Winona State University's Newspaper since 1919

The Winonan

Winona State University's Newspaper since 1919

The Winonan

Winona State University's Newspaper since 1919

The Winonan

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Dying our own deaths: Voices from the Past illustrates how Winona built a community

Abby Peschges/Winonan

Wallace Stevens, a great Modernist poet, said, “every man dies his own death.”

This is a concept I have latched on to and adapted. It means that only you can experience your death, and those around you can only experience the repercussions of it.

Extending the concept, you are the only one who can experience your life.

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I can’t tell you when my obsession with cemeteries started, but I do know moving to Winona increased it with trips to Woodlawn to get names for the characters in my stories. Anyone who has spent even a little bit of time in our local cemetery can tell you how beautiful and intricate some of the headstones are.

I mean, I could spend hours talking about the ironwork sculpture in the back of the cemetery that depicts the duality of life through the tree of life filled with rotting corpses and animals.

I usually get some weird looks and questions when I tell people that I love spending time in cemeteries.

I wear a lot of pink and don’t believe in communicating with the dead, but there is a lot you can learn when you know how to respect death and listen to what those who live in the necropolis have left behind.

Because respecting death means to truly live and to understand what it means to be alive. But I joined many others in the community a few weeks ago in Woodlawn for the historical society’s Voices of the Past cemetery walk.

John Holzinger, Ray Beyers and John Latsch were few of the influential people who have shaped Winona we learned about as we traveled through the headstones on the old cobblestone lanes.

Holzinger, a professor at Winona State University, worked to keep Lake Winona healthy, and Ray Beyers dove into the flooding Mississippi to help seal up the storm drains during the 1965 floods.

Latsch bought shoreline up and down the river, donating it for public use, and paid for a bathhouse, allowing for a safe place for children to swim in the river. These are only a few of the things these three men did along with many others alongside them in order to build Winona, a beautiful city that we enjoy every day.

But how many actually know the history?

And how can we truly enjoy all that the area has to offer if we don’t know how it came to be this way?

 

Contact Abby at [email protected]

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