Want to become a Herman Being? Have a great Hermantown moment or story to share?
Reach out to the Communications Department at City Hall at either 218-729-3600 or via e-mail at [email protected]
Herman Beings; Winter of 2023
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Scott
“Our agency’s MLK Day was spent serving the Superior, Cloquet, and Hermantown communities in many different capacities. We had a crew repainting walls at the Superior YMCA, a crew working with the Hermantown YMCA volunteering with the kids and various other things needed, a crew coordinating a blood drive in Cloquet, and hydrant crews in both Cloquet and Hermantown. One of our Core Values is Community Involvement, and this aligns with MLK Day’s purpose of being a day on, not a day off, serving one another within our communities. Our staff loved every minute of each project, and we plan to continue this each year.”
It’s been a winter of heavy, wet snow, so a big thanks to the Reliable Insurance team – and all of those neighborly folks here in Hermantown – for helping shovel out hydrants, sidewalks, and neighbors!
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Jamie
“Our goal at Excel North is to help our patients reach their highest potential. We feel that being located in the new building at Hermantown Marketplace and the initial support we’ve received from the community has allowed us to start reaching our highest potential as a business right away. We look forward to serving Hermantown and the surrounding areas for years to come.”
We’ve worked hard in Hermantown to garner a reputation as being a place where businesses of all shapes and sizes can be successful. It shouldn’t be hard work to get your hard-working business started, and that approach has helped Hermantown become one of Minnesota’s most business-friendly communities.
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Amanda
“The reason I started dedicating my time to the volunteer fire department was because of the community, and I thought, ‘I want to meet more people like me.’ It gives me the opportunity to get to know more people and not just the people here on the team. I wanted to know the residents in Hermantown and the people in the community. A great thing about volunteering here is the flexibility. We all have busy lives outside of volunteering, and we all find time to work around our regular lives. This can be on a day off or if we have time to take a call. There is no commitment to a work schedule. If I am having a busy week, I won’t go on any calls. In terms of taking these calls, this is also very flexible. If anyone feels uncomfortable or triggered by a certain situation, such as blood, they don’t have to take that call. I think there is hesitancy because people think you need to have a lot of experience before you join. You do not. A person can come in with no prior experience of any kind, and all the schooling is paid for. Overall, as a first responder, there is something that draws me to want to be there for people when they are not at their best. It feels good to be able to talk with them and feel like I am helping them.”
“I have many stories as examples of how people on my team go above and beyond for the community, from taking care of people’s animals for them when they need to go to the hospital to ensure their groceries are taken care of if something happens to them at the store. I remember this one time a man had to go to the hospital, and he was worried about no one being able to take care of his dog. So one of my team members went and walked the dog for him and checked up with the dog later that night for him.”
* If interested in joining the volunteer fire department, please look at our website linked below with some more details. If you have any more questions, Amanda says that she runs the Facebook page, and people can feel free to DM her; or you can also email with this email address here: [email protected]
More information on the volunteer fire department can be found here, and the pictures below show Amanda’s story about members of the HVFD taking care of the aforementioned dog.
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Drew
“It was a happy accident that drew me to the world of working with the youth in Hermantown and Proctor. I went to school for Criminology, but I didn’t want to work with the prison aspect. I was more drawn to working on the preventive side and keeping kids out of the system. My whole career is based around youth development and figuring out positive ways for kids to become involved in the community and have a great time while doing so. During the pandemic, we moved into the emergency childcare role and wanted to step up by giving back when everything else was shut down. It kept me going each day to get to work with the kids and to feel like we are doing something positive as opposed to watching the world shut down around us. We served close to one hundred kids every day for emergency childcare within the Hermantown district and Proctor. We took it day by day, figuring this stuff out since there hadn’t been anything like it before. At the same time, we tried to provide opportunities to ensure that kids were still able to be kids through the COVID-19 chaos. We wanted to make sure that they were still having important social interactions. It was a whole different layer of responsibility to make sure that everyone was on track during the difficult pandemic time.”
Thanks to Drew and everyone at PH Community Education for all you do for the Hermantown youth. We are grateful for your dedication during the pandemic and how you’ve helped so many people in our community.
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Jason
“I have been at the Hermantown Star since March of 2013, I have really enjoyed working here, and it has been interesting to see how the town has grown significantly in that span. I really like writing about Hermantown’s sporting events because they are triumphant local moments, and it’s nice to be the one to capture that with my writing.”
