It can be a challenging time for grieving in this Pandemic

 

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

Last weekend I met with 2 other guys at the Perkins restaurant for a time of challenging each other with our Navigator 2:7 memory verses. These guys have been with me long before I lost my daughter Maria when the post surgical medication she was on failed to metabolize in her blood stream. We always ended our gatherings with a word of prayer for each other's children, our spouses and any other issues that required urgent prayer.


Rick, one of the guys in our group, shared about his dad's recent death and being down in Worthington, Minnesota. He shared about a former member of our Church who lost her step mom and younger sister to a tragedy when her step brother, who suffered very serious mental health problem, severely beat them in the basement of their home. The husband of this former member told Rick that they probably will not live much longer. Rick said there were 100's of towns people, friends, and family who made their pilgrimage to the Worthington area to pay respects for those who died.


As I listened, I discovered that this same former member, when she was a little girl, lost her biological mom and younger sister when they were involved in a serious car accident. She and her dad survived, the others didn't. I remembered when the Department of Health talking about the funeral in Worthington, Minnesota where new cases of the Corona virus were found.


We have become so filled with fear and anxiety that just paying respects and comfort to the family members who experience the unfortunate tragedy of loss that it keeps us from going to that place for fear that it would become a super spreader event of the corona virus. We lose all rationality and common sense with wearing facemasks and maintaining a reasonable social distance and instead we avoid going to funerals, celebration of life services, or simply sitting with a friend experiencing this tragedy.


This is pandemic grieving. In the beginning of the years, I heard stories where family members could not say goodbye to their loved ones who were slipping away because of the corona virus. They were not allowing friends to visit the deceased loved one, and instead many funeral homes were doing drive-up reviewal of the deceased person. Today, we have become so fearful of this virus that we're all working from home, watching our church services on line, and on the weekends we're making that trip to the big box retailers for this weeks essentials. We have become so filled with fear that the fear is impacting our happiness.


When God created mankind, he created us to be in fellowship with Him and each other. We were uniquely designed by God with a gifted set of DNA to be a blessing for others. We must not lose sight that if we wear the required surgical face mask and social distance at least 6 feet we can safely resume life's activities just as we did before the onset of this virus. We cannot be fearful of the CDC and World health organization as they provide us with nearly daily updates on this virus. The promising news is there are several vaccines that have been tested and soon will become available for the general public once it passes the final FDA approval.


In the meantime, if we wear the facemask we can resume providing comfort to people encountering the loss of a loved one.


The song I included on this blot was a song I listened to as a young adult in the 1970's. It is a reminder for all of us today that when our burdens become so heavy to carry we should bring them to Jesus who will help us carry those burdens.


I accepted Jesus Christ in the spring of 1974 and through good times and not so good times, Jesus has always been there for me. Where is Jesus right now in your life? He wants you to open the door to your life and let him come in to help you on your life's journey, a journey of fear brought on by this virus. Here is a simple prayer you can say to invite Jesus Christ into your life:


Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, and I ask for Your forgiveness. I believe You died for my sins and rose from the dead. I turn from my sins and invite You to come into my heart and life. I want to trust and follow You as my Lord and Savior.


If you said that prayer while truly meaning it, you can be assured that Jesus Christ is at this moment in your heart where he promises to journey with you through the difficult days ahead. I'm a optimist and I believe that better days are ahead because of the hardworking scientists as they come up with a vaccine to finally win the battle over this virus.


As a new believer in Christ, your mission would be to grow in your relationship with God by reading the 4 gospels- Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Be sure to tell someone about praying that prayer of salvation and remembering that date on your calendar.


My experience in life has taught me that God is truly amazing. Like a good shepherd herding a flock of sheep, God will guide you around the pitfalls of life.


He is an amazing God!

Sid Hartman was well known to Minneapolitan's for the man who placed Minnesota on the Pro sports map from the early Minneapolis Laker's and all of the teams that came after. We as a community grieve for this loss.

 SPORTS 572788662

Star Tribune sports columnist Sid Hartman dies at age 100

By Patrick Reusse Star Tribune

 

OCTOBER 19, 2020 — 8:34AM

Video (21:44) : Patrick Reusse talked with Sid Hartman about his many close personal friends in the sports world.

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Sid Hartman was, for all of his 100-plus years, a hometown guy.

