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LOVE RELATIONSHIPS Series Excerpts
Heartbreak turns a romantic to love coaching
by Todd Svanoe
Passionate and tastefully dolled-up, LeeAnn Williams of Plymouth, Minnesota admits she’s always been a hopeless romantic. But never was that more apparent than when she turned her life’s greatest heartbreak – the loss of a 13-year marriage – into a one-of-a-kind business outfitting couples for sustainable love.
“I wasn’t the coolest kid in school, but I dreamed of an amazing relationship with a happily-ever-after ending. I was lucky. Except for one or two toads, I dated guys that treated me like a princess,” she said with an infectious glow.
Williams is not talking about exotic or erotic shows of affection, she said, just intentional love – more walk than talk, and a little bit of planning, thank you.
A hard-working farm girl who grew up just south of Rochester, MN, Williams is not given to flights of fancy. She knows you get out of something what you put into it, and love relationships are no different. So a movie date, in an age of screen-watching passivity, is pretty much a “cop out” in her book…
Gambling husband reverses life’s negative balance
by Todd Svanoe
It was a cruel time for Peter’s dad to bail out of this world, just as Peter was transitioning to manhood. Not that he talked to his father anyway — and he NEVER spoke of him, since that only led to feelings of bitterness, fear and rage.
But an 18-year-old boy needs a role model. Now all Peter had was a precedent for escaping, rather than facing his pain, and Peter was tormented the next seven years with his own “hopeless contemplation of suicide,” he said.
“Dad took his life at 49, the age I am today,” said Peter Schulte, sharing his courageous climb out of a generationally dug pit of despair, and his journey to becoming a faithful husband and father of five in Cottage Grove, MN…
Hustler trades Cadillac cruiser for outreach van
by Todd Svanoe
If you asked V.J. Smith how he went from being a destitute nine-year-old orphan to a Cadillac-cruising drug lord – then a guardian angel patrolling Minneapolis streets, it wouldn’t be long until you heard about his wife Ruthie.
They still argue about who first “put the moves on” who. A popular D.J. at a Lake Street Minneapolis bar, V.J. hustled women for sport. Sporting a big toothy smile, slick and dressed to kill, he drove a shiny Cadillac with gangster whitewall tires and few women tried to resist him, he says. Until Ruthie, that is.
“I met Ruthie 22 years ago. I chased her at our workplace to get a kiss. She quit her job and never came back. I never forgot that. That’s the only girl that never came back,” says V.J., not so humbly.
A conscience was pricked. A pattern was broken. “Just Say No” may not have been the “end all” as a national anti-drug program, but on a personal level, it worked splendidly…
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PURPOSEFUL ADOLESCENCE Series Excerpts
Wilderness Retreats Heal Family Relationships
by Todd Svanoe
Caryn Hirshleifer thought she had done her job by arranging wilderness therapy expeditions for her teenaged girls with Soltreks, based north of Duluth in Two Harbors, MN.
When filling out application forms and describing the family problems, “I expected them to go be transformed,” come home and everything would be OK, she said.
In fact, when the whole family signed up for a second expedition with Soltreks in the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico, Hirshleifer explained, “I thought I’d let my husband go while I checked into a Ritz Hotel, hang out in the bath tub and read and write. But that wasn’t allowed.”
Don’t get her wrong. “I like hiking, but drinking water from a stream with dead bugs floating on top wasn’t my idea of therapy.”
If wilderness retreats in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters and the 275-mile Superior Hiking Trail reveal anything to wilderness therapists like Soltreks co-founder Lorri Hanna, it’s this: relational brokenness and healing involves the whole family.
That’s why one of the first questions Hanna and her husband Doug Sabo ask is, “What’s the family structure? And who’s showing up and being intentional about the relationships?…
From Hating School to Loving It, Mark Found a New Identity
by Todd Svanoe
It was not a badge he was proud of, but Mark came to Pilgrim Lutheran School having led his previous school in number of detentions.
Boys in that school had to prove that they were tough just to fit in and he wasn’t about to be the sissy, he explained. “You had to fight to be accepted. If someone said something bad about you, you had to fight back or they would laugh and not respect you.”
His mother tells the painful story of trying to pull Mark out of bed each day. “He hated school and begged me to stay home.” But Mark understood what was missing.
“My identity was sort of blank. I didn’t think about my future. Whatever happens, happens. I hadn’t learned to take advantage of my opportunities and not let them just fly out the window.”
