He loved Winona. And never forgot. With his fortune from the home-grown Fastenal, he bequeathed us a spiritual and bricks-and-mortar legacy: The reinvented Cotter Catholic schools. Signatures at the Bridges golf course. The Minnesota Marine Art Museum, The Main Square downtown complex and riverfront Fastenal offics. And the still-in-process Masterpiece Hall.
Bob Kierlin
1937-2025
His leadership gospel: Challenge rather than control. Treat everyone as your equal. Stay out of the spotlight. Share the rewards. Listen rather than speak. See the unique humanness in all persons. Develop empathy. Suppress your ego. Let people learm. Remember how little you know.
Politics: He was eklected to the Minnesota sente Disillusioned at what he saw, he didn’t seek a second term.
The final chapter. He had an aversion to flying and never did. When he had a heart attack at age 85, doctors at the Winona hospital called for an emergency helicopter med-evac to Mayo Clinic. He didn’t want to go. The story, never confirmed by the hospital, is that he died being wheeled to the rooftop helipad.
Dillying and dallying
Everybody knows that Winona needs a new firehall. So too a policing nerve center. In 2025 our elected city and county elders again have done nothing — nada — except gab and bicker about site possibilities and whether a combined facility is best. Fact: No site is perfect. Projected construction costs meanwhile have swelled over the years from an original $42 million to $76 million. Right now an early rejected plan in the gentrifying St. Stan’s neighborhood looks better and better. Even the former car dealership near downtown on Huff Street would do fine. Just do something. It’s time to end hiring yet another costly consultant siting study.
Time to move. Central Firehall is 70 years old, the joint Law Enforcement Center about 50.
Our first riverfront hotel
Plenty swank. Although not the ritz. Nor a Michelin five star. Hotelier Mike Rivers added 76 guest rooms to Winona’s inventory for travelers.
School enrollment
Winona public schools lost 170 students. A declining birthrate was blamed. The new total: 2,193. The Catholic Cotter Schools grew slightly, to 1,154. Cotter experienced a major loss of foreign students, from 55 a year. earlier to 33. Why? Parets abroad were fearful over Trump deportation policies, xenophobia and racism.
College enrollment
Enrollments stabilized at Winona State after a decade of perilous losses. September’s headcount: 6,160 with 12% more freshmen. Saint Mary’s, once with 1,200 students in Winona, claimed stability with 890. Still unclear was the effectiveness of new President James Burns’ rescue plan. He laid off dozens of faculty and trimmed programs in the liberal arts and performing arts.
Stealthy beer busts
Sheriff Ron Ganrude pre-empted another summer of wild weekend beer busts that had drawn hundreds iof under-age revelers to secretly arranged party sites at wilderness sites. Granrude’s solution: Online monitoring, increased patrols, coordinated multi-agency back-ups. The concern had been drunken car wrecks on backroads, brawling and injurues at hard-to-reach sites for rescuers, bonfires that could set forests and croplands ablaze.
“Bub’s” or “Boobs”?
Our little Winona secret was how to pronounce the favorite local lager from long ago. Bub’s brewery was run out of business by big-guy nationa l brands jn 1969. But a Fourth Street bar downtown kept the name alive until it closed this August. Now we Winonans have wholly lost our trick on how to recognize uninitiated newcomers. Long live boobs
Masterpiece riseth
The 700-seat concert hall waits its cladding of glass and Biesanz quarry slabs on Fouth Street. It’s world-class and like no other opera house in the wirld
A masterpiece falleth
When built at the College of St. Teresa in 1928, Lourdes Halk was gorgeous testimony to the beauty of Italianesque architecture. This year Cotter Schools acquired Lourdes for $1 million, decided it was too costly to maintain, and called in the wrecking ball.
Political: Seats up for grabs
U.S. Senate: Tina Smith retiring. In office since 2018. A Democrat. Among candidates as successor are to succeed her: Angie Craig, now in the U.S. Huse, and Peggy Flanagan, now lieutenant governor.
U.S: House: MN-1: Brad Finstad in office 1-1/2 terms. A Republican. In trouble for re-election because Trump coattails are in tatters. Serious challenger: Rochester school teacher Jake Johnson.
Minnesota Senate: 20: Steve Drazkowski retiring after 18 years. Has endorsed fellow right-wing winger Steve Jacob, now in the Minnesota Huse to fill his shoes.
