Northwest Minnesota Foundation Establishes Programs and Camps Fund with Courage Center

Northwest Minnesota Foundation, Bemidji, has established a component fund that will serve the needs and interests of people with physical disabilities, helping them to lead healthy, independent, productive and empowered lives.

The Courage Center Programs and Camps Fund will be used to provide financial support for programs, projects, activities or services that further the mission of Courage Center to empower people with disabilities to reach for their full potential in every aspect of life. Funding priorities will be for activities that are conducted in northern Minnesota, sponsored by Courage Center, that benefit people living here.

The fund was established by Courage Center from a partial bequest of the Ray Hellekson estate, who made annual gifts to Courage in support of Courage North. Hellekson was a Bemidji resident and turkey farmer. He was a member of the United Methodist Church, the Elks, the Lions, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, Sons of Norway, the National Rifle Association and the Bemidji Trap Shooting Club.

Hellekson served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He was a first lieutenant in the Army 29^th Division, 116^th Infantry Regiment. He received two Silver Stars, a Bronze Star, three Purple Hearts, and from the French government, a Bronze Cross. He received four Bronze Stars for being involved in four major campaigns that took him through France and Germany. He was also awarded a Bronze Arrowhead for leading 30 men in the first wave of the amphibious landing on Omaha Beach, where his division suffered heavy casualties.

Following the war, he worked in Greenbush, Minnesota, where he met Neena Johnson, whom he married in 1947 in Grafton, North Dakota. The couple moved to Bemidji in the early 1950s to begin farming and stayed the remainder of their lives. Preceded in death by his wife, Hellekson passed away in August of 2003.

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