A look back in history from past issues of the Lake Country Echo. 10:00 am, Mar. 12, 2021 ×
40 years ago, March 12, 1981
George Hall of Pequot Lakes is named the 1981 Crow Wing County Conservation Farmer of the Year.
Joan Starkka, Donna Cotten, Mindy Maher, Anne Woog, Jill Arvig, Lael Olson, Bonnie Pierce, Jean Starkka, Mary Hermerding and Julie Haglund will compete for the title of St. Patrick’s Day Queen in Crosslake.
30 years ago, March 14, 1991
Second-grade teacher Donna Collins is named Pequot Lakes Teacher of the Year.
To avoid conflicts with spring sports start times and afternoon classes, the Pequot Lakes School District changes its school day starting time from 8:50 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.
Virgilio and
Nenita Lim and his uncle
Ben Chan set up as a small shirt shop in 1987, the now iconic Bench, under Suyen Corporation, which has since become a diversified empire of food, fashion, furniture, grooming, and lifestyle brands, both homegrown and flown in from across the world.
Bryan started in product development for Bench’s underwear section. As we know, Bench is not an overnight success, catapulted to the top, as it has been, reaching as far as the US, the Middle East, and China, by a series of small leaps, during which Suyen pioneered many breakthroughs, including high-concept activation events and celebrity endorsements. As vice president for business development, Bryan is officially tasked to manage its future.
Sketches by Albert Andrada
I made a promise that I would stay in my shirts, shorts, and sneakers until a vaccine was found. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I might have underestimated our fighting spirit, thinking we could manage staying cooped up, removed from one another, until the storm was over, forgetting what I should have learned from disaster fiction that no matter what the odds, life finds a way, we go on.
It has been over 10 months since an infinitesimal, invisible virus upended our lives. It is no safer now than it was in March, but now we know we can’t afford and some of us don’t want to keep everything on hold indefinitely.