37 minute read
In Sight
Daybreak at Saint John’s
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Photo by Tommy O’Laughlin ’13
Edwin Torres
Helped Lead Minnesota’s COVID Vaccination Effort
By Frank Rajkowski
After playing a key role in the campaign to re-elect U.S. Senator Tina Smith last November, Edwin Torres ’16 decided to take a little time off to decide what came next.
At age 28, he already boasted an impressive resume that also includes serving as the National Latino Outreach Director for the presidential campaign of Amy Klobuchar, the senior U.S. Senator from Minnesota.
So he had no shortage of potentially lucrative options to consider. But when Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s office approached him about helping to lead the state’s COVID-19 vaccination efforts, Torres thought back on his own background. And he knew he couldn’t refuse.
“I still (remember) my experiences at age 11 and 12,” Torres said. “Being homeless. Showering in the ocean. Being hungry every day I went to school. Not having dental care until I was 18 and enrolled at Saint John’s. Not having a physical for years at a time. My parents working two or three jobs and not having any time off because of their immigration status. “That’s what grounds me. And I want to do everything I can to make sure even one less kid doesn’t go through what I did.”
That’s why for the first six months of this year, until leaving the job this past June, Torres was working 10 to 12 hours a day – often seven days a week – as the state’s COVID-19 Vaccine Outreach Director, helping connect Minnesota residents with critical shots that have played a key role in the fight against the deadly virus. “We never had medical care growing up,” said Torres, who is one of approximately 700,000 individuals covered by Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a policy allowing those who came to this country at a young age to gain work permits and remain protected from deportation. “Being undocumented and living in the shadows, that’s something that just wasn’t there. So to be able to assure that our most vulnerable communities get the vaccine, which is lifesaving, (was) just an incredible privilege. To be able to help out families that look like mine (was) so humbling.”
Emotional work
One of the areas Torres was most proud of was the efforts he worked on to reach workers in the food manufacturing industry – an industry that was hit hard in the early weeks of the pandemic. “We knew that when the vaccines were available this group needed to be prioritized,” Torres said. “So we went to work and hosted dozens of planning sessions with community leaders, organizations, various departments, key employers and unions who represented these workers.
“And from March to May (of this year), we led a highly-targeted approach with no barriers to reach these communities.
“I’m proud of the work we did in towns like Worthington, Marshall and many others to get these workers vaccinated. Because of the work of many (people), the state achieved a 70% vaccination rate with all of these workers in a matter of weeks. When Gov. Walz met with President (Joe) Biden in May, this was one of the vaccine campaigns that he highlighted as a great achievement in our state.”
Torres said the work was personal for him.
“Many experts told us that reaching these communities would be hard and that we would be lucky to get 30 to 40 percent vaccinated,” he said. “But I hope we were able to show that intentional planning and having community organizations lead is the key. “Also, I am from these communities, an immigrant, mix-status family whose parents have worked in food manufacturing plants. I knew the challenges and I know these communities. “
Overcoming challenges
Indeed, when he was a small child, Torres’ parents were forced to leave both he and his brother behind in El Salvador when they came to the U.S. in search of a better life for their family.
He was reunited with them in California when he was six, but the road was far from easy. By the time he graduated high school, his family had moved 12 times and he had attended 10 different schools. On two different occasions, they found themselves homeless.
“There were a lot of challenges to overcome,” he said. But Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan said that background has helped Torres bring a deep sense of empathy to his work on the vaccine rollout, especially when reaching out to BIPOC, nonEnglish speaking and undocumented communities, some of whose members have been hit hard by the spread of the virus and don’t always have access to needed medical care.
“Part of outreach is sometimes having the hard conversations,” Flanagan said. “But he answers all the tough questions and forms real bonds.
“He’s smart, compassionate and empathetic. He really cares about people and community and that comes through.” Torres is proud of the work he and others put in to get as many Minnesotans vaccinated as possible, efforts that likely helped avoid a new surge of cases and deaths last spring. He said he tried to approach the task the way he approached his past work on political campaigns. “I (tried) to run this effort like we would a voter outreach effort,” he said.
