Former Clay County Sheriff Bill Bergquist has been placed in hospice care at Sanford Hospital due to recent progression from Alzheimer's Dementia.
Bergquist, who's been battling the disease since his retirement in January of 2019, is resting comfortable with family and friends, according to a news release from Clay County Sheriff Mark Empting.
Bergquist began serving as the Clay County Sheriff in 2002, and spent the entirety of his 38-year career in law enforcement in the Dilworth-Moorhead area.
Before his role as sheriff, Bergquist remained engaged within his community as an officer with the Moorhead Police, including serving as the D.A.R.E. officer at local schools.
He was known to care deeply about his community and those he was sworn to protect.
"He loved Clay County and he loved Dilworth," said Empting. "He's just an all-around genuine person and good guy."
As Saeed looked upon the vast crowd gathered outside the Hamid Karzai International Airport, he knew the hulking blue U.S. Air Force planes flying overhead represented his best, and maybe only, chance of survival.
The Taliban had captured Kabul a few days before on Aug. 15, and Saeed would soon be a marked man.
During a decade of combat-laden service in the Afghan Army, he led dozens of successful missions, snuffed out many enemy soldiers and aided American troops in beating back rebel forces.
He suffered several serious injuries, including a bullet to the leg and bomb shrapnel to the head.
To some in Afghanistan, Saeed’s war record made him a hero, but the Taliban fighters who had finally overthrown the U.S.-backed government after two decades of battle held no such admiration for their old foes.
Saeed’s real name has been altered for this story to protect his identity and his family. An interpreter translated his responses to Forum News Service’s questions from Dari Persian.
Read more from Forum News Service's Jeremy Turley
Both sides of a controversy revolving around building a restroom at the Fargo National Cemetery called for calm on Thursday, July 28, during an open house that attracted Department of Veterans Affairs officials, state representatives and cemetery volunteers.
“We need to take a step back and act like adults, work together,” said Jim Graalum, fundraiser for the Fargo Memorial Honor Guard.
David Huth, director of Fort Snelling National Cemetery Complex, which oversees the Fargo National Cemetery, echoed the sentiment, saying, “I don’t understand why it’s a controversy, but Fargo Memorial Honor Guard has lost focus, and we need to work together.”
For now, a portable toilet sits near the main entrance. The controversy is focused around a vault-style restroom to be built near the front gate.
Read more from The Forum's C.S. Hagen
Fargo Mayor Tim Mahoney unveiled a preliminary city budget for 2023 on Thursday, July 28, that contemplates boosting employee numbers and pay, as well as a bump in taxes that would help pay for those and other cost increases.
Overall, Mahoney's preliminary budget would increase the city's general spending from the current year's $104.5 million to about $113.3 million in 2023, an 8.3% increase.
Part of that increase would be covered by greater state aid payments to Fargo, which are anticipated to be roughly $22.9 million next year, up from about $17.3 million this year, according to the presentation Mahoney made Thursday to fellow city commissioners and other city officials.
Mahoney stressed that one of the city's main goals is to reward and retain city workers, proposing a 3.5% pay raise for city employees, whom he referred to as "Team Fargo." Additional bumps in pay come from things like reclassification of duties and adjustments stemming from an evaluation of what people in comparable positions elsewhere are paid.
Read more from The Forum's David Olson
A bull took a walk on Main Avenue July 21 in Park Rapids.
According to Police Chief Jeff Appel, the call came in at 9:39 a.m. on July 21. Three Park Rapids Police officers responded, along with Hubbard County Sheriff’s deputies and city public works personnel.
“There was a bull walking down Main Street,” Appel said. “The owner was by the bull. A pin had popped on his trailer on (State Highway) 34; that’s how the bull got out.
“Obviously, due to the size of that bull, he was walking where he wanted to walk. We just ended up corralling him over into the bus garage off of Fair (Avenue), and then they lowered him into the trailer from there.”