Star Tribune
How one Minneapolis family navigated two wars
Minneapolis resident Mohamed Khuder climbs into an 18-wheeler every morning with a cup of coffee, ready to drive across the country hauling heavy machinery on a flatbed trailer.
It is a stark departure from his former jobs running a construction company and exporting trucks from Eastern Europe to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. But Khuder, 41, is beginning life anew, just as hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have done in the United States since Russia invaded their country two years ago.
Starting over has become familiar to Khuder: This is yet another home for him after wars devastated first his mother country of Syria, then his adopted nation of Ukraine a decade later.
As the number of displaced people around the world has reached 110 million — the most since World War II — global unrest has stretched so far that some people have been battered by more than one armed conflict. Like many refugees, Khuder has developed a kind of fortitude and appreciation for all that remains, and an eagerness and gratefulness for the chance to make Minnesota his home.
“Sometimes I think about the two wars, what influence it [had on] me and my family,” he said. “It makes me stronger. I know life more because two or three times you have to start everything from the beginning.”
“It’s good,” he added. “I can work. I have my health, my kids. I have everything to start again. It’s OK. It’s OK.”
Minnesotans have filed more than 4,900 applications to sponsor those fleeing the war in Ukraine, and the state has welcomed 1,300 Afghans since the Taliban returned to power. Another 1,500 refugees — many from Africa and Asia — resettled in Minnesota in 2023, and that figure is expected to rise this year.
Khuder grew up in Idlib, a small city in northwestern Syria near the Turkish border, where his family had an olive oil factory. He moved to Odesa, a Ukrainian city on the Black Sea, to study information technology in 2003 and two years later married a local woman named Olena. As Khuder learned Russian, his wife learned Arabic.
The couple relocated to Dubai for a few years and were considering moving to Syria to be closer to Khuder’s family when mass anti-government protests erupted there. Soon, the unrest spiraled into civil war. In 2012, the Khuders received a phone call: Mohamed’s old house had been bombed. His relatives survived and had to escape through a hole blasted in a wall.
Olena, now 45, had been looking forward to spending more time with her husband’s family in Syria. She said she always enjoyed visiting the country — its desert sands, its peacefulness. “They have a very good culture, very interesting,” she said.
“Had,” Mohamed corrected her. “There is no country anymore.”
His family resettled in Turkey, and the Khuders returned to Ukraine. Mohamed loved his adopted city, where they lived in an elegant condo with their three children.
“I had a good business there; I had good friends there. It was a very beautiful city,” he said. “You feel [like] yourself in your home in Odesa.”
On Feb. 22, 2022, Mohamed left Odesa on a business trip to Lithuania. Two mornings later, Olena heard explosions: The city was under attack; news reports said 22 people fell victim to Russian bombs.
“I just was numb,” she said. “My life stopped.”
Mohamed’s brother, a journalist working in Istanbul, phoned about the invasion, but Mohamed did not understand what was happening. In Odesa, his wife fled in the family’s Nissan Juke, an SUV so small she had to leave some bags behind. The drive to the border with Moldova should have taken an hour, but so many cars jammed the road the journey took all night.
Mohamed thought the fighting would end in a week. But when a month passed, he said, “I understood that that will be for a long time, and I get in my mind that I will start from zero again.”
After traveling through several countries, Olena and their children joined Mohamed in Dublin, Ireland. After six month, refugee resettlement officials moved them to an apartment 20 miles outside Cork. But the region was too rural and remote, the couple recalled, and they could not find work.
“No job is very boring for me,” Mohamed said. “I have to do something.”
They moved to Germany, where they stayed for a while, but struggled to learn the language and land jobs. Last year, they found a sponsor to emigrate to Minnesota through the Uniting for Ukraine program. Within 10 days of their arrival in the state, Mohamed went to work at a factory testing electronics. His wife, an English tutor in Ukraine, was hired as an administrative assistant at the University of Minnesota. Their children Violetta, 18; Ahmed, 15; and Yazan, 7, enrolled in school.
Mohamed went on to earn his commercial driver’s license and started a trucking job last December. He’s already traveled from California to Florida, keeping up with his family by phone while working 70 hours a week. He returns home for a week after every month on the road.
In Orlando, he met a childhood friend, and Olena and their youngest child traveled south to visit Disney World. “I was impressed so much, like a small little girl,” she recalled.
The couple hopes they can start businesses and own a home here one day.
They have not returned to Syria since 2010 or to Ukraine since the war broke out two years ago. In November, news reports said Russian forces allied with the Syrian government killed 34 fighters in air strikes in Idlib and bombed a crowded market in the city on New Year’s Eve. In Odesa, Russian soldiers have repeatedly attacked cultural heritage sites and key grain export facilities.
