

August 19, 1953, he married Esther Gade at St. Merlin was born on the family farm in Union City Township, Iowa to Henry and Irma (Kruse) Reinke. John’s United Church of Christ, Wheatland, rural New Albin with Pastor Paul Burgess officiating. Funeral services were held Tuesday, Maat St. Reinke, 92, of Eitzen, MN passed away Friday, Februat Gundersen Tweeten Care Center, Spring Grove, MN. “He had always and repeatedly said that the best way to help any community is to educate them,” Helgeson told the Herald.Merlin H.

Tweten organized opposition to that plan and, ultimately, got a brand new elementary school built instead.Īnd education, broadly speaking, was crucial in Tweten’s eyes, according to Helgeson, the library director. It’s an echo of the moment that first put Tweten into politics: an early 1950s plan to expand an existing Eastside K-12 school. That school later became Northland Community and Technical College. Tweten served on the Minnesota Board of Higher Education, and he cajoled other members into approving the idea. Tweten told the Herald in 2012 that his biggest contribution to the city was getting a vocational school built there in the 1970s. I hope we can all up our game a bit to make up for the positive force we no longer have - this great man in our midst." I guess that’s left for us to do," Gander wrote in a prepared statement he planned to read Tuesday evening at an East Grand Forks City Council meeting. I really thought he would reach his goal of living to see our population go over 10,000 people. He always had a plan to grow East Grand Forks and make it better. "Henry was one of the most optimistic people I know. Steve Gander, East Grand Forks' mayor, said he met Tweten for lunch every few months. “Sometimes I think he really overstepped his purpose there, but he got it done.” “It got to be quite a turmoil,” Strandell recalled. Tweten opposed the idea, and organized the neighborhood against the idea, ultimately leading Polk County administrators to choose another spot, which is now the site of the Polk County Social Services Center. Strandell remembered a county push about 20 years ago to turn an old elementary school into a corrections facility. Known for expounding forcefully and at length about his civic plans and political beliefs, Tweten could also be a fierce political opponent. He earned a Silver Star for Gallantry and a Purple Heart in World War II, and he kept the bullet that punctured his knee.

Won the East Grand Forks/Grand Forks Chamber's Henry Havig Award in 2014įor his contributions to the city, and the military history section of the Campbell Library is named after him.

Whether you agreed with his party or not, it didn’t make a difference.” He was very committed to his thoughts and principles, and he would go at lengths to work on those and to get them adopted. “If you didn’t know him or he didn’t know you, he’d find out. “You couldn’t escape Henry,” said Warren Strandell, a Polk County commissioner and former owner of The Exponent, the city’s weekly newspaper. He helped put together the city’s economic development authority, and was a prominent leader and fundraiser for the Democratic-Farmer Labor party in northwestern Minnesota.
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He was a fixture at East Grand Forks City Hall, serving on the City Council for six years in the 1960s and another 18 in the 2000s, plus stints on the city’s library board. Minus three years fighting in World War II, Tweten lived in East Grand Forks for the entirety of his life. He leaves behind a lengthy resume of civic accomplishments and a reputation for being a vigorous and seemingly ever-present force in East Grand Forks politics. Tweten died Sunday at age 97 due to complications from COVID-19. Charlotte Helgeson, the director of East Grand Forks' library, said she felt like she's always known Henry Tweten, the longtime politician, lawyer, prodigious speaker and passionate advocate for the city and region.