Edwin Torres served as the national Latino outreach director for Minnesota U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar during her run for the presidency from 2019-20. (Photo courtesy of Edwin Torres)
“Let’s get as many people as possible registered for the vaccine connector. Let’s employ text messages. Let’s go door-to-door. The type of outreach you do during a campaign is very similar to the things (we were doing). “That six-month COVID appointment was life-changing for me,” Torres continued. “Even at the start of the pandemic, I couldn’t have imagined that within a few months I’d be working on getting such a precious material out to so many people. Something that had the potential to save our own lives and the lives of our loved ones.
“Words can’t describe the pressure I felt to not mess it up and the sheer amount of work that needed to be done. There was no infrastructure set up for an effort like that. We had to create it from
the ground up.”
Paying it forward
Torres said he is conscious of the responsibilities that come with the positions of influence he has served in. “One of the things I’ve always tried to do is to take my understanding of what is happening at the local levels and try to use it to get changes made at the top,” Torres said. “I’ve been so lucky to be able to have the ears of some of our top elected officials. And the question for me has always been how to take that privilege and bring it back into our communities.
“Because I wouldn’t be where I am now if the leaders of those communities hadn’t placed their trust in me. Political leaders come and go. But the leaders on
While working on U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar’s presidential campaign, Torres attended a presidential candidate forum hosted by the NAACP at its annual convention in Detroit in July 2019.
the ground will always be there.” Those who have worked closely with Torres over the years praise his commitment to that mission.
“He really brings a combination of a zealous work ethic and a core belief in the possibility of public policy and government being able to make the world a better place,” said Matt Lindstrom, a professor of political science at CSB/SJU and director of the Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement. “He’s committed to causes he believes in. He’s a learner and he’s someone who understands that issues can be complex, which makes him appreciate the kaleidoscope that a liberal arts education offers.
“I’ve known him as a student and I’ve known him as an employee,” Lindstrom continued. “And now as an alumni, he’s been a true friend to the McCarthy Center and a true friend to CSB/SJU as a whole. He’s always willing to talk with current students and pass on his advice and guidance.” One of his more recent bosses echoed similar sentiments.
“Edwin Torres was an invaluable member of our team,” Klobuchar said in a statement. “He embodies Minnesota values – he is hard-working, humble and kind to everyone he meets. “From advocating for dreamers like himself to ensuring vaccines are reaching every community across the state, Edwin has a steadfast commitment to public service and making this country a better place.”
Man on a mission
Such efforts are all part of making good on the mission Torres set for himself soon after arriving on campus at SJU in the fall of 2012.
“I’ve kept a journal I wrote in during my first night at Saint John’s sitting in my room on the third floor of Mary Hall,” Torres said. “I wrote that I’d been given this chance, now I had to take it and run and keep running. I wrote that when I was 18 back in 2012 and it’s still true today. “When I was given a chance with Sen. Klobuchar, I said, ‘Take it and keep running.’ When I was given a chance with Sen. Smith, I said, ‘Take it and keep running.’ Working with the governor’s administration on vaccination efforts, I tried to do the same thing. “I try to take every opportunity I have and make the most of it, while putting a ladder down behind me so other people like me are able to have the same experiences in the future.”
Alejandro Guzman
Helping Others Mirror His SJU Experience
The road that brought Alejandro Guzman ’19 from Immokalee, Florida to Saint John’s University has now taken him to another seemingly unlikely destination and challenging career path. A nutrition major and exercise science
minor? Teaching high school biology and chemistry? In Houston? “It’s very rewarding. You can really see the appreciation that a lot of these kids have,” said Guzman, who is starting his third year of teaching high school first-years and sophomores at YES Prep East End – part of a group of 21 Houston charter schools with a college preparatory emphasis that serve students who are 97 percent Hispanic or Black, 90 percent first-generation college students and 85 percent economically disadvantaged. “A lot of families are just truly trying to push for their kids to have a better education,” added Guzman, who
also coaches East End’s varsity boys basketball and volleyball teams. “We want to make sure that from an early age we’re starting to introduce that you can go to college, you are college-ready, things like that.” Hopefully, their experience can mirror Guzman’s own First Gen experience at Saint John’s. “My four years at Saint John’s were so amazing,” said Guzman, who was one of the first four success stories of the Immokalee Scholarship Program that provides scholarship support for students from one of America’s poorest communities.
