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Sentenced to College - Chapter 2
What's happening in Willmar?
New here? Start from the beginning...
In the spring of 1989, I had just graduated from the University of Minnesota with a shiny new Journalism degree and high hopes of landing a copywriting job at one of those big and trendy ad agencies in downtown Minneapolis. These were the years of Prince, First Avenue, Kirby Puckett, and—soon on the way—a World Series trophy and a notorious Halloween Blizzard that we still talk about today.
Minneapolis was red hot and I couldn’t wait to be part of it. I wanted to live downtown, work downtown, and ooze downtown. I worked hard on my portfolio and spent day after day lining up informational interviews with busy, unpleasant creative directors who had no time or openings for a fresh-faced college graduate with zero experience. The best I could hope for at the end of each interview was a word of encouragement and a referral to another busy and unpleasant creative director at another agency. And so it went. For months.
To pay the rent, I got a job at a recruitment ad agency where I spent the day writing and placing help-wanted ads. I could type lightning-fast and the pay was decent, but it was far from the downtown copywriting job I’d dreamed of. I was just about ready to throw in the towel when my college roommate called and asked if I wanted to move to the tiny lake town of Spicer for the summer. Betsy had just started her own graphic design studio and was looking for a freelance copywriter for the summer. To sweeten the deal, she said we could waterski on our lunch breaks. I was packed and on my way within a week.
By the end of that summer in 1991, I had bought-in to the business, moved into my own apartment, and was soon to fall in love with a turkey farmer who lived across the hall from me. One year later, Betsy and I had turned our little graphic design studio into a full service advertising agency and moved it south about 15 miles to the big city of Willmar. With a population of about 18,000, it was no Minneapolis, but it had a Target and that was good enough for me.
A rural city on the brink of change
In the early 1990s, Willmar, Minnesota was undergoing a series of significant changes brought about by a rapid shift in its demographics. Since its founding as a railroad town along the Great Northern Railway that stretched from St. Paul to Seattle, Willmar was inhabited mostly by people of Norwegian and Swedish descent who were attracted to the fertile farming land. It would eventually grow to become southwest Minnesota’s largest city, due in large part to efforts by railroad magnate James J. Hill who recruited new emigrants from northern Europe.
Agriculture dominated the local economy, with sugar beet production taking the lead after a federal tariff on imported sugar was introduced in 1897. Mexican migrants began to move north to help in the sugar beet fields, and by 1943 it was estimated that 350 Mexican nationals were employed by Minnesota sugar beet farmers.
Then, in 1949, a young man by the name of Earl B. Olson purchased his first turkey processing plant in Willmar and started a company that would go on to become one of the world’s largest turkey processors—Jennie-O.
Throughout the next several decades, Jennie-O began recruiting the Mexican migrants who came during the summer to work in the farm fields and convinced them to stay. Their efforts proved successful—so successful in fact, that between 1980 and 1990, the Hispanic population in Willmar grew by 750%.
So, how did the Willmar community adapt to this sudden demographic change? Not well. According to many local residents, “they’d heard” that a flyer was circulating throughout Texas telling migrant workers to come to Kandiyohi County because it had “the best welfare benefits in the country.” (The rumor was untrue and no such flyer was ever discovered.) But, the seed had been planted, and by the time the brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking newcomers arrived hoping to build a better life for their families, they were often eyed with suspicion and even outright racism.
Growing pains
As Jennie-O grew, so did the influx of migrants. By 1993, Hispanics made up 7.3% of Jennie-O’s workforce, compared to a countywide average of just 1.4%. To retain workers and develop future leaders, the company introduced ESL (English as a Second Language) classes to its Spanish speaking employees and began translating its policy manuals and in-house newsletter into Spanish.
A summer day camp named “Amigos de Cristo” brought together children from Anglo and Hispanic cultures for a week of play, singing, games, crafts, storytelling, and Bible study, all aimed at building an awareness of cultural diversity, cooperation, trust, and appreciation for each other’s differences.
Bilingual teaching aides were hired at each of Willmar’s public schools, and the development of a summer migrant school helped kids overcome the disruption of being pulled out of school early whenever their families moved north to work in the farm fields throughout the spring, summer and fall.
One caring counselor at the local technical college (who had spent many summers working the fields as a young migrant worker himself) helped increase the enrollments of Hispanic students, thanks in large part to his ongoing recruitment efforts and guidance.
And while all these efforts were commendable, Willmar as a whole was not keeping up. Fresh off the farm crisis of the 1980s, skyrocketing interest rates had led to a slowdown in new housing starts. So, when the construction industry finally began to rebound in in the early 1990s, the city found itself seriously behind the eight ball. New housing had failed to keep pace with Willmar’s growing population, especially for low-income families. This resulted in severe overcrowding and rising crime at the local trailer parks. And there was one trailer park in particular that was causing the majority of the problems—Elm Lane.
