"I'm kind of considered Mr. Northeast"

"I'm kind of considered Mr. Northeast."

(1) Mr. Iacarella's high school senior photograph.

I'm Mike Iacarella from Northeast, Minneapolis. I went to school at Thomas Edison High School, graduated in 1975 and went on to St. Thomas with a Bachelors of Arts in Finance1, so I've been a Tommie2 my whole life. I went on to California and got an MBA3. When I came back, [Edison High School] was looking for a business teacher and I kind of fulfill that need so, I have been here for twenty two years now. I've lived in Northeast my whole life...except for those four years in California.

My dad, his parents immigrated from Italy. They were the first flight Italians in the late teens, early twenties. Italians have a tendency to stay together and so a lot of other Iacerellas kind of lived in this Northeast area. My dad, he went into teaching and met my mom in Oregon. He taught for one year out there and then they decided to come back [to Northeast] and raise a family. My dad got cancer in the early 80s and I bought the house next door to take care of my dad. My wife liked [the house] and so we ended up staying there ever since so...so I’ve seen the neighborhood come back and forth a lot, it’s just been crazy.

(2) Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Catholic Church today

[Northeast] used to be a swamp and one big farm. What happened was a couple missionaries came here and started communities, you know. You had your Russians, you had your Polish, your Germans, and then Italians. Northeast used to be Nordeast. It was called, you know, N-O-R-D 'cause you know Polish and Swedish had a hard time with the "North". [Nordeast] was a blue collar neighborhood. This was always a blue collar, hard working neighborhood, you know. It was always known for small houses yet very well kept. Everybody took a lot of pride in their houses. Grain Belt Brewery down here was the big employer at that time. So they brewed beer, built churches, and had lots of babies. Every family was crazy! They had at least seven kids you know. My family, I come from a family of eight. The Neeves were seven, Emersons had eight, and Lassers had seven kids. They had six boys and one girl and the six boys had to sleep in one room because the girl was gonna have a room all to herself. You know, so it was easy to get baseball teams together and stuff.  There’s a lot of Catholic Churches that were tied to certain ethnic group. Holy Cross, they are the Polish Church. St. Hedwig is like the Ukraine. I still go to Mount Carmel, that is the Italian Church. There’s a record block just down here: there’s four churches on one block. That’s in the Guinness Book of World Records4, so that’s kind of cool.

There was a saying, “The longest bridge in the world was the Plymouth Avenue Bridge because it connected Africa to Poland”5. You didn’t mix. What got a lot of people together was sports. A lot of teams, you know, you're always rival gangs and all of a sudden you realize, ‘well this guy’s pretty good’, you know. He’s a Polish guy against the Italian guys. It was pretty- you know, the next thing they started mixing and [they] all started playing [together]. [The people] kind of just melded together so...no one cared, they didn’t care what nationality. What ethnicity you were, that was a big thing back then and that changed a lot you know. Italians were kind of looked down on and stuff, 'cause you know they were the lower class. Over time that changed.

(3) Edison High School today

When I went to school, [Edison High School], there wasn’t one minority as far as--our only minority was a foreign exchange student from Japan. We didn’t mix. That’s kind of the way it was, you know, but over time Edison became a much more accepting place than a lot of other schools. We’ve never had any race fights. It’s something to be said for Edison as a building. You know when the immigrants came here- it’s always been a school of immigrants if you really think about it. The first wave just happened to be from Eastern Europe, the second, third, fourth; we’ve had about four waves now. The Hmong were the first ones to come here to Edison. They put them in Edison and they did really well. Then we had [the] Somalis, then the Latinos, and then we had another wave of Eastern, you know, from Ukraine and Russia. I think you can get a lot better education here than you can anywhere else if you think about it. A world wide global setting, you know. You’re going to get exposed to everything, every type of religion, every ethnicity, languages, can you imagine? How neat is that? You know, we had our 75 year anniversary here and it was really neat seeing all these people come back from the past. It was kind of interconnected. It was such a community school that you had your fathers and daughter and could celebrate an event that they [are both] connected to. They each had their own memories here that they could share. I’m with the [Edison] Alumni Band and we play at reunion[s]. Just a week ago,  we played at a class of ‘55 and that’s their 60th reunion. You know, it’s kind of neat: we played "Blue Gold", that’s the school song, and it just gets everybody. Everybody's got that connection [with the song] and they’ve always done the same kind of movements and the shoes for "Blue Gold". It was like “Wow! That was cool!”. Some people are just kind of dull and [when] we leave those reunion the next thing you know everybody is up talking and whatever. You’ve got everybody connected. So yeah, it’s kind of cool that way.

