Remembering past lessons and teaching them anew

by Gail Hayden

Excerpts of the wise sayings of King Lemuel of Massa, taught to him at his mother's knee and found in the Book of Proverbs:

She is a woman of strength and dignity, and has no fear of old age. When she speaks, her words are wise, and kindness is the rule for everything she says. She watches carefully all that goes on throughout her household, and is never lazy. Her children stand and bless her.

A beloved sister lies in her bed at home, distant worlds away from the small village in Africa where she was born. Minnesota is a long way from the Red Sea. Her family surrounds the bed she lies in. They care for her the way the hospice workers taught them. Quite often, they pray.

Her younger sister pushes aside panic and prays only for her sister's survival. Across town, the burned out shell of the younger sister's business, a rug store she has worked in seven days a week, eight hours a day for two years, still smolders, but in keeping with the ways of her people, she puts nothing ahead of her devotion to her elder sister during this difficult time. The family has already known great tragedy. They survived civil war in Africa. Not all of them, though. Their grandmother, father and two brothers were killed by cluster bombs in the long and brutal war they, as Eritreans, fought in the war of independence against Ethiopia.

The oldest sister, who now wages another battle against cancer that has invaded her brain and liver, has always been their savior. She came to Windom, Minn., forty years ago as a foreign exchange student. Her people were facing destruction and she made a decision to remain here to work hard as a seamstress and use her earnings to bring her family to safety. She did all that and more. Her successful business, Elsa's Store of Sleep, graces a prominent St. Paul corner. Her children run it for her now. In addition, the siblings she rescued own and operate three more businesses, locally.

Insightful Elsa, the older sister, taught Belainish, the younger sister, as well as her other brothers and sisters, to build bridges with people different from themselves, to insure their success. Belainish learned the lesson so well, that when her store, Baraka Rug, in the historic Gustavus Adolphus building, went up in flames on January 17, 2004, people of many foreign origins she had reached out to in her adopted city shared her grief.

The city of Minneapolis is like a human heart. Lake Street, where Belainish operated her business, is its aorta. Sometimes it seemed that the block situated between 16th and 17th needed a kind of coronary bypass. When Julie Ingebretsen thought so, she didn't waste any time becoming a veritable neighborhood heart surgeon. The ways in which she crossed cultural and generational lines to help people like Belainish are a lot like the lessons Elsa taught. Julie learned them from earlier immigrants—her grandparents and parents. The lessons are worth learning. The need to teach them, remember them and apply them has never been greater.

Three women—Elsa, Belainish and Julie—offer us an object lesson for our times. It may be, in actuality, the only remedy to prevent sudden death to the city we love.

Julie's story begins almost 83 years ago when her grandfather Charles Ingebretsen Sr. opened up The Model Meat Market at the corner of 16th and Lake Street. At that time, many immigrants such as himself had made their way to Minneapolis from their native Norway and settled much of this area of Lake Street. Swedes and Danes did likewise. Julie said that as a butcher with a "Scandinavian bent" he hoped to satisfy local palates with many of the Scandinavian delicacies and staples they had enjoyed in their native lands. It seems reminiscent of the creation of kosher meat markets on the north side of the city and the opening of many halal meat markets, now. This was the year 1921, however, the same year that Julie's father, Charles Jr., the second generation Ingebretsen butcher to work on this corner, was born. Through the years we called the Roaring ’20s, onward into the Great Depression and a world war, right up to today, four generations of Ingebretsens worked at the business that now takes up four storefronts and has evolved into a regional Scandinavian center. Situated right across the street and down a block, the Swedes are no longer doing business in the great Gustavus Adolphus building. Before the fire, the people doing business there included merchants from Mexico and Algeria, as well as Belainish from Eritrea. Julie experienced an earthquake of human compassion when her friend's store was destroyed.

Julie's father had mentored her, just like Elsa had mentored Belainish. Returning from the Navy after WWII, Charles Jr. began to assist his father as a butcher and joined forces with Wayne Dahl, a Swedish butcher with a great recipe for Swedish meatball mix and Swedish sausage. They changed the name to "Ingebretsen's Meat Market. The customers came in droves.

When Julie finished her degree in education at the University of Minnesota in 1971, she had no intention of following her father into the business. He was a butcher, she was a teacher. She worked for awhile managing the making of small parts in a local factory awaiting a full-time teaching position that she hoped would allow her to improve young lives from many backgrounds. Before that job was forthcoming, her father asked her if she would consider helping him start a gift store in the meat market which by now also included a Scandinavian deli. The request was daunting.