“I was able to be part of the Urban Scholars internship in Minneapolis, so I was feeling after graduation I was going to work with public health or some type of government work with public policy. But teaching just kind of fell into my lap and I ran with it.” Part of Guzman’s immersion into his students’ lives in Houston has included steering them toward his own footsteps. “I tell all my kids, ‘Senior year I’m making you apply to Saint John’s – every one of you.’ ” Guzman’s long-term vision, however, is focused elsewhere.
“My plans are still to one day go back to Immokalee and take all my knowledge, become the first (Hispanic) councilman representing Immokalee or the first mayor,” he said. “That’s still my future goal. “I’m just trying to do my best. Hopefully with the hard work it leads me to be in a position to do even more great things and inspire others.”
Alejandro Guzman (lower left) poses for a photo with one of his classes at Houston’s YES Prep East End college preparatory high school, where he teaches biology and chemistry.
Jaime Ramirez
Making a Difference For Healthcare Patients
Two decades into his professional career, Jaime Ramirez ’00 can proudly say he helps people and makes a difference every single day. Perhaps that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, though, because it’s exactly what Ramirez has been doing basically since his arrival at Saint John’s University.
“I was very fortunate being at Saint John’s, coming from a family where I was the first to go to college,” said Ramirez, who served SJU as an admissions student tour guide and as founder and director of an outreach program for Hispanic/Latino youth. “I had experiences with a lot of wonderful men and women who would take the time to listen, to talk, to advise, to impart wisdom.” That’s what Ramirez now does for others. He serves as a clinical social worker in the Outpatient Mental Health Clinic at St. Cloud Veteran’s Health Administration Medical Center, where he has provided care since 2007. “In my role, I provide individual, couples and group psychotherapy for veterans as well as clinical case management – that’s helping veterans navigate the VA healthcare system,” said Ramirez, who lives in Sartell with his wife Carolyn – also a VHA clinical social worker – and their kids Jasmin (10), Alejandro (8) and Ariana (6). The roots for that career of service sprouted at Saint John’s. “He was an agent for change,” said SJU Director of Admission Marketing Tom Voller-Berdan ’88, who helped recruit Ramirez in 1996. “He’s just this kind, generous person that loves Saint John’s and Saint Ben’s.”
As an SJU sophomore, Ramirez founded the Fast Forward Youth Program, an Hispanic/Latino youth college initiative and outreach program through the SJU/CSB Admission Office.
“It involved me going to high schools and speaking about my experience in life and how I got to Saint John’s,” said Ramirez, who subsequently recruited over 400 SJU/CSB students to serve as tutors and mentors for Hispanic/Latino students in Central Minnesota during his years as director of the Fast Forward Youth Program. “We’ve got to go to the source. We’ve got to plant the seed. “I’m always looking to evolve. I’m always looking to improve things. When we look to the profile of a good Saint John’s student, these are the things we look to – service and leadership.”
Jaime Ramirez (left) and his wife Carolyn pose with their children Jasmin (top middle), Alejandro (top right) and Ariana.
Julio Ojeda-Zapata
Finding His Journalistic Calling at SJU
Enrolling at Saint John’s University was truly a leap of faith for Julio OjedaZapata ’85. The native of the San Juan, Puerto Rico area had never set foot on campus before he arrived here as a firstyear student in the fall of 1981. “I hadn’t done any college visits and I went to Saint John’s sight unseen,” said Ojeda-Zapata, a longtime reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press who has been covering the changing face of technology since the mid-1990s. “I got dropped off in the middle of nowhere in a place I’d never been before. But it ended up working out. I loved my time there.” Ojeda-Zapata majored in political science at SJU, but he already knew journalism would be his true calling – an insight that dated back to when he started writing for La Flama, a student paper at Colegio Espíritu Santo parochial school in Hato Rey, Puerto Rico.
He also wrote for The Record during his time at SJU, then earned his master’s degree in journalism at the University of Illinois. He worked for the Chicago Reporter, a monthly magazine, for a year, then joined the Pioneer Press as a general assignment reporter in 1987. “Saint John’s had such a solid liberal arts program, which was perfect for me,” he said. In the mid-1990s, Ojeda-Zapata transitioned from his general assignment role into covering the technology beat, just in time for the dot.com bubble and eventually the advent of social media. He’s also written a number of books about consumer technology, business tech and mobile productivity. He’s currently part of the newsroom’s online team.
