Star Tribune
Jack Jablonski gives Minnesota another gift
Jack Jablonski was going on a date.
It was summer and he was back in Minnesota for a few weeks for another fundraiser for the foundation that bears his name. The 26-year-old opened an app, swiped and found a guy he liked and who liked him.
And then he canceled.
“What if someone sees you?” his family worried.
Paralyzed at a high school hockey game in 2011, he had been a source of inspirational, feel-good news stories. He was the kid who turned a devastating sports injury into a force for good in the world. The Jack Jablonski Foundation has raised millions of dollars for spinal cord injury research. He had a great job with the NHL.
But he wasn’t out yet. What if someone told the world he was gay before he was ready to share the news himself?
Coming out doesn’t change who you are. But it can change how the world treats you.
Which is why coming-out announcements, like Jablonski’s last month, still matter.
It matters to kids like the ones KQ Quinn works with as a school equity coordinator for OutFront Minnesota.
Quinn offers coming-out training for youngsters who are almost ready to tell their parents or friends or teachers that they’re gay, or trans, or ready to use the pronouns that make them feel more like themselves.
They talk about what they’ll say, how they’ll answer questions, where they can go for support if they don’t find support at home. Being kind when someone comes out is more than just Minnesota Nice. It’s a lifeline. A 2022 survey by the Trevor Project found that 45% of LGBTQ youth have seriously considered suicide in the past year.
So if someone comes out to you, say thank you.
“This person just shared some really, really important and vulnerable information,” said Quinn, who uses they/them pronouns. “I always recommend starting with ‘Thank you very much for sharing that with me’ … ‘What do you need in this moment and what do you need moving forward so I can show that I support you and love you?’ “
Jablonski came out on his own terms, in his own words, and so far the response has been overwhelmingly – 99%, he estimates – positive.
“Now I can just be myself,” he said. “I don’t have to worry about living in the shadows … Embrace who you are. This is the only life you’re promised.”
The Jack Jablonski Foundation is hosting its big Beat Paralysis Gala on Oct. 15 in St. Paul, which will raise money for two spinal cord research projects. Over the years, the foundation has raised $3 million, bringing hope to an injury the Jablonski family never saw as hopeless.
“Slowly but surely, progress,” Jablonski tweeted in March. Below the words, a video showed him pouring water out of a bottle and into a glass — an action that would have been unthinkable before his participation in an upper-limb stimulation research trial.
By July, a follow-up video captured the moment he swiped a cracker through some hummus and popped it in his mouth. A tiny, everyday gesture. An enormous triumph.
“Hard work is paying off!” he tweeted. “Couldn’t control my hands like this six months ago. Finally able to eat lunch on my own.”
He will walk again someday, he believes. Someday, he’ll skate again.
Right now, he’s just happy to be living without fear of what might happen if somebody spots him out on a date.
“It’s great to be who you are,” he said. “I just want everyone to be who they are and not have to hide and live a lie.”
Now that he’s out, the most intrusive questions he’s likely to face at the Oct. 15 gala will be whether he’ll be rooting for the Minnesota Wild when they play his employers – the L.A. Kings – in St. Paul that night.
Jablonski, a Minnesota story of courage and optimism for the past decade, just added another chapter.
“It was scary,” he said. “But I’m so happy I’ve done it. I’m happy to be who I am.”
DULUTH – The Minnesota and Wisconsin transportation departments will make upgrades to the Richard I. Bong Memorial Bridge in the summer of 2025, in preparation for the structure to become the premiere route between this city and Superior during reconstruction of the Blatnik Bridge.
Built in 1961, the Blatnik Bridge carries 33,000 vehicles per day along Interstate 535 and Hwy. 53. It will be entirely rebuilt, starting in 2027, with the help of $1 billion in federal funding announced earlier this year. MnDOT and WisDOT are splitting the remaining costs of the project, about $4 million each.
According to MnDOT, projects on the Bong Bridge will include spot painting, concrete surface repairs to the bridge abutments, concrete sealer on the deck, replacing rubber strip seal membranes on the main span’s joints and replacing light poles on the bridge and its points of entry. It’s expected to take two months, transportation officials said during a recent meeting at the Superior Public Library.
During this time there will be occasional lane closures, detours at the off-ramps, and for about three weeks the sidewalk path alongside the bridge will be closed.
The Bong Bridge, which crosses the St. Louis River, opened to traffic in 1985 and is the lesser-used of the two bridges. Officials said they want to keep maintenance to a minimum on the span during the Blatnik project, which is expected to take four years.
Red Wing will celebrate the grand opening of its first permanent set of pickleball courts next week with an “inaugural play” on the six courts at Colvill Park on the banks of the Mississippi, between a couple of marinas and next to the aquatic center.
Among the first to get to play on the new courts will be David Anderson, who brought pickleball to the local YMCA in 2008, before the nationwide pickleball craze took hold, and Denny Yecke, at 92 the oldest pickleball player in Red Wing.
The inaugural play begins at 11 a.m. Tuesday, with a rain date of the next day. Afterward will be food and celebration at the Colvill Park Courtyard building.
Tim Sletten, the city’s former police chief, discovered America’s fastest-growing sport a decade ago after he retired. With fellow members of the Red Wing Pickleball Group, he’d play indoors at the local YMCA or outdoors at a local school, on courts made for other sports. But they didn’t have a permanent place, so they approached the city about building one.
When a city feasibility study came up with a high cost, about $350,000, Sletten’s group got together to raise money.
The courts are even opening ahead of schedule, originally set for 2025.
REDWOOD FALLS, MINN. – A truck crashing into a school bus left nine with minor injuries Wednesday morning in rural Redwood County, a statement from the Redwood County Sheriff’s office said.
The bus driver, serving the Wabasso Public School District, failed to yield when entering the intersection of County Road 7 and 280th Street, the statement said.
Deputies received word of the crash around 8:15 a.m. and identified the bus driver as Edward Aslesen, 72, of Milroy.
The nine injured passengers on the bus were transported to local hospitals, the statement said.
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