As you may have noticed, North Dakota has produced a great many high-ranking military officers. Retired Admiral Bill Owens was born on this date in 1940. He graduated from Bismarck High in 1958, then went to work for a farmer that summer. In an interview for the Carnegie Reporter, he said, “I came from a very poor family… and I was imagining my life if I stayed there. North Dakota is a great place, but the opportunities available to me there, at that time, were not ones that I could imagine