Star Tribune
Florian Chmielewski, former Minnesota state senator and Funtime Band accordion player, dies at 97
DULUTH — This past February, celebrated accordion player Florian Chmielewski played his own 97th birthday party at the Cloquet VFW — and even tacked on a few more gigs after that in nearby Cromwell, Sandstone and beyond.
“He just kept going,” his daughter Patty Chmielewski said. “As long as he could see, as long as his arms worked, he would play.”
Chmielewski, a farmer, a Minnesota state senator for 26 years and a musician for triple that amount of time, died in his Sturgeon Lake, Minn., home on the morning of April 23. He had congestive heart failure, according to his daughter, who was among the family with him at the end.
His Chmielewski Funtime Band, which has included several generations of Chmielewski musicians, was featured on a polka centered television show that aired for decades in both the United States and Canada. The family crisscrossed the country, performing hundreds of shows a year — complete with on-stage antics and jokes. Chmielewski was behind a long-running International Polka Festival that started in Chisholm in the late 1970s and shifted venues in later years.
“Everyone knew him everywhere,” Patty Chmielewski said.
Florian Chmielewski, grew up with 14 siblings on the family’s northeastern Minnesota dairy farm. He got his first accordion when he was 18, a handoff from his brother whose landlord had grown wary of the sound. According to the family lore, Chmielewski had a four-song repertoire and had booked a wedding within his first 30 days of playing.
He played music alongside his own siblings and friends, and after he married Pat Stolquist in 1956 and their own family grew, the kids joined the family band. They were given a choice, Patty Chmielewski said: The alternative to making music was milking the cows. Music won.
These days, the band includes some of Florian Chmielewski’s grandchildren.
Helmi Harringtonthe owner of World of Accordions Museum in Superior, Wis., has known Chmielewski for decades — from playing his polka festival, to teaching music to his grandchildren, to hosting a display at the museum with Chmielewski relics.
“[I knew him as] a fine gentleman and a fine musician,” she said. “He was both. That’s not always the case. He was a friend to many.
“He always had a ready smile and a joke on his lips.”
The band has won Minnie Grammy Awards from the Minnesota Music Academy and performed at the Minnesota State Fair and Hostfest in Minot, North Dakota. Chmielewski and Patty were inducted in the Ironworld USA Hall of Fame in Chisholm. He’s in the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame and the International Polka Music Hall of Fame.
Chmielewski was first elected to the state Senate in 1970. In 1974, he ran for a seat in the Eighth Congressional District, but lost to fellow DFL candidate Jim Oberstar in the primary election. He continued to get reelected to the state Senate until 1996 when he was ousted in the primary by Becky Lourey, who went on to win the general election. At the time, Chmielewski was fresh from the “Phonegate” scandal, in which several politicians were found guilty of not supervising the use of their telephone access code. He was sentenced to two years probation for the gross misdemeanor and said at the time that he had paid off more than $3,000 that he owed for calls made.
Lourey described Chmielewski as “really invested in his community.” They were friends and she would sometimes see him performing. He would call her out of the crowd to come up by the stage and dance.
“It’s wonderful that you can keep these relationships, and caring, after these races,” she said. “I’m really impacted by his death. He just offered so much to our communities and loved serving.”
On Thursday morning, Palo, Minn.-native Steve Solkela, who plays accordion and is a member of the Solkela Polkela Band, posted a music tribute to Chmielewski. Solkela never met his fellow musician, but he had tried and now regrets it didn’t happen. He credits the Chmielewski Funtime Band with making it possible for his polka band to find an audience — and book the 12 gigs they have this year.
“They made a huge mark on American history,” Solkela said. “He paved a way. On a more somber note, I feel like polka is dying at a fast rate. I think Florian prolonged the life of polka for far longer than it would have stayed alive.”
DULUTH — Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has given an unexpected and no-strings-attached $9 million to a Duluth nonprofit that helps entrepreneurs grow.
The EFund was chosen through Yield Giving’s “quiet research” process, in which it chooses and evaluates organizations privately for unsolicited gifts. EFund is only the second known northeast Minnesota organization to benefit from the billions Scott, an author and the ex-wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, has given since 2020 as part of her pledge to donate a majority of her wealth over her lifetime. The Duluth Area YMCA in 2020 received an undisclosed amount. About $140 million in donations have now been designated to Minnesota organizations.
“It still feels surreal,” EFund CEO Shawn Wellnitz said. “And with no restrictions, it’s just transformational,” especially as pandemic aid dries up for businesses and creditors are more cautious about lending money.
Unrestricted gifts are considered rare in the philanthropy world.
The EFund nonprofit, formed in 1989, manages a portfolio of about $60 million, lending money and offering services to entrepreneurs in northeast and east-central Minnesota, and northern Wisconsin. The Seattle billionaire’s gift is its largest ever. The recognition and confidence that comes with a Scott donation can help the organization leverage that money “multiple times over,” Wellnitz said.
The nonprofit works with about 1,500 entrepreneurs each year. Wellnitz said the money will allow the organization to take bigger risks with companies they are already helping who are poised to bring more jobs to the region, along with preparing succession plans for the looming mass retirements of area aging business owners.
It has lent start-up money several times to Advanced Machine Guarding Solutions, a safety equipment supplier in Hibbing. The EFund helped the owner, who came from the robotics industry, line up other funding sources. The company now has more than a dozen employees and “back orders through the roof,” Wellnitz said.
Yield Giving didn’t share with the EFund why it chose the nonprofit. Its website says it looks at organizations in underserved communities that have high potential for impact, and with stable finances, a long track record and evidence of outcomes.
Star Tribune
A second person has been charged in connection with an attack on a north Minneapolis homeless shelter that forced dozens of women and children to relocate last week.
A second person has been charged in connection with an attack on a north Minneapolis homeless shelter that forced dozens of women and children to relocate last week.
Read the original article
Robbinsdale is considering renaming a beloved park named after a family that tainted the city with racial covenants.
The city council will hold a public hearing to potentially rename Sanborn Park Tuesday evening.
The park was named after the Sanborn family, which owned much of the land throughout Robbinsdale in the early 1900s. They placed racial covenants on their real estate, prohibiting “any person or persons of Chinese, Japanese, Moorish, Turkish, Negro, Mongolian or African blood or descent” from leasing or mortgaging their properties, according to Mapping Prejudice, a University of Minnesota database of racial covenants in the Twin Cities metro.
Racial covenants were used to segregate the metro during the early to mid 1900s, the effects of which are still present. In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court declared racial covenants unconstitutional, and Minnesota outlawed them in 1953. Thus, the covenants hold no legal power but remain on deeds to scattered properties around the Twin Cities.
The Robbinsdale City Council, with the assistance of the city’s Human Rights Commission, established naming and renaming policy for parks and facilities in the spring that places emphasis on names with “equity/inclusiveness, service to the community, and/or observe local history.”
The council will hear public comments on two Sanborn Park name change proposals Tuesday.
The Human Rights Commission is proposing the name Castile Park, in honor of Philando Castile, a Black man killed by police during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights in 2016.
Some Robbinsdale residents said they did not want the park to be renamed after Castile.
