Portraits 2018

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Portraits in Steele 2018: Everyday People

Welcome Inside these 76 pages, you will find in-depth stories about Everyday People who live and work in Steele County, this place we love to call home.

Some of the faces will be familiar to you; others may be new.

But they share a desire to build new lives and to make life better for us all. And we are all made the richer in our lives because of these individuals.

The stories will take you behind the scenes of places you know, telling the stories of regular people.

The annual publication is a product of the Owatonna People’s Press staff, convering weeks and months of photography, interviewing, writing, designing and creative advertising efforts.

We hope you enjoy Portraits in Steele 2018 for weeks and months to come as we celebrate Everyday People. — Tom Murray Publisher

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Contents

Friday, March 30, 2018 F

PORTRAITS 2 0 1 8 o f

s t e e l e c o u n t y

EVERY DAY PEOPLE

Celebrating those whose contributions will keep Steele County strong for years to come

Welcome.....................................................................................................1 Terry ‘TC’ Carlyle: Bleeding blue and silver.....................................4 Scott Kozelka: Leading the team.......................................................10 Jason Lennox: A better way.................................................................14 Gary Johnson: Staying young.............................................................20 Jerry Roberts: Coaching life’s players...............................................26 Dick Baumer: Overcoming obstacles, learning to soar................32 Greg and Kathy Johnson: It’s all about service..............................36 Mark Domeier: At NRHEG, he’s ‘Mr. Panther’.............................40 911: The true first responders..............................................................44 Robert Sikel: Man on a mission.........................................................48 Annette Duncan: Making a difference.............................................52 Colette Lea: Serving smiles.................................................................56 John Klatt: Pulled Upward..................................................................60 Wayne Klinkhammer: Far from the farm......................................64 Fred Ventura: Diversity, acceptance, inclusion...............................70

Portraits in Steele 2018 is a special project of the Owatonna People’s Press

Publisher Tom Murray Advertising Director Ginny Bergerson Managing Editor Jeffrey Jackson Media Sales Consultants David Granlund, Emily Kahnke, Lisa Richmond, Erin Rossow, Kyle Shaw Ad Design Nikkie Gilmore, Jenine Kubista & Kelly Kubista Page Designer Jeffrey Jackson Cover Design Nikkie Gilmore Contributing Writers/ Photographers Ryan Anderson, Annie Harman, Jeffrey Jackson, William Morris Portraits in Steele 2018 is distributed to subscribers and readers of the Owatonna People’s Press at no additional charge and is available at the front counter of the Owatonna People’s Press.

All rights reserved. © 2018

Friday, March 30, 2018

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

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Advertiser Index 20 Rifle & Pistol Club ......................19 Amesbury Truth ... Inside Back Cover A Touch of Charm...........................67 B to Z Hardware ..............................67 Blooming Prairie Area Chamber of Commerce.................................67 Budget Blinds .....................................5 Cedar Travel .....................................43 City Auto Glass ................................57 City of Owatonna ..... Inside Front Cover CliftonLarsonAllen..........................55 Cole’s Electric ...................................39 Community Education ...................53 Cumberland’s Northwest Trappers Supply, Inc ...................................49 Cybex ..................................................5 Dairy Queen of Blooming Prairie ..... 67 Darrick’s Preferred Auto .................57 Deml Heating & Air Conditioning .....21 Dream Day Bridal............................63 Ellis Body Shop ................................61 Endres Window Cleaning ..............47 Einhaus, Mattison, Carver & Haberman, PA.........................63 Fareway Food Stores .......................13 Farmers Insurance - Mike Bishman.....31 Farmers & Merchants State Bank ..... 66 Federated Insurance ......30, Back Cover Fireplace Connection ......................61 George’s of Geneva ..........................75 Geneva Bar & Grill ..........................75 Good Shepherd Lutheran Church.....51

Harland’s Tire & Auto Center ........23 Holland Family Dental ...................33 Joe’s Repair Service, Inc ..................67 Jostens ...............................................15 Kappy’s Collision Center ................65 Kernel Restaurant ............................23 Kid’s Korner Educare Center, Inc .... 45 KIK Marketing ....Inside Front Cover Koda Living Community......... 37, 57 Koda Living Community/Park Place ..... 29 Krejci Ford ........................................43 K.S.W. Roofing & Heating ..............25 Lerberg’s Fitness Center..................75 Lerberg’s Foods ................................75 Little Theatre of Owatonna ............19 Loken Excavation & Drainage Inc ..... 45 Main Street Dental ..........................47 Mark’s Repair ...................................45 McCabe Motors & Rentals .............49 Metal Services ....................................7 Michaelson Funeral Home ...............9 Modern Metal Products .................29 New York Life Insurance ................67 Northland Farm Systems ................17 Owatonna Arts Center....................19 Owatonna Bus Company ...............55 Owatonna Eagles Club ...................21 Owatonna Floor Covering .............23 Owatonna Foundation ......................9 Owatonna Granite & Monument ..... 53 Owatonna Heating & Cooling .......11 Owatonna Hospital .........................43

Owatonna Public Utilities ..............35 R&K Electric ....................................76 Realife Cooperative .........................43 Riverland Community College .... 59, 73 St. John Lutheran Church...............51 Salinas Auto Repair .........................67 Salon-e-Clips ....................................21 South Country Health Alliance .....69 SpareTime.........................................11 Specialty Personnel..........................33 State Farm Insurance-Plemel Agency .......31 Steele County Child Care Association......41 Steele County Free Fair ...................39 Steele County Historical Society ...... 33 Steele County Landfill .....................25 Steele-Waseca Cooperative Electric .....13 Steve’s Meat Market .........................75 Supercuts ..........................................76 Sweet Towing & Repair ...................47 The Bakery........................................67 Timber Lodge Steakhouse ..............37 TPS Insurance Agency ....................31 Trinity Lutheran Church ................51 Trinity Nursery School ...................41 Vandal’s Family Market...................66 V.F.W. Post #3723.............................61 Wencl Accounting & Tax Service ...... 49 Wenger Corporation .......................27 Worlein Funeral Home ...................67 YoungLife..........................................19

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

Terry ‘TC’ Carlyle:

Bleeding blue and silver

By RYAN ANDERSON

randerson@owatonna.com

W

“My roots run deep here, even though I have no real family connection, and I’ve been as loyal to Owatonna as anyone could be,” said TC Carlyle. “If you cut my right arm, I would bleed royal blue, and if you cut my left arm, I would bleed silver,” the colors of OHS. (Jon Weisbrod/People’s Press)

hen Terry “TC” Carlyle first came to Owatonna nearly three decades ago, the Iowa native assumed he’d spend a year or two here at most; instead, he’ll celebrate his 29th Owatonna High School football season when he steps foot on the gridiron for the Huskies’ season opener this August.

“It doesn’t seem possible, but that’s the truth,” Carlyle said.

“I consider Owatonna more of my home than anywhere else.”

See CARLYLE on 5

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

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Carlyle

close the door as the last one to leave at night,” he said.

Though Carlyle, 55, has no children of his own, he considers himself to be a guardian to “1,500 kids every year” due to his life’s work,.

“I’m extremely close to my kids,” he said. “I deal with the most valuable commodity in the city, the county, the state — the health and well-being of youth.”

From Page 4 “My roots run deep here, even though I have no real family connection, and I’ve been as loyal to Owatonna as anyone could be,” he added. “If you cut my right arm, I would bleed royal blue, and if you cut my left arm, I would bleed silver,” the colors of OHS. Though Carlyle is best known as the trainer for Owatonna athletics, including everything from football and hockey to cheerleading and dance, he’s basically the trainer of record in Steele County. Carlyle and his fellow medical professionals — including Dr. Brian Bunkers, Dr. Scott Perkinson, Dr. Tim Van Gelder, and Gold Ambulance’s Ken Ringhofer — are always reading to help athletes, Carlyle’s band of athletic training student assistants (ATSAs) are a ubiquitous presence at local sporting events, Carlyle makes his rounds each week to see employees at Viracon, Wenger, Federated, Owatonna Public Utilities, and Bosch, he’s the trainer for school athletics in Blooming Prairie and Medford, and he’s the on-call trainer for the Owatonna Fire Department, Owatonna Police Department, Steele County Sheriff ’s Office, and Gold Cross Ambulance.

Carlyle is employed by the Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute, which is part of Allina Health, even though he sees his office inside Owatonna Hospital about as often as Ryan Bingham — the uber-road warrior in the critically-acclaimed movie “Up In The Air” who notably spent as little time as possible in his company’s Omaha home base. Carlyle is simply always visiting patients and covering sporting events.

Stars align early for athletic training career

When Carlyle steps onto the gridiron for the Owatonna football team’s season opener this fall, he’ll mark his 29th year as the team trainer.

(Photo courtesy of TC Carlyle) He’s also always on call for anyone who requires his expertise, experience, and assistance, he said. He’s in his spot in the basement training room of OHS by 1:30 p.m. Monday-Friday, and he’s there almost longer than anyone else.

“It’s usually between me and the custodians on who is going to

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Despite his Southern-sounding drawl, which he picked up from his mentor in college, an Arkansas native, Carlyle was actually born in Colfax, Iowa, roughly 20 minutes due east on Interstate 80 of state capital Des Moines. A small town of only 2,000 residents, both his parents still reside there, only three hours from Owatonna, and it’s fortunate they’re relatively close because, he says, “I love my parents like there’s no tomorrow.”

Both his parents retired in the late 1990s, he said. His mother was a medical secretary in Des Moines for Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and his father worked for the department of transportation, plowing snow in winter and fixing roads in summer, and when one or both of them die, “I’ll be devastated.”

In many ways, Carlyle’s career chose him as much as he selected it. His neighbor directly across the street was the athletic director and baseball coach of the local high school in Colfax, while another neighbor was the girls basketball coach, and several friends of his parents were also coaches.

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Friday, March 30, 2018

Carlyle received the Fred Zamberletti Award for athletic training at US Bank Stadium from Frank Vascelaro on May 7, 2017. (Photo courtesy of TC Carlyle)

Carlyle From Page 5 When Carlyle was in sixth grade, the high school’s head football coach asked him to help him set up football equipment to hand out to players, which led to Carlyle becoming a quasi-student manager that season, he said. During the year, a player was injured, and Carlyle grabbed a first aid kit to assist the coaches.

“I seemed to have a knack for it,” he said.

And the head coach gave Carlyle a college textbook on athletic training, which Carlyle — to this day a voracious reader — devoured that summer, he said. By the time he entered high school as a freshman in 1977, Carlyle was mending all minor injuries of athletes, and throughout his high school tenure, he acted as the student trainer for various athletic teams, even traveling on the road.

At that time, most schools didn’t have athletic trainers, and he even gained trust with opposing teams, he said. Between training/managing a plethora of sports — and being a member of student council — Carlyle actually set a new school record for letters in his four years.

The district’s sports booster club sent him to Drake University in Des Moines to take a Cramer student training workshop — at that time, Cramer and Mueller dominated the sports medicine product market — and while there a Drake trainer suggested Carlyle take a prevention and care sports injury class, he said. Carlyle was able to enroll without fee in the month-long college class, and he drove into the city with his mother each morning and back with her each evening during the course’s duration.

By that time, he knew athletic training was his career path, and while he considered Drake and Iowa for college, he opted for Wil-

liam Penn University in Oskaloosa, Iowa, because he was familiar with a small-town atmosphere from childhood, and due to the fact that he’d be only one of a handful of students in his program there, as opposed to one of 20 at Drake or one of 30 at Iowa, he said. It was also at William Penn where Carlyle, who, much to the dismay of his mother, loathes the name “Terry,” picked up the “TC” moniker he utilizes to this day.

And, indeed, he “got that hands-on experience right away” at William Penn, he said. Additionally, because the college was located in the center of his high school’s conference, he was able to make the rounds to those schools and continue his training at their athletic events.

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Friday, March 30, 2018

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Dr. Tim Van Gelder, Dr. Scott Perkinson, and Dr. Brian Bunkers joined Carlyle at US Bank Stadium to celebrate his Fred Zamberletti Award. (Photo courtesy of TC Carlyle)

Carlyle From Page 6 Despite his decades of attendance at sporting events as a trainer, it’ll surprise many to learn Carlyle is actually “not a sports enthusiast,” he said. In the rare times he’s actually home, “I don’t watch sports,” preferring to read or write, instead.

Moving to Owatonna

He left William Penn in January of 1989 as a certified trainer with all work and education experiences checked off the list and was hired at Health Reach in Albert Lea, but the person who hired him resigned six months later to take a different post in Owatonna, Carlyle said. He followed suit, a decision that helped hasten the demise of his marriage.

Carlyle and his then-wife, whom he’d met at William Penn, were married in 1989 and living in Clear Lake, Iowa. She was teaching in Sheffield, due south of Mason City, while Carlyle was driving 150 miles roundtrip every day to and from work in Owatonna.

After nine months of that arrangement, they divorced, albeit as “amicably” as any couple could, he said. “We never fought,” but the distances proved too high a hurdle, and “we grew apart.”

His start date in Owatonna was July 23, 1990, and he quickly got to work, including for sports at OHS, as well as establishing his student training program, which has become renowned statewide, he said. “I’m on my 96th student trainer” — many of whom have gone on to careers in some facet of the healthcare industry — and “we are one of the largest, if not the largest, program in Minnesota.”

Students must be at in at least ninth grade to join, and they all begin as “ensigns” in the military ranking system, he said. Advancement is based purely on merit, not seniority.

He also can’t remember the last time he had to recruit, he said. “Most talk to the ones already in the program,” and others see the “respect” garnered by ATSAs.

Honors and awards

He’s won numerous awards, including the Minnesota Athletic Trainers Association’s Athletic Trainer Recognition Award, for promoting athletic training in the state and recognizing the OHS Athletic Training Student Assistant Program, in May 2010. He was the National Football Foundation’s Minnesota Chapter’s 2017 Fred Zamberletti Award for Athletic Training winner in May 2017, the 10th overall recipient but first to receive the award in US Bank Stadium, and in September 2017, he was the first athletic trainer in the state to be honored with the Minnesota State High School League’s Region 1AA Distinguished Service Award, so it’s no surprise the City of Owatonna proclaimed Terry “TC” Carlyle Day last May. However, Carlyle makes it clear that while “my name is on the awards, I didn’t do it alone.”

He’s surrounded by his ATSA’s, as well as doctors like Bunkers, Van Gelder, and Perkinson, and he has the backing of his Courage Kenny supervisor Linda Hoffman and David Albrecht, president of Owatonna Hospital.

See CARLYLE on 8

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

Carlyle with Bunkers, Perkinson, and athletic training student assistants Grace Pick and Nina Barriga at US Bank Stadium. (Photo courtesy TC Carlyle)

Carlyle From Page 7

“I would not be where I am today — my program would not be where it is — without their help and support,” he said. “There’s no doubt in my mind.”

Entrenched in Owatonna

Carlyle has been here so long many connections have come full circle. For example, he “taped the ankles” in his first year in

Owatonna of “Mr. Basketball” Mark Randall, who was then an OHS senior and is now the building’s principal.

“I took care of all three of (erstwhile superintendent) Pete Grant’s kids,” he added. Furthermore, the man who replaced Grant as Owatonna’s superintendent in 2017, Jeff Elstad, also has a connection with Carlyle, as Elstad’s oldest daughter was one of Carlyle’s ATSA’s, and now so too is Elstad’s youngest daughter.

Carlyle has also seen OHS add numerous sports to reach the 28 the school currently boasts, he said. When he began in Owatonna,

OHS had no boys or girls soccer teams, no boys or girls lacrosse, no girls hockey, no adapted field hockey, and no dance team.

Carlyle is the longest-tenured athletic trainer in the Big Nine by more than a decade, he said. In fact, many conference schools didn’t even have athletic trainers when he entered the picture, and the last three to add that position on staff were the three Rochester schools — Mayo, Century, and John Marshall.

See CARLYLE on 9

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Carlyle

PAGE 9

How we showed it for the 50th. you need somebody to step in,” he said.

Carlyle and coaches long ago agreed to an unwritten covenant: he doesn’t tell them how to coach, and they don’t tell him how to train. Carlyle and his team also have developed “respect and rapport” with school administrators, he said.

“We have control of the entire thing once we step out on that field,” he said.

Though “sports are very, very important,” and athletes get only four years in high school to play them, “we have to make sure kids are only returning when they’re really able to return,” he said. “Parents are an integral part of the decision-making process,” as well.

During the past three decades, Carlyle and his ATSA’s have seen “compound fractures, femur fractures,” a wrestler who dislocated his elbow backward, “major lacerations” — including a hockey player who had nine tendons, two arteries, and a nerve severed by a skate and would likely have died from blood loss without the assistance of trainers — and a football player who broke his neck but regained the ability to walk, he said. Accidents have also demanded his care outside the sports realm, from an OHS student hit by a car on the street next to the building to a student whose hand lost a battle with a table saw in a shop room — part of the reason Carlyle

From Page 8

Improvements in training

Medicine has advanced remarkably, as well, especially in the area of concussion awareness, prevention, and treatment, he said.

For example, “we’ve learned that the younger you are, the more serious concussions are, and the longer the recovery time,” because the brain is still evolving at those ages.

Minnesota has mandated a six-step “return to play” process for anyone sustaining a concussion, he said. In order to progress beyond the first two stages, patients must be “asymptomatic,” and while that happens quickly for some, others can remain in stages one and two for days or even weeks.

With concussions, symptoms may even be delayed, adding another complication, he said. He’s had athletes who don’t exhibit symptoms, like, for example, vomiting or sensitivity to light, until hours — or even days — after the head shot.

“We’ve learned concussions are not to be messed with,” he said.

“Athletic trainers are kind of the checks and balances,” meaning recovery from head injuries can’t be rushed.

“In the heat of battle, some things get skewed just a little bit, and

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always keeps a “trauma kit” in his training room.

‘Owatonna grows on you’

Carlyle’s grandmother on his mother’s side recently died at 101, which brought “perspective home for me,” Carlyle said. “Everyone knows I’m as ornery as the day is long, I have a short fuse, and I go through phases where I say, ‘Why?’ But I love my job and the people I work with.”

He does plan to keep working for “another 15 years,” but whenever he decides to retire, he has a plan, he said. He already spends time writing, but would devote himself to it full-time.

Carlyle has met numerous residents who, like him, moved to Owatonna for a job and planned to stay only a short time but ended up making this community home, he said.

“Owatonna grows on you, and it’s a loving community that provided support for me and took me under its wing after my divorce,” he said.

