DNT Extra August 2020

A different view of 2012 flood

By Andee Erickson aerickson@duluthnews.com

From the aerial view of an airplane to the basements of flooded homes, News Tribune photographers sought to capture both up-closeand-personal as well as grand-scope images to tell the story of the 2012 flood.

“I immediately wanted to get up in the air,” recounted Bob King, recently retired News Tribune photographer of 39 years. “I knew that aerials would be such a valuable way to show people the scope. There’s the ground angle, the close-up, that’s important, but no one knows the scope until you’re up in the air.”

No lives were lost as a result of the flooding in June 2012, but the rain ruined homes, businesses and roads around the Northland. To understand how severe the damage was, King made a reservation for a ride in an airplane as soon as the storm clouds cleared June 20, 2012.

He asked the pilot to circle around certain areas a number of times to get various angles, or to tilt the plane to accommodate the best lighting. To King, seeing the water surrounding the homes in Thomson, or the school in Moose Lake brought the aftermath of the flood home. He knew it would for News Tribune readers, too.

“I’m always looking to compose a nice picture, trying to get a sense of context,” King said. “You just try to bring it home. So I was trying to look for things that would really bring it home: the devastation or the amount of water covering the area.”

Back on the ground, King and other News Tribune photographers would scatter off to wherever someone was reporting significant damage.

As soon as he became aware of the vehicle that fell into the sinkhole on Skyline Parkway, King ran to the scene.

To capture the detail of the damage done to

A pickup truck sits in the floodwaters of Miller Creek in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. (Clint Austin / News Tribune)

Carl Carlson III (left) and Connie Strong, both of Duluth, help to evacuate Jan Martin (center) from her home in the Lincoln Park neighborhood after record rainfall hit the Duluth area June 20, 2012. Most areas received 7-10 inches of rain in 24 hours. Martin remarked that she has lived in the neighborhood for 69 years and has never seen Miller Creek that high. (Clint Austin / News Tribune)

Vermillion Road in Duluth, he timed his visit so the lighting would be just right to reveal the textures of the road.

“I had to move around quite a bit to find just the right spot and angle. I waited for somebody to show up,” King said. “That person provides a real context for the size.”

News Tribune photographer Clint Austin had been out photographing during the first few hours of the rainfall June 19, 2012, and could already tell it wasn’t going to be just any rain event.

“Once I was out there that first night I didn’t want to stop shooting because I could feel how different it was,” Austin said. “But I had to make some quick decisions and then get back and turn them in.”

That night, while monitoring his sump pump and getting very little sleep, a friend called him at 3 a.m. to tell him a polar bear was missing from the Lake Superior Zoo.

“At first I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming,” Austin said. He recalled texting an editor and being told to stay put until morning.

He was photographing the rush of the Lester

River flowing above its banks in East Duluth the next day when he got a call that people were being evacuated from their homes in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.

“I headed west to go cover that, but the big thing that morning was it was really hard to get anywhere,” Austin said. “It just took an enormous amount of

Continued on page 5

Sightseers visit and take pictures of a section of Vermillion Road that was destroyed by floods during the 2012 flood. (Bob King / News Tribune)

Onlookers take in the scene of a car that fell into a huge sinkhole on Skyline Parkway at Ninth Avenue East in Duluth on June 20, 2012. Rain undercut the ground beneath to create the weak spot in the pavement. The car’s owners are from Seattle and came to Duluth to run Grandma’s Marathon and visit family. (Bob King / News Tribune)

I enjoy watching documentaries that show a behind-thescenes look at how movies, albums, books or artwork are created. Some might say those peeks behind the curtain steal some of the magic behind masterpieces, but, to me, a closer look at the creative process only leaves me with a longer-lasting appreciation for the passion and work ethic of the creators. I want to see the entire process, from choosing a slab of rock from which the statue was created to brushing away the final crumbs before it hits public display. For the 2020 August DNT Extra, the News Tribune staff is excited to give readers a peek into the newsroom as we tell you the stories behind some of the biggest newsmaking events that we have covered in the past several decades. This issue of DNT Extra covers big weather events such as the infamous 1991 Halloween blizzard and the 2012 floods, tragedies such as the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald and the Congdon murders, as well as celebrity visits to the Northland from Bob Dylan and several presidents. There are some other treats, too, including a column from longtime news scribe Jim Heffernan and DNT reporter John Myers recounting a career’s worth of handshakes with newsmakers.

We hope you’ll enjoy this special insider’s view of some of the biggest stories our newsroom has covered. Thank you for being a loyal reader of the Duluth News Tribune.

Rick Lubbers is the executive editor of the Duluth News Tribune. Contact him at 218-723-5301 or rlubbers@duluthnews.com.

2-3,5 6-9 10-11 12-13 14-17 18-21

24-25

26-27

28-29 30-32 33-35 36-39

A different view of 2012 flood

Snapshots told story of Halloween 1991

’Dogs first national title was extra special

Extra! Extra!

Through the News Tribune’s lens: Northland presidential visits

Reporter on Congdon case still gets tips

Fitzgerald sinking was told in multiple runs

Reporter recalls crash that claimed Sen. Wellstone’s life

What about Bob?

A look back at newspaper, city history

Among many wildfires covered, Ham Lake caused the most heartache

Memorable handshakes while on the job

Cover: News Tribune file photos

Cover designed by Gary Meader / gmeader@duluthnews.com

Rick Lubbers

Editing by: Rick Lubbers, Barrett Chase, Katie Rohman, Beverly Godfrey Graphics by: Gary Meader Page design for this section by: Renae Ronquist

Water flowing from Miller Creek fills the backyards of several homes on West Second Street in Duluth on June, 20, 2012.

time because there were so many different streets that were washed out and there was debris everywhere.”

A photo of a woman evacuating her Lincoln Park home remains his favorite photo that he captured during the News Tribune’s coverage of the flood.

As for what it felt like covering such a major

event taking over his community, Austin said: “The responsibility of telling the story to the readers takes over in my mind, so I don’t really think about how it’s affecting me in that moment. It’s afterward that I process it.” u

Flooding in the town of Thomson along the St. Louis River. (Bob King / News Tribune)

(Clint Austin / News Tribune)

Snapshots told story of Halloween 1991

By Adelle Whitefoot awhitefoot@duluthnews.com

The Halloween blizzard of 1991 was a four-day event that left Duluth with 35.2 inches of snow.

As with any big event, photographs are always essential to telling the story.

News Tribune photographer Bob King, now retired, was just one of those making sure he was documenting everything he could.

“I love photographing snowstorms because people were such a joy. What it is really during a big story you feel much closer to your fellow humans,” King said. “They’re very open to being photographed and you’re open with them and you’re laughing and sharing griefs. So there was always a joy to it for me in that.”

One of the most memorable photographs from the blizzard that continues to get shared today is really an aftermath photograph by King. The iconic photo, which was in color and still new for the News Tribune then, was taken on Nov. 4, 1991, along East Seventh Street in Duluth. It shows a long line of cars buried in the snow and people working together to get them unstuck.

“It was a really wonderful scene to capture,” King said. “On the one hand, it was kind of a pictorial view of this great natural disaster of sorts. On the other, humanity was just kind of dwarfed by the enormity of the storm and it just seemed to sum it up really nice.”

King said he went out every day of the storm to try and capture as many scenes as he could. The biggest challenge, of course, was not getting stuck.

