Do we know this person?

[dreamshark]

http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_13725514?nclick_check=1

His name is on our incorporation papers. Same guy?

Comments

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

A very belated reply, now that I've seen this thread.

Steve St. Onge was the gun carrier, not Gerry Wassenaar. I didn't notice the gun tucked in his pants -- mgs and someone else saw the gun when Steve was leaning over during the Sunday night Dead Dog at the Leamington back at Minicon 18 in 1984. Martin talked with me because he was aware that I knew and seemed friendly with Steve. (Steve had just moved to Mpls from California. I think he was in Minneapa at the time, but lots of people didn't know him very well at that Minicon.)

I knew him well enough to walk up and give him a hug in such a manner that my hand more or less naturally touched the gun through his clothing, giving me the opportunity to ask, "What's that?"

"You know what it is," Steve responded. "We need to talk," I said, and so we did. We ended up locking up the gun in the room we were using for secure storage that night, returning it to Steve when he left the party (and hotel). We also gave him the option of leaving the party immediately, but made it clear that we welcomed him staying so long as the gun wasn't at the party, too.

While the gun was in secure storage, some other well-known Minn-stf members decided it needed to be checked for ammunition and then emptied of it. They did that without consulting Steve, and I happened to walk into the secure storage room when they did. That freaked me considerably -- it was just 3 years after Louise Sullivan's suicide, and people holding guns in a firing position (even pointed down and away from the people in the room) were too much of a flashback for my mental well-being.

In retrospect, I consider my own way of confronting Steve to have been remarkably foolish, and the other fen handling the gun after we had "locked it safely away" to have been even more so. At the very least, it was a breaking of the trust Steve gave us when he handed his gun over to Minicon's safe-keeping. If we wanted the ammunition removed if there was any, we should have gone and asked him, and then had him doing the removing. He was angry that we'd removed the ammo when he retrieved both the gun and ammo from us.

Fortunately, no long term harm that I'm aware of came of the incident.