Eloise Ogden/MDN The Minot Commission on Aging and Parker Suites are located in the former Clarence Parker Hotel in downtown Minot, shown in this photo taken Easter Sunday, April 16. When it was a hotel, a U.S. president and a former U.S. president were among the guests who stayed there.

Lucille Parker remembers the opening of the Clarence Parker Hotel in Minot.

“It was a big opening, a big deal,” said Parker. She said a large banquet was planned along with the opening.

Parker, 94, has lived in Minot for most of her life. She lived in the Leland-Parker Hotel for a time, a hotel owned by Clarence Parker and his sister, Lottie Parker, when she and Bill Parker were first married. They were married in 1948 in Cheyenne, Wyo.

Bill was the only son of Esther Parker who was Clarence Parker’s only child. Clarence Parker was a prominent pioneer Minot businessman, civic leader, rancher and sportsman.

On Saturday, June 24, Clarence Parker will be inducted into the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame in Medora. He will be inducted in the Great Westerner category. Parker and six other individuals, including Paul Christensen of Minot, and the White Earth Valley Rodeo will be inducted this year.

“I can remember Lottie saying, ‘We’ve got to get new gowns,” said Lucille Parker as she recalled the plans being made for the opening of the Clarence Parker Hotel in 1948.

For a number of years prior, the structure stood unfinished with only the steel girders in place, according to Minot Daily News files. Initially, it was to be an office building but the work stopped in 1929. The structure stood forlorn and neglected, and was referred to as the “Sparrow Hotel” because the birds were the only tenants.

It remained unfinished until 1944 when Colonel (a title bestowed on him by Gov. John Moses) Clarence H. Parker and associates bought it. Construction started in 1945. According to a Sept. 25, 1945, story in the Minot Daily News, Parker’s plan was to convert the building to use for apartments and hotel rooms with a banquet room and some offices and store space on the lower floors. Later plans were developed for a full-fledged hotel.

The hotel was touted as the largest modern hotel in North Dakota. Shortly after its opening, a glowing story in the Minot Daily News in 1948 declared “there are no more beautiful or complete hotel accommodations in the United States today than has been provided at the Clarence Parker in Minot.”

Carl Flagstad, a longtime Minot Daily newsman, wrote in a 1985 story that two U.S. presidents have stayed in the hotel – Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. Truman stayed there after his tenure in the White House when he was campaigning for Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson. Eisenhower stayed in 1953 when he came to North Dakota to officiate at the dedication of the Garrison Dam near Riverdale. Eisenhower stayed on the top floor of the hotel and his staff rented 60 rooms. Charlie Demakis was Eisenhower’s personal chef when he stayed there. At a small formal dinner in the penthouse hosted by Esther Parker, only one photographer with the Associated Press in Minneapolis, was allowed in, limited to one photo.

Agnes Christianson, a desk clerk at the hotel, told the Minot Daily News she was the one who made the call to give the rise-and-shine signal to the Eisenhower suite when the president stayed in the hotel in 1953. She said the whole eighth floor was used by secret servicemen. A secret serviceman was stationed at the elevator door and someone patrolled the roof. She said the lobby was full of reporters from national magazines and newspapers and their typewriters were going during the night. Her comment on the president was, “He was always a step ahead of the secret servicemen. It seemed they had to run to keep up with him.”

Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin is another dignitary who stayed in the hotel, arriving on a cold, fall night with an entourage of friends aboard a private plane. McCarthy came to speak at the college, sponsored by the American Legion, and his friends came with their shotguns to get in some duck hunting.

Flagstad wrote in a 1980s story in the Minot Daily News that at breakfast the next morning, newsmen who had tried to stay up with the senator during a martini-filled affair at a local watering hole were feeling pains. But McCarthy looked as vibrant as a man with 10 hours sleep. His happiest moment probably came when an elderly lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, seated in the hotel dining room some tables away, could no longer restrain himself. Toddling over to the burly politician, he blurted, “By God, sir, you look just like pictures of Senator McCarthy.” When McCarthy acknowledged him, the colonel almost shouted: “By God, sir, you’re the greatest living American of our time.” McCarthy beamed. The colonel had made his day.

Many others stayed in the hotel – celebrities, singers, orchestra leaders and their bands, including Fred Waring, Lawrence Welk and members of the Army and Navy bands.

Another hotel employee remembered an incident with a big fish that occurred at the hotel.

Jack Bolyard, head bellhop who was a student at Minot State Teachers college at the time, told the Minot Daily News for a December 1960 story about a man who was on his way back from a fishing trip and asked Bolyard to store a fish he planned to have mounted. It was a large fish of prize-winning size so Bolyard put it in the cooler in the hotel kitchen. The hotel cooks found the trout and thought it was something to be prepared. They were about to cut it up when Bolyard appeared just in time to rescue the fish from the knife.

As it might be expected, running a hotel with more than 100 rooms, a lounge and a dining room kept everyone busy.

For years, Burlington Northern (now BNSF) railroad men walked between the freight office at the end of Main Street and the hotel. The railroad men overnighting in Minot were transported to Gavin Yard to catch their next train assignments by shuttle bus. The hotel reserved 30 rooms for the railroad men. On a monthly basis, about 1,300 BN railroad workers would overnight at the hotel with the cost to BN running about $25,000 a month, according to the Minot Daily News. A few Soo Line workers also stayed at the hotel during the week.

Hotel owner Clarence Parker also had ranches and farms in the area. Steaks from buffalo he raised on an area ranch were served at many banquets at the hotel not only in Minot but in other parts of the country.

Clarence Parker and his second wife, Ruth, lived in the penthouse in the new Clarence Parker Hotel, Lucille Parker recalled.

When the Clarence Parker Hotel opened, Lucille and Esther opened a candy shop in the hotel’s lobby. “That was a fun thing,” Lucille said. Lucille and Bill also ran the cafe in the hotel for awhile.

The Silver Saddle room in the hotel was once the city’s main banquet hall.

Clarence Parker died in 1953; his daughter, Esther Parker, died in 1984; his sister, Lottie Parker, died in 1969; and his grandson, Bill Parker, died in 1992.

Over the next years the hotel went through several separate ownerships. When the sale of the hotel in the mid-1980s for conversion into apartments occurred it meant not only the end of an era but the disappearance of the city’s last downtown hotel. Earlier the city had 10 hotels in the downtown area but by this time all were gone. The 1930 city directory listed the Dakota, Grand (a different hotel than today’s Grand Hotel), Great Northern, DeVolne, Leland-Parker, Roosevelt, Waitz, Waverly, West and Windsor. All disappeared, demolished, converted into other uses or in the case of the Waverly, a victim of fire.

Today, that has changed and the city has many hotels again.

The Leland-Parker Hotel, once standing at the corner of Main Street and Central Avenue, was demolished some years ago. Now that corner is the site of Artspace, a housing and retail complex.

Today, the former CP hotel is home to the Minot Commission on Aging, including the Parker Coffee Shop on the first floor and the Parker Suites apartments on the upper floors.

Lucille Parker said she is pleased the Parker name has been retained on the building that once housed the Clarence Parker hotel.