She is survived by son, Danny (Deb); daughter, Barb (Dan) Donohue; grandchildren, Shellie (Scott) Wilson, Joshua and James Curtis, Marty (Julie) Witt, Matt Witt, Joe (Debra) Donohue; great grandchildren, Gabrielle and Kalliann Wilson, Devin and Ava Witt; sister, Bonnie Backlund; brothers, Donald (Donna) Rahn, Leonard (Donna Jean), Robert (Dolly), David (Rose); special friend, Morrie Dahlheimer.

Preceded in death by husband, Clarence “Sonny”; infant daughter, Patricia; infant son, Douglas; granddaughter, Jana Curtis.

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Editor

A statewide effort to raise money for the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial education center will make a pit stop in Otsego on Thursday at Veterans Memorial Sports Complex, 7350 Quaday Ave.

The Ride for Healing, which starts on Memorial Day in St. Paul and concludes in the Brainerd area, will include 60 stopping points, according to the Department of Minnesota Veterans of Foreign Wars has announced.

“This is monumental,” said Jim Hesselgrave, a member of the Elk River-Rogers VFW Post 5518. “There have been welcome home events, but they have been centralized.”

The Elk River-Rogers VFW will host a rally at noon May 30 at the Veterans Memorial Sports Complex in Otsego. All veterans and members of the Elk River and Otsego communities are invited.

State Veterans of Foreign Wars Commander Lee Ulferts has asked that all communities statewide gather for an event honoring the sacrifice and service of Vietnam veterans.

Ulferts, a combat-wounded veteran of Vietnam, said the ride will also give communities a chance to contribute to the cause of building the Education Center at the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

“This Center will help remind the Nation of the trauma suffered by these veterans,” he said. “I see this as a ‘healing’ process and the welcome home that many Vietnam veterans never received.”

The Education Center at the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial will house the legacy of the Vietnam veteran generation and their sacrifices, Ulferts said.

The week will start at the Minnesota Vietnam Veterans Memorial in St. Paul on May 27 with four teams departing for a statewide ride covering more than 60 communities and end in Brainerd on May 31 for a two-day event.

“This ride will reach out to areas that haven’t been touched with a statewide welcome home and at the same time raise money to help memorialize what Vietnam veterans sacrificed for generations to come,” Hesselgrave said.

The Otsego event will last from noon to 2 p.m. at the Veterans Memorial Sports Complex.

A state VFW official will deliver a message honoring and thanking Vietnam veterans for their service.

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Editor

Cecilia Scheel, a former Elk River City Council member who fought for property rights and limited government, has died at 79 years of age.

The Elk River woman is survived by eight children, 21 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren. She is preceded in death by her husband of 50 years, Eugene, an infant daughter of theirs, her parents and three of her six siblings.

Scheel grew up in rural Akeley. She married Gene in 1952 and moved to Spring Lake Park where they started their family before moving to New Brighton four years later. They began a tool grinding business in 1961 and in 1973 they moved to a farm in Elk River.

Scheel was a past president of the Ladies Auxiliary of Kraus-Hartig VFW in Spring Lake Park where she was active for more than 40 years and directed its veterans funeral program.

Scheel gave her life to rearing her children, but after they left home, she was elected to the Elk River City Council for a term before retiring on her farm.

Elk River Mayor John Dietz, who served on the council with Scheel,  remembered her as both feisty and firm in her convictions.

“She was not in favor of government intervention,” Dietz said.

Former Mayor Stephanie Klinzing remembered Scheel similarly.

“She wanted to pursue the things she thought were right, and she never let up,” Klinzing said. “A lot of us are intense about something, but we will eventually let up or compromise. Of course, that’s good.

“But Cecilia never let up. She always stayed the course on the things she felt were right.”

Scheel upset Duane Kropuenske in her bid for the council. She served one term and was beat out by Daryl Thompson in a re-election bid.

Funeral services will be at 11 a.m. Thursday at Miller Funeral Home, 6210 Highway 65 NE, Fridley (763-571-1300). Visitation was on Wednesday. Interment Ft. Snelling National Cemetery.

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Contributing writer

To conclude an annual performance review that began May 7, Sherburne County Administrator Brian Bensen reached an agreement with the board of commissioners May 21 to call for his retirement effective Aug. 1, 2013.

The date was previously discussed at a meeting last November. Bensen will have worked for the county 35 years. He began as a solid waste officer in 1978, and he was promoted to serve as the county’s planning director prior to his appointment as administrator in 1999.

A county native who was raised on a farm in Haven Township, Bensen earned an education degree from the University of Nebraska, with graduate work in public finance and administration at St. Cloud State University before his county employment.

