Opinions/Editorials

by Senator Amy Klobuchar
Each Memorial Day, Americans across the country honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation, and work to ensure that the price they paid to defend our security and preserve our way of life is never taken for granted. It’s been said that a nation that forgets its defenders will be itself forgotten.
It’s also a time for us to consider what more we can do to treat the families of the fallen with the dignity they deserve.
Of course, one of the most important ways that we can pay tribute to the fallen is by ensuring they are given burials worthy of their sacrifice. Like Virginia, Minnesota resident Dante Tini—who was just 19 years old when he was killed during Pearl Harbor while serving as a radioman on the U.S.S. Oklahoma. He had been preparing to come home for the holidays prior to that fateful day.
But 80 years later, his family, friends and community are still waiting for his remains to return home.

by Assistant Secretary for Land
and Minerals Management Joe Balash
At the dawn of the twentieth century, tens of thousands of people arrived and settled in the Iron Range across northern Minnesota. They came from Scandinavia, Austria-Hungary, Italy, England, and dozens of other places of origin. These new Minnesotans mined the ore, for which the region was named, and built their communities. By 1920, their population had swelled to over 100,000 and comprised 85 percent of the workforce in the mines. When the rise of National Socialism threatened the western world, output from these mines fed the production of the tanks, ships, and airplanes that won World War II.
A century later, we find ourselves in a world where copper is essential to our efficient use of electricity and the transmission of information. Once again, northern Minnesota may play a key role in supplying the raw materials that are needed for solar panels, electric vehicles, and smartphones.

Dear Editor:
Fifty-nine years ago, Francis Gary Powers was piloting a U-2 spy plane over Russia and taking pictures of something the CIA found interesting. Until that day, the U-2 had a stellar record of never being intercepted or shot down. That was about to change.
The Russian bear had built a new surface to air missile that could go high enough and fast enough to overtake the U-2 and knock it out of the sky- and that’s just what happened. The cold war was raging and the Bear was making hay over the spying incident to his advantage. Eventually, the two countries swapped spies and life went on, but the US had its nose bloodied, been embarrassed and needed to improve their odds of surviving in the skies over Russia.

Another Ely business is slated to close, one of the two dollar stores, to go along with the Ely Bowling Alley. Jobs are lost and the area suffers financially.
At city hall this past week the council was smart enough to shop local when buying a vehicle for the police department. Those dollars will help keep Mike Motors in Ely.
We only wish the council had that in mind when they decided to send money to Tower to have the city legals published. Those dollars are gone and this local newspaper suffers. With the loss of Shopko, it’s been a double whammy for a small business trying to make payroll and as an added bonus, the first half of property taxes this week.
Business owners know every time someone goes out of town for a product or even a medical procedure, those dollars go away and don’t come back. We’d like to see the law changed where cities and school districts have to hire local employees, but that’s another issue.

There was a special Ely school board meeting on Monday that brought a reason to tap the brakes on two major initiatives, hiring a new superintendent and pursuing a major building project. The reason? Millions of dollars for collaborating with neighboring school districts such as 2142, the sprawling St. Louis County district that includes schools in Babbitt and Tower.
A law pushed by Sen. Tom Bakk makes millions of dollars available to districts who work to share services, personnel and even facilities.
Ely hasn’t been able to get a seat at the table, until now. On Monday it was made clear that the taxpayers of Ely could get the IRRRB to foot a good portion of the bill for a major building project.

WINNER of the Ely Chamber of Commerce’s Jackpine Bob Cary Community Spirit Award was David Wigdahl. He received the award at the annual Smile, You’re In Ely dinner Tuesday at Grand Ely Lodge. Photos by Nick Wognum

Positivity at Smile, You’re in Ely

We are fortunate to live where major rivers don’t threaten our community. We may not have a Sandbag Central but we do have people impacted by an overabundance of water.
When the city storm sewer system froze and backed up a couple weeks ago, two places were hit hard. A resident near the freeze up on Third Avenue East had 6,000 gallons of water fill her basement.
A Go Fund Me site was quickly set up to help her with expenses. The community responded with financial contributions and the goal was quickly met and exceeded.
On the other end of the freeze-up the water went into Sir G’s Restaurant and sand bags were used to keep more water from coming in.
Now volunteers are working with the restaurant’s owners to help with repairs to the floor. This is another example of community members stepping forward to help a friend in need.

Ely suffered another blow to the local economy when Shopko announced all stores would close in June. While this is an example of corporate mismanagement and the impact of Amazon, losing a major business hurts Ely.
First and foremost we will have employees who will be out of a job. Efforts are underway by Up North Jobs to help these people find employment when the paychecks stop. There are jobs that will be available at the time of year, but not many that are year-round.
Our tourism economy provides jobs for people during the summer months but when restaurants, resorts and stores close in the fall, those jobs disappear.
The impact even hits us at the Ely Echo. We have been inserting Shopko flyers in our paper for years and had inserts scheduled out into May. Not only will we lose that business going forward, we’re likely going to be out $3,000 in bills the company now claims it will not pay.

Letter to the Editor:
Stories have recently appeared in the print media regarding the hiring of former Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Tom Landwehr by Ely based Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness to serve as its Executive Director. Landwehr was hired to lead their organization to fight copper-nickel mining within the BWCAW watershed, focusing on Twin Metals Minnesota’s proposed copper-nickel underground mine, which would be located near Ely, Minnesota.
Up North Jobs Inc. is an Ely based nonprofit membership organization chartered in 2013 to promote economic development and job growth in Northeastern Minnesota. Permit us to offer additional facts to bring context to the print media stories.

No one growing up in the last generation in Ely would have ever dreamed it could happen. The vanishing of St. Urho’s Day as one of the area’s most honored celebrations.
In Ely, Mill’s Clothing Store, under the proprietorship of the late Bill Mills (a Finn with an anglicized name) featured the day. Restaurants were decorated green and purple and featured Finnish foods such as kola mojakka.
In dozens of homes, Finns gathered for more or less solemn observances. For years, the arbiters of Finnish culture and Urho lore were Lorene and Ben Mauser. Lorene by birth, Ben by marriage. Why green and purple? Because St. Urho became known as the cleric who drove the grasshoppers out of Finland and saved the grape crops for wine. Aha, one might say, but is this not a takeoff on St. Patrick, the Irish saint who reportedly drove the snakes out of the Ireland? In a sense, yes; but that is not the only connection.