Julio Ojeda-Zapata (left) and a colleague work in the newsroom at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, where the Saint John’s graduate has worked for more than three decades.
He also is a contributing editor for TidBITS, a website for Apple enthusiasts. His work has appeared in a variety of other print and online outlets, including Macworld.com, Mpls.St. Paul Magazine and the San Jose Mercury News.
Ojeda-Zapata said he still looks back on his time at Saint John’s with great fondness.
“I picked Saint John’s on instinct, but within two days of arriving there, I knew I’d picked the right place,” he said. “Even now, when I come back and swim out to the raft (on Lake Sagatagan) and lay in the sun, there’s nowhere else in the world where I feel more relaxed.”
Michael Pineda
Charting a Road Map for Success
When Michael Pineda ’21 arrived at Saint John’s University as a freshman in the fall of 2017, he was told about the Eugene J. McCarthy Mentor Program, which pairs College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s students with individual political and community leaders.
It’s meant as a way to offer current students sources of support who can provide a road map as they begin exploring avenues to success academically and in later life.
Pineda, a graduate of Verbum Dei High School in Los Angeles who was raised by a single mother and is the first member of his family to attend college, was paired with Steve Chavez, a 1974 SJU graduate who is now a lawyer in the Twin Cities.
“He ended up doing so much for me, including offering personal and professional support,” Pineda said. “And when I offered to try to pay him back, he refused and told me to pay it forward instead.
“That’s something that really stuck with me.”
Pineda, who graduated from Saint John’s in May with his global business leadership degree, served as a mentor to many during his time on campus. As lead video production specialist for Instructional Technology, Pineda supported the Kling Media Lab and Video Studio with a wide range of classes, lectures, podcasts, interviews, newscasts, music videos and more.
At the start of the COVID 19 pandemic, he rapidly created many of the training resources and video tutorials that made it possible for the SJU/CSB community to move online quickly, and to take advantage of the digital tools that would become commonplace as a result of hybrid learning and video conferencing. For his efforts, he was named the SJU Student Employee of the Year for the 2020-21 school year. Pineda plans to pursue a career as an instructional technology specialist. But before that happens, he is spending a year abroad volunteering as a member
of this year’s cohort of the Benedictine Volunteer Corps. “More than anything, I try to look at what I did here at SJU as a baseline for future generations,” he said. “My grandmother came to this country as an immigrant just hoping to survive. My mother became a resident. I’m just the next in the series of steps my family has taken to continue improving our quality of life.”
Valentin Sierra
Growing Into a Career of Service
His home region has always been extremely important to Valentin Sierra ’10. So has the concept of service. But to serve at home the way he is doing now, Sierra first had to travel far and wide. His time at Saint John’s University was an important stop on that journey. “Saint John’s, to me, meant the whole world,” said the 2010 SJU graduate, who is now the secretary of economic planning and development for his home state of Caldas in his native Colombia.
“It changed my perspective on things. It enabled me to apply for the master’s degree of my dreams (in public policy) at Harvard. It set me up with an internship in the city of my dreams in Washington, D.C. “But more than anything, Saint John’s meant grit and growth. It allowed me to discover and believe in what I was capable of doing.” Sierra grew up in Manizales, Colombia, the capital of the Department of Caldas, during a period when the country was racked by civil war. A scholarship enabled him to come to the U.S. and attend St. Cloud (Minnesota) Cathedral High School as an exchange student. A speech he delivered at an event at St. Mary’s Cathedral in downtown St. Cloud drew the attention of the late Vern Dahlheimer, who spent many years working on behalf of social justice causes in the St. Cloud area.
Dahlheimer helped provide the financial support needed for Sierra to enroll at Saint John’s, where he excelled – majoring in economics and political science, working for the Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement and earning acceptance to the Phi Beta Kappa national honors society. With his résumé, he could have gone anywhere in the world and likely had his pick of jobs. But he chose to return to Caldas, where he helped elect longshot candidate Luis Carlos Velásquez Cardona governor in 2019. He now serves as one of Cardona’s top aides, helping his home state meet the challenges in front of it. “The Benedictine values of service and caring for one another that were instilled in me at Saint John’s just reinforced my decision to come back to Colombia,” he said.
Valentin Sierra serves as secretary of economic planning for his home state of Caldas in Colombia.
