BISMARCK — What makes a memory stick? Why do others fade, never to occupy a corner of the mind?

Jim Fischer of Bismarck knows this all too well. At 93, the husband and father of three lives with flashes of a childhood marked by tragedy — some memories sharp, others lost to time.

By age 7, his world had fallen apart. Both parents were gone, his older siblings were sent away to work, and only his baby brother remained — the one he held by the hand as they walked into Fargo’s orphanage in 1939.

He remembered the name: The North Dakota Children’s Home. But little else.

Eighty-six years later, questions still nagged at him. So, with his wife Edith's help, he began searching for answers.

“As you get older, you don’t remember what you had for breakfast,” Edith said with a laugh, “but you rem

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