MANKATO, Minnesota – Jacob Reitan said he told Gwen Walz he was gay before telling his parents.
Reitan was a student in 1999 at Mankato West High School in Minnesota, where Walz and her husband, Tim, were teachers. In her classroom, Gwen Walz announced at the beginning of her sophomore year that her class was a safe place for gay students.
“I had never heard a teacher talk about homosexual issues in front of the classroom,” recalled Reitan, now a 42-year-old Minneapolis lawyer. “This act meant a lot to me. It made me feel welcome in the place where I was supposed to learn.”
Gwen Walz’s unwavering support was shared by her husband, who moved from rural Nebraska to Minnesota long before the Democrat became a congressman, governor and vice president chosen by Kamala Harris to be her running mate in her presidential campaign 2024.
It was Tim Walz who Reitan approached about starting a Gay-Straight Alliance at the school. Having the support of the football team’s defensive coordinator – a straight, married man and soldier in the Army National Guard – gave the plan a boost.
Walz, a world geography professor, volunteered to be the group’s faculty advisor. That mattered, Reitan said, to a young man who had his car window smashed and a gay slur scrawled on his family’s garage.
But he said that was how Walz treated all students.
“He had the ability to talk about bullying issues in a way that helped both the bully and the bully,” Reitan said. “He made it clear that bullying makes no sense. That doesn’t help anyone. And that made school safer for me.”
In introducing Walz as his running mate, Harris shared this story. But Walz’s advocacy for the LGBTQ community has not met with universal approval since he joined the ticket. Some Republican elected officials and conservative commentators have cited Walz’s opposition to bans on gender-affirming care for minors as evidence that he is too liberal to be vice president.
Tiffany Justice of Moms for Liberty, a parental rights group that has been pushing to restrict discussion of LGBTQ issues in schools, said in a recent Fox News interview that Walz is “the most anti-parent candidate Kamala Harris could have chosen.”
Its approach contrasts sharply with actions taken in states such as Florida, Alabama and Iowa who acted to restrict open discussion about sexual orientation and gender identity in schools.
Reitan said the school administration supported the formation of the club and there was surprisingly little backlash. Some parents called and threatened to keep their children out of school, he said, but the principal at the time simply responded that the school would mark those students out.
Such criticism is rare among those who have spoken publicly about their experiences with Walz at Mankato West. Former students say Walz’s classes felt like a bridge to the wider world.
“He made the world seem smaller and more accessible,” said Nicole Griensewic, a student in Walz’s geography class. “And then he talked about China as if it wasn’t so far away and it wasn’t so foreign.”
Griensewic’s brother was bullied, she said, but he felt comfortable enough with Tim and Gwen Walz to join them on an educational trip with other students to China.
“I dare say there is a lot of toxic masculinity throughout the football world,” she said. “And seeing someone who was a football coach but also saying, ‘Hey, let’s respect everyone. And I absolutely will not tolerate any of this crap. That was really bold.”
Adam Segar said Walz found a spot for him on the football team despite problems he had gaining weight and muscle. Segar said this approach was common at Walz — trying to make sure students and athletes who might not fit into the traditional mold found a place.
“I think that’s what Tim brought to small-town America was, you know, a willingness to be open-minded and ask students to make sure they were open-minded as well,” Segar said.
Ann Vote remembers Walz as an extrovert who was passionate about not only teaching children but also learning from them. He supported her vision for a unique prom theme that was not included in the school vendor’s pre-made prom kits and required almost all of the decorations to be handmade.
The theme was “In Our Wildest Dreams,” which, Vote joked, seemed to foreshadow Walz’s trajectory.
When he replaced one of his classes, he showed a video that continually stopped so he could enthusiastically explain various elements of it.
“He was so passionate and engaged in what we should be learning at a time when many teachers were putting on videos to take a break,” said Vote, who spent 12 years as a social studies teacher before becoming a motivational speaker. . “Many of us at that school later became teachers.”
The current high school principal, Sherri Blasing, did not teach with Walz, but she and her family lived next door to him for 22 years. When Blasing’s four children became teenagers, her family was left without transportation. Walz gave them an old Buick they named “Laverne,” which she said was a testament to Walz’s generosity.
“You see this common theme with Tim over and over again,” Blasing said, “that he values each person for who they are and will do whatever he can to help them be the best they can be.”
John Considine, an offensive lineman on the school’s 1999 state championship team, invited Walz to his geography class. Considine would often shorten his lunch break to arrive early so the two could talk.
In the late 1990s, before cell phones permeated campus life, Walz invented expressions that some students began calling “Mr. Walz-isms.”
One of these Mr. Walzismo who stayed with Considine was “11 for the dance”. The phrase called for cohesion between all 11 players on the football field.
Pat Ryan met Walz as a colleague while teaching speech and theater. Ryan participated in a faculty prank aimed at the newly hired Walz, which did not go as planned. Thanksgiving was coming up and the veteran teachers gave Walz what appeared to be a free turkey certificate from a local grocery store.
The certificate was fake and the teachers waited outside the store, ready to have a laugh at Walz’s expense.
Instead, Walz left the store with a free turkey. He said Walz won people over that way.
“He’s so charming,” Ryan said. “You’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who knows him and doesn’t like him.”
For Reitan, the connection was more personal. But he believes everything he knows about Walz translates to the world of politics.
“He is so authentic. He is exactly what he appears to be,” Reitan said. “Tim Walz understands that being different is good. Being different is part of the diversity of the schoolyard and classroom, but it is also part of the diversity of our nation.”
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Beck reported from Omaha, Nebraska.
