For 30 years, John Bidon ran daily around Phalen Lake near his St. Paul home. He would stretch it for five miles and run one of the miles back to work other muscles.

At 83, Bidon’s career years were behind him, but he was still active. He spent hours making sure the grass in his yard was as green as possible, and the widower brought his family together for holidays and birthdays at his East Side home.

Today, all these parts of Bidon’s life and more are memories for his family. He was killed in hit-and-run accident near his home nearly two weeks ago, and Bidon’s family and police are asking anyone with information to come forward.

“We miss my father dearly,” Mike Bidon said this week. He said he would like to tell the driver who hit his father: “We will forgive you, but we need to move on from this.” …Please surrender.

The police don’t have many clues to work with. Police were called shortly after 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 19, after John Bidon was found unconscious in the road near Arlington Avenue and McAfee Street, three blocks from his home.

“Everyone runs down that street,” his eldest son, Patrick Bidon, said of Arlington Avenue.

St. Paul Fire Department medics took John Bidon to regional hospital, where he died that night.

Mike Bidon is asking people in the area to check their home surveillance cameras for any information that could help with the investigation. Patrick Bidon asks anyone who has noticed a damaged vehicle from October 19 to come forward.

Since John Bidon underwent a double knee replacement, he hasn’t taken many walks and his sons aren’t sure why their father was away on October 19. They wonder if he had gone to see the work at East Shore Drive. and Arlington Avenue. Mike Bidon and his father had been there before and were curious about what was being built.

Daughter-in-law Jayne Bidon is also asking anyone who saw John Bidon walking on October 19 to come forward. She hopes determining what he was doing that day could help piece together what happened.

“I loved the East Side”

John Bidon grew up in St. Paul, where he attended Mechanic Arts High School. He worked for 38 years at the 3M manufacturing plant on the East Side.

He and his wife, Josephine, had been married for about 60 years when she died in 2021. They moved into their East Side home more than 58 years ago.

“He loved the East Side, he loved helping neighbors fix their cars or shovel snow off their sidewalks in the winter,” Mike Bidon said.

He coached his two sons’ sports teams from elementary school through high school – hockey, football, baseball, T-ball, soccer – “and he made sure he was a part of it,” said Patrick Bidon . “Until the day he died, he could tell you every player on every team, their nicknames, their parents’ names and even where they lived, because we would pick up the kids.”

Bidon, who had three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, believed in tradition and bringing his family together. When his grandchildren were younger, he would take them to Lake Phalen to go swimming and bike around the lake with them.

For Thanksgiving and Christmas, he would make his mother’s turkey recipe. “It was juicy, like it was half water,” said Patrick Bidon. “It was always perfect.” He prepared ham for Easter and grilled meats for the 4th of July.

He and Josephine used to decorate their house for every holiday, and John continued this after she left. He was preparing his Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations.

People walking or jogging near his house on their way to Phalen Lake would stop to talk to John Bidon because he was out so much.

“He put a ton of work” into his house, yard and garden, probably putting in 80 hours a week in good weather, Patrick Bidon said. He planted flowers around the house and garage, and always watered and mowed his lawn. “I’m not exaggerating at all – he probably had the greenest grass in most of St. Paul for most years,” Patrick Bidon said.

People always asked John Bidon how he got his lawn so lush and green. “Well, an hour and a half later, he was done telling her his secret recipe, and they were hoping it would be, ‘I’m buying Scotts Turf Builder.’ They weren’t expecting it to be a full-time job to keep it green and growing,” Patrick Bidon said.

He entered his Big Boy tomatoes into the Minnesota State Fair, winning second place ribbons. He and Josephine always had plenty of extra vegetables that they shared with their neighbors and church friends.

Bidon was an usher at the Saint-Louis-Roi-de-France church in downtown Saint-Paul for more than 65 years; he attended Sunday school and was an alter boy there. “He never missed a Sunday to go to church, unless it was icy or he was too sick to get out of bed, which was very, very rare,” said Patrick Bidon.

For all his hard work, he also had a joking side: “he was always teasing or being teased,” according to his eldest son.

The motto he instilled in his sons, which can be found in his garden and his house, was: “If you want to do a job, do it well,” said Patrick Bidon. “Be proud of everything you do. Do your best and if it doesn’t turn out the way you hoped, you don’t have to think you did something wrong. This is truly how he lived his life.

To help

Anyone with information is asked to call St. Paul Police Sgt. Jason Neubrand at 651-266-5722.

Family friend raises money for reward in case gofundme.com/f/justice-for-john-bidon-help-solve-hit-and-run.

Related articles