Flags bow to honor Minnesota tribal peoples
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Flags flew half-staff in Minnesota for Indigenous Peoples Day at the direction of Governor Tim Walz. The governor called the day a reminder of the contributions of tribal communities to Minnesota’s shared history, culture and economy. “We still have work to do to keep Minnesota moving and strengthen connections with tribal communities to make sure our economy works for everyone,” Walz said.
R.I.P.: Helen Kukowski
WINONA, Minn. — Helen A. Kukowski, age 97, of Winona, who worked at Technigraph for 42 years, died at Sauer Health Care. She graduated from Winona High School in 1947. She loved old-time dancing and frequented the Labor Temple and Teamsters on Saturday nights. Later in life she became a world traveler and walked the Great Wall of China and climbed in the Alps.
Detail: Watkowski-Mulyck Funeral Home
1928-2025
Cooped-up suffering ducks saved; 10 dead
ONALASKA, Wis. — Police were suspicious about a Buick parked in a backyard with steamed-up windows. Inside the officers found 19 ducks, nine alive but struggling to breathe and 10 dead. Police called animal control officers, then began looking for James R Michael, age 45. He lived at the address in the 700 block of St. Paul Street. This was about 10 p.m. last Monday. Police returned the next morning and found that Michael had left a note telling them to come in, but having seen the officers arrive, he had left through an upstairs window, officers said. Police later arrested Michael. Police said the original call to address was from a girlfriend who said Michael was behaving oddly and had taken her purse.
Michael. Charged with animal cruelty, disorderly conduct.
Proposal: To ease cost of fertility care
MADISON, Wis. — A bill proposed in the Wisconsin Legislature would require health insurers to cover fertility treatments. Representative Jodi Emerson, a Democrat from Eau Claire, authored the proposal. Emerson said that finances shouldn’t preclude families from access to reproductive care.
R.I.P.: Betty Jean Hentges
FOUNTAIN CITY, Wis. – Betty Jean (Kujak) Hentges, 93, a life-long Fountain City resident, died at home at age 93. She graduated from Fountain City High School in 1950. She later was a secretary at Winona Transit., the Winona County Welfare Department, and Federal Bakery. She was president of the St. Mary’s Altar Society at church and active in the American Legion Auxiliary
Details: Fawcett-Junker Funeral Home
1932-2025
R.I.P.: Marlene Schultz
LEWISTON, Minn. – Marlene Verna Schultz, of Lewiston, who cooked many years at St. John’s Lutheran School, died at age 89. She was a graduate of Lewiston High School. With her husband she farmed 30 years near Lewiston. Earlier she was a secretary at Watkins for a short time. She helped run the Winona County Pork Producers food stand at the County Fair. She also was a charter member of the Pork Masters BBQ catering business, which she operated for 40 years.
Detail: Watkowski-Mulyck Funeral Home
1936-2025
WSU names facility for Bolon parents
WINONA, Minn. — The Winona State heating plant support facilities on Mark Street will be named for Gus and Susan Bolon to acknowledge a gift from their son, retired physics prof George Bolon, the university announced. George Bolon, a prominent local aviator, wanted to honor the values he learned from his father, a Greek immigrant and self-taught mechanical engineer, and his mother, a Greek American homemaker who was involved in school and church. George Bolon joined the Winona State faculty in 1968 and taught mostly aviation. He also managed the Winona municipal airport. Earlier he was a U.S. Army captain with the North American Air Defense Command.
Ferry displaces Lansing bridge 12 cars at a time
LANSING Iowa — Who will hold historic honors as the last human being to drive across the 1931 Black Hawk Bridge that connects Lansing across the Mississippi River with western Wisconsin? The shaky high span has been closed off and on for months for structural reasons, but roadblocks will go up the final time next Monday. A 12-vehicle ferry has been contracted to accommodate the usual 700 cars a day between Lansing and Ferryville. In mid-December — a new date — the bridge will be imploded. A towboat will crisscross the river all winter to break ice for the car ferry. The ferry will operate 16 hours a day. So who will make the final trip over the rickety Black Hawk Bridge? Governor Kim Reynolds of Iowa? Governor Tony Evers of Wisconsin? If they dare.
Earlier: Lansing bridge’s finale sooner than expected
Earier: Update: Spanning the Mississippi at Lansing
Earlier: Déjà vu: Lansing bridge quivers, closed again
Earlier: Ice being kept clear of Lansing bridge construction
Desperate soybean farmers: “Buy U.S.”
Farm visits. Wisconsin soybean farmers, like their counterparts in other states, have been wining and dining purchasing agents from abroad. This is a trade mission from Kazakhstan and Cambodia. U.S. farmers are desperate to offset their total loss of the massive China market due to President Trump’s trade war.
