Earlier today we held a Mass for Remembrance for our deceased classmates as part of our 60th Reunion activities. During that celebration we projected the images of those classmates as their names were read. You can see/download those images by clicking here.

Terry Bacigalupo came across these newspaper clips of a few of the football players and teachers taken in 1962 while cleaning out some of his old computer files. We are happy to share them, especially since our 60th Reunion looms.

Two 1963 Cretin High School graduates, George Bonfe and Mike Ryan, both experienced life-altering injuries in their early twenties. Despite the debilitating setback, Mike and George lived very productive lives. They have inspired those of us blessed enough to have known them. 

As a tribute to Mike and George, we have established a 60th Anniversary legacy gift to Cretin-Derham Hall.  We have designated it as The Cretin Class of 1963 Bonfe/Ryan Memorial Scholarship Fund and we  encourage not only  our classmates but others to contribute to this fund as a tribute to the inspiring resiliency of Mike and George.

What made these two individuals exceptional was their common traits of courage, compassion, generosity, patience and perseverance. Their stories are the impetus behind establishing that scholarship  in their honor and to help a physically challenged student attend Cretin-Derham Hall.

George Bonfe

George, in 1965 while coming home on leave from Army training, was a passenger in an automobile accident where the driver died, and George severely injured his spinal column. This resulted in George being in a wheelchair until he died on Veterans Day 2021. George adopted three children and started and ran two successful businesses. He also built and flew an airplane for his own use. Throughout the rest of George’s life, he supported veterans in many ways, from attending their funerals, to sending weekly packages to troops stationed overseas, and visiting with his US congressman on veteran’s issues. Two of George’s children are also veterans.

Mike Ryan

While serving in Vietnam in 1968, Mike was severely injured when he was shot while trying to pull one of his injured Marines from a ravine in the jungle. The bullet injured Mike’s spinal column and he spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair until his death in 2012. Mike earned a law degree and married Karen, whom he met while in physical rehab. They adopted and raised three children. In addition, Mike and Karen served as foster parents to 80 high risk infants. Mike practiced law initially as a prosecutor and then as a judge, serving in the Maricopa County Superior Court and the Arizona Appellate Court. He was appointed a Supreme Court Justice for the State of Arizona in 2002 and retired from the Court in 2010.

There is more background on them that you can view at this link.

The scholarship will be awarded to a recipient with a physical disability who wishes to attend Cretin-Derham Hall. CDH supports the establishment of this scholarship. For anyone wishing to contribute to scholarship fund you can do so through one of the following gifting options:

1. MAIL:  Send your check to:

Cretin-Derham Hall

550 S Albert Street

Saint Paul, MN    55116

Attn: Bonfe/Ryan Memorial Scholarship Fund

• ONLINE:  Go to c-dh.org/givenow to make a credit card gift online.  Please indicate:  Bonfe/Ryan Memorial Scholarship

• PHONE:  Call Peggy Gartland Schafer ’79 at 651-696-3318      

Hi Guys

A dozen from the class got together today and had a couple of hours of pleasant conversation and reminiscing.

One topic of the conversation was of course —How could it be 60 years already since we left Cretin?

Well, the reunion activities are scheduled for Sept 13 and 14^th.

Here is what is scheduled.

Wednesday Sept. 13^th—  Memorial Mass for 86 deceased classmates at CDH Chapel — 10AM.

Wednesday Sept. 13^th—   Tour of CDH, the old parts and all the new parts, lunch and mingle with staff and students and each other – 11:30AM until probably 2 or 3PM.

Thursday Sept. 14^th— Golf outing (THE CHARLIE) at Highland National, first tee time at 9:30AM. Format is a scramble (Britz Scramble)  always fun!

Thursday Sept 14^th – ONE CDH Alumni banquet at CDH where the anniversary classes of 1963, 1973 and 1998 are honored—5PM

*Additional info and sign up/registration for each of these events will be sent out in near future.

Always check the class web site for info as well.

Remarkable Classmates Remembered

Best to you

Tom Troskey

Click on photo to enlarge

Classmate Jim Hudak joined us for lunch today at our monthly get-together.  He spent most of his career in the Information Technology (IT) space, working as a contract Project Manager and more for larger companies in the Twin Cities.  He is retired now and has written a book, SCARLET:Blood and Brillance, a sci-fi novel.   It will be published soon and will be available on Amazon.   We asked him to send us something we could post on our website and he provided the following prologue from the book –

What would you do to keep your country and its allies alive following a nuclear war?

We designed, built, manufactured, and distributed specific tools for electric power, communications, information storage, transportation, and hunting.

We built the spiritual base for our people to strive to stay alive. To collaborate with each other, no matter what. To be all in! WE ARE ALL IN! 

