by Dennis Dalman
On Memorial Day, it will have been five years ago that an explosion at the paper mill in Sartell ended a 106-year era.
Dennis Molitor wants everybody to remember that sad day and the man who died. He also wants to remind people of the enormous importance of that mill not only to Sartell but to all of the thousands of people who worked there during its nearly 11 decades of thriving business. Molitor, an employee at the mill for 38 years, will unveil a paper-mill memorial display right after the Memorial Day ceremony in Veterans’ Park. The tribute-to-veterans ceremony will take place at 9 a.m. Monday, May 29. Molitor’s mill-memorial ceremony will begin at about 11:10 a.m. – exactly five years to the minute that the mill explosion happened.
On May 29, 2012, it was a beautiful sunny morning when veterans and residents gathered in Sartell’s Veterans’ Park for a moving Memorial Day ceremony complete with patriotic tunes, speeches and the playing of taps. Right across the river on that sunny morning could be seen the baby-blue main building of the Verso Paper Co., shining in the sun. Not long after the ceremony participants left the park, a gigantic explosion could be heard, rocking the city from one side to the other. Soon a plume of soot-black smoke rose into the sky, and a bit later the sunny morning turned cloudy and rainy as emergency vehicles rushed to the fire caused by the explosion.
One company employee, Jon Maus of Albany, died instantly in the explosion. Four others were injured. It took 14 fire departments more than a week to completely stop the fire, which kept smoldering in giant bales of paper, causing it to re-ignite.
The shock and disbelief that befell Sartell residents lasted for weeks, to be replaced by a deepening shock when everyone heard even more bad news: the plant would be closed forever after 106 years of continuous operation. The news was a mixture of the tragic and the catastrophic as so many expressed their feelings about the end of an era.
Heart ripped
Dennis Molitor said every time a building was demolished at the paper mill during the past five years, it was “as if a bit of my heart was being ripped out” with every ripped-apart building.
Through recent years, Molitor and others would hold support meetings for any former mill employee who wanted to attend. Many an hour of reminiscence went on at those meetings, memories that stretched back year after year.
But eventually, Molitor decided those memories will fade or die someday. There must be a way people, including new residents and visitors, can know about the mill and the many good things it meant to the city. After much pondering, Molitor decided it would be good to devise a kind of monument in Veterans’ Park with informational plaques giving a brief history of the mill and what has happened since the explosion, closing and site demolition.
The task Molitor set for himself he described as a labor of love.
“I’m trying to preserve the 106-year history of paper-making at the paper mill,” he told the Sartell-St. Stephen Newsleader.
Molitor calls the results of his work the “Sartell Mill Memorial Project.” The sponsor of the project is “Engine Number 844,” the name of the Sartell Retired Firefighters Association, of which Molitor is a founding member.
Molitor has had two assistants for the undertaking: Sartell retired professor and historian Bill Morgan and Sartell High School technology teacher Joe Schulte, who is also a sculptor and welder. Morgan is proofreading and editing the texts on the plaques that Molitor is writing after his exhaustive research. Schulte is putting together the memorial exhibit in Veterans’ Park. As a participant in the “Sartell Mill Art Project,” Schulte had previously created sculptures made of old parts from the ruined mill.
The project
The Sartell Mill Memorial Project is comprised of a row of five round steel paper-dryer gears from the old mill, each 54 inches high. The cogs of the gears will mesh one to another along the row. They are mounted on a cement slab that was poured last fall near the gazebo in the park. Attached to gears 1, 3 and 5 will be “storyboards” – informational plaques that tell a bit of the mill and its processes.
The storyboards’ brief texts will cover the following subjects: the hydro-electric plant, the wood room, the thermal mechanical pulping room, number-three paper-making machine; the number-3 supercalendar machine for making glossy paper, the north power plant, the south power plant, the roll-wrap and paper warehouse, the maintenance and storage room; and a timeline history from 1905 to the present.
Each textual plaque, made of steel with a transparent vinyl coating, is 12 inches wide and 18 inches high. The All-Star Trophy Co. is creating the plaques.
In addition, there will be a 30-foot-long stainless-steel silhouette panorama behind the actual memorial. The silhouette is the outline of how the mill looked when viewed from Veterans’ Park. Earlier, Schulte created a smaller silhouette of the mill outline that was placed on the wrought-iron fence in the park. However, the powdered-steel used for the sculpture began to rust. The new one will be impervious to all weathers.
Anderson Fabricating is building the foundation for the gears and is laser-cutting the stainless-steel panorama display.
Learning
Molitor, in the course of his massive research, constantly learned things he didn’t know about the mill, even during his 38 years with the company.
“When it started, there was only one paper-making machine,” he said. “They didn’t get a second one until 1910. I’d never known that. I also discovered the hydro-electric dam there (operated by Eagle Creek Renewable Energy) can generate enough electricity to furnish 6,000 homes.”
Molitor also found thousands of photos now in possession of the Stearns History Museum.
Cost
The Sartell Mill Memorial Project, when all is said and done, will cost about $14,000. Most of that has been raised through various donations, most of it from companies, such as DeZurik, Sartell’s other historical bedrock company.
There is still about $3,000 to be raised, and Molitor is hoping people will donate. To make a donation, send a check with “Mill Project” on the memo line to Sartell Fire Department, 210 Second St. S., Sartell, Minn. 56377. The fire department is where the retired firefighters usually meet, and they are the sponsors of the memorial project.
Donations are tax-deductible.
Paper-making century
The original paper mill in Sartell, founded in 1905, was called Watab Pulp and Paper. It was created by a group of lumbermen from Wisconsin and Michigan through the sale of stock shares.
The mill made newsprint until 1930 and then switched to making primarily paper for magazines.
At first, the paper was made from wood pulp from tree logs. Later, much of the paper was created from recycled magazines that arrived at the mill by rail in huge “bales” from the Chicago area.
In 1946, the company was purchased by the St. Regis (Paper) Corp. With the rapid changes and improvements in technology, the paper mill went through many changes and adaptations, such as wooden gears on the paper machine being replaced by metal and plastic ones.
The mill was also a pioneer and innovator in pollution-prevention and was honored by the Izaak Walton (Environmental) League for its excellent wastewater treatment operation.
Throughout the years, the mill underwent several extremely expensive and ambitious expansions.
In 1984 St. Regis merged with the Champion International Corp, and the plant was then called Champion Paper. In 2000, International Paper bought the plant, making it the world’s largest paper- and forest-products company.
Its last owner was the Verso Paper Co. that announced on Aug. 2, about two months after the explosion, that the mill would not re-open. American Iron and Metal Development bought the site and began a long process of demolition, with almost all of the razed material sold for recycling purposes.
Now all that remains of more than a century of paper-making is a vast empty site along the Mississippi River in Sartell. To those who made good livings working at the mill – people like Dennis Molitor – that empty site is a very sad sight indeed.