Northern Lights

Helen Tsuchiya | 92

Surviving a WWII internment camp, she shunned bitterness and spread joy. She shared her wartime story at local elementary schools "so it will never happen again."

She was always drawn to teachers; they were some of her best friends.

Perhaps that's because Helen Tsuchiya wanted to be a teacher herself. And she might have been, if she were white.

Instead, the teenage Tsuchiya — a U.S. citizen — was taken at gunpoint from her family's California farm to a prison in the Arizona desert, one of 120,000 Japanese-Americans who were confined to internment camps during World War II.

When the war ended, her family wound up in Minnesota, where one of her brothers had served in the Army as a translator at Fort Snelling. Instead of going to college to become a teacher, Tsuchiya went to work as a medical secretary to provide for her family, which had lost everything.

More than a half-century later, when Tsuchiya was 80, the St. Louis Park resident finally got her chance to teach, appearing at local elementary schools to tell kids about her wartime experience — "so it will never happen again," she told them.

A devout Buddhist, Tsuchiya lived by the credo, "Be kind to all that live," said her son Todd Tsuchiya.

"That really sums her up. She really lived that throughout her life," he said.

Tsuchiya made origami cranes and carried them with her, giving them away to people who looked like they needed a lift. Once, she gave cranes to some children at Ridgedale Mall, not knowing their mother was one of Todd Tsuchiya's dental patients — and had recently lost a child to cancer.

"She saw my mother's name on her walking cane and she asked me about it," Todd Tsuchiya said. "She said, 'Sometime I want to go around and give origami to people and make them happy.' "

JOHN REINAN

Mary Tyler Moore | 80

As groundbreaking (albeit fictional) newswoman Mary Richards, she made Minneapolis cool and inspired a generation of young women entering the work world.

Her smile. Her style.

In her Emmy-winning portrayal of Mary Richards on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," she navigated uncharted waters as a single working woman producing the news for male-dominated WJM-TV.

She was smart, loyal, funny, brave and kind to her core. She put Minneapolis on the map and we claimed her as our own.

Her sunny disposition belied a toughness. During the sitcom's seven-year run, she fought for equal pay and won the respect of men, most notably crusty Mr. Grant. She supported birth control and the lifeblood that is a good girlfriend, particularly one named Rhoda.

"She helped generations of women understand that work and friendships are not lesser than our relationships with men," said KARE 11 reporter Jana Shortal, who saw Mary as a mentor. "They are equal to."

After the series, she continued to produce and act, bringing stunning depth to her portrayal of grieving mother Beth in the movie "Ordinary People." She knew what it was to inhabit the abyss of grief at losing a child. Her 24-year-old son had died the same year in an accidental shooting. She struggled with alcoholism, two divorces and a diagnosis of Type I diabetes. Through it all, on and off screen, she remained our Mary.

"Table 5" at Basil's restaurant, where Richards dined for a split-second in the show's opening credits, was four decades later still the most requested table. Her iconic beret toss is memorialized in a statue on Nicollet Mall. And the Kenwood mansion that housed her fictional apartment was big news when it was sold in September.

Newswoman Mary Richards probably would have discouraged all the fuss.

But the fact is we cannot help ourselves. Her love is all around us.

GAIL ROSENBLUM

Ray Christensen | 92

For more than 50 years, if you followed Gophers football or basketball, you listened to Ray Christensen calling the games on WCCO radio.

He called 510 football games, 1,309 basketball games. For me, one stands out.

Oct. 22, 1977. In our backyard with my mom and dad, raking leaves. On the picnic table, an oversized transistor radio wrapped in faux leather that to this day I swear had only one setting:

830-AM.

Minnesota vs. No. 1-ranked Michigan. Christensen's clarion voice as crisp as that fall day. You could always tell 10 seconds after switching to a Gophers game who was winning by the way Ray sounded. On this day, vibrant, exultant.

Thinking about days like this, before every game was thrust into your living room in high-definition, the memories are almost sepia toned.

Christensen, calling one of five Michigan turnovers. "Fumble! Behind the man, he can't get to it and the Gophers will!''

Christensen, calling Marion Barber's TD run. Christensen, as the clock ticks down on an improbable Gophers win. Feels like yesterday. "And the Gophers have upset the No. 1 team in the nation, Michigan, 16 to nothing."

By the end, I felt I was there.

Through the years I've discovered how universal this sort of memory is for Minnesotans my age. Fall or winter, raking leaves or puttering in the garage. For decades, generations, it was Christensen.

Could he be more Minnesotan? Multitalented but modest. A man of words whose eyes would twinkle at a good pun; one time he transitioned from the sound of the Gophers band playing the William Tell Overture to an ad for a bank. "Now we take you from the Lone Ranger to the Loan Arranger," he said.

Perfect.

Kent Youngblood

Charles Huntington | 91

The Ojibwe artist's massive steel sculptures propelled him from blue collar beginnings to the top of the art world as he devised a career all his own.

