Eugene Bohannon family photographs

At the age of 35, Dr. Eugene William Bohannon took office as the first president of the Duluth Normal School on September 2, 1901, at an annual salary of $2,500, surpassing twenty rival candidates for the post. He married Mary Agnes Carny the same year. He had spent the prior three years at the Mankato Normal school. Mr. Bohannon was educated at the University of Indiana, and awarded his doctor of philosophy from Clark University at Worchester, Massachusetts. He stayed with the Duluth Normal School until he retired on January 1, 1938, seeing it through the transition from a normal school to the Duluth State Teachers College. He had gained stature as a defender of educational excellence and teachers specifically.

The State Normal School in Duluth opened in September of 1902 after delays in funding and a fire of the nearly complete building. The building was reconstructed. Agitation for the school had begun in the 1880s, but was not successful in the legislature until 1895. When the first students registered in the fall of 1902, there was a one-building campus with a faculty of 10 including President Eugene W. Bohannon. The Normal School had an enrollment of fewer than 100 students. The Normal School became the Duluth State Teachers' College and finally the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Gardening was Bohannon's loved pastime, and there was a blueberry bog in his backyard just east of Old Main on fifth street. Dr. Bohannon died in 1955 at age 89 in Duluth.

The Bohannon children were Mary Elizabeth, Ruth, and George. Mary Elizabeth Bohannon, Ph. D. (1905-1963), chair, department of history Wells College, Aurora, N. Y.; Ruth Bohannon (Rochester, Minnesota 1963); George Wilder Bohannon was a grad of University of Minnesota and pursued the transportation industry becoming president of the Pullman Co. in 1958. George, Oak Park, Illinois, unveiled a plaque at UMD when Bohannon Hall was named for his father May 22, 1974.