Portraits 2016 by Waseca County News

Portraits 2016

Pillars of Our Communities

Celebrating those whose contributions will keep Steele County strong for years to come

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Friday, March 18, 2016

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

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Welcome Portraits in Steele 2016: Pillars of Our Communities

Inside these 92 pages, you will find rich, colorful stories about pillars of our communities — individuals, and in some cases families, whose contributions have made Steele County strong and will keep it strong for years to come. The people featured here stretch across the spectrum of life here in Steele County — from those in the business community to those in agriculture to those in public life to those in the arts to those who are known for the community services they provide. Some of the faces and the names will be familiar; others

may be new to you. But each person profiled here has contributed something of his or her time, talents or resources to make Steele County a wonderful place to live. We are all made the richer in our lives because of these individuals. This annual publication is a product of the Owatonna People’s Press staff, covering weeks

and months of photography, interviewing, writing, designing and creative advertising efforts. We hope you enjoy Portraits 2016 for weeks and months to come as we celebrate the pillars of our communities. — Julie Frazier Publisher

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Contents

Mike and Tammi Ferch .....................................................................................4 Dan Deml .................................................................................................................8 Dave Albrecht ........................................................................................................12 Carol Winter.............................................................................................................18 Jerry Deetz ...............................................................................................................22 Bruce and BJ Busho ............................................................................................26 Steve Stansberry ..................................................................................................30 Harvey and Nancy Farr .....................................................................................38 Stephanie Kibler ...................................................................................................42 Mary Kay Feltes .....................................................................................................47 Matt Kottke ..............................................................................................................52 Laura Resler .............................................................................................................58 Dennis Meillier.......................................................................................................65 Berlyn Staska...........................................................................................................70 Cheri Krejci ...............................................................................................................76 Shelley Fitzgerald.................................................................................................82 Andy Michaletz .....................................................................................................86

Portraits 2016

Pillars of Our Communities

Celebrating those whose contributions will keep Steele County strong for years to come

Portraits 2016 A special project of

Owatonna.com Publisher Julie Frazier Advertising Director Ginny Bergerson Managing Editor Jeffrey Jackson Media Specialists Diane Gengler, Per Kvalsten, Jennifer Sorensen, Autumn Van Ravenhorst, Elizabeth Williams Advertising Design Lauren Barber, Nikkie Gilmore, Keeley Krebsbach, Jenine Kubista, Kelly Kubista Page Design Tony Borreson Cover Design Kate Townsend-Noet Contributing Writers/Photographers Kim Hyatt, Jeffrey Jackson, William Morris, Ashley Stewart Portraits 2016 is distributed to subscribers and readers of the Owatonna People’s Press at no additional charge, and is available at the front counter of the Owatonna People’s Press. All Rights Reserved © 2016

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Advertiser Index

A. J. Lysne Contracting Corporation .................... 91 A Touch of Charm ................................................... 75 Abraham Consulting Technologies....................... 64 Ag Power Enterprises, Inc. ..................................... 31 Al-Corn Clean Fuel ................................................. 31 Alexander Lumber .................................................. 85 Attorneys .................................................................. 48 B to Z Hardware & Rental ...................................... 75 Berkshire Hathaway Home Solutions Advantage Real Estate ............................... Inside Front Cover Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Southern MN ............35 Blooming Prairie Chamber ....................................74 Blooming Prairie Public Utilities ..........................75 Blooming Prairie Servicemen’s Club.....................74 Budget Blinds ...........................................................51 Budget Tax Solutions, Inc. ......................................77 Cash Wise Foods .....................................................89 Cedar Travel .............................................................23 Central Farm Service ..............................................27 Child Care & Preschool ..........................................29 Churches ............................................................. 60-61 City Auto Glass ........................................................15 City of Owatonna ....................................................73 Clifton Larson Allen................................................43 Clubs & Organizations............................................79 Cole’s Electric .............................................................5 Comfort Inn .............................................................11 Community Education ...........................................71 Country Goods ........................................................19 Crown Food Packaging USA .................................53 Cumberland’s Northwest Trappers Supply, Inc. ..55 Cybex ..........................................................................7 Dairy Queen of Blooming Prairie ......................... 74 Darrick’s Preferred Auto ......................................... 67 Dean’s Smoke Shack ................................................ 62 Dean’s Westside Towing.......................................... 41 Deml Heating & Air Conditioning ....................... 49 Dragon’s Lair ............................................................ 25 Dream Day Bridals by Marcia................................ 49 Eagle Prairie Insurance ........................................... 75 Ellendale Muni......................................................... 77 Ecumen Brooks & Countryside............................. 49 Ellis Body Shop Inc ................................................. 85 Fareway Food Stores ............................................... 80 Farmers & Merchants Bank ....................................45 Federated Insurance .................................Back Cover Fireplace Connection ...............................................11 Frontier Communications.......................................75

Gandy .........................................................................45 Garlick’s Water Processing ......................................15 Geneva Bar & Grill ...................................................62 George’s of Geneva Supper Club ............................62 Heartland Animal Hospital .....................................70 Heather Haus Apartments.......................................75 Holland Family Dental ............................................25 Holman Agency Inc .................................................49 Home Sellers of Minnesota, Inc. ............................75 Independent School District 761............................71 Insurance .............................................................32-33 J-C Press.....................................................................46 Jaguar Communications ..........................................92 Jerry’s Owatonna Auto Sales ...................................53 Joe’s Repair Service, Inc. ..........................................75 Josten’s ........................................................................17 Kappy’s Collision Center .........................................27 Kernel Restaurant .....................................................15 Kid’s Korner Educare ...............................................35 KIK Graphics & Printing .........................................74 Koda Living Community........................................ 13 Koda Rehabilitation ................................................ 15 Kottke Jewelers..........................................................55 Krejci Ford .................................................................89 Lerberg’s Foods .........................................................77 Loken Excavation & Drainage ................................62 Looks Unlimited/Haute Skin Spa & Tanning .......37 Ludewig Financial & Mages Insurance..................17 Main Street Dental Clinics ......................................80 Manke’s Outdoor Equipment & Appliances .........80 Mark’s Repair ............................................................21 McCabe Motors & Rental ......................................... 9 Modern Metal Products ..........................................27 Morehouse Place.......................................................57 Morton Buildings ...................................................... 5 N & B Ground Maintenance ......Inside Front Cover New York Life............................................................ 75 Noble RV ...................................... Inside Back Cover Northland Farm Systems, Inc. ................................39 Northrop Oftedahl House .......................................64 Owatonna Bus Company ........................................67 Owatonna Eagles ......................................................90 Owatonna Floor Covering ......................................21 Owatonna Foundation .............................................57 Owatonna Granite & Monument ...........................43 Owatonna Groundsmasters ....................................57 Owatonna Heating & Cooling ................................13 Owatonna Hospital ..................................................43

Owatonna Physical Therapy Center.......................41 Owatonna People’s Press..........................................70 Owatonna R.V. Services...........................................11 Paffrath Jewelers .........................................................7 Park Place/A Koda Living Community ................. 17 Pearson.......................................................................17 Prairie Manor Care Center......................................75 R & R Insurance Agency .........................................75 Randall’s License Bureau .........................................45 Realife Cooperative ..................................................64 Riverland Community College ...............................59 Salinas Auto Repair ..................................................75 Salon-e-clips ..............................................................89 Sette Sports Center .................................................... 9 South Central Human Relations Center ...............35 South Country Health Alliance ..............................64 Specialty Personnel Services ...................................85 Spherion Staffing Services .......................................62 Steele County Free Fair ............................................19 Steele County Historical Society ............................25 Steele County Landfill ..............................................46 Steele County Public Health ...................................91 Steele-Waseca Cooperative Electric .......................91 Steve’s Meat Market ..................................................77 Stewart Sanitation.....................................................90 Sweet Towing & Repair ............................................51 Terry’s at Bunkie’s Grill & Lanes .............................75 The Bakery.................................................................74 The Kitchen ...............................................................41 Timber Lodge Steakhouse .......................................35 Tonna Taxi .................................................................21 Travel Headquarters .................................................51 Tri M Graphics........................................................... 9 TT Motorcycles........................................................ 75 V.F.W. Post #3723......................................................67 Vandal’s Family Market............................................74 Wells Federal Bank ...................................................23 Wencl Accounting & Tax Service ...........................53 Wenger Corporation ................................................31 Worlein Funeral Homes ..........................................75

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In this October 2015 file photo, Mike and Tammi Ferch accept the Community Leadership Live United Award for individuals from United Way of Steele County. Executive director Kim Schaufenbuel stands in the background. (Press file photo)

Mike and Tammi Ferch

Sweet Sounds

By KIM HYATT

khyatt@owatonna.com

Music is the tie that binds Owatonnans Mike and Tammi Ferch. From when the couple first met in college — Mike joined the band Tammi was part of — to when they moved to Owatonna where they started not only a family and successful careers, but made an indelible mark on the music scene. The Ferches’ contributions to the community span countless performances with their band, The Bad Tangerines, and an array of church choirs. Their repertoire list too lengthy to name every concert or musical fundraiser put on by the two. In fact, when they first moved to Owatonna and started attending Associated Church, their musical involvement and interest in contemporary worship music is what

sparked a desire within the community to create a more modern house of worship, Daybreak Community Church. Yeah, not many people can claim that their love of music led to the construction of one of Owatonna’s largest churches in 1997 and later an entire congregation. But that’s just how much the two musicians love performing and sharing that love of music with others. So when trying to find a theme or common thread of Mike and Tammi Ferch’s life, music rings loud and clear. And as Confucius once put it, “Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without,” and that pleasure is apparent on the Ferches’ faces and overall personality. Tammi and Mike Ferch cannot do without music. It is what moves them, inspires them, and what provides them with an outlet in which they are able to serve others with something as simple, yet powerful, as sound. Listen.

See FERCH on page 5

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Mike and Tammi Ferch

Sweet Sounds

By KIM HYATT

khyatt@owatonna.com

See FERCH on page 5

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FERCH from page 4 The story of Mike and Tammi’s love for each other and music, too, produces that kind of pleasure Confucius describes. Though words fall short in that description, even musicians like Hans Christian Andersen said that’s ordinary in our brief, beautiful human existence. “When words fail,” Andersen said, “music speaks.”

Love at first sound

The 54-year-old musicians met through music, but their lives were already all about playing and performing prior to crossing paths at Mankato State University in 1983. Mike grew up in Waseca and his first experience on stage was when he co-emceed the Sadie Hawkins talent show. “I still remember my best friend

Tom and I kind of coming up with some funny stuff and the first time people laughed at it I thought, ‘Wow, this is fun,’” he said. And he still thinks it’s fun being on stage now after all these years later, whether he is singing or still trying to crack a few jokes while hosting an event in Owatonna. “You learn in life you can get up and deliver a message and influence them to do things like give money. That’s a great life skill,” Mike said, mainly referencing fundraisers that he and his wife have put on, such as the Give Hope concert. His grandfather, Fritz Olson, was a musician who could play multiple instruments. Olson, of course, taught his two sons, Steve and Howard, to play the drums and “how to love music,” Mike said. That same love was

passed on to him. “That’s when I first learned to play the drums from them. I still remember my Uncle Steve’s red, sparkly drum in his room. The moment I saw it I fell in love with the idea of drumming,” he said. Throughout school Mike played drums and, similar to his reputation here, he was best known for his involvement in music. “I didn’t do sports, but music was my first love,” he said. As for Tammi, she said, “If I was in front of people, I was singing.” But that experience performing has carried over skills into her professional life at Federated Insurance, where she has worked for 28 years. “I couldn’t conduct meetings and stand in front of staff. It really has helped me in that way,” she said.

See FERCH on page 6

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Mike and Tammi Ferch said their vows on August 9, 1985 in Garden City, Minnesota at Garden City Christian Church. (Submitted photo)

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Tammi’s love of music comes from her grandmother, Irene Thurston. She was a shy girl from Madelia, Minnesota with four brothers. “Apparently I was known for humming and singing,” she said. “My brothers would get mad for singing in my room at night.” While her brothers were busy being boys on the Blue Earth County pig farm, grandma Thurston made Tammi into a performer. “She had talent shows and she would stick me in front of church and make me sing a solo,” she said. This continued for years. When Tammi was 17, for example, Blue Earth crowned her 1979 Pork Princess — and yes, she still has the sash to prove it. “I did not want to do it, but of course grandma Thurston did,” she said. “I pull [the sash] out every National Pig Day, March 1, and serve pig cookies and wear the sash at work.” Tammi was totally fine showing pigs at the county fair, but when competing for the royal, and rural, title she was most scared about having to give a speech. So to make it less scary for Tammi, her aunt helped write the speech in such a way so that she could sing it. No sweat. Fast-forward through the awkward, experimental, and obviously musical high school years to college and both Mike and Tammi are in the music programs at Mankato State University. Tammi was asked to audition for the Ellis Street Singers, an ensemble at MSU that lasted 25 years, and Mike was brought in to be the drummer. “We had a really horrible drummer prior to Mike, so I remember,” she said. But if that wasn’t kismet enough, Mike wasn’t even going to school for music. He was studying pre-engineering and, “in a fluke incident on a rainy day,” he said that on his was to class he cut through the performing arts

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

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FERCH from page 5

In this March 2015 file photo The Bad Tangerines, featuring Tammi Ferch (center) and Mike Ferch (playing the drum), perform onstage at The Little Theatre of Owatonna during the Saturday afternoon performance of the Hometown Sampler Concert Series. Also featured in the group are, from the left, Mark Sebring, Jodie DeKam and Tim Van Gelder. (Press file photo)

building. If not for the rain that day, Mike may never of noticed the auditions posters to join the ensemble. “We met through that group and ended up getting married in Mankato,” Mike said. “What really brought us together was a rainy day — and a really bad drummer — leading to our path’s crossing.”

Balancing bands, giving back

It was in Mankato where their first child, Erin, was born after they met in the band. Meanwhile, both Mike and Tammi were still in school and performing with other groups on the weekends. In his last college course, Mike met Rufus Sanders of the Owatonna-based

Wenger Corporation. As fate had it, he was hired in July 1988. Tammi, too, started working in Owatonna in ’88 at Federated Insurance Companies, and that’s where they’ve both been ever since. They moved to Owatonna, only at the time they didn’t realize how prevalent performing arts were within the community. It didn’t take long for them to catch on, better yet, to fit right in. “Because music had been such a big factor in not only who we were and what we did growing up, but how we met, it’s really what also brought us to Owatonna,” Mike said, adding that his career at Wenger has been a great fit where he gets to help music educators teach students everyday.