Voices of the Johnnies
NOTABLE ANNOUNCERS RESONATE THROUGHOUT SJU ATHLETIC HISTORY
By Frank Rajkowski
When Mark Lewandowski gets behind the microphone to do the radio broadcast of Saint John’s University football and basketball games, he doesn’t have to imagine what his audience looks like.
He can see a sampling right in front of him.
“That’s how loyal Johnnie Nation is,” said Lewandowski, who began calling SJU basketball games in 1999 and took over football play-by-play duties the following year. “Even people who are at the games are tuning in. “There’s nothing more incredible than looking out at a large crowd in Clemens Stadium, or at a packed gym in Sexton Arena, and seeing people with headphones on listening to your broadcast.”
For decades, those listeners have made up just a small portion of a wider audience of SJU alums and fans tuning in across Central Minnesota – and more recently, thanks to the advent of the internet and the creation (in football) of the Johnnie radio network, the entire state, nation and world. Since the 1960s, radio stations based in nearby St. Cloud, Minnesota consistently have carried Johnnie football and basketball. And even before that, a number of games were broadcast locally each season during the late 1940s and ’50s.
The broadcasts often have featured top-notch talent, including play-byplay voices who have gone on to call games at the professional level. For a time in the early 1990s, the football play-by-play duties were assumed by legendary broadcaster Ray Scott, who in the late 1960s and early 1970s was the lead voice of NFL broadcasts on CBS television, calling four of the first eight Super Bowls. “It’s unprecedented for a Division III school to have had the kind of coverage we’ve had over the years,” said Johnnie football coach Gary Fasching ’81, who also handled color commentary on SJU broadcasts for several years before returning to his alma mater to join then-head coach John Gagliardi’s staff in 1995. “I don’t think you’ll find another school our size that has attracted the kind of talent and big names that have come through to call our games over the years. I know we’re the envy of a lot of schools. I hear from other coaches in our conference who are amazed at the amount of radio coverage we’ve had over the years, and at how professionally it’s been done.”
Many of those broadcasters look back fondly on calling the action for the Johnnies. “It was really like being part of a Division I atmosphere, but on a smaller scale,” said Dick Bremer, who called SJU football games on WWJO-FM 98.1 in St. Cloud for a number of seasons in the 1980s and has gone on to become the longtime television play-byplay voice of the Minnesota Twins. “You sense it from the moment you park your car and walk into the stadium,” he continued. “People are so into the game and the whole experience. It becomes very evident when you’re doing those games that they’re social events for a lot of people.”
“It’s the coolest thing,” said Anthony LaPanta ’90, an SJU graduate who hosted The John Gagliardi Show on the old Midwest Sports Channel in the mid-1990s and became the play-by-play voice of Johnnie football during the 1999 season on St. Cloud-based KKJMFM Spirit 92.9. He now does play-by- play for the NHL’s Minnesota Wild. “Here you have a Division III team, but they play in front of huge crowds and they have so much support out there,” he said. “You know people are listening from all over. It was such a great atmosphere to be part of.”
EARLY DAYS
The first recorded instance of an SJU sporting event being broadcast on the radio came on Oct. 22, 1922 for a matchup between the Johnnies and St. Olaf.
By 1925, soon after campus station WFBJ went on the air thanks to a radio tower built atop the old Science Hall (now known as Simons Hall) at least a very small audience had the chance to tune in for updates on the Homecoming game against Hamline. Johnnie sports updates were featured regularly on St. Cloud station KFAMFM when it first hit local airwaves in 1938, but it wasn’t until 10 years later when full broadcasts of Saint John’s football games appear to have been added to the station’s lineup of local sports programming. “Both colleges (SJU and St. Cloud State University, then known as St. Cloud Teachers College) and three high schools will figure into the overall home-game coverage,” reported the St. Cloud Times in its Sept. 17, 1948 edition highlighting that year’s fall schedule with Cliff Sakry, KFAM’S regional director and social events commentator, handling the call. The station continued carrying select SJU games throughout the 1950s, but by the start of the 1960s a new station had emerged as player on the local sports broadcast scene.
TIN PAN ANDY
WJON-AM first went on the air in 1950. By the early 1960s, the St. Cloudbased station would become the regular home for SJU football (and sometimes basketball) broadcasts with Jim Roeser handling the play-by-play. “When I first got there, we started to get pretty heavy into doing the local high schools and colleges,” said Roeser, who remained the sports director at the station until he departed in the early 1970s to take a sportscasting job at television station KCMT in Alexandria, Minnesota.
