The Duluth Public Library doesn’t just collect books, it collects memories! Take a trip down Memory Lane by looking at some old yearbooks. Check out the fashions and relive your carefree youth.
This week, check out some of the local celebs who attended CATHEDRAL HIGH SCHOOL and THE MARSHALL SCHOOL.
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Ian Grant ’87
Star of “The Relic Hunter with Ian Grant,” which aired in 2009 on the Travel Channel, Grant graduated from The Marshall School in 1987, the first year the school was consolidated with Cathedral High School. He attended college in Minneapolis and now owns his own business hunting for unusual artifacts and objects overseas, then shipping them back and selling them.
Check out a clip from his show.
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Maria Bamford ’88
Bamford is a comedian best known for her voice work and stand-up comedy about her dysfunctional family and depression. In 2007 she created a web-based sitcom called “The Maria Bamford Show” that centered around the main character returning to live with her parents in Duluth after a nervous breakdown. In 2010 she was in a series of holiday commercial for Target portraying a crazed shopper.
In her senior year of high school Bamford was the Winter Frolic Queen and class president.
In the video below Bamford talks about being from Duluth, and even references the library! If you like the clips of her comedy, check out her DVD Plan B from the library.
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Chris Connolly ’05
Jack Connolly ’07 (picture from junior year)
The Connolly brothers are known for their hockey prowess. Chris was a member of the Boston University’s 2008-2009 Division 1 Men’s College Ice Hockey Championship Team and team captain in the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 seasons. He graduated from BU this spring. Read a review of his college career here.
Jack Connolly helped UMD to their first ever NCAA Men’s Hockey Championship in 2011. As a senior in 2011-12, Jack finished the regular season ranked second in the nation in scoring. He was named All-American three times and in 2012 he won the Hobey Baker award. He is currently signed a two-year contract to play overseas for Farjestad in the Swedish Elite League.
UPDATE: Jack Connolly was nominated for an ESPN Espy award, which will be presented on July 11, 2012
The Duluth Public Library doesn’t just collect books, it collects memories! Take a trip down Memory Lane by looking at some old yearbooks. Check out the fashions and relive your carefree youth.
This week, check out some of the local celebs who attended DENFELD HIGH SCHOOL.
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Albert Amatuzio ’42
Amatuzio founded the Superior-based synthetic oil company that would become known as AMSOIL. He first worked with synthetic lubricants during his two decades as a fighter jet pilot .
A born entrepreneur, as a child in West Duluth Amatuzio had a paper route, sold magazines, and collected scrap iron. He attended Duluth Junior College and UMD, playing hockey at both.
In 2010 Amsoil bought the naming rights to the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center’s arena for $6 million.
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Roger Grimsby ’46
Long before becoming a television anchorman in the biggest metropolis in America, Grimsby was adopted by the Reverend and Mrs. Grimsby. When Roger was four the family moved to Duluth, where his father became the pastor of Zion Lutheran Church.
Grimsby attended St. Olaf College and was drafted to serve in the Korean War after graduation. When he returned home he began his broadcast career in Duluth, announcing on WEBC Radio in the mid 1950s.
He soon moved up to larger and larger markets, ending up at WABC in New York City, where he was on the air for 18 years. He was known for bringing humor to the news, sometimes at the expense of his fellow newscasters.
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Jim Heffernan ’57
Long-time newspaper columnist Heffernan has lived in Duluth most of his life, excepting his time in the US Army. His journalism career lasted forty-two years, and since official retirement he has kept up a blog and a monthly column in Duluth-Superior Magazine. While working for the Duluth Herald and the News-Tribune, Heffernan was a reporter, city editor, symphony reviewer, movie reviewer, arts and entertainment editor, and columnist.
His collection of columns, Cooler Near the Lake, can be checked out from the Duluth Public Library.
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Marcia Nyquist Hales ’63
Best known for the holiday light extravaganza at her home on Park Point, Hales was also a city councilor from 1995 to 2002.
Spirit of the Lights, a book of stories about Hales’ holiday display, was published in 2011 and is available from Duluth Public Library.
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Gary Waller ’63
Waller served as a Duluth Police officer for 21 years and as the St. Louis County Sheriff from 1986 to 1999. Gary was one of the lead investigators on the scene of the murder of Elizabeth Congdon and her nurse at Glensheen Mansion. Waller is a co-author of Will to Murder, a book about the Congdon murders.
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Mark Munger ’73
Munger is a district court judge in St. Louis County and the owner of the Cloquet River Press, which has published all but the first of his novels. In high school he was the school newspaper editor and planned on becoming a journalist. He changed his mind in college, and got his law degree from William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, MN.
Munger is also the author of nine books, all held by the Duluth Public Library. Two are collections of the column he wrote for the Hermantown Star, and many of the novels are set in Minnesota. For example, “Suomalaiset” is a historical novel set in Duluth and centering around the turbulent times of the early 1900s. This period saw a cholera outbreak, the 1918 Cloquet fire, violent labor disputes, and the lynching of Olli Kinkkonen.
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Mike Simonson ’75
Simonson got an early start in journalism, writing for the Denfeld High School newspaper, the Criterion. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Superior he worked at KDAL in Duluth before moving on to Georgia. He returned to the Northland in 1990 to work at Wisconsin Public Radio’s Superior desk.
He recently appeared on Joy Cardin’s show on WPR discussing the mining bill in Wisconsin. Listen to their conversations here.
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Greg Anderson ’79
Anderson is the Four-time NHRA Full Throttle Pro Stock World Champion and has had sixty-five Pro Stock wins. He currently drives the Summit Racing Chevrolet Camaro.
