Octogenarian looking to reunite

Graduates from the Cloquet High School classes of 1953, 1954 and 1955 will gather at The River Inn later this month. In addition to Facebook and other means, 1954 CHS grad Wendell "Windy" Falstrom placed a small ad in the Pine Knot News to let people know about the event.

I connected with Fahlstrom at his home in Napa, California. These graduates are in their 80s and it's just a thrill for Windy to come back to Cloquet and rejoin his former classmates. "Once a person moves away and then reflects, it is obviously clear how fortunate we have been to have grown up and attend school in Cloquet," he said.

He grew up on the corner of Selmser Avenue and 14th Street in Cloquet (across the street from my Klemovich cousins). Windy learned to skate at a very early age.

"Athletic Park was so close that on cold winter days, I could put my skates on at home in the kitchen and walk over," he said. He became a very fast skater. As an eighth-grader, he made the Cloquet varsity squad and was one of the leading scorers.

Hockey captain Jim Arntson was a senior that year and immediately after high school enlisted in the Army and was soon thereafter a prisoner of war in Korea. Windy witnessed all this history at an early age.

He enjoyed summers too, staying at Whispering Pines on Round Lake in McGregor. "I'd swim and putz around that lake with a little boat and Evinrude motor for hours on end. It was tremendous fun and a great escape."

In the 1950s, Cloquet played hockey home games at Athletic Park and against Duluth high school teams at the Duluth Curling Club. They also played Eveleth and Hibbing from the Iron Range. Eveleth dominated the early years of the Minnesota State High School Hockey tournament. Those teams featured John Mayasich, among others, who later starred for the Minnesota Gophers and Olympic teams.

"I could almost skate with him, but nobody could shoot like him," Windy said. Mayasich is the only Gopher to have his number retired. He still holds Minnesota High School hockey records.

His senior year, Falstrom captained the Lumberjack hockey team. After a successful season, he was asked to play with a semi-pro hockey team in Duluth. They played Winnipeg and Thunder Bay and other teams in Canada. It was a great experience.

Two days after he graduated from CHS, he enlisted in the Navy. He served four years on active duty and then went to the University of Minnesota Duluth, compliments of the GI Bill. He worked fulltime at the paper mill while going to school, but with a couple of summer sessions, Fahlstrom graduated in three years. He applied for and got a job with Prudential Insurance in the area. In 1965, he took a regional job with the company in California.

Fahlstrom was in the Navy Reserve. In his 50s, a unit was looking for volunteers for a mission in the Middle East. He raised his hand. Windy was assigned to a 32-foot swift boat that was ensuring safe passage for supertankers.

When he came back from the Gulf, Windy said he set three personal goals: to go to clown school, climb a mountain, and play hockey again.

He wanted to go to clown school, as he was a Shriner and loved to entertain kids. He went to a clown school and graduated with honors.

For the next goal, Windy climbed the landmark Mount Shasta in California. Its elevation is 14,162 feet. "It took all the energy I could muster to make it up and down that peak," Falstrom said.

His last goal was to play hockey. By now he was in his 60s. He found an arena in California where he could skate regularly. One teammate was famed Peanuts cartoon strip originator Charles Schulz.

It was a pleasure catching up with Windy. Welcome back to all graduates attending class reunions in Cloquet this summer.

Steve Korby's interest in writing goes back to when he was in fourth grade and editor of the Scan-Satellite school newspaper in Scanlon. Steve loves sports, especially golf. He welcomes human interest stories and tales regarding Carlton County residents, projects, history, and plans.