Brown: As a small Minnesota town mourns its only elementary school, opportunity grows from loss

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At the only gas station in Randall, Minn., the Friday morning crowd already knew each other. They laughed as they compared weekend plans, mostly chores, with a begrudging joy, because with this good weather the work goes easy.

After weeks of bad news and ugly discourse, a stranger traveling Hwy. 10 northwest of Little Falls teared up at the sound of the world working the way it should. The way it does when we love our neighbor.

I wanted to write about what I felt there. Unfortunately, the first thing I found was a notice about a funeral happening in Randall that very weekend. The service wasn’t for a person, but for the town’s beloved Dr. S.G. Knight Elementary School.

Rumors of a potential closure kicked up last spring, inspiring a passionate campaign to save the school. Then came the public hearings and the fateful closure decision by the Little Falls school board on June 30. By the time school started, Randall students rode buses to the Lincoln and Lindbergh elementary schools in Little Falls.

“It felt like a rug was suddenly pulled out from underneath us just because of how quickly it went from whispers to a closed sign on the door,” said Laura Marcus Adamek, who helped organize the campaign to save S.G. Knight. The whole process took just 120 days, she estimates.

This is the true definition of nostalgia. Pain. Specifically, the pain of losing something you can never get back, knowing that the change is forever. And if such nostalgia seems more common in rural places, it’s because this has been happening here, with little to show for it, since most of us were born.

It’s hard to explain this feeling to people who haven’t experienced it.

“It was more than just a building,” said Marcus Adamek. “That structure was the heartbeat of our community. It was life-giving. There was vitality to it. It just felt like the future. It felt like hope.”

Laura’s mother-in-law, Cathy Adamek, taught kindergarten at the Dr. Knight School for 32 years. Now retired, she explains the unique qualities of a small-town elementary.

“As a teacher there you knew every kid,” said Cathy Adamek. “In fact, now that I’m old and it takes five people to come up with someone’s name, there is a group of us that meet to talk. The conversation still goes back to kids and families. That’s why it’s a family. You knew all of those kids, their parents. You may have even known their grandparents.”

“I’m confident that in time something good will come of it,” said Pantzke. “We’re just in this transitional period. It’s tough. It burns. It lingers. But we feel that something good will come of this and continue to thrive for years to come.”

The Little Falls school district promised to work with the city to find a use for the building that serves the people of Randall. Ideas range from a community center to a child care hub to an economic development space.

“It’s a choice,” said Cathy Adamek. “You can live in the downers and grump about everything that is bad, or you can wake up every morning and ask, what can I accomplish? And what can I do to move forward?”

Laura Marcus Adamek recently rang the bell to end her cancer treatment. In good health, she’s now dedicated to her family — the one in her house, and the one in Randall.

“This is not just on one of us, it’s collectively on all of us,” she said. “We’re not in this alone. We still have each other and we still have hope.”

In 1912, Dr. Samuel Graham Knight came to Randall from his native Canada. He would become the doctor, druggist and village president, preferring horse and buggy even after the advent of automobiles. During emergencies, he would hop freight trains to reach more distant farms, his wool coat flapping in the cold air like a cape. The improbability of success fell second to his desire to heal the people of this land. More often than not, he did.