For 30 years, John Bidon took each day runs around Lake Phalen near his St. Paul home. He’d stretch it out to 5 miles and run considered one of the miles backward to work other muscles.
At 83, Bidon’s running years were behind him, but he was still lively. He spent hours ensuring the grass in his yard was as green as may very well be, and the widower gathered his family together for holidays and birthdays at his East Side home.
Now, all those parts of Bidon’s life and more are memories for his family. He was killed in a hit-and-run crash near his home nearly two weeks ago, and Bidon’s family and police are asking anyone with information to come back forward.
“We miss my father deeply,” Mike Bidon said this week. He said he’d prefer to tell the driving force who struck his father: “We’ll forgive you, but we want closure on this. … Please turn yourself in.”
Police haven’t had many clues to work with. Officers were called just after 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 19, after John Bidon was found lying unconscious within the road near Arlington Avenue and McAfee Street, three blocks from his home.
“Everyone races up and down that street,” his oldest son, Patrick Bidon, said of Arlington Avenue.
St. Paul Fire medics took John Bidon to Regions Hospital, where he died that night.
Mike Bidon is requesting that folks in the encompassing area check their home surveillance cameras for any information which will assist the investigation. Patrick Bidon asks that anyone who noticed a vehicle with damage starting on Oct. 19 to come back forward.
Since John Bidon had a double knee substitute, he didn’t go on many walks and his sons aren’t certain why their father was out on Oct. 19. They wonder if he’d gone to examine out the development at East Shore Drive and Arlington Avenue. Mike Bidon and his father drove past it previously they usually’d been inquisitive about what was being built.
Daughter-in-law Jayne Bidon can also be asking anyone to come back forward who saw John Bidon walking on Oct. 19. She’s hoping that determining what he was doing that day might help piece together what happened.
‘Loved the East Side’
John Bidon grew up in St. Paul, where he attended Mechanic Arts High School. He worked on the 3M production plant on the East Side for 38 years.
He and his wife, Josephine, were married for about 60 years when she died in 2021. They moved into their East Side home greater than 58 years ago.
“He loved the East Side, he loved to assist neighbors work on their cars or snowblow their sidewalk within the winter,” Mike Bidon said.
He coached his two sons’ sports teams from elementary school through highschool — hockey, football, baseball, T-ball, soccer — “he made sure he was a part of that,” Patrick Bidon said. “To the day he passed, he could inform you every player on each team, their nicknames, their parents’ names, and even where they lived because we’d go around and pick up kids.”
Bidon, who had three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, believed in tradition and bringing his family together. When his grandchildren were younger, he used to bring them to Lake Phalen to go swimming and bike across the lake with them.
For Thanksgiving and Christmas, he would make his mother’s turkey recipe. “It was juicy, prefer it was half water,” Patrick Bidon said. “It was at all times perfect.” He made ham for Easter and grilled for the Fourth of July.
He and Josephine used to embellish their house for each holiday, and John kept it up after she was gone. He’d been readying his Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations.
People walking or jogging by his house on their method to Lake Phalen would stop by to consult with John Bidon because he was outside a lot.
“He put a ton of labor” into his house, yard and garden, probably spending 80 hours every week on them in the good weather, Patrick Bidon said. He planted flowers across the house and the garage, and was at all times watering his grass and mowing it. “I’m not exaggerating in any respect — he had the greenest grass probably in most of St. Paul for many of the years,” Patrick Bidon said.
People at all times asked John Bidon how he got his grass so green and luxurious. “Well, an hour and a half later, he’d get done telling him his secret recipe, they usually were hoping that it was, ‘I purchase Scotts Turf Builder.’ They weren’t hoping that it was a full-time job to maintain it green and growing,” Patrick Bidon said.
He entered his Big Boy tomatoes within the Minnesota State Fair, winning second place ribbons. He and Josephine at all times had plenty of additional vegetables they shared with neighbors and friends from church.
Bidon was an usher at St. Louis King of France Church in downtown St. Paul for greater than 65 years; he attended Sunday school and was an alter boy there. “He never a missed a Sunday attending church unless it was an ice storm or he was too sick to get away from bed, which was very, very rare,” Patrick Bidon said.
For all his exertions, he also had a joking side — “he was at all times doing the teasing or getting teased,” in response to his oldest son.
The motto he instilled in his sons, which may very well be seen in his yard and his house, was: “When you’re going to do a job, do it right,” Patrick Bidon said. “Take pride in anything that you simply do. Give it your best and if it doesn’t prove the best way you hoped for, you don’t must think that you simply did anything unsuitable. That was really how he lived his life.”
To assist
Anyone with information is asked to call St. Paul Police Sgt. Jason Neubrand at 651-266-5722.
A family friend is fundraising for a reward within the case at gofundme.com/f/justice-for-john-bidon-help-solve-hit-and-run.