Bennie James Clayburgh was born in Scobey, Montana, on January 31, 1924, the son of Anna (Horvick) and Marcus Clayburgh. Ben liked to say 'once a Montanan, always a Montanan' but he considered Grand Forks his home town. He attended South Junior High and graduated from Central High School in 1941. Ben passed away on Monday, January 21, 2013, 10 days short of his 89th birthday. Ben married his college sweetheart, Mina Tennison on June 23, 1947. She passed away in 1968. On January 3, 1970, Ben married Beverly Manternach in Moorhead, MN. Ben enlisted as a Private in the U.S. Army in 1942. Following basic training he was assigned to Service Command Unit 3772, University of North Dakota, where he took pre-med courses; Washington Jefferson College, Washington, PA, for nine months; and performed general duties in the neuro-psychiatric section of Fitzsimmons General Hospital in Denver, Colorado for a period of four months. He was then transferred back to UND where he was a student in medicine for fifteen months. Recalled by the military in 1950 during the Korean conflict, Ben was stationed at Ellsworth AF Base in South Dakota and at a base in London serving as a flight surgeon, retiring from the Air Force in June of 1953.