New Minnesota pitches for southeast Asia sales
TYLER, Minn. — Minnesota soybean growers pitched the value of their soybeans to 14 buying agents from southeast Asia. It’s been a Hail Mary attempt to offset the loss of China sales as a result of President Trump’s huge new tariffs on imports of Chinese goods into the United States. The Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council flew farmers from Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam to walk the land to witness the current harvest. The hope: To excite these buyers to commit to mass purchases of Minnesota soybeans. Soybeans are a major part of livestock feed globally. “We’ve got to beat the bushes and utilize these trade teams and show them what a great product the U.S. has,” said Joel Schreurs of the Minnesota Soybean Promotion Council in a Minnesota Star Tribune interview. “The crop at this point is plentiful and relatively cheap: “Now’s the time to buy if you’re a foreign entity.” Seth Naeve, a University of Minnesota agronomist, told the Star Tribune that prospective buyers that Minnesota soils yield soybeans with superior protein content. The focus in hosting the Asians was on what the animal wants,” he said. Minnesota has 26,000 soybean farmers. More than half of their crop is for export. In recent years a quarter of the state’s production went to China. Minnesota farmers planted 7 million acres of soy this year. Suddenly, thanks to Trump, China is buying nothing from Minnesota growers. China instead is buying from Argentina and Brazil.
Glenn Groth, chair of Northern Soy Marketing, which advocates for Minnesota and South Dakota farmers, said the Asian buyers were shown the whole process of Minnesota soy production to understand the supply chain and why Minnesota soybeans have advantages over international competitors.
Joel Schreurs, of the Minnesota Soybean Promotion Council, made a case that the 2025 Minnesota crop almost wholly harvested and plentiful and relatively cheap.
Seth Naeve, a University of Minnesota agronomist praised Northern-grown as “very clean” — low disease, low foreign material and dry — with a superior quality of protein.
College scores
Soccer (women): Winona State 5, MSU-Moorhead 1
Tennis (men): UW-LaCrosse 6, Hamline 1
Tennis (women): UW-LaCrosse 7, Hamline 0
Lewiston man’s new woes: Drugs, snub to judge
WINONA, Minn. — A Lewiston man, who was under a restraining order, was stopped driving with a woman protected by the order. In the vehicle, police said, was 0.4 grams of suspected meth and a meth pipe. Besides a drug possession charge, James Robert Hernstine, age 45, was booked for violating the do-not-contact court order. The woman in the car with Hernstine appeared all right, police said. This was about 3:20 p.m. in the 650 block of Dacota Street on the West Side. Two weeks ago, Hernstine was arrested after a 6-1/2 hour police stand-off in a remote quarry outside Utica. A woman had reported being threatened with an axe and beaten with a broomstick.
Hernstine. Back in jail two weeks after quarry stand-off.
Finstad’s wedge politics: Why be divisive?
ST,PAUL, Minn. — The four Republicans in the Minnesota Congressional delegation, including Brad Finstad, have inserted themselves into the controversial removal of a Christoher Columbus statue at the State Capitol five years ago. Although all four Republicans are Caucasian and lockstep supporters of President Trump, it was unclear whether they were motivated by Trump’s racist project to diminish any aboriginal role in U.S. history. The delegation delivered its letter to Governor Tim Walz for information on where the statue is now. Walz has not responded. Walz, a Democrat, has been a steady supporter of indigenous causes. About 134,000 Minnesotans identify themselves as American Indian. The GOP letter as delivered to Walz on Minnesota’s Indigenous Peoples Day, which Trump insists be called Columbus Day. The GOP letter:
“While we recognize that Christopher Columbus has become a subject of debate in recent years, it is important to remember the significance his legacy holds for generations of Italian Americans.”
The letter argued that the 10-foot statue had commemorated the contributions of Italian-Americans and “the spirit of exploration that shaped early American history.” The letter suggests the disappearance of the statute is an insult to Italian-Americans. The facts, however, are:
> Columbus arrived in the Caribbean, not the continental United States, which didn’t come into being until 300 years later.
> Although Italian by birth, Columbus claimed what’s now known as the Western Hemisphere for Spain, whose royalty had financed his expedition.
> No Italian culture connection to the United States occurred until the first waves of Italian immigrants in the mid-1800s.
> Any affinity between latter generations of Italian immigrants and Columbus is faint at best: Christopher who?”
