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Eagan Apple Valley Rosemount
April 21, 2011 • V36.16
minnlocal.com
In the Community, With the Community, For the Community
Spring sports are here. Page 31
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Nearing 90, Caponi reflects on life, park BY JEFF BARTHEL • SUN NEWSPAPERS
Tony Caponi is the namesake of Eagan’s Caponi Art Park. His 90th birthday will be celebrated with a party May 7. (Photo by Jeff Barthel • Sun Newspapers)
How does a person light 90 birthday candles? Anthony Caponi, the namesake of Eagan’s Caponi Art Park, celebrates his 90th birthday next month. A party will be held in his honor Saturday, May 7. While Caponi recognizes the achievement of 90 years of life, the Italian-born Eagan resident said he’s apprehensive of any attention toward him and feels the celebration and adoration should be directed more toward his 60-acre park than himself. The park, which was created in 1987, is on Diffley Road in Eagan a few blocks east of Pilot Knob Road. “We initiated this movement [to create the park] of using open land to bring art and nature together,” he said.
“People think of art in a gallery or at a museum and a lot of people don’t go to those places. Over here they can come the way they are. We represent all the arts. That makes us unique. We’re more holistic.” Although he is an artist, Caponi said he’s a bit uncomfortable with being called an “artist,” or with “art” being attached to his park’s name. He doesn’t care for the terms in the way they are often conjoined or stigmatized with elaborate art galleries or museums. Caponi draws his inspiration from many places. He recognizes artists and said if he had to choose a favorite it would be Michelangelo. But Caponi’s greatest inspiration, he said, is everyone. CAPONI: TO PAGE 27
Apple Valley native joins PBS TV show’s ‘Freedom Riders’ BY JENNIE OLSON • SUN NEWSPAPERS
Ryan Price
When Apple Valley native Ryan Price was a student at Greenleaf Elementary School he would wake up every morning at 7 a.m. to watch the news headlines. “I’d always run into my parents’ room and watch and eat breakfast
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before going off to Greenleaf,” Price said. “I’ve been interested in politics and civic life for quite a while now.” For Price, now a sophomore at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, that interest in civic engagement led him to become one of 40 students selected to participate in the 2011 Student Freedom Ride, a 10-
day trip sponsored by the PBS series “American Experience.” The May 616 trip will retrace a violent 1961 bus trip through the south that historians credit as a turning point of the Civil Rights Movement. The original freedom riders aimed to defy southern states’ laws that banned blacks from riding in
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public interstate buses. The riders were often beaten or attacked by mobs and the buses they were riding were firebombed. Federal rules were enacted barring segregated interstate transportation as a result of the brutality. PRICE: TO PAGE 28
Spring Open House April 27, 2011, 6:00pm Catholic • College Prep.
612-798-2621 • academyofholyangels.org