FHS to honor first Fine Arts Hall of Fame inductees | News, Sports, Jobs

ABOVE: The first five Fine Arts Hall of Fame inductees at Fairmont High School. Clockwise from top left: Cliff Janke, Roxy Janke, Miles Duffey, Bradley Greenwald and Marlys Brummond.

FAIRMONT– For the first time, five individuals will be recognized for their accomplishments in and contributions to fine arts at Fairmont High School. The recognition event will be at the school on Oct. 11.

“We’re two week out and finalizing details for the event,” said committee member, Kathleen Walker.

While details are still being hammered out, the idea behind a fine arts hall of fame is several years in the making.

Committee member Sara Gudahl said that it’s been long talked about not just in the school, but in the community as well.

“Mat Mahoney, who is really involved in the athletic hall of fame, brought to me a copy of how the athletics one is run and said, ‘I think this is the year. Let’s see if we can get this off the ground,’” Gudahl said.

She added that Mahoney’s push to get it started helped those interested in starting it get a committee formed.

The committee consists of 10 people. It’s a mix of people in the school and out of the school as Gudahl said they wanted an all-encompassing mix of all areas of fine arts.

“It’s pretty much anything that’s not an MSHSL sport or athletic,” Gudahl explained.

That means future and potential inductees could have involvement in not just speech or theater, but robotics and knowledge bowl, too.

The committee began meeting at the end of the 2024-25 school year and continued to meet throughout the summer and leading up to the October recognition.

Gudahl said first the committee created its bylaws and established its criteria, purpose and goals. To be considered, someone has to either be a graduate of Fairmont High School or been a coach, volunteer or community supporter. They must either be 15 years out of graduation or provided 10 or more years of community support or coaching.

“Once we had that, every person on the committee was tasked with bringing names to the committee that fit inside those categories. We had a massive amount of people,” Gudahl admitted.

The committee narrowed it down to 12 people and after researching those dozen on a deeper level, the members voted again and selected the first five inductees.

They are Bradley Greenwald, Marlys Brummond, Cliff Janke, Roxy Janke and Miles Duffey.

Greenwald is a 1984 graduate of Fairmont High School who was involved in band, jazz band, concert choir, one act play, all school play and declamation (speech). He is now a working actor.

“He’s currently performing in a show called Journey On at Theater Latté Da in Minneapolis,” Gudahl said.

Brummond is an officer of the Fairmont Band Boosters and long-time supporter of the school and its students.

“She’s making possible for kids to continue to excel in band through all of her community work,” Gudahl said.

Cliff was with Fairmont Area Schools from 1983 to 2014 and served as music teacher, choir director, musical director and speech coach.

Roxy was with Fairmont Area Schools from 1997 to 2015 and throughout her time served as an English teacher, speech teacher, play director and speech coach.

Under the guidance of the Jankes, the speech team earned subsection and section titles for 12 consecutive years. The team also produced 14 state champions and advanced to the finals at the state tournament every year.

“Roxy and Cliff continue to serve their Minnesota and national speech communities through leadership roles and education,” Walker said.

Duffey is a 2007 graduate of Fairmont High School. He is a currently an English teacher and speech coach at FHS. As a student, Duffey was the first student in Fairmont speech to go to a national tournament.

“He spent 12 years touring with the Shakespeare company,” Gudahl said.

The plan is to induct people into the fine arts hall of fame on the off year of the athletic hall of fame, which has been running since 1990.

Gudahl said they will be establishing a physical fine arts hall of fame with photos, just like the athletic hall of fame, in the upstairs hallway by the Performing Arts Center at Fairmont High School.

Both Walker and Gudahl spoke to the importance of starting and, in the future, adding on to the fine arts hall of fame.

“It’s to celebrate the amazing legacy of Fairmont fine arts that goes back decades and decades and to show, of the inductees that we have, most of them still give back to their fine arts community someway whether they’re a coach, teacher, volunteer or still judge in their realm of fine arts and give back in that way,” Walker said. “This highlights not just their accomplishments and legacy but what they’ve done for our kids.”

Gudahl added, “our programs would not be what they are without these founding members of it. The fine arts at our school is very deep and rich in excellence and quality and sometimes I feel like athletics are elevated to a very visible level in the community and fine arts tends not to be as visible as sports. It’s important for me to have our hall of fame to make sure people are publicly aware of not just the programs we have, but the people who have built, created and made those programs.”

The event on Oct. 11 will start at 6:30 p.m. with a dessert reception and the program will start at 7 p.m.

As part of it, there will be performances by current fine arts students continuing in the activities the inductees have made possible.

“To me it’s a bridge from the past to the future,” Gudahl said.

The event is free to attend and members of the committee are hoping for a good turnout.

“Please come and support them. We would love to see the community show out,” Gudahl said. “There are plenty of kids who excel in fine arts who don’t necessarily excel in an athletic arena and for them to see themselves celebrated in the same way is really important to me.”