He’s had plenty of other job offers, but roughly a decade ago stopped even considering them, he said.

“I plan to retire in Owatonna, and this is where I’ll take my last breath,” he said.

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Scott Kozelka:

Leading the team

By ANNIE HARMAN

I

aharman@owatonna.com

n August 2017, had you stumbled upon Scott Kozelka in the midst of the Steele County Free Fair and asked him if he thought he’s be managing it anytime soon, he’d probably of thrown his head back and given you a hearty chuckle.

But only a few months in to 2018, Kozelka is settling in to his new office in preparation of the next fair, this year as its leader.

The idea of Kozelka running the largest free fair in the State of Minnesota is little to no surprise for those who know. He has a long history of organizing events that bring people joy and was

once told by longtime fair manager Elmer Reseland that he was made to be a carny.

In fact, the Steele County Free Fair won’t be the first fair Kozelka has had a heavy hand in leading. By the time he was 12-yearsold, Kozelka was a professional at organizing carnivals.

“I ran my first carnival in 1972,” Kozelka laughed, showing a clipping of the Highwood Hi-lites in the Edgerton Reporter out of Wisconsin. “We made $94 that we gave to Muscular Dystrophy.”

In only three weeks, Kozelka and a group of friends made salable items such as candles, dolls, and pillows to sell door to door to raise funds for the food, refreshments, and prizes at the carnival.

They hosted the carnival in August at the local clubhouse and were

Friday, March 30, 2018 F

After a decade of taking time off from work to volunteer at the Steele County Free Fair, Scott Kozelka will be officially working for the 2018 fair as he steps into the role of fair manager. (Press file photo)

praised for their hard work by the local press: They should feel very proud as should all of Highwood for having such worthwhile and charity-minded children in our midst.

It only renews our faith in the younger generation. This carnival was one of the largest contributors in this area. So hats off to all those who helped make this worthwhile event such a huge success.

— Edgerton Reporter, Thursday, August 31, 1972 “It’s just about giving back,” Kozelka said regarding why as a young kid he felt the desire to host such an event. More than 40 years later, he still says that’s what it’s all about.

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 11

Kozelka From Page 10

‘It’s the smiles’

Shortly after graduating high school in 1980, Kozelka followed his family to Owatonna after his father was transferred for work.

There, he attended night classes in Mankato in business marketing and began working at Thrifty Drug as a floor manager, where he met his wife Gayle.

It was future in-laws who first introduced him to the magic of the Steele County Free Fair, recruiting him to help serve beer alongside the rest of the family. From that moment, Kozelka was hooked.

“It’s the smiles,” he said about why he instantly fell in love with the fair experience in Steele County. “It’s seeing the same people you don’t see all year long, but you see them every year at the fair.”

Returning year after year to the fair continued to nurture and already existing love for events like fairs and carnivals. Eventually he joined together with Casey Connor at Hy-Vee in 2002 and developed the Hometown Fair.

“Casey was the store director at Hy-Vee at that time and used to have a small carnival in his parking lot,” Kozelka said. “So we moved it across the street to the fairgrounds and had food, music, and a small carnival. At the end we gave the money made to different organizations, whoever wanted to help us that particular year.”

When that ran its course, the duo handed the event over to the Scott Kozelka (far right) first experienced the Steele County Free Fair with his wife Gayle (left) back in the early 1980’s, when See KOZELKA on 12 she roped him in to serving beer at the fair alongside her parents. (Submitted photo)

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

After Jim Gleason (right) had to step down from his position as manager of the Steele County Free Fair due to a cancer diagnosis, Scott Kozelka sought Gleason’s blessing to apply to be his successor. The two men have been close friends for more than 30 years.(Submitted photo)

Kozelka From Page 11 Knights of Columbus in 2008 who transformed it into the Smokin’ in Steele BBQ and Blues Fesitval.

Coincidentally, that was the same year Kozelka decided he needed a little more fair time.

“I really started to get more involved 10 years ago when I started taking the week of the fair off from work,” he laughed. “I spent my first three years in the office as kind of a gofer person.”

After volunteering in the office for three years, Kozelka was approached by members of the fair board and asked if he would be interested in serving alongside them. He happily obliged and was able to branch out his efforts in multiple facets around the fairgrounds.

“My first year was working with parking and supply truck parking along with some Grandstand,” Kozelka explained. “When Dave Kubista got sick, he was with us for 18 years as the superintendent that took care of our inside vendors, I was asked to shadow him to learn about working with vendors and how things went inside [the Four Season] and how they ran.”

Kozelka said he was fortunate enough to work alongside Kubista

for two years before he died from pancreatic cancer. The invaluable training he received from Kubista allowed him the knowledge and skills to train a new superintendent for that area. Once a new person was trained in, Kozelka spent the last couple of years helping with the carnival and outside vendors.

After a successful 2017 fair came to a close, however, Kozelka and the rest of the fair community had their world ripped out from underneath them.

Jim Gleason, who had been the fair manager since 2012 and a great friend to all who knew him, was diagnosed with an aggressive and terminal form of brain cancer.

“It was overwhelming,” said Kozelka, who considers Gleason a close friend.

Gleason’s blessings

Because of Gleason’s diagnosis, he decided to retire in December 2017. While the fair board and office staff came together to cover the manager responsibilities in Gleason’s absence, their number one concern was their friend.

Kozelka was among many of the other fair board members who began visiting Gleason as often as possible, assuring him that

everything at the fair was taken care of.

It was during one of those visits that Kozelka had a serious conversation with Gleason that he never imagined he would be having so soon.

“I asked him if he thought I was the person that could be his successor,” Kozelka said. “I needed to get his blessing to put my name in the hat. Ideally I thought when we’d have that conversation it would be because Jim retired.”

Because of Kozelka’s background in sales and marketing, as well as experience with working in corporate America, he couldn’t help but feel called to strive for the manager position of an organization he held so dear to his heart. After many conversations with family members and Gleason, he decided to apply for the job.

By the end of February 2018, the fair board was happy to announce that Kozelka would be stepping into the role of manager of the Steele County Free Fair.

“I need Jim to be riding by my side this year,” Kozelka said as he prepares for the new adventure of being in the driver’s seat for the fair. “He said he’s going to do whatever he can.”

See KOZELKA on 13

Friday, March 30, 2018

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 13

Kozelka From Page 12 It’s never truly about one person, though, according to Kozelka.

While he may be the manager, he 100 percent believes that it is the entire team of people that make the Steele County Free Fair such a success year after year.

“We have a whole bunch of committees that make it all happen,” he explained. “We all have our little things we do before the fair, but during the fair we all pitch in together to keep the Steele County Free Fair an experience. That’s what it has been all about since my early days up here at the fairgrounds just serving beer.”

Moving forward

Moving forward, Kozelka does have a few ideas of what direction he would like to see the fair move in. Specifically, he is excited about trying to get the different communities of Medford, Blooming Prairie, and Ellendale more involved.

“The Steele County Free Fair is a big part of Steele County,” he said. “I want to let everyone know that their cities are a part of what we do and that they can only help us make it better.”

Like most people who are passionate about the fair, Kozelka knows that if it wasn’t for the power of the community he lives in that the fair would never be what it is today.

“It’s not just the manager or just the office girls, it’s Steele County,” Kozelka stated. “It’s all our volunteers, it’s our superintendents, it’s our directors. When people ask us how we’re so successful we say it’s the people that pitch in. It’s the people that make it happen.”

Kozelka added that it continues to be a phenomenon to him

On the morning of opening day of the 2017 Steele County Free Fair, Scott Kozelka’s grandson Rory was born. Despite the long morning, Kozelka still managed to be at the fairgrounds for the fair opener. (Submitted photo

how the fair keeps going year after year, all while staying free to the public. He again states that it’s because of the team that everyone is an equally important player on.

“I’m going to do my best to be as many places as I can to make sure that I’m out and about and seeing people around the fair,” he said. “I know some days are going to be tougher than others.”

Happy and ready to be as involved in the Steele County Free Fair as one can get, Kozelka still keeps his friend and now mentor Gleason close to his mind and heart.

“He wouldn’t want us to stop,” Kozelka said, patting his chest

the same way he and others have adapted from their good friend who now relies heavily on body language for communication. “I tell him every day to stay positive and stay strong, so we have to do that, too.”

Determined to continue on with tradition of fair managers giving their all to the fair, Kozelka decided to start fulfilling some of his fair manager duties before officially stepping in to the role on April 2. This meant that he essentially worked two jobs as he finished up his 32-year career at Aramark Corp., a food service, facilities, and uniform services provider to clients in education, healthcare, business, corrections, and leisure.

“We’re all still stepping up and filling in where we can,” Kozelka said in reference to his fellow board members. “Everyone is on the team; it’s just a close-knit family like that.”

With that, it was never a question on Kozelka taking on more responsibilities the moment he accepted the offer from the fair board. It was a smooth transition to feeling right at home in the Steele County Free Fair Office, considering the staff and volunteers of the fair have been an extension of his family for many years.

However, come August 2018, it will be the first time in a decade that Kozelka will not be using vacation time to be at the Steele County Free Fair.

And he can’t wait.

“What’s my goal?” Kozelka laughed. “Walking through the fair every day and seeing smiles.”

Reach Reporter Annie Harman at 444-2378 or Follow her on Twitter @OPPAnnie.

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Jason Lennox:

A better way

By WILLIAM MORRIS

I

wmorris@owatonna.com

t’s difficult to pick the best point to begin telling Jason Lennox’s story.

To start any time in the last few years would be to begin with a portrait of success: a drug addiction treatment technician going from promotion to promotion while launching a charitable organization to help children and their families grappling with

Friday, March 30, 2018

Jason Lennox, center, founded a new branch of the For a Day Foundation in 2014 to help children and their families dealing with pediatric cancer. It’s just one of the ways Lennox, who almost lost everything to drug addiction, now tries to give back to his community. (Submitted photos)

cancer, among numerous other forms of community service.

Or the story could begin anytime from 2006 to 2010, and take the form of a cautionary tale, of a young man losing his way and his prospects to drug abuse and addiction.

But in the end, there’s nowhere better to begin telling Lennox’s story than Dec. 9, 2010. That’s the day that, sitting in a jail and wracked by physical and mental symptoms of drug withdrawal, Lennox decided there had to be a better way.

“I just wanted anything other than sitting in that cell, experienc-

ing what was going on in my head and my body,” he said. “I finally accepted that a treatment route, the world of recovery, might be better. Anything might be better than where I was at that time.”

Like father, like son

From a very early age, Jason Lennox had a model of the kind of life he did not want to lead.

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Friday, March 30, 2018

y e

5

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 15

Lennox From Page 14 Lennox was born in Massachusetts, but moved to Owatonna with his mother at the age of 2. His father spent his entire adult life struggling with alcoholism, and remained in Massachusetts until coming to live with Lennox’s family when Lennox was in eighth grade. His mother set the condition: you have to stop drinking. His father, already ailing from cirrhosis of the liver, agreed, but couldn’t make it stick for long, and soon moved out again.

The young Jason, who had barely known his father most of his life, took that personally, especially when his father died two years later at the age of 39. ‘“I felt a lot of abandonment when he did leave, because he couldn’t stay sober, and then he did die, so I equated that to, he chose to die and chose to drink over his kids,” Lennox said.

Even before the family’s brief reunion, Jason had been pushing boundaries. When he moved to New Richland for eighth grade, he began experimenting with drugs and alcohol, and continued down that path into high school, especially during and after his father’s final illness and death.

“I think it was then or shortly after that I started on some of the harder drugs, methamphetamine specifically, and things really took a turn for the worse,” he recalls.

Lennox dropped out of school for a while after the end of football season his senior year, although he was able to return and make up enough credits to graduate on time. He was already

“I spent a lot of years of my life fighting not to be what he was, and wound up exactly the same. What the difference was, I don’t know, because from everything I know, his sisters and family, I’m the spitting image of him, the same looks, the same intelligence.””

— Jason Lennox, Remembering his father and the path his father took well-acquainted with the inside of a jail cell by the time he received his diploma, and while he had scholarship offers to play football, “that all went out the window,” he said.

Also during that senior year, he’d gotten a girl pregnant, and soon after, had a son. He was ill-prepared for parenting, despite his efforts to clean up during a short stint among his father’s family in Massachusetts.

“I was living in a little minivan, still partying a lot, and slowly got back into the harder drugs and alcohol. I tried to work things out with my son’s mom, but that didn’t happen,” he said. “From

8

2018

the end of 2006 through 2010, I was pretty much absent from my son’s life and progressively getting worse with drugs and alcohol, in and out of jail, a couple DUIs, several minor consumptions, lots of disorderly conduct and property damage.”

In 2008, he added a felony charge to his rap sheet, when he was found asleep at a local bar with drugs in his possession. He was put on probation, but a year in skipped a drug test he knew he would fail, and then skipped his court date for that violation, resulting in a warrant. He spent nine months technically on the run.

“I started working at a group home,” he recalls. “I was the only person working there, taking care of older men who couldn’t take care of themselves, and I was in the basement, drinking and doing drugs, far too many drugs over the course of the day, and I overdosed there in the basement.”

From the hospital, he was taken to jail (“I think I had 11 different violations at that point,” he says), which is where he found himself Dec. 9, 2010, which he now marks as the anniversary of his sobriety. That was the day he decided there had to be another path than the one that consumed his father.

“I spent a lot of years of my life fighting not to be what he was, and wound up exactly the same,” he remembers. “What the difference was, I don’t know, because from everything I know, his sisters and family, I’m the spitting image of him, the same looks, the same intelligence.”

See LENNOX on 16

PAGE 16

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

Lennox earned his bachelor’s degree in business management in 2016 while working as a treatment technician at Beauterre Recovery Institute.

Lennox From Page 15

Finding a better path

Of course, there’s a world of difference between deciding to change one’s life, and putting that decision in action. But over the next year, Lennox began building the team that continues to support his recovery.

From the jail, he reached out to an addiction specialist (introduced to him during an ill-fated intervention his family had attempted) and came back before the judge, who went against the prosecutor’s recommendations and told him that he could still get the felony removed from his record if he successfully completed treatment. He did, and by the end of 2011, he was released from probation early, ready to finally start building a better kind of life.

“When I left the halfway house in June, I still was homeless, but a family took me in, let me stay in the basement,” he said. “I was able to buy a car for the first time, started college that August, 2011, and in November of 2011 I got my first place, an apartment on the north end of town. All those things the people start getting when they’re 16, the phone, the utilities, all that stuff, were my firsts at 24.”

See LENNOX on 17

Friday, March 30, 2018

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 17

Lennox A different kind of foundation

From Page 16

Lennox also has been building a foundation in a very literal sense.

For a Day Foundation is a national group with chapters from Florida to New York to California, all working to provide fun, lifeaffirming events for pediatric cancer patients and their families.

In 2014, Lennox founded a Minnesota chapter for the group, the only one in the Midwest.

“Back when I had more time and I watched TV, I used to watch a lot of ESPN, and each year, they do a Make a Wish series. It always caught my eye, and I remember doing a Google search that year of how I could get involved in something like that. Of course, there wasn’t anything around here,” he said. “I wanted to find a way to make a significant difference, and I came across this group. ... So I reached out to the national founder, had a couple conversations, a couple interviews, and we both agreed it was something we could make work.”

The group holds events where volunteers and children alike dress up as superheroes or royalty, as well as annual 5K races, and more and more often, individualized events for particular families (including this winter, when they worked with the NFL to send a Medford student and his brother to the Super Bowl).

The couple who took him in, Steve and Deb Langer, have played a pivotal role in Lennox’s life, not just in the help they offered in a moment of need, but the guidance they have given him going forward. “[Steve Langer], he was very clear in the beginning, he was completely about service,” Lennox said. “That would be how my life would be saved. I wasn’t sure I believed him. … In all the years I was doing that, I lost any hope there would be a different life.”

Despite a work history that was checkered, at best, he eventually found work at a group home, then another. For several years he juggled minimum wage jobs to cover bills and tuition, but in 2015, he joined the staff of Beauterre Recovery Institute as a treatment technician, and later moved to additional roles as a financial analyst and his current position of financial product manager. In December 2016, he earned his bachelor’s degree in business management.

As all of this was happening, he was also attending numerous addiction recovery meetings, spending more and more time volunteering, and for the first time began spending significant time with his son, now nearly 7 years old.

“I always lean toward (this idea). I made it this far because I built the foundation I’m going to think about that I’m going to be out doing good for others,” he said. “That’s what I always fall back to — service and contributing to people.”

Lennox and his girlfriend, Dessa Smith of Eagan. “[Dating] takes a lot more time than I imagined,” he says ruefully.

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

As Superman, Lennox paints a child’s nails during a For a Day Foundation event. The group hosts therapeutic, diverting programs for sick children and their families around southern Minnesota.

Lennox From Page 17 Running a nonprofit with events spanning half the state would be more than enough service work for most people, but Lennox said his schedule also includes mentoring with Big Brothers Big Sisters, and a similar group called Little Brothers that spend time with the elderly, as well as serving as treasurer Transitional Housing of Steele County and an addiction recovery group. He’s also a personal trainer certified by the American Council on Exercise, spends time each week with his son, has mended his relationship with his mother and, for the first time in his recovery, is in a serious relationship with a woman he met in 2017.

“[Dating] takes a lot more time than I imagined, but that’s been incredible,” he said.

He still often thinks about his father, and wonders why his story has followed another path.

“He had all the desires and values to try to be a good person and help other people, and somehow he just couldn’t get it in time,” he said. “He sobered up six months before he died, but by then it was far too late.”

But key to his journey, he said, have been the people who supported him in his darkest moments, from the treatment professionals to the Langers to his own family.

“I had so much shame and guilt and fear of my past and the

things I’d done. They didn’t really care about that,” he said. “I didn’t have to carry all that guilt and shame. They understood this is a very serious problem for a lot of people, and all they cared about was that I had a chance to get better.”

And he plans to keep paying that support forward. Asked what he sees for himself in the future, he chuckles ruefully (“I thought I’d have an answer for every question,”) but says service has become his touchstone, his purpose, his stability, and he has no plans to stop.

“What will always be in my life is looking forward, and finding more ways to impact more people, more causes in more capacities,” he said.

Friday, March 30, 2018

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 19

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

Gary Johnson:

Staying young

By RYAN ANDERSON randerson@owatonna.com

G

ary Johnson, who started Johnson Barber Shop with his father in 1959 and continues to this day, is a straight-shooting, self-effacing bastion of stability.

“I provide a service, and I’ve been doing it for pushing 60 years,” he said. “Maybe all this work is keeping me young?”

