Telephones began ringing in the basement press offices of the State Capitol around the noon hour 10 years ago today.

Rumors at first, then a great silence from normally gabby political insiders, and finally, the news – that U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, his wife and daughter, three aides and two pilots were dead in a plane crash near the Eveleth-Virginia Municipal Airport.

Shock, along with flowery memorials and crepe hung on green Wellstone signs, shared the emotional space with what-next prognostication. The state faced an exhausting cycle of mourning and campaigning, when separating the two was impossible and remembrance was crowded out by the election calendar.

Today we pause, during the frenetic last days of another election campaign, to honor the memory of those who died: Sen. Paul Wellstone, his wife Sheila Wellstone, their daughter Marcia Wellstone Markuson, staffers Tom Lapic, Mary McEvoy and Will McLaughlin, and pilots Richard Conry and Michael Guess.

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