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Compiled by Jerome Christenson | Winona Daily News
1983
Michael J. Bambenek, a driving force in Winona athletics and park management died Tuesday morning in Winona Community Hospital. He was 81.
A large portion of Lake Park is named Mike Bambenek Fields in honor of the city’s first director of Parks and Recreation and Forestry.
Bambenek was a graduate of Winona State College. He taught and coached at Browns Valley and Monticello Minnesota Public Schools from 1926 to 1930 and was athletic director and coach at Alliance College, Cambridge Springs, Pa., from 1930 to 1941.
He served as director of recreation for Winona from 1941 to 1949 and was the city’s first director of Parks and Recreation from 1949 to 1968.
Bambenek was born October 8, 1902, in Winona to Michael and Marcianna Perszyk Bambenek.
1958
Winona and area parents today were urged by Sheriff George Fort and Chief of Police A.J. Bingold to warn their children of the dangers of playing with dynamite blasting caps they may find.
Blasting caps, they explained, are small, bright metallic cylinders usually made of copper and about as big around as lead pencils. Loaded with a powerful and sensitive explosive charge, the caps are used to trigger dynamite charges.
They are used in blasting operations on road construction projects, quarries and other places and sometimes are stolen and lost.
Frequently, caps are stolen or lost and fall into the hands of children who in tampering with them explode the sensitive charge.
When a cap explodes, hundreds of pieces of metal fly out in all directions — as far as 200 feet — and each year hundreds of children are blinded or maimed in such explosions.
Chief Bingold and Sheriff Fort asked that the finding of any dynamite caps be reported to their offices.
1933
A city truck, furnished through the poor department, began transporting Winona men employed on the Whitman locks to Whitman on Tuesday. The men are picked up at 6:45 a.m. and 1:15 p.m. at Lafayette Street and East Broadway and taken to the site of the work in time to begin their five-hour shifts. They are also returned home after completing their work.
This undertaking will be continued as long as the men are employed on the job, according to Alderman Harold Brehmer, chairman of the City Council’s Poor Committee, although permanent arrangements for the plan have not yet been worked out.
Men employed on the earlier shift have been making the trip in private cars. At present, approximately 20 Winona men are employed on the job, and it is expected that others will be given work soon.
Work on the construction of the coffer dam in the main channel of the Mississippi River began Saturday with the driving of sheet piling.
1908
The team of George Calkins, the well-known milkman of this city, took a lively sprint in the vicinity of the lower end of Johnson Street and the levee front last evening about 5 o’clock. They were in the rear of the Steffes Launch and Auto Co., where the men were engaged in loading a gasoline engine into the wagon. When the engine was loaded, the man was about to drive off, when the steam exhaust of the Railway and Light plant began to blow off, and the horses became unmanageable and went for the river. They dumped the wagon and engine, the latter partly into the river, and also several milk cans, which were later rescued. The engine was being repaired and had been finished, but it is now again in the shop.
1883
On the complaint of Mr. P. Minck, the police this afternoon made a raid on a party engaged in gambling at a game called “hazard” in the rear of Frank Gray’s broker office and arrested the parties while engaged in the game and also captured the cards, checks and devices used thereat. The parties arrested were Frank Gray, John Hitsker, Jule E. Premo and William Minck, who pleaded guilty and were fined $10 and costs each, amounting in the aggregate to $48, which was paid.
1863
On the last trip down of the steamer Keokuk, soon after the boat had entered Lake Pepin, a lady, the wife of Mr. George Knowles of Beaver, in this county, fell overboard and was drowned.
Mrs. K. had been in very ill health for some time past, and during the last four months was absent at St. Paul. She having become much worse, her husband went up to that city to bring her home, and they were returning when the occurrence here mentioned took place. The lady was too weak to accompany her husband to the table at the supper hour and remained in her state room while he went out. Upon his return, he found the stateroom vacant, and inquiry for his wife soon elicited the fact, from some of the deck hands who had heard or seen a person drop overboard, that she had fallen into the lake. It was too late, however, to make any successful effort to save her, and the boat passed on. Mrs. Knowles is represented as having been a woman of much intelligence. Her age was probably about 30 years. A reward of $50 is offered for the recovery of her body.
Contact Jerome Christenson at (507) 453-3500 or
jchristenson@winonadailynews.com
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