Continued on page 8

Jack Ryan received some help from passersby as he tried to push his car in front of his home along East Sixth Street in Duluth. They tried to move it into the street, and then move it back into the spot, unsuccessfully.

The neighborhood digs out along East Seventh Street in Duluth on Nov. 4, 1991, after the huge Halloween snowstorm. (Bob King / News Tribune)

(Dave Ballard / News Tribune)

A group of current and former University of Minnesota Duluth students didn’t let the heavy snow deter them from enjoying an afternoon in a hot tub at a home on Second Street on Nov. 1, 1991. Clockwise from far right: Kris Simon, Mike Erickson, Brenda Berglund, Cal Matten, Dennis Karp, Jay Lyle, Becky Sunnarberg, Aaron Stoskopf and Eric Rajala. (Dave Ballard / News Tribune)

“Once you’re stuck, you’re pretty much done,” King said.

Another challenge was making sure the cameras stayed dry. So King said he always kept a few towels in his car to dry off his cameras every time he got back to the car.

Former News Tribune photographer Dave Ballard was also out on the roads during the blizzard.

“I remember the editor at the time had to pick me up because my road wasn’t plowed,” Ballard said.

Ballard was the photographer who took the iconic hot tub photo. Ballard said he saw the college kids sitting in the hot tub and pulled over right away.

“Tried to fly through the snow, which was about kneedeep at the time and just started taking photos,” he said. “And then the guy behind them in the alley starts plowing his driveway with a snowblower and I thought that was kind of an interesting juxtaposition.”

King said he remembers when Ballard came back to the office with the picture of the hot tub.

“We were all like, ‘Oh my god, what a great photo that’s going to be,’ and it was,” he said.

Both Ballard and King said the blizzard is definitely one of those events they will always remember and how important it was to document it.

“We all wanted to get out there and get photos that really told the story for people to look back on,” Ballard said. u

/ News Tribune)

PEOPLE LIKE NOWHERE ELSE

Drew

and JR

Armstrong, of Duluth, found it no problem to climb atop the family car in heavy snow. They were trying to help clear it off in November 1991. (Bob King

Caring for each other.

’Dogs first national title was extra special

By Jon Nowacki jnowacki@duluthnews.com

It was early in the fall of 2008 when I approached my sports editor, Rick Lubbers, about a trip I was thinking of taking to Las Vegas that December.

It was kind of a spur-of-themoment deal. A friend of mine was getting married out there, so Lubbers and I discussed the situation. My fall beat is covering Minnesota Duluth football, and the Bulldogs were having quite the season in coach Bob Nielson’s return to the helm. A trip out to Vegas could interfere with my job of covering the team, although it would be unprecedented for the Bulldogs to be playing into December.

“For UMD to play that late, wouldn’t they have to get past Grand Valley State?” Lubbers asked.

“Yes, that’s correct,” I said.

We both laughed.

“Go ahead and book it,” Lubbers said.

Grand Valley State was the power in NCAA Division II football at the time, having won four national titles from 2002-06, but in a shocker, the Bulldogs went into Allendale, Michigan, and edged the Lakers 19-13 in double overtime in the national quarterfinals on Nov. 29, 2008.

Lubbers covered that game because it aligned with his annual Thanksgiving trips home to Michigan. He stayed on the Bulldogs’ beat one more week as I watched UMD trounce California (Pennsylvania) 45-7 on Dec. 6 from a bar in downtown Las Vegas. Then it was my turn.

“For UMD to play that late, wouldn’t they have to get past Grand Valley State?” Lubbers asked.

“Yes, that’s correct,” I said.

We both laughed.

“Go ahead and book it,” Lubbers said.

I was a frequent flyer that year, and the next week I was off to Florence, Alabama, for the NCAA Division II national title game.

It was a different time, when the newspaper business was still trying to grasp the impact of the internet, throwing ideas out there to see what would stick. Add the Great Recession into the mix, and I was just glad I got to go out there.

Rather than covering the press conferences and cranking out two or three stories each day in the traditional way, we scaled back on print a little bit. We pushed a live blog where fans could ask me questions at all hours about the mood of the team, the festive and welcoming atmosphere down in Florence and, of course, what I had to eat (found a great Cajun restaurant, by the way). It was fun, just a little different.

I remember late the night before the big game. The hotel was silent when I finally signed off on the live blog with a reference to “The Night Before Christmas.” Yes, not a creature was stirring. It was that quiet.

Minnesota Duluth downed Northwest Missouri State 21-14 the next day as the Bulldogs jumped out to a 21-0 lead after Isaac Odim’s touchdown run early in the fourth quarter before the Bearcats made it interesting with a pair of touchdowns.

That set the stage for a climactic finish, and made my story unique. Northwest Missouri State attempted an onside kick, and I described how one of my favorite Bulldogs, linebacker Robbie Aurich, had eyes the size of “ostrich eggs” as the football tumbled his way.

He missed.

Fortunately, his teammate Luke Schalekamp pounced on the football as the Bulldogs secured their first national championship. They’d win a second national title just two years later, but as they say, nothing beats the first time.

Record-setting quarterback Ted Schlafke got the biggest laugh when afterward he said: “I guess this has got to mean that we’re not a hockey school anymore.”

I’ll never forget the hectic aftermath.

While we had photographers shoot the game for us, I was in charge of everything else. I shot video, took photos and recorded the post-game press conference. And oh yeah, I had a story to write.

All of this takes time, of course, and it was time I didn’t have. In a get-in-the-chopper moment, I

had UMD sports information director Bob Nygaard yelling at me: “Jon, we’ve got to go. Now!”

A blizzard was coming, and the team wanted to beat it back home. With a charter, the sooner you get on, the sooner you go.

I filed my story and literally ran with Nygaard to the rental car, stuffing papers and cords into my computer bag as we went. Sweat beads formed across my forehead. Finally, in the car, with Nygs driving us to the airport, I could relax. A short time later, we were in flight.

Lubbers, my boss, said my story was great, the proverbial case of “stepping up” when it mattered, and I got first place in Minnesota for a sports story that year for papers our size.

Obviously, the subject matter helps. It was a storybook ending, indeed. There were 160 teams in NCAA Division II football, and I was fortunate and proud to say I got to cover the best one.

This was a celebration.

Not long after the plane took off, the Bulldogs put in a request, and the flight crew obliged. “Sweet Home Alabama” blared through the plane’s PA system, and the entire team sang along.

“Play some Skynyrd” never sounded so good. u

Minnesota Duluth’s Tony Doherty (right) runs past Northwest Missouri State defenders during the Bulldogs’ national championship victory over the Bearcats in 2008 in Florence, Alabama. (Brett Groehler/UMD for the News Tribune)

Extra! Extra!

Sports fans have seen “special edition” pages pop out of the stands at the end of Super Bowls or World Series.

The headlines are big and bold and proclaim championships such as “Kansas City wins Super Bowl” or “Yankees reign.” Fans proudly display them for TV cameras as they celebrate, often leaving viewers at home wondering “How did those newspapers print them so quickly?”

But the ink on those pages had long since dried by the time they emerged at the start of those championship celebrations.

Plans for those pages go into action nearly from the moment those teams qualify for their respective title games.

By Rick Lubbers rlubbers@duluthnews.com

The News Tribune has produced several of these title pages in recent years — some of which have been displayed by cheering Northland sports fans. Others have not seen the light of day.

