Brooks: Minnesota’s greatest honor for a family’s great loss

For Melissa Hortman’s last day at work, they draped her coffin with pink flowers and filled the cold marble under the Minnesota Capitol dome with the green and growing things that she loved.

Outside the building where she’d spent two decades and untold hours working on her state’s behalf, the line to say goodbye stretched out the door, across the lawn and up nearby streets until it almost encircled the building.

Former President Joe Biden came to pay his respects, genuflecting in prayer and stopping to pat both service dogs that were standing vigil, tails wagging. There was the governor and his wife, walking hand in hand. But this is the People’s House too, and it was a day for the people of Minnesota to grieve two people and one dog who had their lives stolen by political violence.

Hour after hour, mourners filed into the rotunda where Hortman, speaker emerita of the House, lay in state alongside her husband, Mark Hortman, and their golden retriever. Visitors stared numbly at the flowers, the soaring underside of the dome, the framed photos of the Hortmans’ smiling faces. Some carried bouquets to add to the piles of flowers that were starting to wilt on the memorials outside the House chambers.

Yellow blooms spilled across Mark Hortman’s coffin. Tucked between the Hortmans’ coffins was the urn for Gilbert, their dog. All were victims of the political violence that terrorized the state two weeks ago, and so in a way were the thousands who streamed in to pay their respects.

High overhead, the electrolier – the century-old chandelier lighted only on special occasions or when the Legislature is in session – glowed for them. Minnesota’s greatest honor for Minnesota’s great loss.

It was a memorial put together by legislators and legislative staff, some of the people who knew Melissa Hortman best. They worked through their own crushing grief to make sure all Minnesota had a chance to honor her.

“Speaker Hortman was strategic, funny, kind, and driven to make Minnesota a better place,” wrote Sean Rahn, her chief of staff, trying to put into words the loss of someone he’d been in daily contact with for the past eight years.

“Over many years having witnessed her in action in ‘the room where it happens,’ I would say that she was very often the smartest person in that room,” he said, ‘and if you didn’t know that going in, you certainly would when you left.”

“Speaker Hortman was my boss,” he added. “She was my friend, and I miss her terribly. Words just aren’t enough.”

In the long line outside the Capitol, everyone seemed to have a Melissa Hortman story. She and her family had touched so many lives and hearts. Even the ones they hadn’t met yet.

“Even if you didn’t know her, you did,” said Democratic state Sen. Matt Klein, waiting in line like everyone else.

One of the first to pay his respects was Mike Starr, a retired veteran from Oak Grove who arrived at the South Entrance at 6:30 a.m., five and a half hours before the doors opened.

“She meant quite a bit to the state,” said Starr, 71. “She stood up for the people and she would do what she had to do to take care of the people. And unfortunately someone didn’t like that.”

Hortman was there for Sheryll Mennicke on a difficult day at the Legislature.

Mennicke’s son, Jacob, had cerebral palsy, epilepsy and other disabilities. She brought her son, in his wheelchair, to the Legislature and ran into Hortman on the front lawn.

“She stopped and talked to us about what was going on. She said, ‘How is your son, and how are the services? And can you think of other things the state could do to help?’” Mennicke said. Jacob died two years ago, at age 31, from respiratory complications. “But it was just the way that she really listened. She would ask these open-ended questions, and then would just listen.”

Two weeks ago Friday, the Hortmans were at a yearly DFL fundraising dinner. Hours later, they were gone. Gary Melom, at the Capitol to pay his respects, described well what came next.

“There’s a pall over the country,” Melom said. “And now we’re the pallbearers.”

Allison Kite, Ryan Faircloth, Nathaniel Minor, Emmy Martin, Sofia Barnett, Sydney Kashiwagi and Matt Gillmer of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.