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Beverly Cottman, Minneapolis teacher and storyteller, has died

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If you’re looking for an epitaph for Beverly Cottman — a longtime Minneapolis high school biology teacher and prolific Black storyteller who died this month at 80 — just use her own words.

“I aspire to be a teller of universal truths,” the woman known as Auntie Beverly once said, “to provide emotional depth by the way I tell, and to bring wisdom of the ages to these troubled times.”

Or, “An imaginative mind can overcome many obstacles. Storytelling is the key to developing an imaginative mind.”

Or, “A story that makes you feel as if you can do anything, that you have the ability to reach and surpass your goals, or that you have the wisdom of the ancestors pushing you forward with love, is perhaps the most powerful tool of storytelling.”

The story of Beverly Cottman began in California, and added an education in Washington, D.C. There, as a student at Howard University, she met her husband, Bill Cottman. The two became a force in the Twin Cities’ arts and literary scene, Bill as a photographer, writer and radio host, Beverly as a teacher — first at the old Marshall-University High School, then at North High School, and also at arts organizations like COMPAS, where she was a teaching artist.

Beverly Cottman became the very definition of a renaissance woman: a teacher and dancer and fabric artist, a storyteller who interpreted and performed African fables and African-American folk tales, an energetic docent at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, a gracious host who whipped up soul food meals for big groups of fellow artists, a mentor to students and an elder in her community.

“She had such an impact because she was a storyteller, an artist and a scientist — a true teacher,” said Vusumuzi Zulu, co-founder of the Black Storytellers Alliance, of which Cottman was a member. “She had a very nice, soft, smooth style of storytelling with a smile that was infectious.”

As a teacher to thousands of students over the decades, her style was not one of rote memorization or standardized testing. Instead, students became excited about biology when Cottman invited them to tell stories about science.

“There was always this concept of making and sharing and telling,” said George Roberts, the Cottmans’ longtime next-door neighbor in north Minneapolis and colleague at North High School. “A storyteller is more than an entertainer. A storyteller is a teacher who shows us the important moments in history.”

Said Dawne Brown White, the executive director of COMPAS: “She really believed in the power of the arts. She saw something in every person.”

Cottman died in her sleep March 11 while on a trip to Egypt with friends. Cottman was preceded in death by her husband, who passed away in 2021, and is survived by their daughter, Kenna, and two grandchildren. Memorial services will be held Friday, March 31, with a program beginning at 1 p.m. at Liberty Community Church’s Northside Healing Space, 2100 Emerson Ave. N. in Minneapolis. Details and livestream will be posted at www.voiceofculture.org.

“Kids loved her — when you spend 30 years in a classroom, you know how to work an audience,” said Danielle Daniel, a teaching artist at COMPAS and a friend. “She was like the Energizer Bunny, even at 80. I’d tease her: ‘How you get so much energy?'”



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Star Tribune

Eveleth man dies of injuries from northern Minnesota house fire

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A 63-year-old Eveleth man died from injuries suffered in a house fire in the northern Minnesota city Friday morning.

Dale Wallander of rural Eveleth was found with burns covering most of his body at the end of the driveway to his house in the 7100 block of Antoinette Road in Eveleth at about 11:26 a.m. Friday, according to a press release from the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office.

Law enforcement arrived to find his house engulfed in flames. Wallander was transported to a metro area hospital by Life Link air medical service, but died of his injuries, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

The cause of the fire is under investigation by the Sheriff’s Office and the State Fire Marshal.



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Two arrested in Brooklyn Park shooting that left one dead

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Brooklyn Park police arrested two people Saturday in connection with an early-morning shooting that left one man dead.

Police responded to a shooting in the 7900 block of Lee Avenue North at about 4:36 a.m. Saturday, and found a man with a gunshot wound, according to a Brooklyn Park Police Department press release. The man was pronounced dead at the scene and hasn’t yet been identified.

Later Saturday, Brooklyn Park detectives arrested two suspects who are being held at the Hennepin County Jail, according to police.



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Gov. Tim Walz hunts in Minnesota’s pheasant opener

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“We passed three of them and we did it [in a] bipartisan [way],” said Walz, who represented southern Minnesota in Congress for a dozen years before running for governor.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz holds Matt Kucharski’s dog, Libby, a 6-year-old German Shorthaired Pointer, to give her a drink during the annual Minnesota Governor’s Pheasant Hunting Opener. (Anthony Souffle)

Following the event, Walz’s motorcade wound its way north and east across farm country, past combines in fields harvesting corn, to downtown Sleepy Eye, where he slipped into a crowded brewery. In many ways, the trip resembled any year for a pheasant opener, save this time the motorcade, a dozen vehicles long, stretched out the back side of a downtown Sleepy Eye alleyway.

One patron, who declined to give her name but said she grew up in Madelia and lived in New Ulm, was purchasing a six-pack of beers when she told the bartender, “Is that Walz? I don’t got time for that guy.”

Later, when Walz briefly emerged from a side room, a chorus of cheers reached him from the balcony, before he hustled out to the motorcade.



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