Our Northern Lights

Faced with extraordinary personal challenges, they could have given up, become bitter, withdrawn. Instead, these Minnesotans improved lives all around them, influencing how the nation thought about victims of domestic violence, civil rights and sexual harassment. They found ways to soothe us: a professor who taught intense college students to relax, a baker who broke up long drives north with a slice of flaky apple pie, a reliable voice during tornado warnings. They were writers, farmers, poets and lawyers. Ten Minnesotans we lost this year, whose legacies endure. Our Northern Lights for 2015.