See FERCH on page 7

Though Tammy has a minor in music, she majored in social work to have a career “working with people,” but she still found time for music. The two kept playing in weekend bands — Tammi was part of Midway, Mike was in Small Change and then Main Street — and eventually they got in the same band, Silver Blue, based in Mankato. But Blue went on tour fulltime, so the Ferches quit. But it’s not all bad. When one band tries to go big, another band is about to begin. Mike and Tammi devoted their talents to a worship team at Associated Church. At the time when the Ferches first joined the congregation, the pastor at the time was looking into starting a contemporary service and reached out

to the musicians. “A number of us formed this worship band and started doing contemporary services in fellowship hall [and] it grew to the point where it became its own service,” Tammi said. Growth continued for the contemporary-style of worship and eventually broke away from Associate to become its own house of worship at Daybreak with just a 30-member congregation to start. Because there wasn’t a youth program for their three children — Ryan, Erin, and Libby — the Ferches eventually found their home at Trinity Lutheran Church, which also led them to one of their next “gigs.” Get a taste of The Bad Tangerines, a band featuring the Ferches and other Trinity members like Mark Sebring and Tim Van Gelder. Bad Tangerines were influential in the Hometown Sampler, a now-22year-old tradition in the community. Local musicians put on a show to benefit the Steele County Food Shelf. But that wasn’t where Mike and Tammi said “that’s good enough.” Instead, they went on to do even more musical events and fundraisers. “We just kept thinking we need an excuse to sing all these songs again,” Mike said. “We do it because we love music and we love to sing together.” So they approached the Music Boosters of Owatonna to start what is now widely known as the Give Hope concert. “The music program in Owatonna helped raise our children,” Tammi said. “We have the most amazing program and teachers in Owatonna,” Mike echoed. “We have been so blessed. Owatonna is known as a community with strong music tradition.” They organized and did most of the music the first year, but they wanted to have the faculty and students per-

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

FERCH from page 6 form, too, “because often students don’t get to hear them perform,” she said. Several thousand dollars were raised to support music education in Owatonna. In January 2015, the Ferches celebrated the sixth year anniversary of Give Hope, which is officially organized and put on by the Music Boosters of Owatonna. Throughout all those years, the music has remained the same: a mix of community, staff, and student performers. Only now the concert raises $12,000. It goes without saying that their children followed suit in singing. They started very young in elementary school and participated in band, orchestra, and choir. “So its really easy to for us to want to give back,” Tammi said. Now, all their children are married and musical. Still, every

Christmas Eve, the Ferches continue the tradition of having the whole family sing at Trinity. Mike and Tammi occasionally sing for weddings and funerals and things like that. Or they will get a call from a family organizing a fundraiser for someone battling cancer to pay for medical costs. They ask the Ferches to provide entertainment, and they oblige. “You get to do something fun that you love and help the cause along the way which is rewarding,” Mike said. Busy with their bands, both musicians still find time to direct children choirs and even venture to other concerts in the area. Sometimes even back to Mankato — where it all began — to see Mike’s uncle in the band. Reach reporter Kim Hyatt at 507-444-2376. Follow her on Twitter @OPPKimHyatt

Mike and Tammi Ferch with their grandchildren 10-week-old Sydney Ferch, and sisters Evelyn, 2, and Olivia, 4, Terres. (Submitted photo)

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Down on the Farm

Dan and Vicki Deml in their home located in southern Owatonna. The Demls have been married for nearly 40 years. (Ashley Stewart/People’s Press)

Dan Deml

By ASHLEY STEWART

astewart@owatonna.com

For Dan Deml, the decision to retire from the dairy business was a “no-brainer.” “I was 63 years old, and I wasn’t getting any younger,” he said. “It couldn’t last forever.” Still, one thing wasn’t easy for the small, registered Holstein herd farmer: selling the cows. “It’s still hard for it to happen,” he said. “You just knew it had to.” Deml’s career in the dairy business end-

ed in April 2014 with much to be proud of.

Becoming a dairy farmer

Deml’s interest in livestock, primarily cows, started at an early age. As the only child of George and Margaret Deml, he spent hours helping with chores on the farm. The farm — located 10 miles south of Owatonna — was purchased by George Deml in 1946 from his uncle. “It was very diversified,” Dan Deml said. “He had dairy cows, hogs, chickens and crops.”

Livestock, crops and tractors. Deml was interested in it all, but he gravitated toward the dairy business in 4-H, which took him to the Steele County Free Fair and the Minnesota State Fair for his dairy projects and judging. Throughout high school, Deml woke up each morning and returned each night to help his father with chores, like feeding the animals. That continued to be the case in college, too. After graduating in 1968 from Owatonna Marian High School, a parochial school that closed in the mid-1970s,

See DEML on page 9

Deml attended the University of Minnesota College of Agriculture on the St. Paul campus. “I had a car, so Friday afternoon after classes most weekends, especially in the spring and fall, I’d come home and help with farm work and field work and everything,” he said. “Then, Sunday night after chores were done, I’d get in the car and drive back to St. Paul for classes for the week.” In 1972, Deml returned to his parents’ farm with his eyes set on being a farmer himself.

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DEML from page 8 “There was nobody else to take it over,” he said. “I got done with college and came back home and kept doing what I had been doing before. I was just doing it full time now.” Deml would soon take over the homestead and the dairy farm he grew up on.

Meeting Vicki

“We were both Golden Gophers,” said Deml as he recalled when he met his wife of nearly 40 years. It was 42 years ago when Vicki Peterson of Owatonna started as a freshman at the University of Minnesota. “I didn’t know her at first,” Deml said. “I knew another girl through 4-H in Owatonna that I was giving rides back and forth from college, and Vicki was up there and didn’t have a ride home. They both lived in Bailey Hall, so she asked if I could give them

both a ride.” Deml’s and Vicki’s paths would cross more in the coming months outside of the occasional car rides to and from Owatonna. At a family Christmas party, Deml’s cousin, Joe Stransky, and his wife, Ev, invited him — and a date — over for a New Year’s Eve party. Deml didn’t have a date, so he decided to ask Vicki. “She agreed, so I picked her up and we went,” he said. “As the old saying goes that didn’t go too bad.” When the two returned to campus after break, Deml’s fraternity had a winter date party, so he called Vicki again. “One thing led to another and we started dating over the course of the spring, summer,” he said. That spring, Deml graduated from college and returned to Owatonna to farm,

while Vicki continued her education. “We didn’t split up or anything. We just weren’t too handy,” he said because of the distance. After Vicki graduated in 1974, she remained in the cities, where she had an apartment and worked at 3M until a general layoff in 1975. With a fashion merchandising degree, Vicki returned to Owatonna to work at Brett’s, a large department store in the Cedar Mall — now Federated Insurance’s A.T. Annexstad Building — on South Cedar Avenue. “It was a lot handier because I was confined to a dairy farm and she was in Owatonna,” Deml said. The couple was soon engaged with a wedding set for August 1976. “I didn’t want it right in the middle of fall field work or spring field work or anything,” he said. “That gave us six, seven months to get ready for it.”

See DEML on page 10

Dan Deml, with wife, Vicki, sons, Scott and Matt, and mother, Margaret Deml, in 2004 at a ceremony where his father, George Deml, was inducted posthumously into the Steele County Livestock Hall of Fame. (Submitted photo)

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DEML from page 9

I accepted,” he said. As the livestock director, Deml, also a member of the local Holstein board, was interested in combining the district Holstein show with the county fair’s open class show — something he had wanted to do for years but had little success. “I felt we could preserve [the district show], and it’d be a huge plus for the fair,” he said. When the two merged into an evening show the Saturday of the fair, the spectator volume increased significantly, and to this day, the district show remains a success at the fairgrounds. In 1998, Deml was selected as the fair board treasurer, something that had been done by Dick Reinhardt, a long-time fair board member, for decades. “Jim Harland, who was president at the time, called and asked me if I’d be the treasurer,” he recalls. “It was in November, and I told him I was too busy for it.” But Deml agreed to start and transfer the books onto the computer until he found someone else in the spring. “Jim’s still looking,” he said with a chuckle. In 2013, Deml was elected as the fair board president after James “Corky” Ebeling stepped down after a promotion within Owatonna Parks and Recreation. “Over the years, I’ve really enjoyed the sociability of the fair board and the people on there, Elmer, and the guys who came before him,” he said. “I have no idea how many directors I’ve served with over the last 30-some years, but I’ve enjoyed it all.”

Dan and Vicki married a week after the Steele County Free Fair and moved onto Deml’s childhood farm, while his parents moved to another farm. “The cows were there,” he said. “That’s what I was most interested in.”

Building a family, farm

Being the owner of a small Holstein dairy farm had some drawbacks: no days off, no weekends off and no holidays off. “You had to do it every time, all the time,” Deml said. His days revolved around his 35-cow herd. Between seven to eight hours of chores, like feeding, milking, bedding and cleaning had to be done every day in addition to the planting and harvesting of crops in the spring and fall. “If you weren’t going to be there, you had to make sure you had somebody else who could be there who was willing, able and qualified to do the chores, run the machinery,” he said. “There were not weekends off or paid vacations or anything like that.” It was a lifestyle Deml was born into and understood, and it was one Vicki and their children, Matt and Scott, lived. “It absolutely controlled your life, every day of what you did,” he said. But Deml wouldn’t have traded it. “As long as it was my dairy herd and it was my farm and I was doing what I wanted to do and enjoyed doing it, it was a part of the business I simply tolerated,” he said. “I can’t say I always liked it, but I tolerated it. The fact that I Recognizing a career lived with it and grew up with it probably made it tolerable. I don’t think it’s something I would’ve done had I been It was a Tuesday of celebration for the Steele County working for someone else.” Fair Board of Directors on Aug. 12, 2014, as it held a Deml entered the dairy business a decade before an ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Allan R. Radel Family Livestock Pavilion, a project that took years to replace agriculture crisis hit the United States. a barn that was destroyed in the winter of 2010 and two “A lot of young farmers my age ended up quitting farming because they weren’t able to continue with the others, and opened the 2014 Steele County Free Fair. And for Deml, there was even more to celebrate. economic times,” he said. But Deml survived. Surrounded by friends and family, he was inducted “I put in 40 years and reached retirement as a full-time into the Steele County Livestock Hall of Fame for his farmer,” he said. “I’m proud of that.” contributions to the dairy business. Joining ‘success’ “There’s no doubt about it, it’s a tremendous honor,” Dan Deml with his family at the wedding of his oldest son, Matt, in 2014. Matt Elmer Reseland, the secretary-manager of the Steele Deml now lives on the family homestead that Dan Deml grew up on and farmed Deml said. “It’s very satisfying not only to be recognized County Free Fair between 1995 and 2011, used to say, on for years. (Submitted photo) but to be appreciated by the other people in the business.” “Everybody wants to be a part of something successful,” But it meant even more to follow the footsteps of his Deml remembers of his long-time friend and mentor who father, George Deml, who was inducted into the hall of up and go to the lake on the weekends or a lot of other things that died in 2012. people in Owatonna, or non-livestock farmers, would typically do,” fame posthumously in 2004 — the recognition’s first year. And he couldn’t agree more. “If it hadn’t been for my mom and dad I probably wouldn’t have he said. “This was always my big social event of the year.” “Sometimes I’m overwhelmed by how successful the whole And in 1981, Deml was given the chance to play a bigger role been in the dairy business or the farming business the way I was,” thing can be,” said Deml, who has been the fair board president in the county’s largest social gathering when he was appointed to he said. “I have to give my parents a world of credit.” since 2013. Throughout Deml’s dairy career, he also received the Steele an unexpired fair board term after the livestock director resigned. Deml’s involvement in the fair started when he was a 10-yearCounty Dairy Association Lifetime Dairy Achievement Award in “I still remember it quite clearly,” he said. old showing a hog for his first 4-H project, and it continued to be a It was January and Deml had just returned home after hernia 2014, the Owatonna Jaycees Outstanding Young Farmer Award vacation of sorts for him when he became a full-time dairy farmer surgery when Louie Allgeyer, fair secretary-manager at the time, in 1983, the Typical Leader Award in 1997 after serving as a 4-H in the early 1970s. leader for 10 years, and the Progressive Breeder Registry Award as called. “When you milk cows and have a dairy farm, you don’t pack “He said the fair board wanted to appoint me to the board, so a member of Holstein USA for 41 years.

See DEML on page 11

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

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DEML from page 10

Dan Deml, fair board president, speaks at the Steele County Free Fair in August 2014 during a ceremony dedicating the Allan R. Radel Family Livestock Pavilion. Deml was elected fair board president in 2013. (Ashley Stewart/People’s Press)

Deml said being inducted into the Livestock Hall of Fame was “an extremely gratifying way” to end his dairy career, while noting the timing was more coincidental. He received the recognition just four months after retiring from dairy farming. “I always enjoyed working with the cows,” he said. “I also enjoyed the sociability of the organizations that went along with the dairy business.” Hanging it up Deml sold the majority of his Holstein herd by the fall of 2013, and the following spring, the rest were gone and his milking days were over after more than four decades. And in July 2014, Deml and his wife traded their farmhouse for a single-story house on the south side of town. “It’s a nice house and a nice neighborhood,” he said. “We’re happy here.” But Deml certainly hasn’t left farming behind. “I’m still crop farming [with my son],” Deml said. “I’m virtually out there

every day up until spring planting, harvesting and part of all the field work that goes on.” Deml’s son, Matt, and daughter-inlaw moved into the family homestead in 2014 after they married, and with them, the Demls have a limited liability company, or LLC, which will eventually be transitioned to his son and daughter-inlaw in the future. “My son was very interested [in crop farming], he wanted to do it,” Deml said. “We were crop farming anyway. We simply retired from the dairy business.” The Demls farm nearly 900 acres of corn and beans within five miles of the family homestead. “Now that I’m no longer milking cows and no longer in the dairy business and still crop farming and still involved in the farm and involved in the fair...I’m still very satisfied with what I did and the lifestyle I’ve got now,” he said. Reach reporter Ashley Stewart at 444-2378 or follow her on Twitter.com @OPPashley

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Immersed Community Dave Albrecht

in the

By JEFFREY JACKSON

jjackson@owatonna.com

Even before the question was asked, Dave Albrecht was ready with the answer. “The answer is ‘yes,’” he said, a smile coming across lips. Yes, he admitted that, even though he’s Owatonna and has been here for nearly 10 years now; and even though he has immersed himself in the community, not only as president of Owatonna Hospital, but as a vice president of the board of directors for United Way of Steele County, as chairman of the board of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, as chair of the Riverland Community College Foundation Board, as a member of Owatonna school district’s Community Task Force, and as a member of the Owatonna Rotary Club; and even though he’s surrounded on nearly every side by diehard Minnesota Vikings fans, he himself is a Cheesehead through and through. “I am a Green Bay Packers fan,” he said with a shrug. But who can blame him? After all, until he moved to Owatonna in June of 2006 to become the hospital’s director of operations and finane, Albrecht had spent most of his — all of his childhood and the vast majority of his adult years — in Wisconsin, including time in Green Bay itself. Now, however, he is fully ensconced in the Owatonna, if not Minnesota itself, even if his blood runs Packer green and yellow.