Just over 10 years ago, the News Tribune optimistically printed a bundle of championship pages prior to the 2011 NCAA Division I men’s hockey national title game and Jimmy Bellamy, at the time a web guru for the News Tribune, smuggled them into Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul while a spectator for the championship game against the Michigan Wolverines.

The headline simply read “National Champs!” and the page featured a large celebration picture taken earlier that season.

Bellamy’s instructions were simple: If the Bulldogs win, distribute the pages as quickly as you can. If the Bulldogs lose, keep them hidden and make sure to toss them into the recycling.

“Before the start of the final, I met (DNT sports reporter) Rick Weegman in the concourse at the X where he handed me the wrapped stacks of front pages,” Bellamy recounted recently. “I put them

Jimmy Bellamy (left) and his brother, Josh Bellamy, celebrate the University of Minnesota Duluth’s men’s hockey team’s first national championship moments after the Bulldogs’ 3-2 OT victory over Michigan in 2011. Immediately following the victory, Jimmy Bellamy distributed many championship pages printed ahead of time by the Duluth News Tribune. (Photo courtesy of Jimmy Bellamy)

under my and my brother Josh’s third-row seats and refused to peek out of fear of jinxing it.”

The close game was deadlocked at 2-all after regulation. The outcome of the game — and the fate of those championship pages — was very much in doubt. But UMD’s Kyle Schmidt scored in overtime to boost the Bulldogs to a 3-2 OT victory and the wild celebration of the school’s first Division I men’s hockey championship was under way.

“When the OT-winning goal was scored on the opposite end, I turned around and hugged my brother,” Bellamy said. “He told me to start handing out the front pages. I hurriedly grabbed small stacks, ran up and down the stairs and gave them to the first person in each row while instructing them to take one and pass it down. In the fog of it all, News Tribune reporter and longtime UMD hockey season

ticket holder John Myers and I spotted each other and embraced like we had been on the ice to set up the winning goal.”

Several Bulldog fans waved their new collector’s items around for ESPN’s cameras, and highlight reels of that thrilling victory still sport images of those title pages.

“Seeing images of the front pages in highlights of the postgame celebration on ESPN and photos on the Sunday sports page was a thrill,” Bellamy said. u

Bulldogs fans celebrate their team from the stands of the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul on April 9, 2011, after UMD defeated Michigan in overtime 3-2 to win the school’s first national championship in men’s hockey. (Photo by Brett Groehler/UMD)

Through the News Tribune’s lens: Northland presidential visits

By Jimmy Lovrien jlovrien@duluthnews.com

While it’s no Iowa or New Hampshire, the Northland has seen its share of sitting U.S. presidents visit on the campaign trail. For the News Tribune, it’s usually an all-hands-on-deck effort with photographers spread throughout the area to document the trip — from the airport to capture Air Force One landing and taking off, to the arena for the speech, to protests outside the venue at anything along the motorcade route.

Here’s a look at some sitting presidents to visit the area:

June 20, 2018: President Donald Trump in June 2018 drew long lines of supporters outside the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center’s Amsoil Arena (and dissenters formed their own marches and rallies) to stump for then-candidate Pete Stauber, R-Hermantown, who won the 8th Congressional seat that November.

July 13, 2004: President George W. Bush spoke to about 8,000 re-election supporters in the DECC with a 45-minute speech in which he referred to the Iron Range as the “Iron Ridge.” Protesters gathered outside the arena and several were arrested for disorderly conduct.

Nov. 3-4, 1994: President Bill Clinton visited Duluth to rally for U.S. Senate candidate Ann Wynia. Clinton appeared at the University of Minnesota Duluth, jogged on Skyline Parkway and spent a night at the Holiday Inn.

Sept. 24-25, 1963: President John F. Kennedy spent a night at the Hotel Duluth — now Greysolon Plaza —

Continued on page 15-17

President Donald Trump congratulates Pete Stauber after his speech during the rally at Amsoil Arena in Duluth. (2018 file / News Tribune)

President Donald Trump talks during a roundtable discussion with political and industry officials in a warehouse on the waterfront. (2018 file / News Tribune)

President George W. Bush shakes hands with those who attended his speech at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center. (2004 file / News Tribune)

Young supporters of President George W. Bush show their enthusiasm for the president after his speech at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center. (2004 file / News Tribune)

and spoke at UMD. He also took a side trip by helicopter to visit Ashland.

Other visits included President Jimmy Carter in 1978 and President Harry Truman in 1952 and 1948. Earlier presidents made stops in the Northland prior to 1948, including President Calvin Coolidge, who made Superior’s Central High School his summer White House while he fished on the Brule River in the summer of 1928. u

President Bill Clinton jogs with, among others, Duluth Mayor Gary Doty along Skyline Drive near 40th Avenue West on Friday, Nov. 4. From left: Bill Jobe, of Arlington, Texas (Ann Wynia’s brother); the president; a Secret Service agent; and Doty. (File / News Tribune)

President Bill Clinton waves goodbye to the crowd before departing from the Duluth International Airport. (1994 file / News Tribune)

President Bill Clinton shakes hands with the crowd gathered at the Air National Guard Base after landing at the Duluth International Airport on Nov. 3, 1994. (File / News Tribune)

President Bill Clinton does his stretching exercises at the end of his morning run on Skyline Drive in Duluth. (1994 file/News Tribune)

President John F. Kennedy speaks to more than 5,000 people on the campus of the University of Minnesota Duluth. (1963 file / News Tribune)

President John F. Kennedy, rested from a night at the Hotel Duluth, left on Air Force One on the morning of Sept. 25, 1963, after spending 30 hours in the Northland. (File / News Tribune)

President John F. Kennedy shakes hands with Clarence Maddy, assistant to the Duluth mayor, on Superior Street in front of Hotel Duluth in September 1963. (File / News Tribune)

Reporter on Congdon case still gets tips

Gail Feichtinger grew up on the East Coast and was living in Texas when she landed the job as the night cops and courts reporter for the Duluth News Tribune & Herald back in 1984.

“I left Dallas and moved to Duluth in January,” Feichtinger recalled. “I had never been there. I knew nothing about it. … I had to go to the library just to find out where I was going. My interview for the job was over the phone. ... They were taking bets in the newsroom that I wouldn’t last through the first winter.”

By John Myers jmyers@duluthnews.com

But she did last, and Feichtinger, then in her 20s, went on to cover one of the most famous legal dramas in Duluth history: the Congdon murders.

On June 27, 1977, one or more intruders entered the Glensheen mansion in Duluth. They used a satin pillow to smother Elisabeth Congdon, 83, and also bludgeoned to death Congdon’s night nurse, Velma Pietila, 66. Congdon was the last surviving child of Duluth mining and timber magnate Chester Congdon who, when he died in 1916, was thought to be Minnesota’s richest person.

Investigators immediately focused on Marjorie Caldwell, one of Elisabeth Congdon’s two adopted

Roger Caldwell, Marjorie Caldwell’s husband, pleaded guilty to the killings. (File / News Tribune)

Marjorie Caldwell, Elisabeth Congdon’s adopted daughter, was suspected but never convicted of plotting her mother’s murder. (File / News Tribune)

daughters, as the mastermind of the murder, and her alcoholic husband, Roger Caldwell, as the person who carried it out.

