Frank Lee mug

Frank Lee

Reporter

Frank Lee is an award-winning journalist and features writer for the Wadena Pioneer Journal. The weekly newspaper is owned by Forum Communications Co.

As a professional and experienced journalist, his fact-based reporting has won statewide awards. His work has also appeared in other Forum-owned publications like the Brainerd Dispatch and the Gannett-owned USA Today.

(Lee was the arts and entertainment editor at the Brainerd Dispatch and wrote articles for the section. He also wrote a weekly movie column for Forum that appeared in print and online, and can be followed on Twitter at @Frankfilmcritic.)

Have a Wadena-area features story suggestion? Let him know during business hours at (218) 631-6470 or email him at flee@wadenapj.com. (Please include your contact information, such as your name and how best to reach you.)

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Charles “Bud” Sedlachek was born in Jasper, Minnesota, in 1938, died of congestive heart failure in Brainerd at 83 on Jan. 3. The Crow Wing County farmer loved John Deere equipment, so a John Deere tractor led the funeral procession and he was buried in a custom-ordered John Deere casket.
Medical exams such as mammograms, colonoscopies and pap smears were put off by some people during the coronavirus pandemic because of their concerns related to the in-person services. But with COVID-19 vaccines and masking more common now, local health care providers want people to resume the potentially life-saving visits to the doctor.
Artists Samantha French and her partner Aaron Hauck create a wall-sized mural near Big Axe Brewing Co. and StoneHouse Coffee & Roastery. French's brother Chris owns the brewery and her parents own the coffee shop in Nisswa.
Steve Brandt of Brainerd died in May from cancer at the age of 65, but his legacy lives on in his three children ... and in the young pine trees the family planted decades ago at their former residence near Jackson and Northwest Third streets he humorously dubbed “Steve Brandt National Forest.”
Roundhouse Brewery in Nisswa, Minn., began building its six-lane Wreck Room last year to accommodate ax throwing and other recreational activities upstairs while also serving beverages during social activities.
“I think — and I think a lot of the kids on the team think as well — that sailing is just the most fun in the world. ... I will say that sailing, particularly the kind of sailing that the high school team does — which is small boat, fairly physical sailing — is unlike any other activity you’re likely to find anywhere.” — Josh Sullivan, coach of the Brainerd High School sailing team.
Paula Persons, a certified diver, took home the prize for most creative in the Minnesota School of Diving Inc.'s annual Halloween underwater pumpkin-carving contest at the Cuyuna Country State Recreation Area near Crosby.
Mike Koering, who has grown and sold pumpkins for almost two decades, harvested his fourth conjoined pumpkins this year. Boys-N-Berries Farm in Brainerd also grows pumpkins and harvested conjoined ears of corn this year. Both oddities have been a hit with produce shoppers.
Dave Mick, a metal detector hobbyist from Baxter, Minn., found a lost 2005 Brainerd High School class ring by Hardy Lake in Pillager and returned it with the help of his daughter, a Brainerd High School teacher.
The Crow Wing Soil and Water Conservation District, the Brainerd Parks and Recreation Department and the Brainerd Rotary Club are using goats instead of herbicides to manage the European buckthorn at Rotary Riverside Park by letting the animals eat the invasive species.