For 71 years, the stately mansion on Duluth’s London Road prompted many to crane their necks, taking in Glensheen until the very last moment when the property slipped out of sight. When the 39-room mansion opened its doors as a museum in 1979, crowds of Duluthians and tourists stood in line for the first tour. This was the first time visitors were allowed inside the Congdon estate. Chester Congdon was the richest man in Minnesota when he died in 1916, after making a fortune in iron ore land speculation, copper mines, and orchards. Throughout the years, citizens have also been riveted by the murders of the mansion’s last resident, Congdon’s daughter Elisabeth and her nurse, Velma Pietila in 1977.

The dark past and family fortune might have created the curiosity that drew crowds of people to the ornate front door of 3300 London Road for the first tours in the late ‘70’s. But, when all is said and done, the majesty of the estate continues to draw people 34 years later. In fact, more than 2-million people have toured Glensheen.

The longevity of the estate’s appeal can be attributed to its authenticity. It’s one of few historic house museums in the country with the original collection intact. From the tiny details including the letters in a desk drawer, to the significant call system that works to this day, Glensheen is an incredible slice of turn-of-the-last century opulence.

More information about the Glensheen Community Day can be found on Glensheen’s website, glensheen.org or by calling (218) 726-8910.

Starting at 8 a.m. on race day, the UMD Alumni Association will be hosting a Bulldog Fanstand on the outdoor patio at Pizza Luce, on the corner of Lake Avenue and Superior Street.

We invite all UMD alumni and friends to stop by to say hello and cheer on the runners as they pass by. We need you to help us create a warm and welcoming Bulldog Country atmosphere, so whether you’re running or cheering on a family member or friend, here’s your chance to say, loud and proud, that you’ve got Bulldog Spirit.

What can you enjoy at the Bulldog Fanstand? Purchase a hot or cold beverage inside Pizza Luce, and toast the morning (and the runners!) outside on the patio. Order breakfast or lunch and dine outdoors so you won’t have to miss a moment of marathon action. Fan favorite, Champ the Bulldog, will be on hand to entertain and high-five the runners, too! Most importantly, you can cheer for your Bulldog runner and all the Grandma’s Marathon racers. We’ll even provide the pom-poms so you can take your cheering to the next level.

You can find convenient parking in the Technology Village parking ramp, located just behind Pizza Luce and connected by the Skywalk. The ramp entrance is on 1st Street.

Have you ordered your UMD running shirt yet? Visit UMD Stores on Kirby Drive today, or order your shirt online. Don’t forget to use your Alumni Discount Code (discount applies only to online purchases)! Each shirt is specially priced at $26.39 for both men’s and women’s shirts after the discount is applied. Five dollars per shirt will also be donated to the UMD Alumni Association Scholarship Fund.

Grandma’s Marathon was created in 1977 when a local running club called the North Shore Striders partnered with Grandma’s Restaurant to plan and host a marathon along Highway 61—one of the most scenic courses in the world. What started as a small road race consisting of 150 runners has grown to be the 13th largest marathon in the United States.

When Grandma’s Marathon became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in 1987, the 17-member board of directors, Executive Director, Scott Keenan, and staff of Grandma’s Marathon, adopted the philosophy of reaching for the stars and never being satisfied with the status quo. This led to the addition of the Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon in 1991 and the William A. Irvin 5K in 1997. Today, Grandma’s Marathon weekend is one of the largest multi-race festivals in the nation. The 2012 races drew over 17,000 participants from 47 states and 41 different countries, 50,000 race fans from across the globe, and 5,000 volunteers from the Twin Ports and surrounding areas, AND 1,042 Bulldogs!

Johnson and colleagues from UMD’s Large Lakes Observatory (LLO) and an international team of scientists extracted ancient sediment in 2005 from two sites under Lake Malawi, the second largest lake in the East African Rift Valley. The lake sediment in the drilling samples accumulated over 1.2 million years, providing the longest undisturbed history of the environment and climate yet obtained for the African continent.

