Last Sunday was family day like gangbusters at the Sauk Rapids Fire Department’s annual open house, with lots and lots of babies, toddlers, teens and their parents having a ball at the fire station.
At one point, the large parking lot behind the fire hall was cram-packed with visitors, with children crawling in and out of fire trucks as their proud parents took photos.
All but three of the department’s 28 firefighters were at the event, helping out, greeting visitors, answering questions, shooting the breeze with people younger and older.
There were prizes, balloons, free popcorn and pop, and hamburgers and hot dogs for sale.
The breezy warm weather was a big plus for the big turn-out.
For more about the event, see the photos in this paper.
Dalman was born and raised in South St. Cloud, graduated from St. Cloud Tech High School, then graduated from St. Cloud State University with a degree in English (emphasis on American and British literature) and mass communications (emphasis on print journalism). He studied in London, England for a year (1980-81) where he concentrated on British literature, political science, the history of Great Britain and wrote a book-length study of the British writer V.S. Naipaul. Dalman has been a reporter and weekly columnist for more than 30 years and worked for 16 of those years for the Alexandria Echo Press.