Category: editor-notebook

By Bernie Hunhoff

I’ve never lived in Wessington Springs, but we read the town’s weekly paper, the True Dakotan, every week at the magazine office because we’re fans of the Wenzel family publishers.

I’ve always appreciated the way they capture in black and white and occasional color the pulse of their town.

Since a June 18th tornado devasted the community, we’ve watched with ever-more appreciation on how the Wenzels lovingly record the long road back to normalcy. First, they published all the emergency news that had to be known. Then they took stock of what was lost and what was left. Now they’re highlighting and encouraging the restoration. This week we learned that the Zion Lutheran Church, a skyline landmark to the town, stands strong enough to be repaired. It is 98 years old. “And the heart of the church, the people inside worshipping every Sunday for the past 100 years hopefully will continue for many years to come,” wrote Duke Wenzel.

South Dakota has some 150 weekly newspapers. A good share of what you read in those papers cannot be found in daily papers. It won’t be found in blogs like this. It won’t be anywhere online in any trusted and easily-available format. All the above media have a place — but I’ve yet to see how the online world can do what the Wenzels do in any sustainable fashion.

I can’t imagine the comfort that the True Dakotan has provided to the people of Wessington Springs in the past five weeks. A terrible tornado changed their world, but some degree of reality came back around on Tuesday when the paper came to their mailbox. And the next Tuesday. And the next.

We’re a little partial to magazines, naturally. But I can only dream of providing the community service that the Wenzels have given since June 18 — and long before June 18.

Eight years ago, we wrote several times on our magazine Web site about a little fellow from Alpena who was in the fight of his life. Hunter Mees was just eight years old, and the boy was fighting off Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

It didn’t seem fair. He was as cute as an 8-year-old could be with a big smile and more grit than a kid should ever have to show.

But some good came out of Hunter’s lymphoma. We don’t know the whole story because we mostly observed it from a hundred miles away, but first we watched as the Wenzels at the Wessington Springs True Dakotan spread the news about the boy’s plight.

Then the story hit the Internet, thanks in part to our then-new Web site which was little more than a blog. Jerry Hinkle’s Holabird Advocate, a community blog, spread the news. So did our old friend Grant Peterson, who had a popular radio show in Brookings.

The story of Hunter caught fire. Teachers, high school students, friends, relatives and strangers began to shave their heads to show solidarity with Hunter. Even the Dakota Wesleyan baseball team went bald.

A single fundraiser, promoted by all the above entities, raised $20,000 on a Friday night and the money kept coming in to help Hunter’s family with the expenses that surround such a fight. Everyone wanted to help Hunter, especially those who’d seen his smile.

Hinkle, who still writes his blog, says Hunter changed his life. It pushed him to pursue social media as a means of building community, and that led him to study at DWU. “Whenever I’m faced with a difficult or seemingly impossible job, I think of the 8-year-old boy who kicked cancer in the teeth and I keep plugging away.”

Yes, Hunter’s cancer went in remission. He kicked it away in 2007.

We got word in May that Hunter just celebrated his 16th birthday. He’s healthy and an active student at Woonsocket High School. We thought our longtime readers would want to know.