BILLINGS — Over 60 members of the Solberg family traveled from across Montana and the country to Billings over the Fourth of July weekend, gathering for a reunion that brought generations together to reconnect and visit The Wall That Heals, the traveling Vietnam Veterans Memorial replica.
Watch the story below:
For Carl Solberg, it was a weekend he had been looking forward to for a long time.
For years, the Vietnam veteran, who lives in Billings, has collected photographs, documents, and family stories, and filled display boards with more than a century of memories. The collection traces the family's roots from Norway to northern Montana, where his father homesteaded in Phillips County in 1912.
"My mother was an avid scrapbooker, and I gathered up her scrapbooks and have them on the boards,” he said. "Some of the oldest photos that I have goes back to my great-grandparents from 1858."
Carl was born in Malta and was the 9th of 10 children. His mother, who was born in Norway, and his father homesteaded in Phillips County in 1912 after coming to the United States.
"There are four of us still remaining with multiple aunts and uncles and husbands and second cousins," Carl said. "It's four generations now since Solbergs came to the United States."
The photo displays lined tables at the Trinity Lutheran Church youth building, where relatives spent Friday reconnecting, sharing stories and discovering branches of the family tree.
The reunion, organized by family member Karen Allery of Glendive, drew relatives from across the country. About 80 family members registered, with nearly 60 attending over the weekend.
“Life is about people, and I say this: it's good to have friends, and it's good to have family, but it's wonderful to have family who are your friends," said Orvin Solberg, Carl’s nephew. "All because two people fell in love. I mean, you take that marriage not happening, none of us would be here, and that makes it significant.”
For some, it had been years since they'd seen one another. Others met cousins for the first time.
"Kind of feels like strangers sometimes just for how many of us there are," said Alicia Allery, Karen's daughter who lives in Miles City. "Just learning a lot of the history and looking at all these pictures, it's definitely a different perspective from the younger generation."
This year's reunion also coincided with The Wall That Heals, a three-quarter-scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial that traveled to Billings over the Fourth of July weekend. The exhibit honors the more than 58,000 U.S. service members who died during the Vietnam War while bringing the memorial experience to communities across the country.
Related: Billings volunteers assemble Vietnam Veterans Memorial replica
For Carl Solberg, visiting the wall with his family offered an opportunity to share another part of his story.
"Five people died from Phillips County as a result of the war,” he said. "Of course, that's not counting the friends and people that I know and others that were on the wall.”
Among the names he always searches for is Richard Duane Appelhans of Dodson, whose remains have never been recovered.
The visit also brought back memories for Orvin, who remembers sending recorded messages to his uncle while Carl served overseas.
“At this time when my uncle Carl was there, I'm nine years old," said Orvin. "We had a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and we would pass that around ... We were sending messages to Carl over in Vietnam."
Related: Vietnam War Memorial replica comes to Billings, offering one family a full-circle moment
Carl has visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., twice and previously visited The Wall That Heals when it came to Billings in 2017. This time, however, he searched for familiar names alongside children, grandchildren, and relatives who had never experienced the memorial before.
"It's important so we can recollect names that are familiar to us, but I think more importantly for our children, our grandkids and so on, so they can experience and see history as it happened," he said.
"As you get older, you hope that the young people really do hang on to some of the memories because it is really neat history,” added Orvin.
For the Solbergs, the reunion wasn't only about looking back but also about ensuring the stories of both their family and those who served are carried forward by the next generation.
"Hopefully we can all just kind of get to know each other and stay in touch so when we're older, this doesn't really end with all of us," she said. "Family, it's all just so crucial, I think, to life. I don't know where I'd be without them.”