In addition to his duties at the shop, the 78-year-old Johnson has also owned and managed an apple orchard for the past three decades.

“I should slow down a little, but I enjoy what I’m doing,” he said. “You’ve got to have a reason to get up in the morning.”

See JOHNSON on 21

Gary Johnson’s barbershop has been a quintessential family business, as both his father, Gerhard, and his son, Tim, have helped out at various times through the decades. (Photo courtesy of Gary Johnson)

Friday, March 30, 2018

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 21

Johnson From Page 20 Johnson and his father, Gerhard, opened their barbershop in Owatonna July 2, 1959, when Gary was 19 and fresh out of barber school in St. Paul, he said. His father had also been a barber, although he’d drifted out of the profession to manage the family farm in Lemond Township.

Following a six-month stint with the United States Army, Gary’s father suggested he take a look at the barber school, and it quickly appealed to Gary, he said. “It’s an artistic trade, and you meet people from all walks of life.”

They spent their first handful of years inside an Owatonna hotel — the site is now home to U.S. Bank — until the bank bought the hotel, and then migrated to their current spot on North Cedar Avenue, he said. Ted Ringhofer owned the latter building, which housed his meat market, and he suggested the barber shop relocate.

At first, “we thought it was too far from where we’d been,” but, in fact, the move was a blessing, because the new site offered ample parking the former spot did not, Johnson said.

“It was really a good move,” he said.

In addition to his father, Gary’s brother, Ron, and son, Tim, have all assisted him at the barbershop at one time or another, he said. In fact, three Johnson generations have all been represented inside the shop at times over the past several decades.

“I provide a service, and I’ve been doing it for pushing 60 years,” Johnson said. “Maybe all this work is See JOHNSON on 22 keeping me young?” (Photo courtesy Gary Johnson)

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

Inside his barbershop, Johnson still displays every one of his barber licenses, which barbers renew on an annual basis, he said. Dating back to 1959, they serve as a quick, visual reminder of six decades of serving customers, many of whom have become like family. (Ryan Anderson/People’s Press)

Johnson

From Page 21

Reared on a rural farm

Born in 1939, “life was good on the farm,” Johnson said. “It was a lot simpler living,” with a few animals, plenty of crops, and a family consisting of Gary’s father, his mother, Nettie, his three older sisters, Gail, Rena, and Norma, and his younger brother, Ron. “Going from a one-room, rural school house” to the much-larger

a big change,” he said. “Adjustments had to be made fast.”

He graduated from OHS in 1957 and then joined the Army, he said. Later, there was “a long waiting list” for barber school, but, fortunately, “I got in almost right away.”

Of course, he could still be recalled anytime to military service, as he fulfilled his eight-year commitment, and it nearly happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he said.

“It got close,” he recalled. “Some of the other towns did get called.”

A family business

During his nine months in barber school, Johnson learned to cut all types of hair and received an education on the various muscles and nerves in the face and head, but most importantly he was taught the value of building relationships with customers, he said.

Like bartenders or manicurists, barbers must be adroit listeners, as clients simply tend to open up to them.

See JOHNSON on 23

Friday, March 30, 2018

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 23

Johnson From Page 22 “Some people like to talk,” whether sharing positive news or venting about professional or personal setbacks, while others “want advice,” and still other customers “just want to shut their eyes and relax,” he said. “You have to know your customers and how they like it.”

Johnson and his father “started from scratch,” rather than moving into an existing shop, he said. In that era, beauty shops focused mainly on women, while men visited barber shops, and “it didn’t take long to build a customer base,” despite over a dozen barber shops operating in the city at the time.

While Owatonna once had several more barbershops than beauty salons, that ratio has since reversed, Johnson said. Still, “we’re a regular old-fashioned barbershop, and men really like it.”

When Johnson Barber Shop opened, “$1.50 was the regular haircut,” Johnson recalled. “I’d go back to $1.50 if everything else would go back, too.”

The barber business has proven immune from America’s recessions through the decades, but Johnson does remember one fallow stretch owing to an unusual culprit: The Beatles.

Not only did the musical group’s slim suits set a new standard for style, so, too, did their long hair, Johnson recollected.

“In the Twin Cities, seven or eight-chair shops went down to one-chair,” he said, “and a lot of barbers quit to go paint houses or do other things.”

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Johnson and his wife, Judy, have been married for 56 years, they have two children, Terry and Tim, and several grandchildren. (Photo courtesy Gary Johnson)

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

Johnson From Page 23

Their style “proved pioneering, influencing the closets of not only their performing peers but also their fawning fans,” Olivia Barker wrote in USA Today back in 2014. “Few pop-culture figures have a coif named after them, (but) the bouncy Beatle haircut, a borrowed-from-the-German-boys style, balanced out the suits’ sleek, slim-trousered silhouette.”

Fortunately, Owatonna wasn’t impacted as much by The Beatles craze, Johnson said.

“We had the working class who kept their hair trim,” he said.

Tornado tragedy

Johnson and his wife, Judy, have been married for 56 years, introduced by mutual friends shortly after Judy came to Owatonna to work in a local doctor’s office, and they have two children, Terry and Tim. The two boys nearly died as babies, however, when a tornado tore through this region in 1967, killing several, including Judy’s parents.

Gary and Judy were actually at a barber convention, so her parents were babysitting the two children, and Gary received a note at the convention stating, “Come home, your house is sitting on the highway,” he said.

In fact, his home was on the road, but it was also upside down and roughly three-feet high.

“That was a long ride home,” he said.

And it was made more torturous by hearing a live radio report from the scene noting two were killed and two were alive, but not identifying anyone, he said. “The first news I had when I hopped out of the car” back in Owatonna was “the boys are OK.” Though buried in the demolished home, neighbors heard cries and rescued the children, but Judy’s parents were not as fortunate, he said. “The boys were lucky to be alive.”

In addition to the death of Judy’s parents, and two young children in the hospital, the family’s home was absolutely destroyed.

“We had nothing,” he said. “It was a tragic day.”

Johnson remains grateful for the way residents of this area rallied around his family, from donating items, to conducting fundraisers, to picking up debris.

“They were so wonderful,” he said. “You always think it happens to somebody else somewhere else, but every family has tragedies here and there.”

Johnson’s faith has also been a paramount element in his life. He’s served as deacon off-and-on for decades at Pontoppidan Lutheran Church of Lemond, as well as singing in the choir, acting as an usher and greeter, and he’s the current president of the cemetery board.

He gives back to the community with his unique barber talent by providing haircuts for shut-ins, as well as residents of a local nursing home, he said. Furthermore, his “new hobby” is making canes and walking sticks out of Applewood.

Slowing down?

Johnson and his wife Judy.

Johnson is finally planning to “slow down” to one or two days each week at the shop, with the extra free time allowing him more focus on his three antique automobiles and visiting car shows, he said. He owns a 1958 Chevy Impala, a 1936 Ford street rod pickup, and a 1952 MG. “I found them and bought them,” he said. “Some were in pieces, and some were in pretty good shape.”

See JOHNSON on 25

Friday, March 30, 2018

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 25

Johnson From Page 24 Unlike some collectors of antique cars, Johnson actually drives his treasures.

“That’s what I like,” he said. “They’re usable” on the road.

“They are fun, and they all have a uniqueness about them, but my wife says ‘No more,’” Johnson said with a laugh. “I don’t have enough time to really enjoy the three I have now.”

How do you like them apples?

Johnson actually began considering retirement in the 1980s, and he felt he’d need a hobby, so he launched an apple orchard near where he grew up, he said. After all the years of pruning, picking, spraying, mowing, weed controlling, etc., however, he’s realized “it’s not a hobby—it’s work.”

Nevertheless, it’s an “enjoyable endeavor,” and the seclusion of picking apples up in trees is “relaxing,” he said. It also reminds him of the farming he did in his youth.

He and his wife still perform the vast preponderance of duties relating to Johnson Oakside Orchard, a business he started with his brother after walking around his uncle’s farm and noticing one solitary apple tree, he said. Though this region isn’t bereft of apple orchards, the southwest area he was considering didn’t have any, so “that’s where we targeted our sales,” and customers drive to the orchards in droves on fall Sundays to purchase any of the dozen varieties grown on 600 trees at Johnson Oakside Orchard.

Patience was required, as “it’s like crop failure the first five years, because you have to wait for the trees to grow and start producing

Johnson’s apple orchard.

apples,” he said. “It’s a big gamble, like all farming.”

Since Minnesota’s climate is colder than most fruit-producing regions, “it’s not surprising that the first apple breeding efforts in Minnesota looked to Russia; in 1865, about 150 apple varieties were imported for testing, (and) in the early 1900s, plant breeders (at the University of Minnesota) collected wild trees as well as cultivars from New England and other Midwest breeders,” according to University of Minnesota. The record-breaking cold winter of 1917-1918 “helped sort out the winners and the losers.”

The stretch from August to mid-October “is the time for picking, sorting, and selling,” Johnson said. “Luckily, they don’t all ripen at the same time,” considering the modest workforce.

His most popular offering remains the Honeycrisp, an apple designed specifically for this state by the University of Minnesota.

The development of Honeycrisp was recognized as “one of the top 25 innovations of the decade by the 2006 Better World Report,” a report issued by the Association of University Technology Managers recognizing “significant academic research and technology transfer that has made the world a better place,” according to the University of Minnesota. Since Honeycrisp trees were introduced in 1991, “millions have been planted, producing excellent fruit that is enjoyed by consumers all over the U.S.” “Everybody wants the Honeycrisp,” a “sweet-tart” apple that is “very firm and very juicy,” Johnson said. “Other states can grow Honeycrisp, but they don’t taste as good.”

In addition to Honeycrisp, Johnson also has a predilection for both Fireside and SweeTango apples, he said. The latter is a relatively new addition to his orchard, and “I probably should have planted more of those.”

SweeTango is a cross between two popular apple varieties, with Honeycrisp considered its “mother” and Zestar considered its “father,” according to the University of Minnesota. “This apple’s flavor, balanced by vibrant acidity, dances to a long and satisfying finish on the palate.”

A visual reminder of longevity Inside his barbershop, Johnson still displays every one of his barber licenses, which barbers renew on an annual basis, he said.

Dating back to 1959, they serve as a quick, visual reminder of six decades of serving customers, many of whom have become like family.

“The customers are my friends,” Johnson said. “That’s probably why it’s so hard to quit.”

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Jerry Roberts:

Coaching life’s players

By ANNIE HARMAN aharman@owatonna.com

Growing up, Jerry Roberts always knew he wanted to be a coach.

“Of course I found out that you have to get a degree and do a little teaching, too,” he laughed.

A few of his own coaches in Worthington encouraged the young Roberts to go into teaching, as well as two of his family members that were also in the education field. So when he hit graduation, Roberts set out to Bemidji State University to become a teacher, allowing him to chase his dreams of coaching young athletes.

“I always liked history and I think it was my strength,” Roberts said, taking his interest in World War II and transforming into a social studies teacher. With his college degree in hand, Roberts made his way down to a small town called Medford in 1961 to teach world history and becoming the coach he was determined to be.

“I thought it would be a two- or three-year deal,” Roberts chuckled. “I didn’t think I’d stay, but you get comfortable.”

Now in 2018, Roberts still resides in Medford where he has been happily retired for 20 years from a decorated, 36-year career at the Medford High School. However, settling permanently in Medford turned out to be just one of the multiple ways Roberts surprised himself over the years.

After six years of teaching and coaching baseball and basketball, Roberts was approached with a new opportunity that he wasn’t expecting.

See ROBERTS on 27

Friday, March 30, 2018 Jerry Roberts speaks to the crowd at the Inaugural Medford High School Hall of Fame Induction Banquet on Oct. 7, 2017. Roberts was recognized for his time as a teacher, coach, and athletic director in the district.

(Submitted photos)

Friday, March 30, 2018

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 27

Harry Wenger Though his aspirations were to be a coach, Jerry Roberts quickly learned that academics should be prioritized during his 37 years has a social studies teacher in Medford.

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Roberts From Page 26 “The superintendent called one day and asked if I wanted to be the athletic director,” he said, stating it initially caught him off guard. “But I thought I’d take a swing at it and see what happens.”

What happened was Roberts continued to teach students three hours a day while simultaneously handling all that comes with the athletic director title up until his retirement in 1997.

The new title, however, did not mean he had to leave coaching in the past. The school district allowed him to still hold one varsity coaching position, which led him to picking between the field and the court.

“Baseball was always key,” he said, having been the head baseball coach for about five years before being offered the athletic director position. “Baseball is my favorite sport to play and to watch, but baseball is also a tough sport in small schools. You have to take care of the fields, you do everything.

And you don’t get rainouts in basketball, and I hated rainouts.”

Roberts was only the assistant basketball coach when making the transition, but the head coach position just happened to become available to him. So he kissed rainouts goodbye and embarked on his new journey.

Along the way, he scooped up the title of Regional Athletic Director twice in his run.

“The big thing is scheduling for multiple sports,” Roberts said regarding his responsibilities as the athletic director. “It’s also being the buyer of all the equipment, and then the biggest thing is dealing with all the coaches for the various sports.”

While there seems to be a current trend of coaches leaving their jobs due to conflict with parents, Roberts said that was never an issue while he ran the athletic department.

“I don’t know if we were unique at that point in time, but we never had a problem with parents in Medford,” he explained. “Part of that probably is that we didn’t have a lot of turnover. We had the same head coaches pretty much the entire time I was there, and that’s incredibly rare and unheard of.”

Whether it was the social climate at the time or the trust that the community had in their longtime coaches, Roberts said the parents were overall overtly supportive of the athletic programs in the city. While it is unrealistic to expect to never had a disagreement, Roberts insists that they were fortunate at the school.

“I think it was just an easier time back then, for whatever reason,” he said with a shrug and a smile. “A town like Medford just rally around sports because it’s all about the kids.”

See ROBERTS on 28

It was 1946, a time when music programs were booming in schools all across America. A time when a good parade tune was hummed for days after the Fourth of July. Regional organizations and music associations were forming everywhere. It was a time when school music programs in major cities and small towns all across our nation were established. In Owatonna, Harry Wenger was “The Music Man.” As music director, he built the Owatonna High School band, choir and orchestra programs into national award winners. His passion was music education and when he couldn’t find the right equipment to support his students and programs, he built his own.

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Join us! Parade starts at 11:00 a.m.

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

Now that he has been retired for 20 years, Jerry Roberts is excited to spend even more time with his family, specifically by attending his great-grandchildren’s’ sporting events.

Roberts From Page 27 In a town the size of Medford, trying to build up as much participation in the various sports was key in keeping the programs alive. At that time, the programs available at the school included football, volleyball, wrestling, baseball, track, and both boys and girls basketball. Since then, a couple other sports such as cross country and softball have been added, but that wasn’t much of an option in Roberts’ day as the athletic director.

“The problem is that all these sports are fine, but you have to have numbers,” he said. “If you add another fall sport for boys it would take away from the football program, and you can’t play football with only 15 guys. You have to be careful with what you add because you might be destroying another sport. It would be nice if we could get something for everybody, but that’s just not realistic.”

Aside from participation, the absolute priority for Roberts was making sure he was getting people into the coaching positions that would take care of the student athletes, both on and off the field.

“Of course we don’t want them running out kids who have a concussion,” he said. “But it’s also making sure you taught them things that were apropos after they finish playing — how to be in

the public sector, how to treat people. I think you learn all that in playing the game. If you respect the other team then you probably respect people out on the street.”

Roberts said it wasn’t uncommon for a sports season to start with a team meeting where the coaches would lay down the rules and expectations for their athletes’ off-court behaviors.

“It was laid out what was expected and they were told that if they don’t meet these standards they probably won’t be with the team,” he added.

With all these elements of the athletic director position, it’s no surprise that Roberts was incredibly busy. On top of the everyday responsibilities, he was expected to attend all the athletic events, allowing him the opportunity to watch and support the entire athlete population in his school.

“I see some of them now and they still say, ‘Hi, Coach!’” Roberts stated with a proud laugh.

While Roberts clearly took the title of athletic director seriously, he never let that title of “coach” fall to the back burner. During his time coaching basketball, the team won four Gopher Conference titles.

“We never could get pass that next hump because we always had to play the big schools,” he laughed. “Back then they didn’t

have classes, so it was difficult. But our kids always played hard and did a good job.”

Among all the changes that have occurred in high school athletics over the years, Roberts believes that the introduction of different classes was a highly positive one.

“I know they get criticized a little bit that everyone gets a trophy nowadays, but basketball and all sports have changes so much that there’s no way the small school can compete with the Hopkins and the Eagens out there,” he explained. “I think it’s good for the kids to get out on the big floor. It might not necessarily be good for people on the outside, but it’s great for the kids, and that’s what sports is supposed to be about.”

With athletics being the focal point of Roberts career at the Medford school, he was quick to realize what the real focus should always be.

“Sometimes priorities get a little messed,” Roberts said. “When you graduate, I don’t care what school you’re in, what percent is going to play sports after high school? It’s small, so therefore you should always make sure you prioritize what’s most important.

Learning is what’s important.”

See ROBERTS on 29

Friday, March 30, 2018

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 29

Roberts From Page 28 Though he does still believe in the power of athletics, specifically how it can teach a child to accept failures and not cause give up because of them, Roberts said that after only a little bit of time in Medford he started seeing the importance of emphasizing education.

“I think it helps if you don’t get so carried away with thinking athletics are more important than academics,” he added. “I really believe in athletics, but boy you better get your academics down and in a row so you know what’s going on in life.”

Roberts said that he has always been supportive of the arts and music program in Medford and worked hand-in-hand with the instructors to the best of his abilities.

“The athletic and music department always had good cooperation,” he said regarding his time at the school. “That might not sound like anything, but we were in the old school then and didn’t have the room they have now, so you had to cooperate or somebody was going to fight.”

In addition to the good cooperation, Roberts was able to see first-hand the positive impact music can have in shaping youth to be a well-rounded individual.

“I wish I had gotten involved in music when I was a kid,” he laughed. “You can always play the piano, but you can’t always shoot baskets.”

Though Roberts ended up believing in not having athletics be the absolute priority in a child’s education, he was truly honored in 2017 when he was inducted in into the inaugural Medford Hall of Fame for his time as a coach and athletic director.

“I was so surprised, the guys that were inducted along with me were people I worked with for 30 years,” he said, admitting that he is not typically one to get caught up in receiving recognition and praise. “The athletes there were all kids I either had in the classroom or athletics.”

