Hello my friends! I have a really fun episode for you today. There's a lot of my

own childhood memories tied up in what I want to chat with you about and so I

think this will be really fun. Let's dive into this episode about the great

state of North Dakota. I'm Sharon Negan and welcome to the Sharon Says So

podcast. Raise your hand. I can't see you but I want you to raise your hand

anyway. If you ever grew up watching the TV show Lawrence Welk because I did

it was well off the air by the time I was a child but my grandmother absolutely

loved it and we watched it in reruns, we watched it in syndication and so I

have to tell you more about Lawrence Welk who at the time that he died in the

1990s was one of the richest men in entertainment. He was worth over 150

million dollars so let's start at the beginning and we're gonna trace how

this man who did not even learn how to speak English until he was in his 20s

became one of the richest people in entertainment by the time that he died.

So Lawrence Welk was the child of immigrants. His parents were ethnically

German. They lived in the All-Sace Lorraine region of Europe and they immigrated

to Ukraine and then in the late 1800s his parents Ludwig and Cristiana Welk

came to the United States and they settled in North Dakota. Lawrence Welk was

the sixth child for the Welk family they had eight or nine children depending

on which biography you consult and his parents spoke no English and so Lawrence

was not raised speaking any English and this actually was something that made

him famous. It made him famous that his accent was very pronounced. His English

was very heavily accented with his like upper midwestern German. When his parents

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