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Barb says this is her favorite picture of her father, John Lyght. The longtime Cook County Sheriff cut an imposing figure but he was nice, quite kind, and willing to help anyone who was willing to help himself or herself. John, who was born and raised in Cook County, was the first black sheriff elected to office in Minnesota. Photo courtesy of Barb Lyght Seaburg
In 2010, January 15, John Lyght passed away at the North Shore Hospital in Grand Marais. He was 82 years old. Diabetes and heart disease took him from this earth, but his legacy lives on.
As a cub reporter in the early 1980’s I did a story about one of my father’s lumberjacks who cut, peeled, hewed, and fashioned a house from the raw materials of the forest. It was a small house. A bit gnarly. Somewhat gritty. Maybe even a little kittywampus. Actually it was kind of a poor man’s shack, but Godfrey, the builder, was proud of it, and he asked if I would write a story about his house building experience, which I did. Not long after the newspaper hit the newsstands, I got a call from Sheriff Lyght. Mr. Lyght asked if I wouldn’t walk up the street and pay him a visit. Curious, I said sure and ambled the one block to the sheriff ’s office and he graciously offered me a chair to sit in.
“Mr. Larsen,” he said as he stretched the newspaper out, pointing to the picture and story about the house. “Did you write this?” He asked, knowing full well I was the only reporter at the paper and my name was firmly affixed where the byline would go.
“Yes sir.” I replied, wondering where this conversation was going.
“Did you take this picture?” He pointed to the picture of the ramshackle house and I replied, “Yes sir.” Knowing full well he could read my name under the picture.
“Are you encouraging people to build shacks in the community?” He was glowering now. Even shaking a little bit. I could tell he wasn’t one bit impressed by the story.
“Uh, no sir.” I replied.
“Then WHY in tarnation DID YOU PUT THIS, THIS, THIS whatever this is in the newspaper? Don’t you know we are trying to discourage this sort of thing?”
“Yes sir. I suppose you’re right.” I answered, my mouth going dry.
“Don’t suppose nothing,” he said as he slammed the newspaper down. “Just don’t let me see this kind of thing in the newspaper ever again. Are we clear about this?”
“Yes sir.”
Well, I have to say I wasn’t sorry about writing the story, but I reasoned quickly that it was a one off. There wouldn’t be anymore of those coming off my pen or pictures flashed from my camera. I got up to leave but he asked, “Where you going?”
“I supposed we were done here,” I said.
“No, just sit down and let’s catch up a little bit. How are your folks doing? How’s your mom? Where’s Hank cutting wood? And so the conversation went. A complete 180 and a gentle way to let me off the hook. And frankly, as mad as John was at me, it was impossible not to like him. No one cared for the community more than John Lyght.
Maybe no one has ever cared about the community as much as John Lyght did.
John was considered a pioneering legend in Minnesota law enforcement. He was Minnesota’s first elected black sheriff. In 1974 deputy John Lyght threw his hat in the ring and ran for Cook County sheriff. He won with 97 percent of the vote.
The next time out, he received 90 percent of the vote. He built his department from one deputy to a staff of eight. Over 22 years, John won four elections, losing the fifth when he was 67. He didn’t campaign that time around. Didn’t campaign one bit. He said if people didn’t understand he was doing his job, then it was time to go home and shovel snow for two months and then go fishing. And that’s what he did.
John was a tough but fair man of the law. “I don’t care who you are. If you do wrong, you’re going to get pinched. I don’t play double standards. I’ll arrest my brother. As a matter of fact, I have arrested my own brother.”
As one of 15 children to HP and Stella Lyght, John was brought up poor, but with a tremendous work ethic.
HP was born on January 4, 1881, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. When he was old enough, HP left Alabama because he didn’t like the way black people were treated. He moved eventually to Pennsylvania, where he worked as a coal miner. He met Stella and married her in 1908.
Coal mining, however, wasn’t for HP. He suffered from sinus infections. Mine strikes also made the work unstable, and it was a hard place to raise a family. Giving money to the company store also rankled him. HP was told to go to the pine trees to cure his sinus infections, and that’s just what he did.
HP discovered he could own 160 acres of land if he lived on it and made improvements on that property for five years or more.
After checking homestead property in Minnesota and Canada, HP selected land in Lutsen.
In 1913, HP filed a homestead in Cook County. Highway 61 wasn’t built yet, so the young family of four took the steamer America from Duluth to Lutsen.