The apocalypse soft started in 2000 CE. War spread everywhere. The West prepared by putting all knowledge on the Lattice and made it available via brain chip implants so everyone had access. We made micro-nuclear power devices, powerful small batteries, small data centers, two-man electric drones, laser guns, and satellites for Lattice communications. Fuel and its infrastructure were destroyed. Nuclear war destroyed cities, followed by 20 years of nuclear winters. Nuclear fallout altered pathogenic DNA and the nuclear winters were followed by centuries of pandemics. We are almost gone. Some of us stayed alive and collaborated, fought the pathogens, and won. But it’s not the only thing that kills us.

This is history. Not a projection of the possible outcome. My knowledge of our history compels me to write it so you know what happened and why. But, who ‘you’ are is unfathomable to me at the present time. Maybe you’re a person. Maybe you’re an artificial intelligence agent.  Maybe you’re no one or no thing and this won’t be read. Right now, times up, it appears. We’re done, it seems. The spirit of living remains, if in danger. 

This is the story of that spirit. 

I am the Lattice.

Jim

James L Hudak

We will publish another post when the book becomes available.

J.S.

We previously featured Boz in a post about him and his band’s resurgence (click here). Well Boz and friends have released their final album “Ute Creek Eulogy”.

Front Cover

Back Cover

Congratulations to Boz and his band personnel and guest musicians!

Here is the press release –

July 1, 2023

FREELAND RELEASES THIRD AND FINAL ALBUM, UTE CREEK EULOGY, 51 YEARS AFTER FIRST RECORD

Freeland, a six-piece band from Minnesota, announces the release of Ute Creek Eulogy, featuring 17 songs and two bonus tracks, all written by members of this long-lasting group of musical friends, some of whom played in local groups together in the 1960s.  The title refers to Ute Creek, a canyon near Idaho Springs, CO, where the band moved in August, 1972, to promote their first record, Headin’ Back.  The group played a good number of shows that summer featuring their original music but eventually moved back to their homeland to pursue other musical, educational and career objectives. 

Four of the members reunited in the summer of 1975 in a new version of Freeland, focused on Colorado (again) club gigs and cover songs peppered with danceable tunes of their own making.  When autumn came, the four took another hiatus for life’s various quests.

By 2005 they were reunited again for a concert at Macalester College in St. Paul to memorialize a fellow musician from back in the day.  The good feelings and camaraderie of that performance led to Freeland’s second album, Almost Home, released in 2008.  Then, once again, the members went their separate ways for more than a decade.

As the Covid pandemic settled upon the land in 2020, the group started planning for the current collection of songs, but recording logistics were tricky given where the members lived: San Juan Island, WA; Pocatello, ID; Park City, UT; St. Paul; Deer Park, WI; and Nashville.  Thanks to jet airliners, home studios, a mobile recording setup in a big van, and the keyboard player’s pro studio in Nashville, work started by mid-2021, with a release date of August 2022 to mark the 50-year anniversary of Headin’ Back.

Life and health being what they are, things fell off schedule, just a little.  But today, Freeland is delighted to present Ute Creek Eulogy, dedicated to the memory of Doug Rymerson, who died on the day mixing commenced in November, 2022.

Band personnel

Boz Metzdorf – guitar, harmonica and vocals

Tommy Wiggins – keyboards, guitar, drums and vocals

Steve Keys – guitar, bass and vocals

Jeff Schroeder – guitar and vocals

Doug Rymerson – guitar and vocals

Dave Cushing – drums, bass, guitar and vocals

Guest musicians

Denny Hemmingson – slide guitar, dobro

Ron Rotter – drums

Dan Perry – harmony

 Track listing

1. Chasing Down the Sun (Wiggins)
2.  Picks And Axes (Metzdorf)
3.  Ute Creek Eulogy (Keys)
4.  Earth Medicine (Schroeder)
5.  Music’s for Dancing (Wiggins)
6.  To Be Free (Metzdorf)
7.  Buffalo Gulch (Cushing)
8.  Morning Sunlight (Rymerson)
9.  On Your Watch (Metzdorf)
10.  Storm Bound (Wiggins)
11.  River Dream (Schroeder)
12.  Silver Moon (Metzdorf)
13.  Doing Alright (Keys)
14. Makin’ Our Way (Wiggins)
15. Nothing But Love (Metzdorf)
16.  Memories are Songs (Wiggins)
17.  The Song Lives On (Metzdorf)

Bonus tracks – recorded in the 1970s!