A ‘recovering CPA’

Albrecht path to Owatonna — and even into the health care community itself — was a somewhat circuitous route. When he was young, he never even thought about the existence of hospital administration, let alone making it his profession. “I never knew there was an infrastructure to a hospital,” he said. Instead, he just thought hospitals were there to provide health care to those who were sick, and the business side just took In this December 2008 file photo, Dave Albrecht (left), then director of operations and finance for the Owatonna Hospital and Brent Ogne, project manager, give a tour of the new hospital that was then under construction. (Press file photo)

care of itself, if there even was a business side. And there was no reason as a child that he should have known that. Albrecht grew up in La Crosse, Wisconsin, the third of four children — all boys. “It was a great community,” he said. “I never appreciated it until I left.” With his mother still living there, Albrecht gets back to the community to see her. His father worked for a trust company, and his mother was a stay-at-home until he was about 8 or 9, when she took a parttime holiday job with J.C. Penney, a job that eventually became full-time. “All my wardrobe was from J.C. Penney,” he said. He played sports in high school, specifically basketball, which, given his height, comes as no surprise. “It was a great childhood,” he recalled. So great, in fact, that when he went to college, he didn’t go far from his childhood home, enrolling in the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. “When I started, I had no clue,” he said. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do.” The idea for his major and for his first job out of college came from a visit he had with his advisor. “He said I’d always have a job if I went into accounting,” Albrecht said. And so he did, first transferring to the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater whose accounting program, he said, was stronger. And right out of college he went into public accounting with a firm in Wausau, Wisconsin, a job he held for 6 1/2 years. “I enjoyed it,” he said. At the same time he couldn’t see himself in public accounting for his entire life. Even now he calls himself a “recovering CPA.” Still, he counts the experience as extremely beneficial to the eventual development of his career, especially since his broad and diverse clientele included a large number of businesses and organizations with ties to the health care industry — hospitals, nursing homes and the like for which he was doing audits.

See ALBRECHT on page 13

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ALBRECHT from page 12 The experience paid off. “I wasn’t looking for a new job,” he said. Yet he was approached by a recruiter, the comptroller for Bellin Health, based in Green Bay. They wanted him for the chief financial officer position. “It was a good stepping stone,” he said. Though he was confident that he knew the financial side of the business, it was the other side — the health care side — with which he was unfamiliar. So as he climbed the corporate ladder, his eyes fixed on eventually becoming the president of a hospital, he enrolled in an MBA program with the University of Colorado, which offered a specialty in health administration. The two-year program allowed him to do most of his work online, with just two weeks out of the semester spent at the Denver campus. The rest of the time, he spent working on the degree at nights, his eyes glued to the computer screen. In this January 2016 file photo, Dave Albrecht (center, holding the number 2) joins other board members of United Way of Steele County to announce how much the organization had raised in its annual fund drive. (Press file photo)

See ALBRECHT on page 14 OWNED & OPERATED BY STEELE COUNTY COMMUNITIES FOR LIFE

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“My wife and kids got to know the back of my head well,” he said. He graduated with his MBA in 2001, and eventually rose to the position of executive vice president for Bellin Health in Green Bay, where he led the operations of Bellin Hospital, including its employed primary care medical group and an affiliated HMO. Still, he was still trying to become a hospital president, and so left Bellin Health and Green Bay to become chief executive officer of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Huntingburg, Indiana, a small, struggling hospital that was, Albrecht said, going bankrupt and trying to stay afloat. Albrecht did not want to be at the hospital’s helm if and when it went down, so he started sending resumes out, including one to Allina Health, the company that operates Owatonna Hospital. It was then that he heard from Dorothy Erdmann, then president of Owatonna Hospital.

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ALBRECHT from page 13 Erdmann had worked for Bellin Health — and therefore with Albrecht — before coming to Owatonna. She told Albrecht that the hospital was in the initial stages of a building project and of entering a joint venture with Mayo Clinic. And she wondered if he would be interested in coming to Owatonna as the director of operations and finance and as one who would oversee the building project. He admits that the real attraction of the job was the new building project. “So I told Dorothy, ‘Yes, I’ll help you for a while,’” he said. He started in 2006, about the same time that Allina approved the capital — about $46 million of the $50 million price tag — to build the hospital, a process that would stretch out

over three years. “It seemed like it took forever,” he said. In the fall of 2006 — actually, on Albrecht’s birthday, Oct. 14 — the kickoff meetings were held, and for a full year, the hospital was being designed. It then took another two years for the building to be built. And Albrecht is proud of the results. “We often lose sight of how lucky we are to have this,” he said of the Owatonna Hospital. “We have the same technological capabilities here that they have up there at Abbott [Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis]. It’s a great building that works well, with a great infrastructure.” Another reason that Albrecht came to Owatonna when Erdmann asked him is that he

knew he would be working with Allina and that would give him an inside track to securing a president’s position with one of the hospitals in the Allina system. “I saw it as an opportunity with Allina,” he said. “The opportunity came right here.” In July of 2009, Erdmann stepped down from her role to become the president of ThedaCare Medical Center in Shawano, Wisconsin. With her departure, Albrecht was named interim president of the hospital that same month. By September, he had been named permanent president.

All in a day’s work

When Dave Albrecht stood on the stage of the Owatonna High School auditorium with

his dancing partner, Susie Hoopes, for their performance in July 2011’s chapter of “Dancing with Our Steele County Stars,” a fundraiser for Healthy Seniors of Steele County, he demonstrated how far he would go to be a part of the community and to do what he could to make Owatonna and Steele County a stronger and healthier place to live and work. Oh, he had been in front of people, and even performed, as a member of a competitive drum and bugle corps in La Crosse, where he had “seen the United States through a bus window,” and as a member of the band at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, where he met his future wife, Debbie, who also played in the band (she clarinet, he trombone).

See ALBRECHT on page 16 In this July 2011 file photo, Dave Albrecht and dancing partner Susie Hoopes perform a foxtrot to raise money for Healthy Seniors of Steele County in that year’s edition of “Dancing with Our Steele County Stars.” (Press file photo)

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ALBRECHT from page 14 But, dancing? That was different. It would be just he and his partner, who had also never performed in front of a crowd before. Sure, the song — Peggy Lee’s “Fever,” the title of which, at least, seemed apt for a hospital president — was familiar enough. And the step, a foxtrot, had not been that difficult to learn. But doing it just the two of them, their height difference accentuated by the spotlight — well, that was another. They said at the time that they hoped to just get through it, perhaps win “Miss Congeniality,” they joked. What they never expected was to win. But win they did.

Albrecht didn’t dance for the recognition or the glory. He did it, like the other participants because it was for a good cause — Healthy Seniors of Steele County, an agency that works to provide services for older Steele Countians to help them stay in their homes instead of moving into an assisted living facility. It is that same benevolent attitude that prompted him to work with the local United Way, especially on its initiative to improve the health of the disadvantaged segment of the county; with his church on its building project; with the foundation board for Riverland, helping the community college raise money; with the

other members of the school district’s Community Task force in discovering what the district for facilities and bringing to Owatonna voters in the form of the recently passed referendum; and with a variety of Rotary Club initiatives in the community, including the annual STRIVE run, which he co-chairs. But to Albrecht, it’s all in a day’s work. “It’s part of being a leader in the community,” he said. “It seems to work.” Reach Managing Editor Jeffrey Jackson at 444-2371, or follow him on Twitter.com @OPPJeffrey

In this October 2009 file photo, Dr. Brian Bunkers of Mayo Health System Owatonna and Dave Albrecht, president of Owatonna Hospital, prepare to cut the ribbon and officially open the passage between the hospital and the clinic. (Press file photo)

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Kirk Dornfeld and Carol Winter. (Submitted photo)

Dr. Carol Winter

Healthy Living By KIM HYATT

khyatt@owatonna.com

Dr. Carol Winter loves living in Owatonna, otherwise why she wouldn’t have stayed for nearly 30 years. At her home on Kellford Place, large bay windows outlook a ravine that runs through her backyard swarming with birds. Not only does her home provide a picturesque view, but when the Owatonna Hospital was formerly located on South

Oak Avenue, it was a brisk walk to work for her husband, Kirk Dornfeld, As for Winter, 59, she started working for the Owatonna Mayo Clinic Health System in 1988, but her contributions to the community are more than just quality healthcare. She served on the Owatonna Foundation board of directors and eight years on the school board during a time when the state’s budget was really, really tight, she said. All these involvements on top of keeping hundreds of patients healthy

and being a mother and wife makes for a fulfilling, busy life. But, she said, there is one thing missing in this city she calls home: a university. And because the university she is used to, Bemidji State University, also includes a big, beautiful body of water, which is such an integral part of the campus that it serves as additional parking once frozen and a celebratory dip for the Beaver football team every homecoming. “Being from Bemidji, you take it for granted,” Winter said of the abundance

See WINTER on page 19

of open water in Northern Minnesota. She misses the life a university brings to a town like Bemidji, and Winter would know as she was able to experience academia at a very young age. Her father, Wes Winter, was a physics professor at BSU, which was just two blocks away from her house. Winter actually went to grade school at BSU, originally called Bemidji State Teachers College, so basically Winter and her classmates “were [teachers’] little guinea pigs.”

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WINTER from page 18 “Because of where we lived, we would walk through campus in the winter and I’d stick my tongue on metal railings,” Winter reminisced. “It was a pretty campus.” She recalls taking swimming lessons there, too, and exploring the underground tunnels. “We’d be walking back from swimming lessons in 30-below weather with our frozen heads and suits that we’d whack each other with,” she said. Something about the close proximity or perhaps the possibility of running into her professor/ father at school meant that, upon graduation from Bemidji High School in 1975, Winter went to college somewhere else. “I did take a couple of BSU summer school classes and got some credits taken care of, but, nah, too close,” she said of attending the university practically in her backyard.

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Winter said that she doesn’t go from scrubs to the sofa so she can watch medical TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy.

“I watch Modern Family,” she laughed. The doctor referenced a recent study of medical TV shows comparing the rate of patients’ recovery when the heart stops and they have to do an emergency procedure to the real-life rate. “Our attitudes about things comes from TV shows,” she said, adding that shows have a higher rate of recovery than real life, which skews people’s perspectives of real care, not the kind they can watch from the couch. “To me what I find most rewarding is when somebody comes in and they’re sick and I can figure out what’s making them sick and I have the tools to make them better,” she said. Since she doesn’t work in birthing, all her patients’ are18 years old or older. “I thought I wanted to be a pediatrician, but once I got going I realized I don’t like sick children,” she said, “I like the old people.” Though the elderly pose some challenges as they are set in their ways, she said, some with irreversible damage done throughout the years. “So much of what I do is address the problems they brought on themselves, like they smoked for

Kirk, Tess, Carol and Britta on one of their many travels. (Submitted photo)

See WINTER on page 20

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WINTER from page 19 years, diabetes was not taken care of, you don’t exercise and your body is a wreck. Now were trying to change that [and] helping them get by, but we cant make them truly healthy.” In her nearly 30-year medical career, she said a lot of changes are apparent between the types of problem’s patients are having and health care coverage. “There’s much, much more diabetes than there used to be, but there are fewer people smoking and aren’t as many people having heart attacks,” she said. With better immunizations, doctors are preventing things that were once devastating such as the AIDS epidemic, which was just starting when Winter began her residency in Minneapolis. “I remember my first AIDS patients. He was a really, really nice, young man who came in with terrible pneumonia. His mom would call everyday and I would tell her he is really sick. “ Winter told the patient, unable to speak and only able to communicate via clipboard, he had AIDS and he wrote, “If you tell her, she’ll die.” “I vividly remember that,” she said. AIDS was a death sentence and Winter said people, even doctors,

Carol Winter and her husband Kirk sailing. (Submitted photo)

were afraid because they didn’t have any treatments yet available. “There was at the time a real risk to medical caregivers, but these were people who needed care desperately.” She noticed a trend of young

men from rural areas who moved to the Twin Cities only to wind up in the hospital after unknowingly contracting AIDS. “It was just devastating for everybody,” she said. “If you live in a little town like this and get a call that

See WINTER on page 21

your child is in the hospital and terribly sick, it was really difficult for people.” Though that epidemic still exists, progress was made and less lives lost. But the health care industry is

constantly fighting the latest infection or virus, she said. And if those weren’t enough to worry about, an even greater threat exists: the cost of health care. “I personally believe our models of care will need to continue to change. As a country we are morally responsible to have basic health care available to everyone. Our bigger concern is there are a lot of people who don’t have any access to health care. Everyone should have access. Obamacare is a step. It’s not perfect, far from it, but it’s a step toward making care available to everyone.” Winter went to the University of Minnesota, Duluth for a year, and then to the University of North Dakota before going the University of Minnesota for medical school. After receiving her medical doctorate, Winter spent four years at the Hennepin County Medical Center, three years with internal medicine and one more year as chief residence Her mother was a nurse hired by families for private duty to take care of a loved one and she even had a stint at the Detox Center in Cass Lake. So naturally, that was eye opening for Winter, who wasn’t sure if she “wanted to be a forester or physician,” she said.

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WINTER from page 20 Her childhood consisted of always being outdoors: swimming and taking the canoe out on the lake, or hanging out with Paul Bunyan and Babe down at the summer carnival, occasionally getting some cotton candy if she had money leftover from rides. When she wasn’t cheering for the Lumberjacks, during high school she worked at the A & W as soon as she turned 16 years old. Once in college, she worked at Sawbill Canoe Outfitters near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area every summer vacation. Interestingly enough, her two daughters, Tess, 27, and Britta, 23, both wound up working at the same canoe outfitter in college as their mom.