“KFAM had been the dominant station in town, but WJON was really coming to the forefront with Andy (Hilger) as the program director at the time. He was the guy who hired me, and having local sports – especially Saint John’s – on his station was really important to him.”
Hilger started at WJON in 1958 as a late-night DJ who went by the name
Mark Lewandowski and Bryan Backes
Ray Scott
“Tin Pan Andy.” He worked his way up the ladder quickly, buying the station in 1965 and later adding WWJO, KMXK (now Mix 94.9 FM) and KKJM to his portfolio. Roeser spearheaded early coverage of SJU sports, following along when Gagliardi and the Johnnies headed to Sacramento, California for the NAIA national title game in 1963. There, SJU defeated a Prairie View A&M team that featured future NFL stars Otis Taylor and Ken Houston by a score of 33-27, earning the first of the head coach’s four national titles.
WJON was not alone in the press box for that game, though, nor for the 1965 NAIA title game in which the Johnnies defeated Linfield (Oregon) in Augusta, Georgia. Unlike today, when contracts guarantee exclusivity, no barriers prevented other stations from airing the games if they chose to. KFAM, which was owned by the St. Cloud Times, took advantage of the fact that sports writer Mike Augustin was already on hand for both the 1963 and ’65 title games — Johnnie alums paid to fly him out— and pressed him into double service as a play-by-play man on the radio.
“Was there an Oak Grove Dairy in the area?” recalled Pat Reusse, the longtime Twin Cities sports columnist who worked with Augustin at the St. Cloud Times in the mid-1960s, and later for many years at the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Star Tribune.
“I believe they were a sponsor. Augie told this story 1,000 times in bars. He was overamped about a punt return and read the next ad as ‘Drink Oak Grove egg nog and you’ll never drink egg nog again.’ He skipped the word ‘another’ in front of the second egg nog.” Roeser, meanwhile, said he enjoyed his time broadcasting Johnnie games – even if, like many who came after him, he sometimes found it difficult to get much information out of Gagliardi in the week leading up to a game. “He never changed,” recalled Roeser of the legendary coach who retired in 2012 with 489 career victories – the most of any coach in college football history. “I interviewed him for well over 20 years and he never told me a damn thing. He never wanted to give anything away. The only thing he’d ever say about the upcoming game was that the team they were playing was bigger and faster and he didn’t know how the hell the Johnnies were going to beat them. “But somehow they almost always did.”
THE CONNIE O SHOW
Roeser’s departure in the early 1970s opened the door for the arrival of a new play-by-play voice. Connie Overboe, who went by the on-air name Connie O, arrived in St. Cloud from Illinois in 1972.
Soon he was handling play-by-play for SJU football and basketball, in addition to high school sports, especially Rocori High School in Cold Spring, Minnesota. Overboe arrived around the same time Johnnie sports migrated from AM (WJON) to FM (WWJO). “The coverage area was much larger at that time,” Overboe recalls. “(WWJO) could carry into the Twin Cities and all that. I worked by myself a lot of the time. Sometimes I had Charlie Reichensperger with me on color for football. Once in a while, Thom Woodward (a 1970 SJU graduate who worked as the school’s sports information director and later in Institutional Advancement) would help out. But mostly it was just me.”
Left: Andy Hilger
Among the highlights of Overboe’s time in the SJU booth were calling games for the 1976 Johnnie football team that won the NCAA Division III national title and for the great SJU basketball teams of the late 1970s led by All-American Frank Wachlarowicz. “(Gagliardi) was a great guy to cover, but he could get really paranoid before games,” Overboe said. “I remember (in 1978) the Johnnies were playing Macalester and the Scots were going to set a national record for consecutive losses if the Johnnies beat them. John would not even do a telephone interview with me the week before that game. He just didn’t want to say anything that would motivate them. “They ended up beating them 44-0.”
LEGENDS IN THE BOOTH
Though he remained in the area, Overboe had moved on from Saint John’s broadcasts by the late 1970s. The baton was picked up by Gary Sparber, who called SJU action on WWJO from 1979-82 before embarking on a successful broadcasting career that included a stint as the TV play-by-play voice of the original Charlotte Hornets during the NBA team’s first season in 1988-89.
