More than 170 years after James and Sarah Shaver arrived in the Lake Minnetonka area, their family remains deeply woven into the story of Wayzata. Today, Tom Shaver lives in the 1910 house his grandparents owned for decades, directly across from a city park bearing the Shaver name — a remarkably tangible connection between one of the area’s earliest settler families and the Wayzata of today.
Just a few blocks away is another park carrying another familiar local name: Klapprich Park. It was there that Shaver spent countless winter hours as a boy, playing pickup hockey and learning the game under coaches including Paul Klapprich. More than half a century later, Shaver is helping lead an effort to place a statue of his former coach at the field — a permanent tribute to a man whose influence on generations of Wayzata hockey players extended far beyond the rink.
The effort brings together two long-running Wayzata stories: a family whose roots here stretch back to the earliest days of settlement, and a hockey tradition built by adults who gave their time to generations of local children. For Shaver, those stories have ultimately converged at Klapprich Field, where he hopes a future generation that never knew Paul Klapprich will nevertheless understand something about the man — and the community — that helped shape those who came before them.
A Wayzata Winter Tradition
On a winter evening, when Tom Shaver is heading west on Wayzata Boulevard, there is a familiar sight that still catches his attention: the lights glowing over the outdoor rink at Klapprich Field. For Shaver, who grew up playing there, it remains one of those unmistakably Wayzata scenes — skaters moving across the ice, the rink illuminated against the winter sky and another generation discovering the same place where he spent countless hours as a boy.
Decades later, Shaver hasn’t entirely left those days behind. He still plays hockey and will occasionally head down to Klapprich for a pickup game. Sometimes he simply arrives at the boards while younger players are skating, only to be invited onto the ice and told which side to join. It is an informal tradition that has endured for generations: show up, divide the teams and play.
For Shaver, Klapprich Field is more than an outdoor rink. It is part of the landscape of his childhood and part of the story of Wayzata itself — a place where he learned hockey, made friendships and absorbed lessons that stayed with him long after the skates came off.
And it is ultimately why, more than half a century later, Shaver is helping lead an effort to make sure one of the men who helped create that experience for him and countless others — Coach Paul Klapprich — is remembered there permanently.
The Shavers’ Deep Roots on Lake Minnetonka
To understand why Klapprich Park carries so much meaning for Tom Shaver, it helps to go back considerably further than his own childhood.
The Shaver family’s connection to the Lake Minnetonka area reaches to the opening years of European-American settlement. James Shaver Jr. came to the Minnetonka Mills area in 1852, where he lived in an early claim and helped with construction of the dam and sawmill that became the center of the new settlement. Later that year, his wife, Sarah Chowen Shaver, and their son joined him. Historian Ellen Wilson Meyer records their arrival on Nov. 8, 1852, describing the Shavers as the first family to settle in the Minnetonka district.
The 1954 centennial history, The Story of Wayzata describes James Shaver as helping establish the first sawmill in the Minnetonka area and identifies Sarah Shaver as the first white woman in the Minnetonka colony. The mill produced lumber needed by the rapidly developing settlement at St. Anthony Falls, while Minnetonka Mills became an early center of activity for families beginning to establish themselves around the lake.
More than 170 years later, that connection has never entirely been broken. Generations of the family remained in and around Wayzata, eventually leaving their mark not only through business and civic life, but in the names, places and stories that became part of the community itself.
A Family That Stayed
The Shaver family’s connection to Wayzata did not end with those first generations. Over time, the family became part of the civic and business life of the community as well.
Tom’s grandfather, Craig Shaver Sr., served as mayor of Wayzata. Ellen Wilson Meyer’s Happenings Around Wayzata identifies C.H. Shaver as mayor in 1947, when the community was debating whether to establish a municipal liquor operation.
The family name also became familiar in local business. In July 1952, Dickey & Milbert, an oil business in Wayzata, became Dickey & Shaver, Inc., with Craig Shaver joining the company as vice president.
Bill Milbert, Doris DeCamp, Will Dickey.
Image Courtesy History of Wayzata, Ellen Wilson Meyer.
Tom grew up around that family business. He remembers the company’s oil tanks, its filling stations and pumping gas himself as a boy. He also remembers another branch of the family operating Shaver’s Hardware on Lake Street, with its wood floors, dog and rows of steel bins — small details from a Wayzata that looked considerably different from the city today.
Perhaps the most tangible connection to that family history is the house where Tom lives today on Grove. Tom said his grandparents owned the house for about 55 years. When they decided to move to a condominium, they worked their way through the family looking for someone interested in buying it.