As the county administrator, Bensen typically had gone through annual reviews in June, but Commissioner Bruce Anderson, the retired sheriff from Elk River who was elected to the board last fall, asked for an early start in response to concerns he had heard from other staff.

Among those issues, Anderson said, there were questions whether other staff had always been directed through job reviews in line with consideration of pay raises. Bensen responded said that in recent years, the managerial duties were divided so that a deputy administrator was responsible for logging those reviews. Through department reorganization, the full-time deputy administrator’s position was discontinued last February.

As of the May 21 board meeting, Bensen had met once with Anderson along with Commissioner Ewald Petersen, County Attorney Kathleen Heaney and Human Resources Director Roxanne Chmielewski as a five-member search committee to find a full-time successor for Bensen.

Anderson announced they would meet for a second time before the holiday weekend, with no word yet on how broadly they will extend a search.

“We won’t know until we get into that committee and talk,” Anderson told Star News.

The transition has otherwise begun, as the board voted unanimously May 21 to name County Assessor Dan Weber as an interim deputy administrator. Petersen made the motion for Weber, seconded by Commissioner Felix Schmiesing.

Weber has some interim administrative background from when he worked seven years as the assessor for Kanabec County, where he served before joining Sherburne County in early 2012.

Of Bensen, Schmiesing said the outgoing administrator has been a leader in the background, “working and solving problems. … I think we’re going to miss that a lot.”

Commissioner and 2013 board chair Rachel Leonard added, “I appreciate all the very excellent work you did.”

The retirement agreement allows for Bensen to receive six months of severance pay, totaling $68,592 and to be issued Jan. 2, 2014, along with paid health insurance premiums of more than $7,000 to cover one year.

“I’ve had opportunities for great challenges and great learning,” Bensen told the board May 21.

“I will miss the many friends I have among the county employees and other business contacts,” he added, in a letter to the board. “My life has been richer for being here.”

In separate conversations after the meeting, Bensen and County Board Chair Leonard agreed they are nearing the end of the administrator’s county career with their issues resolved.

“Brian’s career (has been) marked with many successes, but there were a few problems which have been resolved,” Leonard said. “We wish him a rewarding retirement.”

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Contributing writer

This spring, as hundreds of seniors graduate from Elk River Area School District, one will have traveled more than 103,000 miles commuting to school over seven years. To put that in perspective, the earth’s circumference is about 25,000 miles.

Jacob Crippes, 18, has come a long way since sixth grade, when he became the first student in the Elk River School District to enroll in the Northwest Suburban Integration School District Magnet School program.

In 2006, sixth-grader Jacob Crippes became the first student in the Elk River School District to enroll in the Northwest Suburban Integration School District Magnet School program. He is graduating from Fridley High School this month.

Five school districts cooperate in the program, which allows students living in the districts to go to a school of their choice.

Mother Kori remembers the day the postcard for the magnet program came in the mail.

“I said, ‘Oh, I wonder what this is all about?’” she said, and then made plans to attend the open house.

The Crippes family went table to table, picking up brochures and talking to school representatives. One school stood out to them: Fridley Middle School.

It offered foreign language classes beginning in sixth grade.

“I really wanted to study a language,” said Crippes.

To even be considered for the Naval Academy, a candidate has to secure a congressional nomination. After a grueling interview, Crippes was rewarded with a nomination from Rep. Michele Bachmann’s office.

The first day of the 2006-07 school year, Crippes woke at 5:30 a.m., got ready, had breakfast, then bounded out the door to the van waiting at the end of the drive.

The fact that the program provided transportation “made it doable,” said Kori.

Crippes had a 45-minute commute each direction between Zimmerman and Fridley. He was the only passenger.

The first two years, Don Watson, a man in his 70s, chauffeured Crippes to school. Driver and rider became close. Watson got to hear about teachers, golf and band practice. Sometimes the exhausted middle schooler took a nap. Sometimes he finished homework.

The next year, Crippes was the youngest student to letter in golf. And two more kids from Zimmerman joined the van ride to Fridley.

Another reason the Crippeses liked Fridley was the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. IB classes stress the interrelatedness of courses and examine how what’s being taught can be applied to the real world.

Jacob Crippes and his parents Tom and Kori of Zimmerman.

In 10th grade at Fridley High School, Crippes’ IB English class was asked to develop a personal project.

“You were supposed to think of something you could do to help your community or peers,” he said. Some would compose music or seek to find a cure for a disease.

Crippes said he would join the military.

