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We have found some more clues in the curious case of a plaque honoring Sigfred Johnson, a World War II veteran from Cloquet who died in 1948. As reported in the Dec. 17 issue of the Pine Knot, the plaque was discovered hanging on a wall at a salvage yard in the area.
Bonnie Edin called after reading the story and insisted that she found the plaque among her father's things when he passed away and gave it to Ken Johnson, Sigfred's nephew. We found Ken after John Prouty showed us a picture of the plaque and said he wanted to hand it over to a family member.
Ken received the plaque in the Pine Knot office and was quite taken aback by its size and heft. He had never seen the plaque before. Bonnie's father, Art Swanson, worked with Sigfred and was a friend. Bonnie assumes Art and others had the plaque made when Johnson died at age 39. We thanked her for furthering the mission to solve the mystery of the plaque's origins. Ken agrees that Art would have been the kind of person to have the plaque made and, perhaps, hung at the gathering spot known as Jake's Place, today's Lost Tavern at the Cloquet-Scanlon line.
But Bonnie, insisting that she had given Ken the plaque, was muddying the waters as far as who had the plaque and when. Then Bonnie, who now lives in the Pacific Northwest, called back. It is her son, Mark Johnson, who runs Mark's Salvage & Recycling in Saginaw, where the plaque was said to have been found in the trunk of a car. So, in calling back, she suggested that perhaps Ken never did receive the plaque and her intentions made it as far as the trunk of one of her cars. She admitted that she's owned "lots of cars" over the years and that one of them may have contained the plaque and was eventually scrapped at her son's yard.
We will keep readers informed as more information drips from the plaque mystery. Send your history mystery to us at [email protected] with "history" in the subject line.