The honor came 20 years after Roberts retired and stepped away from the education field. He now is able to enjoy being a spectator at high school athletic events, allowing him a direct line to the heartbeat of the community he loves.

“The school had always been sort of a central place,” he explained. “The people of Medford really love their school. You see quite a few smaller communities consolidating and coming together, and I suppose you can’t say never, but I really don’t see Medford ever doing that.”

Happily enjoying being simply a fan of Medford sports, it didn’t take Roberts long after his retirement to find a way to fill his days.

“I have a hard time sitting around,” he joked. “So I started volunteering.”

What began as a couple days at the Steele County Food Shelf turned into a nine year commitment as a board member, helping

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set policies and overseeing the work. What was unique about Roberts’ role, however, was that he continued to do his volunteering while serving on the board.

“I had a good idea of what was going on within the framework of the Food Shelf,” Roberts said. “I thought it helped a lot. I have always thought that board members should work once a week or once a month to see what’s really happening.”

While Roberts has an impressive volunteering resume from various places, including the Salvation Army and the Bloodmobile, there is something special about the Food Shelf that keeps him going back.

“The people that come to the Food Shelf are just like everyone else, they’re nice people and I just enjoy being with them,” he said.

“To me it’s basically the key to our success. Children can’t learn if they’re hungry, so if they need food this is the place to come.”

Still actively volunteering, Roberts said he has developed a true passion for it. He said that perhaps it’s just because he is not capable of sitting around all day doing nothing, but it may also have to do with his 36-year education career, where Roberts selflessly helped children grow into the best possible versions of themselves every day, that carried over.

Reach Reporter Annie Harman at 444-2378 or Follow her on Twitter @OPPAnnie.

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

Dick Baumer:

Overcoming obstacles, learning to soar

By WILLIAM MORRIS

D

wmorris@owatonna.com

ick Baumer describes himself as a child as a “nosy, curious kid,” the kind always getting into some sort of mischief.

But his childhood, growing up in tiny Stetsonville, Wisconsin, also taught him the importance of patience and to occupy himself with his hands. There wasn’t much else to do, after all, when you’re paralyzed from the waist down by polio.

But unlike many other youths of his generation, Baumer, 78, is on his feet still and using the love of craftwork from those early years to pursue a very specialized hobby, flying remote control airplanes and gliders with the Owatonna RC Modellers. He’s stayed involved with the polio community as well, advocating for people still feeling the aftereffects of the disease. And he’s working hard to pass his love of all things aerial on to the next generation of pilots, whether they fly from a cockpit or with a radio remote.

See BAUMER on 33

A glider in flight above the Owatonna R/C Modelers airfield south of town. Inset: Dick Baumer, a longtime member and past president of the club, with his wife, Pat. (Submitted photos)

Friday, March 30, 2018

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 33

Baumer

in 1964, he married his wife, Pat, with whom he recently marked 54 years, and the couple settled in Richfield.

Back in civilian life, Baumer pursued a career as a technical writer, first with Viking of Minneapolis, a company making tape recorders later acquired by Telex Communications. He then spent a year at EMR Computer, making computing equipment for oil exploration; 11 years at Data 100 Corporation, nine years with Northern Telecom (now Nortel), and finally 13 years with ADC Telecommunications, where he retired in 2003 as training director.

“The feather in my cap that I really had thought about recently was when I was with Viking, they had a contract with Boeing to do the cabin entertainment system for the 747 airplane, and I did the installation, service and maintenance documentation for that system,” he said. “The 747 made its commercial debut in 1969, and it just retired this year. I don’t think Viking was used all of those years, but I had the first shot.”

From Page 32 All of that in Owatonna, the town he fell in love with.

“The story I like to tell is we were moving south, got to Owatonna, needed gas, and that’s as far as we got,” he says with a chuckle.

Flyboy from the start

“I got into this hobby with my older brother at the age of about 10,” Baumer says of his model aircraft endeavors. “Back in those days, there was no radio control. You used a control line to fly the models.”

Baumer had some time on his hands. Although America has been largely polio-free since 1979 thanks to widespread vaccinations, at the time, it was still a very real danger. He spent months on bed rest before finally, painstakingly regaining his feet. He wasn’t alone — at one point, five children in Stetsonville, population 299, were all being treated for polio at the same time.

So he tinkered with and flew his model planes, until finally he was well enough to move on to other pursuits.

“I did that pretty much until the time I started high school, and then obviously girls and all that got in the way, other interests,” he said.

In fact, it would be many years before he would take up the joysticks again, but they were years well spent. Baumer got an electronics degree at Wausau School of Vocational and Adult Education, then joined the Air Force and spent four years as an intelligence analyst, with stints in Turkey, Germany and the National Security Agency headquarters in Washington, D.C. Fresh out of the service

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As a child of 10, Baumer first began tinkering with model airplanes as a way to occupy himself while recovering from polio.

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Initially, he says, what drew him to Owatonna was the Cabela’s store.

“The real story is, my neighbor and I were fishermen, and when Cabela’s opened here, we started coming down every other Saturday, buying whatever we really didn’t need,” he said. “We would come to town, get a bite to eat, look around a little bit, and finally say, maybe this is a city we could live in.”

See BAUMER on 34

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PAGE 34

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

Baumer, left, has been a member of the R/C Modelers since moving to Owatonna in 2003 and recently wrapped up a term as club president.

Baumer From Page 33 Of course, his wife knew nothing about this yet, but when he retired in 2003, they agreed it was time to leave the “rat race” of the Twin Cities behind. They put their former home up for sale, and within two days were homeless, he says, only to find a house they loved on Crestview Lane in Owatonna.

And it was in Owatonna that he resumed his childhood interest in model airplanes, joining, and later serving as president and vice president, of the Owatonna R/C Modelers Club. Baumer recently wrapped up a tour as president of the club, which has about 25 active members and 40 overall (many of whom hail from as far as Chicago or Milwaukee). The club hosts multiple events a year from its airfield southwest of Owatonna.

Remote control flying, as the club does it, is serious business.

A beginning hobbyist could perhaps get a basic model for as little as $200, plus the cost of a radio. A more comprehensive starter kit, Baumer said, will run $400 to $450. Beyond that? The sky is literally the limit, as dedicated (and deep-pocketed) pilots invest in models with wingspans of 20 feet or more; choose between electric, two- and four-stroke engines and even miniature jet engines, and consider variant hobbies such as helicopters or unpowered gliders and tow planes, with some items retailing for $5,000 or more.

“I’ve got a total of 16 [models] at this point,” Baumer said. “There are a number of auctions that go on, there’s three major hobby shops up in the Twin Cities, and two of those three have an auction at least once a year. Often times you can buy this stuff for just

pennies on a dollar.”

Baumer can hold forth at length about the various types of model planes on the market, the companies that make and sell them, and the various events and organizations that support their pilots. But he also strives to make the hobby approachable.

“There are a number of ways you can get into this hobby without spending a lot of money. Number one would be to contact me, I’m an instructor with our club, and we have a number of club-owned airplanes. We use what’s called a buddy box technique. The instructor and student both have a control box,” he said. “It doesn’t cost anything to come out and try this.”

See BAUMER on 35

Friday, March 30, 2018

5

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Baumer From Page 34 Even when he’s not flying something, the hobby consumes much of his free time.

“I’m probably at the field the most often. Being retired, I have the most time,” he said. “I do a lot of handiwork around the field, and there’s always something to do around the field.”

You’re never fully cured

It’s been many years since he was rushed to a hospital in Madison, Wisc., with the initial symptoms of polio, but the disease has remained a part of his life even into his retirement. In the Twin Cities, he says, he served on the board for the Post Polio Awareness and Support Society of Minnesota, helping and advocating for people still affected by aftershocks of the disease.

“People like me that made any kind of recovery from polio, sometime after their recovery, however normal they became, some people within 10 years seem to have had a relapse,” he said. “It wasn’t polio all over again, it was just the body wearing out. … To this day, I firmly believe that if I hadn’t had a desk job through my career, I probably would’ve been in a wheelchair 30 years ago.”

He continued those efforts after moving to Owatonna. “[When] I moved down here, one thing I wanted to do was start a chapter of this organization,” he said. “It took a while to get going. I couldn’t get anyone interested until I contacted Todd Hale. I went on his show, and by golly, things opened up. We had I think a maximum of 23 members at the time, and I knew of a lot more people that had polio in the city but wanted nothing to do with a support organization. There’s kind of a stigma of support organizations.”

Eventually, as members died or moved away, the Owatonna chapter closed down, but Baumer is still engaged in speaking and advocacy for child polio survivors, and continuing efforts to eradicate it in other parts of the world.

“I’ve done a lot of speaking, all the rotary clubs, on the history of it, the need for vaccines,” he said. “Anyone that doesn’t believe in vaccines, I have some pictures I’d dearly love to show them of what an iron lung or paralytic polio ward looked like.”

And on top of all of these, he also serves on the board of the Owatonna Veterans Roundtable, which invites veterans to tell stories of their military service. And of course, there’s the family to keep up with: He and Pat have two daughters, one in South Dakota and one in Brooklyn Center; four grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

The next generation of flyboys

Talking to Baumer, the thing that makes him most animated is talking about the young people he has taught the ropes of model aircraft.

One pupil in whom he takes much pride is Dylan Hudock, currently studying aviation at University of North Dakota. “[Dylan] came to us at the age of about 10. A fellow member and I taught him ow to fly model airplanes,” Baumer said. “He got interested in helicopters, started out with a small one. … Today, he just makes a helicopter do things they’re not supposed to do.”

Now, Baumer said, his former protege has his instructor and multiengine pilot ratings and is preparing for a career in the skies.

“As far as I’m concerned he has his ticket punched for a great future,” Baumer said. “He had his private pilot license before he could drive a car. [He was on the ] Civil Air Patrol here in town. A classic story of model aviation leading to what will be a great future for him.”

Another student who has gone on to great things, Baumer said, was a Norwegian exchange student, who he declined to name because he now serves in a sensitive military position.

“He had expressed a desire to be in the Norwegian air force, and had done the paperwork for that upon his graduation, and he wanted to fly drones. They told him to get a hold of somebody in the States and get associated with a model aircraft club, get some basic aeronautic experience. So [his host mother] called me. … The kid was just a natural.”

Since the student returned to Norway, Baumer still hears from him from time to time.

“He was very good at this, went back to Norway, and I don’t know how long afterward, I was sent a picture of him. he was sitting at a formal dinner next to General Breedlove, in charge of NATO forces in Europe,” Baumer said. “I got a hold of him by email, asked what he was doing, and of course he wouldn’t say, didn’t want to release anything, but at that time, Norway was supplying some little tiny drones to NATO, and I’d bet a donut to a dollar today that that’s what he was flying.”

At 78, Baumer has many years under his belt of flying his beloved planes and sharing that love with younger pilots. But he says he’s not planning to ground himself any time soon.

“Not until these don’t work any more,” gesturing to his thumbs, “or that doesn’t work anymore,” pointing to his head, he says with a grin.

William Morris is a reporter for the Owatonna People’s Press. He can be reached at 444-2372; follow him on Twitter @OPPWilliam

PAGE 35

PAGE 36

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

By JEFFREY JACKSON

O

jjackson@owatonna.com

n a shelf in the office of B to Z Hardware in downtown Blooming Prairie sit a couple of boxes of Chuckles candy.

“Chuckles,” for the uninitiated, are jelly candies, not unlike gumdrops, that are coated with a light layer of sugar, also similar to gumdrops. Indeed, the main difference seems to be the shape — bigger, flatter. The candy, first produced in 1921, seems bit out of place in a hardware store among the screws and the nails and the plumbing supplies.

But ask Greg Johnson, the owner of the store, why he has that candy in his office, and he’ll just smile.

See JOHNSONS on 37

Greg and Kathy Johnson:

It’s all about service

Greg and Kathy Johnson met while they both worked at Jostens in Owatonna. While she still works there, they are now owners and operators of B to Z Hardware in Blooming Prairie.

(Submitted photo)

Friday, March 30, 2018

Friday, March 30, 2018

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 37

Johnsons From Page 36 “There’s a man from Ellendale who comes in a couple times a month for Chuckles,” Johnson says. “He’d be disappointed if we didn’t have them.”

So to make sure that he has, Johnson keeps a couple of boxes of Chuckles in the office just for that man.

And for Johnson, it’s that sort of customer service — learning not only what the customer wants and needs, but how the customer wants it delivered to him — that will keep him in business long after other small hardware stores have succumbed to the big box stores.

More about those in a moment.

Coming to Blooming Prairie

Neither Greg Johnson nor his wife Kathy ever really intended to make Blooming Prairie their home.

“I never expected to be here,” Greg says.

Greg was born and reared in Owatonna, Kathy in Waseca. And they both had had careers at Jostens in Owatonna — Greg for 20 years and Kathy, who still works there, for 30 years now. That’s where they met and likely intended to stay.

Greg, however, left Jostens so he could own and run a rental business in Owatonna. At that point, he was looking at other business opportunities and almost took a job elsewhere. That’s when a job opened up at B to Z Hardware in Blooming Prairie — a business that he knew little to nothing about.

Still, he wasn’t totally unprepared for taking over and running the store. He had run a business before, yes. Then there was the

Although Greg worked in maintenance for Josten’s for 20 and “knew his stuff,” running a hardware store was an adjustment for him. Still he says he loves it and the community of Blooming Prairie. (Submitted photo)

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work he did at Jostens for those two decades.

“I had an advantage — 20 years of maintenance at Jostens,” he says. “I knew my stuff.”

Now the only thing left was for him to learn how to put those two things — the business knowledge and the maintenance acumen — together and figure out how to do those in a community that was smaller, much smaller, than the one he was coming from.

It wasn’t always easy.

When he first came to the community in 2006, he came not as the owner of the store but as the manager, and he was being trained by one of the former owners, who had agreed to stay on for a few months to help in the transition.

Greg was happy he stayed, saying that former gave him some invaluable insights into running a small-town hardware store.

Take, for example, his first week there. When he answered the phone one day, the voice on the other line had a short message.

“Sharon locked herself out of the house,” the voice said. “I need you to get down here.”

And then the voice hung up — no word about what exactly the voice wanted, who exactly Sharon was or where “down here” was, for that matter.

When Greg asked the former owner who Sharon was and what that was all about, that former owner shrugged.

“He told me that if they really needed our help, they’d call back,” Greg says.

They didn’t, so to this day Greg assumes that Sharon is fine.

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PAGE 38

If you ask Greg Johnson why the store is called B to Z Hardware, you’d better be ready for two answers — “the real reason and the reason I tell everybody,” he says. (Submitted photo)

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

Johnsons

From Page 37 The very next day, however, he got another phone call from an older man in the community who wanted to know if the barber shop were open.

“Well, how do I know?” Greg asked the man.

The man told him to look down the street. If the flag was out, the barber shop was open. Greg looked and, sure enough, the flag was out. Apparently, he told the older man, the shop was open.

When he first describes coming to take over the management of B to Z Hardware, his initial enthusiasm for the job doesn’t seem that great.

“I thought I’d come down and give it a try,” he says.

But that initial hesitancy was quickly replaced and with good reason.

“I fell in love with the people,” he says.

The swear jar

Ask Greg Johnson why the store is called “B to Z Hardware” in front of Kathy, his wife, and her eyes will quickly grow big as she flashes him a look — a look that says she has heard his answer before.

His eyes just twinkle.

“What version do you want — the real reason or the reason I tell everybody,” he says.

It’s best to ask for both — one for the facts and one for the joke.

The real reason is that the store was named for its two former owners — Betlock and Zwiener. They owned it not only before he bought the store, but also before he started managing the store. The “B,” of course, is for “Betlock,” the “Z” for Zwiener. And when the Johnsons took it over, they decided not to change the name.

That’s the real reason.

The other reason, Greg says, is because one thing they don’t have in the store is — he leaves it at that, readily acknowledging the “A” word he has in mind would not be proper for a family publication.

“I was going to say because we don’t sell apples, but we do sell apples in the fall,” he says.

And sure enough, the store does — a tradition that dates back to when Betlock and Zwiener, both devout Catholics, sold the apples grown by Father Paul Breza, the former priest in Blooming Prairie. Father Breza will sell the apples and donate the money back to charities.

When autumn comes around and the folk in Blooming Prairie get a hankering for apples, they often will call down to B to Z Hardware and ask if the apples are there yet.

So they do sell apples.

The missing “A,” or course, is not the only joke that Greg Johnson likes to tell that puts a twinkle in his eye. There’s also the swear jar that sits on the counter — a jar to which people must contribute if they say one of the “bad words” while in the store. Those are the “M” word, the “L” word, the “F” word, the “W” word or the “H” word.

“One day I held the jar out and told this one woman she had to contribute because she had used the ‘F’ word,” Greg says.

The woman — an older woman — was taken aback by the suggestion that she had used an improper word beginning with the letter “F” — that is, taken aback until Greg explained that she had used the phrase “Fleet Farm.”

For the record, in Greg Johnson’s lexicon, the “M” word is “Menard’s,” the “L” word “Lowe’s,” the “W” word “Wal-Mart” and the “H” word “Home Depot.”

See JOHNSONS on 39

Friday, March 30, 2018

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 39

Johnsons From Page 38

A new home

Six months after Greg Johnson took over B to Z Hardware, the couple made a decision — to move to Blooming Prairie and immerse themselves in the community that they were falling in love with.

“It’s unbelievable the people here, how nice they are,” Greg says.

“They take care of each other.”

And he begins to rattle off a list of organizations in town in which the people do indeed care for each other — the Blooming Prairie Youth Club (formerly the Boys and Girls Club of Blooming Prairie), the Blooming Prairie Education Foundation, the Blooming Prairie Cancer Group and the Blooming Prairie Area Chamber of Commerce.

The Johnsons have been involved with all, contributing in some form or fashion — sometimes financially, other times with their hard work for the organization, and in all times with their vocal support.

Indeed, when Greg Johnson starts talking about the organizations and how the people in those organizations work to help others within the community, he shakes his head in wonder about what is accomplished in this otherwise small community.

“It’s amazing what they do,” he says.

Because the Johnsons are so amazed at the community and

the support that the community gives those who are a part of it, they have become active participants in many of the activities and organizations of Blooming Prairie.

Currently, Greg is the president of the local chamber of commerce — in the second year of a 2-year term, and something he hopes to continue.

“I kind of get it,” he says. “We need the chamber to help promote our community. It helps us as retailers on Main Street.”

He and his wife have also been big supporters of the Blooming Prairie Youth Club — an organization they refer to as “Our” Youth Club. Their involvement earned them “Supporters of the Year” honors.