Examining the Sediment from Lake Malawi
In October 2010, Johnson arranged for UMD graduate student Ben Chorn to take a two-week course with Dr. Christine Lane, a geographer at the University of Oxford, to examine Lake Malawi sediment samples from 75,000 years ago, looking for the Toba ash. Following this training, Chorn returned to UMD to carry on the search, with frequent communication with Lane.

After more than a year of analyzing a number of volcanic ash layers derived from volcanoes in nearby Tanzania, they found a specific volcanic ash from the Toba explosions on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. This was the largest volcanic eruption of the past 2.5 million years, thousands of times greater than Krakatoa (1883) or Pinatubo (1991). Evidence of Toba’s giant plume of ash was previously found from the South China Sea to the Arabian Sea, but never before in Africa.

The Population of the Human Race Drops
About the same time as the Toba eruption took place, genetic evidence points to a drop in the number of our species, Homo sapiens, in Africa. Lake Malawi is located in the East African Rift Valley, where our ancestors emerged about 200,000 years ago. “Something created a population ‘bottleneck’ around 75,000 years ago, at the time of the Toba eruption,” said Johnson. The human population dropped cataclysmically to near-extinction levels, some estimating the remaining population consisted of only 1,000 – 10,000 individuals. For decades, many scientists have embraced the theory that most of the people in Africa were killed when Toba’s eruption caused a global volcanic winter where sunlight was obstructed, plants died, and the planet cooled.

Lane, Chorn, and Johnson have disproved that theory. They published the paper, “Ash from the Toba super eruption in Lake Malawi shows no volcanic winter at 75 ka,” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which was released on April 29, 2013.

Tiny Shards from the Toba Volcanic Eruptions
Through examination of the sediment cores taken from Lake Malawi, Chorn found a thin layer of the distinctive glass-like shards of Toba ash. “Ben [Chorn] had to conduct an elaborate search, one centimeter at a time, to find the tiny shards, smaller than the diameter of a human hair,” said Lane. The chemical analysis by Lane definitively ties the fragments to the Toba eruption. Now it is proven that the volcanic ash traveled 4,350 miles from its source in Sumatra, about twice the distance as previously thought.

Organic Matter Proves No Volcanic Winter
In addition, Johnson examined the algae and other organic matter in the layer that contained the ash from Toba. The organic matter showed no evidence of a significant temperature drop in East Africa indicating the environment recovered quickly from the atmospheric disturbance from Toba. “There may have been effects from the Toba eruption for a few seasons, but no prolonged, substantial impact on the climate,” said Johnson. If the area had seen dramatic cooling because of all the ash and sulfur spewed into the atmosphere, the lake’s ecosystem would have changed measurably, significantly altering the composition of the lake’s mud.

The results of this study at UMD’s Large Lakes Observatory indicate that the Toba volcanic eruption did not sway the course of human history as much as some previously thought. “We can now rule out the widely touted theory that humans nearly became extinct 75,000 ago as a result of the Toba super-volcano eruption,” said Johnson. “The data don’t support it.” Johnson said it may have been another catastrophe, such as a disease, that caused the drop in human population at about that time.

Information and copy provided by UMD External Affairs.

Graduate Ceremony
At this year’s graduate program ceremony, 22 students made history as members of the first Master of Tribal Administration and Governance class. This is the only graduate degree program of its type in the United States. It trains people specifically in the best management practice for tribal governments. It focuses on tribal sovereignty, federal Indian law, leadership, ethics, tribal accounting and budgets, and tribal management (including strategic, operations, project and human resources.) Uniquely, MTAG was designed for tribes by tribes.

“We did not start out with the ideas for MTAG, they came from Indian Country,” says Tadd Johnson, director of graduate studies and chair of the American Indian Studies department at UMD.

