Joel Bigelow honored with procession of subcontractors

(ABC 6 News) – Family and friends of Joel Bigelow honored him with a subcontractor salute parade in Kasson Wednesday afternoon.

Hundreds of subcontractors and other local businesses and law enforcement drove through Kasson, ending at Community Celebration Church where Bigelow’s wake was held afterward.

Bigelow was well-known in southeast Minnesota for founding Bigelow Homes in 1983 and has touched many with the houses he built and the jobs he provided.

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"Cement trucks and lumber trucks and siding trucks and plumbers and painters, electricians, realtors, bankers. It’s awesome. It’s an eclectic crowd," Joel’s nephew Pat Bigelow said.

Family members said Bigelow is leaving a family legacy behind with four kids, 12 grandkids, and many brothers and sisters.

"They’re his friends and they’re here to pay their last respects. It might be people that wouldn’t have normally gone to the funeral or the visitation but this is a way that they can pay their last respects to Joel," Joel’s niece Jill Bigelow-Shea said. "He had a unique way of making everyone feel special and like they were his friend. These are his friends and they all showed up to honor his memory."

Bigelow died on Friday from injuries sustained in a motorcycle crash near Wasioja, MN.