Pathfinder Award winners keep contributing

By Michael Lagerquist

Since 1986, the Greater Mankato Pathfinder Awards have been awarded to individuals or organizations that, in the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., are initiators or action takers in the struggle for equal treatment, human rights and nonviolence.

The Young Pathfinder Award was added in 2002 to recognize the commitment and courage displayed by young people to achieve fair and equal treatment for all, healthy communities and peaceful resolution to conflicts.

In 2003, the first Business Pathfinder Award was presented. This award recognizes area businesses that strive for equal treatment, human rights and nonviolence in the workplace.

Former Mankato Public Schools Supt. Ed Waltman is listed as the 2006 winner of the Greater Mankato Pathfinder Award. Awarded to him for the creation of the Greater Mankato Diversity Council, Waltman was quick to recognize the support he received from the Mankato Area School Board, Minnesota State University, the city managers and elected officials.

It was at an annual conference of the Minnesota School Boards Association that he and Jodi Sapp, School Board member, attended George Thompson’s presentation on the creation of Rochester’s Diversity Council.

“After attending George’s presentation, both Jodi and I felt that it was just what our community needed to be proactive in a time in which our area’s population was changing,” Waltman said. The idea got support at the monthly meeting with city managers and college presidents, and soon former Mankato East High School Assistant Principal Mary Lou Kudela was selected as the first Diversity Council education director.

Interestingly, Kudela had received the Pathfinder Award in 2004. At East High School she worked with student groups to establish a student-led diversity initiative in schools, she said. She still facilitates Respect Curriculum in area schools and calls herself a cheerleader for current Greater Mankato Diversity Council leadership.

In 2012, the Pathfinder Award went to Wilbur NeuschwanderFrink for her work in Minnesota’s self-advocacy movement, a civil rights movement for people with developmental/intellectual disabilities. It had a profound effect on her work.

“It came at a pivotal moment in my career,” she said. “I was already in the process of discerning whether or not to start a nonprofit for the theater work.” Within a few years, she had laid the foundational work to start that nonprofit, Open Arts Minnesota.

She has been going full blast since then. She has participated in three Advocating Change Together Olmstead Academies and Community Integration Projects; helped create a third inclusive theater group in Fairmont, Aktion Club Theatre of Fairmont; completed a three-year certification program in spiritual deepening for global transformation offered by The Christine Center in Wisconsin; helped design and fundraise for the Fallenstein Playground in North Mankato; and joined the board of the Miracle League of North Mankato.

Her awards include the Binger/ McKnight Unsung Hero Award, the Service to Mankind Award, Kiwanis Division Star Award, Irving Martin Professional of the Year Award and a Community Peace-Maker Award from the Kessel Institute.

Neuschwander-Frink said her work in self-advocacy continues.

“I am most grateful for all of the people involved in self-advocacy who shared their tender stories with me. These stories shaped the work I do and shaped me as an ally.”

Someone who found her pathfinder skills at an early age was Lauren Senden, Youth Pathfinder Award winner in 2018. From 2007, when she was a kindergartener, until 2018, Sanden spent Saturdays of her summer break running a treat stand at the end of her driveway.

“Over time, we raised $19,130 for child hunger relief, primarily through the BackPack Food Program,” she said. Since 2018, when she graduated from high school, the effort has been continued by other young women in the community.

In addition, in 2017-2018 she performed three free-will music concerts that raised $8,700 for BackPack Food Program, Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals and Partners for Affordable Housing. Through her church, she also helped support the Page Education Foundation based in Minneapolis.

She plans to graduate from Baldwin Wallace University in the spring with a bachelor’s of music in music theater. Next, New York City will benefit from her music and philanthropy.

“I am forever grateful for the honor of the Young Pathfinder

Award,” she said. “I have received recognition for my singing in the past, but this award I hold most dear because of who Dr. King was and the purposes of the award.”

Dan and Kirstin Cronn-Mills used the election of Donald Trump as president in 2016 as a launching point for creating the Ally Network of MN, which is now called the Solidarity Network of MN and has nearly 1,400 online members.

They were honored with the Pathfinder Award in 2019.

“The Network was started to support all those left behind in Trump’s version of America — women, people of color, the LGBT community, immigrants,” Dan Cronn-Mills said.

“We hold the words of Rep. John Lewis as our guiding philosophy: ‘When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation, a mission, a mandate to do something about it.’”

He said the Network’s mission has four parts: share events and opportunities to be in solidarity with communities who need support; share educational information; share good examples of solidarity; and encourage respectful discussions of how to be in solidarity with others.

“We all have an obligation to support and listen to marginalized communities, to contribute to dismantling of systems of oppression, and to encourage people with privilege to put that privilege to good use,” he said.

Among the Business Pathfinder Award winners have been Mankato Ford (now Harrison Ford) in 2003; Mayo Clinic Health System in 2005; Mankato Clinic in 2007; Eide Bailly in 2008; Coughlan Companies in 2009; The Coffee Hag in 2010; The Free Press in 2011; Lloyd Management in 2012; MRCI Workforce Center in 2016; and Cambria in 2018. MM