At 7 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 16, my husband and I both awoke suddenly at the same time. “What was that?!” he asked, rising to investigate the loud disturbance.
It felt and sounded like something had momentarily shaken the walls in our home’s northeast corner. Checking my phone, I noticed a Facebook post from my friend Hannah, standing with her children the day before in front of the Lashkowitz building—the high rise just north of the Red River in Moorhead, near the Fargo YMCA—there to say “Adieu.”
Of course! The sound of a 22-story building tumbling to the ground was what had awakened us, and everyone else within a 30-mile radius. I’d known of the planned $5 million project to bring down the building, but not the date.
Photos and video: The implosion of Fargo’s Lashkowitz High Rise
Soon, another implosion-related post appeared, describing the demolished building as “ugly.” But for Hannah, the structure had a beauty to it as a holder of memories of her mother, Pam Erickson, who’d worked there prior to her unexpected passing in Nov. 2019.
“Lashkowitz High Rise: 2.7 rating on good ol’ Google,” Hannah had shared. “I can tell many stories that would support those lonely stars, thanks to my mom.” What her mother had relayed to her during her time there, she said, could “make you squirm…and laugh hysterically.”
“She loved her job and serving this population, Ziplock bags with bedbugs, U.S. marshals, and all,” Hannah continued, hinting at the colorful events that had marked that time; tales only her mother could accurately relay, with ample doses of love.
Pam, a dear friend, had also mentioned to me how much she’d loved working at this low-income housing complex. Not for the building, but the people within, many of whom had messy lives but whose perspectives brought her joy. In each, Pam saw a child of God deserving dignity, and souls often more relatable and real than her more refined acquaintances.
In years past, I’d also had reason to occasionally stop by the building, known to me then only as “the high rise,” to visit Dona Joy Robideau. Helping with child care for a group of moms with whom I gathered weekly for faith-sharing, she’d become part of our lives, even joining us for our children’s birthday parties, always eager to hear updates as they grew.
The towering complex had some tantamount issues, as Hannah attested to in her post. “I can confirm it’s a building that needs to go,” she wrote, “but there is some sadness…it holds some of my freshest memories with my mom.”
The Lashkowitz may have been an unwanted eyesore to some, but to others, it was a shelter from the storm, a place in which to live, laugh and love.
The jolt that roused me that weekend morning also ignited a part of me that saw the dust clouds left behind from the fallen building as prayers rising up for the broken souls who’ve lived there through the years; fellow human beings worthy of being remembered and loved.
[For the sake of having a repository for my newspaper columns and articles, I reprint them here, with permission, a week after their run date. The preceding ran in The Forum newspaper on Oct. 2, 2023.]
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