Several stories about Herman, USA besides the one below are on this web site. Here are links to all of them:
Story 1, Story 2, Story 3, Story 4, Story 5, Story 6, Story 7, Story 8, Photos. How life has settled since Bachelormania
By Robert Franklin, Star Tribune Staff Writer
HERMAN, MINN. It's been seven years now since Dan Ellison gave the speech that echoed around the world, raised romantic hopes and put Herman on the international map.
To survive, the town of 485 needs more women, Ellison told Herman's handful of business leaders in 1994. It needs more career jobs for single women and for women in two-earner families. It needs careers for its highschool girls, who are all planning to leave for good.
Townsfolk started counting 78 single men ages 20 to 50, including Ellison, a 6-foot blond farmer who doubled as the town's economic development coordinator.
For the same ages, 10 eligible women.
After the story was reported by the Star Tribune and picked up worldwide by the Associated Press, Herman found itself in the midst of "Bachelormania." Town officials were deluged with thousands of calls, letters, visits and proposals.
The town has been the subject of bachelor celebrations, auctions, cooking contests, national TV appearances and now a movie, "Herman U.S.A.," making its first Minnesota showing tonight in the Twin Cities.
Bachelormania hasn't changed Herman a lot, but it surely changed some lives.
Initially, there was a role reversal.
"It was a real awkward position for single guys to be looked at" by visiting women, Gary Findlay said. He received 800 letters and stopped counting at 500 phone calls after he was featured on ABC-TV's "2020."
Findlay is one of at least seven bachelors who married. His wife, Rhonda, a nurse from a farm family in Underwood, Minn., first wrote to him on a dare from her mother, she said. Now they have three children, are remodeling the farmhouse where Findlay grew up and operate a 1,200 acre spread with 500 cows.
Ellison also married, but his story is quite different -- some would say more touching -- than his movie character, who falls for an out-of-town hustler.
Gwen Fredrickson, a former operating-room nurse in St. Louis Park, said she was thinking of a long-term future for herself and her son Bob -- not marriage -- when she moved to Herman to open a clothing store. Then she bid $265 at a bachelor auction for lunch with Ellison, and they started dating.
But she had back surgery and extensive therapy and wouldn't marry right away. "I want to float down that aisle and dance at my wedding," she said.
And she did.
Now the Ellisons have Spencer, born last August. Gwen still battles pain constantly and cannot lift her baby, but her world revolves around dinner together, farm, home remodeling, homework, and family reading times.
A safe, friendly town
Herman marketed itself as a safe, friendly town with cheap housing and its own good small school system. Early-morning arrivals at Denny's Cafe still let themselves in and make their own coffee. The town has few secrets. Hundreds turn out for the annual Odd Fellows Hall of Fame banquet honoring an area resident. (It's this Saturday night.)
But Herman never became the tourist mecca some promoted during Bachelormania. New businesses came, but few survived. The evening restaurant, auto dealership, and one of the two farm implement companies closed, but an auto-parts store opened. The bakery was replaced by Farm Stuff, an Internet-based agriculture supply company that also sells Minnesota-made gifts.
A couple of the bachelor marriages ended in divorce. About 60 newcomers moved to the area, but population slipped by about 9 percent in Herman and two adjacent townships.
As for young women leaving, "it really isn't any different," said Owen Heiberg, a school board member who ran the Herman Review newspaper during Bachelormania. But, he added, "at least half the businesses are owned or managed by women."
For its efforts, Herman gained a wider sense of the world and a sense of fun, banker Jerry Bryson said.
A "Survivor"-type contest is planned for July at the Grant County Fair, where Bachelor mania once attracted 10,000 people. And probably 100 artisans will show up for the Herman Iron Pour sculpture-making and parade the second weekend in August.
Governor's scholars
Justin Werk and Kayla Stotesbery, Governor's Scholars in a statewide program that Heiberg directs, have joined the board of the Herman Development Corp. Bryson, the group's president, said it is trying to bolster hometown firms more than chasing for out-of-town businesses. There's talk of a heritage museum and of a residential charter school for at risk kids.
New Horizons Ag Services, the grain elevator, has become a big rail shipping point, and "sometimes every week, semis are lined clear down the highway," Bryson said.
You can still buy an older house for $35,000, a 20-year old rambler for perhaps $75,000, but there's a housing shortage, he said. "We have more people who are willing to live here now and work elsewhere" -- Wheaton, Morris, Alexandria, Fergus Falls.
People still remember Bachelormania -- the Findlays and the Ellisons for the loves they found, of course. And Heiberg still gets occasional e-mails and calls about Herman.
But the town never will be the movie's lake-rich, picturesque community where bachelors placed personals ads. (That never really happened.)
"You don't think of it as a romantic place, like Niagara Falls," Dan Ellison said. "But probably to a certain number of people in the world, probably more female than male, when they hear of Herman, they think of romance. That's not a bad thing."
There are photos with the story: One of Gary Findlay and his family with this caption: "After the bachelor-town media coverage that put Herman, Minn., on the map, Gary Findlay got hundreds of letters and phone calls. He later married Rhonda, a nurse from Underwood, Minn. They now have (left to right) Benjamin, 1; Megan, 2; and Tiffany, 3. Another on the front page: Owen Heiberg at the door of Denny's cafe with this caption: "Owen Heiberg, a school board member, says things really aren't that much different now. He reached for the door of one constant: Denny's Cafe, where early arrivals still let themselves in." On the jump page there is a map locating Herman and a photo of Dan and Gwen Ellison with this caption: "Dan Ellison married Gwen Frederickson -- who moved to Herman from St. Louis Park to open a clothing store -- after she bid $265 at a bachelor auction for a lunch with him."
-- Robert Franklin is at franklin@startribune.com.