The MTAG program began in the Fall of 2011, after two years of extensive consultations with tribal administrators, tribal leaders, and tribal organizations at national conferences and throughout the Midwest. These meetings affirmed that there is a need for partnerships between tribes and a university to assist in training tribal administrators.

Brian McInnes, an assistant professor in the Department of Education, said, “I really see the program as a good way in which UMD has been responsive to the community. It is a product of tribal consultation.”

The MTAG graduates are an accomplished group, consisting of tribal members from throughout the Midwest. This group includes three executive directors of Indian tribes, the tribal liaison for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, and several managers running programs on area reservations. Johnson said, “These students are the leaders of Indian Country.”

In the past, the Bureau of Indian Affairs administered tribal programs, but over the last few decades federal laws have passed that encourage tribal governments to run their own reservations. Johnson explains that tribes can now pair up with universities to better educate tribal administrators, putting UMD’s MTAG program on the cutting edge. “The Master of Tribal Administration and Governance program is a stepping stone that shows we have the capacity to do this,” said Tiger Brown Bull. He is an Oglala Lakota from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. When asked about his 12-hour drive to UMD, he said it was “totally worth it.” Brown Bull will be starting law school at Michigan State University this fall.

At the same time, MTAG graduate Joseph Nayquonabe admits that his jump to CEO of the economic development arm for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe occurred largely because of his participation in UMD’s MTAG program. Nayquonabe has 10 years of experience in the marketing department of Grand Casino and received an MBA from the Carlson School of Management.

To read more success stories from the graduating MTAG class or for admission information into the program, please read the UMD homepage story or a recent article published in the Duluth News Tribune.

Undergraduate Commencements
For the first time, UMD hosted two bachelor degree ceremonies in one day, both on May 18 at AMSOIL Arena. UMD’s Chancellor Dr. Lendley C. Black presided over both commencements. The two ceremonies were divided with the Labovitz School of Business and Economics (LSBE) and the Swenson College of Science and Engineering (SCSE) graduates conferred in the morning, and the College of Education and Human Service Professions (CEHSP), the College of Liberal Arts (CLA), and the School of Fine Arts (SFA) graduates conferred in the afternoon.

The Class of 2013 consisted of 2,028 students earning undergraduate degrees from UMD with a total of 1,348 students marching in both ceremonies.

University of Minnesota President Eric Kaler delivered the commencement address at both ceremonies during which he ran down a list of the Top 10 things the Class of 2013 will remember from their days at UMD, which included celebrating several NCAA National Championships and experiencing campus closures for floods in June and blizzards in April.

Tricia Nielson was the student speaker at the 10 a.m. ceremony where she received a bachelor of accounting degree, summa cum laude, in addition to graduating with departmental honors from LSBE. Taylor Kosey was the student speaker at the 3 p.m. ceremony where she received a bachelor of science degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders, summa cum laude, from CEHSP.

Did you know 1,042 UMD Bulldogs are running in this year’s Grandma’s Marathon Races? Cheer them on at Pizza Luce’s Patio (corner of Lake Avenue and Superior Street)

Please Join the UMD Alumni Staff & Champ for Marathon Fun!
- Hot or cold beverages available for purchase from Pizza Luce.
- Outdoor seating for breakfast or lunch just steps from the race course.
- Parking at the Technology Village ramp located behind Pizza Luce.

Have you purchased your UMD running shirt yet? There’s still time! Both men’s and women’s shirts are specially priced at $26.39 after the UMD Alumni Discount Code is applied*. Five dollars per shirt will also be donated to the UMD Alumni Association Scholarship fund.

To purchase your UMD running shirt, please stop in the UMD Store on Kirby Drive or place an online order by clicking here.

*Alumni Discount Code (UMDalum13) applies to online purchases only.

For specific running shirt information and sizing charts, please visit this previous post on the UMD Alumni blog.

Have questions about the Bulldog Fanstand? Give our office a call at 866-726-7164 or send us an email at alumni@d.umn.edu.