The idea was to get students to think about a possible future and then to research it. Crippes met with military recruiters.

He’d never seriously considered the military until the project, and after that he was hooked.

The seed planted in the IB English course resulted in one of Crippes’ biggest challenges to date when he applied to the Naval Academy.

“They start out with 20,000 applicants and from that choose 4,000,” said the graduating senior.

After being selected, Crippes had to secure a congressional nomination from a U.S. senator or representative. He interviewed with selection committees chosen by the offices of Rep. Michele Bachmann and Sens. Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar.

The Franken and Klobuchar committees were laid-back. But the Bachmann committee grilled Crippes like he was a private in boot camp.

“Everything I said was wrong,” he said.

His mother remembers him walking out of that interview. “One look at his face, and I was like uh-oh.”

So it came as a shock when he received his nomination in the mail — and it was from Bachmann’s office. The hard-knuckle committee members had been testing his mettle and they liked what they saw.

Crippes didn’t make it into this year’s round of Naval Academy selectees, but the graduate has been chosen to attend Greystone, a preparatory school for the Naval Academy. He’ll try again next year, and one way or another pursue his dream of a military career.

Because after a journey of 103,000 miles and seven years, Crippes knows what he wants.

“I want to serve my country,” he explained. “I want to do it for the people who live in my country and for the people already serving my country.”

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Special to the Star News

No one shouted, “Move that bus” like they do on the hit ABC TV show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” However, the emotion that was displayed proved there wasn’t a need to move a bus to make the reveal of a new playground dramatic.

“I was holding one of our youngest guests as we walked around the corner to the backyard,” explained Great River Family Promise Executive Director Jess Hartfiel. “Her eyes got so big, and she started shaking her little fist as though she were a cheerleader.”

Submitted photo
A team of staff and students from the Minnesota School of Business built a playground last week.

As the other six children, who are also guests at the homeless day center known as Great River Family Promise, rounded the corner to find a newly constructed playground, they stopped suddenly about 10 feet away and just stared in amazement.

Then, with one confirmation that they could play on it, all seven ran over to the play set and started swinging, sliding and rock climbing. The staff and faculty from Minnesota School of Business in Elk River stood back and watched as their hours of labor and planning all became worthwhile.

“The entire experience was so rewarding,” said Doni Deters, Minnesota School of Business employee. “But the best part was watching the kids and parents enjoy the end product.”

Unlike TV show, where families featured are the homeowners, these families are guests at the Elk River-based homeless day center. Up until now, the center didn’t have any outside activities for the kids to do.

“For kids whose lives are impacted by not having a home and playground of their own, you all gave them a wonderful gift,” said Hartfiel in an email to Minnesota School of Business staff and faculty. “It is a gift that will keep on giving as many children will have the opportunity to enjoy the playground for many seasons to come.”

A work crew from the Minnesota School of Business assembled a play structure for the children of families who come to the day center.

Purchasing and building the playground weren’t the only focuses of Minnesota School of Business’s Community Service Day last Friday. A team of staff and faculty also created a container garden complete with vegetables and herbs for the homeless day center’s guests to pick and enjoy. They raked leaves, which revealed flowers that were starting to sprout.

A third group of staff and faculty made a surprise project of building the playground at the homeless day center possible.

This group entertained, educated and pampered all of the homeless day center guests at the school’s campus. They held workshops on fun things to do with kids on a small budget, nutritional foods that don’t cost a fortune, fashionable clothes for working adults and school-aged kids for less, among many others.

Additionally, some staff members engaged in activities like creating tie pillows with the kids, while others pampered the adults with massages.

“One mom said how much she appreciated the massage as she has never had one before,” Hartfiel said.

The day’s events were all part of a designated National Community Service Day held simultaneously across the campuses of Globe University, Minnesota School of Business and Broadview University.

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Editor

Lt. Col. Lyle Bradley, who flew fighter planes launched from aircraft carriers in both WWII and the Korean War, will talk about teamwork in a Memorial Day address on Monday at Lions Park in Elk River.

Lt. Col. Lyle Bradley flew Corsairs in both WWII and the Korean War.

Bradley credits teamwork  — not only on the battlefields and in the skies, where he and other pilots shot down enemy planes, but also back at home, where people were pressed into service in various forms — with winning WWII.

“Farmers and factory workers were as much veterans of WWII as those in the war,” he said from his Andover home. “If it wouldn’t have been for teamwork, we wouldn’t have won the war.”

The Dubuque, Iowa, native logged more than 1,000 hours on Corsairs to provide support over the Pacific Ocean in WWII and ground support over the Chosin Reservoir in the Korean War. But the retired high school science teacher who taught for five decades at Anoka High School walks the talk when it comes to teamwork.