Born on the North Side of Minneapolis on March 15, 1920, he worked for newspapers in his hometown for nearly his entire life, until his death on Sunday afternoon.

From a humble start selling newspapers on the street in 1928, he wrote about sports for the Star Tribune for the ensuing decades. He was still writing three columns a week, his final one appearing on the day he died.

“My father’s extraordinary and resilient life has come to a peaceful conclusion surrounded by his family,” his son, Chad Hartman, tweeted early Sunday afternoon, announcing his passing.

“I want to make it clear — he didn’t die from COVID — but COVID took away the enjoyment from his life by making him stay home,” his son said later. “It took away the chance to see the people he liked. It took away his zest, not being able to go four, five different places every day and to laugh, to get on people and have them get on him.”

Sid Hartman also was for decades a radio voice on WCCO.




 Gallery: So long, Sid Hartman




He gained a stature very few journalists have achieved, becoming one of this state’s legendary public figures. For years, he was also a power broker in the local sports scene, playing an integral role in the early success of the Minneapolis Lakers pro basketball team while serving as the team’s de facto general manager and working behind the scenes to help bring major league baseball to Minnesota.

He created a rags-to-riches story unlike any his hometown has seen, working his way from the very bottom of the newspaper industry to one of the most influential and popular figures ever to use a typewriter, and later computer, for his livelihood. He also became a popular radio personality for WCCO and for 20 years was a panelist on a Sunday night TV show. If Minnesotans referred to “Sid,” there was no doubt who they were talking about, much the same as the first-name status of the greatest of those he covered, men like “Kirby” and “Harmon” and “Bud.”

According to a count by Star Tribune staffer Joel Rippel, Hartman produced 21,235 bylined stories in his career, from 1944 until the one that ran on C2 of Sunday’s Sports section. That column was his 119th of 2020.

Much of Hartman’s success can be traced to his relentless reporting style. He developed and nurtured contacts, and his vocation was a labor of love. Hartman had no false illusions about his writing ability, one of the few newspaper journalists who required another reporter to write his “autobiography.”

Many of those he encountered in his job became his closest friends. Sports were Hartman’s life, around the clock, although in his later years he showed his softer side by becoming a doting grandfather.

Chad Hartman followed his father into the sports media, doing play-by-play for the Timberwolves, now hosting a general-interest show on WCCO. It’s given him a deeper insight into what made his father tick.

“Because of him, I wound up in this [media] profession, and found this out: He is most competitive person I’ve ever met in my life,” he said. “The way he saw things, ‘He is competing against the Pioneer Press, he is competing against you [the Star Tribune], he is competing against what he hears from me on the radio.

“It was something — that competitiveness ­— that allowed him to love his life. And the ability to build a life to enjoy, to come from where started to reach his level of success, it’s a remarkable story.”

Hartman started selling newspapers as a 9-year-old kid, pedaling his bicycle to Newspaper Alley, where he would buy 100 copies of the Minneapolis Star, the Journal, the Morning Tribune or the Evening Tribune for $1.10, then sell them for two cents apiece.

“If you sold 100, you made 90 cents,” Hartman said.

Hartman’s basic task — selling newspapers — never changed, although his outlet for accomplishing the task did, starting when he was hired by sports editor Dick Cullum to work on the sports desk of the Minneapolis Times in 1944.

The Times was a latter-day version of the Evening Tribune. The Times folded in 1948. Hartman was quickly hired at the Morning Tribune by Charlie Johnson, the executive sports editor of the Morning Tribune and the afternoon Star.

It was from there, writing his daily column of news and notes in the Tribune, that Hartman became a Minnesota legend.

The periodic readership surveys during Hartman’s long tenure at the newspaper always told the same story: Sid Hartman’s column was a big reason that people bought it.

“Sid’s contributions to the Star Tribune during nearly half of its 153-year history are immeasurable,” Star Tribune publisher Michael Klingensmith said Sunday. “He leaves an amazing legacy and we will miss him greatly. It won’t be the same reading our sports pages without Sid’s column.”

Hartman also worked for WCCO Radio starting in 1955. He became as much of a fixture there as he was in the Minneapolis morning newspaper, with daily call-ins, with coaches’ interviews on pregame shows and with a long-running Sunday morning show that produced large ratings.