One of the things they have done to help raise money for the youth club is to host pulled pork meals at their greenhouse, just a couple of doors down from the main entrance to the hardware store. The proceeds of the meal go to the club.

Greg has served as president of the Senior Center in town and has been a trustee at their church — First Lutheran of Blooming Prairie.

That’s right. The man who has continued the tradition of selling apples for Catholic charities is himself a Lutheran.

Then there were the 80 boxes of Girl Scout cookies he purchased and had delivered to Prairie Manor Care Center — something that Greg saw would be beneficial to both the Girl Scouts and the residents of the manor.

“I had my mother here, so I know that something different in

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Personal service

Walking back to the office, Greg stops to greet a man — a retired farmer who comes in the store just about every day. It’s later in the afternoon and Greg wasn’t sure the farmer was going to make in that day.

“You made it,” Greg says.

The farmer just smiles.

B to Z has a few of these older men — and they’re generally men — who visit the store two, three, even four times a week, sometimes more, even in the worst of winter when it’s cold and snowy.

There’s isn’t the only store to attract the visitors, to be sure, but the Johnsons are pleased that they are one of the stops on the way.

“We’ve produced a pretty good atmosphere here,” Greg says.

And if the smiles on the faces of their customers are any indication, indeed, they have.

Reach Managing Editor Jeffrey Jackson at 444-2371 or follow him on Twitter @OPPJeffrey.

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And when the Scouts delivered the cookies, they didn’t simply drop them and go. They met and mingled with the residents.

The work that the Johnsons have done in the community isn’t likely to end any time soon. The reason is simple.

“I believe in these people,” Greg said, and Kathy nodded.

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PAGE 40

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

Mark Domeier:

At NRHEG, he’s ‘Mr. Panther’

By RYAN ANDERSON

randerson@owatonna.com

Though he was born and raised in New Ulm, one could credibly call Mark Domeier “Mr. Panther” after two decades as a staple of the New Richland-Hartland-Ellendale-Geneva English department, not to mention countless other school duties — from announcing sporting events to coaching youth sports teams.

“I am ‘the voice of the Panthers,’” he acknowledged with a laugh. “I love it here.”

Hired right after graduating with his teaching degree from Winona State University, “I’m happy here and have never seriously considered going anywhere else.” Even his wife, Michelle, is an alumna of NRHEG High School.

A happy, rural upbringing

Born in 1973 as the first of four children — he has three younger sisters — to Ron and Karen Domeier on nine acres outside New Ulm, Domeier appreciated the “wide open spaces,” which is probably one reason he maintains a rural lifestyle, now residing in Ellendale. His father was a grocer for the same store his entire career, and his mother managed the household until the family’s youngest child was born, at which point she stepped into the workforce.

“I felt happy and privileged,” he said. Though by no means a wealthy family, “I felt we led a good life.”

He’s still grateful for the sacrifices his parents made to send him to New Ulm Cathedral for high school. Because of the smallschool setting, he was afforded the opportunity to engage in a litany of opportunities, from sports to 4-H to band, he would not have been able to in the larger New Ulm High School. According to the Minnesota State High School League, New Ulm High School currently has more than five times as many students enrolled as New Ulm Cathedral.

Domeier’s first job was at Randall Foods — the same grocery store as his father — and he transferred within the company to the Winona location to continue working there while in college, he said.

“It was a great job,” he said.

Domeier visited multiple universities, but he felt comfortable at WSU, where he was valued as an individual, rather than simply part of a large group, he said. WSU also endeared itself as an institution to Domeier by letting him meet several members of the English faculty; Domeier already knew he wanted to become an English teacher — a decision he’d reached back as a high school freshman while in a class with a teacher who was far from engaging.

See DOMEIER on 41

Domeier is a voracious reader, including fiction, nonfiction, and even comic books, with a collection of more than 12,000 comics. (Photo courtesy of Mark Domeier)

Friday, March 30, 2018

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 41

Domeier He’s willing to adjust and try new things, from having all students stand up for questions on readings and only sit down — at the risk of being called on — if they know the answer, to taking class walks around school prior to writing to “get the creative juices going,” to having students blog, he said. Students respond to his prompts — which range from the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics to plans in the event of a Zombie Apocalypse — as well as to comments from their classmates.

On the blog, they can agree or disagree with assertions from fellow students, but must do so with supportive evidence, he said.

“Everyone has a right to their opinion, but they need to support it with facts.”

The blog is another way to “get them writing, and kids tell me they get excited about it,” he said. Much like shooting a basketball, “you get better through sheer process with writing.”

From Page 40

Teaching style

“I started thinking about how I would (teach) differently,” he said. Though that moment didn’t occur in an English class, English was fated to be his teaching subject, as “reading and writing had always come easiest for me.”

He’s been inspired by a plethora of English teachers over the years, from a third-grade instructor who asked students to perform creative writing monthly to a middle school teacher who pushed Domeier to challenge himself with tougher books, and he’s incorporated their wisdom into his own teaching. He also was forced to find his style quickly, via a battlefield promotion.

Student teaching in Houston, he observed a marvelous English teacher the first week, but then she was forced out of her room due to heart trouble, and “the class was mine,” he said. “She was a master teacher with a looser classroom,” and Domeier continues in that method, with limited lecture and more discussion and activities.

His goal is to “link what I’m trying to teach you to your life,” because “there’s meaning in their life when they relate to characters,” he said. He wants his students to understand the material, and “when I run into students who remember some of what we did years later,” that “justified and gratifies.”

Though not all students can be adroit readers or writers, they can all be “good communicators and good thinkers,” he said. “If they work with me, I can get them where they need to be.”

Domeier actually met his wife, Michelle, his first year as a NRHEG teacher, and they’ll celebrate their 20th anniversary in October. They have two children, Jayna, a sophomore at NRHEG, and Anton, a seventh grader. (Photo courtesy of Mark Domeier) Students also must give presentations to their classmates, because communication is “the most important thing you can learn, and if you can speak to people, that is so powerful,” he said. Nerves never do go away completely, but “it does get easier.”

Family

When current students ask him about colleges, he can always recommend WSU with confidence based on his own experience, but he also encourages to students to select a school where they can be themselves, because “college is really when you create yourself,” he said. Prior to college, most students are wearing masks to one degree or another, but “you don’t have to pretend in college,” because, no matter “who you really are,” a group of like-minded individuals exists on campus, and “they will find you.”

See DOMEIER on 42

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PAGE 42

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018 F

Father and son spent some quality time at the Science Museum’s Star Wars exhibit. (Photo courtesy Mark Domeier)

Jayna was named drum major this year and shared the proud accomplishment with her parents. (Photo courtesy of Mark Domeier)

Domeier From Page 41 Domeier actually met his wife, Michelle, his first year as a NRHEG teacher, and they’ll celebrate their 20th anniversary in October. Domeier’s cousin actually attended college with Michelle’s mother, so “we got set up on a blind date, clicked pretty well,” and were married in October of 1998 after meeting in December of 1996.

His wife is a graphic designer for Precision Signs, LLC, in Austin, and, among her accomplishments, she created the girls basketball championship posts on the “Welcome to Ellendale” signs motorists pass on Highway 30, he said. They have two children, Jayna, a sophomore at NRHEG, and Anton, a seventh grader.

A voracious reader

Domeier is a voracious reader, including fiction, nonfiction, and even comic books, with a collection of more than 12,000 comics. He believes “To Kill a Mockingbird,” with its “strong, powerful story,” remains “the greatest novel ever written,” but he also adores “The Hobbit,” and “Lord of The Rings.”

He’s convinced “everyone can like to read if they find the right” books or genre, he said. For example, one of his former students loathed reading, until he learned she enjoyed mysteries, so he gave her one from Allen Eskens — a Mankato author who, coincidentally, spoke at the Owatonna Public Library in February.

“After that, she was always reading,” he said. As part of his search, he requires his students to read at least one non-fiction book an-

nually, just in case they realize that’s what they enjoy, and he lends out comic books from his vast collection, because comics were his entrée into reading as a youth.

Interestingly enough, by far the favorite book of his contemporary students is “The Outsiders,” which was also preferred by a majority when he first began teaching, he said. “That has been consistent.”

“They devour it,” he added. “It’s tough being a teen, no matter the era, and the characters come across as genuine people, so they probably relate to it.”

“Motivation” remains the key to education, he said. Though some research indicates modern students have shorter attention spans, “kids are basically the same.”

“The distractions are different, but there have always been distractions,” he said. He wants his students to learn from their mistakes, and, to that end, the last essay his seventh-graders write is a rewrite of their first essay of the year.

School, church, community

In addition to announcing sports like football, basketball, and wrestling for the Panthers, Domeier coached myriad youth teams before recently “stepping back” to watch his own children play, he said. He continues to function as an official for sports like basketball and baseball, and he can be spotted in Owatonna during the summer umpiring baseball tournaments.

His extensive sporting involvement can lead to long days, he

said. For example, on one particular Saturday this winter, he officiated two basketball games, then announced a doubleheader, and “My voice was pretty much gone.”

He’s also a negotiator for NRHEG’s teachers union, he and his wife are co-treasurers for the band boosters, and he plays piano at his New Richland church and in a polka band with Michelle’s relatives called Litomycellaneous. He writes columns for both the People’s Press and New Richland’s newspaper, he conducts sportsmanship presentations for teams for an organization named Youth First, and he’s written three novels about superheroes.

Fortunately, as superhero movies featuring characters like Batman, Spider-Man, Iron Man, and Captain America have taken over multiplexes to (mostly) critical acclaim and massive box offices figures over the past decade, “I don’t look like such a crazy person anymore,” he said with a laugh. The movies are successful because they balance “Easter eggs” for comic book aficionados like himself with accessible elements for the general moviegoer.

His parents purchased a subscription to Spider-Man comics when he was six; by the time he started teaching at NRHEG, he’d amassed 6,000 comic books, and that has since swelled to 12,000, he said. “It takes up three walls of my office at home.”

His favorites are Spider-Man, whom he related to as a child, and Captain America, because he loves the patriotism, he said. “I think I have every ‘Captain America’ (comic) Marvel has put out.”

See DOMEIER on 43

Friday, March 30, 2018

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 43

Domeier From Page 42

Forming connections

Domeier landed his first announcing gig when the usual public address man was indisposed, and though “I had never done anything like that before, I had such a kick” that it’s become part of his life, he said. He even has catchphrases and nicknames for players — like “Beast Mode” for NRHEG girls basketball star senior center Betsy Schoenrock — and he’s an unabashed homer, but “how could you not be?” (Photo courtesy Mark Domeier)

He landed his first announcing gig when the usual public address man was indisposed, and though “I had never done anything like that before, I had such a kick” that it’s become part of his life, he said. He even has catchphrases and nicknames for players — like “Beast Mode” for NRHEG girls basketball star senior center Betsy Schoenrock — and he’s an unabashed homer, but “how could you not be?”

He patterned some of his style after the person who did the job at WSU, “a crazy man at the mic,” and announcing is a way to keep in touch with students he taught in junior high as they matriculate at the high school, he said. “You get to know them and their families better.”

Domeier appreciates sports for the values they can teach youth, from teamwork to overcoming adversity, and they also provide him another way to connect with his students, be it coaching, announcing, or officiating, he said. In fact, he tells other teachers to go to as many events as they can, because “the kids do see you, and it’s important.”

“When you can make connections with kids, however you do it, then you can have success,” he said. “Sports mean a lot in our small town, and we talk about” teams, games, and players “for years.”

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

Katie Smith, the operations manager and nighttime supervisor for the Law Enforcement Dispatch Center for Rice and Steele Counties, says that while others may consider the dispatcher to be a thankless job, she does not because of the pride and self-recognition she finds in helping others.

(Submitted photos)

911 Dispatch:

The true first responders

By ANNIE HARMAN

P

aharman@owatonna.com

eople always talk about those “behind the scenes” that make things happen. Whether it be an amazing event, a great production, or a profound change, there always seems to be an unsung hero lurking in the background, not looking for praise.

There is one remarkable group of people who commonly go unrecognized, though they are easily some of the most important individuals in every community.

The 911 dispatch crew. They work long hours, weekends, and holidays. Their jobs depend on strong communication and multitasking skills. The training program is a rigorous four month ordeal.

They have at least 270 different guidelines they must adhere to with every call they take.

They are the true first responders to every single incident that results in a 9-1-1 call.

February 16 marked the 50th anniversary of the first ever 9-1-1 called placed in Haleyville, Alabama in 1968. For half a century, 911 has been the gateway between the public and emergency help, working as a lifeline to help people when they need it the most.

Though the profession, technology, and industry have changed over the years, the desire to make a difference in people’s lives remains the the same for those working at the Law Enforcement Dispatch Center in Owatonna, covering both Steele and Rice counties.

Jill Bondhus, who worked as a dispatcher for more than 15 years before moving into the administrator role in Rice County in 2015, affirmed that the work they do is all about helping others at their most vulnerable moments of life.

See 911 on 45

Friday, March 30, 2018

5

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 45

911 From Page 44 “The dispatch position is unique because every single day is never the same. You always have new challenges and new opportunities to help,” Bondhus said. “That’s why they’re here. Everybody in there that you ask why did you take this job will say ‘I wanted to help, I wanted to help somebody, I wanted to help the community that I serve, I wanted to help the community that I live in.’”

Another highly unique factor about the dispatch crew in Owatonna is that they have a reputation for holding on to longterm employees. The longest currently working dispatcher has been with the agency for the last 29 years, with about six more people trailing closely behind them.

Bondhus said the reason the longevity of her staff is so unique is because the average “burn out” for a dispatcher is about two years.

“We run 24/7, 365. That means somebody has to be here days, afternoons, overnights, weekends, holidays,” Bondhus said regarding what attributes to the two-year turnover.

While the schedule can certainly be a bit demanding, it’s the emotional toll it can take on dispatchers that can prove to be too much for some people. Bondhus stated that anyone who has ever been a dispatcher has dealt with calls that have an impact on their emotional state, whether it directly hit home on a personal experience or circumstances lead to an unfavorable outcome.

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PAGE 46

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018 F

The Law Enforcement Center in Owatonna covers both Rice and Steele Counties and runs 24/7, 365 days of the year. Every shift has at least two dispatchers working for each county.

911 From Page 45 “There are situations where they might be the last person ever to speak to somebody,” she added as an example of how emotionally draining the job can be. “If somebody is on the phone and says they are going to commit suicide and then does while on the phone, that dispatcher was the last person who ever spoke to that person.”

“You’re dealing with people at the worst point in their life,” said Katie Smith, the operations manager and nighttime supervisor at the dispatch center. “You have to be able to take that and focus on the positive, like I was there for that person when they needed me.

Or even the calls that don’t have a good outcome, you have to know that I am well trained, I did my job to the best of my ability, I gave them the best possible chance at a good outcome.”

“You have to be able to take this negative and look at the positive aspects of it,” Smith continued. “You have to learn to remove yourself from it.”

It does take a lot more than a strong-will to make a great dis-

patcher, however. Bondhus said that the number one trait someone has to possess to succeed at the job is the ever-elusive common sense.

“You really need a lot of common sense,” she said. “Though we have almost 300 guidelines, there is always a scenario that presents different than what we have on file to guide them, which means they need to make quick and solid decisions. Their decision making will have an impact on the outcome of the call, so common sense is key.”

While common sense is usually considered something that a person is born with, not something that can be taught, the intense training program every dispatcher must go through covers a wide range of topics that can help assist in effective decision-making.

Aside from the different scenarios, learning specifically how to communicate correctly with every kind of caller is vital.

“Part of our training is talking about different types of callers,” Bondhus explained. “You react to an emotional caller different than you would a child caller versus an elderly caller. Or a distraught caller in the middle of a domestic violence situation, you would

need to talk to them different than you would somebody in another circumstance. We highlight all of that a lot in training.”

The best way to train someone to take all the different types of calls and deal with all the different types of callers has proven over the years to be the hands-on experience.

“We do most of our training when someone is hired as on the job training,” explained Smith, who also heads up a lot of the training programs. “The first couple weeks is phone skills training where you’ll sit with a person and just observe. You work on-one with one of our training officers and learn what’s expected of you. You learn our outlines and procedures and are expected to memorize all of those. Once you’re past phone training you move on to radio skills.”

Though it may sound like a bit of information overload, Smith said that one of the most difficult skills all dispatchers has to learn is the ability to multitask.

See 911 on 47

Friday, March 30, 2018

r

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

911 From Page 46 “The thing I see people struggle with the most is being able to take a phone call and listen to the radio simultaneously,” she said. “ It’s that split second, really fast prioritizing ability. It just takes some time to learn to do those things simultaneously.”

But those skills are absolutely crucial in acting as a lifeline and assisting all callers. Being the first person on the scene of any event, dispatchers are the ones who collect the data or information regarding each event and send out the proper resources.

“When in doubt, send them out,” Bondhus said, reciting the most important motto for all 911 dispatchers. “We are responsible for painting the picture of what officers or paramedics or firefighters are responding to, so the information we gather determines the resources we send.”

Sometimes, a dispatcher will receive a call where they get little or no information from the person on the other end of the line.

In those scenarios, the dispatcher has to tap into other resources available to try to determine how to handle the situation.

“You may have a caller that all they’re doing is screaming and you can’t understand anything that’s going on,” Bondhus said, which is not a rare occurrence. “You have to then base it on what you’re hearing in the background or looking at previous incidents with that caller or address. If we have a female or male on the phone screaming with us and we then see that they have had five previous domestics, we can let the officers know that and have a better idea of what they are walking into.”

In the actual bullpen of the dispatch center, there is never a quiet moment. Dealing with calls ranging from simple welfare check requests to a vehicle accident to any type of physical altercation, the phones are always ringing. According to Bondhus, afternoons tend to be the busiest.

“Generally our busy time of the day is 4 p.m.,” she said. “I think it’s a combination of people getting out of school and people starting to go home for the day after work.

“Years ago I would have been able to tell you that Friday and Saturday nights were our busiest time, hands down,” Bondhus continued. “That has changed to anywhere, anytime. There is not a consistent time that is the busiest anymore. A domestic can occur at 7 a.m. and a drunk driver can occur at 10 a.m. It’s not like it used to be. It’s more spread out and diverse.”

Although it may seem like more incidents are occurring more often, Bondhus admits that it may not necessarily be that simple.

While it does appear the the frequency of events are increasing, it could actually be the access everyone has to dialing 9-1-1 that is changing the busy atmosphere of the dispatch center.

