The Woman Yesterday

Veda Ponikvar “The Iron Lady” (1919-2015)

By Abigail Blonigen

nce you get that printer’s ink in your veins, you can’t replace it,” Veda Ponikvar once said, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “It isn’t blood — it’s ink. I really mean that.”

Ponikvar was born and raised in Chisholm, Minnesota in a Slovenian family. She knew at a young age that she wanted to become a journalist, so she attended Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa in pursuit of a newspaper career.

According to Minnesota Brown writer Aaron Brown, Ponikvar was distraught over the bombing of Pearl Harbor, so she joined the Navy after graduating in 1942. Her Slovenian heritage and language skills came in handy for the war effort, and she soon became one of the only women working in naval cryptography intelligence.

In 1946, Ponikvar was honorably discharged as a lieutenant commander and returned home to Chisholm to pursue her newspaper dream, launching the Chisholm Free Press.

About a decade later, Ponikvar bought out the Chisholm Tribune Press and made a point to highlight the experience of the mining employees as opposed to the perspectives of the mining companies which previously dominated the press, according to the Star Tribune.

Ponikvar ran the newspapers for decades, becoming an integral part of the community and politics of the Iron Range. In her career, she published nearly 5,000 articles, though the exact number could be higher.

Her legacy even led to a small appearance in Hollywood. According to Brown, novelist W.P. Kinsella visited the Iron Range while researching Dr. Archibald “Moonlight” Graham who briefly played in Major League Baseball. The subsequent novel, “Shoeless Joe,” became the 1989 film adaptation “Field of Dreams,” which included this snippet of Graham’s obituary, written by Ponikvar:

“As the community grew, Doc became an integral part of the population. There were good years and lean ones. There were times when children could not afford eyeglasses, or milk, or clothing because of the economic upheavals, strikes and depressions. Yet no child was ever denied these essentials, because in the background, there was a benevolent, understanding Doctor Graham. Without a word, without any fanfare or publicity, the glasses or the milk, or the ticket to the ball game found their way into the child's pocket.”

In 2015, Ponikvar passed away at the age of 96, fondly known by her community as the “Iron Lady.” D