DAVID BREWSTER, STAR TRIBUNE
John Castino is interviewed by Sid Hartman, September 1982



Hartman was successful in the business world. He was a partner with Al Rubinger in the apartment business. They started Sidal Realty in 1957 with a 26-unit building on Blaisdell Av. in Minneapolis and expanded gradually through the years. Rubinger passed away on July 21, 2016, at the age of 95. The Rubinger family still runs the business.

Actually, the partnership of Rubinger and Hartman had started in 1940, when both were young men. They scraped together $500 and bought a lunch counter that also had a pool table. It was located across the street from 425 Portland Av. S., the address of the Star Tribune until 2015.

Hartman and Rubinger called it the Press Row Recreation Room. They owned it for 18 months before selling for a small profit. It was there that Hartman got to know Cullum and some of the other sportswriters.

Hartman had gone from selling newspapers on corners to a news run for the Tribune circulation department. He would drop newspapers in bulk in an area of the city for carriers, then would collect from the carriers.

“It was a plum job,” he said. “You could make 50 bucks a week — big money in the late ’30s. I was a junior at North High, and I dropped out to take that job.”

The big break

He was in a panic in 1941, when the Tribune and the Times were sold to the Cowles family (already the owners of the Star and Journal) and his news run was eliminated.

“I was out of work,” Hartman said in his 1996 autobiography. “I started selling vacuum cleaners and had a chance to be world’s worst vacuum cleaner salesman. Fortunately, Louie Mohs saved me. He wound up as the circulation manager at the Times. There was only one news run, in the downtown area, and Mohs gave it to me.”



Sid Hartman



Cullum was looking to hire someone for his Times sports desk in 1944. His friend Mohs said, “I got the guy for you,” and mentioned Hartman’s name.

Cullum knew Sid previously and agreed to give Sid a shot — for the kingly sum of $11.50 per week. It was soon apparent that reporting, not editing copy, would be Hartman’s strength as a newspaperman.

For his entire career, Hartman gave Cullum credit for this advice: Don’t worry about writing. Get the news. Writers are easy to find. Reporters aren’t.

Hartman said that Cullum, during those three-plus years they were together at the Times, used to taunt the sports editors at the powerful Tribune and Star over the scoops Hartman was delivering.

“This kid has the greatest legs of anybody I’ve seen in the business,” Cullum would say.

Cullum was referring to Hartman’s habit of nonstop enterprise in search of news.

He still had those amazing legs in 2001, when the NCAA Final Four was held at the Metrodome.

The room for postgame interviews at the Metrodome was straight up the loading ramp — a haul of a couple of hundred yards from the court and an incline of 20 degrees.

“All the reporters were trudging up the ramp, trying to get a few quotes to beat deadline,” said Lenox Rawlings, a sportswriter for the Winston-Salem [N.C.] Journal. “Then, I saw this man, carrying an ancient, giant-sized tape recorder, sprint past all of us and go tearing up that ramp.

“I thought, ‘That looks like Sid.’ I looked again and said, ‘It is Sid.’ ”

Chris Schmitt, Sid’s daughter, said in the 1996 autobiography:

“Did you ever try walking with Sid? We’ll get out of the car. I’ll be getting the two kids organized. I will look up. He is two blocks away. I’ll start screaming, ‘Sid. Come back, Sid.’ ”

The Gophers beat

Hartman had sold newspapers outside Memorial Stadium, then sneaked in to watch Bernie Bierman’s dynastic football teams, starting in the 1930s through 1941. After World War II, Bierman was back as coach and Sid was covering his team.

As important as Gophers football was to the public through 1941, Hartman said the hype and excitement was much greater after World War II.

“The war was over, people had money and the Big Ten started sending teams to the Rose Bowl,” Hartman said. “That was the crusade — to get to the Rose Bowl.”

Hartman developed a very close relationship with those post-War Gophers, particularly Bud Grant. Obviously, this later would serve Hartman very well when it came to access and information. Grant became the coach of the Vikings in 1967, and turned that football team — rather than the Gophers — into the most important story in Minnesota sports.

Grant remained so close to Hartman that, when he decided to retire for the first time after the 1983 season, he gave the story exclusively to Sid.

The Gophers missed a chance to go to the Rose Bowl in 1949. When they had a losing season in 1950, the wealthier, louder postwar boosters rose up and Bierman was fired.

