PART 2: Community rallied behind blind couple
November 8, 2019
When Jack Thornton carried his wife Joyce over the threshold of their new home on Jan. 23, 1955, the newlyweds weren’t alone. A thousand people stood outside and cheered as they entered the two-bedroom, pre-fab house at 109 7th St. in Cloquet.
It had been this way for a while, ever since the previous August when a story about the blind couple flashed on newswires and landed in every newspaper across the country.
“We were well-known,” Joyce coyly said of all the attention.
The new home was a gift. The lot, the house, the construction, the furnishings, all of it donated as the weekly...
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