When Winter and her husband were approaching graduation, they began looking for places to practice in a smaller town outside the metro area. Because Dornfeld spent six weeks of his residency in Owatonna with Frank Anderson, one of the doctors who founded the Owatonna Clinic, connections led Winter even further south. Nowadays, Winter doesn’t make the five-hour drive back to Bemidji often, but her family just finished building a cabin in Grand Marais. A great place to break away from medical responsibilities and be outdoors. Reach reporter Kim Hyatt at 507-444-2376. Follow her on Twitter @OPPKimHyatt Kirk and Carol. (Submitted photo)

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A Matter of Convenience Jerry Deetz

By JEFFREY JACKSON

jjackson@owatonna.com

There’s a story that Jerry Deetz tells that illustrates how far he’s come — if not in distance, then in life experience — from his days growing up on a dairy farm in rural western Wisconsin to his days in Owatonna as a highly successful entrepreneur with a chain of convenience stores throughout southern Minnesota and a philanthropist. Deetz was born in 1933, during the Great Depression. His father was a dairy farmer, his mother a former country school teacher. The first farmhouse in which Deetz lived, there between Modena and Mondovi in sparsely populated Buffalo County — a farmhouse in which he would live with his parents

and his older brother until he was 5 years old — had no electricity. Part of the way in which they warmed the house during those cold Wisconsin winters was to open the door on the cook stove and let the heat from the stove fill the house. And when young Jerry Deetz would wake up, he go to the kitchen and sit on the cook stove’s door that had been folded down as a way to warm up. Once, he sat down when the stove was too warm and he burned himself. But it was all part of growing up on the farm. They moved into another house right next door when he was 5 years old. But other than the electricity in the house, life on that farm was pretty much the same as it had been. There were still 30-some dairy cows to be milked twice a day, still crops to be

See DEETZ on page 23

In this June 2008 file photo, Jerry Deetz, then president of the Owatonna Foundation, shows the crowd of individuals who attended the foundation’s 50th anniversary celebration a lock box that had been secured in the Wells Fargo bank since 1958. The box contained various items meant to be a time capsule from that year when the foundation was established. (Press file photo)

Friday, March 18, 2016

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

DEETZ from page 22 tended to using plows pulled by horses, that is until Deetz was about 6 or 7 years old and his father got a tractor, and still other chores to be done. There were times, usually on Saturdays, when the family would drive the 10 miles or so to Mondovi to pick up a few things from the store, and there were times as they grew older that his brother and Deetz would hitch up the horses to the wagon and drive in to Modena, though soon horse-drawn transportation would be a thing of the past. In all, most of the time of Deetz’s youth would spent on the farm, save for his days in school —first through eighth grade at a two-room country school in Modena, then high school in nearby Gilmanton, about five miles from their home. Deetz still remembers helping to milk the cows in the morning before heading out to school.

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Deetz stayed on the farm for three years after he graduated from high school — not that he had intended to. But his brother had asthma, making it difficult, if not nearly impossible, for the older Deetz boy to live and work on the farm. So after graduating

from high school, Jerry Deetz stayed on the farm for another three years. And he might have stayed there longer — it’s difficult to say — had he not had another calling, this one in the mid-1950s from his Uncle Sam. Jerry Deetz had been drafted. He understood what it meant to be called into service by your country. He still remembers when the United States was drawn into World War II following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Though he was only 8 years old at the time, he remembers the conversation his parents had, wondering if Deetz’s father, then 36 years old, would be drafted. But since he was a farmer, at a time when the country was going to war and would need farmers to feed its citizens, his father would remain on the farm. Still, even though he was young during WWII, Deetz would be called in to help the war effort by his mother who put her two sons to work picking the silk out of the pods of milkweed that grew on the farm. That silk, she told him, would be used for life jackets. Now, more than a decade later, Deetz, in his early 20s, was drafted into the U.S. Army.

PAGE 23 A congratulatory note to Jerry Deetz when he was named 1965’s St. Paul Marketing Division Salesman of the Year for Cities Services. (Submitted photo)

See DEETZ on page 24

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PAGE 24

DEETZ from page 23

After learning Morse Code That same year, Deetz was named at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, Deetz the region’s Salesman of the Year was sent to Korea. Though the for Citgo, something that earned Korean War had been over for the couple a trip to Miami and a some time, the tension between five-day stay at the famous Founthe two Koreas remained. tainbleau hotel. When he finally served his “They took us deep-sea fishtwo-year tour of duty, Deetz ing,” Carol Deetz recalls. “I didn’t returned to Wisconsin, though know I could get so sick.” he wasn’t quite finished with his In 1968, a friend who worked military service. for Northwest Refining told Deetz that the company was Shortly after he returned home, Deetz, who was worklooking for someone to run one ing for a nearby lumber comof the departments. Deetz got the pany as its assistant manager, job and moved the family to Stillhad his first foray into the fuel water. Soon thereafter, however, business. The man who was the the company’s sales manager got fired and Deetz took over, distributor for Cities Service fuel company, delivering fuel overseeing sales for five states — oil and gasoline to farmers and Minnesota, Wisconsin, North others in the area, died. Deetz Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa. applied for the distributor’s job While the family lived in Duand got it. luth, Carol Deetz, who had been “I had to buy a truck,” Deetz a teacher in Wisconsin, got back recalls. to teaching on a part-time basis. And so, with the help of his While they were in Stillwater, she father, Deetz purchased a truck, was a substitute teacher. Then in thus allowing him to fulfill a Owatonna, she carved out a 20dream he had always had. year career as an elementary spe“I wanted to be in business,” In this June 2008 file photo, Jerry Deetz (second from the right), then president of the Owatonna Foundation, joins Owatonna cial education teacher, teaching city leaders and officials and leaders of Pool Together for the official groundbreaking for the city’s aquatic center, what would he said. the learning disabled. She worked be named River Springs Water Park. The foundation ultimately gave $1.3 million toward the building of the aquatic center. But something intervened, (Press file photo) in all the elementary schools in and once again, it was Uncle the district except Washington. Sam. So what brought them to ated a grocery store. Carol and Jerry Deetz credits his wife for keep- Jerry Deetz’s business career skyrockAfter he had left the military Owatonna? following his two years of service, he was had known each other from going to ing the business going. They hired a eted. Cities Services called him from his Simply put, a big change in the way required to be in the Active Reserves for the same church — Sacred Heart in man to drive the truck, but with Deetz small territory in western Wisconsin to that oil companies did business with three years. He signed up for the Na- Mondovi — but with a five-year differ- 2,000 miles away, someone had to act St. Paul. And, Deetz, said, they had to the everyday consumer. Gone were the tional Guard, and with a month to go, ence in their ages, they had not dated, as consignee for the business, which ask themselves the serious question: “Do days of full service at the pump, where the Berlin crisis erupted and Deetz was perhaps not even seriously considered included doing the books. So with two we want to go to the big city of St. Paul?” someone working at a gas station would called back into active duty, meaning one another. Until, that is, he returned boys under the age of 2, Carol Deetz After all her parents still lived nearby in come to your car, fill up the tank, check took up the job, sometimes starting the Mondovi, his parents still on the farm. your oil and the air pressure in your that he would spend 10 months away from Korea. They dated for about a year, then book work at 10 p.m. when the boys But they decided to make the move and tires, and even wash your windows. By from his new business, stationed in Fort Deetz continued to be successful in his 1974, when Jerry Deetz quit his job and Lewis, Washington. It could have meant married on Aug. 22, 1959. About a year were asleep. “She kept it alive,” Jerry Deetz said business career. later, their first son, Steve, was born. the end of his business. moved the family to Owatonna, someAbout a year after that, Tom was born. of the business. By 1965, he was still working for thing new was coming into vogue — the Except for Carol. Cities Service, now rebranded Citgo, self-service gas station and something Carol had grown up in Mondovi, It was then that Deetz was called back The move to Owatonna and the Deetzes were living in Duluth. called a “convenience store.” where her parents owned and oper- up into active duty. In the immediate years that followed,

See DEETZ on page 25

Friday, March 18, 2016

d r d a -

d d s e e , r , — h . n k . e n g d n

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 25

DEETZ from page 24 “The convenience store was a new thing,” Deetz said, adding that all of the customers to whom he sold gas were converting their full-service stations into convenience. “I quit to go into business on our own.” His first store — the first of what would be more than 30 stores by the time he sold out — would be in Owatonna and bear the name of Budget Mart. It opened on South Oak Avenue in 1975. “We went in on just a shoestring,” Deetz said, recalling the credit he got from oil companies, thanks to his 15 years in the oil business. He remembers being grateful for his wife’s job and its steady source of income and its health insurance. And he remembers the first office his company had — in the family’s laundry room. Whatever they did that first year, they did right. By the next year, they opened their second store in St. Peter. The rest, they say, is history.

Throughout his career, there has always been a philanthropic and civicminded side to Jerry Deetz — from his work raising funds for the Muscular Dystrophy Association to the Owatonna Foundation to the Owatonna Rotary Club to being a Scout Leader for mildly disabled kids to the Seratoma Club to Habitat for Humanity and to, of course, his church. It’s his way of giving back for what he considers a fortunate life. “All the way along, I’ve been fortunate,” he said. “From the dairy farm through Korea through to my business days, even through the tough times of starting a chain of convenience stores.” And he considers Owatonna to be a great part of his being fortunate. “This is home, and we intend to stay here,” he said. “We have a great relationship with Owatonna.”

Carol Deetz (front row, left) and Jerry Deetz (front row, right) with their family in a 2014 Christmas card. (Submitted photo)

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From left to right: Jake Busho, BJ Busho and Bruce Busho. Bruce and BJ Busho purchased Owatonna Groundsmasters, then Mel’s Equipment, in 1984, in 2008, their son, Jake, started working at the business on a full-time basis. (Ashley Stewart/People’s Press)

By ASHLEY STEWART

Masters Grounds Bruce and BJ Busho

of the

astewart@owatonna.com

There isn’t much sleep for Bruce and BJ Busho and the Owatonna Groundsmasters crew during the winter months. “It’s pretty much 24/7 because it’s based on the weather,” Bruce said. And Mother Nature isn’t always a fan of the 9-to-5 workday or the 40-hour work week, for that matter. “So you sleep when you can,” Bruce said. An overnight snowstorm calls for a midnight start at clearing many of the commercial lots in Owatonna and working until 9 or 10 a.m., but if it snows all day, you can bet the days are long for the

60-person crew. “We work around the clock,” Bruce said. “Sometimes we’re working 18- to 24-hour days.” Or longer. In fact, one snowstorm earlier this year had the Groundsmasters crew out for 34 hours straight. “When everyone is all cozy in their houses, these guys are out working,” BJ said. But the Bushos’ son, Jake, 27, who has worked at the family business much of his life, said it’s not that bad, and come summer, there are more scheduled hours. “Everyone works together and we get everything done,” BJ said.

See BUSHO on page 27

But working in lawn care and snow removal wasn’t always Bruce and BJ Busho’s plan.

Changing plans

Bruce, born to Melvin and Jane Busho in 1956, graduated from Owatonna High School had aspirations to become a mechanic. After attending Albert Lea Technical School to become a certified diesel mechanic, Bruce was hired at Concrete Materials in Medford, where he took hands-on training during Vo-Tech. He also became involved in stock car racing, a hobby he’d continue through 1984. It was while Bruce was a mechanic at Concrete Materials that he met Betty Jo, known to everyone as BJ.

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PAGE 27

BUSHO from page 26 It was in 1976 at the Monterey Ballroom south of Owatonna when Bruce Busho met Betty Jo, known to many as BJ. BJ, born to Frank and Laura Osterwyk in Great Falls, Wisconsin, arrived in Owatonna in the early 1970s when her father, who worked for GTA Feeds was transferred to the city. She graduated from Marion High School in 1975. After graduating high school, BJ started working at Schultz’s Family Store at the Cedar Mall in Owatonna as a department head of sporting goods. It was at the Monterey Ballroom in Owatonna, where Bruce and BJ crossed paths. “She was chaperoning her sister,” Bruce said. The ballroom was hosting a live band for one of its teen dances, and BJ was there to drive her sister,

when she was introduced to Bruce. “We met through mutual friends,” BJ said. And in February 1976, the two were dating. Shortly after, BJ took a position as a police dispatcher at the Owatonna Law Enforcement Center. “I stayed here,” she said about Owatonna. BJ was a police dispatcher for two years when she decided to work for the NAPA Distribution Center in the Jobber Sales and Service Department. She remained there until 1989 when she left to work at Owatonna Groundsmasters. In 1980, Bruce took a job at Ed’s GMC in Owatonna, where he stayed until 1984 when he accepted a position at Inland Parts Company of Minneapolis in April. But little did Bruce know he wouldn’t be there for long.

In August 1984, Bruce father, Melvin, owner of Mel’s Equipment, unexpectedly died. “My mom asked us if we could help her finish out the contracts that he had, and then she talked to us about taking it over instead of just disbursing it,” he said. Bruce and BJ, who weren’t married at the time, considered it. “We talked to the people [Melvin] had as clients and they were willing to stay with us,” BJ said. Mel’s Equipment served 10 customers in lawn mowing and snowplowing. So, in October 1984, they bought it. “We thought if we were going to do this business venture, we were going to do it together,” BJ said. In October 1986, Bruce and BJ married — nearly 10 years after dating.

BJ and Bruce Busho began dating in 1976 and were married in 1986. The two have one son, Jake, and own Owatonna Groundsmasters together. (Submitted photo)

See BUSHO on page 28

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BUSHO from page 27 “A lot of things between there halted that,” BJ said. “I had bought a house. I wasn’t ready to get married. He was racing cars, an expensive hobby. A wedding just didn’t play into plans of anything we were doing.”

Road to incorporation

When Bruce and BJ took over the business in 1984, they changed the name to B&B Equipment. They started with Melvin Busho’s lawn mowing and snowplowing contracts and equipment — three tractors, a pickup, a dump truck and some lawn mowers — doing much of the work themselves with a couple part-time helpers. “Every year we kept adding on more and more stuff because our clients kept wanting more and more stuff. It’s been gradual. “The first five years we kept it tight,” Bruce said. “We only did what we could do between us and tried to make it profitable. We started with little to no equipment. We had to start from scratch basically.” And the Bushos worked long hours, too. “We started working 24/7 basically to keep everything going,” BJ said. Before Bruce left Inland in October, there were some evenings he and his wife worked past dark and on weekends. “To get things done,” BJ said. Then Bruce took a six-month leave from Inland Parts to see what happened during the snow season. He decided to leave the company that year. “They were after me for a couple months to come work for them as a transmission and rearend mechanic,” he said. BJ continued working for the NAPA Distribution Center until 1989, a year after the Bushos’ son, Jake, was born. “We decided we were just going to give it a go,” BJ said. “I could always go back because I left NAPA on good terms.” In 1989, the Bushos incorporated the business under Owatonna Groundsmasters to better reflect their services. “At first we just had B&B Equipment and people didn’t know what that was,” BJ said. The name came to BJ while she was on a Toro Groundsmaster lawn mower. “I thought that’s exactly what we do. We’re masters of grounds maintenance,” she said. “Why can’t we be groundsmasters?” BJ brought it to Bruce, and he liked it. By the mid-1990s, the business increased clients, employees and services.

