Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/651930
31 HISTORY OF MEDOR A Tickets and info at M EDOR A .COM Harold Schafer Harold Schafer was a businessman, philanthropist and founder of the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation. Schafer rose to national acclaim as the original maker of Glass Wax, Snowy Bleach and, perhaps most popular of all, Mr. Bubble bubble bath. He was a classic "rags to riches" story, a Horatio Alger winner, alongside the likes of Herbert Hoover and J.C. Penney, whose personal friends were among the world's rich and famous, but whose heart was always with his home in North Dakota — especially Medora. Schafer purchased the Rough Riders Hotel and Ferris Store in 1962 and began rebuilding them. Other renovations and improvements followed and, in 1965, the Medora Division of Schafer's Gold Seal Company was opened to the public — its star attraction, the Medora Musical! When the Gold Seal Company was sold in 1986, the family donated the Medora assets to the newly formed Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation. A very large number of people have worked to make Medora what it is today, but clearly, it all began when Schafer's crew took the Rough Riders Hotel apart, board by board, and then painstakingly reassembled it. Harold Schafer was a unique blend of flamboyance and humility, a successful businessman who was much more interested in giving than in accumulating wealth.