Star Tribune
Former Ramsey County Commissioner and St. Paul City Council Member Janice Rettman has died
Janice Rettman probably wouldn’t like to see this obituary in the paper.
Despite more than three decades representing the North End of St. Paul and its surrounding areas in local government, she was an intensely private person, friends said, with strong convictions about what was right. She died after a short illness on Nov. 18 at 75.
“Basically, she represented Rice Street. And she represented people who have limited political power. And she fought for those people, and she didn’t forget about them,” said Joe Collins, who worked for Rettman earlier in her career and remained a friend.
Rettman had a tough childhood, growing up in Texas, a self-described “nondescript, dirt-poor kid.”
“She started working in the third grade, so she could eat,” Collins said. He said she later put herself through college at Abilene Christian University by working three jobs. She landed in the Midwest after serving in the program now known as AmeriCorps VISTA in Iowa.
Rettman spent more than a decade on the St. Paul City Council before she was elected to the Ramsey County Board, where she served from 1997 until she lost reelection in 2018.
On the City Council, Rettman helped St. Paul develop a strategy for demolishing vacant buildings, Collins said, making space for redevelopment.
On the county board, she was known as a workhorse who kept an eye on dollars and cents. In debates, she frequently found herself at odds with colleagues and often cast the lone “no” vote — including against pay raises for herself and colleagues.
She was instrumental in developing Ramsey County’s yard waste sites and helped stop a proposal to build a new Vikings Stadium in Arden Hills. Former Star Tribune columnist Joe Kimball nicknamed her “skunnel queen” for championing the connection between the St. Paul skyway system and Xcel Energy Center through a tunnel.
“That was Janice,” Collins said. “That was Janice pushing.”
Taking to the podium at her last meeting in 2018, Rettman addressed colleagues, staff and constituents. “I created my own set of values when I began to run, on the vision of democracy: Idealistic, realistic, optimistic, with a fiscal note,” she said.
Victoria Reinhardt, a longtime colleague on the county board, said she first learned of another of Rettman’s accomplishments while she was away at a conference and happened to catch an episode of “Forensic Files.”
“I heard Janice’s voice coming out of the TV,” she said. The episode covered the 1981 kidnapping and murder of Cassie Hansen, a 6-year-old who was abducted from a bathroom at a church in St. Paul’s Hamline-Midway neighborhood.
Rettman had run across suspect Stuart Knowlton when she was the head of the St. Paul Housing Information Office. A housing resident had alleged Knowlton had made sexual advancements toward kids, according to “Forensic Files.”
According to the episode, Rettman volunteered to wear a wire and talk to Knowlton, asking him if he’d followed news about the Hansen case. During their conversation, Knowlton revealed a detail that hadn’t been made public about the murder, helping prosecutors make a breakthrough toward Knowlton’s conviction. Later she advocated against Knowlton’s release on parole, Collins said.
Rettman was known for loving her dogs, Tigger and Pilgrim. She also loved the music of Dolly Parton, said friend Linda Penrose, who along with Collins helped care for Rettman at the end of her life.
And she loved kids. Reinhardt recalled leaving her grandson, around age 3, with Rettman in her office when she had to step out. When Reinhardt came back, she found the two laughing on the floor, coloring with coloring books.
“I just cracked up and I went, ‘OK, well, I’m glad that you’re entertaining him,'” Reinhardt said. “And she said, ‘Oh, no, he’s entertaining me.'”
In her retirement, Rettman moved to Cambridge, where she built a home on a lake and enjoyed new adventures, including travel, plays and relaxation, Penrose said. Rettman continued to serve others through her local food shelf and her church, Open Range Cowboy Church in Ham Lake, where she was known as the “treat lady” for handing out goodies. “The kids swarmed to Janice every Sunday,” Penrose said.
A private celebration of life will be held at Rettman’s church, per her wishes, Penrose said.
Star Tribune
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, on the campaign trial, gives a pep talk to the Mankato West High School Scarlets, a team he once coached.
MANKATO – The football players in their pads jogged out to face their rivals Friday night as Gov. Tim Walz, back home briefly as he campaigns across the country as vice presidential nominee, cheered them on.
“Don’t forget to have fun, enjoy,” Walz told players on the football team at Mankato West High School, where he worked as a geography teacher and assistant football coach before launching a political career that carried him to the Democratic Party’s national ticket.
Since choosing Walz as her running mate, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has touted his background as a football coach, hunter and gun owner, as Democrats reach out to Midwestern voters and look for inroads with men.
Walz’s stop in Mankato is one of a series of media stops in the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where the governor is talking high school football and hunting.
“This is the best of America,” Walz told reporters after greeting the players of Mankato West ahead of their rivalry game with Mankato East. He said he would visit his old classroom, before heading to watch the game.
A quarter center ago, Walz was the assistant defensive football coach for the 1999 Mankato West football team that won the state championship. That year’s crosstown rivalry game was a spark for Mankato West as it headed toward its state championship, said John Considine, a Mankato West alum and right tackle on that 1999 Class 4A championship team.
“It’s good to have him back,” Considine said Friday.
Local Republicans called Walz’s appearance a stunt. “They’re getting desperate to get the word out,” said Yvonne Simon, chair of the Blue Earth County GOP, adding she’s doesn’t think the governor’s “coach” branding is catching on.
“There’s a fair amount of stuff we’ve digested over the years,” Kerfoot told the Star Tribune at the time of the sale. “It’ll take a while to pick all of it out of me.”
In recent years, he and Sue have spent summers in Minnesota and then traveled back to Missouri to be close to family for the rest of the year.
Visitors love to drop in and talk about Justine Kerfoot or Bruce Kerfoot or the years they spent working at the lodge, Fredrikson said. He’s found that Bruce’s energy seemingly matched that of his mother, who died in 2001 when she was 94.
“He was one of those people that was able to get stuff done more easily or better than other people,” Fredrikson said. “Maybe because of who he was, or maybe because the stars align for this kind of person.”
In a social media post, Kerfoot’s family said they had peace knowing he and his mother “were paddling together to their shore lunch spot.”
Mark Hennessy knew Kerfoot for 40 years, but has had a closer view for the past three years. He said without Kerfoot, the Chik-Wauk Museum and Nature Center, located near the end of the Gunflint Trail, wouldn’t exist. Whenever there was a work project, the executive director said, Kerfoot would show up.
A teenage motorcyclist was killed in a collision with an SUV at a Burnsville intersection, officials said Friday.
The crash occurred shortly after 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Burnsville Parkway and Interstate 35W, police said.
The motorcyclist was identified by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office as Peter Vsevolod Genis, 17, of Burnsville.
An SUV driver was turning left from westbound Burnsville Parkway to northbound 35W when Genis went through a red light while heading east and struck the SUV.
The SUV driver and a woman with him, both from Burnsville, were not hurt.
The other vehicle was a Mercedes SUV. The driver was a 30-year-old male from Burnsville, with a 29-year-old female passenger from Burnsville. Neither of them was injured.