1.  Kalah (Wiggins)
2.  Ride With The Devil (Metzdorf)

Ute Creek Eulogy is available from Chili Dog Records, Nashville

and soon at birdseyeviewproductions.net

Streamable on bandcamp (more platforms soon)

Our classmate John Runyon submitted the following article for publication on our website.  The genesis of the article stems from the comments and eulogies John heard when attending George Bonfe’s memorial service.  That led him to learning more about the other paraplegic in our class, Mike Ryan.  He has tried to put into words how moved he was by learning about these exceptional individuals.  What made these two exceptional was their common traits of courage, compassion, generosity, patience, and perseverance among others.  They lived life well and deserve our admiration. Their stories are the impetus behind establishing a scholarship in their memory and to help a physically challenged student attend Cretin-Derham Hall. You can learn more about the scholarship and how to support it by clicking here.

Joe Schufman

June of 1963, 268 of us proudly left Cretin High School with Diplomas representing not only the knowledge imparted by our Christian Brothers faculty, but most importantly the values which they embodied and taught.  Thus 268 stories followed those young men into what are now their “golden years” or to the final rest of those already departed.

At our 50th reunion, some memories from those stories were captured in a book put together by classmates Joe M. McGrath and Len Mitsch. And as our 60th reunion approaches, two unique lives shine down as examples from our departed classmates. As they passed each other many times in the halls of Cretin, these two students could never imagine how much their lives would have parallels to inspire us 60 years later.

George Bonfe and Mike Ryan were exceptional individuals who both suffered life changing injuries while in the prime of their young lives.  Even though both lost the use of their legs, they did not let that handicap hinder their love of life and people. What they both did in spite of their physical limitations was amazing!

Mike Ryan was a platoon commander in Vietnam.  In September of 1968, while trying to pull one of his wounded soldiers from an enemy ambush, a sniper’s bullet hit his spinal cord, putting him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. In November of 1965 George Bonfe was riding home for Thanksgiving Leave from Army training when his car overturned near Oronoco, Minnesota,  killing the driver and leaving George with a spinal injury which also confined him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

Each of us can wonder how we might have reacted, but George, in a wheelchair and unmarried, adopted three children from outside the U.S. when the agencies here said he couldn’t parent. He built a successful business and a home on Forest Lake. When he couldn’t find adequate daycare for his adopted son, he bought property and had a daycare built, one of two successful businesses he started.

His son “Robbie” remembers his Dad assembling the playground equipment. Robbie, at George’s urging, applied to West Point, and after graduation has served almost twenty years.

George’s daughter Deoki followed Robbie into the Army, serving two tours. George tirelessly sent care packages to the troops. Box upon box were stacked in his garage, and Deoki says “Whatever he could do to put a smile on your face, he would do it.” When George’s daughter Sunithia needed hand surgery, George found help at Shriners’s Hospital. She says “I miss him every day.”

George built his own airplane, learned to fly with hand controls, and piloted his jet ski, boat, snowmobile, and van – “his only obstacle was stairs, but somehow he always made it to the top”.  George also bought a very small  West St Paul business in the early 70’s, growing that business and building a new larger building about a mile down the road—Southview Liquor, a store he directly managed for many years.

He honored the fallen at funerals and the Forest Lake Veterans Memorial, and departed us on Veterans Day in 2021.   A tribute (click to read here) to his “remarkable life and accomplishments” was entered into the Congressional Record. 

What did Mike Ryan do?  He’d graduated from St John’s before joining the Marines. He was awarded two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star with combat “V” for valor under fire. The Book “Care under Fire” fittingly autographed by the author at George Bonfe’s American Legion Post #225, will take any reader back to the daily ordeal faced by Lieutenant Ryan in the jungles of Vietnam.  Inside the cover: “To George Bonfe and Mike Ryan, who gave their legs to benefit us all. You know how to turn adversity into something positive.”

Looking back we could say, not only “positive,” but amazing!

After Mike’s medical discharge, his treatment included physical therapy.   His therapist so enjoyed his demeanor and sense of humor that they later married. They adopted and raised three sons. His wife Karen says his practical jokes are legend in the Arizona judicial world. Mike went to Graduate School, taught briefly in High School, then went to Law School and became a Maricopa County prosecutor.  “He had a unique ability to form lasting relationships with victims and their families.”  Through his legal accomplishments he was elevated to the Superior Court, and then to the Arizona Court of Appeals.

Over the years, Mike and Karen became foster parents to approximately 80 high risk infants. Meaning that in addition to their own adopted children, they found time to care for many other children, those awaiting adoption or eventual return to their mothers who were experiencing  temporary hardships.

In 2002 Mike was appointed to the  Arizona Supreme Court, He retired in 2010, but continued to work on Court projects until his death in January of 2012.   A fellow Marine (and Judge), after speaking at Mike’s Supreme Court investiture, said that it was “the greatest honor of my career.”