Feichtinger missed out on the 1978 trial of Roger Caldwell in Brainerd (he was convicted of the murders) and the 1979 trial of Marjorie, in Hastings, Minnesota, (she was acquitted) but she did cover several of the case’s major events that happened soon after. That includes the civil wrongful death lawsuit brought by Marjorie’s own family claiming she was responsible for Elisabeth Congdon’s death and thus shouldn’t get any of the $11 million Marjorie stood to inherit.

“When it came time for me to cover some of these hearings, there was so much energy in the newsroom I knew it was a big deal. … I had to go back and do some research because I had never heard of the Congdon murders before,” she said. “Then it hit me that this was a big deal for Duluth.”

Feichtinger recalls the eventual guilty plea made by Roger Caldwell in the Duluth courthouse as the most memorable moment on the job as a News Tribune reporter. The plea hearing was held under almost total secrecy.

“I was the only person not involved in the case

who was in the courtroom,” Feichtinger recalled. As the only reporter there, she got a front-row seat to one of the biggest legal events in Duluth history.

Caldwell’s conviction had been overturned by the Minnesota Supreme Court and, to avoid another costly and exhausting trial, investigators and prosecutors agreed that if Roger Caldwell, who was ailing, pleaded guilty to the murders he would be set free — his only punishment being time already served in prison.

“I got a tip from Gary (Waller, the police investigator and later St. Louis County sheriff) that something big was going to happen and that I should be there. He wouldn’t say what it was,” Feichtinger recalled. “So I sat in the courthouse. ... And when I saw Doug Thomson (Roger Caldwell’s famous Twin Cities defense attorney) show up, I knew what was going on.”

Feichtinger said she had developed a close professional relationship with both Waller and John DeSanto, the prosecuting attorney in the case who later became a district court judge, and said that relationship continued even after she left Duluth

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in 1984 to take a job with Twin Cities Public Television.

“Before I left Duluth, Gary and John and I had been talking that, someday, we should write a book about the whole story behind the story” of the Congdon murders, trials and legal mess that followed Marjorie, Feichtinger said. “I think they trusted me because I saw them every day, twice a day, when I made my rounds on the beat for the paper.”

That “someday” didn’t happen for several years, and then took another decade to come together. But the book, “Will to Murder: The True Story Behind the Crimes & Trials Surrounding the Glensheen Killings,” was finally was published in 2003 as a cooperative effort by Feichtinger, Waller and DeSanto. By then, Feichtinger had attended law school and was well into a career as a staff attorney for the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office.

Feichtinger met her husband and raised a family in the Twin Cities, where she still lives. But she has been continually drawn to the drama of the Congdon case.

“Even though I left Duluth, I never left the story,” she said.

Some 17 years after it was published — and now 43 years since the murders — the book continues to sell well at the Glensheen Mansion book shop, Feichtinger said in a recent phone interview. And to this day she still gets calls from “sources” about the case, especially about Marjorie, who is still alive at age 88, living in Arizona after being in and out of court and prison over recent decades for arson, fraud and other crimes.

“Another of the other parts I covered while working in Duluth was Marjorie’s bigamy case, when she married Wally Hagen in North Dakota while she was still married to Roger,” Feichtinger noted, adding that Marjorie is a potential but

Elisabeth Congdon, the last surviving child of Chester Congdon, was smothered in her bed on June 27, 1977. (File / News Tribune)

uncharged suspect in the death of both Hagen and his previous wife.

Feichtinger said several of her sources in the case still call her on occasion and that some still refuse to talk on the record for fear Marjorie, even though aging, might somehow still dole out retribution.

For the record, Feichtinger said she always thought — and that the evidence shows — Roger Caldwell was involved in killing Elisabeth Congdon and Velma Pietila and that Marjorie Caldwell, strapped for cash and hungry for her inheritance, was indeed the mastermind behind the crime.

But Feichtinger also harbors a theory, held by

some others involved in the case, that there was another assailant who assisted Roger in the physical crime — someone who has never been identified, let alone charged or convicted.

“There is some evidence that points to someone else helping him. And Roger (who slashed his wrists and took his own life in 1988) was such a bad alcoholic at the time, was drinking so much, likely would not have been able to do it by himself.”

Duluth’s most notorious crime and long legal drama still fascinates Feichtinger, who said it definitely helped inspire her to go to law school and become an attorney. (She’s not prosecuting criminals, but serving vulnerable adults and children on assignment with the Department of Human Services.)

“This story never ends,’’ Feichtinger said of the murders at Glensheen. “There are still parts of this case that will always be a mystery.” u

“Will to Murder: The True Story Behind the Crimes & Trials Surrounding the Glensheen Killings” is published by Zenith City Press and is available at Amazon and other booksellers.

Nurse Velma Pietila was killed on the mansion’s staircase. (File / News Tribune)

Glensheen Mansion in Duluth was the site of the murders of Elisabeth Congdon and her nurse, Velma Pietila, in 1977. (2017 file / News Tribune)

Fitzgerald sinking was told in multiple runs

By Brady Slater bslater@duluthnews.com

Days and nights of news gathering can blend together in a stew of memories that make it hard to discern a timeline.

But former Duluth News-Tribune editor Tod Chadwick remembers the night, almost 45 years ago, when the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior on Nov. 10, 1975.

“It was one of the more memorable nights I’ve had there, that’s for certain,” Chadwick said, describing how an already busy news night boiled over into unforgettable territory.

Chadwick was the “slot man,” or nightly news editor, when the city editor burst from the composing room at 424 W. First St. downtown Duluth to say that a boat was missing on Lake Superior.

“I said, ‘That’s all I need,’” the 73-year-old former editor said. He sprang into action on a night that would take him past 3 a.m.

At the time, the News-Tribune, since renamed without the hyphen, featured one of the largest distribution areas in all of Knight Ridder, including separate editions for the Iron Range, South Shore, Superior and Duluth.

The newsroom and press operators would make over the paper between printing runs, swapping out plates and updating stories as the night went along. On the night the Fitzgerald sank, Chadwick sent the paper’s waterfront reporter, the late Richard L. Pomeroy, in search of answers.

“Dick was a damn good reporter, and was trying to reach everybody in the industry,” Chadwick said. “It was getting late and it was a horrible storm.”

The first edition of the paper went out featuring “a blurb” about the missing freighter, he said. As the night wore on, bits and pieces were added and the press operators were left to scramble with each added detail.

This 1975 photo of the Edmund Fitzgerald was taken along the St. Marys River. (Courtesy of Bob Campbell)

The Edmund Fitzgerald leaves port through the Duluth ship canal in this undated photograph. The wreck of the Fitz — on Nov. 10, 1975, in a ferocious gale claimed the lives of 29 crewmen, many from Northland communities. (Courtesy of the University of Wisconsin-Superior archives)

“I made over Page 1 seven times that night,” Chadwick said, describing “running makeovers,” which would stop the press in mid-run as a new front page plate was updated.

In the end, Pomeroy was able to include a sidebar about the frightening history of the gales of November on the lake to go with the early report about the ore ship and its 29 crew members being feared lost.

“We didn’t have that much that night,” Chadwick said, underselling the effort.

Later the same day, the Duluth Herald, then the afternoon daily, featured a more thorough story that had the benefit of a full morning’s worth of reporting.

