The lost boy

Lavern Enget was the son of Obert Lavern “Bud” Enget and Sophie O. Enget. The Enget family lived on a farm near Powers Lake, Burke County, North Dakota, in the northwestern part of the state. Our family farm was in a neighboring community, about fifteen miles away.

On the evening of October 17, 1954, four year old Lavern went into the fields near his home to meet his father, and disappeared. It was dusk.  His father never saw him, and Lavern did not return home. Neighbors gathered to help look for him.  The effort to locate the young boy expanded.  He was clad in only a T-shirt and overalls when he left his house, which would offer little protection from the cold North Dakota nights. More than three thousand North Dakotans, my father among them, came together to aid in the biggest hunt in North Dakota's history. They joined hands and walked in mile-long human chains across the prairie. Airplanes, helicopters and bloodhounds (including one sent by the Canadian Mounties) were called in to help.  

My father took this photograph of one of the helicopters used in the search on October 18, 1954.  The story made national news, including coverage in Life Magazine. The search covered one hundred square miles, but no trace of Lavern was found. The hunt for the boy was eventually called off due to bad weather. 

One year later, in October 1955, a second search was organized by local newsman Daniel Halligan of Williston, North Dakota, to help ease doubts by the parents that their son may have been abducted. The search was conducted in an area close to the farm. The sloughs in the area were drained, something that had not been done the previous year, as the authorities felt the little boy would not have been able to get through the waist high weeds and grass surrounding the waters’ edges. 

LaVern's body was found in ten inches of water in the middle of one of the sloughs, about a mile from his home, on October 30, 1955. He is buried in Bethel Cemetery, near his parents and other family members.