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Staska named Firefighter of the Year

Firefighter of the year, Ben Staska
By
Karen M. Jorgensen, Contributing Writer

Despite growing up in a family with firefighters, that was not Ben Staska’s first choice of a career. He wanted to be a cop.

On Oct. 10, Staska was honored by the Exchange Club of Owatonna as the Firefighter of the Year.

In accepting the award Staska told the Exchange Club members gathered at the Owatonna Eagles that “I did not want to be a fighter, I wanted to be a cop. But then, he said, “life happened.”

Both his grandfather, Robert Lewis, and uncle, Brian Staska, were firefighters.

His uncle came down with cancer, Staska said, and he saw the support that his uncle and family received before, during and after the illness.

“That changed my mind.”

He headed to college at Fox Valley Technical College in Wisconsin. He recalled his first day of classes when he was “kicked out” of class for not wearing a uniform. A uniform, Staska said, he did not know he was supposed to have. So, he went and pieced together a uniform and returned to class the next day. He was kicked out again. This time because he was not wearing steel-toed boots. He tried a third time and this time the instructor, after a uniform inspection, let him stay.

After class, Staska said, the instructor explained there are people who want to be firefighters and there are pretenders. He didn’t want pretenders, Staska said. The instructor told Staska that when he came back for the second class, he was shocked and when he came back a third time, he knew Staska was not a pretender.

He later left Fox Valley and returned to Minnesota and completed an associate degree from Riverland Community College.

He joined the Owatonna Department in 2020 as a paid-on-call employee. After eight months he moved on to a full-time firefighter/EMT position in East Grand Forks, Minn.

In accepting the award, Staska said that “public service is service rendered in the public interest.” The Fire Department, he said, has taken huge steps in upholding its end of the bargain. If everyone involved doesn’t buy-in to it, it’s not going to work, he said.

“None of it has to do with us,” he went on. “It’s the community we service.”

During the program Staska was presented with a plaque, Mayor Tom Kunz read a proclamation declaring Oct. 10 as Ben Staska Day in Owatonna and he was presented with a boardwalk with his name which will be installed on the boardwalk at the Steele County Historical Center.

Also addressing the group was Julie Gotham, executive director of the MN 100 Club.

The organization, she said, was started in 1972 by a group of Minneapolis businessmen and labor leaders based in Northeast Minneapolis. Other 100 Clubs had been formed, she said, the first one in Detroit.

The purpose of the club was to provide instant relief and aid to family members of first responders killed in the line of duty. The original group has expanded in the years since, she said, and now there are supporters throughout the state and membership is at an all-time high. It has now been updated to include EMS personnel, corrections officers, DNR officers, and members of the Minnesota National Guard serving in Minnesota.

When a first responder dies in the line of duty, she said, it can be a year or more before the benefits start coming to the family. The club, she said, wants to fill the gap.

The most recent help, she said, has been approved for the family of Kevin Grossheim, a park ranger at Voyageurs National Park who died while responding to a distress call from a family of three. Grossheim took the family aboard his boat, but it ultimately capsized because of high winds and rough waters. The three family members made it to safety.

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