Olena finds it difficult to talk about the war in Ukraine. Sometimes, she said, she worries about her house, her parents who have relocated to Germany and the suffering of those still in the country.
“I know I cannot change everything,” she said. “I cannot go back in the past. Just I try to live now and to think about the future, about my family, and to take a lot of opportunities that life will … give me.”
Star Tribune
Long Prairie, MN school board dismisses its superintendent, the latest controversy in this small town
LONG PRAIRIE, MINN. — The school district superintendent dressed up as the school mascot, Thor, on football nights. He read the graduation address in both English and Spanish. He even set up office hours in the cafeteria, granting easier approachability to students.
But now, two months into the school year, Daniel Ludvigson is gone. Or, rather, “on special assignment,” according to the terminology of the Long Prairie-Grey Eagle School Board, which voted 4-3 earlier this month to remove him as superintendent. The move came weeks after voting to not renew his contract, which expires at the end of the school year in June.
Four board members — two of whom voted to oust Ludvigson, including Board Chair Kelly Lemke — are up for re-election next week.
The dismissal is the latest blow in this central Minnesota community on the edge of the prairie. Over the last nine months, the town of 3,400 residents and seat of Todd County has lost its mayor, a city manager, two school board members, and now its superintendent.
Students walked out earlier this month in support of Ludvigson. Signs in support of Ludvigson can be seen across town on the lawns of apparent Democrats and Republicans alike. And last week, hundreds packed the American Legion off Hwy. 71 to eat beef sandwiches and sign support letters for Ludvigson, who only swung by to pick up his child for hockey practice.
In a time of great divide in America, this fight has nothing to do with politics.
“You’ve got Harris buttons and Trump hats side-by-side, arm-in-arm,” said Amanda Hinson, a former local newspaper reporter who is concerned the board is not being upfront about why they placed Ludvigson on special assignment. “We want transparency in our government.”
Lawn signs around Long Prairie, Minn., now include people weighing in on the dismissal of Superintendent Daniel Ludvigson by the school board. (Christopher Vondracek)
School board members say Ludvigson has repeatedly shown he is not ready for the prime time of a school district bigger than the one in central North Dakota he arrived from two years ago. They have twice disciplined Ludvigson, but did not state the reason for placing him on “special assignment,” beyond insinuating that staff are fearful to raise official complaints.
Rain and potentially heavy snow are on tap Thursday around the Twin Cities, just before families set out for Halloween trick-or-treating.
Temperatures were expected to drop throughout the day, creating conditions for flurries. A winter weather advisory is in effect from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. covering the Twin Cities metro area and parts of south-central Minnesota. Steady rain drenched the Twin Cities on Thursday, making for a soggy morning commute.
“As colder air begins to move in this morning, the rain will transition to heavy snow from west to east with snowfall rates of an inch per hour at times into early afternoon,” the National Weather Service in Chanhassen said in a weather advisory.
The Twin Cities and surrounding areas could get between 2 and 4 inches of snow, according to the weather service. The winter weather advisory is expected to affect Anoka, Chisago, Hennepin, Ramsey, Scott, Washington and Le Sueur counties.
It’s unclear how much of the snow will actually stick, with warm surface temperatures likely leading to melting on contact in many areas.
“Exact totals will depend on snowfall rate, surface temperatures, and melting — which increases uncertainty with the snow forecast,” the weather service said in an early Thursday briefing.
“Thundersnow possible!” the weather service emphasized.
The good news for Halloween revelers is that the snow and rain are expected to wrap up in time for trick-or-treating, though temperatures will remain in the 30s with a sharp windchill.
An off-duty Washington County sheriff’s deputy caused a head-on crash while under the influence of alcohol and injured a couple in the other vehicle, officials said.
The crash occurred about 10:40 a.m. Sunday in Afton on Hwy. 95 at Scenic Lane, the Minnesota State Patrol said.
Campbell Johnston Blair, 58, of Hastings, was heading north in his Subaru Crosstrek, crossed into the opposite lane and collided with a southbound Ford Expedition, the patrol said.
Blair and the other vehicle’s occupants, 38-year-old Erik Robert Sward and 36-year-old Heather Lynn Sward, both of Lake Elmo, were taken to Regions Hospital with non-critical injuries, according to the patrol.
The patrol noted the alcohol use by Blair was involved in the crash.
Blair, who was driving a private vehicle at the time of the crash while off-duty, has been a deputy with the Sheriff’s Office since 2020 and is currently assigned to our Court Security Unit.
The Sheriff’s Office has been asked for reaction to the crash involving one of its deputies.