Mike was buried with full military honors at  Arlington National Cemetery with a Drum and Bugle Corps setting cadence in “steady repetitive triplets.” And an Honor Guard carrying the colors, followed by the 24 men of a rifle platoon. Then 7 horses, four with riders. Then the caisson carrying Mike’s flag draped coffin. His fellow Marines bore that casket to the gravesite and with it, the later ceremoniously folded flag for presentation to Karen.

After a rifle salute and the plaintive farewell of taps had faded, Mike’s granddaughter Alicia handed out green foil shamrocks (befitting an Irishman) which the family sprinkled in final tribute on his coffin. Not long after, she told Karen: “He doesn’t need his wheelchair anymore. He is dancing, and he has wings!”

A link to a great article in tribute to “Hon. Michael D. Ryan” is (here).

Mike and George’s dedication to their families, their community and their country began with the values imparted by their parents and reinforced by the Christian Brothers and Cretin High School.  All of us can be very proud of both of them.

Click image to enlarge

Hi everyone,

Beautiful day in the Twin Cities.

There are two photos attached and one is of our Cretin Classmates and the other is of the class of 63 St Thomas Academy Classmates. Both of these classes meet the second Thursday of each month at the P & Y but are usually in separate rooms.

Today the P & Y was very crowded due to a funeral reception being held. Because of that Cretin and St Thomas were seated side by side in one of the rooms. It was fun in that because of who populated the schools back in our day, most came from about a dozen parishes around St Paul so many of us knew one another.

Click on Photo to Enlarge

The Cretin photos has from the left side of the table front to back; Don Danneker, Joe Schufman, Gary Stoffel, Dave Britz, Joe Brooks, Tim Valento, Frank Villaume, and from the right side of the table front to back John Lentsch, Joe M McGrath, Jim Dimond, Gene Bovy, Dave Tyree, Jim Hudak, Tom Mega, John Runyon.

In the St Thomas photo; left to right around the table; Dick Bisanz, Gene Allstat, Pat Feely, John Berken, Mike Byrne, and I can not remember the fellow in the orange shirt.

During the past week I had the good fortune of communicating with two of our classmates, Greg Halbert and Tom Rubbelke. Both of these guys said to say hello to all of you. Greg was injured in a fall and Tom lost his wife Carol two months ago.

I know both of these guys would love to hear from you.

The strong CDH baseball team lost last night in the section finals to East Ridge so no trip to state.  The very strong CDH girl’s fast pitch won the sections and is headed to state.

Three boys off the Golf team qualified to go to state next week. Their top golfer is a Sophomore who has won the National Drive , Pitch, and Putt competition at Augusta National twice in the past three years. I think a CDH girl golf team member also qualified for the state but do not have confirmation on that.

John Runyon handed out a copy of the Congressional Record from May 25^th where MN Rep Pete Stauber recognized our deceased classmate George Bonfe. A copy of the recognition is on the class of 63 web site here.

OUR 60^th  REUNION ACTIVITIES

Wednesday Sept 13^th—Memorial Mass at CDH for the 85 deceased classmates from the class of 63. Joe Schufman has put this together. Please confirm attendance and any questions with Joe.     Also family members of the deceased classmates are welcome to attend.

Thursday Sept 14^th     Annual Golf outing (THE CHARLIE) to be held at Highland National beginning at 9:30AM It’s a scramble a “BRITZ SCRAMBLE”.  Please confirm attendance and any questions with Dave Britz

Thursday Sept 14^th    THE ONE CDH alumni dinner at CDH beginning at 5PM.  More details on this event will be sent out by CDH. Contacts at CDH are Peggy Schafer   and Megan Smith 

Friday Sept 15^th   The CRETIN DERHAM / ST THOMAS ACADEMY football game at the Minnesota Viking Performance Center facility in Eagan, 7PM.

As far as a multi-school social gathering for the 60^th I have no info at this time but want to thank Tim Valento for stepping forward to contact the other schools to determine their interest in a gathering such as this.

That’s all for now folks

Thanks

Tom Troskey

May 25, 2023

George Bonfe was formally honored in the House of Representatives on May 25, 2023 by Minnesota Representative Pete Stauber. The honor was captured in the Congressional Record and I have added a page with the excerpt from that record. You can link directly to the page by clicking here.

Joe Schufman

Joe McGrath sent me a message with a link to a University of St. Thomas publication recognizing individuals who contributed to the success of their School of Engineering. Our classmate Steve Nachtsheim was one of those visionaries. Steve sent a note to me saying “The article was a nice tribute but really deserved to have lists of folk who supported me. Those were the days!” Nonetheless he was an innovator worthy of recognition. You can read the article by clicking on this link.

Here is the photo of the young Steve that accompanied the article.