By then, Hartman was writing both a daily column and covering the Gophers for the Minneapolis Tribune. In 1957, he became the sports editor of the Tribune. For more than a decade, he would write his column six days a week, run the sports department and also take care of his radio duties at WCCO.

Going big-league

There were no clear lines between sports journalism and boosterism in this era. John Cowles Sr., the owner of the Star and Tribune, wanted more than anything to bring a major league baseball team to Minneapolis.

Charlie Johnson was both the executive sports editor of the Star and Tribune and the main spokesman for the task force trying to get a ballclub. Hartman was Johnson’s right-hand man, attending league meetings and taking part in the behind-the-scenes manipulating to get a team.

As was the custom then, Minneapolis and St. Paul had a tough time working together. So, the Minneapolis forces built Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington and the St. Paul forces built Midway Stadium, and they fought it out to land a team.

Minneapolis thought it had two clubs — first, the New York Giants, then the Cleveland Indians — before convincing Calvin Griffith to move the Washington Senators here after the 1960 season. Griffith’s team became the Minnesota Twins and an expansion group of Senators was placed in Washington.

“The excitement was unbelievable,” Hartman said in his autobiography. “For Minnesota to get a major league team after all the work we had done was the greatest feeling in the world. …

“Baseball was what made you big-league. And the Star and the Tribune had done more in getting the Twins here than any outfit in town.”

The Twins and the expansion Vikings of the NFL were arriving in the Twin Cities only a year after the Minneapolis Lakers had departed for Los Angeles. Hartman’s involvement with the Lakers had been both vital and behind-the-scenes.

The NBA years

Hartman was the de facto general manager of the Lakers. The concession to journalism was that he did not often write about the Lakers in his newspaper column.

In 1947, Hartman took a $15,000 check from Morris Chalfen to Detroit. He met Morris Winston, the owner of the Detroit Gems, at the airport, gave him the check, and the National Basketball League franchise relocated to Minneapolis as the Lakers.

Chalfen’s partner was Ben Berger. Hartman, then 28, was offered the job as general manager, with the stipulation that he quit his newspaper job. He wouldn’t do that, so Max Winter — a former boxing promoter — became the official GM, with Hartman involved in personnel decisions.

“Involved”’ was not a word Sid would use, by the way. He insisted that he made all of the personnel decisions that turned the Lakers into a dynasty in the early years of pro basketball.

Hartman insisted he also had worked a trade with Boston that would have sent veteran Vern Mikkelsen to Boston and brought a chance to draft Bill Russell, the great University of San Francisco center, to the Lakers. Sid told and wrote that story so often it became part of his legend among Minnesotans, even after Boston’s Red Auerbach denied it.

For sure, Hartman and Winter were able to get the NBL’s rights to George Mikan. When they signed the great center early in the 1947-48 season, after his Chicago team had folded, the Lakers were a powerhouse.

The Lakers won the NBL title in 1948. The league then merged with the Basketball Association of America, the forerunner of the NBA. The Lakers won five NBA titles over the next six years.

Hartman left the Lakers operation in 1957. He had made his contacts in the NBA, though. He later would make the personnel decisions for an expansion team that came to Chicago in 1961 (the Packers, then Zephyrs), then moved to Baltimore as the Bullets.

Loyal to his friends

Hartman was famous for his “close personal friends.” The term was coined by Steve Cannon, the WCCO radio personality with whom Sid appeared for years during afternoon drive time.

Hartman had four of those close friends with the Vikings: Bud Grant, Jerry Burns, Winter and Jim Finks. He was tight with Paul Giel, the athletic director at the University of Minnesota, and any influential Gophers coach — John Mariucci, Herb Brooks and Don Lucia, Bill Musselman, Jim Dutcher, Clem Haskins and Tubby Smith, Dick Siebert and John Anderson, and every football coach from Murray Warmath to P.J. Fleck.

He was tight with Lou Nanne, Walter Bush, Gordie Ritz and all the influential people with the North Stars.

The Twins? Years later, Twin Cities reporters could encounter Sam Mele, the manager of the Twins’ 1965 World Series team, in the Boston Red Sox training camp. Mele’s first question never varied: “How’s Sid doing?”