Statue profile
The statue, created by Italian American Carlo Brioschi was erected on the state Capitol grounds in 1931. In 2020, after the murder of a black man, George Floyd, by a white policeman, the Columbus statue was brought down by racial protesters, some from the American Indian movement. They saw the statue as a symbol of white supremacy. At the time, Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, the nation’s highest elected Native woman, said she was pleased to see the statue gone.
Earlier: Anti-Columbus activist charged
Earlier: Indians topple Columbus statue
GOP’s Columbus champions. Signatories: Tom Emmer, from northern suburbs; Brad Finstad, from southern counties; Michelle Fischbach, from western counties; and Pete Stauber, from the Arrowhead.
Toppled face down. Crews removed the pieces after protesters pulled the statue off its pedestal. Where now?
DeSoto motorcyclist dies from truck collision
LACROSSE, Wis. — A motorcyclist who was injured fatally in a crash 10 days ago has been identified as a DeSoto man. Nicholas H. Smythe, 38, sideswiped a truck with a trailer at 33rd Street and Mormon Coulee Road on October 2. He died later at a LaCrosse hospital. His home, in DeSoto, was 28 miles downriver.
Smythe. Life-saving measures administered at scene.
R.I.P.: Gene Lundak
HOUSTON, Minn. — Eugene R. “Gene” Lundak, of Houston, who taught math at Winna State University for 29 years, died at age 81. He held a doctorate through the University of Phoenix Online. Earlier degrees were from Winona State and University of Evansville in Indiana. He was involved in philanthropic and civic organizations. He was active in the Lions Club, Odd Fellows, and Kiwanis. He was light-heated and enjoyed performing as a clown, his family said.
Details: Hoff Funeral Home
1944-2025
Y’s Halloween outings: Pumpkin bobbing, carving
WINONA, Minn. — Ever bob for apples? Here’s a twist on the Halloween tradition: The Winona Family YMCA invites kids to bob with pumpkins in its indoor swimming pool. Time: Saturday at 11 a.m. They call it “Dunkin’ for Pumpkins.” Charge: $10. The floating pumpkin patch event will be followed by trunk-or-treating. A follow-up for $15, starts at Camp Wenonah up East Burns Valley at 2 p.m.: Pumpkin carving, a bounce house, crafts, hiking, zipline, ropes courses, yard games, and scavenger hunts.
Floating pumpkin patch. Who would ever have thought. A warm dip indoors on a cool October day outside.
Cotter eyes expanded early childhood program
WINONA, Minn. — The private Cotter Schools sees growth ahead for its early childhood programs. There is a need, said Erin Koetz, admissions coordinator in a Winona Post interview.. Koetz pointed to Cotter being near capacity at Nicholas Hall on the old College of St. Teresa campus and at the Main Square Montessori downtown. Enrollment this fall rose to 192 from 177. Families take comfort in the continuity of starting children at Cotter and having them continue at Cotter through high school, she said.
Top-tier Michelin rank for LaCrosse hotel
Charmant. Built in 1898 as the Funke candy factory. Restored as a hotel in 2017 for $30 million as a hobby project of Don Weber after amassing a as a contract insurance processor. Address: 101 State Street. In homage to its roots, the hotel restaurant has a candy counter at the check-in desk.
Unique boutique: “No match in these parts”
GREENVILLE, S.C. — The Charmant Hotel in LaCrosse retained its top-ranking Michelin Guide rating for a second year. The new Michelin guide called the $138-a-night Charmont “a true gem with personality. Service always goes the extra mile, and the hotel provides much more than others in its price range.” The only other Wisconsin hotel with Michelin’s top score is the Goodwin in Beloit. In Minnesota there’s only the Four Seasons in Minneapolis. Michelin’s criteria:
> A contributes to the local experience.
> Architecture and interior design.
> Quality of service, comfort and maintenance.
> A singular personality.
> A unique character.
> Quality of the experience for the price paid.
