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Bloomington group works to honor veterans for Memorial Day
“Very proud of him, 16 years is a long time, and now we see this,” said Mary Wento.
BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — For veteran Mary Wento, it’s a somber day as volunteers place flags on the graves of fallen service members at Fort Snelling National Cemetery.
“It hurts, people don’t understand what they gave,” said Wento. “My son James – he was a staff sergeant and he served 16 years.”
His grave now sits in this cemetery after he was killed in a training accident overseas in 2021.
“I haven’t even started grieving yet,” she said.
Like Mary, Dardis is a veteran, who has now made it his mission to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice.
“I served in the US Army in Vietnam, I was wounded in combat,” said Michael Dardis.
Dardis is the president of Bloomington Remembers Veterans, which is fundraising to build a new memorial on the east lawn of the City’s Civic Plaza. It will be one of the first of its kind featuring new technology, along with mental health resources for veterans and all who visit.
Along the landscape barrier will be six arching threads, each representing a branch of the military.
Symbolic metal dog tags identifying Bloomington Veterans will name the serviceman or woman, their service branch and years of service, and some additional information you wouldn’t expect to find at a memorial.
Each dog tag will have a QR code etched into it that leads people who take a picture of it with their phones to a special tribute website.
“There’s a feeling I have for veterans and the sacrifice, and that’s reflected in the design,” said Dardis. “That’s what this memorial is all about regardless of the war, we want your service to be recognized.”
As volunteers place flags down one-by-one back at Fort Snelling.
“Very proud of him, 16 years is a long time, and now we see this,” said Mary Wento.
It’s a time to remember and celebrate the sacrifices of the men and women who have served, and their families. “I’m not the only mother who lost their child, but today is the day you say thank you for what you served, my heart goes out to all of these people and their families,” she said.
To learn more about Flags for Fort Snelling, visit the link here.
Learn more about donating or volunteering for the project at BloomingtonVeteransMemorial.org, or by contacting Mike Dardis, Vice President of Bloomington Remembers Veterans Inc. He can be reached at 952-888-3479 or via e-mail at m1dardis@hotmail.com.
The organizers hope to have the memorial in place by the Fall of 2024.
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The building, located at 345 Wabasha, has been a magnet for crime and drugs. An inspection on Dec. 9 found the Lowry Apartments unfit for human habitation.
ST PAUL, Minn. — A troubled St. Paul apartment building has been condemned, with city inspectors declaring it unfit for human habitation.
The Lowry Apartments are one of the Capital City’s biggest headaches, a magnet for crime and drugs. An inspection on Dec. 9 documented a lack of fire protection systems, inoperable heating facilities, active plumbing leaks, electrical systems that had been damaged or tampered with, and overall unsanitary conditions, among other things. A condemnation notice was immediately issued.
Being condemned means that all residents of the 134-unit affordable housing building must evacuate immediately. Included in the notice is a list of 25 action items/repairs that must be completed before the Lowry Apartments can reopen. Most are significant, making it unlikely residents will be able to return anytime soon.
The troubled building is owned by Madison Equities, St. Paul’s largest downtown property owner, which is in the process of trying to sell off most of its portfolio after the death of long-time owner Jim Crockarell in January. Court documents say commercial real estate group Frauneshuh partnered with the Halverson and Blaiser Group to manage the property and act on behalf of the owner with tenants and other third parties after the building was placed into receivership in late August.
“The building has been in decline, rapidly, since the owner died,” said resident Megan Thomas when KARE visited the Lowry apartments in August. “There’s a risk of violence, there’s a risk to health, I found a cockroach in an ice cube in my freezer last week because they are everywhere.”
Thomas has since moved from the building because of living conditions.
During that visit, the problems were obvious: The front door to the building was wide open, leaving the Lowry Apartments vulnerable to squatters, drug dealers, and others who were not residents. Windows were broken, plumbing leaked and the elevators were inoperable.
Residents were blindsided when a foreclosure notice appeared on the building in mid-August, leaving them wondering where they would go. The city of St. Paul stepped in to broker a receivership for the property, but it appears now that action was not enough to stem the tide of problems that plague the Lowry Apartments.
Hiding from the cold is what Jaelynn Hoggard is used to as a resident of the Lowry Apartments in Saint Paul.
“My body can’t handle the cold, like my pacemaker feels the cold and everything,” said Hoggard. “I saw them posting it on the door, like the condemned notice. And my heart just shot into my stomach.”
Jaelynn is disabled and says there are times the elevators don’t work. Because of the living conditions, she had to give back her service animal.
“That was the hardest thing to do,” she said.
“Zara Frost” publishes a Substack newsletter that includes audio and video recordings that are not in the possession of any other news outlet — or Bock’s attorney.