Minnesota House: 20-B: Steve Jacob, an Elba Republican in second term, wants to move to Senate.
Minnesota Senate: 26: Jermey Miller, a Winona Republican with a strong Senate voice since 2010, is retiring, to spend more time with family and tend to business.
Minnesota House: 26-A: Aaron Repinski, a Winona Republican, is seeking a third term.
Minnesota House: 26-B: Greg Davids, a Preston Republican, hasn’t announced his 2026 intentions. First elected 1991.
Great shooters
Photojournalists whose Winona Journal images helped show us ourselves:
Kelly Beckman
Mike Beckman
Andy Frank
Steve Lunde
Leif Olson
Kevin O’Reilly
Nancy Wagner
No Trump and no king
Not even the anti-war citizen protests of the Vietnam era came close to 2025 Winona rallies against the monarchical Trum regime. Three rallies drew hundreds to Windom Park, two of them at 1,400 people each. See the flag, Yes, Trump vacillation on supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression was an issue too. Despite isolated Trumper taunts, the rallies were peaceful. No arrests. The rallies were locally organized as grassroots events but coordinated nationally to send a message. Millions demonstrated. Trump wasn’t listening.
Travails in the fields
Trump’s global trade war backfired on U.S. farmers. China retaliated. Our soybean farmers lost their largest export market in a heartbeat. Prices plummeted. Desperate to offset his disaster, Trump promised a multi-billion dollar rescue farm rescue from new tariff revenue. It was a lie. His tariffs had dried up imports. There wasn’t much left coming n on which to levy tariffs.
River shipping off
Early estimates showed a 27% loss in Mississippi River shipping. The loss was due largely to the Trump trade war that devastated agricultural shipping to Gulf ports for transoceanic transfers. The situation was exasperated by low water due to drought caused by climate change. Shipping compnies had to run light-load barges to avoid getting hung up on the bottom.
Canary in coal mine
Our first signal of the impact of Trump hollowing-out out of federal agencies with came early. In February a $1.1 million federal grant to Winona State University was cancelled. The grant would have funded local inter-agency prohects to better government services. More cuts followed. Most devastating: Elimination of Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center for research on the fish, wildlife and aquatic ecosystems. Gone: 86 jobs.
Weathering the storm
After a rough spot in April when investors in Winona-based Fastenal quivered at Trump fiscal gyrations, the company found equilibrium. A consensus of Wall Street projections at the end of the year showed an expectation of slightly improved stock-owner earnings. The nuts-and-bolts business globally appeared steady.
Innocent? Guilty? Somewhere in between?
Jennifer Bechle
Arrested for 2011 death of newborn Baby Angel, whose body was floated inside a carton down the Mississippi River with angel figurines. Age 43.
Eric Birth
Trial pending for Winona High School coach accused of serial improprieties with several girls on his track team. Age 31.
Justin John Dionysius
Arrested at East Side home where police confiscated 6.7 pounds of meth. Also cocaine, an opioid remedy, fentanyl, hallucinogenic mushrooms. Also 10 handguns, ammo. Age 30.
Joseline Puente Gundersen
Charged in the duct tape torture of a 3-yerod old boy in a videotaped series of abuses posted online. Why? Entertainment value. Age 29.
Jacob Andrew Klaver
Charged with pounding and strangling an ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend to death in the man’s bedroom in Holmen while she slept downstairs. Klaver from Winona. Age 37.
Ava Leone Kock
Found too crazy to stand trial. Had shot up a neighbor’s car in Elba and seriously wounded the woman. Why? She cited Biblical passages. Age 64.
Valentin Silva Quintana
Of Lewiston. To prison for 27 years for sexploitation blackmail of girls 9 to 12 years old. Ordered to pay $1.7 million restitution. Age 31.
Tom Sanvik
Local tennis impresario.Also a part-time Winona State University coach. Accused of collecting child pornography. Age 65.
Damen Duwjan Shade
Convicted of shipping drugs inside stuffed teddy bears from California to a Winona address. Age 48.
Damien Lamont Smith Jr.
Arrested after a series of drive-by shootings into Rollingstone homes late at night, a A tactical team took him down at a Winona address. Has cocaine record. Age 30.
Damien Bryant Winn
Pleaded guilty to shooting a fellow boozer outside George’s Bar at Bluff Siding. Arrested in Winona. Prosecuted in Bufalo County. Age 41.