Star Tribune
50 years later, St. Paul woman recovers her brother’s long-lost sled
St. Paul, its residents like to say, is a big small town. It’s got a long memory too. Ask Connie Maertz Kasella, who grew up there.
Just after Christmas, only months after returning to St. Paul from Oregon, Maertz Kasella received numerous messages on her phone and social media from grade-school friends. Somebody had posted on the Old St. Paul, Minnesota, page on Facebook about an old sled with Tom Maertz’s name on it. Wasn’t he Connie’s brother? they asked.
He sure is, Maertz Kasella said. Turns out, an elderly couple who lived not far from the former Maertz home in Merriam Park had had a fire in their basement recreation room. Hanging on the wall was a Radio Flyer-type sled emblazoned in youngish writing with the name, address and phone number of Tom Maertz.
“He wrote all over it,” she said of her baby brother.
Bob Milne, who’d posted the news and photos of the newly discovered sled, said his parents don’t remember how the sled came to be in their basement. It had been there for at least 30 years, he said.
Make that 50-plus years, Maertz Kasella said. Her brother Tom, now 57, had probably left it on the snowy hills at the Town and Country Club when he was 4 or 5, she said.
As kids, they used to trek from their home at Dayton and Cretin avenues, climb the golf course’s tall fence and sled until the cold, or hunger, chased them home.
“He probably just left it behind,” she said.
Maertz Kasella contacted Milne. A meeting was arranged. Photos were taken of Connie, the sled and Bob’s parents, Bill and Beverly Milne. The sled and its first family were finally reunited.
There was just one snag in the otherwise heartwarming story. Tom Maertz, now of Roseville, has no recollection of the sled.
“I really don’t remember it,” Maertz said. “When I saw the picture, saw the writing, I must have [lost it]. But my life has been broken up into different segments since then.”
Tom remembers going sledding at Town and Country, remembers his mom making the kids put plastic newspaper bags on their feet before slipping on their snowmobile boots “to keep them dry,” he said.
But the sled? “Sorry,” he said.
The sled’s current home is Connie’s new place in the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood. Maybe her grandkids will use it, she said.
Bob Milne, who helped move his parents into assisted living after the rec room fire, said the sled’s tale has garnered nearly 700 “likes” and “loves” on Facebook. Nearly 100 people have posted messages of joy at the reunion.
He chuckled.
“There are two key points to this story that are missing: Tom doesn’t remember it and Dad doesn’t remember where it came from,” he said. “But there are 700-some people who do care. So it’s a good story.”
The Minnesota Department of Transportation closed part of a state highway Wednesday evening near Austin because of a “major hazardous materials release” in the area.
Hwy. 56 from Hayfield to Waltham, a stretch covering about five miles, was closed in both directions and drivers were directed to follow a detour to Blooming Prairie on U.S. Hwy. 218.
No information on the hazardous materials released was immediately available.
A federal judge dismissed a civil lawsuit against Minnesota state trooper Ryan Londregan in the shooting death of Ricky Cobb II during a 2023 traffic stop.
The decision is the latest development in a case that has drawn heated debate over excessive use of force by law enforcement. Criminal charges against Londregan were dismissed by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty in June, saying the prosecution didn’t have the evidence to proceed with a case.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Nancy E. Brasel granted Londregan’s motion to dismiss the civil suit, arguing he acted reasonably when he opened fire as Cobb’s vehicle lurched forward with another state trooper partly inside.
Londregan’s attorney Chris Madelsaid Wednesday that it’s been a “long, grueling journey to justice. Ryan Londregan has finally arrived.”
On July 31, 2023, the two troopers pulled over Cobb, 33, on Interstate 94 in north Minneapolis for driving without taillights and later learned he was wanted for violating a felony domestic no-contact order. Cobb refused commands to exit the car.
With Seide partly inside the car while trying to unbuckle Cobb’s seatbelt, the car moved forward. Londregan then opened fire, hitting Cobb twice.
In her decision, Brasel said the troopers were mandated by state law to make an arrest given Cobb’s domestic no-contact order violation. She said it was objectively reasonable for Londregan to believe Seide was in immediate danger as the car moved forward on a busy highway, which would make his use of force reasonable.
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Donald Trump walked down the steps of the Boeing 757 that bears his name, walked across a rain-soaked tarmac and, after twice missing the handle, climbed into the passenger seat of a white garbage truck that also carried his name.
The former president, once a reality TV star known for his showmanship, wanted to draw attention to a remark made a day earlier by his successor, Democratic President Joe Biden, that suggested Trump’s supporters were garbage. Trump has used the remark as a cudgel against his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.
”How do you like my garbage truck?” Trump said, wearing an orange and yellow safety vest over his white dress shirt and red tie. ”This is in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden.”
Trump and other Republicans were facing pushback of their own for comments by a comedian at a weekend Trump rally who disparaged Puerto Rico as a ”floating island of garbage.” Trump then seized on a comment Biden made on a late Wednesday call that “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”
The president tried to clarify the comment afterward, saying he had intended to say Trump’s demonization of Latinos was unconscionable. But it was too late.
On Thursday, after arriving in Green Bay, Wisconsin, for an evening rally, Trump climbed into the garbage truck, carrying on a brief discussion with reporters while looking out the window — similar to what he did earlier this month during a photo opportunity he staged at a Pennsylvania McDonalds.
He again tried to distance himself from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, whose joke had set off the firestorm, but Trump did not denounce it. He also said he did not need to apologize to Puerto Ricans.
”I don’t know anything about the comedian,” Trump said. ”I don’t know who he is. I’ve never seen him. I heard he made a statement, but it was a statement that he made. He’s a comedian, what can I tell you. I know nothing about him.”