“The Fitzgerald was fairly new and one of the bigger vessels on the lake at the time,” Chadwick said. “It was a shock to everybody.” u

Tod Chadwick of Duluth was working at the Duluth News Tribune the night that the Edmund Fitzgerald was lost on Nov. 10, 1975.

(Clint Austin / caustin@duluthnews.com)

This photograph shows the Edmund Fitzgerald’s pilot house. The ship’s final resting place is 530 feet beneath the surface of Lake Superior, 17 miles off Whitefish Point on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. (Courtesy of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum)

The restored bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald is on display at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point, Michigan. It was retrieved in a joint U.S.-Canadian dive in 1995. (Courtesy of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum)

Reporter recalls crash that claimed Sen. Wellstone’s life

By Peter Passi ppassi@duluthnews.com

Former News Tribune reporter Lee Bloomquist was working in his home office in Iron on the morning of Friday, Oct. 25, 2002, when an airplane crashed, killing U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone; his wife, Sheila; his daughter, Marcia Markuson; three campaign workers, Will McLaughlin, Tom Lapic and Mary McEvoy; and two pilots, Richard Conroy and Michael Guess.

He first heard a report that an airplane had gone down near the Eveleth-Virginia Airport while listening to a police scanner.

With the airport only a short distance away, Bloomquist jumped in his vehicle.

“I can remember it was a dreary, cool day, and there was a mist in the air. It was right around the freezing point,” he said.

Given the conditions, Bloomquist said he suspected icing could have been a factor in the crash.

He headed to the airport first but saw no sign of a crash.

So, Bloomquist decided to check out Bodas Road, which runs along the south side of the airport. There, he was met by emergency vehicles.

Bloomquist got out of his own vehicle and

Firefighters from the Eveleth area prepare to move to the Wellstone plane crash site using allterrain vehicles in October 2002. The crash site was about 500 yards from the firefighters in the forest at upper-left. (Lee Bloomquist / News Tribune)

encountered just one other member of the media, a cameraman from KBJR-TV.

“Neither one of us had any idea where the plane had gone down or who was in it,” Bloomquist said, recalling how more and more law enforcement and first responders arrived on the scene.

“Law enforcement kept us on Bodas Road, and basically we stood there for about 2½ hours. And we had real poor cell phone reception out there, so we didn’t really know what was going on,” he said.

Bloomquist knew some of the first responders coming out of the woods personally.

“They couldn’t or wouldn’t offer anything, of course,” he said. “It was not their place to do so at that time.”

Meanwhile, authorities closed Bodas Road to traffic, but allowed Bloomquist and the KBJR cameraman to remain.

“So, we were basically kind of in the dark there for a long period of time over the details. We couldn’t see the plane or any smoke or anything like that. It was real thick woods to the north of Bodas Road, between there and the airport,” he said.

Finally, Bloomquist received a call from the News Tribune newsroom informing him that a plane carrying U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone had reportedly gone down.

“When I heard, it was a shock for me personally,” he said.

Bloomquist said his thoughts flashed back to his last interaction with Wellstone, who had met with steelworkers concerned about their jobs at EVTAC a couple of weeks earlier. Bloomquist covered the senator’s visit and recalled walking out of the union hall meeting alongside Wellstone, who greeted him by name on the sidewalk.

“We were not close friends. But he put his left arm around my shoulder, and I put my right arm around his,” Bloomquist said. “That was the last time I saw him.”

Bloomquist recalled the impression Wellstone

made on him.

“He had a personal connection with you. Tom Rukavina and him were a lot alike that way. Once he knew your first name, he never forgot it,” Bloomquist said.

Wellstone, seeking his third term, had chartered his final ill-fated flight to the Iron Range just 11 days prior to the general election to attend a funeral for Martin “Benny” Rukavina, state Sen. Tom Rukavina’s dad. The plane crashed about 2½ miles southeast of the Eveleth-Virginia Municipal Airport in a remote thickly wooded area. The aircraft was found in pieces, and the wreckage continued to burn for five hours after impact.

Bloomquist said he left his post on Bodas Road

to attend a hastily called press conference at the airport.

“It was a tough story to cover,” he said, reflecting on the emotional scene. “I remember seeing Sen. Wellstone’s aide, Lisa Pattni, and just how hard it hit her.”

“It was a huge loss to people up here,” Bloomquist said. u

People gathered at the DFL headquarters in Eveleth watch a television update on the plane crash death of Sen. Paul Wellstone in October 2002. (File / News Tribune)

What about Bob?

Before a 1978 concert in St. Paul, Bob Dylan offered a single interview with a single media outlet within Minnesota or neighboring states. Enter Pamela Coyle, then a 17-year-old living in Dylan’s hometown — who at the time worked for the Hibbing High Times.

The estimated 20-minute interview turned Coyle into more than a reporter. She became the story — a distinction that pops up even decades later. The Associated Press ran with the story of the high school student who interviewed Dylan, and eventually she was getting phone calls from media outlets and super fans who wanted to know more about her experience.

In 1998, Coyle revisited the experience with the News Tribune and recalled that she asked him basic questions and that he was very pleasant and offered short answers.

By Christa Lawler clawler@duluthnews.com

Editor’s note: A version of this story was originally published in the July 7, 2013, News Tribune.

Coyle voluntarily left journalism in 2007 after a career that included an internship at the News Tribune, a job at the New Haven (Conn.) Register, a fellowship at Yale Law School for a master’s degree in the study of law and more than 13 years at the TimesPicayune in New Orleans. She finished her career at The Tennessean in Nashville.

Bigger than her Dylan exclusive: The TimesPicayune’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Coyle was an assistant city editor in the role of acting city editor at the time.

Ten years later, then News Tribune staff writer Bob Ashenmacher interviewed Dylan before a concert at the Metrodome in Minneapolis.

Ashenmacher found himself backstage before the concert while Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Dylan’s backing band, wandered around. The conversation was brief, Ashenmacher recalled.

As for Dylan:

“I have a very distinct memory of vivid blue eyes,” Ashenmacher said. He later reported that Dylan’s handshake was dry and his grasp was gentle. At first, the star avoided eye contact.

When asked about his willingness to talk to a Duluth newspaper, Dylan responded:

“Don’t you want me to? I can go, I really can. I mean, I got things to do. I thought you wanted to speak to me.”

When Dylan mentioned his old girlfriend, Echo Helstrom, Ashenmacher asked if he ever hears from her.

He smiled, Ashenmacher wrote, then the musician said, “I see her occasionally.”

The experience of interviewing Dylan was a highlight of Ashenmacher’s journalism career, but not the kind of memory he regularly revisits.

“As I look back, it was very meaningful,” he said. “I’m grateful to have been able to shake his hand. It sounds corny, but he’s a great American. To say ‘thank you’ to him was meaningful to me.” u

Bob Dylan performs at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center in 1998. (File / News Tribune)

Bob Dylan in 1975. (File / News Tribune)

Pam Coyle, 17, editor of the Hibbing High Times, was granted an exclusive interview with Bob Dylan. (File / News Tribune)

A look back at newspaper, city history

October 1963: John F. Kennedy was president — but wouldn’t be for long. Queen Elizabeth was on the throne of England — had been for about a decade. Fidel Castro was roiling the Caribbean. Closer to home, downtown Duluth was the center of local commerce — there was no Miller Hill Mall. Oh, and I began a job as a reporter for this newspaper. This newspaper at the time was really two newspapers under the same roof: the morning Duluth News Tribune and the evening Duluth Herald. (A widely shared joke in those days called them “The Morning Liar” and “The Evening Repeater”). It amounted to the publication of 13 newspapers a week — seven News Tribunes and six Heralds — delivered to the doorsteps of tens of thousands of Northland subscribers by school kids eager to make a few bucks. Now, back to the present. Daily home delivery of this one remaining newspaper has ended; publication scaled back to two papers a week — Wednesdays and Saturdays — arriving in the mail. Of course, the newspaper’s coverage continues daily — even hourly — online. Times change.

