Since 1999, the Brainerd Public Schools Distinguished Achievement Hall of Fame has inducted graduates of Brainerd High School, and two legendary Brainerd Public Schools administrators, to this select body of extraordinary men and women.
The Distinguished Achievement Hall of Fame is an honor which has been bestowed upon approximately 80 of tens of thousands of graduates from Brainerd Public Schools over the course of its almost 150 years of providing public education to the youth of Brainerd, and for some 500 square miles of central Minnesota and parts of several adjacent counties.
Distinguished Achievement Hall of Fame members come from all walks of life, and now live in all parts of the world, from Brainerd to New York City to Stockholm, Sweden to Hanoi, Vietnam and back again to the Brainerd Lakes Area. They include research scientists, a four star United States Air Force general, leading lawyers, a Native American lawyer and former tribal judge and tribal appellate court justice, highly decorated war heroes, pioneering women law, medicine and journalism, a Broadway star, an highly acclaimed sports photojournalist, an early explorer of Antarctica with a 10,000 foot mountain there named after him, titans of industry, a naval captain whose name graced a WWII US navy destroyer at the Battle of Iwo Jima while another inductee was a twice wounded Marine lieutenant storming the beaches of Iwo Jima, a Minnesota governor, a CDC epidemiologist, a commanding officer of the Minnesota Air National Guard, a United States congressman, and friends and neighbors on Main Streets seemingly everywhere.