For 30 years, John Bidon took daily runs around Lake Phalen near his St. Paul home. He’d stretch it out to five miles and run one of the miles backward to work other muscles.

At 83, Bidon’s running years were behind him, but he was still active. He spent hours making sure the grass in his yard was as green as could 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 forward.

“We miss my father deeply,” Mike Bidon said this week. He said he’d like to tell the driver who struck his father: “We will forgive you, but we need 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 in 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 people in the surrounding area check their home surveillance cameras for any information that may assist the investigation. Patrick Bidon asks that anyone who noticed a vehicle with damage starting on Oct. 19 to come forward.

Since John Bidon had a double knee replacement, 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 check out the construction at East Shore Drive and Arlington Avenue. Mike Bidon and his father drove past it previously and they’d been curious about what was being built.

Daughter-in-law Jayne Bidon is also asking anyone to come 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 at the 3M production plant on the East Side for 38 years.

John Bidon (Courtesy of the St. Paul Police Department)

He and his wife, Josephine, were 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 to help neighbors work on their cars or snowblow their sidewalk 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 — “he made sure he was part of that,” Patrick Bidon said. “To the day he passed, he could tell you every player on each team, their nicknames, their parents’ names, and even where they lived because we would 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 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,” Patrick Bidon said. “It was always perfect.” He made ham for Easter and grilled for the Fourth of July.

He and Josephine used to decorate their house for every 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 way to Lake Phalen would stop by to talk to John Bidon because he was outside so much.

“He put a ton of work” into his house, yard and garden, probably spending 80 hours a week on them in the nice weather, Patrick Bidon said. He planted flowers around the house and the garage, and was always watering his grass and mowing it. “I’m not exaggerating at all — he had the greenest grass probably in most of St. Paul for most of the years,” Patrick Bidon said.

People always asked John Bidon how he got his grass so green and lush. “Well, an hour and a half later, he’d get done telling him his secret recipe, and they were hoping that it was, ‘I buy Scotts Turf Builder.’ They weren’t hoping that it was a full-time job to keep it green and growing,” Patrick Bidon said.

He entered his Big Boy tomatoes in the Minnesota State Fair, winning second place ribbons. He and Josephine always had plenty of extra 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 more 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 out of bed, which was very, very rare,” Patrick Bidon said.

For all his hard work, he also had a joking side — “he was always doing the teasing or getting teased,” according to his oldest son.

The motto he instilled in his sons, which could be seen in his yard and his house, was: “If you’re going to do a job, do it right,” Patrick Bidon said. “Take pride in anything that you do. Give it your best and if it doesn’t turn out the way you hoped for, you don’t have to think that you did anything wrong. That was really how he lived his life.”

To help

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 in the case at gofundme.com/f/justice-for-john-bidon-help-solve-hit-and-run.

Related Articles

St. Paul-based Securian Financial lays off 58 employees across departments

Man shot in stomach outside Rice Street bar, St. Paul police say

St. Paul officers identified in shooting of man at Snelling and University

Concordia University in St. Paul to absorb Denver-area Platt College nursing program

Halloween 1957: How a widespread blackout put Medtronic on the map with the invention of the portable pacemaker