Bruce and BJ Busho and their son, Jake, have dedicated years to Owatonna Groundsmasters. Under their ownership, the business has added services, changed locations and grown. (Ashley Stewart/People’s Press)

“We started adding lawn spraying, sprinkler systems, and then we were doing more and more lawn mowing and that,” Bruce said. Groundsmasters, Bruce said, serves more commercial accounts, like Hy-Vee and Owatonna Hospital, than residential when it comes to mowing and plowing, but when it comes to landscaping, it’s more residential and it’s not all located in Owatonna. “A lot of the accounts we have are all year round. We do everything for them,” he said. “We do all the grounds maintenance for the majority of our large clients. A lot of them sign contracts for one to three years, sometimes five years.” With Groundsmasters growing clientele and services, it has outgrown several locations throughout the years. When the Bushos first took over the business in the late ‘80s, they ran it out of the garage of their Woodland Drive home. Then, they rented two Quonset huts that were behind Cenex.

“We had the office out of the home, then we moved out to 26th Street in hopes of building up there, but then that fell through,” BJ said. “When we got annexed into the city, the city wouldn’t allow us to build up there.” The Bushos continued looking for a space that could accommodate the business’ growth. Every time a property became available, they looked at it. Many were too big or too small. “We wanted to make sure when we made a move it was going to be the right move for expansion and everything to make it so the company had a brick-and-mortar setting,” BJ said. They found the spot on State Avenue Northwest in 2015, “This is our main office now,” she said. “Before we did all our service work out of the garage, now we moved everything out here. Nothing is at our house.”

A family business

Although you can take the business out of the

See BUSHO on page 29

home, you can’t take the Bushos out of Groundsmasters. In fact, they added another. Their son, Jake, who graduated from Medford High School in 2006, attended Riverland Community College and earned a degree in business management before joining Groundsmasters in 2008. But he wasn’t new to the business and its workings. Jake grew up in it. “I’ve done every single job rather than just getting thrown into managing,” Jake said. “I learned from the bottom up and how hard you have to work for what you get.” Jake started so young, he remembers a time when he had to place fertilizer bags behind him while he was mowing lawns because he wasn’t heavy enough for the light. “It was a lot of school of hard knocks,” he said. When Jake turned 16 and had his driver’s license, he’d wake up before school to plow snow for three or four hours, but he wasn’t forced into the business. “They’ve always said if it’s not what you want to do, you don’t have to do it,” he said. “But I’ve always loved doing it.” Jake said he’ll only do what he wants to do, and right now, working at Groundsmasters with his parents is what he wants to do. BJ said her husband and her son make a good team. “They know what needs to be done and they do it,” she said. For example, Jake is responsible for all the snow contracts, and has been for the last three years. He also does trees, curbing, irrigation and dump truck management during the warmer month, while Bruce does much of the lawn spraying, lawn mowing and scheduling. “Jake and Bruce tag team with snowplowing,” BJ said. And while Bruce and Jake are out and about, BJ is taking care of the “office stuff.” “Neither of them are desk people,” she said. “If they have a choice between sitting down and getting their desk cleared off and getting their paperwork done as soon as that phone rings, they’re gone.” But being a family-run business has its drawbacks, the Bushos said. “We can’t vacation together because somebody has to be here to run the show,” BJ said. “When we go on vacations, they’re three days. That’s it.”

Friday, March 18, 2016

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PAGE 29

BUSHO from page 28 Bruce said the family goes camping at Kieslers Campground in Waseca on the weekends during the warm months. “We like it because it makes it handy to come back for weddings, graduations and different events that are going on in town,” BJ said. “We’ve been over there for 27 years.” And although there isn’t much time to get away, Jake said it isn’t just him and his parents that keep Groundsmasters going. “It’s the employees,” he said. And teamwork, BJ added. There are 20 year-round employees, 40 summer employees and between 60 and 70 winter employees, Jake said. “We have good employees and

that’s the big thing,” BJ said. Bruce said because of the employees they have they’re able to provide a service that Groundsmasters’ customers are satisfied with. “We’re thankful for our employees and the people of Owatonna who continue to use our services and back our company,” BJ said. “If we didn’t have people to serve, we wouldn’t be here.”

Community involvement

While owning Groundsmasters has kept Bruce plenty busy, he has found time to dedicate to other areas, too. The first was the Owatonna Fire Department, which he joined in February 1980 as a volunteer/sleeper — something BJ said was in his blood.

“My dad was a firefighter, so I grew up all my life having him there on the fire department,” Bruce said. And Bruce served with him until the summer of 1984, when his father retired. “He had 30 years in,” he said. In 1995, Bruce received the Owatonna Jaycees Distinguished Service Award for his work on the fire department. And he retired from the fire department in 2007. Another area Bruce is involved is the Steele County Free Fair. It was 1995 when Bruce was approached by Ted Ringhofer and James “Corky” Ebeling about joining the Steele County Fair Board.

“They thought it’d be neat to have me on there,” Bruce said. So, he agreed. And Bruce, who is currently the director of the grandstand and has been for at least six years, started in sanitation. “When you first got on the fair board then, you were on sanitation, that was your job,” he said. “Now you come and they kind of pick where you’re going. Back when I started, it was this is your job.” Bruce has also been in charge of parking, camping and grounds, too. “I’ve done a lot of different things,” he said. “I’m probably the only person on the fair board right now that’s done multiple jobs.”

But Bruce has enjoyed it. “[I like] the fact we’re bringing a summer festival to town and the quality of that for the people and kids of the area,” he said. Bruce is also involved in the Owatonna Area Chamber of Commerce and Tourism as an ambassador, but he’s also served as a board member and the chairman of special events. He also was a member of the Owatonna Eagles Club board from 1985 to 1989 as well as the Knights of Columbus, Zurah Shrine, Star in the East Blue Lodge. Reach reporter Ashley Stewart at 444-2378 or follow her on Twitter. com @OPPashley

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Steve Stansberry

The Extra Mile

By JEFFREY JACKSON

jjackson@owatonna.com

There’s no length that Steve Stansberry wouldn’t go to help kids learn. If you don’t believe it, ask him about his days as Marshmallow Man or his trips around the schoolyard on a mini-motorcycle. Ask him about sitting on top of the school gymnasium in a rocking chair, reading a book. Or ask about his trips with “Gordy the Groundhog,” Stansberry’s answer to Punxsutawny Phil. He would even let students cut off his necktie if — and it was a big “if ” — the student body of the school at which he was principal met their reading goals during February, “I Love to Read Month.” That commitment to going the extra mile was all a part of reaching out to the students, of motivating kids. “I wanted to show them that learning was fun,” he said. Even now, nearly a dozen years after he officially “retired” from being an educator — or should we say retired for the first time — Stansberry still wants to encourage children to learn, even though health issues have slowed him down. “My only hope is to give back more to the community,” he said. But we’re jumping ahead of ourselves.

The road to Owatonna

It was late May of 2004 when Steve Stansberry, then principal at Lincoln Elementary School in Owatonna, was pulled out of a meeting in the school superintendent’s office for some important, if not urgent, business back at his school. He raced back, not knowing what awaited him in the school’s gymnasium.

See STANSBERRY on page 34

In this February 2007 file photo, Steve Stansberry, McKinley Elementary principal, takes questions from students in Diane Moe’s second-grade class about Gordy, his stuffed groundhog, and Groundhog Day. (Press file photo)

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STANSBERRY from page 30 What awaited him was the entire student body, plus the faculty and staff as well as members of Stansberry’s family, all there to throw a surprise retirement party for the man who had helmed the school for nine years. Even Owatonna Mayor Tom Kuntz was there to proclaim the week “Steve Stansberry Week” in the city. For weeks, everyone in the school managed to keep the party a secret — no mean feat when you’re dealing with children who just love to tell secrets or having to manage rehearsals of songs or hide banners wishing him well in his retirement. Even the meeting in the superintendent’s office was a ruse used to get the much beloved principal out of the building so that everyone else in the school could gather in the gymnasium for the surprise. It worked. “You really pulled a trick on me,” Stansberry told the crowd at the time. “What a wonderful, wonderful surprise.” It was a surprise that may have never been had Stansberry not changed his mind on his career choice, Stansberry, 69, was born in Minneapolis in 1946, where he father was a student at the University of Minnesota Law School. His father was also an ROTC instructor, which meant that the family, including young Stansberry, traveled a bit — Chicago, Milwaukee — before finally settling in Bloomington, where Stansberry graduated from high school. From there, Stansberry entered the U of M himself with one goal in mind. “I wanted to be a band director,” said Stansberry, a trombonist. So he became a band major. Part of his training required that he teach some music in elementary school where he discovered something that he did not anticipate. “I enjoyed it,” he said, especially the upper elementary kids. “I thought it was a good fit.” He enjoyed it so much, in fact, that he changed his major from music education to elementary education — an unusual major during the mid-1960s for men. In fact, as he recalls, in the

In this February 2015 photo, Steve Stansberry oversees a game of chess between members of the chess club that he started at Willow Creek Intermediate School in Owatonna. (Press file photo)

entire university at that time just three men were studying to become elementary school teachers, something that made his stock go up in the eyes of

potential employers. “I had job offers even before I applied for jobs,” he said, noting that he was approached by Edina and St. An-

See STANSBERRY on page 36

thony Village. He settled on a job teaching fourth, fifth and sixth grade in what was then the Rosemount-Apple Valley school

district, a job that he kept for a couple of years. “I had the opportunity after two years to go back to the U and earn my master’s degree,” he said, an opportunity that also allowed him to teach elementary science methods and psychology to undergraduates. Then, with his master’s degree in hand, he took his first position as a school administrator — headmaster of an alternative school, Model City Mini-School, a school with about 80 students in the inner city of Minneapolis. Unfortunately, after just a year with the institution, the federal funding for the school ran out, leaving Stansberry looking for a position. So with his principal’s license in hand, he landed in the Bird Island school district as principal — a small town west of the Cities, something that was a bit of a shock for Stansberry. “I was a city slicker from Bloomington,” he said, noting that his high school graduation class had 1,200 kids in it — about the same size as the entire community of Bird Island when he arrived. What’s more, he was young when he arrived to be the principal, “quite young,” he said, a mere 27 years old. “I was the youngest person on staff,” he said, adding that he had great respect for the teachers, who took the young principal under their wings. “It was a growth experience for me.” But the community, the county and with them the school district were shrinking. In his three years there, the student body had declined from 300 to 160. Stansberry began looking for another school, a bigger school, to lead. He first went to Detroit Lakes for nine years, followed by Staples, not far from Brainerd, also for nine years. Then, as his parents were aging in Bloomington and needing more care, Stansberry looked to make one more change so he and his family could be closer to his parents. It was then, in 1995, that they moved to Owatonna where Stansberry would become principal at Lincoln Elementary School.

Friday, March 18, 2016

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Friday, March 18, 2016

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STANSBERRY from page 34 “I’m sure glad we found Owatonna,” he said.

The ‘return’ of Steve Stansberry

agreed to help out at the school three days a week, doing the administrative tasks at the parochial school. “I had never taught in non-public schools,” Stansberry said. “It opened my eyes.” He readily admits now that he was working with a misconception, thinking that the teachers at parochial schools were only there because they couldn’t get teaching jobs in the public schools. “They proved me wrong,” he said. “The teachers at St. Mary’s have a commitment to their church and religion as well as to education.” But he wasn’t done when his work with St. Mary’s came to an end. In 2011, when the Owatonna school district was looking for ways to cut back on energy use, thus saving the district substantial amounts of money, district officials turned to someone they knew they could trust to do the job — Steve Stansberry. Stansberry became the district’s “energy czar,” working part-time to implement and oversee an energy-saving program for the schools in the district. “Our goal is to save the district a lot of money,

and we are saving a lot of money,” Stansberry said during his tenure as energy czar — or energy education specialist, as he likes to call it. And save money they did — about a half-million dollars in 2 1/2 years. In his retirement, he also returned to Lincoln once a week to work with 15 of the top mathminded fifth graders in the school in a program he called “Math Masters,” a program designed to increase their mathematical capabilities and take the students to a higher level. “I thought I could wing it,” Stansberry said. But, he admitted, after his first time working with the fifth graders, he realized their grasp of mathematical concepts were far greater than he had imagined. From there on out, he made certain to prepare an hour’s worth of material for the fifth graders. He should have known. After all, in 2008, Stansberry was responsible for bringing “Are You Smarter Than a Steele County Sixth Grader?” to the grandstand during the Steele County Free Fair — a game patterned after the TV game show “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?”

It’s not the only participation that Stansberry has had at the fair. Shortly after Stansberry’s retirement, he was having coffee with retired school principal and then manager of the fair, Elmer Reseland, who was trying to coax Stansberry to “get involved in the fair.” Apparently, it worked. He has also taken over as superintendent of the spelling bee at the fair, a job originated by his friend Jerry Kent. “I eventually took it over after Jerry passed away,” Stansberry said. And for 10 years now, he has been involved with Les Abraham as the co-superintendents of the car museum at the fair. His interest in older cars dates at least back to his college days when he worked in an auto parts store and used to drag race a 1957 Chevy. And for 30 years, he owned a ’55 Chevy that he recently sold as he and his wife “downsize” following a stroke that he had three years ago. “I’m not able to shift it anymore,” he said. The return of Steve Stansberry? No, not really, because Stansberry never left.