Tom, then about 30 years old, eventually got his chance.
“I was I think maybe 12 or 14th in line and 30 years old at the time and said I’ll do it,” Shaver recalled.
He and his wife, Cristen, went on to raise their three children in the house, directly across from Shaver Park. Tom has now owned it for more than 30 years.
For a family whose Lake Minnetonka story began in the 1850s, there is something fitting about that continuity. Generations changed, businesses came and went and Wayzata grew around them, but the Shavers remained connected to the community — and Tom eventually raised another generation within sight of a park carrying the family name.
Where Hockey Took Hold
For Tom Shaver, Wayzata was also where he learned to play hockey — and much of that education happened outdoors at Klapprich Park.
Shaver remembers spending long winter days there as a boy, when pickup hockey required little organization. Kids arrived at the rink, tossed their sticks together, divided into teams and played. If the teams were uneven, they adjusted. Then they kept playing, often for hours.
There were organized teams and coaches, of course, but Shaver believes something important happened during those unstructured hours on the ice. Young players learned skills simply by playing, but they also learned how to organize a game, include one another, settle disagreements and make things work without an adult directing every moment.
Klapprich Park was built for exactly that kind of community recreation. Local histories describe it as a center of Wayzata youth activity, with hockey, skating, baseball and other programs drawing generations of children to the park. During Shaver’s childhood, much of youth hockey was still played outdoors, and Klapprich became one of the places where his own connection to the game took hold.
The Klapprich name already carried its own history. Paul’s father Edmund F. “Ed” Klapprich helped develop the recreation area beginning in the 1940’s and in 1955 the Wayzata City Council officially named it Klapprich Field in his honor. Paul was part of the next generation, playing on Wayzata’s inaugural hockey team before later coaching young players including Shaver.
Shaver’s connection to the Klapprich family extended beyond Paul. Growing up in Wayzata hockey, he played alongside members of the next generation, including Kurt, Cookie and Kevin Klapprich. Shaver said part of the motivation for honoring Paul is the broader legacy of the Klapprich family itself — generations of one family remaining deeply engaged in Wayzata, its hockey community and the lives of young people. In Shaver’s view, that kind of sustained family involvement across generations has become increasingly rare, making the Klapprich story especially worthy of recognition.
That connection has lasted. Shaver still plays hockey and occasionally returns to Klapprich for pickup games. He described showing up at the boards while younger players are already skating and, before long, being waved onto the ice and assigned to a side — essentially the same informal ritual he remembers from childhood.
It was within that world of outdoor hockey that another important figure entered Shaver’s life: Paul Klapprich, one of his early youth coaches and a man whose influence Shaver would come to appreciate more fully many years later.
Hockey continued into the next generation of the Shaver family. Tom and Cristen Shaver’s daughter, Sophia Shaver Kunin, starred at Wayzata High School before playing four seasons at the University of Wisconsin. She finished her Badgers career with 80 points, earned All-WCHA honors and was named captain of Wisconsin’s 2018-19 team.
Her college career ended with a storybook moment: Shaver scored the game-winning goal in Wisconsin’s 2-0 victory over Minnesota in the 2019 NCAA championship game. Her hockey career continued professionally, first with the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association, where she won the 2023 Secret Cup with Team Harvey’s, and then with Minnesota in the inaugural season of the Professional Women’s Hockey League. In 2024, Kunin helped Minnesota capture the league’s first Walter Cup before announcing her retirement from professional hockey that June.
The arc from Tom’s childhood days playing outdoors at Klapprich Field to his daughter captaining a national championship team and ultimately becoming a professional champion adds another generation to a family story closely tied to hockey in Wayzata.
Coach Paul
Among the adults who shaped Tom Shaver’s early years in hockey was Paul Klapprich.
Image courtesy City of Wayzata Facebook post.
Paul coached Shaver at the Squirt level, roughly fourth and fifth grade, when much of Wayzata youth hockey was still played outdoors. Looking back, Shaver remembers Klapprich less for wins or systems than for the way he treated the young players entrusted to him.
“Paul just cared so deeply about each of the individual kids,” Shaver said.
One memory in particular has stayed with him for more than five decades. Traveling-team tryouts required coaches to make cuts, and Shaver remembers Klapprich becoming emotional as the final roster was discussed. He knew that for every child who made the team, another would be going home disappointed.