Hartman was so fond of Billy Martin, the Twins’ manager in 1969, that his relationship with owner Calvin Griffith was strained after Martin’s firing.

The big scoop

Hartman’s friendships — along with all that legwork — allowed him to get endless stories and bits of information that were out of the reach of other media members.

There was no national scoop more startling for Hartman than that contained in the lead to his column on Dec. 15, 1974. He reported that Ara Parseghian would resign as Notre Dame’s football coach after the upcoming Orange Bowl. Parseghian was at the peak of his career and there had been no hint he was thinking of leaving Notre Dame.

Still, there it was in Hartman’s column: Parseghian set to leave Notre Dame. The Chicago newspapers heard about Hartman’s report that night and contacted Notre Dame officials. There were denials in those newspapers that Sunday morning.

Hartman was receiving calls from Chicago sports-writing acquaintances, telling him he was off base. And then, that afternoon, Notre Dame released the information that Parseghian would be quitting as football coach after the Orange Bowl.

The denials had not worried Hartman. His source was old friend Dan Devine, who already had agreed to leave the Green Bay Packers to become Notre Dame’s next coach.

Hartman sat on that part of the story, because Devine had given the Parseghian information with that stipulation.

Hartman always said he was a reporter, not a writer or grammarian. “I can’t spell ‘cat,’ ” he would say, and generations of copy editors at the Tribune never argued with that.

Some years ago, a file was kept in the computer system of Hartman’s attempts at spelling that appeared in his original copy. Example: “pay per view’’ was “paper view” in Sid-ese.

The former Viking guard was “Sunday,” “Sundae” or “Sunne,” but rarely was he Milt Sunde when his name left what was then Sid’s typewriter.

Hartman’s radio dialogue also could be unforgettable. For instance, in lamenting the lung cancer that would eventually take the life of his friend Finks, Sid told his WCCO listeners that Finks “smoked like a fish.”

Wasn’t Mr. Fix-it

Among his friends, Hartman was as famous for his lack of mechanical ability as he was for his loyalty. A few years back, Joe Swanson, then a teenager and the son of a Hartman friend, was riding in Sid’s Cadillac. He noticed a packaged CD of Frank Sinatra songs.

When the young man wanted to listen to the CD, just to hear what this Sinatra fellow sounded like, Hartman had to admit that he didn’t know how to load the CD player in this thoroughly modern vehicle. And even if he had known, Sid admitted that he didn’t know how to remove the disc from its packaging.

Grant enjoyed retelling the story of a long-ago return trip from Superior, Wis., where Bud and Sid were visiting Grant’s folks. On a brutally cold night in the middle of a deep-snow winter, Hartman’s vehicle developed a flat tire on an old, winding road back to the Twin Cities.

The spare in Sid’s trunk also was flat, which was no surprise to Grant. Stuck in the middle of nowhere at 3 o’clock in the morning, Hartman looked around, then suddenly started sprinting — directly into a snow-filled ditch, where he sunk to his waist.

“Where are you going, Sid?” asked the always stoic Grant.

“To that light,” said the often panicked Hartman.

“Long trip, Sid,” Grant said. “That’s the moon.”

Grant made his fame in football, but he also was one of the former Gophers that Hartman brought to the Lakers, to surround the superstars — Mikan, Mikkelson, Jim Pollard and Dugie Martin — on those championship teams.

Hartman’s influential basketball background was confirmed in September 2003, when he was a recipient of the Curt Gowdy Award at the National Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.

In 2010, a statue of Hartman was unveiled outside of Target Center. The next year, before a game between the Timberwolves and Los Angeles Lakers, Hartman was honored for his contributions to both organizations. In 2016, the Minnesota Vikings dedicated the media entrance at U.S. Bank Stadium in Hartman’s name. The Twins and Gophers have also honored Hartman in recent years.

No plans of quitting

Hartman’s autobiography, “Sid! The Sports Legends, the Inside Scoops and the Close Personal Friends,” was released in 1996. The people giving endorsements included Arnold Palmer, Wayne Gretzky, Ted Williams and Bob Costas, as well as Knight, Steinbrenner, Holtz, etc.

Ten years after the autobiography was published, the Star Tribune published “Sid Hartman’s Great Minnesota Sports Moments.” This book’s back cover featured a quote: “I grew up on Sid Hartman columns about my Midwestern sports heroes — and I still think of him as a Hall of Fame newspaperman.” That came from Tom Brokaw.

