Waldemar Ager - Newspaper Editor and Writer

Newspaper Editor and Writer

Ager's newspaper career began in earnest when, at the age of 23, he moved to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, after being offered a job at a Norwegian temperance newspaper called Reform. Ager would be associated with Reform (both the newspaper and literal reform), for the rest of his life. The editor of Reform died in 1903, and Ager took over the position. Eventually Ager would come to own the paper. Reform folded shortly after Ager's death in 1941.

In addition to his long newspaper career, Ager penned six novels and numerous collections of short stories. Although he never achieved the commercial success of his friend, Ole Edvart Rølvaag, Ager's body of work is thought to be on many levels, comparable with and sometimes superior to that of Rølvaag. A humorist in the tradition of Mark Twain, Ager specialized in character sketches, and dramatizing the tragicomic plight of the Norwegian immigrant. Some of his more important works, translated into English, are Christ before Pilate, On The Way to The Melting Pot, Sons of The Old Country, and I Sit Alone.

Ager was also a popular orator, traveling the stump circuit for much of his career, speaking wherever Norwegian-Americans gathered. For Syttende Mai in 1916, Ager shared a platform with William Jennings Bryan.The city of Eau Claire meant more to Ager than just a career. It was here that Ager met a beautiful young Norwegian immigrant girl from Tromsø, Norway, named Gurolle Blestren. Ager and Blestren would go on to get married and raise nine children in a home that still stands to this day near Half Moon Lake in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The house, now known as the Brady Anderson and Waldemar Ager House, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has been designated a Literary Landmark by the National Association of Friends of Public Libraries.