“It used to be that if you needed help you had to go to a phone that was connected to the wall, versus today if you see an incident or there’s something occurring you can call directly from where you physically are,” Bondhus said. “On top of that, we may get several calls on the same incident where we used to get only one.”

At the consolidated dispatch center for Rice and Steele counties, they are set up as a call-taker dispatcher environment. With all the calls they take, day in and day out, Bondhus said there is

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one major misconception the public continues to have about what happens when they dial 9-1-1.

“As the call taker is putting the information in it queues up in the system and the radio dispatcher takes it and gets the resources going,” Bondhus explained. “Some people think there’s a delay and they want us to get off the phone and send somebody.

“Well I’m not the one sending the help. My partner is,” she continued. “So I don’t think they always understand why we stay on the phone with them and ask them more questions. We ask those questions to make sure everyone gets there safely and that we get the right resources there. But I truly believe that people still think today that you’re delaying sending help by asking those questions.”

Despite the profound importance that dispatchers have in every 911 scenario, the people answering our calls rarely learn the outcomes after hanging up that phone. While both Bondhus and Smith said that it can be quite difficult for dispatchers to never receive the closure they desire, specifically on difficult or life-threatening calls, it’s not enough to keep them from loving their jobs.

“I don’t see it as a thankless job,” Smith said. “You get a sense of pride in giving back to your community and it gives you a lot of self-recognition, especially when a rough call goes well.”

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PAGE 48

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

Robert Sikel:

Man on a mission When not running the Open Arms Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention Program, Robert Sikel enjoys hunting and fishing, hobbies he once shared with his son, Jacob.

(Submitted photos)

By WILLIAM MORRIS

wmorris@owatonna.com

R

obert Sikel doesn’t want anyone else to be like him.

For the past six years, that’s been his primary goal: to ensure no other parent experiences what he did on July 30, 2012. That’s the day his 15-yearold son, Jacob, took his own life. Since then, Jacob’s father has made it is mission to ensure other parents never have to go through the same ordeal. To that end, he now travels around the region, speaking to schools and other audiences as part of the Open Arms Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention Program.

He says he knows, because they have told him in person, that other youths are alive today because of the advocacy he and other Yellow Ribbon members do. That’s his goal, he says.

“That’s our motto, that it’s always OK to ask for help,” he said. “That’s what we’re going to keep doing, as long as I’m alive.”

See SIKEL on 49

Friday, March 30, 2018

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 49

Sikel From Page 48

Hometown boy

Robert Sikel’s roots in Steele County run deep.

Born and reared in Owatonna, he still speaks with pride of being an Owatonna Indian, not a Husky. (“We were the first year they actually tried to take that Indian away from us, and we fought it off,” he said. “The next few years didn’t.”) His parents were both longtime Wenger employees who made late-career shifts, his father into union carpentry and his mother to the Steele County Attorney’s Office.

After finishing high school, Sikel moved to Mankato with his girlfriend Angie Blouin, later his wife, and then to Ellendale. He found a job at Viracon, where he has stayed, with one short break, for almost 26 years, first on the shop floor and later in industrial maintenance and as an electrician. He and Angie had a daughter, Kayla, now 23 with two children of her own; and their son, Jacob.

The family remained in Ellendale until 2001, which Sikel remembers as a difficult year. He was arrested for driving while intoxicated, and lost his brother to a Le Sueur County car crash at age 29. That timeframe was also when suicide touched his family for the first time.

“That was a rough loss, and it wasn’t even a year later that my ex, we were in the process of getting divorced then, lost her sister to suicide,” he said. “It’s real hard that we both lost our siblings, Three generations of Sikels: Robert, from left, his son Jacob, and his father, Tom. and that’s tough.”

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PAGE 50

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

Warning signs of suicide

• Talking about wanting to die • Looking for a way to kill oneself • Talking about feeling hopeless or having no purpose • Talking about feeling trapped or in unbearable pain • Talking about being a burden to others • Increasing the use of alcohol or drugs • Acting anxious, agitated, or recklessly • Sleeping too little or too much • Withdrawing or feeling isolated • Showing rage or talking about seeking revenge • Displaying extreme mood swings

Source: Reportingonsuicide.org

Sikel

From Page 49

But for the decade after that, things got better. His family grew again after he met Brenda Bergstrom and her daughter, Amber.

He moved to West Concord, and then four years later to rural Claremont.

“I’m pretty much in my paradise out there now, all by myself,” he said. “The kids seem to like it out there,” he said.

Then came June 30, 2012.

Remembering Jacob

Suicide is a difficult topic to talk about, or to report on — not only because of the pain it can bring to the family and friends of the deceased, but because of the very real danger that other vulnerable people in crisis might be inspired to do the same, in so-called “copycat suicides.” In fact, as Sikel recalls, there were a number of teen suicides in the counties nearby in the six months before Jacob died.

But remaining silent about suicide is not, cannot be, the answer either, because if nobody speaks about the problem, how will it ever be solved?

“The one thing our group is most firm on is, if you don’t talk about it, you won’t stop it, ever,” Sikel said.

And so, this is the story he tells about his son Jacob.

“He was a great kid,” Sikel says. “He was a kid that everyone would go to, if they wanted to have fun or had a problem and needed help, they would go to him, and even if he didn’t know what he was doing, he would try.”

The young Jacob had something of a mischievous side.

“Growing up, he just loved playing pranks on everyone,” Sikel said. “He would scare the crap out of my mom. He would hide in a laundry basket, and she would wonder what was in there, and so she’d open it up and he’d spring out at her.”

Like his father, Jacob enjoyed hunting, fishing and other outdoor pursuits. He particularly enjoyed “wrenching,” on anything from motorcycles to snowmobiles to full-sized cars.

“He even liked the quirky stuff, like mopeds,” Sikel said. “Anything with a motor, he’d like to get it running and say hey, look what I got running.”

When Jacob took his own life, the family was left stunned, trying to make sense of what had happened. Sikel believes that a drug Jacob had been taking may have altered his thinking and contributed to the decision he made, but ultimately there is no satisfactory explanation. Jacob with his cousin, Kelsey Wolf. “He was a kid that everyone would go to, if they wanted to have fun or had a problem and needed help, they would go to him,” his father says.

See SIKEL on 51

Friday, March 30, 2018

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 51

Sikel From Page 50 “It’ll never explain all of it. You’ll never know why,” his father says now. “That made me absolutely sure that I was going to continue doing what we are doing with Yellow Ribbon, as long as it takes.”

Sikel credits his sister, Darcy Roemhildt, with taking the first steps toward what would become Open Arms Yellow Ribbon in a conversation shortly after Jacob’s death.

“She asked, ‘what I can do for you,’ and I said, ‘I don’t know, I just don’t want another family to ever have to go through this,’” Sikel said.

Open arms

“It took a lot to convince the rest of the family to actually want to participate in it at first,” Sikel recalls. “I just knew we had to do something, and I didn’t know what, and I just didn’t want Jacob’s death to be in vain.”

The Yellow Ribbon program was founded in 1994 by the family of a Colorado teen, Mike Emme, who died by suicide. The program, not to be confused with a Department of Defense veteran reintegration program of the same name, focuses on training and education for parents, teachers and peers, showing them how to spot the signs of a teen who might be in danger, and how to reach out and help.

Sikel and his family launched the Open Arms Yellow Ribbon affiliate in 2012.

“In the beginning, … the five of us went down to Westminster, Colo., and actually got trained by the original founders of Yellow Ribbon,” he said. “When we’re doing our presentations, we’re not strictly to the book of how they do theirs, and they say that’s fine. It’s more, what are we going to be able to do to capture these people, usually kids, and capture their attention.”

What to do If someone you know appears to be considering suicide:

• Do not leave the person alone • Remove any firearms, alcohol, drugs, or sharp objects that could be used in a suicide attempt • Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) • Take the person to an emergency room, or seek help from a medical or mental health professional

Important numbers to know:

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273TALK (8255). Press 1 for the Veterans and Military crisis lines Crisis Text Line: 741-741

In the beginning, the group’s presentation was all about Jacob. Over time, though, it has expanded.

“As our group grows, we get more and more members with family members who’ve died by suicide, and we want to include all their photos, so we’re getting a new video [for our presentations],” Sikel said. “Yes, it’s just about Jacob with me, but it’s just about this person’s son for that person. It’s all about who you’re there for.”

Open Arms does presentations for a variety of audiences, but the most common, Sikel says, is for schools. He’ll speak to the students, encouraging anyone in crisis to remember they can ask for help, and telling

them how they can help each other. The early years were slow going, but now they’ve become regulars in a number of southern Minnesota districts — for example, each year they’re a part of the health curriculum for Waseca 10th-graders. He hopes to see that trend continue.

“I would like to see the schools coming to me instead of me going to them. I would like them to realize we’re just there to spread the word,” he said. “Not that I want to be popular at all, I just want them to recognize the Yellow Ribbon as an organization that’s here to make their community better, and give people with any kind of mental challenges an option at least.”

He and Brenda Bergstrom are no longer together, but they remain involved (along with Jacob’s mother, Angie Blouin, and other friends and relatives) in the movement they built to honor their lost son. There are four presenters in the group now, and Sikel says he puts in 15 to 20 hours a week, slowly turning the group from a family endeavor into a vertically structured advocacy group.

“All of the volunteer work, it amazes me that our group has stuck together as well as it has,” he said. “We’ve had some people come and go, bc it is a lot of work.”

To support their work, and the scholarships they award each year, Open Arms raises money through several group rides — Jacob’s Ride and Ride for Hope — as well as a pancake breakfast.

Sikel says he’s in it for the long haul, continuing to organize and fundraise and, most importantly, speak about that awful day in 2012, and bring hope to others in the same dark place.

“It was the hardest day of my life, and I never want to have it again,” Sikel said. That’s what really inspired our group, is we don’t want any other family to have to do this, if it’s possible.”

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PAGE 52

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

ANNETTE DUNCAN:

Making a difference

By JEFFREY JACKSON

A

jjackson@owatonna.com

nnette Duncan is striving to make a difference.

And Duncan, the executive director of the Exchange Club Center for Family Unity based in Owatonna, wants to bring others in the community along on that mission.

“We all have a part in the solution,” she said. “We want the message to be hope, to be that we can make a difference.”

But if Duncan is looking for a solution, there must be a problem she is trying to combat. And that problem could be considered one of the more insidious problems facing a community — a problem that many of us don’t even want to notice or acknowledge that it exists. The problem is that of abuse and neglect of children.

The stated purpose of the center — of which she’s been the director for 2 years officially, though she served on the board for 8 years before that and did a lot of the work — is to help parents become “successful parents” and enable parents to “provide a safe and nurturing home for their children,” according to the center’s website.

It truly is, as the name suggests, a “center for family unity.”

See DUNCAN on 52

Annette Duncan sits at her desk at the Exchange Club Center for Family Unity in Owatonna with her daughter Amelia in her lap (Jeffrey Jackson/People’s Press)

Friday, March 30, 2018

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 53

Duncan From Page 52

Long road to Owatonna

What Duncan remembers if not most, then at least clearly about her first winter in Minnesota were the ditches.

She was just 17, barely old enough to drive in either Minnesota or her native California, and the winter that year in southern Minnesota was, at least as Duncan recalls, horrible.

“I ended up in the ditch every week,” she said.

Of course, she wasn’t used to Minnesota weather. She had been reared in Orange County in southern California — the third most-populous county in that state with a population of more than 3 million people. It rarely snows there, but why would it with an average low temperature in December and January — its coldest two months — at 45 degrees.

Her mother, who had connections in Minnesota, moved here when Duncan was a teenager. They hadn’t planned on stopping where they stopped.

“But our car broke down in Waseca, so that’s where we settled,” she said.

It was tough at first, being so different than what she was used to and where. But she adjusted.

“I weathered the storm,” she said.

Quite literally, it seems, if that first winter was any indication.

And now?

“I’ve been here 23 years now, and I couldn’t imagine raising a family any place else,” she said. “I love the Midwest mentality.”

Annette Duncan with two of her six children at Give a Kid a Flag Day at the Steele County Free Fair in 2011. (Submitted photo)

See DUNCAN on 54

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PAGE 54

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

Annette Duncan receives the 2015 Woman of Achievement Award from the Owatonna Business Women. She is pictured with her husband and son following the honors.

(Submitted photo)

Duncan From Page 53

Abuse and neglect

That’s not to say there aren’t problems here, some of which Duncan sees on a daily basis.

She hopped on the computer in her office in Owatonna, her infant daughter Amelia seated on her lap, and pulled up some statistics for the state of Minnesota. In one year alone there were 76,785 reported cases of child abuse and neglect, 24,262 of which were investigated. Of that number 7,610 children were removed from their homes and placed in foster care.

Duncan acknowledged that there is a gap — a “huge gap,” she called it — between the number of reported cases and the number of investigations, much of which has to do with the initial examination

of the reports by human service agencies in the state.

“Does it meet the qualifications? Does it meet the criteria?” she asked hypothetically. “If not, it’s dismissed.”

And, she has seen it.

Though housed in Owatonna, the local Exchange Center for Family Unity covers a five-county region — Steele, Rice, Dodge, Waseca and Freeborn counties.

“We added Freeborn in 2017,” she said.

In those counties she has seen the abuse — “horror stories,” she calls them — though, she said, they are not as numerous as they might be.

“Truly, there are not that many malicious parents,” she said.

Then she paused. “But they’re out there. They’re in our community.”

The abuse cases may garner more media attention because

of the horrific nature of events. But the neglect cases are equally troublesome for Duncan, perhaps even more so because of the sheer volume of it.

“There’s a lot of neglect,” she said.

She rattled off several examples of the type of neglect she was speaking of. In some cases, children were not being fed. Other parents were not making sure their kids were getting medical attention if and when they needed it. Still other children were going to school in dirty or tattered clothes, some of them wearing the same outfit for days on end. And once at school, it was obvious that their parents had not fed them the night before or that morning for breakfast, or had not helped their children with their homework.

See DUNCAN on 55

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 55

Duncan From Page 54 In all such cases — and others as well — it becomes obvious that the children are physically not being taken care of, Duncan said. In a word, they are being “neglected.”

“It’s a large issue,” she said.

So large, in fact, that social workers struggle to keep up, Duncan said.

That’s where the center comes in. Many parents caught in such a situation, Duncan said by way of example, also have difficulties with basic parenting skills. They lash out at their children. They scream and yell.

“Our goal is to get to it before something happens,” she said.

That’s where the center’s parent mentoring program comes into play. The parent mentors will go to a family’s home, help the family set goals, determine needs and help the parents become the best parents they can become..

“We want to provide parents with the opportunity to do it a different way, a better way,” Duncan said.

And that different, better way may — and often does — include modeling.

Of course, Duncan is aware that there are things that can get in the way, and many of those roadblocks have to do with one thing.

Money — or the lack of it.

“A lot of families live in poverty,” she said.

It’s difficult, she said, to establish a solid home life when you’re homeless. And many of the families the center has dealt with are homeless, spending their nights couch-hopping.

It’s also difficult to be concerned about other things when you can’t ensure your basic needs, like food, are being met.

And it’s difficult to get your child medical attention if you have no insurance and can’t afford the doctor bills.

“Anything that prevents a child from living in a secure environment and prevents them from thriving could be a form of neglect,” said Duncan.

Becoming involved

Duncan was just 24 when she got involved with the Exchange Club of Owatonna — the only Exchange Club in the county at the time.

She attended her first meeting at the invitation of Katie Smith, who, as Duncan said, “knew my situation.”

At the time Duncan was involved in sales — for 15 years as an inside sales representative for Jostens, then for another 5 years with Hibu, the company responsible for Yellow Book — and making contacts with others in the community through an organization like the Exchange Club seemed to make good sense.

But Duncan found something else at the Exchange Club, something that changed her life. As an Exchange Club member, she volunteered time at the Center for Family Unity. After all, not only did the center bear the club’s name, but preventing child abuse was — and is — the national mission of the club. For Duncan, it became much more personal than that.

“It gave me an opportunity to know that I can do something different,” she said. “That I can change the way children are treated.”

She “moved up the ranks” of Exchange Club pretty quickly, she said.

By 2013, she helped to charter the Moonlighters branch of the Exchange Club here in Steele County — a club designed for those for whom the noon club was difficult to make and the early morning club was too

early in the morning for those with families.

In the meantime, she started serving on the board of the United Way of Steele County, a position that she held for 9 years. She also served for 8 years on the board of the Exchange Club Center.

When Vicki Staloch, the former director of the center, died in late 2012, the task of doing the everyday work for the center fell on the board members, much of it on Duncan. Two years ago, she officially became the director.

But even before that, Duncan — then Annette Frank and still working for Hibu — was honored by the Owatonna Business Women with its 2015 Woman of Achievement Award. At the time, Duncan’s list of achievements was long and impressive. She had earned Rookie of the Year honors from Hibu, was involved with the Steele County Safe & Drug Free Coalition, Junior Achievement and the Uplift Housing Project, and was a member of Lakes & Prairies District Exchange Club.

When she was named the Woman of Achievement that year, Duncan was visibly moved.

“Thank you for honoring me tonight, and I hope I’ll be able to keep doing as much good work as I can,” she said, accepting the award. Then she reminded the audience of one last thing. “Together,” she said, “we can achieve a lot.”

Now, of course, her main area of focus is preventing child neglect and abuse, something that she says is, aside from the most malicious situations, is preventable.

“It is preventable. We have the power to do something,” she said.

“We have to get back to the idea that it takes a village to raise a child.

There is still hope.”

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PAGE 56

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

Colette Lea:

Serving smiles While Colette Lea never imagined herself as a restaurant owner when she was younger, she has found her passion in using her business, the Blooming Prairie Cue Company and Pizza Cellar, to help the community with various fundraisers and charities. (Submitted photos)

By ANNIE HARMAN aharman@owatonna.com

With a background in social work, Colette Lea would have never guessed that she would run the go-to spot for charities and fundraisers.

But since 2006, Lea and her husband have been the owners and operators of the Blooming Prairie Cue Company and Pizza Cellar, serving up much more than drinks and pizza slices.

Lea, a native of Ellendale, admits that she didn’t really know as a kid what she wanted to be when she grew up. Encouraged to go college by her mother, Lea found herself in Austin working in child protective services for the county. At the time, the Pizza Cellar was owned by her aunt and uncle, Luann and Keith.

“I worked in the kitchen just for fun. It was kind of my social life,” Lea laughed. “They knew that obviously my [social work] job was extremely stressful and you start to think, how many years can I do this? Well, they of course were ready to get out of this business and move on with their lives, so they approached me and asked me if I would ever want to run this place.”