By Jim Heffernan

An advertisement promoting Jim Heffernan’s Duluth Herald column misspelled his name.

Back in 1963, when I walked into the newspaper building (currently for sale), it was a pretty big operation, employing hundreds in the plant, a couple dozen in the news and sports departments. I was totally unprepared. I hadn’t majored in journalism in college, nor had I worked on school papers. I didn’t know what I was going to do with the rest of my life, so actually being hired someplace was welcome. So was the 75 bucks a week.

About a month before I showed up at the paper, having recently returned from active Army duty, my Duluth National Guard unit was involved in “guarding” President Kennedy on his visit here.

About a month after I began my job at this paper as a general assignment reporter, I was involved in local coverage of Kennedy’s assassination. Things were moving real fast.

They were moving real fast throughout Duluth, too. When I began my journalism career, the newspaper was located where it is now, Fifth Avenue West and First Street. The back of our building, where they loaded our delivery trucks, was across the alley from the back of the magnificent old Lyceum Theater in its last days in a run that had begun in 1891. Across Superior Street from the Lyceum’s imposing facade the stately Spalding Hotel, a contemporary of the Lyceum, still stood, but had recently closed.

Across Fifth Avenue West stood the Holland Hotel, still in operation, but its days were numbered, too, along with the Fifth Avenue Hotel, across Superior Street from the Holland. The Radisson is now where the Holland was, and the Duluth Public Library is on the Fifth Avenue Hotel site, in a block considered the city’s “bowery,”

locus of the oxymoronic Classy Lumberjack tavern.

A few blocks east on Superior Street, there were several department stores, the most prominent being the Glass Block. Across the street was Wahl’s and kitty-corner

Montgomery Ward had a sizable store. A little farther east was Oreck’s, and Sears operated in a building that is now a casino. In between were myriad specialty stops offering everything from sports equipment to clothing for women and men, to shoes only, luggage — anything anybody might need.

There were also several movie theaters, and we can’t overlook various bars and restaurants nestled in among everything else. One, called The Flame, was operating on the bayfront at the foot of Fifth Avenue West, site of the aquarium today. It was Duluth’s classiest eatery, always with entertainment — dining and dancing, as they used to put it. Across the avenue, also on the waterfront, site preparation for the Duluth Arena Auditorium was getting

Continued on page 32

The front page of the Nov. 22, 1963, Duluth Herald.

The former News Tribune newsroom. (Photo courtesy of the Laurie Hertzel book “From News to Me,” University of Minnesota Press)

underway. It opened in 1966.

And towering over all this were the banking facilities, business and medical offices, some of them where they are today but with different names. What is now Miller Hill Mall was a golf driving range, which went up in the 1950s on undeveloped land.

That’s not all. There were major bustling industries, including the Duluth Works of United States Steel, called American Steel and Wire, employing thousands at its Morgan Park location. Clyde Iron in the West End was multi-decades away from becoming a restaurant. Up over the hill,

with the daily newspaper in one form or another to this day.

Not in our wildest imagination at that time could we ever foresee the newspaper business changing nationally the way it has. Here and elsewhere it was an institution, like the seats of government across the street from our building in the Duluth Civic Center.

When I showed up in the newsroom, many, if not most, of the other men — yes, men — had served in World War II. What about women? There were two: the “society” editor and her assistant. They worked during the day; those of us on the morning Tribune worked evenings and nights. Evening Herald workers were leaving as we arrived.

We wrote our stories using manual Royal typewriters on leftover newsprint from the press downstairs. Electric typewriters had been invented, of course, but the newspaper management at the time was not quick to upgrade. I could recognize my desk in old newspapering movies from the 1930s.

the U.S. Air Force had established a major air base to ward off enemy attacks from the Soviet Union (now Russia) during the Cold War. Many Air Force personnel from warmer climates found out in Duluth just how cold the war could be.

The University of Minnesota Duluth (known then as the Duluth Branch of the University of Minnesota) had about 2,000 students, maybe 1,999 after I left the previous year. There are upward of 10,000 now.

That was Duluth in 1963 when I became a reporter and where I have continued an association

Those World War II vets used the hunt-andpeck system of typing, but they were fast. I had taken typing in high school, and the first night on the job, I was asked by the city editor if I could type. When I said I could, he said I had half the battle won. I didn’t, but it was encouraging.

Yup, things change. About all I can think of that hasn’t, for the purposes of this column, are I am still here, and Elizabeth is still queen.

It’s been quite a ride for both of us. u

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and columnist. He maintains a blog at jimheffernan.org and can be reached by email at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org.

Trix Wyant, of Aitkin, was at the right place at the right time as she shook President Kennedy’s hand at the Hotel Duluth as a Duluth Herald photographer snapped this picture. It was just after Kennedy arrived in his motorcade from the airport. (File / News Tribune/Duluth Herald)

Among many wildfires covered, Ham Lake caused the most heartache

By John Myers jmyers@duluthnews.com

Starting in the droughty summer of 1988, and ever since then, I have been one of the News Tribune’s primary forest fire beat reporters.

I even have the yellow Nomex shirt and green pants, with some black char stains in places, to prove it.

Something about wildfires and the people who fight them draw me in. The stories can be fascinating, fast-paced, heartbreaking and just plain interesting all at once. There’s a science to wildfires that involves climate and meteorology and forestry and then a military science-like effort to put them out, with the battle fought on land and in the air.

Fires are also confusingly contradictory, at once destroying and renewing. Where a decade ago a wildfire area might have looked blackened and bleak, it now supports a lush new forest, better for moose and blueberries.

I’ve covered some of the

region’s biggest fires of recent decades: Alpine Lake in 2005, Cavity Lake in 2006, Pagami Creek in 2011, the Germann Road fire in Wisconsin in 2013 and myriad smaller ones, too.

But in sheer scale of destruction of people’s homes, cabins and property — of disrupting and endangering people’s lives — nothing in the last 79 years in Minnesota can top the Ham Lake fire of May 2007.

It was just after noon Tuesday, May 8, when I was standing along the Gunflint Trail, near Gunflint Lake, at a roadblock formed by Cook County sheriff’s deputies and U.S. Forest Service personnel. It was as far as anyone not fighting the Ham Lake fire, just a few miles up the road at that point, was allowed to go.

The fire had already been raging for three days and most of the area had been evacuated. But authorities were bowing to pressure from home and cabin

Continued on page 34

Pillars of fire and smoke rise above the Ham Lake fire at sunset May 8, 2007. (Clint Austin / News Tribune)

owners to allow them to return to where the fire had already burned through to retrieve valuables and confirm damage. And for a couple of hours that day, as the fire seemed to settle down, property owners were allowed in for one hour under law enforcement escort.