“War is not all bleak,” he said. “Some very good things come of it. Most of it’s not good, of course.”

Bradley will likely tell of a  Japanese fighter pilot turned medical doctor he befriended after the war, despite the fact that he had shot down the same fighter pilot’s friend during the war.

“War is war,” he said of his friend he came to know as Dr. K. “Things change.”

Memorial Day  celebration  at Lions Park

10 a.m., Monday, May 27

•Emcee, Curt Swanson senior master sergeant, USAF (Ret), commander VFW Post 5518 and Mike Beyer, Legion commander, Post 112

•Memorial Day address by Lyle Bradley, lt. col., USMC, Marine combat pilot during WWII and Korea

•Awards by Legion Auxiliary, VFW Auxiliary, Legion Post 112, VFW Post 5518

•An Honor Guard rifle salute will be performed, following the benediction, at the base of the Lions Park flagpole to honor those deceased veterans in the air, on land and at sea.

•The local German Band will provide entertainment at the American Legion Post after the ceremony.

•Roll call of deceased for 14 veterans from the local area to inlcude Lloyd Bennett, Kenton LeFebvre, Larry Braun, Henry Malinowski, Joseph N. Corrow, Darrel Noyes, James Goinbs, Harold Roach, Curtis Johnson, James Schmitz, Robert Kelley, Robert Umbarger, Fredrick Labandz and Harold Warneke

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Each student with special needs has an individual education plan (IEP) that by law must be funded. All children including those with special needs have an equal right to an education as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. They also have a right to the same funding as all children.

The problem comes when the cost of mandated individualized programs for special needs children is greater than the state and federal funds provided. Local school districts then by law must pick up the extra cost from their general funds, causing school boards to cut funds and opportunities for all students.

In 1967 Congress passed a law requiring school districts to have an individual plan for each learning disabled child and promised to provide 40 percent of the funding. The state of Minnesota also is expected to provide funds to educate these children. At no time was it suggested that local school districts would have to fund what the federal and state governments refused to provide.

Look at what’s happened in Minnesota alone.

According to the Minnesota Department of Education, in 2012 it cost $1.8 billion to fund these individual plans. The state and federal government covered $1.2 billion, forcing local school districts to bolster special education funding by almost $600 million from their general operating funds.

Had the federal and state governments paid what was promised – another $450 million – local school districts would have had to pay only $150 million more last year.

Obviously this system is broken. There has been no action by either the federal or state governments to close the funding gap that compels the diversion of local school district funds from programs for all to the cost of mandated IEPs.

The federal government is content with the underfunded status quo. Gov. Mark Dayton had budgeted an extra $125 million for special education. State legislators would rather spread any new funding to their local districts, rather than give more to districts that educate many of the disabled learners.

A leading advocate for children with learning disabilities contends that a local school district’s subsidy of the funding gap is part of the community’s responsibility to educate all children.  She notes that students with special needs also lose opportunities when districts cut operating budgets.

In a survey taken by ECM education columnist Joe Nathan, 40 Minnesota school superintendents said their No. 1 priority for the federal government is full funding of special education.

We favor a concerted effort to have the federal and state governments live up to their commitments, because after all they are the ones who mandate that these IEPs be funded.

Until the people rise up and demand that the federal and state governments live up to their promises, under-funding will continue and students who have no IEPs will continue to feel the loss of educational opportunities they deserve. —An opinion of the ECM Publishers 

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Jennifer Mueller and her son, Tyler dressed for German Festival success.

The German Heritage Festival committee would like to thank everyone who helped to make the first German Heritage Festival an amazing success. Approximately 1,000 people of all ages gathered at Lions Park in Elk River to enjoy a wide variety of exciting German music performed by Command Performance, the Bavarian Musikmeisters and Northstar Boys Choir. The Elk River Lions and MCCoys served great German food and beer while children enjoyed costumed characters and fairytales by Youth Theatre Workshop in the castle tent. All ages had fun trying their skill at the carnival games sponsored by Abba Roofing and Windows, Coldwell Banker Vision, Thrivent Financial and Guardian Angels.

We greatly appreciate the support of the Central Minnesota Arts Board, the Minnesota Stage Legislature as well as all of the individuals and businesses who helped to make this idea a reality. — Eileen Anderson, Elk River (Editor’s note: Anderson wrote this on behalf of herself and the rest of the Elk River German Heritage Festival Committee Members Brian Budahn, Harold Gramstad, Jennifer Mueller and Deborah Weston.)

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