Having no intentions of ever running a restaurant or a bar had little impact in Lea’s decision as she figured “why not?” and jumped in head first with nothing to lose. After about a year of completing her other job, Lea worked with her relatives to figure out a contractfor-deed and embark on her new journey.

“It was fun,” she said regarding the first couple years of owning the place. “It was nice to be able to interact with people on the opposite end of what I was use to while at the county. People actually want

the service that I’m providing them and I’m making them happy instead of making them upset or forcing my profession on them.”

Lea said that her stress essentially changed overnight. Instead of dealing with people at their most vulnerable, she was not able to focus on how to make everyone happy through a happy, fun experience. She admits, however, that it did bring on a different type of stress.

“My focus has probably become making people happy,” Lea laughed. “I want to make people happy. With social media nowadays, if you make somebody upset who knows where it’s going to go. That really makes me nervous, so it’s really a different kind of stress than it was.”

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Friday, March 30, 2018

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 57

Lea From Page 56 Luckily, Lea didn’t have to take these burdens on alone.

“My aunt and uncle knew I couldn’t run it by myself and there was a bartender here named Tony, so they thought he would make a good partner,” Lea said, referring back to when she first agreed to takeover the restaurant. “Lo and behold, he became my husband.”

Not only did the couple’s relationship blossom at work, but they ended up rearing their children inside the restaurant as well. First came Beckett, who is now 8-years-old, followed by Sailor six years later.

“Having children threw a whole different wrench in it,” Lea stated.

“It’s night and weekends and there’s no childcare nights and weekends. Beckett literally grew up here. I brought him to work everyday, he ran around here in a walker with a balloon attached so we just had to look for the balloon, he took his naps here, my back office turned into a play room, everything. Everybody knew Beckett.”

While it was fun to have Beckett be somewhat of a mascot for the business, Lea said it still presented plenty of difficulties.

“It was long days and late night, it’s hard to do that with kids,” she said, adding that they decided to be done having kids after Beckett.

“But surprise, here comes Sailor!”

Quite different from her older brother, Sailor didn’t mesh right with the restaurant scene. She wasn’t able to nap, she didn’t care for the balloon-walker, and just overall didn’t seem to like it at the Pizza Cellar for some reason unknown by her mother.

See LEA on 58

Though Colette Lea’s 8-year-old son Beckett essentially grew up at the Blooming Prairie Cue Company and Pizza Cellar, taking his naps in the office and roaming around the restaurant in a walker with a balloon tied to it, her 2-year-old daughter Sailor had a more difficult time adjusting. Lea now works out of her home during the day with Sailor, but still spends most nights and weekends at the restaurant.

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PAGE 58

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

Colette Lea’s favorite part about owning a business is donating her space for various fundraisers and charities. During these events, she says the bar and restaurant completely fill to the rim with people who are there for a good cause, as pictured here.

Lea From Page 57 “It just didn’t work, so I pretty much had to move my office home,” Lea said. “I’m at home with her all day making my phone calls, doing my payroll.”

Transitioning into a more administrative side of owning a business, Lea still would find a sitter at night and go back to the restaurant to help out. Though it may not be ideal, she is happy that she knows she will never miss out on any part of her children’s childhoods.

“I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way,” she smiled. “You don’t get rich off of owning a restaurant and bar, at least I don’t.

Maybe other people do, but we haven’t figured that part out yet. It almost feels like a community service sometimes, because we’re not selfish people so I don’t want to overcharge people. I would hate it if anyone ever said it was too expensive.”

What some may view as a chaotic lifestyle just seems to match perfectly for Lea’s family. Though it was something she didn’t plan or expect for her life, owning a restaurant an bar allowed her to stumble on to her true passion.

“If I had a choice and we could giveaway everything,” Lea said, regarding the direct link to charity that her business has allowed her to develop. “If we were rich and able to do that all the time, that would be so fun.”

The Pizza Cellar’s relationship with charities and fundraisers dates back to when Lea’s relatives owned the place, specifically with the Education Auction. At that time, her aunt and uncle would donate the building as a venue to host the event and guarantee a certain percentage from their sales that they would then donate at the end of the night.

“A lot of other facilities you would have to pay just to use their

just sort of spiraled after that.”

Probably one of the biggest charity groups the Pizza Cellar is correlated with is the Blooming Prairie Cancer Group, of which Lea is the president. The restaurant became the “hub” for the group, from hosting the events there to storing all their materials. Because of that well-established and well-known relationship the group and business had around town, it wasn’t long before other people with generous hearts began knocking on Lea’s door.

“It just sort of turned into having an individual in town who was throwing a benefit asking if the Cancer Group would do it,” Lea explained, though said she knew it was probably best not to have the group take on more and more events. “It turned into me saying that if they want to use our building for free to do the benefit they could and I’ll help them with advice I may have on things they need.”

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PAGE 59

Lea

“Everyone needs to volunteer. They really do.

Before she knew it, Lea became the go-to-girl on benefits and You feed off that, making people happy.”

From Page 58

fundraisers. According to her, however, it is simply because it just fits with her business.

“It just kind of has been more and more and I don’t know if it’s because we have so many but we just know where the tables go and what all works best,” she said in reference to how natural it became for the restaurant and bar to be the main venue for benefit-style events. “It just seems to flow and work.”

Lea said that every single benefit that comes through the Pizza Cellar doors leaves her and her staff with that heartwarming feeling of truly helping somebody. She even admitted that her job of running a business has almost fallen to a secondary position with all the charity work that fills both her time and her soul.

This primary role that has developed for Lea has actually been mainly behind the scenes, which she prefers. She prefers to simply make sure everything is running smoothly and let the event be entirely about the person or organization it may be honoring and the people who attend.

“It’s definitely not anything that I expect credit for,” Lea said.

“Any of the benefits, I don’t do them. I just offer my services of tables, chairs, and a building. We flip it upside down and I will give advice of what works well and what might not, but by no means is this about the Cue Company or the Pizza Cellar or the time it took me to do something. It’s more about that I hope they are happy with the event they were able to have.”

— Colette Lea, On her staff and their sense of community Being the recommended place to go to have a fundraiser, benefit, or any such event is humbling for Lea, though it does let her know that she is achieving her goal of making sure everyone who attends events at her restaurant were indeed happy.

Of course a woman like Lea is the first to admit that she cannot keep these events operating smoothly on her own, as she is happy to give a massive amount of credit to her staff that will come in to work events that will fill the entire building with people shoulder to shoulder.

“It’s crazy because I always tell them to be humble because sometimes at benefits you’re not going to get rich off of tips,” Lea said, adding that her staff puts in a lot more work at benefits then they would a typical Friday or Saturday night of waiting tables.

“I always tell them that what goes around comes around. This is your community service.”

Plenty of times Lea has seen staff begin a shift for a benefit with perhaps a less than excited attitude about the hard work ahead of them, but by the end of it she said they always have smiles on their faces. Between seeing the amount of people that come out

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to support one another to feeling the energy of the room, Lea said that her entire staff feels the sense of community ever time.

“Everyone needs to volunteer. They really do,” she added. “You feed off that, making people happy.”

Lea joked that it may not be realistically the most fiscally beneficial way to run a business, but she believes much more in the power of making others around her smile.

“I don’t know that we would be the business that we are if we weren’t involved in a lot of these things,” Lea said. “It really puts you out there vulnerably in the community. Our society is changing so much and people expect things differently now.”

For Lea, she just truly enjoys knowing that she can give benefit organizers one less thing to worry about so they can focus on their bigger picture. She says it’s all about doing the little things for people, and in a community like hers it’s easy to be so giving with her business and time.

“Just in the first couple of months this year, the thousands of dollars people have put towards charities in Blooming Prairie is crazy,” she said.

Perfectly content behind the scenes, Lea hopes people continue to feel comfortable and welcome coming to the Cue Company and Pizza Cellar for good times, smiles, support, and whatever else they may need.

Reach Reporter Annie Harman at 444-2378 or Follow her on Twitter @OPPAnnie.

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

Lt. Colonel John Klatt, seen here at the stick of his F-16 fighter plane, retired in 2016 after 27 years in the Minnesota Air National Guard, including almost 20 years with the 148th Fighter Wing based in Duluth. (Submitted photos)

John Klatt:

Pulled Upward

By WILLIAM MORRIS

F

wmorris@owatonna.com

lying, John Klatt would say, is in his blood.

From his parents, his neighbors, his wife, and many more, he has absorbed a lifelong love of flight. And he’s good at it, too, with decades of experience flying everything from fighter jets to airliners to nimble aerobatic planes. So good, in fact, that he puts his name on it: John Klatt Airshows, based at the Degner Owatonna Regional Airport.

You won’t find him on the ground often, but when he is on terra firma, he’ll be happy to tell you how glad he is to have moved his company to southern Minnesota.

“It’s a really nice place to have a small business, so we’re really happy to be welcomed so well there in Owatonna,” he says.

See KLATT on 61

Friday, March 30, 2018

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Klatt From Page 60

An early start to flying

The young John Klatt probably never had a chance at a career on the ground.

His father, a former Air Force mechanic, spent his career working for a succession of airlines that eventually merged to become part of Delta. Although his father is now 15 years into retirement, the love of aviation he passed on to his son remains strong.

“Fortunately, he took me to air shows and gave me a chance to be around airplanes, and from a very young age I was drawn to airplanes and airshows in general,” Klatt said.

His father wasn’t the only influence pulling him upward. Next door to the home he grew up in lived a man named Larry Daudt, a 747 pilot for Northwest Airlines. Through him, Klatt got to experience flying from the plane as well as the audience on the ground.

“He also took me for one of my first airplane rides, when I was a bit younger, and he [later] recommended I go into the Air National Guard,” Klatt recalls.

In 1986, his mother put down the initial money for him to obtain his pilot’s license. He learned to fly under the tutelage of Paul Dagnon, a Vietnam veteran pilot, before even finishing high school.

Then it was off to the University of Minnesota-Duluth, where he studied communications.

See KLATT on 62

PAGE 61

Klatt deployed overseas three times during the Iraq war, flying combat missions with the 148th Fighter Wing.

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PAGE 62

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

The Screamin’ Sasquatch, a custom-built biplane that combines a piston-driven propeller and a jet engine, is the primary stunt plane for John Klatt Airshows.

Klatt From Page 61 “Every summer, I’d come home and get an additional flying rating, like an instrument rating, commercial pilot license, instructor training,” Klatt recalls. “It was sort of a journey to get through college and keep flying. I knew I wanted to be a pilot at that time.

I wasn’t sure how.”

With Daudt’s suggestion in mind, Klatt signed up for the Minnesota Air National Guard in 1989 and joined the 133rd Airlift Wing in St. Paul, flying C-130 cargo planes around the world. At the same time, though, he began hankering for something a little bit more nimble.

“During that timeframe, I kind of fell in love with aerobatics. I purchased a small plane called a Pitts [a famous aerobatic biplane], and started teaching myself aerobatics on those,” he said.

A word about teaching oneself aerobatic maneuvers, which is a bit like testing parachutes in that if anything goes wrong, it’s a long way down. Klatt said there are classes a pilot can take, and simulators and other forms of instruction one can do on the ground, but eventually, you have to try it in the plane.

“I did take a lesson or two, but then you go up in these airplanes, and there’s actually books written about how to fly aerobatics,” he said. “So you can read up on a maneuver, and then if you climb up to higher altitude, you can practice it and if things don’t go as planned, you have some room to correct the situation.”

All airplanes great and small

After a few years focusing on the air national guard, Klatt began looking to shift into commercial flying. He flew Beech 1900s, a small regional airliner, for a short stint with Great Lakes Aviation in North Dakota, then in 1992 joined Sun Country Airlines, which offers both scheduled and charter flights from its base at MSP International Airport. At Sun Country, he flew as a flight engineer on 727s and copilot on DC-10s. He also met his future wife, Deborah.

“When I was flying there, I met her as a flight attendant, and we hit it off,” he recalls.

1997 was a year of great change. After almost a decade with the 133rd Airlift Wing, Klatt transferred to the 148th Fighter Wing in Duluth, moving (after training in Oregon) from the workhorse C-130 to the nimble F-16 fighter plane. He also changed his privatesector employment, taking a job with United Airlines, and also took the first steps toward turning his aerobatic hobby into an actual job.

“From about 1997, I started to fly airshows with my little airplane on a more regular basis, and found that I really enjoy the opportunity to meet people at airshows, get out, travel around and maybe learn a little extra money doing something you love,” Klatt recalls. “For me, I was lucky to be able to do that, so I’ve been flying airshows for the better part of going on 20 years.”

Two years later, John Klatt Airshows was born.

Klatt’s eponymous company, which includes not just him but a

crew chief, operations manager and multimedia manager, travels around the country, putting in appearances at 10 to 12 airshows a year. The business runs on sponsorships, with the current primary sponsor being Jack Link’s Protein Snacks. And all of it gives him the opportunity to do the aerobatic flying he loves.

That was almost 20 years ago. Today, Klatt remains a pilot for United Airlines, flying from Chicago as first officer for 737s. He retired from the Air National Guard as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2016, after 27 years in the service, a career that included everything from piloting aid missions to Somalia in the ‘90s to three combat tours in Iraq.

“I was very grateful to have that opportunity to be part of both Air National Guard units in the state of Minnesota,” he said. “That was a unique opportunity.”

And John Klatt Airshows? Scheduled for a full touring season in 2018, starting with the Luke Days airshow in mid-March at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona.

Owatonna’s fastest marketing company

So, what brought John Klatt Airshows to Owatonna? Unsurprisingly, Klatt says it was the airport that caught his eye.

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Klatt From Page 62 “We were actually in the Cities, in about 2009, and we were looking for a place to house all our equipment, and be part of a good community,” Klatt said. “I researched all the airports in the vicinity, and Owatonna was definitely the top choice for having the nicest airport in the southern Minnesota region for the kind of business I have.”

After 10 years basing out of Owatonna, he doesn’t regret the move in the slightest.

“The airport is just a spectacular facility. It’s got long runways and great hangers,” said Klatt, who also heaps praise on Degner Owatonna Regional Airport manager Dave Beaver and other city officials. “It’s a really nice place to have a small business, so we’re really happy to be welcomed so well there in Owatonna.”

The aerobatic stunts are what will jump out to most observers about the company, but Klatt, who in the past has described John Klatt Airshows as “really a marketing company,” is always highly attuned to his sponsors. For more than a decade, he flew in a partnership with the Air National Guard, rolling and diving in their colors. That partnership ended when he left the service, but the Jack Link’s show is an entirely different beast, centered on a one-of-akind airplane built around the airframe of a 1929 Waco biplane.

He calls it the “Screaming Sasquatch.”

“It’s as close to flying, like being a bird, that you can be in an airplane,” Klatt says.

Experience the

John Klatt Airshows performs at 10 to 12 shows every year, traveling from its home base in Owatonna to all corners of the country.

What was originally a classic propeller-driven barnstorming airplane has been totally reworked with modern materials and engineering, and most significantly, with a jet engine grafted on

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for “supplemental power,” as Klatt puts it.

“It’s quite a bit of supplemental power,” he said. “The airplane will actually hover.”

Using both the piston and jet engines, Klatt can perform snap rolls, spins, barrel rolls and the hover at speeds up to 250 mph, a challenge demanding all his skill from decades of flying.

“Flying the Screaming Sasquatch has probably been the most unique and rewarding flying experience I’ve had,” he said. “It’s been very demanding, it’s a huge airplane, and has two different throttle levers.”

But the business succeeds as much through marketing acumen as aerobatic prowess, and Klatt jokes that he finally has a chance to put his college education — major in communications, minor in philosophy — to use.

“How that applies to aviation, I’m not sure, but I think it definitely applies to the business side,” he said. “We’ve definitely applied some of our communication skills to the John Klatt Airshows brand.”

Back on the ground, he and Deborah have been married 21 years and have two children: Leah, 19, a freshman at Arizona State University, and Daniel 17, who Klatt calls “a respectable young man.” His terrestrial pursuits include hiking and fishing and watching Daniel’s hockey games. But he always has the itch to get back into the cockpit and take again to the sky.

“The sheer thrill of flying just never goes away,” he said.

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

Wayne Klinkhammer:

Far from the farm

Even at age 86, Wayne Klinkhammer still seems to be always smiling. Klinkhammer served three terms as mayor of Owatonna. (Press file photo)

By JEFFREY JACKSON

I

jjackson@owatonna.com

f you blinked, you would miss him. For that reason, when Wayne Klinkhammer’s bit part in the 1970 film “Airport” was about to come on the screen some 55 minutes into the movie, Walt Barfknecht, the proprietor of the State Theater in downtown Owatonna, would do something to make sure that the patrons didn’t miss it.

“Walt would flash the lights,” said Klinkhammer.

And sure enough, just moments after the lights would flash, Klinkhammer, Owatonna’s own, would appear on the screen.

“The bus from the downtown terminal is just coming in,” his character would say.

As quickly as he appeared on the silver screen, he was gone — his brush with stardom and celebrity over in a matter of seconds. Still, it was enough to garner him some applause from the appreciative Owatonna crowd and to get his name on the theater marquee alongside the other stars of the film — Burt Lancaster and Dean Martin.

The thing was Klinkhammer wasn’t supposed to be in the movie, not even up for a part. It all happened serendipitously.

Klinkhammer had been one of the charter members of Little Theatre of Owatonna, the community theater group that still is going strong after more than 50 years. He had been on stage a few

times and even directed a show for LTO. So it wasn’t surprising in the late ‘60s when Klinkhammer received a phone call from Dan Danielson, the president of LTO at the time, who asked Klinkhammer to do something for the theater group.

Universal Pictures was filming part of the movie “Airport” at MSP in the Twin Cities and a call had gone out for theater groups across the state to send actors to audition for small roles — bit parts, really — in the film. Danielson asked Klinkhammer to go and represent LTO, especially to push the talents of one of the actresses associated with the local theater troupe.

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

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Klinkhammer From Page 64 “Can you go in my place?” Klinkhammer remembered Danielson asking.

So Klinkhammer went and met with the director, Ross Hunter.

“I made the case for her,” Klinkhammer said, further noting that she didn’t get the part. “But as I was leaving, I turned and said, ‘You don’t happen to have a part for an ugly guy like me?’ And he said, ‘Can you come back tomorrow?’”

He took the part, even practiced his one line for four hours — “The bus is unloading now.” But when it finally came time to film it, the director changed the line to the one now heard — “The bus from the downtown terminal is just coming in.”