If that book felt like a capstone of sorts to Hartman’s career, the publishers were off by about 15 years.

More than once, Hartman was asked in his 90s why he still was at it most every day.

“I don’t know what else I would do,” he’d say, the idea of relaxing and enjoying a slower pace not for one moment occurring to him.

Hartman, however, did speak often of his family, especially later in life. He celebrated his 99th birthday with family members and made sure to attend events for his grandchildren.

Hartman was married to Barbara Balfour in 1964. They were divorced in 1972. He had two children: daughter Chris and son Chad.




Patrick Reusse is a sports columnist who writes three columns per week. Write to Patrick by e-mailing sports@startribune.com and including his name in the subject line.

612-673-7129

This couple decided to change their world by moving their family from rural Minnesota to the most diverse city in Minneapolis. If only the rest of us can consider doing this.

 Sometimes all it takes to understand our diverse neighbors is to move closer to the diversity. This is what this couple did and in the eyes of their children, there dad changed the world.

NORTH METRO 572709991

Quest for diversity led transracial adoptive family to move from rural Minnesota to north metro

The Lundquists see Twin Cities as a better fit politically and culturally 

By Kim Hyatt Star Tribune

 

OCTOBER 12, 2020 — 9:46AM

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ELIZABETH FLORES – STAR TRIBUNE

Gallery: The Lundquist family including from left, Addi, 14, Ridge, 9, Verabeth, 2, Jacob Lundquist, Maki, 8, Kate Lundquist, Charlotte, 11, and Nelson, 11, moved from Roseau, MN to Brooklyn Park after a decision the family made after visiting the George Floyd memorial in June. Here, the family visited the memorial, Wednesday, September 30, 2020 in Minneapolis, MN. The Lundquists wanted to move from the overwhelmingly white rural town so their children of color could see others like them.

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A pilgrimage to the George Floyd memorial in Minneapolis this summer confirmed what the Lundquist family had thought for a long time: They could no longer live in the overwhelmingly white city of Roseau, Minn.

In September, the family of eight moved 340 miles south to Brooklyn Park — one of the most diverse cities in the state, with 57% of residents identifying as Black, Indigenous and people of color.

Two of Kate and Jacob Lundquist’s six children are adopted from Haiti and were often the only students of color in classrooms in Roseau, whose population is 97% white.

“I’m doing the opposite of white flight,” Kate said from their new home with framed pictures still in bubble wrap. “We made the decision and eight weeks later, we turned our entire life upside down.”

Even though Floyd was killed in the Twin Cities, the Lundquists were drawn to the metro by its diversity and anti-racist activism. They contrast it with what they heard in Roseau after Floyd’s death in May.

Kate said people she considered friends and neighbors were saying Floyd deserved it, that he was a criminal.


ELISABETH FLORES, STAR TRIBUNE
Kate Lundquist returned to the George Floyd memorial last month with children Verabeth, 2, in her arms; Maki, 8, left; Charlotte, 11; and Ridge, 9. A summer visit had convinced the family that they would be more at home in a diverse community in the Twin Cities than in rural Roseau, Minn.




“I’ve been watching how people react to the death of unarmed Black people for years now, and it’s just very subtle. But when George Floyd died, it wasn’t so subtle anymore. That was scary. As a mom, you just think, ‘Well, what if that was my kid? How would my community react? Would they fight with me? Or would they tell me that the world is better off without them?’ And that’s why we’re here.”

In early June, Kate packed the minivan and drove six hours with her Haitian-born sons Nelson, 11, and Maki, 9, along with son Ridge, 9, and daughter Charlotte, 11, to visit the memorial in south Minneapolis. Jacob stayed home with 2-year-old Verabeth and eldest daughter Addi, 14.

The experience at 38th and Chicago Avenue, known as George Floyd Square, was so transformative that it served as the final push for the Lundquists to leave Roseau after 16 years — not only in the midst of a pandemic and political uprising sparked in the city they wanted to call home, but also breast cancer treatment for Kate, now in remission, and just in time for the start of a new school year.

A month after the visit, Jacob had a job offer in the Twin Cities, and they put their house on the market.