“We find this true of so many kids,” said Director of Education Scott Gostchock. “Because of peer pressure, insecurity, or a lack of purpose or belonging – things that have nothing to do with their academic abilities — they lose focus. Tragically, they get labeled a ‘bad kid,’ known primarily for the trouble they get into…
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GIVING BACK Series Excerpts
RN measures love for the homeless in feet
by Todd Svanoe
When you’re a survivor on city streets, a nasty little pebble can really ruin your day. In fact, if that pebble’s beneath cracked and numb feet in the cold rain, it often leads to bloody injuries and painful infection, a hazard for homeless thousands.
But thank goodness, the foot doctor is in — on three days a week in three Minneapolis locations — and her warm soapy water and soothing voice can make you feel like you’re in heaven.
“Homeless people travel five to ten miles each day, often in snowy or soggy conditions and without a change of shoes,” said Kathy Bissen, an RN from Plymouth, MN who started Sole Care in 2006.
Today almost 200 needy clients each month receive tender love and care from Bissen and her fleet of 60 compassionate volunteers…
Border-crossing Stillwater dentist saved best for last
by Todd Svanoe
After 34 years of repairing teeth, no one would have blamed Stillwater, MN dentist Fred Kalinoff for taking a year off to rest, reflect, or just plain golf.
But the drill, probe and forceps are still in his hands, the only change being a floppy orange fishing hat, and a different stream of clients — ones that could never pay him.
“It took me 10 minutes to get used to retirement, and after six months, I was having such a good time, I realized I should have retired a long time ago,” he said by phone, fresh off a plane from Guatemala.
Since retiring, or shall we say re-firing, in 2003, Kalinoff has made more than 50 service sorties into Mexico and Guatemala, filling cavities and treating infections for the poorest of the poor, including perhaps the oldest indigenous community in the Western Hemisphere…
More available by request
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CROSS-CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING Series
Hmong youth navigates maze; finds career passion
by Todd Svanoe
As a daughter of transitory Hmong migrant farmers, Belick Pha had reasons to believe that her life would be hard in middle-class America.
It was hard when her parents fled from Laos to Thailand across the Mekong River, floating grandma on an inflated bag balloon; it was hard living in the refugee camp until they were airlifted to St. Paul.
It was hard when Pha’s older sister contracted pneumonia from their first-ever winter; and it was hard when her oldest brother “got off track in high school,” she said diplomatically.
“We moved seven or eight times, to wherever my parents could find work, so I attended four or five different schools,” said Pha about the odds against her.
But Pha has hung on to every hand that has been extended to her — starting with a mentor in 6th grade — showing the life-changing role adults can play to bridge the enormous gap today between a child’s dreams and vocational fulfillment — and pointing a way to success for those humble and smart enough to receive help…
Camel-herding boy becomes a true Minnesotan
by Todd Svanoe
Neither his guerilla gunfire nor time in prison were as powerful as the simple seeds of education planted in the life of Dahir Jibreel, 58, a Somalian father of 10 now living in Monticello, MN.
But the inspiration of meeting Hubert Humphrey in Somalia as a 5th grade boy had nearly as much impact on making him the leader he is today.
Known as DJ, a smiling and approachable Augsburg College graduate and Somalian leader, Jibreel told of the roots of the growing garden of East Africans in South Minneapolis since Humphrey first sunk a spade into their soil 40-plus years ago.
Jibreel recalls a day, as a 7-year-old boy herding camels in central Somalia, when “I somehow decided I didn’t belong there and ran away to a nearest village. I spent an entire week behind a restaurant eating whatever scraps I could find.”
After being found and returned to his family, he fled again, this time sneaking onto a semi trailer and traveling 500 miles to the capital Mogadishu where he landed at the crossroads of history.
Dahir arrived at a school just built as an American investment in the high-stakes Horn of Africa, coveted for its oil prospects by Russia, China and the U.S. during the Cold War.
“Senator Humphrey convinced John F. Kennedy to build this sprawling National Teacher Education Center, a demonstration project with only 1st, 3rd, and 5th grade students, and I was in the first class…
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RESILIENT PARENTING/ CREATIVE FAMILIES Series
Confident exec finds toughest job at home
by Todd Svanoe
A former Pillsbury executive, Barb Benetti had always been educated, capable and self-assured. But when what she called “this little creature” — her first child — came along, she felt clueless and undone.
“I used to manage 20 people in four states and we were able to accomplish our goals. Then I had one baby and I couldn’t figure out how to make him stop crying. I was totally and completely helpless!”
