From Eveleth to Austin, Texas and back: A 76-year gold medal journey

The Eveleth Golden Bears won the 1945 Minnesota State High School Hockey Tournament to go down in history as the winners of the inaugural championship of a now legendary event.

All 11 players from that time have since died, but the legend continues to grow in unexpected ways. That brings us to the case of the mysterious missing gold medal that once belonged to the team’s goaltender, Ron Drobnick, who died in 2007.

"When my grandma passed away in 2013, we looked all over for his gold medal and we couldn’t find it," said his grandson Phill Drobnick. "I found the third-place medal from 1946."

It remains a family mystery about what happened to the gold medal. Although, after Phill posted a tweet this week commemorating the 76th anniversary of that championship, the mystery was either solved or just got deeper.

"76 years ago my Grandpa Drobnick & the (Eveleth Golden Bears) team won the first Minn. State High School Hockey Tournament," Phill Drobnick tweeted. "Every March my Grandpa spent his winter vacations in St. Paul for the annual Hockey Tourney! I sure miss his stories."

That tweet caught the eye of John Millea, from the Minnesota State High School League.

"I assumed they had his grandpa’s medal from that tournament," Millea told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS on Friday. "I didn’t know they didn’t have it. I assumed they did."

It turns out, Millea had a 1945 gold medal from the first Minnesota tournament sitting in his desk drawer. A Minnesotan bought the medal in what he described as a Goodwill silent auction in, of all places, Austin, Texas. He tried without success to find out whom it might belong to, including an appearance on the 2019 state tournament broadcast on 45TV. So back it went in his drawer, until this week.

"So, I sent Phill a message," Millea said. "I said, ‘Hey, I have a medal from that tournament. I’d love to give it to your family in honor of your grandpa.’ Turned out, somewhere along the line, his medal had disappeared."

Phill was stunned that one of the Eveleth gold medals, whether it was originally his grandpa’s or not, ended up so far from home down in Texas.

"That’s about as far away from home as this can get within the United States, so it’s pretty cool to get this back to Eveleth," Drobnick told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS as he proudly showed off the medal.

Millea was just happy to find someone in Eveleth who will cherish and preserve a piece of Minnesota hockey history.

"Again, we don’t know this is Ron Drobnick’s, but it’s one of the medals that went to that team," Millea said, noting there were only 11 players on the team plus a coach and manager.

Phill Drobnick is happy to have the medal on behalf of his grandfather and the city of Eveleth. Drobnick knows a thing or two about gold medals, having coached the U.S. Men’s Curling Team to the gold medal in the 2018 Olympics.

We asked him which medal makes him more proud.

"Oh, boy, that’s a tough one," he said. "I would say my grandpa would be more proud of the one that I won, I’m sure. I’m more proud of the one he won because, 1945 … it’s quite an accomplishment back then."

Spoken like a good grandson.