They arrived in December, and there was a small trapper’s shack on their property. Before moving in, they stayed with Charley Nelson’s brother, Alfred, for two months. Charley would later build Lutsen Resort.
Alfred showed them the plot of land HP had claimed and the trapper’s shack on it. As John later recounted, his parents “had three children, a dollar bill, a sack of flour and a sack of sugar,” when they moved into the small shack. They fixed up the little abode, putting in some windows and cleaned it up.
HP and Stella raised meat, fished, and grew vegetables. In the spring of 1914, they bought five dollars worth of garden seed and planted a small garden. Their first harvest netted 8 bushels of potatoes, 2 bushels of carrots, 5 pounds of rutabagas, 2 pounds of onions, and 200 pounds of cabbage.
HP bought a heifer from Gilbert Johnson, who lived at Sugar Loaf in Tofte. HP carried the 100-pound heifer on his back more than eight miles through rugged trails because there was no road yet. The Lyghts built a small barn and cleared more land, raising wheat, rye, buckwheat, oats, barley and vegetables.
In 1923-24, HP was elected to the Lutsen school board and town board. HP walked ten miles a day on moose trails to work in the woods. He also trapped weasels, mink, fox, mink, etc.
Stella and HP had strong moral convictions. They ran their household influenced by the bible. Sunday nights, they had bible sessions around the fireplace. The kids sang and played musical instruments at the services.
Eventually several kids formed a band, the Minnesota Merrymakers. It was a self-taught string quartet. Arthur played mandolin, Willis and David doubled on Spanish guitar, Robert played Hawaiian guitar, and John played tipple (a 10-string ukulele– like instrument). They played weddings, fairs, and carnivals along the Minnesota/Canadian border.
As time passed, the family grew. HP and his kids turned some swampland on Caribou Lake into a small resort. They built log cabins and ran Northern Lights Resort for 25 years. They kept the resort going until 1941, when World War II started. Today Cathedral of the Pines bible camp sits on the old resort site.
HP died in 1945 at the age of 65. His death brought John’s formal education to an end at age 17. At that time, there was $3,000 to $4,000 debt hanging over the family.
John took care of his mother. He and a younger brother followed his father’s footsteps into the woods.
Interviewed much later, John said it wasn’t pleasant quitting school, but there was a debt to pay, and it was something “we’re responsible for.”
An older brother returned home to help work off the family debt, which eased the burden.
Stella was quoted saying, “There were sad days and happy days. It took faith, hope, and charity to ‘come to the timber’ and hew out a home and raise a family.”
John was drafted into the Air Force in 1945 and discharged in 1946, returning to Lutsen. He moved his mother to Silver Bay and some of John’s brothers worked for the Taconite plant.
In 1946, John and some of his other brothers formed the Light Brothers Trucking Company. They hauled lumber, livestock, sand, gravel, and freight. When they weren’t trucking, they went into the woods and logged. They also owned and ran a sawmill for 3-4 years.
John left the trucking business and went to work for another company and traveled about for the next eight years before returning home.
For 22 years, John ran and managed the Fosters resort.
In 1954, John married Anne Matage from Thunder Bay, Ontario. Anne was of Russian/Ukrainian descent. They lived in Lutsen close to where John grew up and had three children, Mary, Bill, Barb.
Before he entered law enforcement in 1968, John did a wide variety of jobs. He worked as an over-the-road truck driver, drove school bus for Birch Grove (19 years), was a security guard at Lutsen Resort, logged, built log cabins, and who knows what else.
Of John, the late Frank Hanson, a two-time county commissioner said, “As far as being a public servant, John was as good or a better bargain than anyone else. After he was done working, he would check on people, businesses and just show up where he might be needed. (i.e., cutting firewood for a widow.) He was fearless, principled, and a man of integrity. “
John called it “face time” Show up and talk with people, to let them know he was there for them – throughout the county. On his time, not the county’s dime.
Former Commissioner Chet Lindskog was quoted as saying, “John was quite a guy. Always there to help. He was very strict. He might disagree, but he didn’t hold a grudge. He fought hard for the department (with the county board) and for the Search and Rescue Squads. He had a high regard for those people. He was a good guy to have on your side.”
Former Grand Marais Mayor and Commissioner, Walt Mianowski, now deceased, said of John, “He was an exceptional sheriff and a remarkable man. That whole family was exceptional. John was a monster among men. So big and strong. But a gentleman. It’s hard to express in words what he meant to the community.”
I couldn’t agree more.
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