A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
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For the first time in more than 20 years, the Esko One Act play team took its show to the state competition Friday. Before the team loaded their trailer and drove to St. Paul, their classmates and teachers at Esko high school held a sendoff for the One Act team. "Most of us don't do sports, theater is kind of our jam," said actor Drew Prachar. "So to realize we made state and now we get to run through the halls was pretty neat because a lot of us would never get that opportunity otherwise. It...
Cutting sports and other extracurricular activities is the third rail of consideration for any smart school board, but at the risk of losing students because of lost non-classroom experience — exactly what a struggling district can’t have happen. And so here we are in Carlton. When board members said that anything is on the table when it comes to trimming what was expected to be $1 million in cost overruns, they weren’t blowing smoke. At its January meeting, the board did not approve contracts for two staff members who were ready to lead the s...
With the help of some of Steve Korby's contacts and Pine Knot readers, we can safely say that the mural at the Cloquet Country Club was done by onetime resident George "Shorty" Edman. He was an artist by hobby, and we know that he grew up in Cloquet and was here at least until the late 1960s or early 1970s. In 1958, he gained some statewide acclaim as he led a group of 14 Cloquet Boy Scouts, with Glen Backes, down the Mississippi River from Grand Rapids to St. Paul. News stories said he was a dr...
Like athletic teams, One Act play teams compete against one another at section and subsection tournaments to get to the state competition. Esko had to get past 23 other regional teams in Section 7A to advance to the Class A state competition, including Carlton County schools Moose Lake, Barnum and Cromwell-Wright. Cloquet competed in Section 7AA. Cromwell-Wright performed "The Internet is Distract- OH LOOK A KITTEN" for their play. The plot centers on a girl, Micah, who is trying to complete a...
Watching the Trapp kids play basketball and volleyball in the previous decade, Carlton County residents knew Esko's Trapp family was extraordinarily tall. Now the world knows. As announced by the family on social media only last week, Guinness World Records has declared the Trapp family of five is the tallest family in the world. As the "global authority on all things record-breaking," the folks at Guinness should know. According to the online tallest family entry at www.guin...
Gerald “Jerry” Raymond Maki passed away Jan. 14, 2022 in Englewood, Florida. Jerry was born May 5, 1938, to Emil and Helen Maki. Emil was a Merchant Marine turned carpenter and Helen was from a farm family in Floodwood. Jerry and his sister Charlene grew up in Cloquet. Jerry graduated from Cloquet High School in 1956, then attended the University of Minnesota Duluth and studied to be a high school shop teacher. Shortly before he finished college, and in the midst of the Vietnam crisis, a friend...
Sandra Kay (McKibbon) Duffy passed away unexpectedly Feb. 13, 2022. Beloved and devoted wife, mom, grandma, sister, aunt, nurse, caregiver, outdoorsperson, quilter, traveler, photographer, puzzle solver, Santa - these and so many more words only begin to describe her life's impact on her loved ones. Sandy was born in Cloquet on March 25, 1948, the eldest of three sisters. She met the love of her life, Mike Duffy, in Carlton in the first grade. When Mike went off to graduate school the fall of...
Douglas Seivert Haglin, 82, of Esko died Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022, at Community Memorial Hospital in Cloquet. He was born Dec. 28, 1939, in Duluth to Elmer W. and Ida M. Haglin, the eighth of 12 children. Doug graduated from Denfeld High School, Class of 1958, and from the University of Wisconsin-Superior with a degree in elementary education. He served four years in the U.S. Air Force as a flight engineer. He was an elementary teacher at Proctor schools for 28 years. He married Carol Jean Bard...
Duane Carl Johnson, 59, of Cloquet passed away Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022, in his home. He was born Nov. 8, 1962, in Cloquet to Carl and Janet (Koski) Johnson. He was raised in Barnum and graduated from high school there in 1981. He attended Duluth Area Vocational Technical Institute. Duane married Tammie Johnson on Oct. 31, 1999. He served in the U.S. Navy November of 1987 to November of 1990. He was a truck driver for the Michels pipeline and worked for CAP Trico and Moses Chevrolet. He loved...
Jack Norman Oswell, 70, of Esko passed away Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022 at St. Luke’s hospital in Duluth. He was born July 5, 1951, in Cloquet to Oscar “Bud” and Eleanor Oswell. Jack graduated from Barnum High School in 1969 and then attended vocational school for auto body repair. He married Susan Kay Arnson on Aug. 25, 1973, in Blackhoof Township. Jack was the owner of Oswell Auto Body until retiring in 2014. He liked riding his Harley, and enjoyed collecting cars and hunting. Jack was prece...
William “Bill” Francis Anderson died peacefully Feb. 16, 2022. Despite having heart problems which began with a triple bypass at age 49, Bill was fairly active and healthy most of his life. He overcame additional health issues over the years, including prostate cancer and bouts of pneumonia. Significant weight loss and other side effects of esophageal dysphagia depleted his strength, and he died two months after his 85th birthday. Bill was born Dec. 23, 1936. His parents were Marie (Thom) and...
The mask mandate implemented by Cloquet elected officials a month ago will be allowed to automatically expire on its planned end date of Friday, Feb. 18. The expiration was ensured when Tuesday’s Cloquet city council meeting was canceled “because there was nothing that required council action,” said Cloquet mayor Roger Maki. Maki said he implemented the original mandate — with the support of a majority of council members — because researchers at Mayo were predicting a surge in the Covid Omicron variant around Feb. 1 followed by a swift dec...
