Star Tribune
Late gun safety activist’s message lives on in billboard
FARIBAULT, MINN. – Jon Frasz could always be counted on to wave his cowbell at anti-gun-violence rallies at the State Capitol in St. Paul.
Frasz didn’t have children of his own, but he felt strongly about preventing gun violence in schools, friends said. After a gunman shot and killed 20 6- and 7-year-olds and six adults inside Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012, Frasz made buttons commemorating the Sandy Hook victims. He could always be counted on to passionately argue in favor of gun-control laws to whomever would listen; he was the kind of person who could make friends with folks even if they didn’t agree with his politics, they said.
And he’s remembered for his catchphrase that gun laws are pro-life.
“You never ran into Jon if you were one of the people that shared his views without getting into a really thoughtful conversation,” said Mary Lewis Grow.
Grow is among several of Frasz’s friends and fellow activists who miss the 76-year-old Northfield man, who died earlier this year from a sudden illness. To honor him, they used his slogan to put on an election billboard in Faribault near Interstate 35, as close to his hometown as they could get.
The billboard campaign was part of a statewide DFL election push in rural areas, but the money collected for the Faribault sign came from Frasz’s fellow advocates who miss his compassion and zeal. And now that the election is over, activists are finding new ways to honor Frasz.
Frasz was born in Saskatchewan but his family moved to Minnesota when he was 2 years old. He moved around the country throughout his life before settling back home as a truck driver for a number of years. But he found his passion later in life through political advocacy.
He would often volunteer to go to St. Paul whenever gun-safety groups like Moms Demand Action held rallies, cowbell in tow. He’d stand at booths and spread literature. He’d even go to Carleton College to reprint the Sandy Hook victim buttons and pass them out, all at his own expense.
CLEVELAND, MINN. – Avid hunter. Trap-shooting mentor. Son. Dedicated father and husband. Loyal friend. Southern Minnesota enthusiast.
Jack Zimmerman embraces all those personas. Yet he’s inevitably best known for another role: U.S. combat veteran.
As a member of the 101st Airborne Division, Zimmerman served Operation Enduring Freedom in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, for nine months during 2010 and 2011 — until he stepped on an improvised explosive device, or IED, in the midst of a battle, and his world changed forever.
“I was 21 and a half years old when I becaa me double amputee,” said Zimmerman, 35, “and in the hospital I learned that with a good attitude I could overcome everything and with a bad attitude, I couldn’t overcome anything.”
In the intervening years, Zimmerman has worked through many physical and psychological obstacles en route to creating a rewarding life that’s altogether different from what he envisioned as a teen.
“I’ve referred to him as a hometown hero,” said fellow Cleveland resident Cheri Rohlfing.
“What hits me the most about Jack is he had this horrible thing happen to him but he came back and made the best out of it.”
Blue Earth County’s Veterans Service officer and Marine Corps veteran Mike McLaughlin praises Zimmerman for his efforts to encourage, mentor and support other veterans of every stripe.
The county serves as a microcosm of the United States, Moorhead Mayor Shelly Carlson said: urban and rural diversity, ethnic and economic diversity, and the rare commodity of bipartisanship as a border community between two states with very different politics and laws. Two-thirds of the county’s 66,000 people live in Moorhead, but go outside city limits and Clay County quickly turns rural. The next-largest town outside of Moorhead is Dilworth, with fewer than 5,000 people. After that is Barnesville, population 3,000 and known for its annual Potato Days Festival.
While allegiances have somewhat flipped from a generation ago — Moorhead businesspeople used to be the Republicans, farmers used to be the Democrats — the balance remains.
“If Democrats have enough votes to overcome the Republican base in our county, they usually have enough votes for the rest of the country,” said Markus Krueger, a local historian and the programming director at the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County. “If Republicans have enough votes to overcome the college students in Moorhead, they usually have enough votes to overcome the Democratic votes in the rest of the county.”
Without reading too much into a 156-vote Harris victory here not reflecting the national result, Nicholas Howard, an assistant professor of political science at Concordia College, said increasing urbanization of Clay County could change its swing-county status.
“We’re seeing fewer and fewer swing counties,” Howard said. “The economic needs of Moorhead and the non-Moorhead areas in this county have gotten more divergent in the past 20 years. That’s led to some economic and political self-separation. Clay County is no longer the Minnesota bellwether.”
But the near-even split this election meant a stark divide this week in how residents digested what the results meant. And voters didn’t always fall neatly into a box.
The Mataafa was driven ashore and broken in two by a storm. (Minnesota Historical Society)
There are at least 550 vessels that have gone to rest in the world’s largest freshwater lake (by surface area), according to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Whitefish Point, Mich.
The nonprofit behind the museum, the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, has its own underwater research vessel that scours the lake for wreckage.
The team has had successes finding many long-lost storied ships.
The team was also part of an expedition that recovered the 200-pound bronze bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald.
A 1959 photo shows the Great Lakes freighter Edmund Fitzgerald.
The Fitzgerald met its fate on the windy night of Nov. 10, 1975. It was carrying 26,216 tons of taconite pellets from Superior, Wis., to Detroit. It began to take on water and the captain reported that they had turned on the 17-year-old vessel’s pumps. Another freighter, the Arthur M. Anderson, trailed the troubled ship.