I was standing with Larry Oakes, a reporter from the Minneapolis Star Tribune (a cohort and friend), when we struck up a conversation with Grand Marais artist Jan Sivertson. She was waiting for her turn to drive to her cabin on Sea Gull Lake.

We asked Siverston if we could join her. Sure, she said, why not? So the two reporters crammed into the back seat, kept a low-profile, cleared the roadblack and were on our way behind the lines of the fire.

The sound of helicopters and airplanes dropping water on fire was constant while we were there. Smoke was thick in the air and there were small fires burning as far as you could see.

We were only at the cabin site for about 20 minutes when the Border Patrol agent who escorted us to the site, a Texan with a thick drawl, came running up the driveway and told us we need to get out of there fast. The fire was coming back at us.

Here’s part of the story I wrote that ran in the next day’s News Tribune:

Jan Sivertson didn’t cry Tuesday afternoon as

she pulled into the driveway of what had been her cabin.

Only a pile of ash and disfigured rubble remained under a formerly blue metal roof that had been scorched white by the raging Sunday run of the Ham Lake fire.

“Oh my God,” Sivertson said in a hushed voice. “It’s gone.”

Sivertson already knew that. She had been told by sheriff’s deputies and even chartered a plane to fly over the rubble on Monday. But when she saw it up close, the devastation sunk in.

Everything had burned. Glasses melted into disfigured shapes. Even the outhouse is gone — tipped over in the fire’s wind and burned horizontal to the ground. Kayaks stored under the cabin. Artwork. Nothing was salvageable. Most everything was reduced to ash.

“I cried in private at home. ... Now, it’s just sort of numbing,” Sivertson said while walking around the site.

Still, the Grand Marais resident — known for her art gallery — said she’s excited that many of her tall jack pines appeared to have survived the fire. The cabin site sits high on a rock overlooking scenic Seagull Lake, which has been ringed by fires in recent years.

“We can rebuild the cabin, but these trees,” she said. “Once this gets cleaned up, it still looks like a good view.”

Sivertson said she had already made the decision to rebuild the cabin, which she built the first time in 1989. But not yet.

“Not right away. I’m not emotionally equipped,” she said. “I want to let the dust settle.”

As firefighting helicopters and aircraft flew low overhead dropping water on nearby hotspots, still trying to save other cabins only a few miles down the road, Sivertson said she had planned to open the

An aerial photograph taken the day after the Ham Lake fire swept through the end of the Gunflint Trail. The white spots are ash piles where homes and cabins burned to the ground. (Clint Austin / News Tribune)

cabin this weekend — when she would turn on her sprinkler system.

Like several other property owners in the area, she never had a chance to turn on the sprinklers.

“I thought I would at least have a day to come and set it up when a fire started. But that didn’t happen,” she said. The fire moved that fast.

Sivertson’s cabin was one of more than 40 structures that burned near the Gunflint Trail on Sunday afternoon and evening when the Ham Lake fire raged out of control. More than 50 cabins, homes and businesses were saved by a combination of sprinkler systems and firefighters pumping water.

Sivertson and Carol deSain, who owns a cabin across a bay on Seagull Lake that was spared by the fire, were escorted to Seagull Lake by a U.S. Border Patrol officer just after 1 p.m. Their visit was cut short when fire officials felt it was becoming unsafe to remain at the end of the Gunflint Trail.

Sivertson and DeSain were the last car allowed in and out on Tuesday as smoke filled the air.

“Sooner or later, we won’t have to worry about fire any more,” Sivertson said, looking out at a landscape of miles and miles of scorched trees. “Everything is going to be burned.”

Just down the road, Corrine and Joe Sierakowski were allowed back to their retirement home on tiny Gull Lake between Seagull and Saganaga lakes after noon Tuesday. They had hoped to stay a while and repair some sprinklers that were dousing their home and yard with a soaking stream of lake water. But they had to leave quickly.

“We had fire a couple hundred feet from the house,” Corrine said. “I wanted to stay and do more. But when a helicopter is dropping water a few hundred feet away, I thought we better get the heck out of there.”

Sierakowski said she was amazed at how green the grass and trees were in the zone around their home that had been saturated by the sprinklers. Yet everything outside that zone was burned and black.

“We had daffodils and ducks on the pond and the fire was still burning in the background,” she said.

Dick and Kris Gillespie didn’t know for sure Tuesday morning if their cabin on Saganaga Lake was still standing. A Sheriff’s Department hotline said their fire number matched a building that was undamaged by fire, but the Gillespies, of Minneapolis, also heard several cabins on their shore had burned.

On Tuesday morning, they by chance met News Tribune photographer Clint Austin, who had flown over the fire area the day before. Austin used his laptop computer to show the couple dozens of photographs he had taken of the fire area.

“There it is!” Kris exclaimed with joy upon seeing a photo of their apparently unscathed twoyear-old cabin.

But the couple’s joy turned to grief. They say their neighbors’ cabins on both sides had burned to the ground. They were overcome with grief.

“Oh, poor Bill,” Kris said of her neighbor. The burned cabin on one side was only 20 feet from the Gillespie’s undamaged garage. u

Reporter’s note: The Ham Lake fire picked up over the next two days and eventually turned east, forcing the evacuation of the Gunflint Lake area and even the Forest Service’s firefighting command center. Calm winds, cooler temperatures, rain and hundreds of firefighters officially contained the fire 12 days later.

About the Ham Lake fire

Started: May 5, 2007, declared contained May 20.

Burned: Across 76,000 acres — 118 square miles — in Minnesota and Ontario.

Damaged or destroyed: 136 structures in Minnesota and 15 in Ontario. In Minnesota, 6 were permanent homes; 22 were seasonal homes or cabins; 34 were cabins at a youth camp; the rest were garages, sheds and outbuildings.

Cost: About $11 million for the federal firefighting effort. Cook County’s assessed value of lost structures was at least $3.7 million, although that number is widely considered to be grossly undervalued.

Cause: Unattended campfire on the shore of Ham Lake. A Washington, D.C., man who had been canoeing in the area was eventually indicted by a federal grand jury for letting the campfire get out of control. He later took his own life before his trial began.

Context: No one was killed or seriously injured in the fire. But at the time, it was the largest wildfire in Minnesota since 1931 in acreage, lost buildings and financial damage. Since then, the 2011 Pagami Creek fire, at 92,000 acres in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, is now the largest fire in recent state history, although no private structures were damaged.

Memorable handshakes while on the job

Remember the old days when you could shake someone’s hand when you met them on the job, not just bump elbows?

One of the firmest handshakes I can recall was from Pero Tododovic, a pig farmer in the tiny village of Donji Zagoni, Bosnia. I was there on a snowy day just before Christmas in 2003 to write about the peacekeeping mission of Minnesota National Guard troops, many from Duluth and the Iron Range, and we were invited into Tododovic’s house. His wife poured glasses of homemade plum brandy, slivovitz, and I was informed by our interpreter it would be an insult if we didn’t oblige.

President George H.W. Bush (No. 41) had a surprisingly strong handshake. He was also taller than I expected when he stepped off Air Force One — at the time, in 1992, the brand-new gleaming white and powder-blue 747 version on its first-ever trip to Minnesota — and walked over to talk to a line of reporters and well-wishers gathered on the tarmac at the Twin Cities airport. I can’t recall what question I asked him as the cameras snapped, but I still recall his grip.

