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Preserving the Past for the Future: Old Bemidji High School Remembered

Artist rendering of the reconstructed archway

With a last-ditch community effort, a group of alumni from the old Bemidji High School managed to save one of the building’s archways when the old school was razed in 2008. They have been working for 12 years to find the funds and space to reconstruct the arch, with a goal to recognize the old high school’s meaning to the community and bring it together with the new school.

Their project is called “Old Bemidji High School Remembered.” Dan Houg and Maggie Montgomery talked with three of the group’s members (all of them from the class of ’64!) on the Wednesday Morning Show. Listen to the interview below as Sharon Fruetel, Linda Lemmer, and Jerry Phillips tell us the history and future of this project. You can find out more on their Facebook page. Donations to this project are accepted at the Northwest MN Foundation.

Maggie is a rural public radio guru; someone who can get you through both minor jams and near catastrophes and still come out ahead of the game. She pens our grants, reports to the Board of Directors and helps guide our station into the dawn of a new era. Maggie is a locavore to the max (as evidenced on Wednesday mornings), brings in months’ worth of kale each fall, has heat on in her office 12 months a year, and drinks coffee out of a plastic 1987 KAXE mug every day. Doting parents and grandparents, she and her husband Dennis live in the asphalt jungle of East Nary.