Star Tribune
A decade after his death, St. Cloud exchange student still fostering connections
ST. CLOUD – As the sound of music from a festival at Lake George filtered in through the open windows of City Hall, a group of about two dozen people gathered Sunday afternoon for a more somber reason.
It was the 10-year anniversary of the day that upended all of their lives — when German exchange student Alexander Voigt died in a fiery plane crash five days before he was to return home. The untimely death of an adventurous 16-year-old devastated those who knew him. But it has also created lasting connections that span generations and continents.
“We’ve had an enlarged family ever since, and there are those we consider friends even though we don’t see each other very much,” Voigt’s father, Yorck Jetter, said Sunday, a day after arriving from Munich with wife Jutta Voigt and daughter Kira Voigt.
Alex “Sascha” Voigt was visiting St. Cloud during the 2013-2014 school year as an international exchange student with Youth For Understanding. He was staying with St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis, an avid traveler who has visited more than 130 countries and had previously played host to five other exchange students.
On June 20, 2014, Voigt was savoring his final days in Minnesota. He had just returned to St. Cloud from a trip to Duluth, where he conquered the quintessential North Shore to-do list (Grandma’s Saloon & Grill in Canal Park, Gooseberry Falls, Betty’s Pies) and then said goodbye to friends at a going-away party.
That evening, he went up in the air in a small plane with commercial pilot Scott Olson to get some aerial photos. But about 25 minutes after takeoff, the plane crashed into a house in neighboring Sauk Rapids, taking Olson’s life, too. It was later determined the plane likely lost pitch control when its canopy opened during flight.
“It’s unbelievable that it’s already been 10 years,” Jetter said Sunday. It’s the fourth time in the past decade the family has come to central Minnesota, and this time they wanted to reconnect with those who knew Voigt during his final year.
“It’s very symbolic. Ten years just feels different,” Jetter said.
Also in the room Sunday were Ken and Sharron Ring of Houston, Minn., who hosted Jetter as a foreign exchange student in 1979 and have kept in touch ever since.
“He is family,” said Ken Ring, now 75.
Alex Voigt’s family visited the Rings’ farm when he was about 8 or 9, where he drove a tractor, went boating and begged to search for hidden Easter eggs even though it wasn’t Eastertime, Sharron Ring said with a laugh.
Most of those gathered Sunday knew Voigt only as a high school student. He attended Technical High School, where he was known as a “positive goofball” who was adventurous and kind, said Joe Froelich, who met Voigt through sports at Tech.
“He was someone everyone gravitated towards,” said Jess Ambrosch, another former classmate who is now engaged to Froelich.
The couple, who knew of each other in high school but weren’t friends, started dating after Voigt introduced them.
“He’s kind of responsible for us happening,” said Ambrosch, noting Voigt’s memory will carry into a new generation with their 10-month-old daughter Hazel, whose middle name, Alexandra, pays homage to Voigt.
“He may be gone physically but he’s always with us, his influence,” Froelich said. “We only knew him for a year. It’s crazy how you can build those connections with people so fast. He was one of those people. You don’t meet a lot of those people in your life.”
Others shared similar sentiments.
“Alex brought us together as friends,” Jake Oehrlein said about the group of former classmates who gathered Sunday. “I think, otherwise, we might not all have been in the same friend group. But we have a lifelong connection because of him.”
Rachel Evavold, who went to prom with Voigt, said whenever she pictures Voigt, he is laughing and smiling. “He was always joking and so fun to be around — but also somebody you could count on for anything,” she said.
Voigt’s family hadn’t seen him for a year when he died. After the crash, they came to St. Cloud to collect his remains and, on the same day he was supposed to return home, held a small memorial at St. Cloud’s convention center.
The following year, the family returned to dedicate a bench along the Mississippi River. And on the fifth anniversary of his death, Voigt’s family came to “retrace his steps” during the last month of his life by exploring the North Shore — and even sitting in the same booth at Grandma’s. At the time, Jutta Voigt said they were learning a lot about the “Alex they never got to meet.”
Former classmates, including Froelich and Ambrosch, have also visited Voigt’s family in Munich. And Kleis visits them in Germany at least twice a year.
Seeing Voigt’s former classmates — now as young adults with careers, and some with marriages and children — was bittersweet.
“It’s a turning point in the life of his friends,” Jetter said.
But even though Voigt didn’t get the chance to blossom into a 20-something, he left an enduring mark on those who knew him.
