“Lynita Fry, a classmate of Walz’s, "If you did anything, by the time you got home, your mom already knew about it.” My friend up Black Horse Hill Rd John Francella, “As kids we couldn’t get away with anything in Coatesville. People would call our parents.”

When the weather allowed I cut through back yards on my way to Scott Senior High School in Coatesville. Through the back yards of Black families who knew my mom & dad, my grandmom & grandpop, my Uncle Tony, Uncle Nick, Uncle Fred, Uncle John, Aunt Angie, Aunt Martha & Aunt Annie to Coates St, then N. Chester Ave. under the railroad to Merchant St to 8th Avenue and up to Scott High.

Most White people would be terrified walking in those neighborhoods. I felt perfectly safe. More than only safe. I felt loved. 

***

“From one perspective, life in Valentine was isolated; it was a three-hour drive over the Sandhills and across the Badlands to get to the comparative metropolis of Rapid City, S.D. But Valentine was just large enough, with a vibrant main street and a thriving culture, to feel like more than a little city, Walz’s classmates said. And Walz, as an athlete and son of an important local official, had standing among teens in the town.

“There was a social hierarchy, country kids wearing wranglers and cowboy hats, city kids wearing sneakers,” recalled classmate Brad Rodgers, a veterinarian who said his elementary education was in a remote one-room schoolhouse. “Tim wore sneakers; he hung out with the ‘cool’ kids.”

Little of that vibrant small-town life awaited Walz, then 15 years old, and his family as they left Valentine and moved to Butte on a summer day in 1979.

The route from Valentine to Butte is a two-hour drive across the crop fields and ranch lands of northern Nebraska, with hardly a commercial establishment in sight, along two-lane roads, some of them unpaved, until arriving at the town of a few hundred people surrounded by farm fields.

Walz’s mother’s family had deep roots in Butte. Her brother, Jerome Reiman, owned a farm there, as did other relatives. Walz’s parents later told the family they had always intended to move to Butte, but James Walz’s illness sped up the plan. The extended family in Butte would help care for him and his children, and they hoped the slower pace of life would be good for James’s health and also enable him to be superintendent of a smaller school.

The Walz family moved into a two-story house, a few blocks off a quiet business district. The house had been moved from a nearby town and placed on a corner, a block from a red-brick building with the words “High School” over the entry. As school began in the fall, James Walz took over as superintendent and Tim Walz joined a sophomore class of about two dozen, half of whom Walz has said were his cousins.

Everyone in Butte was family of some sort, whether it was by blood or proximity. But it was clear to Walz’s family that he had no intention of following his relatives into the agriculture business.

“He wasn’t into farming at all,” said Reiman, Walz’s 84-year-old uncle who stressed that he saw nothing wrong with Walz’s view, figuring that his nephew wanted to become a teacher like his father.

Lynita Fry, a classmate of Walz’s, said life in the close-knit town provided a shelter to the family in a difficult moment: “You were raised by the whole town. … If you did anything, by the time you got home, your mom already knew about it. You could go to anybody’s house because they knew who you were. Everybody was like a big family. … We were pretty protected from a lot of things.”

Walz’s life settled into a new pattern, as he went to classes and played sports on even smaller teams. He dreamed of going to college, but as his father became sicker, the family worried about how to pay the bills. Butte had limited nearby medical care, and the family began taking him 234 miles southeast to Omaha for treatment.

Walz soon decided to follow his father, a veteran of the Korean War, into the military. The pair drove an hour west to Springview, met a farmer who was a lieutenant in a local unit, and then signed the paperwork, Walz later said in an oral history.

“You picked up your high school junior and took him, and we were in,” Walz said. He joined the National Guard and took his first flight, traveling to Fort Benning in Georgia for basic training. It was, Walz said, a “piece of America.”

Or, as Walz more colorfully recalled it in a speech: “Two days after my 17th birthday, my chain-smoking, Korean War veteran father took me to join the army.”

Walz found refuge in football. Even though Butte High School’s team was small, it had enough boys to put 11 players on the field. The team went 8-1 in Walz’s senior year and he was an all-star, playing guard or tackle, according to his former coach, Kevin Kirwan.

“He loved football,” Kirwan said. “He was tough. I always referred to him as the kid that could spit dirt, wipe sweat from his eyes, wipe the blood off his arm and want more.”

Everybody knew that James Walz was increasingly ill, Kirwan said, and townspeople pitched in to help, bringing food and doing whatever else was needed for the family.

After graduating from high school, Walz used the GI Bill to enter Nebraska’s Chadron State College, 262 miles west of Butte, while his father continued treatment for lung cancer.

One day in January 1984 while Walz was at college, he received an urgent call to come to the hospital. His father had gone into a coma.

“I remember sitting in that hospital room, no one really knowing what to do … because the question was about keeping him on life support, and having to make decisions about your dad,” he recalled during his 2018 campaign for governor.

James Walz died at 54 years old and was buried in Butte.”

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The Washington Post

Tim Walz’s upbringing in rural Nebraska seemed idyllic. Then came tragedy.

Michael Kranish

August 24, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT