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Career choice is a matter of determination. We don’t often know at a young age what we want to be when we grow up. Our career choices are like that feather floating in the air at the start of the movie Forest Gump. It will land someplace, but we’re not quite sure where it will land. This was not the case for young Randall Waldner as he was growing up in Redfield, South Dakota. He knew where he wanted his feet to land, and at an early age he began putting himself in a position to make that dream happen...

The development of the telegraph in the 1830s revolutionized the way the world communicated. A nomenclature of dots and dashes was created representing each letter of the alphabet so that a “telegrapher,” using a telegraph key, could tap out a brief message that could be sent over a wire connected to another station almost instantly. It was a mind-blowing innovation that immediately changed long-distance communication. The thin, taut copper lines naturally followed the railroads. By the 1870s the telegraph had reached the Territory of Dakota, connecting the eastern industrial empire with one of the last regions to be settled wes...