the New York Times for shooting his age in 18 holes of golf, first shooting a 66 at age 66 – “a fine score for anybody at any age,” Mark Harris says. As the story goes, he shot his age in golf some 1,400 times.

“We have enjoyed success all up and down the family in golf, hockey, baseball, hunting and fishing and all the other activities, as in flying our own airplanes to far-flung destinations and venues,” Bob Harris writes in the book’s introduction. “There have been countless adventures, along with a few near-death experiences that have helped us to appreciate the benevolence of our Lord and Savior.”

Coming home

After leaving Roseau in the early 1980s, Harris and his wife lived in Florida and later Glenwood and Chaska, Minnesota (where he had a membership to Hazeltine National Golf Club). More recently, the couple split their time between Florida and their cabin at Rocky Point on Lake of the Woods, giving them the best of both worlds – fishing in the summer and golf in the winter.

Bob and Phyllis, his wife of 72 years, moved back to Roseau to stay in June 2024. Coming home to Roseau after all these years “was the best decision I ever made,” Harris says.

“You don’t know what a pleasure it is to come back,” he said. “Just think, 40 years of struggling around and doing many mistakes with my life, and now I’m back here.”

Writing the book took the better part of 2½ years, but it was a labor of love, he says. Published by Amazon, the 414-page book hit the market in late August.

“It’s very gratifying,” Harris said. “I enjoyed every experience over and over and over. … It was a joy.”

He no doubt didn’t lack for material.

Preserving history

Mark Harris says he takes “a little bit of credit” for inspiring his dad to write the book. As an amateur genealogist, Mark says he grew frustrated with the lack of information available in researching his family history. When his grandfather, R.V. Harris – also a Roseau dentist – died in 1973, for example, the only information available on his life was the obituary in the local newspaper, Mark says.

He wanted his dad’s stories to be preserved for future generations.

I just said, ‘Dad, we’ve got to document this,’” Mark said. “In 100 years, I want my great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, to be able to read about what an amazing time to be alive 1928 to 2024 is, how the world changed, what a wonderful place Roseau was and all of that.

“So I lit a fire under him, and he sat at his computer, God bless him. He’s not a writer, but he was so motivated to get it all documented.”

Mark did “just absolutely yeoman on top of yeoman on top of yeoman work” to make the book what it is, brother Rob Harris says.

“I was in the graphic arts business so I knew a lot of people who would have said, ‘I’ll print it for you,’ ” Rob Harris said. “But Amazon ended up getting the bulk of the work. He had 3,000 slides to choose from – and photographs. The photographs, being in the graphic arts business, they’re expensive to make, but the photographs look like they were taken last week.”

The book is written in his dad’s writing style, Mark Harris says.

“It bounces around a bit,” he said. “There was not any assistance in grooming the book, but it’s genuine and authentic, and it’s only going to increase in value, in my estimation, with his progeny going forward. He has some amazing stories.”

That was apparent during the visit to the deer camp in Beltrami Forest and a couple of hours earlier over homemade vegetable beef and dumpling soup at Nelson’s Cafe in Roseau.

Hunting and fishing stories are just a small part of the book, but in keeping with the deer camp theme, they were a big part of the conversation on this Friday before deer season.

Dr. Bob got his pilot’s license in 1967 and flew the occasional floatplane trip for Julian “Fuzz” LePage, who ran a flying service in Warroad, Minnesota, in the 1970s and early ’80s. Harris would get up at 4 a.m., drive to Warroad, fly anglers to remote fishing lodges in northwestern Ontario and be back in Roseau to start his day as a dentist by 8 a.m. or shortly thereafter.

One time, Harris recalls, he was able to merge his skills as a dentist and a pilot when the owner of a fishing camp on Long-Legged Lake near Ear Falls, Ontario, needed some dental work.

“He had a partial (denture) in his mouth, and it was getting kind of straggly,” Bob Harris said. “So on one of my trips up there, I took all my (dental) equipment up there, took an impression and made some measurements.”

Harris then fashioned a partial denture.

“Next time I flew up, I took it up there, and it fit perfect,” he said.

In exchange for the dental work, the camp owner gave Harris a free weekend for four at the resort.

Mark Harris recalled flying over Anishinabe Lake – a northwestern Ontario jewel renowned for its lake trout fishing – with his dad one time, when they decided to drop in and try their luck for lake trout while fishing on the floats of the airplane.

“The lake was calm, and we landed, and (Mark) got out on the right float, and I got out on the left,” Bob Harris recalled.

“Bing bing – just like that,” they caught two lake trout, he said.

The outdoors adventures didn’t always go that smoothly.

One time, Harris recalled, he was with a group of Roseau men on a moose hunting trip near The Pas in northern Manitoba when their swamp buggy broke through thin ice on a river. Despite the misadventure, they eventually extracted the swamp buggy and ultimately had a successful moose hunt.

Harris writes about the encounter in detail in his book.

“That was a learning situation,” he quipped.

The stories told on this afternoon before deer season no doubt would continue later that night, when the Harris brothers, Dr. Bob and Byfuglien visited another deer camp for an annual pre-opener get-together.

And the next night, when they gathered at another deer camp for a fish fry. Rob Harris would shoot a forkhorn buck near the end of opening day, adding yet another cause for celebration.

“Two glorious nights of deer camp camaraderie,” Mark Harris would say later. “Suffice to say that for Rob and me, our annual November pilgrimage to Roseau County will be etched in granite for as long as the good Lord allows.”

“Dr. Bob – The First 100 Years” is available on Amazon and sells for $22. Seeing the book in its published form, Bob Harris says, was a “thrill.”

No doubt the rest of the family agrees.

“My kids aren’t going to appreciate this today like they will in 50 years,” Mark Harris said. “I’ve said this 100 times in the family – when my great-great grandchildren come along, and I’m long gone, they’re going to read this book.

“And it’s going to be just an absolute treat.”

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