When: Wednesday, May 22
Time: 5:30 – 7:00 pm
Where: Zinc Wine Bar & Bistro in the Cellar Bar

Nob Hill District
3009 Central Ave. NE
Albuquerque, NM 87106

RSVP with the online RSVP form or call the UMD Alumni Association office at 866-726-7164 by Friday, May 17. If making your RSVP over the phone, please provide your name, contact information, and the names of any guests joining you.

Appetizers provided by UMD!

Convenient street side parking is available. Meters are free of charge after 5:00 pm.
Guests can also park across the street in the U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo parking lots.

Not sure where to go? Click here for directions to Zinc’s Wine Bar & Bistro.

Bonus! Every Wednesday night in the Cellar Bar at Zinc is Wine & Cheese night.
Enjoy your Wednesday Happy Hour in the Cellar Bar while also meeting fellow UMD alumni!

Questions about this upcoming event? Please email alumni@d.umn.edu or call the UMD Alumni Association office at 866-726-7164.

See you in New Mexico!

To begin the Baumler-Kaplan series, be sure and attend the presentation on Tuesday, April 23, 2013 at 4:30 p.m. The room will be announced once it is secured. Presented by Sheila Isenberg, the main focus will be on Mission Impossible: Varian Fry in Marseille. Isenberg is the author of A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry. In Europe during World War II, the country proved to be a testing ground for a wide range of brave acts by many who would not have characterized themselves as particularly valorous. Isenberg will speak about the relatively unknown American journalist, Varian Fry. Fry was a well-educated antifascist who arrived in Marseille in the autumn of 1940 determined to be of assistance to Europe’s intellectual elite. His efforts resulted in the rescue of well over 1000 artists, writers and philosophers, including Marc Chagall and Hannah Arendt. **The 2013 Baeumlber-Kaplan Holocaust lecture on Mission Impossible: Varian Fry in Marseille, is cancelled for April 23rd and will be rescheduled in the Fall semester of 2013. The Royal D. Alsworth Institute for International Studies apologizes for the inconvenience to those interested. The scheduling of this event at the time of two unexpected snowstorms made it impossible for the guest speaker to fly into Duluth.**

Among the Alworth Institute Brown Bag events, a Holocaust-specific presentation, Nazi Concentration Camps: Sadism and Strategies for Cultural Annihilation, will be held Thursday, April 18th at 12:00 pm in the Library 4th Floor Rotunda.

1978 Alum Spotlight

Vicky Knickerbocker, a 1978 UMD alumna, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology-Criminology. She is currently a Human Services and Sociology Instructor at Inver Hills Community College in Indiana.

Recently, she was chosen as a recipient of a $1,800 teacher’s scholarship which allowed her to travel to Poland to participate in a “Seed of Forgiveness” tour led by Eva Kor, a child survivor of Dr. Mengele’s twin studies experiments. Knickerbocker was one of 12 Holocaust educators chosen nationally by the Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors (CANDLES) Museum for this monetary stipend. Knickerbocker joined the tour with 100 other Holocaust educators and their family members from several different states and countries.

“I had the privilege of traveling to Auschwitz with Holocaust survivor, Eva Kor, one of Dr. Mengele’s Twins,” said Knickerbocker. “This was an incredible learning experience which greatly broadened my knowledge of Eva’s experiences and will help me better authenticate the life lessons that college students can learn from studying the Holocaust.”

Holocaust survivor Eva Kor

Knickerbocker has been teaching a 3-credit Holocaust course at Inver Hills Community College for the past four years. She is planning to enrich and fortify her teaching curriculum in the course by incorporating the videotapes, personal narratives, and pictures she and other educators recorded and produced while touring in Auschwitz. During the tour, Kor identified significant historical artifacts and ruins in Auschwitz that were associated with her being a child inmate of this death camp from May, 1944 to January, 1945.