Steve Stansberry admits he is no Bobby Fischer, the American chess Grandmaster and former World Chess Champion, whom many consider to be the greatest chess player of all time. Still, Stansberry, who started playing the game when he was 10 years old, enjoys the challenge of the game and wanted it to share it with students. “I like to see kids sitting down at a table, across from one another, facing one another while playing a game of chess,” he said. Not only does it stimulate their deductive skills as they seek to master the game itself, but it also develops their social skills as they interact with one another across the chess board, Stansberry said — something a video game cannot do. So when he was principal at McKinley Elementary School, Stansberry started a chess club, a club that he then transferred to Willow Creek Intermediate School. McKinley? But wasn’t Stansberry the principal of Lincoln for the nine years before his retirement? Yes, but. “I tried to retire, but they kept calling me back,” he said. In fact, he had barely been into his retirement when, during the 2004-2005 school year, he came back to the district on a parttime basis to help Mary Trapp, then principal at McKinley, who was facing health issue. By March 2006, Stansberry had stepped in on a full-time basis for Trapp, who had requested a medical leave as she battled cancer. By July of that year, he had been named interim principal for the school for the next academic year while Trapp took a year of medical leave. “I’m glad to be here. I just wish it were under better circumstances,” Stansberry said at the time. It wouldn’t be the only time that Stansberry would be called out of retirement. And it wasn’t just the Owatonna school district that called on his services. During the 2008-2009 school year, Jerry Kent, then principal of St. Mary’s School in Owatonna and friend of Stansberry, was facing In this May 2005 file photo, Lincoln Elementary School principal Steve Stansberry smiles at a surprise his own health issues. Stansberry retirement party put on by the students, faculty and staff. (Press file photo)

See STANSBERRY on page 37

Ever-growing influence

And the influence of Stansberry can still be felt in the school district, from the energy efficiencies he introduction to the schools to the “I Love to Read Month” antics that he introduced as ways of encourage students to meet their reading goals. Yes, he rode a mini-motorcycle for all the students to see, claiming then that his elementary school principals license allowed him to ride a motorcycle. Yes, he sat on the roof of Lincoln Elementary School’s gymnasium in a rocking chair with book in during the first week of March — a cold March, as he remembers it — to show students how reading can be fun. And yes, he dressed up as Marshmallow Man to go along with the theme of “I Love to Read Month” one year: “Reading is Sweet.” And what could be sweeter, he said, than marshmallows? Then there’s Gordy the Groundhog, Stansberry’s answer to the more famous Punxsutawney Phil.

Friday, March 18, 2016

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 37

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STANSBERRY from page 36 He found the groundhog — stuffed, of course — decades ago in a cabin up north that he had purchased. At first it startled him until he realized that it was stuffed. “My wife wanted me to throw it in the trash,” he said. But Stansberry had other ideas, knowing that it could be a visual aid to help students learn not only the traditions of Groundhog Day, but about the animal itself and what differentiates a groundhog from a beaver or a woodchuck. So for years, Stansberry would take Gordy

from class to class, always the educator. “I gave it up last year,” he said, the groundhog remains in the Owatonna school district. Lincoln Elementary School was awarded the Minnesota School Excellence Award in 2001, during Stansberry’s tenure as school principal. And in 2010, the Owatonna Education Association awarded Stansberry the Friend of Education Award. A friend, indeed. But though he is proud of the awards and the recognition that came with them, Steve

Stansberry remains humble about what he has been able to achieve, not taking the credit for himself, but sharing it with others. “I’ve always thought that I’m nothing more than a compilation of all the good things I’ve seen in other people,” he said. Regrets? Just one, he said. “If I could change one thing, it would be to have found Owatonna sooner,” he said. Reach Managing Editor Jeffrey Jackson at 444-2371, or follow him on Twitter.com @ OPPJeffrey

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Friday, March 18, 2016

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 38

Hometown People Harvey and Nancy Farr

Nancy and Harvey Farr have owned J & H Liquors in Blooming Prairie for nearly 30 years. Harvey Farr purchased the bar in 1986 from Keith Miller. (Ashley Stewart/People’s Press)

By ASHLEY STEWART

astewart@owatonna.com

For decades — centuries, even — bars, saloons and taverns have served as more than drinking establishments in the communities they’re located. “It’s a gathering place,” said Harvey Farr. And the same can be said about J & H Liquors in Blooming Prairie. “There are different people that come in all the time,” said Harvey, who co-owns the business with his wife, Nancy. “You make a lot of friends while you’re here because people keep coming back who have known you for years.” The Farrs would know — that’s not only because

they’ve owned the bar for the past 30 years either. In fact, it was in that very bar at 340 E. Main St. they met for the first time. “It was December 1985,” Nancy said. At that time, the bar and liquor store were known as Blooming Prairie Liquors and were owned by Keith and LuAnn Miller. But it wasn’t long before the bar switched ownership. Just four months later, Keith Miller approached Harvey about purchasing the business, though he kept the off-sale liquor store until 2000. “I remember [Harvey] had asked me what I thought about him buying a bar, and I said, ‘We’re not married. You do what you want,’” Nancy said.

See FARR on page 39

So, in April 1986, Harvey bought the bar. “I thought it’d be something to do,” he said. And the bar — and all the fundraisers, clubs, leagues and parities that are held there — have given Harvey and Nancy plenty to do over the years. “It’s been good to us,” Nancy said. Especially at a time when other small, rural communities struggle to keep a bar’s doors open. “I’ve seen a lot of bars in the area go out of business and somebody else buys it, then it goes out of business again,” Harvey said. The Farrs contribute their business’ success to their ties to Blooming Prairie. “We’re just two hometown people,” Harvey said.

Friday, March 18, 2016

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 39

FARR from page 38 ‘Hometown people’

The Farrs had no intention of living anywhere other than Blooming Prairie. “We like going on vacation, but as far as leaving to go live somewhere else, no, we like this town,” Harvey said. Born and raised on a farm near Geneva, Harvey, who was one of eight children, attended school in Blooming Prairie. “Back then, the gravel road just west of us was the cutoff for Ellendale and Blooming Prairie, so our folks decided to send us to Blooming,” he said. After graduating from high school in 1974, Harvey farmed for a little while and did “odd jobs” in the area. “I just enjoyed Blooming,” he said. “That’s where my friends were

from. My family was still here.” So, Harvey stayed, and in 1985, he was hired at Metal Services, where he’s a shop foreman and certified welder. Nancy — also an Awesome Blossom — was born and raised in Blooming Prairie and was one of eight children. After graduating from high school in 1981, she attended Vo-Tech in Austin for cosmetology. “It was the trend at the time,” she said. But it was a trend that Nancy didn’t pursue after graduating. Instead, she worked at Jerry’s Supper Club in Owatonna for three years and then worked a few years at Federated Insurance Companies while becoming a wife and a mother. On May 13, 1989, the Farrs married.

“It’s been 27 wonderful years,” Harvey said. Together, Harvey and Nancy had Whitney in April 1992 and Taylor in October 1993, while caring for Joey, Harvey’s son with his first wife, who moved in with the couple in the mid-1980s, “[Blooming Prairie’s] a nice town to raise your family in,” Nancy said.

J&H

“The ‘J’ stands for John Swenson and the ‘H’ stands for Harvey,” Nancy said. “That’s where the name comes from,” In 1986, Harvey and Swenson purchased the bar together, despite having full-time jobs at Metal Services and Arkema, respectively. “They’d work their full-time shifts and then they’d come here full time,” Nancy said.

See FARR on page 40

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Harvey Farr takes a break next to his Harley Davidson during a motorcycle trip. Farr has owned a motorcycle since he was 16 years old. (Submitted photo)

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

PAGE 40

FARR from page 39 Harvey worked Monday and Wednesday nights, and Swenson took Tuesday and Thursday nights, while the two shared weekends. “There’s always something to do up here,” Harvey said. But in 1989, Swenson left the business, and in 1992, Nancy started working full time at J & H Liquors as a manager. “I basically [oversee] all the daily operations,” she said. As business owners, the Farrs easily put in 60 to 70 hours of work each week individually. “Every night is different,” Nancy said. “You fill in when it’s needed.” J & H Liquors employs about six individuals, including their two daughters who are currently attending college. With the workload, the Farrs try to find time for other activities and adventures, like a two-week motorcycle trip to someplace within the U.S. “It’s tough to get away unless you have good reliable help,” Nancy said. “That’s a lot of business’ struggle. If you don’t have good, reliable help, you don’t get away. That’s what’s made it easy for us. We’ve had good help.”

Bringing people out

The Farrs have met a lot of people over the years as bar owners and community members through pool leagues, bean bag tournaments, street dances, wine tastings and other special events and fundraisers they’ve coordinated over the years. “It just brings people out, new customers in,” Nancy said. For the last 16 years, Harvey has combined his interest in riding motorcycles with a cause he believes in: Steele County Toys for Tots.

Nancy and Harvey Farr with their children and grandchildren. The Farrs, who grew up around Blooming Prairie, stayed and raised their family there. (Submitted photo)

“I have a big thing for Toys for Tots and in making sure kids have something for Christmas,” Harvey said. The organization, which has provided toys to children in need for more than 30 years, has been the primary benefactor of the annual B.O.B Ride. Others have included Locks of Love and the Steele County Food Shelf, but now, it solely benefits Toys for Tots. “It started with a group of five guys from Blooming sitting in here one time kicking around ideas about doing a ride,” Nancy said. “That’s

where the Bikers of Blooming came from.” Since 2000, the event has pulled together hundreds of supporters and bikers. “Our biggest year we ever had, we had 162 bikes,” Harvey said. But the event’s biggest year was in 2015 when it raised $11,800 for Toys for Tots with about 75 to 80 bikes participating. “It just got to growing bigger and bigger,” Harvey said. The same can be said about the Farrs annual Cruise for a Cause event that benefits the

Blooming Prairie Cancer Group. Since 2011, the Farrs have organized the event, and in 2015, there were about 30 area cruisers that participated. The event raised about $1,400 for the cancer group. “It’s a way to help the different causes,” Nancy said. For years, Nancy has coordinated a wine tasting for the Boys and Girls Club of Blooming Prairie, an organization she served on the board between 2011 and 2014. “Blooming Prairie needs the Boys and Girls Club be-

See FARR on page 41

cause it’s a good place for the kids,” she said. That event draws more than 50 people, and the annual Holiday Dazzle Wine and Beer Tasting, which is held at the Blooming Prairie Servicemen’s Club, is attended by more than 120 people. “That’s one way we promote the chamber here,” Nancy said, noting the purpose for the holiday event. The Farrs are also wellknown for their coordination of the July 3 street dance as the kick off for the community’s annual Old-Fashioned Fourth

of July Celebration. “That event draws the most people we have for one night,” Harvey said, noting there are people from all over the country, too. Harvey oversaw the Fourth of July celebration between 2005 and 2009. “I just thought it was my time to step up,” he said. “It was just something I should be doing to keep things organized and keep things going.” Harvey is currently the Blooming Prairie Lions Club president and a member of the Blooming Prairie Fire Commission Board. He formerly served as a trustee at First Lutheran Church in Blooming Prairie in the 1990s. The Farrs, together, have remained involved in the church. In addition to helping the community and the causes, Nancy said the events they host also promote their business. “It keeps business coming in. If you don’t promote it, your business is going to go down,” she said. “You see a lot of bars close because they’re not successful.” Harvey said the average bar owner only lasts between five to seven years. “I guess we’re above average,” he said.

A slow-down

The Farrs are ready to slow down though. “It’s been 30 years welding, 30 years bartending. I’m tired,” Harvey said. “I’m 60 years old, and I’d kind of like to get home at night and say, ‘OK, now what do I do?’” And that could come any day now for the couple. “We just thought we’d test the water and see if we could find anybody,” Harvey said.

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FARR from page 40 For the last four years, J & H Liquors has been on the market, but there has been little to no success in finding someone to buy it. “It’s just tough finding somebody with money and a work ethic,” Harvey said. “I mean you have to be on the backside of the bar to make money. You can’t sit on this side and drink with your friends. You just can’t.” This isn’t the first time the Farrs have considered leaving the bar business. “We were going to sell when Taylor, the youngest one, got into kindergarten,” Nancy said. “She’s 22 now,” Harvey said with a chuckle. At that time, the bar business’ success deterred the Farrs from pursuing a sale. “Harvey was content, and the bar business was very good then,” Nancy said. But she said it’s time for a change. “I don’t know what yet, but I’ll figure that out later,” Nancy said. Spending time on the beach and with

family are possible options, she said. Harvey would like more time to enjoy his hobbies, like motorcycle-riding trips, reading, watching sports and lawn care. Two of his passions are Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band and Mickey Mouse, as those who know Harvey are aware. “I started listening to him in the ‘70s when I was growing up,” he said. “I like his music.” Harvey has see Seger in concert 17 times and are planning on seeing him again during his 2016-2017 tour. As for Mickey Mouse, Harvey’s been collecting things for years — a collection that has grown. “Let’s just say the man cave downstairs is full,” Nancy said. It’s filled with watches, clocks, cups and other items. “It’s just a lot of things, neat things that I like,” Harvey said. But until the bar is sold, those stopping in J & H Liquors will see the Farrs. “It’s treated us well in the last 30 Nancy and Harvey Farr in the J & H Liquor Store, which they purchased in 2000. The couple enjoys the years,” Nancy said. business for the people they meet. (Ashley Stewart/People’s Press)

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Stephanie Kibler outside her new workplace, the Steele County History Center, where she was hired in September after 15 years of self-employment. “That core group of volunteers, and their commitment to the Historical Society is amazing. It’s been a lot of fun,” she said. (Press file photo)

By WILLIAM MORRIS

Many Hats Stephanie Kibler

wmorris@owatonna.com

Stephanie Kibler has followed a long and winding route to make it across the street. From her living room in Ellendale, she can point out her window to the lot where her childhood home once stood. But unlike her parents, who spent nearly all their lives in the Ellendale-Geneva area, her path has led her far afield, to places as distant as Nashville, Tennessee, and careers as divergent as early childhood education and website design — sometimes at the same time. And though she is back now where she began, in the same block of Ellendale where she grew up, she still is keeping up her several parallel careers and commitments — city council member, meetings and events plan-

ner, education consultant and more — that bring her something new every day. But that’s how she likes it. “I kind of like that variety of being able to do different things, and I think having worked from home for so long, it just makes it a little easier to learn to juggle,” she said.

Small-town start

Kibler, who turns 53 in March, has spent much of her life away from her hometown but always has maintained a strong connection to it. “Born, baptized, confirmed, married, my kids were baptized at the First Lutheran Church here, which is probably the first place I started volunteering as a Sunday school teacher when I was a teenager,” she said. “I participated in Children of the Light, which

See KIBLER on page 44

was a Christian singing group. I handled the lights. They had quite a tour going on for a while there.” Her mother was born in Geneva and worked at the Ellendale plastic business now owned by Woodstream. Her father, an Army veteran who was almost due to ship overseas when World War II ended, was born on an Ellendale farm and spent his entire career at the Wilson meatpacking plant in Albert Lea. Kibler had two sisters and a brother growing up in Ellendale, although some of the siblings were separated by 20 years or more in age. As a teen, she worked at the Whispering Pines restaurant, Ellendale Cafe and Steve’s Meat Market. Her first full-time job out of high school was in 1981 at Federated Insurance Companies in Owatonna.

