BILLINGS — One hundred years ago, Glenn Pomeroy's mother, Myrtle, left Billings. Earlier this month, he came back. Their exit and entrance, separated by a century, can both be traced back to Dec.
6, 1924, the night Nels and Annie Anderson — Myrtle's parents, Glenn's grandparents — were murdered in their barber shop on Minnesota Avenue. On the 100th anniversary of his grandparents' death, Pomeroy visited Billings to lay flowers on Nels and Annie's graves. Pomeroy was raised in North Dakota, has lived in California for decades and hasn't been to Billings in years.
But he wanted to be here on that day, to walk the streets where his grandparents and young mother once did. The past isn't as far away as we'd like to think. Pomeroy figures he was about 5or 6-years-old when he found out his grandparents had been murdered.
"I have a vague memory of being in the car with my parents and they were talking," he recalls. "I overheard, and that's when they told me." Pomeroy is the youngest of his four siblings, behind Elaine, Linda and Earl, so he was the last to find out about the tragedy baked into his DNA.
The Andersons were, by all accounts, thoroughly normal people. They were both second generation Americans — Nels was born in Nebraska to Swedish parents, Annie was born in Minnesota to Norwegian parents. They married in Miles City in August 1913.
He was working as a barber and she was a cashier at the restaurant next door to the barbershop. After their wedding license was signe.