After going down in the cellar and dusting off some wares her father thought might be marketable, 24-year-old Julie set about the task of researching the items' history and worth. To her astonishment, she was good at it. Also, inside the folklore of Scandinavia, she found a mirror to her self. "It explained me," she says. "It explained me, to me."

Julie's mother, Honore (Honnie, pronounced Onnie) Adams was Irish-Catholic. At the time she met Julie's dad at the old West High School and married him following his return from the war, a Catholic marrying a Protestant was a cultural revolution. Charles Jr. and Honnie raised their children Catholic and sent Julie to Visitation High School, a Catholic school for girls. There, Julie had many more Irish-American classmates than Norwegian. By comparison, she felt far less demonstrative than them in her manner. She soon learned in her research on Scandinavians that she had many of the traits of her Nordic ancestors. When I asked her to list them, she said "Stoic, reserved and hard-working." As I talked to her more, I began to write "generous, humble and fearless." These were the very same traits I had encountered in Elsa and Belainish. It was a base upon which, for Julie and Belainish, a friendship could be formed.

There was one difference .... time. Julie had worked in her family business 30 years. Her father before her had worked there 53 years. There was an established prosperity that enabled her to go beyond the boundaries of family and extend lessons of living to newcomers around her; newcomers such as Belainish. Similarly, Elsa had become established but when disaster hit, she was far too ill to help her sister.

Julie acted as Elsa would have done. She picked up the phone and rallied forces to help Belainish. Elsa's recovery was in question and the family believed their love and steadfastness could help create a miracle for her. In the meantime, Julie dealt with the practicalities of creating a plan for fundraising.

In all, three other businesses were lost that day in January inside the grand, old hall. Because Belainish's store, Baraka Rug, contained such perishable merchandise as costly Tibetan and Egyptian rugs, the flames and smoke destroyed almost everything. Looters also contributed to her loss. Belainish had hoped she had left the memories of being looted far behind her when she left Eritrea. She wished she had understood better the need for renter's insurance, especially when she learned the building's owner had none.

Julie's call to help was critical in its timing and significant in light of her seniority of leadership on the block. She assured Belainish that she was not forgotten or alone. Julie had already used her connections as a member of the Lake Street Council to introduce Belainish to the many other merchants and leaders along Lake Street.

Belainish told me how often Julie had gone out of her way to befriend her and include her. Even though Julie had more than 40 employees to supervise, books to balance and a substantial mail order business and classes on aspects of Nordic life such as needlework and cooking to run; Julie was never too busy to keep Belainish informed about activities on the block.

The day I stopped down to talk with Julie, she was industriously expanding the classroom space in order to offer more classes. Many of the instructors were older people desiring to teach crafts to younger people who were interested in learning the old ways. There was no evidence of age discrimination here. On the contrary, the older staff seemed to be revered. I was told by one employee that Honnie and Charles, now in their 80s, still worked in the store. Their other daughter, Molly, created the mail order department. Some of the employees were from Finland, Denmark and Sweden. Mia, a young woman from southeastern Finland had heard about Ingebretsen's while traveling in Montana. Finns there regularly ordered from Ingebretsen's catalog. Mia came to Julie seeking employment and Julie put her to work. She became, as Julie said, "part of our large family." And so had Belainish, because this was a family that honored its elders and welcomed strangers and took care of its own. Why wouldn't Belainish feel right at home? Such were the characteristics she had learned from her own family and now much of what Julie was doing would have been the actions of Elsa.

As we were talking, another employee came over holding out a stack of ragged- looking checks and receipts. They had been found behind the store by a customer and were part of what had been stolen a few months before from the register. That, of course, brought up a question I had about the high crime in the area. Many times, I knew Belainish had been frightened while working in her shop. Julie told me of her work with Weed and Seed, a federal initiative she was actively engaged in, designed to help neighborhoods rid themselves of crime. She told me about also serving on the Bloomington-Lake Council, another organization determined to keep the area as safe as possible. "My grandfather came here as a young immigrant. He worked hard to make this a safe neighborhood. I feel a huge responsibility to both welcome new immigrants and help them run successful businesses of their own. It is important to make it safe for everyone involved. That's why we stay. A lot of the Scandinavian community has moved on, but we choose to stay," Julie resolutely commented.

Elsa, Julie, Belainish and Lake Street give me hope. At a time when others grab attention magnifying our differences, these three remarkable women and one fine thoroughfare demonstrate our enormous capacity to relate to one another. It begins with each individual's decision to get to know another person long enough to see the parallels in their lives.

I hope it's not too late for me to teach my children this. If I am blessed with grandchildren, I'll start them at my knee.