On May 28 John Stjern, whose wife, Cheryl, describes as a "master of hydraulic hose," retired from Advance Auto Parts, just off South Washington Street. Stjern began working there in 1962, when the business was called Grand Forks Supply. In the mid-1980s the store was bought by Carquest, and then again by Advance in 2014. Through it all, Stjern was a fixture there, and built up lengthy relationships with customers, some even coming from the Canadian province of Manitoba, in search of hard-to-find hydraulic components.