Several of the most important historical artifacts and ruins that Kor pointed out were the railroad tracks, the selection platform, the huge posts of electrified, barbed wire fencing, the gas chambers, the guard towers, the crematoria, and a cattle car. She played a significant role in the deportation and murder of her mother, father, and her two older sisters. Standing on the selection platform, she recalled a tragic story of how the Nazis had forcibly marched her family members and another 100 Hungarian Jews onto a train, packed them into a cattle car, and transported them for 4 days to Auschwitz in Poland without any food or water. She also reported that she and her sister Mariam were chosen to survive because they were identified as identical twins and were abruptly separated from their mother immediately after their arrival in Auschwitz in May, 1944.

Kor also escorted travel participants to view the girl’s camp where she, her sister, and numerous other twins were housed in triple-decker bunks in a dirty, smelly, wooden barrack that was a former horse stable. Kor informed the group that the twins were considered “privileged” because they did not have to go outside to use the public latrine and they were fed dinner on a daily basis which consisted of a small slice of bread and a brownish fluid that everyone called “fake coffee.”

At the end of the Auschwitz tour, Kor took group members to visit Block #10 which was the experimental block were Dr. Mengele performed many painful and inhumane experiments on twins including Kor and her sister Mariam. Kor recalled that three days a week, Dr. Mengele would have the children marched to his lab so that he could perform intensive studies and blood extractions that left them exhausted. She stated she hated injections and being jabbed to give blood samples. According to Kor, one of the injections the Nazi doctors gave her made her extremely ill and she nearly died.

Knickerbocker reports that another important historical location that was visited in Auschwitz was the liberation site where Kor retraced the steps that she, her sister, and many other sets of twins had taken on the day the Russians freed them from the Nazis. “Participating in this liberation trek was a very somber experience,” said Knickerbocker. “Eva led our group down a rocky path that was still completely lined by electric barbed wire fencing that the Nazis had erected 65+ years ago to imprison those they deemed racially inferior. The historical remnants of imprisonment were eerie reminders of the evils of racism.”

Knickerbocker found that it was also an inspirational pilgrimage as Kor emphasized the importance of not dwelling in the past, but looking ahead. “She wants to be remembered not as a victim but as a survivor who had three very important life lessons to pass on: never give up on yourself, never judge others unfairly, and always forgive those who have caused you personal
harm.”

Kor’s eyewitness testimonials are a valuable teaching resource in Knickerbocker’s future Holocaust courses. “The testimonials will greatly personalize students’ readings of the two books Eva has written, Echoes From Auschwitz: Dr. Mengele’s Twins: The story of Eva and Miriam Mozes and Surviving the Angel of Death: The True Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz,” said Knickerbocker. “The video documentation will help students gain a more empathetic understanding of the pain and suffering Eva and her family members experienced because they will be able to intimately see and hear her personal perspectives about what she experienced in Auschwitz.”

Knickerbocker contends Kor is an exceptional role model who has many positive life lessons that can motivate her future community college students to do well personally and professionally. “Seeing what an optimistic and upbeat person Eva is will give them hope and confidence that they too can overcome some of life’s adverse circumstances. They will be awed by Eva’s committed effort to keep the memory of the Mengele Twins alive by establishing and maintaining the CANDLES Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana for the past 17 years.”

After returning from this trip, Knickerbocker has collaborated with several Minnesota State College and Universities (MnSCU) educators to make it possible for Eva Kor to present her unique Holocaust experiences and words of hope and forgiveness to a larger public audience this fall.

You can also check out the UMD homepage story.

Eva Kor, a Holocaust Survivor, outside the Girl’s Barrack in Auschwitz-Birkenau taken on July 9, 2012.

Vicki Knickerbocker (far left in the sun glasses and light colored top) walking with Eva and several other travel participants retracing Eva’s liberation experience in Auschwitz.