In Cloquet, it isn't farfetched to have Olympic dreams. After all, Olympic Drive snakes around the land Joe Nowak convinced Northwest Paper to donate for a park, now home to ice arenas and a woodland park. Corey Millen and Jamie Langenbrunner played in the arenas when they were Lumberjacks. Millen was the first Cloquet hockey player to reach the Olympics, playing on the 1988 team. Langenbrunner played in the era when NHL players began competing. He was a last-second replacement on the 1998...
As Covid case numbers continue to fall after peaking here in early February, so too do the mask mandates. The only school district in the county to mandate universal mask wearing in all grades since the start of school, Cloquet school board members took a cautious approach through both the Delta and the Omicron variants, never altering the mandate. On Monday, however, board members voted 5-0 to end the mask mandate effective Saturday. Their decision was greeted with applause by nearly a dozen...
On top of a pandemic, the Barnum school board is looking at a challenging 2022, with top administrators leaving and an $8 million decision on school maintenance coming fast. During the regular meeting Tuesday, Feb. 15, the board held a lengthy discussion about replacing administrative staff that have left or are leaving. The board approved the resignation of Judy Vitito, the former elementary principal, effective Jan. 7, at the meeting of the board Jan. 18, and Mike McNulty, superintendent,...
Sometimes an athlete just has a less than stellar day. Unfortunately for the Lumberjacks Nordic ski team, that happened to a few skiers Wednesday, Feb. 9 at the Section 7 Nordic ski meet. It meant the Cloquet-Esko-Carlton Nordic ski season ended at sections, with no CEC athletes advancing to the state meet this week, also held at Giants Ridge in Biwabik. There were also other factors at play. First, the weather: Conditions were soft, making it harder to ski. Second, this was the first year of a...
The Wrenshall school board on Feb. 9 appointed district substitute teacher Ben Johnson to the school board as a temporary replacement for member Alice Kloepfer, who had a serious case of Covid last fall and is still recovering. Johnson, who is also a firefighter in Duluth, expressed interest in becoming a board member last summer as the board needed to replace Michelle Blanchard, who became principal of the school. Cindy Bourn eventually filled that spot. Johnson has a child in the school and one who graduated from Wrenshall. He said he’d l...
A special five-judge panel released new congressional and legislative maps Tuesday setting the political playing field for Minnesota for the next 10 years. The newly drawn congressional districts keep the 7th in western Minnesota and extends the 8th district west to take in all the state’s northern Native American reservations and south to the northeast metro area. State legislative districts covering Carlton County changed little in the process....
A car crashed into a Barnum restaurant Sunday, but no one was injured and no charges are being filed. The 911 call came into Carlton County dispatch at 10:46 a.m. Sunday, reporting a motor vehicle had struck the Lazy Bear Restaurant building at 3696 Main St. in Barnum. According to a press release from the Carlton County Sheriff’s Office, Bloomington’s Amanda Geyen, 40, was turning from County Road 6 into the shared parking lot of the Minit Mart Gas Station and the Lazy Bear Restaurant. Gey...
For girls seeking the ultimate prom experience, finding and affording a dress can be a barrier to the big night. For the past several years, a mother-daughter team has put dresses within reach. Amy and Ashleigh Arntson's nonprofit If the Dress Fits helps teens find affordable dresses by collecting dress donations from across the region. After taking two years off during the pandemic, the team is back with a new concept this year. This year, dresses and fittings are taking place by appointment on...
Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College is hosting a fantastic event featuring two FDLTCC alumni on Wednesday, Feb. 23. The exciting event will feature a presentation from Serrano Robinson and soul food lunch provided by Doc Witherspoon’s Soul Food Shack. Robinson currently works as the youth restorative program coordinator at Men as Peacemakers in Duluth. During his presentation, Serrano will acknowledge the United States’ history involving the Black community while raising awareness of current racial inequities and social injustices tha...
Northeast Minnesota Office of Job Training (JET) and Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College are providing free nursing assistant training through a 4-week fast track hybrid program in March. Eligible individuals interested in pursuing the exciting field of nursing can take a unique 4-week Nursing Assistant course at FDLTCC for free, courtesy of JET. Starting March 7, students participating in the hybrid program will participate in virtual courses on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays and...
Now that the city’s mask mandate has ended, and most schools are removing their requirements that students wear masks at school, we can all hope that the pandemic is waning and may soon be over. Not so fast. This pandemic was caused by a new and tricky virus, and even after two years, we simply don’t know enough about it yet. Some reports say it will be with us forever, much like the flu or measles. Others say it may die out, like SARS did a few years ago. Still others think we may be able to...
The recent article by Steve Korby on his memories of sliding and skiing in the woods in Cloquet triggered my own memories from the early 1960s. I grew up on a dairy farm 3 miles northwest of Barnum. Even with few neighbor kids around, I don’t ever remember being bored for lack of fun or interesting things to do. I even felt a bit sorry for my classmates who lived in the big metropolis of Barnum — what would one do for fun in such a sterile, manmade environment? One problem we faced in the winter is that our farm and the area around it were lac...
My heartfelt thank-you to Steve Korby for sharing his story about Gary Ross. He was a wonderful person and a great friend and is missed. Thank you for sharing this story. Tim Peleski, Esko...