Thanks to Jason for all the coverage you give to the people of Hermantown and the surrounding area. We’re happy you’ve called the Hermantown Star home for nearly a decade!
Herman Beings; Autumn of 2022
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Kit
“There were so many magnificent teachers and students,” Kit said. “Everybody showed up and was involved in the lives of the kids; everyone helped nurture each other’s kids as much as their own. I could not think of a better school in which to spend my career.”
A big part of what has made Hermantown such an incredible hometown for generations is our top-notch school. Teachers like Kit have guided our young people so wonderfully for so long! With another school year approaching, we are grateful to have such a fantastic school system in Hermantown.
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Catie
“My husband and I officially sold our old house last summer and moved up from southern Minnesota permanently. We love that we are somewhat remote but can get anywhere in the area in fifteen minutes. We like how close the north shore is to us and all the other surrounding lakes. When we moved here, the chamber, in particular, was helpful to work with when I started with a new company based out of Chicago and new to Hermantown; Guaranteed Rate. Everyone has been very receptive and welcoming!”
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Herman Beings; Summer of 2022
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Jess
“The girls on the tennis team are more analytical; always trying to learn more about me, my personal life, and what I am doing, while coaching the boys is more comic relief,” Jess, Hermantown High’s tennis coach, said. “It is a good balance between both teams, and it’s really great that we are able to take the kids in as seventh graders and spend six years with them.”
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Bill
“I came across this snapping turtle up against the fence near the right field foul pole on the east field,” said Bill, who is not pictured above. “I did some research, and they can live 200 years. I found one in Ontario that was documented as 125 years old but wasn’t nearly as large as this specimen. They may have been there when I played Little League there 50 years ago. I tried to get a side shot, but they weren’t buying in.”*
*While Herman Beings may have slowed down a bit in the summer months, it is still moving faster than the Hermantown Little League Turtle above. A special thanks to Bill for sending in this picture and story!
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Herman Beings; Spring of 2022
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Eric
“I have been living here my whole life and I would say that it is a picture-perfect community,” said Eric. “There are a lot of reasons why – and what’s big for me is that our emergency response teams, our police, and our fire, are good – but what it comes to is there is everything you could want from a small area while also being centralized and everything is within driving distance. Everybody works together and we are almost like one big happy family.”
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Nancy
“We’ve had terrific neighbors. Everyone looks out for one another here. One time, we came home after a horrible snowstorm and we found that our driveway was already plowed,” said Nancy. “The other day I was driving down the street and I noticed someone’s garbage can was kind of in the middle of the road. We stopped and moved it for them just like people have for us many times. We have come home to our garbage can by the garage, and we didn’t move it. Those are the kinds of little things that just happen in my neighborhood. I think Hermantown is a great place to live. I like to think of Hermantown as a big, little town.”
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Kitty
“We loved it, there were four kids so we had to share rooms … it was always warm in the wintertime and cool in the summertime,” said Kitty about growing up in a historic Jackson Project home. “If I remember right; when my mom and dad bought that house it was like $8,000 and that was back in probably in the early ’50s or late ’40s. Hermantown was safe, we were always out until dark or after, and you didn’t have to worry about traffic, so we loved it and wouldn’t have wanted to move anywhere else.”
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Steve
“When I was 12 years old, I was on Hermantown’s first Little League team,” said Steve. “It was kind of tough because we didn’t have good pitchers and we had to play against Duluth teams that had good pitchers for quite a few years, so we did pretty well in the league but not so good in the playoffs.”
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Adam
“I was born and raised here in Hermantown. My family is from here, and my wife’s family is from here – we have deep roots here. We have a great school system, a great community, and it is just a great place to be,” said Adam. “Growing up here, my friends and I would build forts in the woods in the summertime and we would drive snowmobiles around the woods in the wintertime. Another summer activity that we did was rope swing into the pond behind my childhood home. We rode our bikes to the gas station on 53 and grab a pop and a candy bar. I tried a lot of sports growing up, but when I hit high school I was involved in track and cross country. There was a fun team atmosphere and it was enjoyable. My son is now in school at Hermantown and is involved in youth sports, so it is cool to see him grow up and do some of the same things I did growing up.”
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Katie
“I absolutely loved being a firefighter in Hermantown. I started out volunteering in Hermantown as a way to give back. My kids were very young at the time so I just thought it was a great way to give back to the community and it ended up leading me to a new career in firefighting for Duluth. At the HVFD, we had a lot of fun. My kids had a lot of fun as well, they would come around and it was like a little fire family. There were other little kiddos they could hang out with and it was awesome to be a part of something unique. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is considering being a volunteer firefighter. Everybody ultimately had the same goal of wanting to help the community.
