Honoring Rondo: Sports, Resilience, and the Oxford Community Center (episode 206)

Lisa Lissimore

Lisa Lissimore is a retired Associate Director of the Minnesota State High School League where she served over 500 member schools for 34 years. Prior to her role at MSHSL, Lissimore worked for the Minnesota House of Representatives as a writer. She also coached women’s basketball at the University of St. Thomas and at her alma mater Central High School. Through her positions she has been at the forefront of growing opportunities and developing programs that support Minnesota students, athletes, coaches, officials and athletic administrators. Lissimore grew up in St. Paul’s Rondo community and helped lead Central High School to the first Minnesota Class AA Girls State Basketball Championship in 1976. She played one season for the University of Minnesota before finishing her playing career and education at Grand View University in Des Moines, IA. Lissimore is a member of five halls of fame including the MN Girls Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame. Most recently, Lissimore and her cousin Linda Roberts were featured in the Minnesota Historical Center’s “Girlhood It’s Complicated” exhibit. As an active member of her community, Lissimore is a member of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Chapter of Links Incorporated, the David Winfield Scholarship Committee, Twin Cities Dunkers and the Minnesota Sports and Events Champions Council. She also served on several University of Minnesota athletic department task forces and advisory committees.

Frank M. White

Frank M. White is a former athlete, coach, community leader and Rondo elder. While attending the University of Minnesota, White began working as a part-time employee at the Oxford Community Center. The job would be the start of a lifelong career in recreation. For over 30 years. White has coached athletes in the Rondo Community and was the former manager of Parks and Recreation for the city of Richfield. As a historian and community leader, White is dedicated to preserving the history of African Americans in Minnesota. His book “The Played for the Love of the Game” highlights the untold stories of Black baseball players in Minnesota from 1970s to 1960s. He also co-created the award winning exhibit They Played for the Love of the Game: Adding to the Legacy of Minnesota Black Baseball, which earned a 2010 Minnesota History Award. White is also the former RBI program coordinator for the MN Twins where he helps provide youth with opportunities to play baseball and develop leadership skills.

Kim Heikkila

Dr. Kim Heikkila is an independent scholar, oral historian, author, and educator. Her most recent book, Booth Girls: Pregnancy, Adoption, and the Secrets We Kept (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2021) blends history, biography, memoir, oral history, and creative writing in tracing a legacy of contested motherhood. Her first book, Sisterhood of War: Minnesota Women in Vietnam (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2011), is based on oral history interviews with fifteen nurses from Minnesota who served in the U.S.-Vietnam War and came to rely on each other as they confronted the traumatic aftereffects of their service. Both Booth Girls and Sisterhood of War were finalists for a Minnesota Book Award.

Dr. Heikkila has a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Minnesota. She taught U.S. and women’s history for more than ten years at St. Catherine University before launching Spotlight Oral History in 2016. Since then, she has developed and executed oral history projects for a variety of organizations, among them the Minnesota Historical Society, the Whittier Alliance, the Lowry Hill East Neighborhood Association, the Hennepin History Museum, and the Anoka County Historical Society. She has interviewed immigrant business owners of Eat Street; Minnesota Court of Appeals judges; Vietnam War protesters; neighborhood and voting rights activists; Minnesota women athletes from the pre- and post-Title IX era; musicians, performers, and artist-activists; and leaders in a youth services agency on the East Side of St. Paul.