It took two takes, but he got it.

Life on the farm

The glitz and the glamor of Hollywood — or at least Hollywood Minnesota-style — are far removed from the farm on which Wayne Klinkhammer grew up and the farm that at one point in his life he thought he would live and work for the rest of his life.

Klinkhammer, now 86, was born in Oakes, North Dakota, just a stone’s throw from Forman, North Dakota in neighboring Sargent County in the extreme southeast corner of the state — almost in South Dakota and nearly in Minnesota.

His grandfather was a farmer who had homesteaded in Sargent County before World War I. Klinkhammer’s father, like his father’s father before him, was a farmer as well. Wayne was the second of six children, his sister Mildred being just a year older.

It was a typical childhood — typical for a child growing up on a farm in rural North Dakota during the Great Depression and through the years of World War II. After the crops came in, he would work at whatever he could get — once in the fall of 1948, putting up snow fences for the highway department before the coming of the tough Dakota winters.

That December, his father showed up in Cogswell, North Dakota — a town even smaller than Forman in Sargent County where Klinkhammer had been staying.

“He said, ‘Your grandfather sent a check and said you should go to college,’” Klinkhammer recalled.

By that afternoon, Klinkhammer, who had graduated from high school early, was signed up to go to college in the spring of 1949.

Things that spring, however, were difficult, especially in May. On May 8 of that year, which happened to be both his father’s birthday and Mother’s Day, Klinkhammer went back home to see his parents and to celebrate the day.

“It was the last time I saw her,” he said of his mother.

Less than a week later — May 14, 1949 — his mother died in the hospital from an embolism in her lung.

Wayne Klinkhammer as a boy on the farm in North Dakota. (Submitted photo) As Klinkhammer remembers, his father did as best he could trying to rear six kids on his own, but it proved too much for him. So his father — a good Catholic — joined an organization through the church. A “lonely hearts club,” Klinkhammer called it.

See KLINKHAMMER on 68

“As I was leaving, I turned and said, ‘You don’t happen to have a part for an ugly guy like me?’ And he said ‘Can you come back tomorrow?”

— Wayne Klinkhammer, On his conversation with movie director Ross Hunter and his landing a bit part in the movie “Airport”

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Friday, March 30, 2018

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PAGE 68

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018

Wayne Klinkhammer in earlier days and (INSET) earlier days still.

(Submitted photo)

Klinkhammer From Page 65 The next thing he knew, his father went on a trip to Colby, Wisconsin, and came back with a new wife and a new family — six stepsisters and a stepbrother.

“Within a year, I had a new half-brother,” Klinkhammer said.

That made 14 children in all, requiring Klinkhammer to become what he called a “part-time nanny.”

“I helped for a while,” he said.

But then, he made what would turn out to be a monumental trip on Thanksgiving weekend 1950. He came to Owatonna.

A new town, a new life

His dad’s sister had married George Kummeth, a manufacturer in Owatonna who made, among other things, turkey feeders and hog feeders. Klinkhammer, who had quit college earlier that spring, was ready to get into the business.

Around the same time, he joined the National Guard and even

convinced a friend of his, Charlie Ferguson, to joining as well. What neither Klinkhammer nor Ferguson expected was for President Harry Truman to activate the National Guard in January 1951 — just in time for the Korean War. Ferguson ended up being a forward observer for the artillery in Korea, but he always thanked Klinkhammer for keeping him alive during the war.

“He said I kept him alive so he could come home and kill me,” Klinkhammer said.

In the back of his mind, Klinkhammer thought about returning to his native North Dakota, perhaps go into hog farming with his father. But his stepmother’s father owned a liquor store in Wisconsin and was ready to retire.

“Dad sold the farm and moved to Wisconsin,” Klinkhammer said. “That was 1954.”

And Klinkhammer came back to Owatonna. It made all the difference.

Over the years, he’s been involved in a myriad of activities and

organizations based here in Owatonna, some that have put his name on marquees or in headlines, others that he has undertaken is silence.

He got involved with the local Exchange Club — Steele County only had one then — working his way up the ranks from secretary of the local club to district secretary to district president to a delegate at the National Convention, held that year in St. Louis, to a member of the club’s Board of Directors to the National Treasurer.

“We did some good,” he said, pointing in particular to the starting of the local Center for Family Unity to combat child abuse.

In the early 1980s, he was instrumental in the development of what is now Senior Place — the local senior citizens center. At the time, there were three separate senior groups in the community, which Klinkhammer, among others, saw as redundant.

“If someone can get these three groups together, we can get a senior center built,” he recalled telling Doris, his wife of now 48 years.

See KLINKHAMMER on 69

Friday, March 30, 2018

Klinkhammer

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

From Page 68

Doris had a response.

“She said, ‘Why don’t you do it,’” Klinkhammer said.

Not too much later, Klinkhammer found himself as the chair of an ad hoc committee “to bring to fruition a senior center to Owatonna.”

To this day, Klinkhammer believes that his service as a three-term mayor for the City of Owatonna can be attributed, at least in part, to his work in helping to establish Senior Place in Owatonna.

That’s not to say he always won. His first shot at running for mayor was in 1984, an election he lost.

He came back in 1988 and then again in 1990, winning both times — mayoral terms were two years at the time. A change in the city charter meant that when he ran again in 1992, he would be seeking a 4-year term. He won.

But when he sought to be elected to the state Legislature, he lost.

“I’m not much of a politician,” he said.

Still, he got things done. He helped start the curling club in town. He was a Chamber Ambassador.

And, perhaps one of the things he is most proud of — the local hospice.

Getting ready to die

In 1984, Wayne received a phone call from his son-in-law — his daughter Pam’s husband — in South Dakota. Pam had battled cancer for 4 to 5 years, and she was dying. His son-in-law made it clear that the end was fast approaching.

“He said, ‘If you want to see Pam, you’d better come out here,’” Klinkhammer recalled.

He and Doris drove out.

“Pam was in tough shape,” he said.

She had tissue that began in her right shoulder and eventually suffocated her to death. It was a tough way to die and a tough thing to watch.

But one day, as Klinkhammer was standing in his daughter’s living room — his daughter had chosen to die at home — he saw a woman walking up the driveway.

“It looks like you have company, Pam,” he told her.

His daughter looked up at the woman and smiled.

“That’s Marian,” she said, explaining that Marian worked for the local hospice and was there to be with Pam. Klinkhammer pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes.

“She helped us keep our sanity that week,” Klinkhammer remembered of Marian.

At the end of the week, his daughter died.

Flash forward a dozen years or so, as Klinkhammer was ending his final term as mayor. During his tenure as mayor, he himself had gone through a bout of cancer — cancer of the vocal chords that left voice raspy.

“I sound like the Godfather,” he said, flashing that familiar Wayne Klinkhammer smile.

He received a call from someone from hospice here in town wondering if he wanted to get involved in helping to build a hospice here. At the time, after all, all Owatonna had was a single in the basement of the old hospital.

He told them that he wasn’t sure that he wanted to get involved, though he was assured that it would meet only on the fifth Tuesday of the month, meaning just four times a year. That he thought he could handle.

Of course, as often happens, they started meeting more often.

Soon, Sharon West, whom he calls the Godmother of Hospice in Owatonna, appointed him to chair the hospice building committee.

“I got thinking about it and said, ‘Why not?’” he said.

Over the years, with the hard work of a lot of people and the generous donations of individuals and organizations, they were able to raise the money and build the beautiful Homestead Hospice House that sits near the city’s health care campus.

“It’s important to me. And it would have been important to my daughter,” he said. “I get a little emotional.”

He paused to wipe away the tears. He then cleared his throat and continued.

“I watched my daughter get ready to die and watched what hospice was doing,” he said. “It gets you ready to die.

“Unfortunately, birth is a fatal disease. A peaceful death is the best anyone can hope for. That’s what hospice provides — peaceful for me dying and peaceful for me.”

Then he recalled what his daughter told him shortly before her death.

“She said, ‘Dying is not so bad when you think of the people I’ll get to see,’” Klinkhammer remembered. “’I’ll get to see Uncle Al again. And I’ll finally get to meet your mom.”

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PAGE 70

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Friday, March 30, 2018 F

Fred Ventura:

Diversity, inclusion, acceptance

By RYAN ANDERSON

randerson@owatonna.com

: “What I find most hurtful in people is their lack of tolerance and acceptance of others no matter what their culture might be or where they come from,” said Fred Ventura. A solution is to “get out of your comfort zone and don’t be afraid.” (Photo from Owatonna’s Alternative Learning Center)

Growing up in the diverse South Bronx, serving in the Army, and working in Japan have imbued Fred Ventura with a sense of diversity, inclusion, and acceptance, and he continues to fight for the rights of all as chairman of Owatonna’s Human Rights Commission.

“I’m an advocate for rights in all areas,” he said. “We’re all volunteers, so you need passion to be on the (Human Rights Commission), and we don’t have a lot of power, but we can do some things.”

Born in 1944, Ventura grew up in what he describes as “a tough neighborhood.”

See VENTURA on 71

Friday, March 30, 2018

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 71

Ventura From Page 70 “I had to pick and choose my friends very carefully,” he said. “My biggest job was not allowing my friends to date my sister,” referring to his sister Barbara, four years Ventura’s junior.

He even absorbed his fair share of beatings for “going out of the box,” including dating girls not of his own tribe.

His environment was a mix of Italians, Jews, and Latinos, “truly a ‘West Side Story’ neighborhood” full of what were then referred to as “social clubs” but were in effect gangs, the most imposing of which were the motorcycle gangs, he said.

“You had to survive in the South Bronx,” he said.

His mother worked in the home until Fred and Barbara were teenagers, and then she became a teaching aid, he said. His father, on the other hand, was a printer who “came home every day with that black ink under his fingers” and worked for the same company for 50 years.

“I’m so proud of my dad,” who never finished high school and started his career as an elevator operator but progressed to foreman, he said. “Our house always had that ink smell.”

An indifferent student at William Howard Taft High School, Ventura bounced around shortly after graduation before joining the Army in 1964 in the middle of the Vietnam War. He actually went to the draft board to ask for his number to be moved up in the pecking order. His reason?

“I was going to be drafted anyway, so why not get started,” he said.

Sure enough, his notice came through the mail two weeks later, ordering him to report to the Army induction center and including a one-way subway token.

“I never went back home, so it was truly a one-way ticket,” he said.

He told his parents about his service only two weeks before he was set to leave, a fact he acknowledges was “inconsiderate.”

His basic, advanced, and communications trainings were conducted on bases in Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, respectively, and he then stopped in California, Hawaii, and Japan on his way to Vietnam, where he spent a year in the conflict.

“I kind of liked the Army, the discipline, and Vietnam really is a beautiful country,” he said. He actually would have re-upped for another term — if he could have served it somewhere other than the middle of an active war zone — but he was told he’d have to stay in Vietnam.

Like many of those who fought in Vietnam, Ventura was “not treated very well by anyone except my family and friends” following his return due to public opposition of the war, he said. Fortunately, he had a free education coming his way for his service, and he enrolled at New York University.

See VENTURA on 72

Ventura grew up in a “tough neighborhood,” the south Bronx, with his sister, Barbara, and his parents. His mother worked in the home until Fred and Barbara were teenagers, then became a teaching aid, while his father was a printer who worked for the same company for 50 years, rising from elevator operator to foreman. (Photo courtesy Fred Ventura)

“I had to pick and choose my friends very carefully. My biggest job was not allowing my friends to date my sister...

You had to survive in the South Bronx.”

— Fred Ventura, On growing up in the South Bronx

PAGE 72

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Ventura From Page 71 “The only thing I ever paid for was books,” he said. He studied computers and communications at NYU and “loved it.”

Like many fathers, Ventura’s wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, and he was an adroit typist, “a speed demon,” in fact, he said. Ventura did spent two years as a linotype operator in Massachusetts, but “it was not in my blood.”

At American Express as a computer operator, “I worked my way up the ladder,” he said.

Eventually, “they brought in this great big machine, the IBM 1401,” which he could manually program by toggling switches.

The 1401 was first in IBM’s 1400 series of computers, which later included the 1410, 1440, and 1460, and thousands were sold or rented, according to Columbia University. “It was the first computer to deploy 10000 units,” and the 1401 eventually played “host to one of the earliest high-level business-oriented programming languages, RPG (Report Program Generator), which increased its usability and popularity.”

Later in Ventura’s career, he also worked on more advanced computer models, but “my biggest break came while I was working for a brokerage firm in New York,” he said. “They taught me to program, and I became a programmer.”

He also passed the Microsoft Certification program, a grueling test but “a big thing to have on your resume,” he said. Even now, he still continues assisting individuals in Owatonna with technical issues, because “I love fixing machines, taking them apart.”

“Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are two of my idols,” he said. “Those two are unbelievable.”

In the late 1970s, Ventura and his boss at a New York City communications company were sent to Japan for two years to assist their counterparts in a project, he said. They both attended a language school to learn Japanese for three months prior to the appointment.

Upon his return, Ventura was one of three employees dispatched to an advanced technology seminar, and Ventura’s future-wife, Diane, was also in attendance, he said. A longtime employee of Brown Printing in Waseca, her company had also sent her there to learn during the symposium.

“She wouldn’t talk to me for three days,” Ventura recalled with a laugh. “I think her girlfriends in Waseca warned her to watch out for those New York guy.” And, indeed, he confesses, “I was your typical, arrogant New York City guy.”

But, finally, they did converse on the third day.

See VENTURA on 73

Friday, March 30, 2018

Ventura’s basic, advanced, and communications trainings were conducted on bases in Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, respectively, and he then stopped in California, Hawaii, and Japan on his way to Vietnam, where he spent a year in the conflict. (Photo courtesy Fred Ventura)

Friday, March 30, 2018

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 73

Ventura From Page 72 During a two-year courtship, with her in Minnesota and Ventura in New York, they wrote countless letters back and forth, and rang up phone bills so high Ventura had to consider whether to pay that fee or his rent one month, he said. They visited each other when possible, too, and one day Ventura’s cat jumped onto his couch and kissed Diane on the nose.

“That sealed the deal,” he said.

They were married in Waseca in June of 1982.

Of course, one of them would have to relocate.

“I really couldn’t leave my company at that time,” so Diane departed Brown Printing after 25 years, much to the consternation of her bosses, he said. “I don’t think they ever sent another employee to New York after that,” for fear of losing another valued member of the staff.

She found a position on Wall Street.

“We lived on Staten Island and took the ferry into work every day,” he said.

But his wife never fell for New York City, which is about as far away from life in Waseca as humanly possible, he said. She said. “I love you, dearly, but I have to go back” to Minnesota, and she made it clear she’d be leaving with or without Ventura.

“I loved her very much, so we moved back,” and now it was Ventura’s turn for culture shock, he said. “It took me at least five years to acclimate” to southern Minnesota, and “some friends still say I’m not acclimated.”

See VENTURA on 74

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Ventura met his future wife at an advanced technology seminar in New York City.

They were married in Waseca in June of 1982.

(Photo courtesy Fred Ventura)

PAGE 74

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Friday, March 30, 2018 F

Ventura and his wife enjoy traveling, and initially after marrying, they lived in New York City, but they eventually relocated to Minnesota, and they’ve lived in the same Owatonna home for the past 34 years. (Photo courtesy Fred Ventura)

Ventura From Page 73 “The one thing I miss about New York is the restaurants, but, now, I couldn’t go back to New York City and live,” he said. He visits friends and family there periodically, but notices annoyances he never did while a resident, like dirty streets and “fighting for parking spots.”

Brown took his wife back, and she ultimately served the company 40 years before retiring, but Ventura needed to find a job.

Jostens offered him a position, but he had to take a significant pay cut from his previous work.

“I think Jostens is one of the best companies in Minnesota,” he said. “They’re very innovative, and I couldn’t have asked to work with a better bunch,” but he wanted a higher salary.

Fortunately, he eventually landed with Ajilon as a consultant with only two clients: Target Corporation and the 3M Company.

“I totally loved it, and they treated me very well,” he said. “I even met some of the 3M inventors.”

Ventura and his wife have lived in their Owatonna home for 34 years, although selecting that house was a protracted affair, he said. Ventura and his wife’s brothers examined 20 houses with a Realtor before alighting upon the correct one, which he dutifully

snapped Polaroid pictures of to send back to his wife, who was still in New York.

In the early 1990s, Ventura threw himself into volunteer work, and he’s served — or is currently serving — a litany of organizations, including Toys for Tots, Healthy Seniors of Steele County, and Owatonna’s Human Rights Commission. He’s been chairman of the Salvation Army of Steele County, West Hills commissioner, and a tutor for students at all levels of education in Owatonna.

He has a particular affinity for the students he’s worked with at Owatonna’s Alternative Learning Center, he said.

“They’re all great kids when you get to know them,” he said.

In Ventura, who offers all students his cell phone number so they can call him any time they’re in need, youth find someone who is “non-judgmental and listens like a social worker,” he said.

He’s even lent students money, and “they’ve always paid me back.”

That’s why it’s so heartbreaking for him to hear stories of homelessness, he said.

“They’re sleeping in cars, in the park, or couch-hopping, going from one bed to the next,” he said.

Cancer forced Ventura to curtail his busy schedule last fall due to radiation treatments that left him exceptionally fatigued, but he underwent his final treatment Dec. 22, 2017, and “I’m getting stronger again,” he said. A follow-up visit with his oncologist has

Ventura and his medical team bullish on his prognosis.

“We won’t know if the cancer is totally gone until May,” he said.

Ventura plans to continue his fight for diversity, inclusion, and equality in any way he can. He’s currently chairman of the Human Rights Commission, and his term doesn’t expire until 2020.

“What I find most hurtful in people is their lack of tolerance and acceptance of others no matter what their culture might be or where they come from,” he said. A solution is to “get out of your comfort zone and don’t be afraid.”

Of course, inclusion is a “two-way street,” as minority groups also need to make an effort to reach out in the same way majority groups ought to, he said. “Just be open, welcoming, and encouraging.”

“You see how far it goes to say ‘Hello’ to someone,” he added.

“You don’t have to become their best friend, but you teach peace by making an effort to extend yourself.”

A hero of Ventura’s is Robert F. Kennedy,who famously said, “There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why?

I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” Because both RFK and his brother, John, “fought for people,” he said. They could be “ruthless” at times, but “they fought for rights of everyone.”

“While I’m limited in what I can do, I’m going to do whatever I can,” Ventura concluded. “That is my mission.”

Friday, March 30, 2018

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PAGE 75

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PAGE 76

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Friday, March 30, 2018

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