On our recent trip to Minnesota, Lynette was kind enough to let me go visit St. Johns College, home of the Johnnies, coached by John Gagliardi, the winningest coach in college football history. Here's a link to some of the pics we took at the college.
I became enamored with the football program there after reading "The Sweet Season" by Austin Murphy. I may blog a bit more about their football program and legendary coach, John Gagliardi, later, but for now I wanted to share the fun story behind the lake in this picture. This is Mrs. Jolly and I at Sagatagan Lake at the campus. Austin Murphy tells the following story about how the college acquired the lake.
Lake Sag, as it is known, has been a source of recreation and picturesque beauty for monk and student alike since the mid-1800's, when a Benedectine Missionary named Bruno Riess arrived on its shores. Father Bruno was surveying the north basin of the Watab River, west of St. Cloud, staking the claims that would provide the land for the monastery and university. The area was known as "Indianbush," we learn in Worship and Work, because it had until recently been hunting grounds of Chippewa and Sioux, "who still made occasional forays through it."
Bruno's lust for the lake - "I was bound to acquire this sheet of water" - shouts to us from between the lines of Colman Barry's book. But Bruno had already claimed as much land as was legal. There was the additional problem of paying for it: "We had no money on hand . . . and could expect nothing of the grasshopper stricken congregations."
His solution was ingenious, if slightly unscrupulous. After asking a Washington friend to petition congress for the land, the shrewd cleric posted twenty signs around the lake. APPLICATION FOR THIS LAND IS MADE TO CONGRESS FOR ST. JOHNS COLLEGE, they said. The petition was denied, but the signs had the desired effect of discouraging "intruders" - Bruno's word - until such time as the monks could come up with the cash. Those signs, he exulted, kept the "land-sharks" away. (Father Bruno's eagerness to tar others with that brush might have amused the Chippewa and Sioux.
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