History Mystery: Golf club mural artist revealed

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 draftsman, but provided no other details.

He died in the Twin Cities area in 2003 at age 86. His obituary stated that his "passion was painting, wildlife, and waterfowl." His work, according to his family, hangs in offices, businesses and homes across the state.

There is no mention of Cloquet in Edman's short obituary. The 1940 U.S. Census lists William, George and Ruth as the grown children of Ray and Karin Edman on 17th Street.

The mural at the country club likely mirrors Shorty's younger days, when he was considered more of a "cartoonist," as sports reporting legend Halsey Hall wrote in a Minneapolis Star column in 1941, perhaps when Shorty was attending school in Minneapolis. Edman had apparently sent Hall a cartoon about the Minnesota and Wisconsin college sports rivalry.

Edman's son, Jerry, was the first hockey player from Cloquet to don a Minnesota Gophers uniform. Jerry was the product of a hockey system created in "basketball crazy" Cloquet by Don Bodin, who was part of an all-Duluth line for the Gophers in 1950.

Jerry Edman was small, like his dad, but quick on his skates. He helped the Gophers win a Big 10 championship in the early 1960s. The team was coached by John Mariucci and one of Edman's teammates was future coach Doug Woog.

Jerry died in 2019 at age 75. Shorty's other immediate family, wife Lola and daughter Darlyne, have all passed.

One of Jerry's four children, Wendy Echartea of Indiana, where Jerry moved to in his professional life, said her grandfather was definitely an artist and that he often talked about his formative years in Cloquet.

There are wildlife paintings by Shorty found on the internet, and, when he died, tribute was paid to him by a member of the Braemar Golf Club in Edina, a suburb of Minneapolis. The writer said one of Shorty's paintings was still hanging at a building there.

- Mike Creger, Pine Knot News