Obituary

RIP Terry Fiedler

Filed under: Obituary

Former CP staff writer Burl Gilyard has written an eloquent tribute to Terry Fiedler, the veteran Star Tribune reporter who died suddenly on Saturday at the age of 47. The piece originally appeared in Finance & Commerce (subscription only), where Gilyard covers the commercial real-estate beat.

F&C has graciously agreed to allow the article to be re-posted here.

Good-bye to an old friend - and friendly competitor

By By Burl Gilyard, F&C Real Estate Writer
August 17, 2006

When I started working for Finance and Commerce a few years ago, I found myself in competition with my old friend Terry Fiedler. Fiedler was then covering the commercial real estate beat for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The idea of us competing was more than a little comical to me. Terry had been covering the local business community since I was in high school. Although we never worked for the same publication, I considered him an older colleague and mentor.

But for a time, we were chasing the same stories and talking to the same people. Terry broke news, wrote compelling stories and brought seasoned perspective to his commercial real estate coverage. If you're reading this column, Terry may have written about you or your company.

On midday Saturday, I got the stunning, heartbreaking news that Terry,
age 47, had died that morning in the home of his girlfriend, Kelli.
Shell-shocked family and friends gathered, trying to make sense of
something that still makes no sense to anyone.

Before joining the Star Tribune in 1996, Terry had been editor of
Corporate Report magazine, a job he loved. Under Terry, the now-defunct magazine was a stellar regional business magazine.

Early in his career, Terry had worked for the Minnesota Business Journal and the Boston-based New England Business Journal. Both titles were defunct long ago.

Even though Terry lamented the superficial trends of the modern news
business, he was truly passionate about reporting and journalism. Terry had a strong work ethic. Last week alone he had four bylines in the paper.

If someone asked me to say good things about Terry Fiedler, I would
never shut up. Terry loved his family and would often quote his father, who runs the Fiedler Ford car dealership in Grantsburg, Wis.
Terry was always reading. He loved Jim Harrison, Cormac McCarthy,
Richard Ford, Thomas McGuane and J.F. Powers.

A proud native of western Wisconsin, Terry was a lifelong fan of the
Green Bay Packers and hosted an annual "Packer Party" at his home.
He loved "The Shack Sandwich" at the late, great Pickled Parrot
restaurant in downtown Minneapolis.

Terry was a generous and selfless friend to many. To list them here
would take up this entire column and still leave out too many names.
He loved music, particularly Warren Zevon. Like Zevon, Terry had a dark, self-deprecating sense of humor and a heart of gold. We cursed and lamented Zevon's own premature death, to cancer, at age 56 in 2003. We had seen Zevon's last local concert a few years earlier at First Avenue.

He kidded me on the phone when I would tell him that I had to "scamper." Terry loved words and there was something about "scamper" that tickled him. It became an inside joke between us.
The dictionary on my desk defines "scamper" as "to run or go hurriedly
or quickly."

You scampered far too soon, old friend.

Wherever you are, I hope they've already put you to work at the
magazine.

C Copyright 2006 Finance & Commerce, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Posted by Paul Demko at August 17, 2006 11:52 AM | Comments (4)

 

August 16: The day the music, the Bambino, and the vampire died

Filed under: Obituary

Beware the ides of August! Famed musicians Robert Johnson and Elvis Presley, Hall of Fame slugger Babe Ruth, and horror movie legend Bela Lugosi all drew their last breath on August 16. What cosmic truth or transcendent meaning can be derived from this ghoulish convergence? It doesn't have the same significance as political rivals John Adams and Thomas Jefferson dying on the same 4th of July in 1826, but the circumstances surrounding their deaths were as unique as their lives. Except for Bela, he just had a heart attack.

Robert Johnson was playing a show with Sonny Boy Williamson one night in July 1938, when a young lady caught the bluesman's eye. It's believed the jealous husband of the woman had Johnson served an open whiskey bottle containing strychnine. Johnson became ill following his return to the stage and had to go outside. Johnson fought the poisoning for weeks, succumbing to pneumonia on Tuesday, August 16, 1938 at age 27.

In the fall of 1946, Babe Ruth, who hit 714 home runs during his legendary career, was diagnosed with throat cancer and spent three months in the hospital. He lost 80 pounds, his voice was impaired, and he was rendered nearly immobile. On June 13, 1948, with his health still in decline, the Yankees honored the player that made them the most recognizable team in the world by retiring his number 3. He died on August 16, 1948 at Memorial Hospital in New York City at age 53. On August 17 and 18, his body lay in state at the entrance of Yankee Stadium, where over 100,000 people came to pay their final respects.

Bela Lugosi, born near the western border of Transylvania in 1882, gained international fame in 1931 in the title role of Dracula, leading to almost three decades starring in horror movies. Lugosi committed himself in 1955 in order to overcome his drug addiction, then joined director Ed Wood on their third collaboration, Plan 9 From Outer Space. After filming a few scenes, however, Lugosi died of a heart attack on August 16, 1956, and was buried in his Dracula costume. He was 73.

Elvis Presley, the first rock and roll star, with 150 different albums and singles certified gold, platinum or multi-platinum, and over one billion record units sold worldwide, grew heavier and more dependent on prescription drugs during the latter part of his life. On August 16, 1977, the day before his next scheduled concert, "The King" was discovered by his girlfriend Ginger Alden dead on the bathroom floor at Graceland, the book The Scientific Search for the Face of Jesus laying nearby. He was 42. Congestive heart failure was ruled the cause of death. A later autopsy revealed advanced hardening of the arteries and an enlarged liver.

