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To place an obituary, please include the information from the obituary checklist below in an email to obits@pioneerpress.com. There is no option to place them through our website. Feel free to contact our obituary desk at 651-228-5263 with any questions. General Information: Your full name, Address (City, State, Zip Code), Phone number, And an alternate phone number (if any) Obituary Specification: Name of Deceased, Obituary Text, A photo in a JPEG or PDF file is preferable, TIF and other files are accepted, we will contact you if there are any issues with the photo. Ad Run dates There is a discount for running more than one day, but this must be scheduled on the first run date to apply. If a photo is used, it must be used for both days for the discount to apply, contact us for more information. Policies: Verification of Death: In order to publish obituaries a name and phone number of funeral home/cremation society is required. We must contact the funeral home/cremation society handling the arrangements during their business hours to verify the death. If the body of the deceased has been donated to the University of Minnesota Anatomy Bequest Program, or a similar program, their phone number is required for verification. Please allow enough time to contact them especially during their limited weekend hours. A death certificate is also acceptable for this purpose but only one of these two options are necessary. Guestbook and Outside Websites: We are not allowed to reference other media sources with a guestbook or an obituary placed elsewhere when placing an obituary in print and online. We may place a website for a funeral home or a family email for contact instead; contact us with any questions regarding this matter. Obituary Process: Once your submission is completed, we will fax or email a proof for review prior to publication in the newspaper. This proof includes price and days the notice is scheduled to appear. Please review the proof carefully. We must be notified of errors or changes before the notice appears in the Pioneer Press based on each day’s deadlines. After publication, we will not be responsible for errors that may occur after final proofing. Online: Changes to an online obituary can be handled through the obituary desk. Call us with further questions. Payment Procedure: Pre-payment is required for all obituary notices prior to publication by the deadline specified below in our deadline schedule. Please call 651-228-5263 with your payment information after you have received the proof and approved its contents. Credit Card: Payment accepted by phone only due to PCI (Payment Card Industry) regulations EFT: Check by phone. Please provide your routing number and account number. Cash: Accepted at our FRONT COUNTER Monday – Friday from 8:00AM – 3:30PM Rates: The minimum charge is $162 for the first 10 lines. Every line after the first 10 is $12.20. If the ad is under 10 lines it will be charged the minimum rate of $162. On a second run date, the lines are $8.20 per line, starting w/ the first line. For example: if first run date was 20 lines the cost would be $164. Each photo published is $125 per day. For example: 2 photos in the paper on 2 days would be 4 photo charges at $500. Deadlines: Please follow deadline times to ensure your obituary is published on the day requested. Hours Deadline (no exceptions) Ad Photos MEMORIAM (NON-OBITUARY) REQUEST Unlike an obituary, Memoriam submissions are remembrances of a loved one who has passed. The rates for a memoriam differ from obituaries. Please call or email us for more memoriam information Please call 651-228-5280 for more information. HOURS: Monday – Friday 8:00AM – 5:00PM (CLOSED WEEKENDS and HOLIDAYS) Please submit your memoriam ad to memoriams@pioneerpress.com or call 651-228-5280. Once in a while, P.J. Fleck will see someone wearing a very specific T-shirts in public and feels a need to set the record straight. The Gophers head coach has come across Iowa Hawkeye fans donning “It wasn’t a fair catch” shirts and can’t help but approach them. One such scene came on a recent trip he and wife Heather made to Minnesota’s Largest Candy Store in Jordan. “Hey, I like your shirt,” Fleck will say to the fan. “That was actually a correct call.” The reference, of course, is to the invalid fair catch signal penalty that was flagged on Iowa punt returner Cooper DeJean’s 54-yard touchdown run in the Floyd of Rosedale rivalry game in October 2023. After review, the decision negated the TD and Minnesota went on to a 12-10 win over then-No. 24 Iowa at Kinnick Stadium. Days later, the Big Ten Conference’s coordinator of officials Bill Carollo and NCAA rules editor Steve Shaw told the Pioneer Press and the Des Moines Register the officials’ final decision in Iowa City was the correct enforcement. Fleck said his off-the-cuff retorts to Hawkeye fans can catch them off-guard, either from them not expecting him to go there or from them just being surprised to see him in the first place. “It’s so funny because some people laugh and some people don’t,” Fleck told the Pioneer Press. “… Not everybody here (in Minnesota) graduated from the University of Minnesota. So, you just see it different and who their allegiance is to when you see that shirt. I love it.” That contentious win snapped Minnesota’s 10-game losing skid in Iowa City since 1999 and ended an eight-game overall losing streak in the rivalry since 2014. While that win remains fresh two years later, Fleck said there is little the Gophers can take from that victory and apply to Saturday afternoon’s road game. The Hawkeyes (5-2, 3-1 Big Ten) are an eight-point favorite over Minnesota (5-2, 3-1) for the 2:30 p.m. kickoff. “It’s its own entity. This is going to take a completely different effort, different team, different identity than we had before,” Fleck said. “… I think having the ability to win there allows us to say, ‘Hey, we can.’ (Now we’ve) just got to go do.” The reputation of Kinnick Stadium imprinted Fleck before he came to Minnesota. He played there as a receiver at Northern Illinois (1999-2003) and then as a graduate assistant at Ohio State in 2006. “I’m not one of those head coaches that doesn’t give anybody credit,” Fleck said. “Somebody asked me a long time ago: What’s the hardest place to play? You’ve got to take where you’re (coaching) at out of it. … And I’ve always told them Kinnick.” The Buckeyes were ranked No. 1 that year, but were tested in a 37-17 win over No. 11 Iowa in late September. “That was the one, I thought, game on the road we struggled with,” Fleck said of a Buckyes team that would fall to Florida in the BCS Championship Game. “The crowd, the atmosphere, and then you throw the football team of Iowa in there, (which) never beats themselves.” Fans are only a few feet away from the visiting sideline at Kinnick and are known for trash talking. And the sounds cranked into Gophers practices this week will include not only songs from the band and other music, but some colorful comments they might here on game day. “We have a lot of things piped in to the indoor (practice facility) that they might hear over and over and over,” Fleck said. Including personal comments? “Oh, one hundred percent,” Fleck said. Last year at home, the Gophers had a 14-7 lead over Iowa at the half, but the Hawkeyes outscored Minnesota 24-0 the rest of the way. Running back Kaleb Johnson amassed 206 rushing yards and three touchdowns. “To beat Iowa, you’ve got to play elite in all four quarters,” Fleck said. “We weren’t able to do that. … What the score is at halftime gets too much credit … It’s only 30 minutes. You’ve got 30 more minutes to play. You’ve got to make adjustments, and you’ve got to play better in the second half. Unfortunately, we didn’t play better in the second half. They took advantage of that.”