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KIBLER from page 42 “I think I started there before my 18th birthday, actually, and worked with some of the really great old guys that are no longer there,” she said. It was at Federated that she met an insurance salesman, Tom Kibler. The two hit it off and married in 1983. When his assignment took him to Nashville, Tennesee, she went with him. There the couple had their first child, Matthew, who soon inspired them to return closer to home. “Our babysitter, who lived next door to us, came over one day and asked what a senator was, and she was a senior in high school,” Kibler said. “Matthew was just starting to walk, getting verbal, and it came down to, we didn’t want him to be asking what a senator was as a senior in high school, and we knew the education system up here was significantly better than down in the South.” So Tom got a transfer to the Twin Cities, and the family moved north again, with Matthew about a year old and Kibler pregnant with her second child, Jessi, and hard at work as a stayat-home mom. But it wouldn’t be long before she was jumping into an array of new professions.

at the Minnesota Social Services Association, running their Annual Training Conference and Expo. “They had a good-sized conference they were doing, and that became my responsibility, and developing that into what it now is was probably one of the most challenging and also most rewarding parts of my career,” she said. “It went from less than 1,000 attendees to almost 3,000 attendees and is one of the largest conferences in Minnesota and is the largest Health and Human Services conference in the U.S. right now.”

Heading home

Finding her career(s)

“I got involved with the Early Childhood Family Education program in the Roseville district,” she said. “At that time, early childhood screening wasn’t mandated, and the ECFE programs were doing it, so I ended up as the early childhood screening coordinator. ... My son at the time would have been 4, and has always been a very stubborn kid. He had to be screened that year, and he was one of those kids who wouldn’t do anything. Here I am trying to coordinate the thing, and he doesn’t want to stack the blocks, doesn’t want to do this … it ended up being kind of a laughing moment, where you realized how stubborn your child really is.” After working for the school district, she spent a few years at an environmental lab, working on the various Superfund contamination cleanup sites around the state, before moving on to a residential treatment center for pregnant and parenting teenagers run by the Amherst H. Wilder foundation. “The residential treatment facility was wonderful, unbelievably great staff, these girls who were trying so hard to parent and be good parents and not fall into the routines there parents and grandparents had fallen into, but it’s exhausting, and heart-wrenching,” she said. “I burned out after about four years.”

PAGE 44

A poster put up by Federated Insurance in 1981 to welcome its newest employee: Stephanie Kibler, just out of high school. In the bottom left is her original company ID card. (Submitted image)

But she left with a newfound passion for health and human services, and it wasn’t long before she was working for the Minnesota Social Services Association, preparing training materials for various professionals in social service fields. After several years of that, she struck out on her own, founding a consulting firm called Mobius Education. “It started as offering affordable graphic de-

sign,” she said. “Graphic design in the ‘90s was extremely unaffordable for small nonprofits. If they wanted to do a brochure that looked professional, the design costs to go to a print house was probably in the $1,200 range, and most small nonprofits didn’t have that to spend.” Through Mobius, Kibler quickly expanded into other services, including web design and event planning. Her main client for the latter was none other than her former employers

See KIBLER on page 45

In all, Kibler spent 25 years in the Twin Cities, but changes on the homefront conspired to bring her back to Ellendale. While she moved through a variety of careers, her husband Tom followed his own star-crossed employment path. From Federated Insurance, he went to work for Drexel Burnham Lambert, the so-called kings of junk bonds, until the company failed in 1990. Nor did the misadventures end there. “The SEC showed up, escorted everyone out and locked the door, and that was the end of Drexel Burnham,” Kibler said. “From there he went to [Prudential-Bache Securities] … and worked for Michael Prozumenshikov, who was found decapitated in the Twin Cities. Or parts of him were found — the head was never located. That was his mentor.” But irreconcilable differences were growing in the relationship, and in 2010, Tom and Stephanie divorced after 27 years of marriage. “You’re more stubborn than the ones who get out after three [years],” she said of the longevity of the marriage. About that time, she was reconnecting with an old acquaintance from Ellendale — Pete Paulson, whose parents had purchased her family’s old home upon arrival in town and who was then running a diner and ice cream shop in Georgia. “Pete and I were friends on Facebook, because we’d grown up down here, and at that time, everyone was kind of looking for who they grew up with, and I was pretty new to Facebook at that time,” Kibler said. “General conversation started — our divorces were happening at the same time. Facebook conversations turned into phone conversations, then he was coming up for Thanksgiving with his family. I’ve kind of been a Jujube on his shoe ever since.”

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PAGE 45

KIBLER from page 44 Paulson eventually sold his business in Georgia and moved back north, managing the Ellendale municipal liquor store. And he in turn drew Kibler back to her old hometown, where she now lives with Paulson and Davidson, Paulson’s blind rat terrier. (Paulson left the liquor store in September and now works in outdoor sales for Home Depot.) “I moved back to Ellendale in 2012, Jan. 1. Pete had come back the January before that, and the commute time back and forth, I was spending more time in my car than anything,” she said. Having spent so much of her life in big cities, she says it’s strange to see the contrasts with the different pace of life in Ellendale. “I’ve not regretted moving back to a small community. There’s something really nice about the way things flow, running into people you know

grocery shopping or banking,” she said. Even so, “I get a little itchy when I drive to the Cities and I hit Lakeville. I’m back in the urban. I love the hustle and bustle of downtown. I love the options for entertainment and dining. Most of my friends, though, that I was doing things with on a regular basis were metro. That piece I’ve missed. ... If I could have a high rise in downtown Minneapolis and a small house right here, best of both worlds.” But there are other advantages to being closer to family, she says. “I love the life that Pete and I have here, and I love that his family is right in town and am so grateful that we get to do so much with them,” she said. “Having lost my mom young [to breast cancer, when Kibler was 23; her father died 15 years later of a heart attack], it is great to be close to my aunt and to Pete’s parents and aunties.”

She’s not just living in Ellendale, either. She’s pouring significant time into her new (old) community, winning a seat on city council in 2014. “I’d been attending the council meetings off and on for at least a year, just to see what was going on in the town, how they were operating, and decided that you can be one of those that sits on the couch [and] complains about what’s happening, or you can jump in the ring and try to change the things that are happening,” she said.

Trying something new

After many years focusing on her primary contract to run the MNSSA convention, Kibler stepped away from that job in 2015. “I made the decision to try something different, which leads me to about four jobs listed on my LinkedIn site right now,” she said.

See KIBLER on page 46

An old photograph of the house, later destroyed by fire, in which Kibler grew up in Ellendale. She moved back to town in 2012 and now lives across the street from her childhood home. (Submitted photo)

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PAGE 46

KIBLER from page 45 Kibler continues to run her own consultancy through Mobius — these days she focuses mostly on social media marketing for smaller nonprofits as well as providing continuing education and a speakers bureau for conferences and events. She’s an account manager with HelmsBriscoe, a company that helps organizations arrange lodging for events. And in September, she joined the Steele County Historical Society as its Meetings and Special Events Manager. “I happened to notice the Historical Society had hired Kim [Purscell] as executive director, so I sent her a note congratulating her and offering my resume, just to introduce myself, and she wrote back and said, ‘Are you applying for the job?’ I said, ‘What job?’ I didn’t know there was a job,” Kibler said. “So she sent me that job description and that’s how I ended up at the History Center.” After so long working on her own projects at her own pace, there have been some transition pains, she said. “The History Center is the first ‘job’ I’ve had outside the home in 15 years,” she said. “I kind of miss being able to grab a cup of coffee and sit in my jammies at the computer until noon and nobody the wiser.” Still, she’s happy where she is.

Stephanie Kibler in her Ellendale home, where she lives with her partner, Pete Paulson. With her is Pete’s dog, a 12-year-old blind rat terrier named Davidson. (William Morris/People’s Press)

“I was kind of surprised at home much I enjoyed the History Center,” she said. “That core group of volunteers, and their commitment to the Historical Society is amazing. It’s been a lot of fun.” And she has a few other odds and ends in the works as well. She’s hosted a number of semi-

YOUR NEXT PROJECT STARTS HERE.

nars, in Ellendale as well as Owatonna, on such topics as prescription drug abuse, human trafficking, and the importance of affirmations; some geared for the public, others for professionals. And several years ago, she served on the Governor’s Yellow Ribbon Task Force, a panel to help better standardize and coordinate the various agencies

and organizations offering services to veterans. “They did a lot around what happens when a veteran returns from war, what kinds of services are offered, how often they check in, who they check in with, what health insurance issues are available,” she said. “It kind of led to there being a national checklist for when a veteran returns and what happens. They check in every 30 days, then 60, 90, up to 120.” In addition to her family around Ellendale, she keeps up with her children. Matthew currently is studying carpentry in Albuquerque, she said, and Jessi works for Thrivent Financial in the Twin Cities and is the mother of Kibler’s only grandchild, Kyriana, who is 8. [Kyriana is] probably the light of my world, I would probably describe her,” Kibler said. “She’s my bestie.” So between her family, the city council, and her multiple concurrent careers, Kibler has more than enough to keep her busy. Which is perfect for her: always a new challenge and opportunity around every corner. “That’s kind of what makes the History Center fun, too, is there’s different hats I can take,” she said. “I don’t have to do the same thing day in and day out.”

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PAGE 47

Surrounded by Stories Mary Kay Feltes

In this February 2009 file photo, Mary Kay Feltes reads to children at the Owatonna Public Library during the Read Around the World event. (Press file photo)

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jjackson@owatonna.com

As far back as she can remember, Mary Kay Feltes has always been interested in stories. And because of — or at least coinciding to — her interest in stories, she developed an interest in libraries, an interest that started at a very young age. In fact, the library was one of her favorite places to go when she was a child growing up

in the small town of Arcadia, Wisconsin, population 2,184 at the time and the largest town in Trempealeau County. The family lived above Mary Kay’s father’s law office, just a scant block away from the community library. “Mom would send us over to get books,” she said, remembering how she, then just 3 years old, would make the one-block trek with her somewhat older brothers, ages 4 and 5. “It was the place we went by ourselves, and you could get books.”

See FELTES on page 48

The library, she said, was important to her and to other children in Arcadia. She even remembers the name of the librarian there in Arcadia: Miss Mathis. “It was one of the few places kids could go and be independent,” she said. It’s of little wonder, then, that she became a librarian, moving eventually to Owatonna and rising to become the director of the Owatonna Public Library, as well as the director of technology for the city.

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PAGE 48

FELTES from page 47 But though it may have seemed destined for her to become a librarian from her childhood, with her love of libraries, books and stories coming to her at that very young age — “We had every Little Golden Book that was ever published,” she said — Mary Kay did not always think that she would end up amongst the stacks of books. In fact, she planned on something much different.

A change of mind, a change of heart

What changed her mind was, in part, the economy. And, of course, her love of stories, her love of books. When Mary Kay graduated from high school in 1971, she first headed to Marquette University in Milwaukee, the same school where her mother had earned in bachelor’s degree in nursing. After two years, however, she transferred to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, the school from which she would eventually earn her bachelor’s degree with a double maIn this May 2013 file photo, Mary Kay Feltes gives the Owatonna City Council and members of the city staff a tour of the library. (Press file photo)

jor in English and sociology, and nearly a minor in philosophy. If the two seem disparate — one dealing with the world of fiction, the world of make-believe, the other dealing with the world of fact, sometimes in its harshest and grittiest form — Mary Kay insists that the two areas are closer than one would think. “They both tell interesting stories,” she said. But when she graduated from college in the mid-1970s, the options for jobs were scant, not just for someone with a double major in English and sociology, but pretty much for everyone else as well. The country was at the tail end of a recession that lasted from 1973-1975 — a recession that put an end to the general economic boom in the post-World War II era, and a recession the effects of which would be felt throughout the Carter administration and into the early years of the Reagan White House.

See FELTES on page 50

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PAGE 50

FELTES from page 48 “The job market was not good,” Mary Kay said. She thought about social work, but it didn’t appeal to her, not really. Then she heard about library school, something she didn’t even know existed. After a year and a half of additional schooling, she could become a librarian. “I thought it sounded great,” she said, “surrounded by books and by people who liked to read.”

fire

If you’re a pretender, come sit by my

For we have some flax-golden tales to spin. Come in! Come in! Mary Kay felt that invitation to “come in, come in” when she was invited by Owatonna Public Library director Graham Benoit to look at the Owatonna library and consider a position here. “I was thrilled to be invited to come Storied path to Steele County and look at it,” she said. The reputation of the library under There is a room in the basement of Benoit’s leadership was, after all, trethe Owatonna Public Library that most mendous. people never see, tucked far behind the “They were at the forefront of anymain desk in the children’s library, past thing new, with a supportive commuthe elevator and some restrooms, down nity,” she said, adding that the Owatonna at the end of a hallway. It is there in the community still strongly supports the corner of the room that the library staff library. pours themselves a cup of coffee. It is Because of that support, the library there on the shelves that line the walls that she came to in Owatonna was one that some books of the library’s collecthat was unafraid to try new things and tion are stored, available if requested but be on the cutting edge of what libraries generally out of sight. offer. And it is there in that room that Mary “We didn’t wait for someone to say it Kay Feltes got her start in the Owatonna was OK,” she said. library system. It hasn’t always been easy. Mary Kay came to Owatonna from Mary Kay remembers that shortly Winona in 1990, hired by then director after Benoit stepped down as director Graham Benoit to be the library’s as- Rotarians Mike Jensen and Mary Kay Feltes work a booth in Owatonna’s Central Park during the Harry Wenger and she was named to take his place, sistant director with a specialty in chil- Marching Band Festival. (Submitted photo) the city — indeed, the state and the nadren’s services. At the time the library tion as a whole — faced a most serious was much smaller in size. And that room story time?’ And I said, ‘Soon,’” she said. the way her mother would tell old familiar tales that now houses the extra shelves and the staff cofAnd true to her word, she offered the program like “Hansel and Gretel” and “Three Billy Goats crisis, an economic downturn since dubbed “The fee pot was the children’s library. during the summer. Gruff.” She loved it when her mother told stories Great Recession.” Money became tight, the state “I got to be in on the planning of the expansion,” “I learned a lot there,” she said. and wanted to share that love of hearing stories cut back on Local Government Aid, and, as a consequence the city directed its departments said Mary Kay. She stayed in Independence for four years, leav- with children who came to the library. But there was much she had to learn, both in ing after she was invited to apply for the children’s “I loved to see the expressions on the faces and to tighten their belts. That, of course, meant the library as well. school and out, before she came to Owatonna more librarian position in Winona, a move that took not just of the kids,” she said. It was tough. For the library it meant cutting than 25 years ago. some adjustment. Not only was she now in a much She also loved to see the expressions on the staff and services. Gone was the bookmobile and The first place she landed after graduating from bigger library surrounded by a much bigger staff, faces of the parents, perhaps remembering and “library school,” as she called it, was in Indepen- but she was no longer in Wisconsin, but in Min- reliving a time of innocence from their childhood. delivery to daycares across the community. Gone dence, in her home county of Trempealeau in west- nesota. Viking territory. And though she’s never And she still loves it, especially sharing books also was delivery to the households of the homeern Wisconsin, a community of about 1,200 people been much of a football fan, she still finds it difficult that have poetry in them and watching as children bound. And high school students, who worked and a community that hasn’t grown much since. It to wear purple. delight in the language — the sounds, the rhythm, after school reshelving books and other odd jobs around the library, saw their positions eliminated. was just about 10 miles from where she had grown While in Winona, Mary Kay continued “story the rhyme. “I was proud we didn’t have to cut hours,” said up and first visited the library. time,” her time of reading to children. “Kids relate to poetry,” she said. It was there in Independence that Mary Kay “I got to love it,” she said. “And I got to be good Then she lapses into a poem — “Invitation” Mary Kay. “It was important to keep open.” And the library bounced back as the economy, first started reading stories to children after a at it.” from Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends: though some programs have not been re-estabmother approached her shortly after her arrival in She still is. If you’re a dreamer, come in, lished even as new programs — always on the Independence and floated the idea. And it’s of little wonder. Her mother, she said, If you’re a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, forefront of anything new — have been introduce. “The mother asked me, ‘When are you starting was a great storyteller. And she still remembers A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer,

See FELTES on page 51

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PAGE 51

FELTES from page 50 Then there are things like the remodeling of the library’s Reading Room, of which Mary Kay is quite proud — and rightfully so. “I’m proud it’s a place where people meet one another,” she said.