“I remember thinking, ‘There has to be an answer and I just haven’t found it.’ In college and the business world, where there’s a problem, you fix it. But it was humbling to discover that sometimes there isn’t an answer, and you have to just have a little faith and wade through it.”
One day while receiving post-natal care, Benetti was astounded that only once did a physician ask how she was doing personally, and none asked about the impact of a new child on her marriage.
“I don’t think we talk about it,” she said from her Woodbury home amidst interrupting children. “Of course having a baby is a joyful event, but it required a complete shift, and there is a lot of associated stress!…
Beloved Engineer Down but Not Out at Age 65
by Todd Svanoe
A hand-waving and exuberant Italian, Will DeSanto is best known for two things: joyful mischief and faithful prayer. Though he’s a beloved “people person” who loves to encourage others, his tight Italian family and their Duluth, Minnesota community know better than to trust him.
The twin brother of a valedictorian, DeSanto distinguished himself in another way — as a lovable rascal, pulling a lifetime of innocent pranks and becoming a favorite friend to many.
He scared the bejeebers out of his brother one day when John opened a woodshed to find Will behind a pig’s head mask; he confounded his dad who got fake calls for business deliveries; and he startled his mom who was the unfortunate victim of a saran-wrapped toilet.
A graduate in civil engineering from the University of Minnesota, DeSanto settled in South Minneapolis and had an uninterrupted career at today’s Xcel Energy that lasted decades. “I was blessed to have the income to raise my family,” he said.
Life on the whole had been smooth and happy, he reported. But in 2004, things began to fall apart for him. That was the year DeSanto’s wife lost her fight with cancer, leaving him the single father of three growing daughters. Then, only three years later, he was laid off by Xcel, losing the benefits of his 35- year investment in the company.
At first there was a feeling of freedom, said DeSanto, who recalls taking his girls out for lunch in his convertible VW soon thereafter and embarrassing them with shouts of joy in the open air, before it hit him. “I needed to be working. My daughters were heading for college. The problem was, there was zero opportunity for an engineer at my age”…
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AGING WELL Series Excerpts
Perky 95-year-old “instigator” ages well
by Todd Svano
Though depression knocks at the door for many in dwindling Lake Lillian, Minnesota, where businesses and farms close regularly, feisty, faith-filled reformer and retired turkey farmer Gladys Bjur will have none of it.
At 95, Bjur still mounts her “horse,” a red, ‘97 Ford pickup, splitting a seam between her soy and corn fields and leaving a cloud of dust behind her, making her daily mark on this remote country town.
“I’m an instigator,” said Bjur, who has the credentials to back it up. “I tried to retire from writing my news column, but people say, ‘Don’t you dare. It’s the first thing I read.’”
You can credit Bjur with helping to bring Lake Lillian phone service, launch the Lake Lillian News, and build a retirement home and senior center, but her most notable contributions may be her progressive optimism, mayor-like vision, and contagious laughter.
As a committee member, she helped lead the merger of the town’s Swedish and Norwegian Lutheran churches, which didn’t happen until the mid-2000’s. “We talked about it for seven years! I was so disgusted. I said, ‘Enough talk. Let’s do it.’ If it were up to me, we’d have done this years ago! But since Martin Luther, church people have been good fighters…
Voice nearly gone, his life still speaks
by Todd Svanoe
After a lifetime of passionate public speaking, former Twin Cities priest Terry Dosh would rather lose an arm or a leg than his voice. Yet this is the prized tool being stripped from him through his bout with a chronic illness.
The ability to communicate was central to Dr. Dosh as a professor of European History at St. John’s University, and as a Benedictine priest celebrating mass at a dozen Twin Cities parishes.
In fact, his favorite times have been rousing discussions in book groups and in the Blaisdell YMCA sauna where philosophy and religion were debated between conservatives and liberals, he explained. But one day is etched in his memory as the beginning of the end of that love.
“It was in July, 2006 at St. Francis Cabrini Church in Minneapolis,” he said in broken whispers. Dosh was part of a preaching rotation there, and he was in the pulpit. Suddenly, his speech became halting and labored. “My talk was interrupted 15 times. I had to drink.”
“It was awful,” recalls his wife Millie from their family home in South Minneapolis. “He had difficulty finishing.”
Dosh had a series of health exams, and what a speech therapist suspected, was confirmed by a neurologist: he had early-stage Parkinson’s Disease.
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Todd Svanoe can be reached by calling at 612-578-2292.
© Unauthorized reproduction or use of this copyrighted material is prohibited
