Honoring Richard Schell. Winona County’s Route 25 is the county’s first to be designated a memorial highway. It spirals up the Minneiska coulee to bluff-top croplands on the way to Rollingstone. Image: Steve Lunde
Memorial markers unveiled on County Route 25
MINNEISKA, Minn. – In Rollingstone they remember a native son, Richard Schell, who disappeared in Vietnam in 1967, apparently a prisoner of war. Fifty-six years later his family, friends and well-wishers gathered to dedicate a nine-mile stretch of scenic Route 25 in his name. Roadside plaques with the MIA symbol were unveiled in ceremonies at the Rollingstone and Minneiska ends of the route — the first Winona County highway named as a memorial. A half-mile convoy climbed the steep coulee out of Minneiska for a memorial service with eulogies at Holy Trinity Church in Rollingtone. Veterans honor guards participated from Eden Valley, Eyota, Lewiston, Plainview, St. Charles, Wabasha and Winona. Richard Schell, an Army major, was among eight soldiers in a combat helicopter that was caught in a downdraft and crashed. A rescue team found four survivors and one body. No traces of the others, including Schell, were ever found. The Pentagon says Schell was later reported being seen in an enemy prison camp.
Schell. Today he would be 78 years old.