Elm Lane
In 1990, more than half of Willmar’s Hispanic population lived at Elm Lane Mobile Home Park. It was located at the entrance to the city along U.S. Highway 12, an ever-present eyesore and a constant thorn in the side of the popular hotels and restaurants on the other side of the small two-way highway.
In an effort to curb the growing problems at Elm Lane, the city of Willmar first updated their zoning ordinance in 1989 requiring all mobile home parks to meet minimum standards regarding overall density, driveway access, and fire lanes. While many of the new standards applied to future parks being built, the city also included specific language for existing parks:
“Each home lot within a park shall abut on and have access directly to a street. Streets shall be paved with concrete or bituminous, and be of similar construction to other City residential streets. The paved surface with concrete curb and gutter shall be at least thirty (30) feet in width from curb to curb. Access drives from streets to all parking spaces and home site shall be paved. Parking on one side only shall be permitted on thirty (30) foot wide streets; parking on both sides would be permitted if the street width is increased to forty (40) feet. All streets shall have curves/turns with adequate radii to accommodate emergency vehicles. Fire lanes shall be clearly indicated. Existing parks are exempt from the curb and gutter requirement. The minimum allowable width for streets within existing parks shall be twenty-two (22) feet.”
For existing parks, the ordinance also required that each lot be a minimum of 4200 square feet and 35 feet wide, have a clearance of 14 feet between homes, and a paved area of at least 10 feet by 20 feet to allow off-street parking space for at least two vehicles.
At first, the required updates came as welcome news for the 600 residents who now lived in the 130-unit park. But when city officials gave the owner of Elm Lane, William Begin, five years to bring the park into compliance, he refused and said he would close it before complying with the new standards.
Begin, a Minneapolis CPA and business partner at Arthur Andersen, had owned the park since 1979. In the fall of 1994, he agreed to pay a $15,000 fine after being investigated for sales fraud by the state’s attorney general’s office. Allegedly, he’d been selling trailers without proper licensing and not transferring the titles to the new owners.
The city worked to compromise with Begin, concentrating on safety matters like widening the streets, improving water and sewer lines and installing fire hydrants, but problems at the park persisted. Several shootings began to take place, and in August of 1994 a 31-year-old man named Jesus Puentes Molina was shot to death while trying to intervene in an argument between two other men.
In an attempt to curb the growing violence and the number of police calls, the Willmar police department even set up a substation at the entrance to the park. Everyone who entered or exited was required to check in or out, and while some residents welcomed the added safety measures, others saw it as oppression and overkill.
In October of 1994, William Begin announced that he would close Elm Lane on July 31, 1995. This decision resulted in a months-long scramble for hundreds of displaced residents now desperately in search of affordable housing. The panic and chaos soon made statewide news, with allegations of discrimination, litigation over who should pay relocation costs, and a HUD investigation for possible violations of federal fair-housing laws.
In the end, the city council agreed to pay nominal relocation costs for eligible residents; a one-million-dollar fund was established by charitable associations and private industry to help residents find housing; and the Community Activity Set Aside (CASA) Program provided qualifying residents with first mortgage loans at 4.8%.
When the city finally shut off the water on August 1, 1995, they breathed a sigh of relief and felt their problems were solved. But something else was brewing on the horizon, something they were in no way prepared for. Since the early 1990s, Willmar’s crime index had been steadily rising and was a measure of the number of “serious crimes” per 100,000 inhabitants. These serious crimes included: murder, rape, aggravated assault, robbery, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft and arson.
In 1993, Willmar’s crime index was 5,855. Two years later, by 1995, it had risen to 6,138 which was higher than all of Ramsey County combined, including St. Paul. What was going on?
Willmar had become a microcosm of a larger, statewide concern—gangs.
In 1998, the state created the Minnesota Gang Strike Force, aimed at investigating gang-related homicides, aggravated assaults, drive-by shootings, robberies, and criminal sexual assaults—all committed by gang members. Around the same time, Willmar also created its own Gang Enforcement Team, aimed at investigating the same gang-related offenses.
And while all of this was happening, a sea of unrest was building in the city. Drive-by shootings were becoming more frequent. Kids at the high school were wearing colors and flashing gang signs. Law enforcement began meeting with court officials to discuss what could be done to combat the problem.
So by the time a young 17 year old kid from Laredo, Texas named Angel Hernandez moved back to Willmar in 1996, things were just starting to heat up.
It turns out Elm Lane was just the beginning.
Next time: The rise of gang activity in Willmar, Minnesota
Dear Jacob: A Mother’s Journey of Hope was released on October 17th, 2023 by MNHS Press. You can purchase it at your favorite bookseller, or ask for it at your local library.
Great piece, Joy. You should be writing scripts for Dateline or Law and Order or some similar show! Unless they have lots of busy, unpleasant creative directors...;=)