Shaver remembers being struck by the sight of a grown man who cared enough about a group of young hockey players that telling some of them they had not made the team brought him to tears.
That compassion was part of a larger lesson. Klapprich taught hockey, but Shaver remembers him also teaching young players how to approach the game, how to be part of a team and, perhaps most importantly, how much an adult could matter in the life of a child.
Those lessons stayed with Shaver long after his Squirt years were over.
The Influence of a Coach
As Shaver grew older, he came to understand Paul Klapprich’s influence in a different way.
Hockey remained part of his life, and Shaver eventually became a coach himself. With that experience came a greater appreciation for the adults who had invested their time in him when he was young — often without knowing whether the lessons they were teaching would matter a year later, much less decades later.
Shaver can point to coaches who changed the direction of his own life. As a young man uncertain about what would come after high school, one coach took enough interest in him to contact a friend at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls and encourage him to take a look at Shaver as a hockey player. Shaver believes that intervention helped put him on the path to college. Years later, he wrote the coach a letter explaining the impact that moment had made on his life.
That experience gave Shaver a perspective he did not necessarily have as a boy at Klapprich Field: young athletes can carry seemingly small moments with them for the rest of their lives, even when the adults responsible for those moments never know the influence they had.
Paul Klapprich was one of those adults.
The lessons Shaver remembers from Paul — caring about every player, teaching responsibility on the ice and sharing his enthusiasm for hockey — helped deepen Shaver’s own connection to the game. More than 50 years later, those memories remain vivid.
The fundraiser now being organized in Paul’s honor describes that influence as something that continued well beyond one generation of hockey players. It says Paul’s generosity and care inspired his players and that those lessons continued through the lives they went on to lead.
For Shaver, that may be the larger lesson of coaching: the person standing behind the bench does not always get to see where his influence ultimately goes. Sometimes it takes decades — and another generation becoming coaches, parents and community members themselves — to understand what was passed along.
From an Idea to a Statue
The idea of honoring Paul Klapprich began simply.
Ed Turnquist, a longtime friend and former hockey teammate of Shaver’s, approached him with the thought that they should do something to recognize their former coach. Turnquist suggested a plaque.
Shaver liked the idea, but there was one problem: there was already a plaque at Klapprich Field.
“What about a statue?” Shaver recalled suggesting.
Turnquist agreed, and what had begun as a conversation between two former players started to take shape as a much larger project.
Shaver began exploring what it would take to commission a life-size sculpture. Through friends and business relationships, he was familiar with other commemorative sculptures and eventually approached a sculptor about the idea. He provided photographs of Paul Klapprich, and preliminary sketches followed.
But creating the statue was only part of the challenge. Placing it at Klapprich Field meant putting privately funded artwork in a public park, requiring the proposal to work its way through the City of Wayzata’s review process.
Shaver brought the concept forward through City discussions and workshops and later through the City’s arts review process. He had submitted an application before the arts committee was formed, then brought the proposal through the new committee as well. Shaver described the process as lengthy, but said the project ultimately received full support.
The result is a plan to place a statue of Paul Klapprich at the entrance to Klapprich Field — returning the former coach, in a sense, to the place where generations of Wayzata children learned to skate, play hockey and become part of a team. According to the project’s fundraiser, the City has approved both the statue and its proposed location.
Turning the Tribute Into Reality
With the City approval process complete, the effort has now moved into its public fundraising phase.
The plan calls for a statue of Paul Klapprich to be placed at the entrance to Klapprich Field, on the southwest corner along Highway 12. Organizers estimate the total project cost at between $75,000 and $100,000. According to the fundraising page, the City of Wayzata has approved both the statue and its proposed location; organizers are asking the City only for assistance with site preparation and construction of the pedestal.
To support the project, organizers established the Coach Klapprich Tribute Fund, which received federal tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) effective May 13, 2026. The IRS determination identifies the organization as a private operating foundation, allowing donors to make tax-deductible contributions to the effort.
A GoFundMe organized by Ed Turnquist has become the public face of the campaign. At the time the fundraising page was captured, the effort had raised $17,475 from 33 donations toward a $100,000 goal.
For Shaver, Turnquist and others involved, however, the project is about more than commissioning a piece of public art. It is an effort by former players to permanently recognize a coach whose influence extended well beyond the rink.
If the fundraising effort succeeds, generations who never knew Paul Klapprich will still encounter him at the place most closely associated with the hockey community he helped shape — standing at the entrance to Klapprich Field, welcoming another generation onto the ice.
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