UMD alumna Vicki Knickerbocker and Eva Kor in front of a famous liberation photo that depicts the Mengele Twins being freed. Eva (on the right in blue) is pointing to herself and her sister as they were photographed by the Soviets leaving Auschwitz.

Entering the deadly gates of Auschwitz.

This is Block 10, the experimental block were Dr. Mengele conducted his experiements on twins.

Empty barracks at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Remains of the gas ovens at Auschwitz.

The processing and shower building at Auschwitz where Eva was tattooed.

Jill Pinkney Pastrana, the new dean of the UMD College of Education and Human Service Professions, is primarily interested in critical pedagogy, education transformation, and popular participation within marginalized contexts.

“I was attracted to UMD by the innovative and important programs within the college (CEHSP) and broader university and the dynamic creative atmosphere of the city,” she said. “Before returning to the Midwest, my family and I lived in Chile in the late 1990’s and again during my Fulbright research. My partner and I have three sons. One is currently a student at UMD in the Musical Theater Program, the youngest is studying vocal performance at UW-Milwaukee, and the eldest is working at CLUES, which is the Comunidades Latinas Unidas en Servicio in St. Paul, Minn. Beyond work, I enjoy biking, hiking, dancing and playing music with my family, and… following South American soccer with my life partner.”

Pinkney Pastrana is currently Chair and Associate professor at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, Department of Education Studies. She arrived back in the upper Midwest after 22 years living, working, and studying in Los Angeles, Calif. Her research conducted in 1998-1999 was supported through a Fulbright Research/Lecture grant and focused on high school student activism and education policy in Chile. Her current work involves continued analysis of education policy in Chile and the United States, and specifically focuses on student movements, teacher work and teacher’s Unions. She has been active in program review and development in Latin America and has worked with the Chilean Ministry of Education, the Catholic University of Valparaíso (Valparaíso, Chile), the University of Concepción (Concepción, Chile), Universidad de la Frontera (Temuco, Chile) as well as within her academic appointments in the United States.

Amy Hietapelto, the new dean of the UMD Labovitz School of Business and Economics, has served as dean of the College of Business and Management at Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) in Chicago since 2009. Hietapelto served as acting dean and associate dean at NEIU prior to holding the dean position. She also has been a faculty member at Michigan Technological University and Clarkson University. She received her Ph.D. from the Carlson School of Business at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities with a focus in the area of Organizational Studies.

Hietapelto, who is Finnish, recently visited Finland and saw the port of Hanko, from which her grandparents emigrated. Her father, Hugo, was a freighter captain before his retirement, and Hietapelto has sailed on the Great Lakes on her father’s freighters. Two of Hietapelto’s siblings live in Minnesota, including her brother Hugo and his family, who live in Hermantown.

“I am thrilled to join LSBE and UMD and contribute to the educational and economic needs of Minnesota and the upper Great Lakes region. This feels like coming home.”

Among new traditions at UMD is the “Those Who Can, Duluth” (TWCD) mantra that encompasses the personality, dedication, and hard work ethic of our students. The spirit of TWCD has led to numerous achievements this year:

- 2,000 students will graduate in 2013 with degrees in everything from physics to philosophy.
- Our students are prepared for rewarding careers and meaningful lives. Over 93% of our 2011 graduates were employed or pursuing advanced education a year after graduation. Check out the Graduate Follow-Up report provided by UMD’s Career Services office!
- Scholarships were awarded to students who shine in their academic fields and to those students who need financial help to reach their full potential. In 2011-2012, UMD awarded $4.5 million in privately funded scholarships and fellowships. The need for financial student support continues to grow year after year.
- UMD celebrated its first Nobel Prize winner, alumnus Brian Kobilka, a ‘77 B.S. Chemistry and Biology graduate. Read Kobilka’s ‘Those Who Can, Duluth’ story in the latest Bridge magazine here.
- Today’s 11,500 students continue to be provided with world-class educational experiences, top academic programs, and exciting research opportunities.

