Toimi is near and dear to Ron Johnson’s heart. His grandparents homesteaded in Toimi about a half of a mile South of the Toimi school. His mother was born in the community located about 30 miles north of Two Harbors and about 30 miles west of Silver Bay.
“I’ve been going up there since I was a baby,” Ron said of Toimi and the surrounding area of Brimson and Fairbanks. These days, Ron and his brother own and maintain the old homestead just down the road from the Toimi School.
The old schoolhouse is also something near and dear to Ron’s heart. He serves on the Toimi Community School Group, which maintains the school that has evolved into a historical center, a meeting place, a community center, and a place for celebrations.
One such celebration is the annual Toimi Midsummer Celebration. It’s a time for the community to get together to have a light lunch, provided by the Bassett Community Church, and enjoy some music. This year’s band is a returning act, the Hutter Bunch. The band is from Virginia, MN, and they play country/bluegrass music.
“We used them for the first time last year and people really enjoyed them and they enjoyed themselves playing for us,” said Ron.
The doors open on June 22nd at 10:00 AM for the event and the music and lunch will start about 11:30 AM, with the lunch ending around 1:30 PM.
The doors are also always open on Saturdays, from Memorial Day to Labor Day weekend. Volunteers provide tours of the building and are on hand to answer questions. The Lake County Commissioners meet at the school annually as well. This year, it will occur on July 16th at 6:00 PM. The meeting is open to the public.
The building has also hosted the Brimson SISU, a race that raises money for the Brimson Area Volunteer Fire Department. It was used in recent years for a bicycle tour as a stop for lunch.
Volunteers also take care of the two cemeteries located in the area. One is located about a mile and a half down the road from the school. The group paid a ground penetrating company to show additional graves that weren’t marked. Families moved away from the area and the graves had been forgotten.
Also, the children cemetery was forgotten. Well, not quite. Ron’s mother and others remembered vaguely where it had been before the woods began to take over the abandoned fields. Armed with clues, the volunteers went into the woods, an arm’s length away from each other, to find it.
They were successful and hired the ground penetrating company to locate the graves. The children’s cemetery, which lies about a quarter block walk into the woods, is about a half of a mile south of the school.
If you tour the school, you’ll learn about the Finnish immigrants who landed in the area and built homesteads in the woods around the late 1800s. Being from the “Church of Finland,” which focused on the importance of education, most came over able to read and write. Children were tutored at home until the school was built in 1913.
“As the community grew, they put on another addition and it became a two-room school,” explained Ron. “The school went from 1st through 8th grade. If they wanted to continue their education, they would bus into Two Harbors to finish their high school education.”
At the peak, there were three small buses that went to Two Harbors, sometimes in the back of a canvas covered truck and a kerosene heater to help everyone keep warm. After WW2, the population began to decline in the area and the school closed in 1942.
It sat empty until the 1960s, when Lake County took out a wall and the floor, added a garage door and transformed the school into a garage for a grader. They put on a new roof, which helped preserve the building and in the 1980s, Ron’s group took over the school and began to renovate it. They found old floorboards in a gym. They hired a Finnish architect who helped them recreate the school.
It’s a site worth seeing and preserving. Those who attend the Midsummer Celebration are in for a community event where they will experience some of the history of the area, some great music, some food, and lots of friends.
The Toimi Community School Group is always in need of volunteers to help on Saturdays, be part of the board, and help with any of the events that are held at the school. Those interested can contact Ron through the Toimi School Facebook page.
