The following article by Tim Engstrom was posted on the Lakeshore Weekly website June 29, 2017:
Photos by Tim Engstrom
ON BIG ISLAND — Despite being part of the negotiations for selling the veterans camp on Big Island in 2006 and despite being on the board that oversees the funds from the sale of the property, Tom Tweet of the Bloomington VFW Post had never set foot on the island.
Finally, on Wednesday, June 21, he did.
And he brought the commander of the Bloomington VFW, Doug Doerfler, with him.
“I really appreciate the opportunity to see what it looks like,” Doerfler said.
Tweet said the trip was good because of the connections the island has had with veterans over the years.
Veterans taking boat rides to Big Island is a 90-year-old Lake Minnetonka tradition. The excursion this June was made possible thanks to new grant funds.
Veterans Gerry Falkowski and Dean Ascheman, both IBM retirees, applied for a $2,000 grant from IBM Corp. to support Minnesota Veterans4Veterans funding outings on Lake Minnetonka.
Former Orono mayor and Big Island advocate Gabriel Jabbour, who owns Tonka Bay Marina, offered to match the IBM grant. He drove the boat — the Sophia.
He recalled a time when as many as 400 veterans made the trip to Big Island on Memorial Day. While the numbers aren’t the same, the tradition is importantant to the Lake Minnetonka area, he said.
“We are committed to continue doing that,” Jabbour said.
Twenty veterans, a state senator, a couple of reporters and the two-person boat crew went out on Lake Minnetonka. In addition to visiting the island, they toured of the lake. They departed from Tonka Bay.
The veterans hailed from across the state, from Hutchinson to Lake City and from Bloomington to Dassel. Aboard the Sophia and launching from Tonka Bay, they visited Big Island, which is now an Orono park but before 2006 the camp was owned by four veterans organizations — American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans and the Military Order of the Purple Heart.
It closed in 2003, and in 2006 the camp was sold to the city, with the funds going to Minnesota Veterans4Veterans. With two members from each of the four service organizations, it oversees the trust fund, which is maintained via US Bank.
“We had $5.3 million. We’ve spent $1.7 million, and now we still have $5.3 million,” said Don Pankake of Hutchinson. “I’d say that’s doing pretty good.”
Among the veterans was retired Major Gen. Larry Shellito, the former commander of the Rosemount-based 34th Infantry Division — the same Army National Guard group that has units all over Minnesota. Shellito these days is the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs.
He noted how beautiful the day was. It was 77 degrees on Big Island, with a south breeze of 13 mph.
“In the mass chaos of the Twin Cities, we have this jewel of tranquility and beauty,” he said.
He thanked the members of Veterans4Veterans for funding needs sought by vets and said though most of the recent veterans from wars in the Middle East returned five or six years ago, the effects of the wars on them is not “over.”
“That doesn’t just happen,” Shellito said.
He said Americans need to make sure they are cared for.
State Sen. Steve Cwodzinski, DFL-Eden Prairie, who sits on the Senate Veterans and Military Affairs Committee, is a former government teacher and said he was humbled after visiting with the veterans.
“You listen to their stories and it makes you feel like, ‘What have I done?’” he said. “Especially the Vietnam veterans.”
Cwodzinski said he used to take his students to visit the moving Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington and have them read the engraving “Freedom is not free.”
Next year will be particularly significant, Pankake said, because the American Legion’s national convention returns to Minneapolis. It will be the 100th national convention — held in the same city as the first one. It is slated to take place in late August 2018.
View the post here.