MINNEAPOLIS — Did you go to your 20-year high school reunion? 50th? How about 75th?

We can all hope to be so lucky, right?

At Thomas Edison High School in North East Minneapolis, a handful of students were so lucky Thursday, 75 years after graduation. About 20 alumni showed up to the reunion gathering. 

“We believe we have 60 living members,” said Dick Anderson, who organized the event. “We have a lot of good people.”

That’s part of the reason why the group of 92 and 93-year-olds look back so fondly on their time. 

Pat Hennen Myklebust remembers her first day of school, and worried about making friends. She wasn’t as outgoing in 1949. 

“They were warm,” she said. “You felt like you belonged.”

Still, her recollection is fading. 

“There’s a gentleman when I came in, he, he was my prom date,” she said. “And I thought, and I can’t even remember, but I’m 93 and there’s a lot of things that I don’t remember.”

She wishes she had written more memories down. Her classmate, Lowell Ludford did. 

“There was the lunchroom food fights.” said Ludford. “A memorable one occurred when Stuart Lease threw a blob of chocolate pudding at me.”

But not all high school experiences were so cheery. 

Betty Boeser Silbernagel didn’t go to games or join any clubs. 

“We were so poor,” she said. “I was the eldest of 10 kids and we had nothing.”

But despite that, she says this school made her into the woman she is today.

“The lord’s been good to me now,” she said. 

So she’ll cling to those memories, and everything high school Betty endured.

MINNEAPOLIS — For the past 15 years, the Twin Cities have had a message about their ash trees – beware of the emerald ash borer. 

The invasive beetle was discovered in the area around 2009 and attacks and kills the trees. 

St. Paul and Minneapolis have been working on a plan to remove the infested trees and replant new ones on public property ever since. The city’s forest specialists say they’ve finished the job, but work to restore the urban forest is never done.

“It has been the generational challenge and opportunity for us to navigate,” said Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board Sustainable Forestry Coordinator Philip Potyondy.

Minneapolis has replaced about 40,000 infected trees from public streets and parks in eight years. It has cost taxpayers about $13 million, but Potyondy feels like they finally have a handle on the problem. 

“The work is never done, but we’ve completed one of our plans in our long-term work,” said Potyondy.

The plan also calls for planting a more diverse mix of trees on each block to enhance their resiliency.

It’s the same strategy St. Paul Urban Forester Supervisor Rachel Jongeward has been employing. Experts will eventually plant several different tree varieties like crabapple, oak, maple, and elm in each spot an ash tree was removed.  

“Trees just provide so many benefits, not only to people but to the space,” said Jongeward. “I think replanting with those more diverse species is going to allow both people and others living in that community to thrive.”

Jongeward estimates the beetle wiped out 27,000 trees. It cost about $36 million to mitigate the problem over the years. The last of the trees were removed around June and what’s still vacant will have new trees planted this fall. 

“I think it’s been difficult for us as foresters, and for the community as a whole, to lose such a high number of trees, so, it’s been good and bad,” said Jongeward.

The wood, though, doesn’t go to waste. It’s brought to processing plants and turned into mulch or fuel.

Some residents in Minneapolis are also helping to save some of the healthy ash trees still left by chipping in to pay for the pesticides that keep the beetle away. Each tree has to be treated every two years. 

“We want to keep enjoying them because they provide for us and I feel good caring for them, knowing that they serve our community,” said Potyondy. 

Both cities require private property owners to remove dead or infested trees if they pose a danger to adjacent property. For now, only Minneapolis provides grant funding to help pay for that cost. 

NEW HOPE, Minn. — Metro Meals on Wheels hosted its annual “Blizzard Bag Blitz” in New Hope on Thursday morning to ensure seniors have access to shelf-stable meals during storms this coming winter.

It comes amid an avalanche of demand that hasn’t relented since the pandemic. 

“We keep serving a record number of meals,” said Patrick Rowan, Executive Director of Metro Meals on Wheels. “Seniors are living on a fixed income, we have an increase in property taxes, an increase in food costs and an increase in medical expenses. All those factors are combining for record demand.” 

Despite serving a record number of meals every year since the pandemic, Metro Meals on Wheels saw demand rise another 19% in 2023. In total, the organization says meal deliveries are up 71% since 2019.

Rowan said Metro Meals on Wheels depends on a network of 14,000 volunteers to meet that demand for meals and deliveries, but he said the need for donations of money and time are still needed to keep up with the rising need.

That surging need isn’t limited to Meals on Wheels either. 

“Senior food shelf visits are up well over 50% in the past couple years,” said Sophia Lenarz-Coy, Executive Director of The Food Group, which works to help stock local food shelves. 

In order to help address that need in a different way, The Food Group has made a habit of opening its warehouse for the annual “Blizzard Bag Blitz”. Hundreds of volunteers, many with local companies, spent the day filling those emergency food bags so that our most vulnerable residents don’t go hungry when cold weather stands in the way of a warm meal.

“Inevitably, there will be at least one day this year where we have to shut down due to volunteer safety because of a blizzard or an ice storm or something like that,” Rowan said. “In the event that we’re not able to deliver due to inclement weather, our senior neighbors and people with disabilities will have that food on hand.”