It began with boredom, Charles Huntington once told a reporter, when his first career as an auto mechanic became monotonous.

With spare parts, and odds and ends around the garage, he began making art out of crushed wheels, hood ornaments and whatever else drew his imagination.

That led to early shows of his "found objects," which won attention from serious art collectors. A critic dubbed him "the poet of the curve."

He rose to the top of the art world, with shows at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. His commissions were often towering pieces of steel that somehow looked as if they were floating. Those who knew him said he was much like his sculpture, a commanding presence, by turns intimidating or full of grace.

It was an unlikely role for Huntington, an Ojibwe Indian from a blue-collar background who was born in the remote northeast Wisconsin town of Niagara. After a stint as a steam engineer in World War II, he drove a taxi, raced cars and then began repairing them. A year in art school followed, along with an apprenticeship, but Huntington otherwise devised his own career, making studios where he could find them, working always.

He'd come up from his basement studio at the Black Forest Inn in south Minneapolis, grimy from work, said his longtime friend and assistant Beryl Wells Hamilton. He might show off a new piece or generously give it away to a friend. Among his last pieces was "Unity," now installed at Hibbing Community College. It's a simple form of two steel pillars rising and twisting together in what looks most like a dance.

In 2012 he told the Hibbing Daily Tribune:

"I don't believe that I make sculpture. I believe that sculpture made me."

Matt McKinney

Faith Ohman | 74

As the first female lawyer and partner at Dorsey and Whitney in the 1960s, she quietly propped open doors for future women.

For 30 years, during the second week of November, a beaming Faith Ohman could be found on a horse, trotting carefree along the shores of Acapulco.

Leggy. Six feet tall. A self-proclaimed klutz. The attorney with a brilliant mind and a penchant for solving the Cargill family's tax mysteries reveled in her freedom on that beach.

"She found it hard to ride a bike. But she loved to ride horses down the beach and was always trying to recruit people to come to Acapulco and ride with her. She just loved it," said Sally Howard, her fellow Macalester alumna and friend of 50 years.

The beach. The waves. The wind. The beasts. They renewed Ohman, instilling an easiness that either didn't come naturally or slowly dissipated over each intense year. Her legal work commanded long hours, for years as the sole female attorney in what was then a 76-member, all-male law firm.

But her quiet, steady work as a master of complex tax and estate law won respect, promotions and a partnership, which she used to open doors for women who followed.

"I was mouse meat. But what Faith did for me in just getting me going [at Dorsey] made the whole difference in my life," said Kate Bartlett, who joined the firm as an unsure, new attorney when Ohman was a partner. "I was in awe of her. She was brilliant. And she never tried to be one of the guys."

With a quiet voice that made listeners lean in, Ohman put a stop to Bartlett and other new hires bouncing between departments to learn the legal ropes. She placed Bartlett in the bond department, ensuring that she received real work and growth opportunities.

"She is the one who broke the mold," Bartlett said. "She was a flag bearer."

Dee DePass

Kathleen Ridder | 94

The Republican activist and ardent feminist was a benefactor of women's sports at the University of Minnesota and pushed to elect more women.

Kathleen Ridder reached to shake the hand of the University of Minnesota student — one of the many female athletes who benefited from her generosity.

In this case, Ridder was disappointed. The student didn't look her in the eye and her handshake was weak. "You need to shape her up," she later told Chris Voelz, then head of the U's women's athletic department.

Ridder wanted women to be strong and competent, Voelz explained. She fiercely fought for equal access and opportunities for women and stepped up with her dollars to make that a reality.

"She was a force to be reckoned with," Voelz said. Ridder could easily call the governor or sit down and talk with "million-dollar people," Voelz said.

But she was clearly different from many of them. "She thought it was more important what book you were reading than the coat you were wearing," Voelz said.

She was outspoken and irreverent. She ignored condescending comments from men and focused on the fight.

Ridder simply believed that some battles are won because you don't give up, said Deborah Olson, longtime supporter of Gophers women's hockey.

In 1981, Marlene Johnson, Minnesota's first female lieutenant governor and a DFLer, was riding a train to Duluth with Ridder when they conceived the idea for a bipartisan organization to get more women elected to office.

With that, the Minnesota Women's Campaign Fund, now known as Womenwinning, was born. Since 1982, Womenwinning has supported "thousands of women with millions of dollars," said Lauren Beecham, executive director.

"Kathleen's vision was to change the face of power."

Mary Lynn Smith

Al Sicherman | 75

He mixed scientific know-how, culinary skills and wit, endearing him to Star Tribune readers as "Uncle Al." His sense of comic timing could be traced to his mom.

I was a fledgling restaurant critic who grew to love Viennese pastries as an exchange student in Austria. Al Sicherman, the Food section's copy editor, was dazzled by French pastries during a year in Paris.

