Terror Alert: 1970--The Strange Summer of Bomb Threats in Minnesota

By Jeff R. Lonto

In the summer of 1970 there was a slew of bomb scares in Minnesota, particularly in the Twin Cities. Dynamite blasts at a federal building in Minneapolis and at a department store in St. Paul caused serious damage and injuries. That was followed by numerous bomb threats throughout the region, including at a Minnesota Twins game that lead to an evacuation in the middle of the game, and a 45-minute delay. The 17, 697 fans handled it in a manner you would never see happen today.

"Imagine. Come to Minneapolis and live dangerously. Who would have thought it?" a resident commented to a newspaper reporter at the time.

Twin Cities-based historian Jeff R. Lonto recounts that turbulent summer at the height of the Vietnam War era through vintage newspaper accounts, and shows what a completely different world it was thirty-one years before the 9/11 terror attacks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Studio Z-7 Publishing
• Release date: Jul 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310930829

Jeff R. Lonto

Jeff R. Lonto is a writer, publisher, blogger and historian residing in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He likes music from the 1960s, B movies from the 1930s and '40s, cats, beer and sugared soft drinks. His first published article, a history of Minneapolis-St. Paul television stations, appeared in a small local tabloid called the Hornet (printed on yellow paper, of course) in September 1985, courtesy of his friend and mentor, Darrell Mulroy. In the 1990s he wrote a regular feature for the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting Newsletter called "It Happened on the Air," chronicling various aspects of broadcasting history. In 1997 he founded Studio Z-7 Publishing, and in 1998 he published his first book, Fiasco at 1280, a behind-the-scenes story of Minneapolis radio station WWTC. Springing off of that, he hosted panel discussions featuring former personalities from that station, and was invited to discuss the book on WCCO Radio's Tim Russell Show, and on, of all places, WWTC Radio. Soon he published a second book, a history of the Grain Belt brewery in Minneapolis called Legend of the Brewery. This lead to interviews on Minnesota Public Radio, KARE-11 News, the Fox 9 KMSP morning show, and even WWTC Radio. He has been invited to speak at events at or near the Grain Belt brewery from time to time as well. In 2007 he published a third book, It Happened on the Air, a compilation of his Pavek Museum Newsletter columns, and in 2010, his first version of Chronicles from the Analog Age, a book covering a wide range of 20th Century pop culture topics, was published. In addition to his books, Lonto has written and had published a number of print and web articles, which have been referenced in a number of places. In 2000, the original version of his web article "The Trading Stamp Story," published on a now defunct website, was referenced in the New York Times ("Clicks, Not Licks, as Green Stamps Go Digital" by Michelle Slatalla, March 9, 2000), and more recently, the revised version on studioz7.com has been referenced in the Rochester, New York Democrat & Chronicle ("What Ever Happened To...trading stamps?" by Alan Morrell, July 21, 2015) and in an ebook, "Let's Close a Deal: Turn Contracts into Paying Customers for Your Company, Product, Service or Cause" by Christine Clifford (2013), National Public Radio's "Planet Money," as well as Wikipedia. As a media historian, Lonto's published articles were referenced in the print book "Media Tales: Stories of Minnesota TV, Radio, Publications and Personalities" by Sheri O'Meara and Martin Keller (D Media, Inc., 2007), he was a contributor to a radio industry print book called "Ain't Misbehavin' Just Conclavin" (Billboard Radio Monitor, 2005) and in 2014 he was invited to give a presentation to the St. Paul Radio Club Annual Banquet at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, on the history of broadcasting in the Twin Cities area. The transcript of the speech was published in an ebook, Twin Cities Broadcasting in the Analog Age. More recently, Jeff Lonto has published an ebook collection of short stories (some of which he originally wrote years ago) called Old Snapshots--Quirky Short Stories from Out of the Past. He has been a contributing writer for the online Minneapolis Happening magazine, and Pixable.com, he has given presentations about brewery history and collectibles at the Minnesota State Fair and the Autum Brew Review (a craft beer show in Minneapolis) for the Minnesota Craft Brewers Guild, and he occasionally posts something on Jeff R. Lonto's Chronicles from the Analog Age Blog (theanalogage.blogspot.com).

Book preview

TERROR ALERT: 1970

The Strange Summer of Bomb Threats in Minnesota

By JEFF R. LONTO

Copyright 2016 by Studio Z-7 Publishing, Minneapolis, MN.

All rights reserved.

Electronic book edition published through Smashwords.

Take me out to the ballgame…

A Simmering Springtime

August Blows Up

Meanwhile at the ol’ ballgame

‘Come to Minneapolis and Live Dangerously’

‘The Revolution is not coming. It’s here.’

Sources

About the Author

Take me out to the ballgame…

On the balmy summer night of Tuesday, August 25, 1970, a crowd of 17,697 filled the stands of Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington as the Boston Red Sox were in town playing the Minnesota Twins in Major League Baseball action.

With no score in the fourth inning, the big Longines clock above the scoreboard reading 9:15, stadium announcer Bob Casey suddenly came over the loudspeakers, and informed the crowd, The Twins have been advised by the Bloomington police that there will be an explosion here at the Met at 9:30. Please leave the stadium in an orderly fashion.

There was plenty of reason to take the threat seriously. Just a few days earlier a small bomb left in the wastebasket in a restroom at the downtown St. Paul Dayton’s department store exploded, seriously injuring a woman and causing structural damage. A few days before that, the downtown Minneapolis federal building was heavily damaged in an overnight bomb blast. Meanwhile, bomb threats were becoming a daily occurrence in the Twin Cities and across the country. An explosion in a crowded stadium could have been catastrophic.

The sources of these bomb threats were not fundamentalists from other countries, but fellow citizens, some with political