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WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2020 VOL. 124 NO. 15 www.whitebearpress.com $1.00
WATER GREMLIN: Allowed to restart operations PAGE 7A
Ice fishing for the lives of children BY SARA MARIE MOORE EDITOR
CARTER JOHNSON | PRESS PUBLICATIONS
Rotary Club President John Channon toasts to 40 years of service.
Living up to motto: Service above self
Jig. Set the hook. Reel it in. A little crappie surfaced from its wintry home below the ice and stared at me for a bit with its googly eyes. I set it back in the hole from whence it came and checked my bait before sending my line back into the icy cold water. Six-year-old Austin Smith used to love to ice fish. But he was no longer around after a rare brain cancer took his life. Yet, he was the reason I was here on Bald Eagle Lake learning how to ice fish for the first time in my life. “He was a guy's guy,” said his godmother, Meg Sorenson, as the ice shelter's snowy ground turned from white to gray with the setting sun. “He wanted to go do whatever his dad was doing.” Her cousin's son Austin was diagnosed with a rare SEE ICE FISHING, PAGE 9A
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Matt Ribar, right, of Centerville, won the prize for the largest fish at the Austin Strong Ice Fishing Tournament last year. He is pictured with Tournament Director Ryan Sorenson.
BY DEBRA NEUTKENS STAFF WRITER
Evidence of Rotarians' good works are everywhere in the community. Many projects are done behind the scenes; some are more obvious. Not one to toot its own horn, the White Bear Lake Rotary Club deserves recognition in this, its 40th anniversary year. The club's accomplishments are many. One gem of a project is the Rotary Park Nature Preserve. Longtime Rotarian Ken Baltzer remembers shingling the picnic shelter roof late into the night back in 2000. He joked that he's still waiting for a steak dinner promised volunteers by then Rotary president Tim Geck. The club donated not only labor for the park, but paid $87,000 for materials to build a restroom, picnic pavilion and, later, the boardwalk through the preserve. Then there's the monument and sidewalk project at Clark and Lake Avenues for which Rotary contributed $50,000. Its members raised the money from the annual Manitou Days beach dance. The club donated another $50,000 for the Lakeshore Players Theatre box office, also using money from beach dance profits. Other good works include the club's annual Bear'ly Open, coming up Feb. 1, with proceeds going to the food shelf; STRIVE scholarships to area students; September's Taste of White Bear; blood drives, senior picnics and other beautification projects. The restored caboose
PAUL DOLS | PRESS PUBLICATIONS
Sliding ahead of the wind Melissa, Hannah and John Bagley stir up some fresh powder as the slide down a snow covered hill at Tamarack Nature Center Saturday, Jan. 18. They were among a group of hardy residents who dressed appropriately for the snowy and increasingly windy conditions before venturing outside for some fun activities on the hills and trails at the nature center located in White Bear Township.
SEE ROTARY, PAGE 8A
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