Bremer, meanwhile, had already began to make his name in the Twin Cities media, starting as the weekend sports anchor at WTCN-TV, now KARE, in 1981 and working for several seasons on Minnesota Twins and North Stars broadcasts on the old Spectrum Sports Channel.
The Staples (Minnesota) High School and St. Cloud State graduate had plenty of familiarity with Central Minnesota, working for a time as a disc jockey on St. Cloud Top 40 station KCLD-FM 104.7.
“Duke in the Dark, that was the name he went by,” said Mike Carr, a member of the 1976 national championship team who provided color for Bremer during Johnnie broadcasts, a role he has reprised numerous times over the years. “I started doing the Saint John’s stuff sort of out of necessity,” Bremer recalled. “Spectrum Sports had ended and I wanted to keep doing games. But everywhere you looked in the Twin Cities, there was a legend working. Herb Carneal was doing the Twins. Ray Christensen was still doing the Gophers. Al Shaver was doing the North Stars.
“One of the guys I worked with at KCLD, Jack Hansen, was involved with Andy Hilger’s operation at WJON and WWJO. He connected me with Andy and I agreed to come up and do some Saint John’s football and basketball.” Bremer, who rejoined the Twins broadcasts in 1987 and has been there ever since, said covering Saint John’s football could be challenging for a broadcaster – both professionally and gastronomically. “John would dress so many players that sometimes there’d be two 77s and you had to figure out which one made the last tackle, which wasn’t always easy,” he said. “I also learned to go to the concession stand (located on the ground floor of the press box) before the game started. The smell of Heavenly Apples or popcorn or hamburgers would drift up and get in your nose, and you’d be hungry the whole game if you hadn’t already eaten.” Bremer remained through the 1987 season. After that, Roeser returned for the next couple of years. Then, in 1990, circumstances led Scott into the SJU booth.
The legendary broadcaster, who was the voice of the Green Bay Packers during the Vince Lombardi era and who called Twins baseball from 1961-66, was living in the Twin Cities at the time.
Paul Johnson, who began the year doing play-by-play for the Johnnies, also hosted a weeknight sports talk show with Scott that was broadcast from Scott’s restaurant in downtown Minneapolis. When Johnson needed a color man early in the 1990 season, he called on his co-host, who was happy to do it. “I said ‘Heck, yes,’” Scott told the St. Cloud Times that season. “This is the first time in 45 years I haven’t done a full schedule of games.” He ended up sticking around, taking over the play-by-play duties through the 1991 season. Scott died at age 78 in 1998.
Carr occasionally served as his color man in the booth.
“I’d just sit there in awe,” he remembered. “Here was a guy who called the Ice Bowl, who’d called World Series games and Super Bowls. It was amazing that he even cared what I had to say. But he couldn’t have been nicer to work with.”
Connie Overboe
ON THE AIR IN THE ’90S
Filling in for Scott when he could not make games during the 1991 season was Emmett Keenan ’81, who had called Johnnie basketball on the radio as a student on campus station KSJU-FM during the late 1970s and early 1980s. He took over football and basketball play-by-play duties full time in 1992, joined by Fasching for football color commentary. He and Fasching lived on the same floor at Tommy Hall when they were sophomores. “One of my best memories of doing those games came before a Johnnie/ Tommie game in St. Paul,” recalled
Keenan, now St. Cloud Cathedral High School’s longtime athletic director. “(Mike Augustin) was covering the game for the Pioneer Press. He’d worked at the Times in the ’60s and he loved Saint John’s. (Longtime St. Thomas basketball coach and athletic director) Steve Fritz knew that and he used to accuse Augie of being so proJohnnies that he wore red underwear. It was kind of a running joke. “Well, before this game, Steve came into the press box, and in that big booming voice he has he yelled ‘Augie, you better not have that red-colored underwear on today.’ At which point Augie actually dropped his pants to show that he really did have red underwear on.”
J.G. Preston, who was working on Twin Cities Public Television’s Almanac program at the time and was WJON’s morning man until 2005, took over football duties from Keenan in 1993, though Keenan remained on color at times and also continued to call Johnnie basketball.
Preston, meanwhile, remained on commentary for the bulk of the games from 1993 to 1998, except in 1995, making him the play-by-play announcer listeners heard when SJU became the second Division III school in the nation to put its radio broadcasts online in 1997.