At the mere mention of Viennese pastries, he oozed contempt. He had visited the Hotel Sacher in Vienna, originator of the famed Sacher torte, which he declared dry and tasteless. Like all Viennese pastry, he added.

Game on. For weeks, our dispute occasionally erupted in a volley of bizarre pastry insults hurled across the cubicle divide. Finally, I proposed sort of a pastry duel: We would each make three pastries and argue their merits. We brought them in, pushed "record" on a cassette recorder (it was the early '80s) and made our cases.

Just to push Al's chocolate-loving buttons, I had created a classic Sacher torte, its glossy glaze a shimmering perfection. He sliced a piece, held it 3 feet aloft and, with a look of glee, dropped it to the table.

"Ah-ha!" he exclaimed triumphantly. It had landed uninjured. He dubbed it the low-heeled German shoes of the pastry world.

We argued ridiculously for an hour, transcribed the tape and put it in the newspaper (you can still read it in Al's book, "Caramel Knowledge"). Readers began to adore Al and his writing that mixed recipes and sizzling one-liners.

He came by that naturally. He loved to tell the story of his mother simmering a beef tongue on the stove in his childhood home in Milwaukee. His cousin Harold wandered in, lifted the lid and asked, "What's that?"

"It's a tongue, Harold," Al's mother replied.

"Ew," said Harold. "I would never put anything into my mouth that had been in a cow's mouth!"

"Have an egg, Harold," she replied.

Kate Parry

Lee Smith | 67

He embodied the entrepreneurial spirit of the 20th century, taking his barbecued wings and ribs wherever hungry people could be tempted.

Barbecue is the only secret its owners share with everyone — one plate at a time. What made Lee Smith's barbecue beloved by his patrons might be analyzed in a lab for its combination of personally selected ingredients — but even if it could be reproduced, it would lack something else that kept customers coming back: the presence of the man who made it.

Mr. Smith, as he was known to customers — "Bubba," to his family — was the hand and heart behind the smoker at Lee's and Dee's Bar-B-Que Express in St. Paul.

It's a classic 20th-century story. Humble beginnings? Check: Smith was born in Tallahatchie County, Miss. Entrepreneurial spirit? Check: Smith would fill coolers with wings and ribs, put them in his station wagon, and head out to factories where workers needed a fine hot lunch, or off to bars when closing time put hungry patrons out on the sidewalk.

His day job was fixing leather goods at Pedro's Luggage in downtown St. Paul, but once he had money — and the reputation as a man who knew his way around a plate of irresistible food — he opened Lee's and Dee's in the Summit-University area. (Dee, or Doretha, was his wife.) Thirty seats for locals and whoever famous happened to hear about this fine Q.

High-haired boxing promoter Don King showed up once, and Smith's daughter Vickie Nash remembered how much he liked it: "He left my mom a $400 tip."

Mr. Smith retired a few years back, handing over the business to his daughters, greeting patrons in the dining room. The restaurant recently closed, and one hopes his recipes find their way back to the table somewhere.

It may not be immortality, but it's as close as a man can get.

James Lileks

Stanislaw Skrowaczewski | 93

The conductor and composer defected from Communist Poland to lead the Minnesota Orchestra to new heights, lobbying tirelessly for its "temple" — Orchestra Hall.

Something happened the final time Stanislaw Skrowaczewski stepped onstage at Orchestra Hall.

It was October 2016, just after the beloved maestro's 93rd birthday. His thin frame had turned frail, his puff of hair bright white. But at the podium, baton in hand, "Stan" proved powerful, still.

He thrust his hands into the air and, from memory, led the Minnesota Orchestra through a piece he loved: Anton Bruckner's Eighth Symphony.

He first heard his "beloved Bruckner" at age 7, through an open window in Lwów, a Polish city that is now in Ukraine. "I stood there, completely out of this world, listening," he said in the documentary "Seeking the Infinite."

He became known as one of Bruckner's finest interpreters, mining his works for his farewell as music director in 1979. But the maestro never said goodbye, really, conducting the orchestra annually and in times of strife.

He didn't mean for the October 2016 concerts to be a farewell, either. He wasn't one for celebrations or schmaltz. Instead, Skrowaczewski looked ahead, forever tweaking, digging deeper. As newspaper articles asked whether the concerts would "be his last," Skrowaczewski added conducting dates to his 2017 calendar.

Even from Friday to Saturday, his translation of the Bruckner symphony changed, said Frederick Harris Jr., his biographer. "He kept molding that sonic clay."

In the final movement, Skrowaczewski took chances, stretched out phrases, built to a big, bold ending.

"Like a bolt of lightning," Harris said. "It's kind of scary, the power at the end of that symphony."

In March, the orchestra memorialized their maestro at Orchestra Hall, keeping the speeches short, but playing with depth. Then, they closed with Bruckner.

Jenna Ross