“His short time on this earth made more impact on me than many individuals I’ve known my entire life,” Kleis said. “His joy for life and new experiences was contagious.”
NEW LONDON, Minn. — Viktoriia Panova knows fellow Ukrainian refugees who refuse to talk to Russians and speak their language since the invasion in February 2022 that destroyed their nation and exiled millions of citizens.
She understands their anger; Panova was a teenager when Russian-backed militants waged a war for control of her hometown of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine in 2014. Panova moved to Kyiv, then left Ukraine two years ago, after Russia illegally annexed Donetsk. Now living in Minneapolis, she has long accepted that she will never get back all that she lost from Russia’s aggression. She just wants to connect with anyone from the region – Russian and Ukrainian alike – trying to reconstruct their lives in the United States amid the aftermath.
So Panova, 28, was among a handful of Ukrainians who joined a group of antiwar Russians recently to go camping in Sibley State Park here, grilling marinated chicken and pork, fishing in the lake and sharing stories around the campfire. The party displayed Ukrainian and Russian opposition flags and listened to songs from both nations.
As clashes intensified in Donetsk and Russian President Vladimir Putin made nuclear threats, Panova and others tried to find solace and a community in the woods of western Minnesota. They enjoyed popular Russian dishes — mimosa, a layered salad of fish, eggs and cheese, and olivier, a dish of meat, potatoes and pickles — and Panova confided in a few Russians about how the war had divided her own family.
Her father is Russian but supports Ukraine in the war, while her mother is Ukrainian and supports Russia — a disagreement that prompted them to separate.
“She has propaganda in her head,” Panova told the Russian campers. They had all suffered so much from this war, she added. “How can my mother like Putin? … He basically ruined our country.”
Though Russian soldiers are paid well, Panova and a Russian immigrant who came here for college agreed that they didn’t understand how people could kill each other even for money. Panova said she had talked to both Russian and Ukrainian fighters years ago in Donetsk “who are not there mentally because they experienced so much.”
She asked several Russians about being considered a threat in their homeland because of their political views. One Russian newcomer living in St. Paul, Svetlana, said she was. She had worked for the Moscow government and officials threatened to check employees’ phones for antiwar materials. Opposed to the invasion, Svetlana and her husband and children left to cross the Mexican border and seek asylum and are among more than 59,000 Russians in the U.S. with pending immigration cases.
The program covers whatever costs aren’t met by a student’s other scholarships and aid. Students must pay for room and board and books.
Paul Shepherd, associate vice chancellor for student affairs and enrollment at Minnesota State, said about 12,990 students received North Star Promise funding as part of their financial aid package; about 12,000 of those students are enrolled in classes now.
Shepherd stopped short of saying the system’s 7% enrollment increase could be attributed to the program. But he said it “certainly stands to reason” that it had an impact. Other initiatives, such as the Minnesota State tuition freeze and workforce development scholarships may have also helped, he said.
Students at community and technical colleges averaged awards of $1,500; those at universities saw about $1,600 each. Shepherd said it’s great that eligibility can be determined from FAFSA data because extra paperwork can be a barrier for students.
Nate Peterson, director of the Office of Student Finance at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, called North Star Promise a “safety net” that will help with recruiting and retaining students. As of Sept. 25, about 2,900 students on the Twin Cities campuses got North Star Promise scholarships. That aid totaled $6.2 million, or about $2,250 per student, he said.
Mike Dean, executive director of the nonprofit North Star Prosperity, said the program is a win for students, families and employers at a time when people are questioning the value of higher education. Anecdotally, he said, he’s heard the program has encouraged many adults with some college to sign up for classes again.
”Pray for us,” he wrote on Facebook.
Hassan Hamd, a freelance TV journalist whose footage had aired on Al Jazeera and other networks, was killed in artillery shelling on his home in Jabaliya. Anas al-Sharif, an Al Jazeera reporter in northern Gaza, confirmed his death.
The military says it has expanded the so-called humanitarian zone in southern Gaza, urging people to head there. Hundreds of thousands of people have already sought refuge in sprawling tent camps there with little in the way of food, water or toilets. Israel has carried out strikes in the humanitarian zone against what it says are militants hiding among civilians.
Nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It does not say how many were fighters, but says a little more than half were women and children.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people in the Oct. 7 attack and took another 250 hostage. They are still holding around 100 captives, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel bombards southern Beirut