Send a Note to our Graduates!

On this special occasion, we invite you, as University of Minnesota Duluth alumni and friends, to join your classmates in a new tradition. Welcome our newest graduates to the UMD alumni by sending a note of congratulations to a new graduate. Pass on a piece of wisdom or share an encouraging word or two as our soon-to-be graduates embark on this new phase in their lives. You can send in a handwritten note to Bekki Babineau or submit your note online with this easy-to-use form.

Commencement Ceremonies: Changes and New Traditions

The 2013 commencement ceremonies are quickly approaching and our students are again preparing for this revered ritual. UMD’s graduation celebration will now be bigger and better because this year two undergraduate commencement ceremonies will be held. This change eliminates the need for admission tickets.

Both undergraduate ceremonies will take place on Saturday, May 18 at AMSOIL Arena. Graduates from the Labovitz School of Business and Economics (LSBE) and the Swenson College of Science and Engineering (SCSE) will have their Baccalaureate Ceremony at 10:00 a.m. Graduates from the College of Education and Human Service Professions (CEHSP), the School of Fine Arts (SFA) and the College of Liberal Arts (CLA) will have their Baccalaureate Ceremony at 3:00 p.m.

The Graduate School commencement will once again take place at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 16 in the UMD Romano Gymnasium.

For further information on either the graduate or undergraduate commencement ceremonies, visit Commencement Information.

Elaine Hansen, Director of the Northeast Minnesota Small Business Development Center, nominated Ness for the award.

Ness’ lifelong compassion for his community and his experience in public service provided the leadership needed to see Duluth through this unexpected event. The record flooding caused well over $100 million in damage throughout the city of Duluth. Ness understood his role and represented the City of Duluth and the surrounding communities particularly well during this time of need.

“I think it’s something that we as a community can grow on and can take pride in especially once the recovery efforts are complete,” Ness said.

Because of the topography, the 8-to-12 inch rainfall not only caused flooding, but swollen and overflowing lakes and ponds with normally trickling streams and creeks became raging rivers removing everything in the way. Roads and bridges were washed out leaving victims stranded in their vehicles and their homes. Infamously, the polar bear and seal in the Lake Superior Zoo were picked up and swept out of their exhibits: the seal down to Grand Avenue and the polar bear to another part of the zoo property. Who could forget the picture of Sandy the Seal found on Grand Avenue circulating around national news headlines?

Along the St. Louis River, homes were flooded, destroyed and washed away. Considerable damage was done to the streets, parks, sidewalks, and other segments of the city’s infrastructure, which require new engineering and repairs that have yet to be underway. The two days in June 2012 changed the landscape of the city, but with the leadership of Ness, the response was quick and many repairs were started immediately.

“If 2012 was the year of the flood, 2013 will be the year of flood recovery,” Ness said.

Ness has raised millions of dollars to help rebuild Duluth and surrounding communities in addition to the FEMA and SBA assistance. Duluth, as it has in the past, will rebuild and succeed.

As the mayor, Don Ness is expected to be a central figure in an emergency. However, in this situation, he became a prominent leader, organizer and collaborator not only for the community, but for neighboring communities as well. He provided direction, comfort, and straightforward, clear communication to flood victims, the public and other political leaders. The city then responded quickly and positively to the disaster clean-up efforts and the necessary long-term repairs and replacements.

Ness brought the plights of the City to state and federal agencies to make sure that a clear picture of the destruction was presented and the damage assessments were documented so all of the applicable resources could be provided and utilized.

“I think looking back the flood was the biggest challenge and the biggest highlight for us in 2012,” said Ness.

It was a crisis many were not prepared for, but through the recovery efforts, it proved how well the community could work together and make the city as a whole stronger.

Want to take a trip down memory lane back to the Flood of June 2012? Here are 10 jaw-dropping photos from the infamous event in Duluth’s history.