When I was 17 in 1957, my parents and I moved to Minnesota from Upstate New York. It was a tough time in my life to move to a new place and to say that my teenage friends that I had known since first grade felt sorry for me is an understatement. They were pretty much horrified.
One of the things that concerned them most was: “But, I heard they don’t even have TV out there yet. You’re going to miss 'American Bandstand!'" Put a big whine on that last quote and you have the general interpretation. We were moving to Rochester, Minnesota, which as the medical capital of the world certainly had television in 1957, but that widely held perception of Minnesota as a northwoods wasteland has always put Duluth, my adopted hometown, at the very top of the list of places you wouldn’t want to live, or even visit.
Until you’ve been here. Then you do pretty much everything you can to visit regularly or move here. We try to keep it a secret, but once you’ve come over Thompson Hill and seen the lake and the city spread out before you, what else can you do? ADVERTISEMENT I have always said that the two best things I have done in my life are marry Tom and move to Duluth.
The kids come in a very close third. We came to Duluth for the first time in 1962, one baby in tow, so Tom could do his internship at St. Mary’s Hospital.
The 11 interns' families, all of us, lived in the Shoreview apartments, right across the street from St. Mary’s, so our world was pretty small. Interns were fo.