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Tom
“I like to think of Hermantown as small-town America at its core. When my family and I moved here in 1990, it was for the schools. We really liked the student-to-teacher ratio and the school had a great reputation even back then. We learned people watch out for each other here. My next-door neighbor plows my driveway, and when we found out that my neighbor across from me was having problems and his snowblower did not work, my neighbor started doing his driveway as well. That kind of stuff comes naturally to Hermantown.”
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Bob
“Hermantown is a great place to grow up and live, it’s got everything that you need. I graduated from Hermantown High School in 1972. It was an older school, but it had a good education program. Back when I was growing up, everybody knew everybody and there were lots of kids and everyone got along. We didn’t have any ice arenas or anything like that so we kind of just made our own fun. We played everything; we weren’t very good, but we did the best we could. We rode bikes, we fixed bikes, we built shacks, we played baseball, we played basketball, we played hockey on the outside rinks at the time, and we swam out at Pike Lake. When we were kids, we used to know how to sneak into the schools and would use the basketball courts to play inside during the summer months. Things have changed, as all places do, but I think it’s still a great community here. We’ve got a beautiful ice arena; a beautiful school; we’ve got parks and trails you can ride bikes, walk, or run on; and the Y, which has been such a positive for the community. They have got so many things for kids to do here, it’s a great place to raise kids. I don’t think Hermantown is done growing, I really don’t … which is great because it has been a nice community to grow up in.”
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Lynn
“I was fascinated with bowling even when I was a little kid,” said Lynn. “My dad used to have the office building across from Skyline and we’d come up on Saturdays. He’d be going through paperwork at the office and me, my mom, and sister would go bowling. Now, it is a nice diversion from everything else that is going on these days. We weren’t sure we were going to have a league this past fall, but once we made a few calls everyone was anxious and excited to get back to bowling. It felt great that everyone wanted to get back together after being shut down at different points in the last two bowling seasons.”
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“There is a buzz … “
Welcome to the Herman Beings from the Winter of 2022.
Joanie
“We needed to move into our not-quite-finished-yet house January 1, 1976, in order to claim homestead, which was also the date of Hermantown becoming the first bicentennial city in the United States,” said Joanie. “For 46 years, we have lived, raised our three children here, have seen them married, and continue to have them raise their children here as well. Teaching for over 40 years at the Hermantown Elementary School has shown me that many families have done the same, and teaching children of my first students has been such a delightful experience. Students and teachers became like family. This has been a close-knit family of many friends, and I’ve so loved working and raising my kids here. Like so many other families, I’m seeing my grandkids grow up here, and being together as a family is so important to me; what a blessing this has been.”
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Sandi
“What makes this a great hometown? Neighbors. All our neighborhoods, everyone is connected, and it’s not like that everywhere,” said Sandi. “I know that if I had an emergency, I’d have many people helping me out and everybody working together to get through it. That’s what Hermantown was based on; families helping each other, and that is how it grew.”
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Carl & Doris
“In Hermantown, we have a business here: The Grussendorf Nursery. It has been around for 70 years, which Carl’s dad started and that’s been the hub of our lives and our kids’ lives here in Hermantown,” Doris said.
“It’s a family business that is going on its third generation. Eric, our son, is the third-generation owner right now. The community of Hermantown has been very supportive of our business. What’s nice about Hermantown is there are several family businesses here. They like the atmosphere, and the people here support family businesses,” Carl said.
“The community has been so positive about our business. Some people have known this business their whole life, and the location is very close to people,” Doris said.
“They are very loyal customers and they support us. Every year we have a customer appreciation day and our place is just overflowing with Hermantown and people from the surrounding area,” Carl said.
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Joel
“There is a buzz; you can feel things migrating Hermantown’s way,” said Joel. “And I like that because it means the more that comes our way, all of us, the better it is for everyone.”
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Kelli
“We moved up here to live closer to family, and we loved the smaller school size, the small-town feel, but it still had everything we needed,” Kelli said. “Having the Y being right by us is a total game-changer because there is a place where I can stay healthy, my kids can learn here, I can work here … it is very convenient, and we love it.”
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Kathy
“I like the people here,” said Kathy about senior bowling at Skyline Social & Games. “I get tired of sitting at home all the time, so I like to come down here and cheer on my husband and the other bowlers, have lunch, and make some trouble. It is a fun group; everyone is so friendly.”
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