By Jody Kerzman

Name a significant news event to happen during the past 40 years in North Dakota, and chances are, Donna Hardt was there capturing the news with her camera. Donna has been a television news photographer since 1976, give or take a few years.

“I took a few years off to try different things, but I kept coming back to news,” Donna explains.

It is a career Donna never intended on having. She married in 1968, quickly had two daughters, and expected she would be home with them while her husband worked. But in 1972, her marriage ended and Donna was left to raise her two young daughters, Michelle and Kaja, by herself.

“I went to live with my parents. I was not going to go on welfare. I knew that for sure and when I realized my marriage was truly over, that my husband was not coming back, I decided to get a job.”

Donna’s sisters, Carolee and Gloria, were living near Seattle, Washington and invited Donna and her girls to move there. Donna found work as an apartment manager and sold Avon. After a year, she returned home to Bismarck, where she has been ever since. She found employment at Kirkwood Office Supply, JC Penney, and Daytons. She also helped her dad with his handyman business. Those jobs included everything from shingling to fixing dishwashers. Donna also did the bookwork for her dad’s business.

“I had to take care of my kids, and I didn’t have time to feel sorry for myself. My parents saved us. They let us live with them and they babysat the girls a lot for me while I worked.”

Hard Working Role Models

Donna’s parents taught her about hard work. Her dad, Arnold Engstrand, was a handyman/housebuilder/jack-of-all-trades. She remembers his stories about climbing the KFYR radio and television towers to change lightbulbs during North Dakota blizzards. Her mom, Florence, was a pastor in the Assembly of God church. Her mother’s job took the family from Wilton to Selfridge and finally to Bismarck.

“My mom came from a family of preachers. Her dad, uncles, and brother were all preachers.”

So even in the 1950s when there weren’t many female pastors, Florence Engstrand felt right at home in the male-dominated career. Perhaps that’s why Donna never blinked an eye at the idea that television news photographer was not a job for a woman.

“I started my career as a news photographer at KXMB in 1977. I even did the weather there a few times, but I wasn’t very good, so they didn’t let me keep doing that, which was just fine with me,” Donna remembers with a laugh. “My good childhood friend from Selfridge, Dwayne Walker, was doing the same job at KFYR-TV and he kept asking me to come to KFYR but I didn’t want to leave my friends at KX. Finally the news director at KXMB set up an interview for me at KFYR. He even drove me to the interview, and convinced me to take the job.

No Job—Or Camera—Too Big

Donna is a petite woman, and in those days, the camera gear was heavy, bulky, and nearly as big as she. Never one to ask for help, Donna figured out how to carry the gear and keep up with fast-moving stories.

“I always balanced my camera on my hip. I still do that even though the cameras today are much smaller and lighter,” Donna says with a smile.

The hours were long, not ideal for a single mom, but Donna made it work.

“I was taught that if you have a job, you do that job, no matter what. You don’t make excuses or feel sorry for yourself. You just do what you were hired to do,” she says matter-of-factly. “There were times I would take my daughters, and later their children, with me on stories. It was just what we had to do. It was hard as they got older, sometimes I had to miss their events, but that’s also the neat thing about news; sometimes you have a few hours off at random times and can make it to lunch at school or to an afternoon program.”

In 1988, Donna married local radio personality Sid Hardt. Shortly after that she left the news business for a few years to care for her grandkids. But she missed the news. So in 1999 she returned to KFYR.

“There isn’t another job where you can go from a feedlot to the Governor’s office in the same day. There are so many great stories and I’m so lucky to be trusted to capture those stories. It’s an honor for me to go into people’s homes and tell their story. It is very humbling. I do my very best to make them feel comfortable and to look their best on TV. I will tell someone if they have lipstick on their teeth, or a hair sticking straight up. I’ve been known to adjust a U.S. Senator’s tie if it’s crooked. I’ll move plants so they’re not distracting in the background. It’s so important to me that people look good. I just want my work to look the very best it can look.”

And when she looks back at her career as a television news photographer, there isn’t one big story that sticks out. When asked to name the top four stories of her career, she lists the 2011 flood, the 1983 shootout between Gordon Kahl and police officers near Medina, North Dakota, a marijuana bust in South Dakota, and the Dakota Access Pipeline protests of 2016. There have been Presidential visits, Army National Guard trips, helicopter rides, police ride-alongs, legislative sessions, and school visits. All hold a special place in Donna’s heart, but what’s most memorable to her are the people she’s met, both those she’s worked beside and those she’s photographed.

“I feel like this job has helped me meet so many people. I love people, and I love when they remember me from a story I did with them years ago. That’s so neat that they remember little old me. I’ve lost track of how many reporters I’ve worked with. It’s got to be hundreds.”

But those reporters have not lost track of Donna. She has taken many a young reporter under her wing, taught them how to write to the video she captured, introduced them to the movers and shakers in the community, and helped them build their reporting skills. Many have moved on to bigger markets, thanks in part to the training Donna gave them at KFYR.

What Retirement?

This summer Donna will celebrate her 70th birthday. For many, it seems like the perfect time to put the camera away and see what retirement has to offer. But Donna has no plans to retire anytime soon.

“People ask me all the time when I’m going to retire. I just smile and say ‘not yet.’ I have too much to do. I don’t want to stop working. I love this job. It is so interesting. I would miss seeing all the people and meeting new people if I quit. And this job helps me keep things in perspective. There are days I feel sorry for myself, days that my arm hurts, or my back hurts and then I get assigned a story that makes me realize just how lucky I am.”   

Click here to see more photos of Donna, taken by Photos by Jacy.

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