Leonard Carlson (Lenny Lane) ’88 (picture from junior year)
Leonard Carlson took the stage name Lenny Lane during his World Championship Wrestling career, which lasted from 1995 to 2000. After wrestling solo, he formed a tag team with Lodi. Known as the West Hollywood Blondes, they were dropped in 1999 following protests from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
Since 2000 Lane has wrestled for various organizations. Some of his signature moves are the diving crossbody, the inverted atomic drop, the frankensteiner, the gutwrench powerbomb, and the wheelbarrow facebuster. He also runs a pro wrestling school in the Minneapolis area.
In high school Lane was on the basketball and football teams.
The Duluth Public Library doesn’t just collect books, it collects memories! Take a trip down Memory Lane by looking at some old yearbooks. Check out the fashions and relive your carefree youth.
This week, check out some of the local celebs who attended EAST HIGH SCHOOL.
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Eric Eskola ’71
Since the early 1970s Eskola has covered news and politics around Minnesota. He started at KDAL television in Duluth and then moved over to the radio side, where he worked up to becoming the director. In 1980 he moved to Minneapolis to work for WCCO. He is also the co-host, along with his wife Cathy Wurzer, of “Almanac,” which airs on Twin Cities Public Television and offers in-depth coverage of state politics.
Eskola was born in Duluth, but his family moved to Ohio, then Ontario, before returning to Minnesota in time for Eskola to graduate high school.
Here’s a clip of Eskola’s first appearance on “Almanac” in 1986.
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Phil Verchota ’75
Verchota was a member of the 1980 Miracle on Ice Olympic hockey team, as well as the 1984 team. After his Olympic appearances he was offered professional hockey positions, but turned them down. Instead, he became a banker.
In high school Verchota was an all-state selection for hockey and football. In his senior year the hockey team won the state championship. He went on to play hockey at the University of Minnesota, where the team was the NCAA champion in 1976 and 1979.
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Kara Wheeler Goucher ’96
Goucher is a distance and marathon runner who will be running in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
She lives in Portland, OR with her husband, also an elite distance runner. They met at the University of Colorado, where both were on the track team. Goucher made the 2008 Olympic team and ran the 10,000 meter and the 5,000 meter races.
In 2011 she ran the Boston Marathon just seven months after giving birth to her first child. That year she also published “Kara Goucher’s Running for Women,” available at the Duluth Public Library.
In high school, Goucher won three first-place finishes at the state championships. She says of her time at East, “I was very shy and running helped me gain confidence” (The Woman Today, June/July 2008 p. 38).
UPDATE: In the 2012 USA Half Marathon Championships, held in Duluth, Goucher won the race and beat the course record. It was the first time Goucher returned to Duluth to run competitively since her days as an East High School Greyhound.
The Duluth Public Library doesn’t just collect books, it collects memories! Take a trip down Memory Lane by looking at some old yearbooks. Check out the fashions and relive your carefree youth.
This week, check out some of the local celebs who attended CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL.
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Margaret Culkin Banning 1907
Banning (known as a child as Marguerite) was a best-selling American author of thirty-six novels, many of which took place in Duluth and the surrounding area, and an early advocate of women’s rights. Her novels often featured women in non-traditional roles, such as Brigid Temple, the protagonist of “The Iron Will” who owned a mine in the fictional city of Twin Ports, and “proved of what mettle she was made,” according to The Book Review Digest.
After graduating from Central High School in 1907 Banning attended Vassar College. She was a Duluth Public Library trustee from 1930-1982.
After high school Oreck attended the University of Minnesota Duluth before transferring to Minneapolis. He joined the United States Army Air Force following the attack on Pearl Harbor and served as a certified pilot, navigator, and bombardier in the Pacific Theater. After the war he worked at RCA for seventeen years, and then started his own company to sell vacuum cleaners. He attributes some of his success to the hard-working examples he saw in Duluth. “Being a Duluthian, the idea of vacation is when you wore a sport shirt to the office” (Lake Superior Magazine, Dec-Jan 2010, p 44).
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Sam Solon ’49
Solon served in the United States Army from 1952-1954 and went on to earn a degree in education from the University of Minnesota Duluth. He taught first at Harriet Beecher Stowe School, then at Morgan Park Senior and Junior High.
First elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 1970, he won a seat in the Minnesota State Senate in 1972, which he held until his death in 2001.
Solon focused on health and welfare, education, economic development, higher education, seniors, drugs and crime, health insurance and employment.
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Lorenzo (Gerald David) Music ’55
Best known as the voice of Garfield the Cat in the 1980s and 1990s, Lorenzo was born Gerald David Music in Brooklyn, New York and raised in Duluth. His father worked at the Superior shipyards. In high school Music worked at KDAL-TV holding cue cards for announcers.
He created “The Bob Newhart Show” and was a writer and producer on numerous shows, including “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “The Smothers Brother Comedy Hour.” On “Rhoda” he was the voice of Carlton, the doorman.
Before moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in entertainment, Music tried out his act at the Owl’s Club and the Eagle’s Club in Duluth. After achieving success, he returned often to Duluth to visit family.
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Michael Fedo ’57
The author of seven books and innumerable newspaper and magazine articles, Fedo first dreamed of becoming a baseball player. In the late 1950s he tried out for the minor league Duluth Dukes baseball team. When he didn’t make the team he attended the University of Minnesota Duluth, and then Kent State University. After teaching for a number of years he took up writing. He was the Minnesota stringer for The New York Times, and published pieces in Newsday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and the Christian Science Monitor, among others.
One of his books, “Chronicles of Aunt Hilda and Other East Hillside Swedes,” is a collection of stories of Fedo’s childhood in Duluth. Fedo says of Duluth, “‘Do not call attention to thyself’ is our eleventh commandment” (Minnesota Monthly, March 2004, p. 28). He also wrote two books on the Duluth lynchings, and can been seen here lecturing on the topic.
