Boxmeyer spent nearly 36 years chronicling the voices of his hometown
Pioneer Press columnist Don Boxmeyer could unfold a story so that it sounded as natural as a chat in a neighborhood coffee shop or tavern.
And his stories would always have that kicker that made you want to read more. Here, for example, is how he opened a column he wrote in June about the cabin his family owned when he was a boy:
“Not much of a summer home as these monsters go today, our little place at the lake was a modest refuge for a young family, without Great Room, spa, gymnasium, racquetball room, media center or wine cellar. But I learned to hunt at our family’s cabin, to boat there, to swim and water ski there, and fish there, to dive there, to build things with my father out of wood and stone, and quite accidentally, I learned a lot about the world from a girl named Bubbles.”
He also knew how to write with wry restraint when the hilarity of a story or, more frequently, the outrageousness of a personality was enough to carry it. In a 1998 column, for example, he profiled “Bobo” Betts, a colorful St. Paul street brawler and gambler who once was working as an ambulance attendant on a long emergency run from Duluth to the Twin Cities and was passing the time playing cards. Here’s how he opened it:
“No one remembers the name of the burn victim, but he was all wrapped up in gauze like a mummy. His eyes weren’t covered, though, and the poor guy did have one free hand, so Bobo dealt him in.”
Though he continued to write columns for the Pioneer Press, Boxmeyer retired from the paper in 2002 and almost immediately suffered health problems that ultimately necessitated organ transplants and heart surgeries. He wrote about them — and his surgeons, his organ donor’s family, his nurses. He also continued writing of scenes in his life and his city of beloved neighborhoods and interesting characters. Last June’s column on cabin memories, for instance, was written between hospital stays.
On Sunday, Boxmeyer died of respiratory failure at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview, surrounded by his wife and children, former colleagues and competitors, and the doctors and nurses who had joined his huge circle of friendships in recent years. He was 67.
With the exception of a stint in the Navy that took him to the Antarctic, Boxmeyer spent his entire working life with the St. Paul newspapers. That includes nearly 36 years as a full-time employee and the past six years as a regular contributor.
“The day I entered that front door (of the newspaper), I think I knew I’d never leave this place,” he wrote in his last column as a full-time employee.
Starting as a general assignment reporter for the afternoon St. Paul Dispatch — his first byline, he recalled, was a brief inside story about a science fair — he moved up to covering City Hall in the era of flamboyant Mayor Charlie McCarty (1970-72) and powerhouse Mayor Larry Cohen (1972-76). In one of many famous newsroom stories, Boxmeyer managed to learn about a secret evening meeting at the old St. Paul Athletic Club by spying on Cohen’s daily schedule. He later said the ability to read documents upside down on other people’s desks is an important skill for a reporter.
Anxious that the St. Paul papers get the scoop, even if it had to go in the morning Pioneer Press, Boxmeyer passed the tip on to Pioneer Press reporter George Beran, who hid in a closet at the Athletic Club and overheard the discussion about plans to build a domed stadium at the State Fairgrounds. The stadium was never built — at least not there — but Beran got a scoop.
“Don was a really aggressive reporter, but he was always searching for the angle that nobody else had,” said Beran, now retired. “When he was around, the City Hall beat was always fun.”
Cohen, despite the eavesdropping, became one of Boxmeyer’s closest friends.
“He was the classiest, warmest human being you could ever know,” Cohen said Sunday. “He was a hell of a lot of fun, one of the nicest people I’ve ever known — decency personified.”
Former Dispatch Managing Editor Bill Cento appointed Boxmeyer a columnist in the late 1970s — the exact date is unclear — and Boxmeyer found the place for his voice.
“I knew he wanted to be a columnist, and I knew he had the talent,” Cento recalled Sunday. “It didn’t take great observational skills to know that. He was a hell of a writer and knew the town better than anybody. There wasn’t anybody better around.”
Boxmeyer’s columns ranged across the city of his birth; its history and cherished foibles; its decent, generally unheralded heroes; and its roughish characters — some with names like Ribs Gordon, Tone the Fone and Charlie the Belgian.
“He was the epitome of the philosophy of telling big stories in small ways,” said Don Effenberger, who was Boxmeyer’s editor, off and on, for nearly 20 years.
“When other reporters turned to big shots and politicians for their sources, Don would turn to the little guys to tell their stories,” Effenberger said.
Boxmeyer also reacquainted people with places like Swede Hollow, Little Italy, the West Side Flats and the Children’s Preventorium for TB patients. Readers learned about cultural things like Norske Torske Klubben, where membership was open to male Norwegians fond of whiskey and boiled fish. In recent years, he often conducted bus tours for new reporters and editors at the paper, taking them to neighborhoods unknown to them and pointing out the landmarks of the city he treasured.
“More than anything, St. Paul has lost its premier storyteller,” said Stan Turner, a radio and television broadcaster who became one of Boxmeyer’s closest friends after competing with him as a city hall reporter.
“Don represented the collected memory of the city,” Turner said. “He taught us history, and we didn’t know it because it was so fascinating in the way he told it.”
Boxmeyer was a native of the West End but spent most of his adult life as a resident of the East Side. He dated his future wife, Kathy, when both were attending Monroe High School and married her in 1963, when he was in the Navy.
“He was a friend of my brother’s,” Kathy Boxmeyer recalled. “That’s how we first met. I was 16, he was 17 — remember that song? With us, it happened.”
After his Navy hitch, Boxmeyer graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in journalism and turned down several job offers to go to work for the St. Paul Dispatch for $105 a week, Kathy Boxmeyer recalled.
“Don loved writing about people,” Kathy Boxmeyer added. “He loved his job so much that we often made fun of him by saying, ‘Some people work for a living. You just play.’ ”
His son Erik said Boxmeyer’s other passions included fishing, hunting and woodworking — and that he was very good at all three endeavors. Though his heart was in St. Paul, part of his soul was in Ashby, Minn., a town near Fergus Falls where he often fished and hunted.
“He once said he could write a whole book about Ashby,” Erik Boxmeyer said.
He did, in fact, write many columns about Ashby and about other Minnesota communities. In 2003, the Minnesota Historical Society Press published a collection of his columns in a book titled “A Knack for Knowing Things: Stories About St. Paul Neighborhoods and Beyond.”
Boxmeyer is survived by his wife and three children: sons Erik and Chris and a daughter, Diana Berg. He also is survived by a brother, Howard, of Bozeman, Mont., and by seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Funeral arrangements are pending.
Copyright 2008 Pioneer Press.