MINNEAPOLIS — Editor’s note: The video above first aired on KARE 11 in September 2024.
Aimee Bock, the former executive director of Feeding our Future and the top name associated with the $250 million pandemic child meal fraud case, is set to stand trial on Feb. 3.
But her lawyer, Kenneth Udoibok, does not have access to materials he believes could exonerate Bock — despite those materials being cited in a series of posts on Substack — according to a motion filed by Udoibok on Wednesday.
The Substack newsletter “Nourishing Truth – Unpacking the Feeding Our Future Scandal” is written by Zara Frost. It is unclear whether that name is a pseudonym, whether Frost is a journalist, and whether Frost has connections to any of the 70 defendants charged in the sprawling case.
The general tone of the postings points blame away from Feeding Our Future defendants and back toward the Minnesota Department of Education, which was tasked with oversight of the federal child meal program during the pandemic.
One passage states, “The implications are clear. Either 1. MDE was catastrophically incompetent at its oversight duties, or 2. The department’s current narrative about early fraud concerns is, to put it politely, revisionist history.”
What is clear is that Frost’s 10 articles sent out to 16 subscribers as of Dec. 11 include details no other news outlet has published concerning the case, including audio recordings of conversations involving Hadith Ahmed, the former Feeding Our Future employee who agreed to plead guilty and help the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office with the case.
Those recordings were not used at the first trial involving Feeding our Future defendants earlier in 2024 despite the government using Ahmed as a key witness.
Udoibok believes the government has the recordings along with evidence concerning the reimbursement claims process from phones and tablets seized during the investigation that prosecutors did use in the first trial — but have not disclosed to Udoibok for Bock’s case.
“The withheld materials are crucial to Defendant’s defense as they provide insight into how Feeding Our Future’s claims were processed, which could exonerate Defendant by demonstrating that she did not oversee a fraudulent scheme. The Government’s failure to disclose these materials creates a reasonable probability that Defendant would not be able to mount an effective defense,” Udoibok wrote in his motion, claiming the prosecution is violating the Brady rule that requires disclosing all exculpatory evidence.
Bock and her co-defendants are due back in court Thursday for a status conference.
Zara Frost told KARE 11 News that the audio and video files were leaked to them, but has not yet answered a series of other questions.
St. Joseph’s Hospital’s doors closed this past spring, but a new group is looking at opening it back up to serve what it described as an urgent health need.
CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis. — Months after a hospital in western Wisconsin shut its doors, a cooperative is looking at opening it back up as a “bridge” as the group works to build a new hospital in the community.
St. Joseph’s Hospital in Chippewa Falls closed along with Sacred Heart Hospital in Eau Claire and Prevea clinics in the region this past spring. Both hospitals were owned and operated by the Hospital Sisters Health System (HSHS).
In light of these closures, the Chippewa Valley Health Cooperative formed, and is now planning to build a new hospital, which they say is slated to open in 2027. Before then, the group says they want to reopen St. Joseph’s so that patients can be taken “care of as fast as possible.”
“Since we started the Cooperative, we’ve been singularly focused on making high-quality healthcare accessible and affordable for Chippewa Valley residents as fast as possible,” said Robert Krause, Chair of the Chippewa Valley Health Cooperative, in a press release. “The new facility we’ve planned in Lake Hallie is fundamental to the long-term sustainability of the hospital. At the same time, if we can, reopening the St. Joseph’s facility in 2025 will help us serve patients faster and doesn’t impede our plans or ability to open the new hospital.”
A press release from the co-op states a letter of intent has been signed with HSHS to purchase and reopen the Chippewa Falls facility “to provide urgently needed healthcare services.” The co-op has until April to find out if reopening the hospital would be financially responsible. According to the co-op, St. Joseph’s “has significant deferred maintenance that may need to be addressed before the hospital can be reopened.”
“Once we understand whether reopening St. Joseph’s is possible, we will be in high gear to start caring for patients as fast as possible,” said Krause. “Then we will turn our attention to exploring other healthcare uses for the building once we’ve opened the new full-service hospital in Lake Hallie.”
RELATED: Laid off healthcare workers get community send-off ahead of hospital closures in western WI
When the hospitals and clinics closed in the region, more than 1,000 people lost their jobs, including 244 at St. Joseph’s.
The new hospital being planned by the co-op is anticipated to be a new 144,000-square-foot space with 48 hospital beds, 12 ICU beds, and Emergency Department, Medical-Surgical services, Labor & Delivery, critical care units, a comprehensive Cancer Center, and comprehensive diagnostic services, including laboratory, radiology, and cardiology services. The plan is to open the hospital in Lake Hallie, between Chippewa Falls and Eau Claire.
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