MINNESOTA
Duluth News Tribune
By Tom Olsen on Mar 19, 2016
HOYT LAKES — In a small cemetery on the eastern edge of the Iron Range, one gravestone sticks out.
Literally.
A granite headstone honoring the Rev. Thomas Stack, who founded the Catholic church across the street, sits atop a hill near the entrance of the Hoyt Lakes Memorial Cemetery. The stone is the only one permitted to stand above ground in the municipal cemetery.
It would seem to be an unremarkable site in an off-the-beaten-path graveyard, but one Grand Rapids woman is fighting for the stone’s removal.
Pat Helms, who grew up in a devout Catholic family and came to the mining boom town as a teenager in the 1950s, says she believes her brother was sexually abused by the priest.
“It’s always bothered me to see that headstone,” she said. “To go and visit the cemetery, the way this man looms over my family, it makes me absolutely sick.”
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