Auctioneer honored
BY JILL DENNING GACKLE
BHG News
It might have been a love of auctions his dad nurtured when Lyle Lauf was young.
Maybe it was that he liked people.
Or maybe it was the time Lauf’s boss told his opinionated employee it might be a good idea for him to find another job.
Whatever the reason, Lauf just knows that auctioneering for 34 years has been an enjoyable field that brought him one of the highest honors recently. He was inducted into the ND Auctioneers Association Hall of Fame at the annual convention in Fargo.
The 1964 Golden Valley High School graduate, went from serving in the Army in Vietnam to construction until 1975. That’s when he landed a job at Falkirk Mine, where he worked for 28 years. But when the shift was done, he was getting ready for the next auction.
"I just always wanted to do that," he said. Training at a well-known auction school in Mason City, Iowa, taught him the fast-talking concentration that is required. With just an expected 5 percent success rate of the 130 in the class, Lauf worked hard to be one that made it.