Northeast was like living in a small town only you were in a big city. Everybody knew everybody. You had a situation where, you know, you could let kids run around the neighborhood [and] you didn’t have to worry about. In fact, parents wanted you out of the house. They wanted to get you out and do things, you know the kind of activities [where] people are interested in your life you’re interested in theirs. As time went on, you had more and more blending, which was kind of neat. It extends on beyond just your family. Everybody becomes tighter. It’s been proven that people live longer when other more people are involved with your life. They have some study [of] this town in Pennsylvania. They couldn’t figure out why this small town had no heart disease. Everybody around had the same diet, this horrible diet. You know, all these people in these other towns are dying but this one town they, they were living for way longer than anybody else and they [thought], ”what’s going on here?”. They realize that everybody was so involved with each other and they cared about each other. That’s what Northeast was.

(4) Edison Alumni Band

You know, I still do stuff with my friends I graduated from high school [with]. We meet every third...we have a- it’s called Dinner for Eight. We get together and these are all couples they’ve been married for..since they got out of high school. I’ve been a part of the Edison Alumni Band for you know..god..it’s been 38 years now that we have been together. [I play the] trombone and I'm not very good, I'm just loud. But we do a lot of stuff in the community. We play at all the reunions, we do all the Aquatennial, and then play in the Holidazzle. This Sunday (September 27, 2015) we are supposed to play at Down Syndrome Art Walk at Como. You know, I get out and do a lot of stuff with my Church. I play softball with my buddies for..I don’t know how many years, for the Yacht Club. I keep active that way and play broomball. I’m with the Lions Club. It’s a service organization. We do Weed It & Reap, you know, stuff pertaining to Meals on Wheels. I’m on the Chamber of Commerce Board.  I’m the president of the Edison Community Sports Foundation. [I] do a lot of getting out and do community functions, a lot of stuff with the community. Northeast, we had all these clubs and service organizations and they’re still hanging and just people who wanted to do stuff with people that’s what was neat about it. I don’t think you get that much anymore with people.

(5) Recent picture of Mike Iacarella

It’s kind of the place to live now. You’ve got new breweries, all these artists, you know, and all these new restaurants. It’s great. I can walk to any place now and just, you know, get world class dining. There’s a golf course that’s close to the river and really great trails for biking. I’ve always come down and felt safe. I’ve never felt afraid. Me and my wife [would] go out walking every night. A couple years back, people were kind of laughing at me for staying. Why am I, you know, even bothering? Because real estate [outside] was just up up up, and now it’s the complete opposite. Now all of sudden my house is worth more than the people out in the suburbs and everybody wants to move [here]. I got a friend of mine made a hundred million bucks. Here’s a guy who can go anywhere, can afford anything he wants, [and] he loves coming down here and do his stuff. This is where he has his fun. I thought that's school, he's never lost his roots and that's home to him, ya know? I’ve got a cousin worth a few million bucks and he likes, if you wanna call it "slumming", coming here to [have his fun]. You’ve got [places like] Betty Danger’s right off the (Mississippi) river...this is the quirkiness of North East. [Betty Danger’s has] a big ferris wheel and it’s a bar. You pay 15 bucks and you get a beer [and the ferris wheel] takes 20 minutes to go around. How many places with stuff like that? You know, it’s a cool place to belong to.

You know I’ve been [here] my whole life as far as that’s concerned and I guess it molded me as far as...I think, I’m kind of considered Mr. Northeast. 

“Belong. Believe. Become."- Thomas Edison High School Motto

Footnotes:

1. Mr. Iacarella attended St. Thomas University from 1976-1979 earning his bachelor's degree in Finance.

2. Tommie is the mascot for both Edison High School and the University of St. Thomas
3.Mr. Iacarella attended Sonoma State University from 1989-1992 and received his MBA in Management

4. The Guinness Book of World Records mentions block in North East as one of four blocks worldwide to be home to four churches. 

5. Back in the early 1980s, the Blacks and the Polish were separated by the Plymouth Avenue Bridge. It was believed that bad things would happen to the blacks if they crossed.

Image Sourcing:

1. Iacarellla, Mike. Senior Yearbook Photograph, Circa 1975. Provided 25 September 2015.
2. Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Catholic Church, Minneapolis. Digital image. Paul Merrill. flickr.com, n.d. Web. 8 Oct. 2015 <https://www.flickr.com/photos/12279886@N06/4455413144>
3. Minneapolis Edison High School. Digital image. Wendelcompanies. Wendel Companies, n.d. Web. 7 Oct. 2015. <http://www.wendelcompanies.com/Markets/Education/EdisonHighSchool>.

4. Ashmore, Kerry. The Edison High School Alumni Band. Digital image.Nenorthnews. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Oct. 2015. <http://nenorthnews.com/CurrentNews.asp?view=1325&paperID=1&month=>.
5. Edison Alumni News. Digital image. Edisonsportsfoundation.org. Edison Community & Sports Foundation, n.d. Web. 7 Oct. 2015. <http://www.edisonsportsfoundation.org/files/FALL%202014%20ECSF%20Newsletter.pdf>.

Story Facilitators:

Sophie Fenlon
Sia Thao
Savannah Belknap