Debra J. Flemming 1954-2022

For more than three decades, she shared a passion of community journalism with readers of publications throughout southern Minnesota. There was no hiding the fact that Debra Flemming believed that community newspapers were the heart and soul of any community.
Flemming died March 14 at a hospital in Faribault after a very brief bout with lung cancer. She was 67.
Her career spanned many years while working at mostly daily newspapers in her hometown of Waseca, Owatonna, Traverse City, Mich., and Mankato. She also did stints as an adjunct professor at St. Cloud State University and executive director of the Minnesota Newspaper Foundation.
In 2020 while the pandemic raged across the country, Flemming became news editor of the Steele County Times. While the Times was the smallest publication she had ever worked at, Flemming often commented how her career had come full circle and loved putting out a weekly newspaper for Steele County and surrounding areas.
“She took incredible pride in the product that she put together every week,” said Rick Bussler, publisher of the Times. “She was the first one to beat herself up if a mistake slipped past her radar. She would be the first to point them out before anyone else could.”
She worked on the newspaper up until three weeks ago with the March 2 edition being the last one she put together.
Besides the product itself, Flemming also took tremendous pride in mentoring and grooming young people to become journalists. One of the recipients of that was Kay Fate, who now serves as a reporter for the Times. Flemming hired Fate in 1989 at the Owatonna People’s Press and again 32 years later in 2021 at the Times.
“I had no journalism degree and I’d never worked at a newspaper, but this was back in the day when we had copy editors (proofreaders), and I was good at that,” Fate said. Fate recalled when Flemming introduced her to the newsroom through a blue haze of cigarette smoke, Flemming said: “I hired this lady because she wrote, ‘I want to work’ on her application. So let’s put her to work.”
Flemming and Fate eventually went their separate ways before reuniting last year.
“She was a mentor like no other, and I was still learning from her,” Fate said. “Every bit of good that I’ve done as a journalist is a direct result of my relationship with Deb. As one of our mutual friends said last week, hours after Deb died, ‘I can’t believe this is a world without Deb Flemming in it.’ Neither can I.”
More recently, Flemming recruited, trained and mentored Johnnie Phillips, a recent college graduate who became sports editor of the Times in 2021. “It was her happy place to know that she was training the next generation of journalists,” Bussler said.
In days just prior to her death, Phillips shared with Flemming: “The past seven months have been some of the best of my life. I have learned more than I could ever imagined since I left college. You have been my biggest role model.”
Flemming shared a smile with family and friends at her side upon reading Phillips’ comments just days before cancer would take her life.
A Celebration of Life was held in Flemming’s honor Saturday in Faribault. A full obituary can be found on page A14.