A bright spring day gone dark ~ April 14, 1988
David Heiller The scene didn’t make sense, last Friday morning in Willow River. The air had that early April feeling to it, nippy and fresh and crystal clear. The sun had a brighter touch too, as it warmed the frost off the brown lawns, and warmed the robins that jumped from tree to tree above the grass, already hoping for earthworms. But smoke curled above the houses in Willow River, clouding this bright spring morning and all the hope that it should have brought along. The smoke oozed from the rafters and walls and basement of a frame home, once white, now blackened and broken. A dozen or so firemen from Willow River and Sturgeon Lake stood outside the shell of a house. They stood in pockets, here and there. They stood alongside the hole in the ground where a backhoe pawed through blackened debris. Their faces were gray with soot and smoke, their eyes hung with a sleepless night. And they seemed to stoop, in a barely perceptible way that is brought on by more than fatigue...