Kate said signs of affirmation for their migration are everywhere, and literal, like the abundance of Black Lives Matter flags comparable to the Trump 2020 signs Up North. Their neighbors are Asian, Ethiopian and Egyptian. Nelson has his first Black male teacher — a “racial mirror” the family longed for.

“I’ve only had white women as teachers here in America,” Nelson said during another day of distance learning in which he and his siblings spread out throughout the house with laptops and headphones. He still wears a Roseau Rams T-shirt.

Over the years, Kate, 39, heard from other transracial families about moving to be near diversity — whether that meant a different school district with more dynamic demographics or a completely new city. For kids adopted into families that don’t look like them, she knew this was a crucial transition. “Love wasn’t enough,” she said.

“When my Black sons have something that’s difficult for them in relation to their race, nobody’s going to understand. [Roseau] wasn’t the best soil for us to grow anymore,” Kate said. “And now that I’m here, I feel this huge gap fill, and it’s filling fast.”

Alexis Oberdorfer, president of Children’s Home Society of Minnesota, which provides adoption services, said the Lundquists are not the first transracial family she’s heard of moving to the metro area for more diversity.

Oberdorfer views this from a professional lens but also a personal one. She is raising adopted children and is an adult transracial adoptee who moved to a white community in the suburbs of the Twin Cities shortly after she was born in Chicago in 1971. So she understands the importance of children of color seeing their race and culture reflected in their everyday lives.

“Being an African American family, race is a routine discussion we have in our house, pre- and post-George Floyd,” she said. “When you’re raising a child of color ... they need to have proximity and access to individuals and communities of color.”

Oberdorfer said she helps transracial adoptive families create a bridge to make their adopted child feel comfortable in school, church and their community. “You have to have positive influences where they can see themselves reflected.”

It’s not that Roseau is without diversity. Like many rural communities across the state in the past 10 years, more people of color are moving in, according to state demographer Susan Brower.

In Roseau and neighboring Warroad, Polaris and Marvin Windows are big employers of Laotians and Puerto Ricans.

“The vast majority of greater Minnesota counties are only growing because of populations of color the past decade,” Brower said.

Longtime Roseau Mayor Jeff Pelowski said he thinks of his city as a welcoming place. “I’m not aware of any racist problems in Roseau. I will argue till I’m blue in the face that there’s not a racist mentality here,” he said. But he recognized that as a white man, he can’t fully comprehend what it would be like as a person of color living in the community. “We assume you’re one of us. It’s easy to overlook.”


ELIZABETH FLORES, STAR TRIBUNE
Brothers Ridge, 9, and Nelson Lundquist, 11, worked on school work, Sept. 29, 2020 in Brooklyn Park.



Nadine Yanok, a family friend who lives in Warroad, can relate to the Lundquists’ decision to move. Adopted from Haiti as a baby along with her sister, Yanok, now 23, has a 1-year-old of her own.

“I told [Kate] how much it touches me to see what she’s doing for her kids because that’s what me and my sister always wished for,” Yanok said. “It’s going to mean a lot to those boys.”

Jacob Lundquist, 38, said he’s been ready to move for years. It’s been increasingly difficult to live Up North where their political views don’t align with the city and county where voters overwhelmingly supported Trump in 2016. Since then, he said the division continued to worsen. Bible studies would turn political and he felt like a progressive outlier.

He deactivated social media as a way to avoid some of the tension that he said was so apparent that “you can taste it.” Recently, during his first visit to the Floyd memorial, he described the moment as a somber reminder of why they uprooted their lives.

“This had to happen now. It felt right. The Cities was the right spot. I’m excited for the future, for the kids, for the culture,” he said. “We thought we were doing everything right, protecting them but sheltering them in a bad way.”

The kids started to notice the tension in town before moving, too. Addie said her support of Black Lives Matter meant losing friendships and feeling isolated. At a BLM rally in Roseau the Lundquists attended, Kate said it was good to see dozens of people come out with signs in support, but it also put on full display the reasons they felt they needed to move: People drove by revving their engines and shouting insults.

A pastor confronted a protester in disapproval, Kate said, so she started hosting church at her house during their last weeks in Roseau.

Not long after their migration south, Kate said she and Maki went searching for a Sunday service and returned to the Floyd memorial. That’s where this summer she saw her children’s heart for humanity grow before her eyes, and her Black children blend in with the crowd for the first time.

