Half-century Legion member proud of the club

(Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series on the longest-serving members of the American Legion of Sartell. The first, which focused on member Rollie Weis, was published in the Jan. 27 Newsleader.)

by Dennis Dalman

editor@thenewsleaders.com

Korean War veteran Duke Knafla, 83, has been a proud member of the American Legion of Sartell for a half century, second in length only to Rollie Weis, a 70-year member.

“I am very happy and proud to have been a Legion member that long,” Knafla said. “I wasn’t real active in Legion activities like fundraisers. I was so busy doing other things. But I sure did enjoy friendship with the other Legion members.”

So many of the members Knafla knew have passed on, a sad fact as the Legion veterans from earlier wars get older. Weis, for example, is 92, and the number of members in the Sartell club is diminishing.

“Most of the younger veterans tend to join the VFW,” Knafla said. “I don’t really know why that is. Veterans from World War I, World War II and Korea always joined the American Legion, but that changed about the time of the veterans from the Vietnam War.”

Knafla joined the U.S. Air Force in 1953 and became a jet-engine mechanic, a job that involved intensive schooling. He served for eight months in Korea during the war there in the early 1950s and was then stationed in Japan and, during the last of his four-year service, in Bunker Hill Air Force based in Indiana (now Grissom Air Force Base).

He loved serving his country, and he loved working on and around jet airplanes. When he was a boy, one of his favorite hobbies was putting together model airplanes and later flying the remote-control model planes. It was not surprising to anybody who knew Knafla as a boy that he would one day be a jet mechanic.

One of the peak lifetime thrills of his life occurred when he was stationed in Japan. Under a pilot’s supervision, Knafla was allowed to fly a jet trainer plane.

“Oh, it was so much fun,” he recalled. “Anybody who’s been in a jet quickly realizes why jet pilots love to fly. We were doing loop-de-loops, and the G-force was so strong sometimes I could barely lift my arm.”

To this day, the skills demonstrated by Blue Angels flying teams can take Knafla’s breath away. He saw them in a training exercise in Florida one time, and his heart was pounding at the sheer coordination of those jets flying flawlessly in such tight formation.

Sauk Rapids

Knafla was born in Sauk Rapids and graduated from Sauk Rapids High School in 1951.

When he wasn’t putting together model airplanes, he was constantly exploring the Mississippi River, which was only a-block-and-a-half from his house. He especially loved to fish the river, day after happy day.

He and his family moved to Sartell in 1967, and Knafla began his long career with the Sartell Paper Mill – 43 years, first as a pipefitter, later as a maintenance planner. It was a great place to work, he recalled, and a true foundation for Sartell and the whole area.

Several years ago, on Memorial Day, when an explosion ripped through a part of the plant, killing one man, Knafla was devastated and even more devastated when he learned later the plant, in operation for more than 100 years, would close for good.

Knafla was home the morning of the explosion. He still lives in the house he built 50 years ago. That is when he joined the American Legion of Sartell. Before that, as a Sauk Rapids resident, he had belonged to that particular Legion club.

Knafla’s house is just a couple of blocks from the paper-mill site. On the morning of the disaster, shortly before noon, Knafla was lighting his outdoor barbecue grill when suddenly he heard a huge boom. His neighbors rushed over to see if Knafla had somehow caused an explosion and to see if he was OK. Then they looked up in the sky toward the northwest and saw roiling black smoke. They knew then, in a sinking moment, something bad happened at the paper mill.

In that single, loud, tragic moment, more than a century of paper-making in Sartell had come to an end. Knafla’s heart still sinks when he sees the vast empty place just north of the Sartell bridge where the paper plant had once stood. It was a very, very big part of his life.

Living on

Knafla retired from the paper mill in 1994. He then went to work part time for 10 years at Dingmann Funeral Home in Sauk Rapids, working along with another retired part-time worker, Rollie Weis, one of his buddies in the American Legion of Sartell and its oldest living member. (See story on Weis in the Jan. 27 Newsleader).

“Rollie was great to work with,” he said. “We always got along just fine.”

Knafla is often surprised he has reached his 80s.

“I was sure I wouldn’t live this long,” he said. “I smoked for many, many years until I quit in 2004, when I was in the hospital being treated for Crohn’s disease,” he said. “I don’t have any secrets for long life. I don’t eat sweets, though. Never drink pop. I might have a beer after golfing, but that’s about it. I guess I’ve just been lucky. Really lucky.”

Sadly, his daughter and his first wife were not so lucky. Daughter Dawn died of cancer at the tragically young age of 35. She was single. Knafla’s first wife, Meta, whom he met through a friend in Indiana, died in 2000. Dawn and Knafla’s son, David, 59, who lives in St. Cloud with wife Barb, are the children of Knafla and Meta. David works in the environmental department for Stearns County.

Knafla’s second wife, Beverly, is now a resident of Good Shepherd Community Home in Sauk Rapids and suffers from serious problems.

“She knows who I am when I visit,” he said. “But when I have to leave to go home, she wants to come with, and that’s so hard to deal with.”

Knafla likes to stay busy with his hobbies: fishing, golfing, hunting, bowling and a relatively new activity, woodcarving. He is now a member of the Central Minnesota Woodworkers’ Association, which he joined 14 years ago.