I started at Northwestern National Bank in June of 1981, so when the fire took place on Thanksgiving Day of 1982, I was still a relatively new employee.

After the fire, our department moved into the Operations Center, lower level #3, known by us as “The Pit.” We had desks very quickly, but we had no dividers between the individual desks in a huge open area, so we got to know people we had never met before.

One person I got to know was Terry M., who was a Systems Analyst. He started talking to me, we found out we had mutual friends and we started dating. To make a long story short, in August of 1984 we were married.

So I guess you could say that the Thanksgiving Day fire brought us together.

I was only 14 years old when the fire happened and not even considering being a team member at the time. I was more interested in getting my driving permit and finishing my freshman year of HS.

My story:

As a family tradition for as long as I can remember while my grandparents were alive we would go walk on Nicollet Mall after dinner thanksgiving night to enjoy the windows of Donaldson’s and Dayton’s.

So that night we were on our way to downtown from south Minneapolis and when we were getting onto 35W from 46th street we saw the smoke and my dad stated that it looked like there was a fire in downtown. Of course we joked with my grandmother saying her bank was on fire, little did we know at the time.

Once we got downtown we soon discovered that there was fire where the old Donaldson’s store was being torn down and the fire department had not yet arrived to the scene. We stood right across the street from the fire; in fact I got so warm from the heat that I unzipped my jacket a bit. I believe we were standing next to a weather kiosk by Woolworth’s and I remember seeing it the next morning on TV covered in ice from all the water being sprayed by the fire department.

At one time we had to move because the police were driving their cars down the sidewalk to get bystanders off the sidewalk where there were underground tanks with some type of possible explosive.

Shortly after being moved by the police we were moved again because the fire was growing so fast, I was running along a sidewalk by the IDS and dodging glass being blown out of the building because the fire was so hot.

I do remember that when we were standing by the weather kiosk that there was “bag lady” stating she saw who did it and it was two boys. She then started pointing at two younger boys and yelling, “There they are!” well not sure about who she was we moved away from her. Much to our surprise she was right and those were the two boys who had started the fire.

It was one of the those things where everyone just comes together and gets things done. We worked with many other departments from NIS (Norwest Information Services, at that time this was the technology company), Norwest Bank Minneapolis, and our computer hardware vendors. We had recovery plans, but one of our main hurdles was equipment. We needed to gather computer terminals, teller terminals, etc. from our testing facilities, other Norwest Banks in the area, from our vendors, etc. The building where we housed the temporary lobby was the building directly east (across Marquette Ave.), first floor south side along 7th street. The temporary bank lobby was in a long, thin room that had access from both the sidewalk and the inside mall area on the first floor.

We worked the entire weekend to secure the location, install the equipment, modify the software to setup a new bank location, and test the location before the customers were to arrive on Monday morning.