Full circle, for now ~ May 23, 2002

David Heiller

Noah’s car was in the shop for a repair so I drove him to school a couple weeks ago. We didn’t talk about much. Just small talk, about the Twins and the weather. There was plenty of silence too, the comfortable kind that fathers and sons have when they are getting along.

Noah's graduation, 2002 Full circle, for this chapter

I took a left off Highway 61 in Willow River down the familiar street, then left into the parking lot to the entrance of Willow River High School with barely a good bye.

A lot of kids were streaming in, running just ahead of the first bell like Noah, and he joined them.

As I watched him disappear, an emotion hit me that I wasn’t expecting. It’s hard to describe. I suddenly realized that a big end had come to one of Noah’s chapters, and to one of mine.

First day of school, 1989

It was sadness a little, although it’s hard to be sad when you son's whole adult life is still ahead of him and you. I thought, “The things that we did in that school as parents are about to end,” and that brought a crooked smile.

I can’t begin to recount the memories here, and I would be in big trouble if I tried, because Noah has declared war on newspaper columns that include him, and I respect that mostly.

But they ran the gamut from good to not so good... as you might expect if you recall your own school years. I know he learned a lot, because Cindy and I learned a lot, and not just from helping him with math and proof-reading his English reports.

Like my sister Mary Ellen told me when I went to college, “Don’t let school interfere with your education.” The lessons Noah learned will probably not be what the chief export of Egypt is.

And since we served as general consul to those lessons, Cindy and I learned too. Phil Minkkinen should hand out honorary law degrees to all the parents on Friday night that can be redeemed at health spas or taverns.

I feel happiness for Noah and his classmates. Finishing high school is a big deal, and he’s glad to be doing that, and excited about his next move. I can still taste the freedom I felt when high school ended for me. It was like a chain was lifted from my torso. Yet I was kind of sad to see it go. That freedom is something to savor, because it doesn’t last. Chains come back, and by our choosing. There are good chains.

The other thought that hit me at that moment two weeks ago was that I was getting old.

Where did the time go? Was it really 13 years ago that Noah was getting on Dave Nyrud’s bus for his first day in school? I can remember it like yesterday, remember that he was wearing shorts (against our advice) and carrying a red back pack with a dinosaur on it. I remember the pride and sadness at that moment too.

We’ve come full circle. Now a new one is about to start, and I’m excited for Noah and all his classmates. There will be more milestones in Noah’s life. I’m looking forward to them. But I’m going to enjoy this one on Friday night in the Tom Stine gymnasium.

School Forest burned, then saved best friend ~ April 16, 1987

David Heiller

When Tom Leustek heard the crackle over his fire pager that a fire was burning south of Willow River last Thursday, he felt a premonition of disaster.

“In my head, I heard, ‘This is it.’ I had pedaled my bicycle to school, and I pedaled against that wind, and I knew it was tinder dry. I work in the woods,” Leustek said.

Tom Leustek had built his house in the center of a dense pine forest in Willow River in 1980. He loves trees. “I built there one reason—for the timber,” he explained. “A fool can see how pretty it is.”

Tom Leustek, holding a poster that
 commemorates May as Arbor Month, 
a time to plant trees.

So when Tom heard the fire call, and felt the south wind, and, saw the dense smoke, he knew.

When Tom got to the fire hall, he jumped into a fire truck with Bill Kenyon and Bruce Bohaty. They raced south to the Eva Marcus farm, but the fire was past it already, and into the pine forest, heading north, straight toward Leustek’s home.

They turned around and drove down the Old Sawmill Road, past Tom’s house, as far as the power line. They met a wall of fire, flames jumping from tree top to tree top, pushed on by that terrible wind.

“It was obvious we were going to do nothing,” Tom says. “Bill Kenyon said, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ and that’s what we did.”

They turned around, and drove back through fire, back to Tom’s house. They pulled up by Tom’s garage, to make a last stand.

A stone’s throw to the west of Tom’s garage lay the School Forest, 40 acres of jack pines that were planted 25 years ago. Tom knew those jack pines as well as anybody, probably better. He and his environmental studies class at Willow River High School had spent the past winter thinning the School Forest, taking out 23 rows of trees, a quarter mile to each row.

“In my yard and in that School Forest I’ve got a lot of labor of love,” Tom said.

Standing by his garage, with his white pines at his back, some of them 100 years old, and the school forest in front, Tom watched the fire bear down.

But suddenly, a miracle occurred, one of many miracles that for most people transformed last Thursday’s inferno from tragedy to relief. The fire veered to the west, skirting Leustek’s house, and two other houses. It swept past like a tornado, missing them.

“Apparently the school forest inferno was pulling so much oxygen from the east,” Tom tried to explain. “God’s wind just blew it away from our buildings.”

“That’s what it was, it was luck or divine intervention.”

The fire raged on, and the firemen chased it and fought it and finally beat it. The fire won the battle for Agnes Jaros’ trailer home, and Lyle Bakke’s basement home, and 302 acres of trees. The fire fighters won the war.

At first the victory seemed hollow to Tom. He lost his School Forest, and he is afraid for those white pines. They are very sensitive to heat, he said. “I don’t look for most of my white pines to survive.”

The day after the fire, Tom put a for sale sign up in front of his house.

“If I can sell, I will,” he said at first. “To me, I would have been better off if it (the house) went up.”

But after some thought, Tom’s feelings changed. “It’s obvious to me that the house didn’t burn because it was God’s will,” he said. “He wants me to stay in Willow River, and that’s what I intend to do.”

If you love trees like Tom Leustek does, you can understand his sorrow. He lost a part of his family, in a spiritual sense.

And consider this: With its wide rows so neatly trimmed by Tom and his students, the School Forest drew the flames away from Tom’s house, and from half a dozen others. If the fire hadn’t changed directions to the west, into the School Forest, at that time, it could easily have swung northeast. It might have jumped County Road 43 to the trees around the gas station and three 10,000 gallon fuel tanks. If those had blown up, the fire might not have been contained for miles.

So in our long list of thank yous to the people who helped halt disaster at the doorstep of the houses in Willow River, let’s add one for the Willow River School Forest. May your trees grow again.