He was also on the call when the Johnnies advanced to the national semifinals in 1993 and ’94 – falling 56-8 in the mud at rising Division III football titan Mount Union (Ohio), then dropping a heartbreaker 19-16 at home to Albion (Michigan) the following year. Hilger, who died at age 83 in 2013, sold WJON, WWJO and KMXK to Regent Communications in 1998. But he kept KKJM-FM Spirit 92.9, the station to which SJU broadcasts had already moved in 1997.
The move also brought a new play-byplay voice when the up-and-coming LaPanta took over football play-by-play for the 1999 season. During broadcasts, he was paired with former SJU quarterback Steve Varley, who had been his college roommate. “I became pretty good friends with (then-SJU quarterback) Tom Linnemann that year,” LaPanta said. “He broke his leg early on that season, so he was always in the press box. He knew Varley because Steve had been a student teacher in Melrose (Minnesota, Linnemann’s high school). So he’d come up and hang out with us. “We ended up becoming pretty close. I was in his wedding. He became my daughter’s godfather. And that all grew out of that season.”
J.G. Preston
VOICE OF THE JOHNNIES
LaPanta was already working on Twins broadcasts in 1999, and when he was unable to make a couple of games because of scheduling conflicts, his place was taken by a new play-by-play voice who has ended up sticking around for over two decades.
Lewandowski, a 1992 graduate of Edinboro University in Pennsylvania, began his radio career in Little Falls, Minnesota before going on to do stints in Havre, Montana calling Montana State University-Northern sports, and in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska calling junior college and high school athletics. He returned to Central Minnesota in 1999 and began calling SJU basketball that winter. The following season, he was paired with longtime Saint John’s Prep coach and activities director Bryan Backes ’87 in the football booth, and the two have been together ever since. They were on hand to call the Johnnies’ run to the national championship game in 2000, and again three years later during the season Gagliardi passed Eddie Robinson as the winningest coach in college football history and won his fourth national title with a memorable 24-6 upset over Mount Union.
And there have been so many other memories – both on the football field and basketball court – in the years since.
“The national championship in football is certainly right up there,” said
L to R: Mark Lewandowski, Dick Bremer, Anthony LaPanta
Lewandowski, who moved with the broadcasts to Tri-County Broadcasting’s powerful AM station WBHR in 2006. “But who could forget Russell Gliadon's game-winning field goal against Bethel (in 2009) when all the fans came streaming out on the field? That was a huge call for me. “And the Kyle Gearman call when the wide receiver caught a Hail Mary pass from quarterback Alex Kofoed as time expired to beat Concordia in Moorhead in 2005 was another big one. We were coming out of the break before that play happened and Bryan asked me what I was going to do for Thanksgiving. That’s when it dawned on me that if they lost, they weren’t going to make the playoffs. “When he caught the ball, he was a good five yards behind the defensive backs. You can actually hear me on the Concordia radio broadcast. Larry Knutson, the dean of MIAC announcers, was calling that game and I was so loud you can hear me in the background.” Indeed, Lewandowski’s passion and exuberance for all things SJU – as well as his occasional critiques of the officiating if a call goes against the Johnnies – have become his trademarks over the years, much to the delight of his listening audience on WBHR and the two other stations around the state that now make up the Johnnie radio network.
“I’m a homer,” he said with a smile. “There’s no doubt about that. I broadcast the games for Johnnie fans. And it’s been an amazing 21 years. I can’t believe time has flown by the way it has. But this is such a great community to be part of. And the crew we have on the broadcasts now – with Mike and (son) Charlie Carr (a former SJU punter) – is amazing. I can’t say enough about all those guys. They make me look good. “This has truly become my home. I feel very lucky to have been as accepted as I have been by Johnnie Nation.”
Voices
who have called Saint John’s sporting events over the years: Jim Roeser 1960s to early 1970s, late 1980s Connie Overboe (Connie O) 1970s Gary Sparber late 1970s-early 1980s Dick Bremer 1980s Ray Scott 1990-91 Emmett Keenan early 1990s J.G. Preston early to late 1990s Anthony LaPanta 1999 Mark Lewandowski 1999-present For an expanded version of this story, and to listen to memorable SJU calls from over the years, go to