News summary at week’s end: October 11, 2025
GOVERNANCE: Fourth Winona protest coming against Trump
GOVERNANCE: Gun law update: Walz sems to yield to GOP
GOVERNANCE: Rosen as Minnesota’s new U.S attorney: “Unexpected”
GOVERNANCE: Walz to Trump: We’ll do our own policing
GOVERNANCE: Trump choice OK’d as Minnesota’s U.S. attorney
RIVER: Corps caught in federal shutdown: No open house
SCHOOLS: Cotter slipping as magnet for foreign students
CRIME: $1 million bail in first sweepstakes scam case
SCHOOLS: Cotter slipping as magnet for foreign students
SEASONS: Jack Frost visits glens, vales, coulees
HEALTH: Gundersen buys Sparta ambulance company
RIVER: Corps caught in federal shutdown: No open house
College scores
Football: MSU-Mankato 47, Winona State 21
Soccer (women): St. Catherine 2, Saint Mary’s 1
Volleyball (women): Southwest Minnesota 3, Winona State 0
Volleyball (women): Saint Mary’s 3, Macalester 2
Minnesota prep
Soccer (boys): Stewartville Tigers 4, St. Charles/Lewiston-Altura 1
Soccer (boys): Rochester Lourdes Eagles 1, Winona Cotter Ramblers 0
Soccer (girls): LaCrescent-Hokah Lancers 3, Winona Cotter Ramblers 2
Volleyball (girls): Winona Cotter Ramblers 2, St. Charles Saints 0
Volleyball (girls): Winona Cotter Ramblers 2, Independence/Gilmanton 0
Volleyball (girls): Winona Cotter Ramblers 2, Soldiers Grove North Crawford Trojans 0
Volleyball (girls): Winona Cotter Ramblers 2, LaCrosse Rangers 0
Volleyball (girls): Winona Winhawks 2, Albert Lea Tigers 0
Volleyball (girls): Lewiston-Altura Cardinals 2, Minneapolis Southwest Lakers 0
Volleyball (girls): Lewiston-Altura Cardinals 2, St. Peter Saints 0
Volleyball (girls): Cochrane-Foutain City Pirates 2, St. Charles Saints 0
Volleyball (girls): Winona Cotter Ramblers 2, Mauston Golden Eagles 0
Volleyball (girls): Winona Cotter Ramblers 2, Cochrane-Fountain City Pirates 0
Wisconsin prep
Volleyball (girls): Winona Cotter Ramblers 2, Independence/Gilmanton 0
Volleyball (girls): Winona Cotter Ramblers 2, Soldiers Grove North Crawford Trojans 0
Volleyball (girls): Winona Cotter Ramblers 2, LaCrosse Rangers 0
Volleyball (girls): Westby Norsemen 2, Plainview-Elgin-Millville Bulldogs 1
Volleyball (girls): Cochrane-Foutain City Pirates 2, St. Charles Saints 0
Volleyball (girls): Winona Cotter Ramblers 2, Cochrane-Fountain City Pirates 0
Bad-mouthing Schulz: So much right-wing baggage
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Democrats aren’t inclined to speak kindly of Republicans. Such is politics. But the state Democratic chair, Richard Carlbom, has unusually harsh words against Ron Schutz as a GOP candidate for attorney general. “Ron Schutz is a corporate shill ready to invite Trump to occupy our cities, pollute our water, and erode the rights of everyday Minnesotans,” said Carlbom. “Make no mistake: This campaign will be Trump’s divisive and extreme policies dressed up in an expensive suit.” Carlbom released his statement in response Schutz declaring his candidacy for attorney general and setting up a challenge against Democrat incumbent Keith Ellison. Carlbom said Schutz is aligned with right-wing interests. He named the Center of the American Experiment and the Minnesota Private Business Council. Both organizations promote conservative economic and social policies.
Carlbom. State Democratic chair for Minnesota. Sparing no words in lambast.
Illegal driver stopped; white powdery stuff found
WINONA, Minn. – A Goodview man whose driving license had been revoked was stopped behind the wheel on the West End. On his person, police said, were what appeared to be 0.4 grams of meth and 0.4 grams of cocaine. This was about 1:20 a.am. Michael David Morrison, 44, was booked on a drug charge as well as habitually driving with a revoked license.
Morrison. Stopped near U.S. Highway 61 and Gilmore Avenue intersection.
Pair nabbed in Arcadia cocaine bust
ARCADIA, Wis. — Two people were arrested with more than a half pound of cocaine after a six-week investigation. Arcadia police inexplicably kept a tight lid on details but said that Karine Rodriguez-Aragon and Edgard Joel Rodriguez were taken into custody about 12:10 a.m. Their hometowns and ages were not released. Nor was the location of the arrests. Police Chief Nicholas Scholl posted a photo of Trempealeau County sheriffs K-9 deputy Luke with about 50 baggies packaged apparently for retailing.
Luke with drugs. The baggies are headed for the evidence room.
Edgard Joel Rodriguez.
Katrine Rodriguez-Aragon.
College scores
Soccer (women: Winona State 2, UM-Crookston 1
Tennis (women): UW-LaCfosse 7, UW-Eau Claire 0
Volleyball (women): Saint Mary’s 3, Hamline 1
Volleyball (women): Sioux Falls 3, Winona State 1
Volleyball (women): UW-LaCrosse 3, Dubuque 2
Volleyball (women): Rochester Community 3, St. Cloud Tech 0
Volleyball (women): Rochester Community 3, St. Cloud Tech 0
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