By Per Peterson
For Steve and Dianne Ferrazzano, a new beginning to their lives meant a move half-way across the country. It meant hearing Minnesota accents for the first time. It meant finding a new home. And it meant understanding what cold really is.
The couple married over Steve’s Christmas break from his studies at the University of North Dakota, and their honeymoon was spent driving from New Jersey to North Dakota in the middle of winter.
“We had to get gas outside of Fargo and pulled into a gas station and saw a kid running out to get the mail in his shorts and a T-shirt,” Steve recalls. “She’s like, ‘I guess it can’t be too bad.’ She wanted to run in and get a coffee or something, and it wasn’t more than five seconds and she started crying.
“The cold just went right through her,” he added. “She was, ‘I can’t believe it’s this cold.’ I said, ‘Well, we’re not even in Grand Forks yet.’ She got used to it.”
Actually, they both did, and from Grand Forks, the young couple ended up in Redwood Falls and eventually in Tracy, where they would settle in for good. Well, almost.
On Monday, more than two decades after grasping the concept of wind chill, Ferrazzano presided over his last Tracy City Council meeting. The longtime public defender and public servant will be sworn in Friday as a judge in the Fifth Judicial District in St. James.
“We’re looking forward to the next chapter,” Ferrazzano said. “Being appointed to the bench is an honor and is something that I can share with Dianne because it’s a blessing for the both of us. I feel privileged and honored to be able to share this with her, because she’s contributed so much to helping me out.”
For more on this article, see this week’s Headlight-Herald.