Wellstone site opens

EVELETH, Minn. - An old friend visited Mark Wellstone in his dreams Saturday night, a buddy from high school who had died in a car crash. On Sunday he realized why.

"He showed up to remind me to remember," Mark Wellstone said while helping dedicate a memorial Sunday to his father, U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, his mother, Sheila Wellstone, and six others who died in a plane crash nearly three years ago.

Mark Wellstone said he hoped the wooded, 5.8-acre, $300,000 Wellstone Memorial and Historical Site will become a place where people come to reflect, to think about the people they love and to remember those they have lost.

In time, he said, the memorial will be such a place for him. "I'm going to feel a lot more when I can come here alone," he said after a whirlwind ceremony. "It's a nice place to come. It gives you a calm feeling."

About 450 Wellstone supporters, family members, friends, political leaders and others attended the dedication. They listened to short speeches delivered from a flatbed trailer - very much a Wellstone stage, one of the speakers said.

After the dedication, the attendees wandered trails of crushed basalt from a quarry near Duluth, Minn. A circular trail represents the unity of words and deeds, the speakers said. Winding through stands of pines and birches, the pathways lead to interpretive signs that detail Sen. Wellstone's work as a teacher, organizer, campaigner, father, husband and senator.

Boulders bear the names of the crash victims. In addition to the senator and his wife, those who died Oct. 25, 2002, while on approach to the Eveleth-Virginia Municipal Airport included the Wellstones' daughter, Marcia Markuson; campaign workers Will McLaughlin, Tom Lapic and Mary McEvoy; and pilots Richard Conroy and Michael Guess.

They were aboard a Beech King A100 turboprop on their way to the Iron Range for the funeral of Martin "Benny" Rukavina, the father of state Rep. Tom Rukavina. "While Paul loved all of Minnesota, he had a special place in his heart for the Iron Range," said Lisa Radosevich Pattni, Wellstone's northern Minnesota director. "Paul broke the mold" by becoming the first Minnesota senator to put an office in the Iron Range, she said.

St. Louis County donated land for the memorial. Donations are still being accepted to cover the memorial's costs.

Most of the construction materials came from northeastern Minnesota. They include walls of slate from the former LTV Steel Mining Co., the base for a silhouetted eagle sculpture made with two chunks of Ely greenstone rock, and nameplates formed from Mesabi black granite from near Babbitt.

Their cars lining nearly a mile of Bodas Road, many attendees wore campaign buttons and Wellstone's trademark green. The late senator's famous green campaign bus provided a backdrop.

The memorial is south of Eveleth and about three miles east of U.S. Highway 53, less than a half-mile from where the airplane went down. Designers laid out the site with care to avoid disturbing trees, wetlands and wildlife.

The natural setting reflects Wellstone's longstanding concern for the environment, designers said. The mother of one of the campaign workers killed with Wellstone praised the memorial, saying it was a place to think not about what was, but about what can be.

"It is truly a fitting tribute to their lives," said Judy McLaughlin of St. Paul, mother of Will McLaughlin. "Come here to revive yourself."