By John Myers jmyers@duluthnews.com

For many of my 34 years reporting at the News Tribune, I’ve had the privilege of meeting and interviewing — and shaking hands with — many interesting people. Some were famous and influential: politicians, activists, heroes, entertainers. Others were just fun.

A fellow reporter once suggested I keep a list, so for a while, I did. But somewhere along the line, among the many computer system changes we’ve had at the News Tribune, I lost my list.

So now it’s all up to my feeble memory, a few front pages I’ve saved for posterity, and the paper’s electronic library of stories since 1995.

I met former Senate Majority Leader and eventual Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole at the Duluth airport; I think this was 1996. He kept a pen in his right hand and shook with his left. His right arm

had been badly injured during his service in World War II. I remembered that in time to reach out my left hand for his left hand.

We spoke for a while on the issues of the day and, I’m not sure why, I felt obliged to thank Dole for his service and sacrifice, and I told him my dad had served in the war, too.

I shook hands with Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry after an outdoor rally in Cloquet in 2004, then a few weeks later got his running mate, John Edwards, at the Hibbing Memorial Building.

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton answered questions and shook my hand in a hallway outside the gym at the University of Minnesota Duluth, where she was stumping for soon-to-be U.S. Sen. Al Franken in 2008. (Franken could tell a joke and shake hands at the same time.)

Years earlier at UMD, I interviewed (and shook hands with) the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was running for the Democratic presidential nomination and promoting his Rainbow Coalition.

In 1988, I rode in the back of a conversion van

from the Duluth airport to the Depot with Mike Dukakis, the eventual Democratic presidential nominee, and his wife, Kitty. The discussion turned to the rigors of the campaign, and their family, and she started to cry.

The late U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, a former NCAA wrestler, was short, but shook hands very hard every time, often grabbing your wrist with his free hand, as if he was about to take you down. (He also had a habit of hugging people.)

I interviewed famed labor activist Cesar Chavez outside a Duluth grocery store.

I met Willie Nelson on board his tour bus outside the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center as Nelson promoted nontraditional biofuels. (No, not hemp.) The bus engine burned used restaurant grease instead of diesel. The bus was huge and Nelson seemed small and frail, but shook hands firmly.

I interviewed Donald Duck Dunn, the bass player for Booker T and MGs (and for the Blues

Continued on page 38

Duluth News Tribune reporter John Myers (center) on assignment with U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar and President Bill Clinton at the Duluth airport in 1994. (Contributed photo)

Brothers) and set him up with a local fishing guide for an outing after their Bayfront Blues Festival gig. He lived in Florida, where he fished every day and he loved to fish on the road, too.

I had lunch with then Vice President Al Gore in his office in the Old Executive Office Building across from the White House. About a dozen environmental reporters from the Knight-Ridder chain of newspapers met with Gore in 1995 as part of a conference in D.C. I remember Gore seemed perturbed when I asked him a question about roadless area regulations in national forests. We shook hands after the meeting, but he may still hold a grudge to this day.

By far my most photographed handshake was with then-President Bill Clinton on the tarmac outside the 148th Air National Guard base at Duluth International Airport. I don’t even know who took the photos, the prints just started showing up in the mail a few days later. (This was before digital cameras and email were common.)

I had been assigned to the national press pool for the visit in 1994 and, even as other News Tribune reporters got up close to the president as he moved

around Duluth to greet cheering crowds, I never got closer than four cars behind him. I was able to ask him a question at a formal press conference, but never up close. Until he was just about to leave town.

As Clinton and U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar walked from the presidential limousine toward Air Force One, Oberstar noticed me behind the rope and motioned for me to come over to them. A Secret Service agent nodded OK and escorted me. Oberstar introduced us and I recall shaking hands with the president and asking him a few questions. We talked for more than a minute — it seemed much longer — but I was carrying my old laptop computer (probably a Radio Shack model) in a briefcase and it was almost impossible to hold that and my notebook in my left hand while writing with my right. When I got back to the newsroom, my notebook had only a few single words on varied subjects. It must have been an interesting conversation, but I can’t remember any of it.

I’ve had several near-misses over the years. After covering his campaign speech at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center in 2004, when he

Duluth News Tribune reporter John Myers shaking hands with Vice President Al Gore at the Old Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C., in 1995. (Contributed photo)

extolled the “Iron Ridge,” I was walking back to the newsroom to file my story when President George W. Bush (No. 43) drove right by me in The Beast (the presidential limo) on Fifth Avenue West on his way back to the airport. He waved and smiled — maybe it was aimed at me? — but the motorcade didn’t slow down enough for me to stick my hand out.

I was within a few feet of Vice President Joe Biden at the Duluth police headquarters in 2014. After a speech praising Duluth’s domestic violence policies, Biden was pressing the flesh with the small crowd. I went closer to ask him a question (and shake his hand), but was shoved away by one of his handlers at the last second.

“Back in the press pit!” she demanded.

Twice I was very close to Donald Trump — just inches away in 2016 in a Superior airport hangar when he was a candidate shaking hands with supporters, and a few feet away in 2018 in a warehouse in Duluth when the president was talking about economic issues. I didn’t shake his hand either time. (I did end up standing under the wing of Air Force One in 2018 in almost the exact spot where I had been with Clinton 24 years earlier.)

My most memorable handshake on the job came in 1990 outside the governor’s mansion in St. Paul. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was in Minnesota at the invitation of then-Gov. Rudy Perpich.

Perpich, the Hibbing native and former dentist who remains Minnesota’s longest-serving governor, was trying to elevate Minnesota’s stature on the world stage (and elevate his re-election chances, too, although that part didn’t work.) Gorbachev spent the day touring the Twin Cities, meeting with business and political leaders, including some from Duluth, while his wife, Raisa, met with Minnesota families.

It was a surreal event, on a cold, rainy June day. Throngs of cheering people lined Summit Avenue for a glimpse at the leader of the Evil Empire who

appeared to be leading the Soviet Union toward a more normal relationship with the U.S. after nearly a half-century of cold war. (Indeed, just one year later, Gorbachev oversaw the peaceful collapse and demise of the Soviet Union.)

Unexpectedly, instead of leaving the governor’s mansion and zooming in his Soviet-made ZIL limousine to the next stop, Gorbachev walked over to the wall of humanity gathered along the avenue and started shaking hands. Pandemonium erupted, as if Gorbachev were Elvis. People screamed “We love you, Gorby!” Reporters and photographers rushed to get closer. I bolted off the flatbed semitrailer that had been set up for the press and positioned myself along the line where I thought Gorbachev was heading.

It worked. Gorbachev eventually walked right up to where I was. But as we raised our arms to shake hands, I felt another hand, this one on my chest. It was a KGB agent pushing me back firmly enough to frighten me. (Did I look suspicious? Maybe it was my trench coat?) My hand grazed Gorbachev’s as we looked each other in the eye, and then he was quickly moving down the line to the next person. That, I thought, was about as cool as it gets on the handshake spectrum, even if we just grazed each other.

There were other interesting handshakes, I’m sure, except I lost my list. I could tell you about the time we ran into Ron and Nancy Reagan at the Ralph Lauren Polo Outlet Store in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. But that was on vacation and had nothing to do with my job. u

Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev waves to a crowd as Minnesota Gov. Rudy Perpich looks on during Gorbachev’s visit to Minnesota in June 1990. (Photo courtesy of St. Paul Pioneer Press)