Posted by Corey Anderson at August 16, 2006 4:21 PM | Comments (0)

 

Goodnight, Papa Bear

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Stan Berenstain of "Berenstain Bears" fame dies at 82; parents everywhere get a little less help embracing their own fallibility

Stan Berenstain, creator of the Berenstain Bears books, died Saturday of complications from cancer. A wildly popular series of thin children's paperbacks, the stories chronicled the misadventures of four bipedal bears named, in childlike fashion, Papa, Mama, Brother, and Sister. There must be hundreds of these books, each revolving around some minor domestic trauma: "The Berenstain Bears and the Messy Room"; "The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food"; "The Berenstain Bears Forget Their Manners," etc.

Most have a predictable thread: The bear siblings step on Mama's or Papa's last nerve and someone in the treehouse blows up. The angry parent starts to tongue-lash the hapless cubs, but then, at the pivotal moment in each book, realizes that he or she isn't being very grown up about the situation. Bearfit thus defused, a constructive outcome is possible and harmony pervades the treehouse.

More often than not, the dunderhead is Papa Bear, who consistently displays a need to do things better, faster, and bigger, and who gets handed his furry ass every time, only to find himself more beloved by the cubs. According to the obituary in today's Los Angeles Times, Stan Berenstain and his wife and co-author Jan modeled the adult bears on themselves.

"I was told by a lawyer once that truth is a complete defense. Mama's perfectionism is about Jan," Stan told The Times.

He deflected criticism of Papa Bear, who is frequently portrayed as a bit of a dolt, by admitting that the bear's bullheaded tendencies were all his.

I do understand the position of one dad I know who finds the Berenstain Bears series too sexist for his family's library (with the lone exception of "Messy Room," Mama never gets handed her comeuppance), but I still maintain that the series displays a subversive genius. Young children like to hear stories a jillion times; stories that show their parents as flawed or capable of hypocrisy, two jillion times. But even better, show me the grownup who can make it through "The Berenstain Bears and the Greedy Gimmies" without acknowledging on their own tendency to feed the trolls and I'll show you someone pathologically devoid of self-awareness.

I'm a better human for having known you, Stan. Godspeed in the ultimate hibernation.

Posted by Beth Hawkins at November 30, 2005 10:50 AM | Comments (0)

 

Diana Watters R.I.P.

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Last Friday evening, City Pages lost a great friend and contributor when photographer Diana Watters died suddenly after taking pictures at a wedding party in the Duluth area. Watters began shooting pictures for CP in 1997 and contributed to over 120 stories in the past eight years. She shot many of our Dish articles, but her versatility enabled her to do fine work for many of our arts features and cover stories. We will all miss her work in these pages, but we will also miss her smile, her laugh, and the adventurous spirit that led her to take up flying small planes a couple of years ago. Our thoughts are with her family and her companion, Jerry Thompson. Watters was 43.

Posted by Corey Anderson at October 3, 2005 1:01 PM | Comments (27)

 

Evelyn Eubanks, 1957-2005

Filed under: Obituary

Minneapolis loses a moral compass

A note posted last night on the online Minneapolis Issues forum notes the passing last week of Evelyn Eubanks, a north Minneapolis mother and a tireless advocate of educational rights. Evelyn, who died of cancer at 47, was incapable of not speaking truth to power, and in doing so rattled cages throughout the Twin Cities. She was a pain in the ass--but always right.

She was memorialized in the note by southsider Doug Mann, her longtime comrade in countless efforts to hold Minneapolis Public Schools accountable for their failure to serve all children with equal vigor.

Evelyn was well known and in high demand as a volunteer advocate for students and parents in the school system, wrote well, and was as an outstanding orator. I especially liked Evelyn's 'angry speeches' to the school board.

Evelyn worked through "the system" for many years, and was probably near the head of the line for a seat on the school board when she endorsed the NAACP's educational adequacy lawsuit in 1995. Evelyn's resume included service on school district improvement committees, on the board of at least one charter school, and as president of the citywide PTA.

Despite Eubanks' willingness to put her energy where her mouth was, Minneapolis School Board members repeatedly attempted to paint her as a crank and a chronic malcontent. I doubt anyone currently employed by MPS or serving on its board would admit it, but Eubanks doubtless deserves much credit for the district's recently acquired insistence that every child be treated as educable, race and class notwithstanding.

Eubanks kicked City Pages' collective ass from time to time, and whenever she did, we would find an injustice that demanded investigating. In recent years several of us have written stories that hinged on her willingness to answer the phone, her penchant for keeping meeting agendas, minutes, fliers, and phone numbers, and her preternatural ability to see through bullshit. Here's a link to one story of mine in which she was willing to say things many people knew, but were too uncomfortable to voice.

Mann's memorial note says that there was no funeral notice or obituary for Eubanks, and yet her services were attended by hundreds. In trying to verify this this morning (which I did), I Googled across a link to a piece in the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder marking an July 23 resolution by the NAACP recognizing Eubanks' contributions to the community. Given that past NAACP leaders were among those Eubanks occasionally called out, the recognition must have seemed especially meaningful.

My kids are better off because of Eubanks. Whether you know it or not, yours are, too.

Posted by Beth Hawkins at September 13, 2005 10:02 AM | Comments (1)