Kate said she often thinks of Floyd’s 6-year-old daughter, Gigi, saying that “Daddy changed the world.”

“[Floyd] changed my world,” she said. “He brought us to Minneapolis.”






Kim Hyatt is the Star Tribune’s North Metro reporter, covering Anoka County and the northern Hennepin County suburbs.

kim.hyatt@startribune.com 612-673-4751 kimvhyatt

If you were invited over to our house you will be hard pressed to find a single drop of alcohol because it simply doesn't exist. I have witnessed generations of men and woman emotionally damaged by this demon drink.

 

Matthew 5:9-12

Blessed are the peacemakers,
For they shall be called sons of God.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

If you were ever invited to our home, you will be hard pressed to find any liquor bottles, beer, or even an old fashion bar. It simply doesn't exist. If we drink it is only with a ceremonial glass of champagne during a meal at a exquisite eating establishment.

Over the years I have watched lives that have been destroyed by virtue of the alcoholic beverage. I've seen generations of men emotionally damaged by the sin of their grandfathers. Regardless of the color of ones skin, or the economic rung they came from, alcohol has destroyed family systems.

It is responsible for countless number of traffic deaths, domestic abuse calls, murders, divorces, poverty, and the list goes on and on. It often isn't until a loved one dies when a person goes off the deep end with the consumption of alcohol, drugs or both. The script is the same across all economic strata's: after they cry that all familiar primal screen when they first hear of their loved death, the pain continues with no end in sight.

A man or woman without religion is apt to head to the bar, or to their liquor cabinet just to drown themselves in booze with hope that the pain will simply go away. But rarely it does.

I watched generations that have been effected by this demon drink. Children in these systems grow up with unresolved trauma issues that effect them from the ways they learn things to simply coping with the day to day stressors of life.

Children grow up knowing only how to survive without ever knowing how to self actualize.

We cannot be peace makers if we are consumed with finding that next alcohol beverage. For some, the consumption of this demon rum leads to fits of anger which leads to far worse outcomes like committing crimes, assaulting people or murdering someone, or stealing property that doesn't belong to you.

Alcohol, when in the hands of idol men and woman, seems to go down quicker and more often. This leads to systemic health problems such as kidney disease, diabetes, heart, as well as struggles with depression and anxiety. There is also the risk of suicide for some one that drinks more than they should; after all, alcohol is a depressant.

Which was why I was disappointed that our Governor didn't declare liquor stores non-essential and our churches essential. As a 'born-again' believer of Jesus Christ, I'm intimately aware of the power of God's holy spirit to all who accept Jesus as savior and Lord. For me, I would rather take my chances in the assembly of the righteous than in a den of thieves.

For it is while in the assembly of the righteous that I'm nourished with the biblical word of God and encouraged by other believers. Oh, some experts said that when people sing in church they spread the virus, but what they don't tell you is that the real super spreaders of this virus were not from those in church, but from all of the shouting that went on in the nation wide riots this summer. A recent glance at the virus statistics confirms that the highest percentage belongs to the 20-30 age group which was the predominate makeup of those protesters.

No one drew that connection because it simply didn't fit the script they were trying to portray.

In the end, most men and woman will have regrets with how they lived this life. Many will sit on the bar stool rehashing over life's mistakes while wondering if things could have turned out differently. Even in the end it is never too late to turn over a new leaf. Probably the greatest thing a man or woman can do is to confess to God that they were on the wrong world view path and come to Jesus simply saying this prayer. I open the door of my life and receive You as my Savior and Lord. Thank You for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Take control of the throne of my life. Make me the kind of person You want me to be.

If you said this prayer and sincerely meant it, you can be assured that Jesus is at this moment in your heart, and then when you take your final breath you will enter into this beautiful place called heaven where none of the earthly struggles can enter.

Until you take your final breath, please remember that your mission in this life is to grow in your relationship with Christ and tell others about Jesus. If you do not have a local church to attend, I encourage you to go this church my wife and I have attended for over 30 years. https://newhopechurchmn.org/

Alcohol can be easily remedied by treatment and alcohol support programs. There is one such group called Celebrate Recovery which I include a link right here.  https://www.celebraterecovery.com

Remember, God truly has a wonderful plan for your life, a life free from the alcohol and drugs.