Passion for the job

It was back in the late 1970s, when she was still working at the library in Independence, that Mary Kay first attended her first Bruce Springsteen concert, but she remembers it like it was yesterday. Her brother Jimmy had asked her to attend, and she still recalls how the auditorium was filled with energy. And she remembers turning to her brother, pointing at Springsteen on the stage and asking, “What’s his name again?” It’s a name she hasn’t forgotten and a singer that she still follows. She planned on seeing in concert yet again on Feb. 29 when the Boss played the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. But it’s not just the energy of the music and the crowds that attracts her, though there is a “lot of excitement in that,” she said. “He seems to be a thinker,” Mary Kay added, noting that she had read that he reads the stories and novels of Flannery O’Connor.

It’s the stories, always the stories. And Mary Kay has never lost that, whether its reading “Polar Express” to groups of enraptured children at a Cocoa with Santa Event or reciting “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” to a group of children on stage during a Little Theatre of Owatonna Christmas variety show. Then there are the other stories — the personal ones that are shared with her from patrons of the library who come through the doors in search of information of life-changing events, like a diagnosis of cancer, that they themselves have just gone through. It’s not just the information they seek — and what better place to find it than the library — but it’s also the comfort they want, comfort from a sympathetic ear. And, again, what better place to find it than the library? “Everybody comes here,” she said. And when she’s challenged by those in the community who ask, “Do people still use the library?” she has the answer. Yes, she says, they do and always will as long as people have stories and seek stories. “I have a passion for this job and for the reading community,” she said. “I enjoy it and I want to see it advance.”

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PAGE 52

Matt Kottke shows off the recently remodeled Kottke Jewelers store downtown. Kottke joined the family business in 2014 after a long career with Truth Hardware. (Submitted photo)

Matt Kottke

Not Far from the Tree

By WILLIAM MORRIS

wmorris@owatonna.com

Reminders of his family history are all around Matt Kottke. “It really hits me when I am by myself and I walk into Wells Fargo Bank, or to the Post Office and walk past the old Armory and between Federated and Jostens, and picture my dad and grandfather doing this so many times themselves,” he said. “I often imagine what the town must have been like in those early years, as I’m literally walking in their footsteps.” The Kottkes have left a lot of footsteps in Owatonna over the years. His grandfather, Carl Kottke, founded Kottke Jeweler’s downtown almost a century ago. His father, Bill, continued the family business, and Matt has now operated the store since shortly before Bill’s death in 2014. Nor is

that the only thread connecting Matt Kottke to the past generations of his family. He volunteers time to numerous community groups, a value inherited from his father, and even lives in the same house his grandfather built in 1939. It’s those deep-set roots that have led Kottke to devote so much of his time and energy to making Owatonna a great place to be. “While many of my friends vowed never to move back to Owatonna, I knew this is where I always wanted to live,” Kottke said. “... Its amazing to listen to so many of my friends who return for reunions or other special occasions, and they comment about how much they miss Owatonna and wish they would have come back here to settle down raise their families.”

Owatonna in his blood

Kottke’s story starts in 1959 in Des Moines. His par-

See KOTTKE on page 53

ents were grade-school sweethearts who attended Drake University together and started their family in Iowa, but moved back for good after Matt’s kindergarten year when his father joined his grandfather at the family jewelry store in 1965. “Back in those early days, I recall that Park and Rec was really huge in Owatonna, with each grade school and each grade having their own teams that we’d play against in all sports,” Matt Kottke said. “Summers were spent primarily at the parks or playgrounds of our grade schools where the Park and Rec held their summertime programs … it was essentially a huge daycare program that everyone biked to and from and spent our entire days at.” Kottke’s other early experiences included Boy Scouts trips to Camp Hok-Si-La or the Boundary Waters and trips to the family cabin near Ellendale, which his grandfather established in 1933.

Friday, March 18, 2016

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PAGE 53

KOTTKE from page 52 “Growing up, the town of Owatonna itself was really alive, with retail stores dominating the streets downtown,” he said. “I recall the streets at Crazy Days being literally packed with shoppers as virtually every storefront had goods for sale out on their sidewalks.” Kottke graduated from Owatonna High School in 1977, and still considers himself a proud Indian, eschewing the newer Huskies mascot. He received a business marketing degree at St. Cloud State University and was soon back in his hometown putting it to use at Truth Hardware, the start of a 31-year career. He started with the company as a customer service representative and ended as the marketing manager. “I really met and worked alongside some very talented and dedicated people, who together we were able to do a lot of great things,” Kottke said. “When we talk about being sold [Truth was sold four times during his tenure], it sometimes appears as a negative in people’s minds, but truly the reason we were sold is because we were a good company. We made our owners very happy — a good, hard-working company with quality

products and quality people.” In the very particular circle of window and door manufacturers, Kottke was a leading figure. He served five years as chairman of the WinDoor North America annual trade show, served on the editorial board for an industry magazine and helped launch the Partners Promoting Window and Balcony Safety program in Canada. He was the first U.S. citizen in 25 years named to the Canadian Window and Door Manufacturers Association Board of Directors (the only other so honored, it happens, was his former boss at Truth, Larry Haberman). And then in 2014, he stepped away from Truth (now known as Amesbury Truth) and the window industry as a whole. “I had worked there a long time, and it just felt like it was time for me to do something else,” he said. “I was fortunate I was involved in so many things in Owatonna, knew so many people, I felt there was something else I could do in Owatonna to help out, whether it would be helping at the jewelry store or do something else to help in Owatonna.”

See KOTTKE on page 54

Matt Kottke, left, with his father, Bill, and grandfather, Carl, in an older photograph. The three together have run Kottke Jeweler’s since 1919. (Submitted photos)

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PAGE 54

KOTTKE from page 53 At that time, his father, Bill, was in declining health, and Matt stepped in to help at the family business. “Our hope was my dad was going to get better, get stronger to the point he could come back to the store,” Kottke said. “He was kind of on a roller coaster of health, and didn’t get strong enough to come back, and probably three to four months after I started working there, he passed away.”

that could have shopped at the store. That’s a lot of history. A lot of smiles, as my grandfather would say, that we’ve brought to Owatonna.”

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So, how does a career window and door marketer take to running a downtown jewelry store? So far, the answer seems to be pretty well. “It was very emotional, to come into the store, but I credit the wonderful staff that my father had hired, the “famous Kottke girls” as he affectionately tagged all the ladies who worked at the store over the years,” Kottke said. “They helped me understand what needed to be done on a daily basis, and on a bigger picture, my wife and family would help me out.” In the past two years, the store has gone through a major renovation project, sorting or getting rid of decades of old material and updating and redecorating the main showroom. “[My fat her] and my grandfather before him built a great store with a wonderful following, and I’d like to think our efforts have just enhanced what those before us had started,” Kottke said. Although not a jeweler by trade, Kottke has brought his sales knowledge from his past career to bear at the store and

The Kottke family, including Matt (back center) gather at the family cabin near Beaver Lake, west of Ellendale, in an older photograph. (Submitted photo)

says business is strong, in no small part due to the many loyal customers who remember his father and grandfather. “It’s wonderful to hear people come into the store today, it happens daily, where people come in and are so appreciative that the store is

still in business and tell me wonderful stories about my father and grandfather that they helped them out, buying their first ring, buying a graduation watch for a child that they still have today, looking around and realizing there’s been updates made, but it still

has the same charm it had back in the days of dirt roads and black and white pictures,” Kottke said. Because the Kottke line isn’t the only family that’s been affected by the store over the years. “I hear, constantly, stories

“”

about families who come in and say they want to get their engagement ring from the store because their father got their ring there, maybe their grandfather or great-grandfather,” he said. “If you consider a generation as 20 years, we’re approaching five generations

We’re approaching five generations that could have shopped at the store. That’s a lot of history. A lot of smiles, as my grandfather would say, that we’ve brought to Owatonna. Matt Kottke

See KOTTKE on page 55

Of cours e, not all of Kottke’s time in Owatonna has been spent at work. He married Lisa (Fjalstad) Kottke, another OHS graduate and a onetime Indians mascot, in 1998. They met in 1996, when Kottke, then almost 40, says he was pretty much resigned to his remaining a bachelor. She, too, has left her mark on the family business. “I do want to give ample credit to my wife, who, while she has her own career, has spent immeasurable time at the store,” he said. “My wife has a wonderful eye for decorating and has a wonderful business sense, and I credit her with a lot of those things that helped move us in the direction where we’re at today.” The couple has two children, both in town: Caleb, who farms and does construction work, and Sarah, who works at Owatonna Clinic and Buffalo Wild Wings and also is the fourth generation of Kottkes to help out at the jewelry store. She’s pursuing a career as a physician’s assistant. “Caleb is the strongest, hardest-working individual I’ve ever met, and I like to think he’s gotten that a little from my family as well as my wife’s family, that work ethic. It’s outstanding,” Kottke said. “And my daughter, she’s involved in so many things as well: music, theater, volunteering. They’re always around to help, and that’s something I’m very proud of.”

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KOTTKE from page 54 That’s something they likely picked up from their father, whose past and present volunteer record reads as a who’s who of Owatonna service organizations: Past board member of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Owatonna and past chair of the annual Bowl for Kids Sake fundraiser; past board member of Owatonna Federal Credit Union; past board president of Little Theatre of Owatonna, past member of the Park and Recreation board, founding member of the Owatonna High School Athletic Hall of Fame, Owatonna High School Alumni Association and Leadership Owatonna Program: Co-chair of Pool Together Owatonna, which helped develop River Springs Water Park, and Owatonna Forward, which supported the 2015 Owatonna School District referendum; and current president of the Owatonna Public Utilities Commission and a trustee of the Owatonna Foundation.

Volunteerism runs in the family, Kottke said. “Growing up, I probably didn’t appreciate the reason and meaning behind the countless boards and committees my father was on, and the numerous meetings he attended and the volunteer work he did, but somewhere along the line, it sunk in and I can’t put it any simpler than simply now saying ‘I get it,’” he said. Particularly dear to Kottke’s heart are projects to help attract and retain people to the community. “Back when I was growing up, Owatonna was looked at very highly amongst neighboring communities, for our schools, our playgrounds, our quality of life, businesses, and I can’t say we’re at the top of the scale in all those categories today, but that’s not to say we shouldn’t strive to be that,” he said. That was why he was one of the leading voices behind the water park.

See KOTTKE on page 56

A picture of the Kottke Jeweler’s showroom floor from about 50 years ago. (Submitted photo)

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KOTTKE from page 55 “That’s how Owatonna grew — the trail system, the hockey rink. There’s a group of people who got together and said, we need that,” he said. “Those have become assets to the community that help attract people to town, and they make for a safer, in some instances, environment to participate in those things. We didn’t have a quality swimming place in Owatonna. It’s good to have a pool to swim at. It’s good to have water slides. If we’re going to continue to attract people to town and continue to retain people, we need to provide those types of things they want.”

Still stuck to the branch

At 57, Kottke has a long way to go at the jewelry store to equal the tenures of his grandfather and father, who worked until they were 92 and 82, respectively. “I’m just taking the store and my involvement one day at a time. This was not the career that I had chosen, but I am enjoying it, and we’ll see what happens,” he said. “I can see why they loved it so much.” The store isn’t the only new addition to his life: he’s also in recent years taken up hobby beer-making. “I’ve got some wonderful friends who actually I went to high school with, and we just wanted to find something else to do, as we were all getting to that age where we weren’t following our kids so much to sporting events,” Kottke said. “It was time to find some other reason to stay together and keep in contact, and we all like drinking beer.” With the help of one of his friends’ daughters, a university chemistry professor, Kottke and two friends launched Mineral Springs Brewery, cooking up beer in a variety of styles in garages and basements and anointing each batch with a little bit of the mineral spring water that he says first drew settlers to Owatonna. But although they’ve got a name and T-shirts for their brewery, the one thing they don’t have is products for sale. “Everyone goes, ‘How can I buy that?’ and I’m like ‘Eh, we drink it all,’” Kottke said. Unlike the peers he remembers eager to get away from Owatonna, Kottke’s roots have always drawn him back to his ancestral home. “[I] did not fall very far from the tree,” he said. “That apple is still stuck to the branch, honestly. ... It’s really heartwarming to think of living in this community that my grandfather lived in for 90-plus years, living in his house that my father grew up in, and now working at the store that was such an important part of their lives.” And he wouldn’t have it any other way. “I really feel fortunate to live in Owatonna. There’s a lot of wonderful people and programs and things that Owatonna has to offer, and I’d like to be involved in keeping that moving forward,” he said. “It’s important to me that Owatonna continues to move forward, continues to be that city that my grandfather and father both helped move down the path of being the community we are today. You can’t just sit on the sidelines if you want to see something done. You need to be an active participant.” William Morris is a reporter for the Owatonna People’s Press. He can be reached at 444-2372; follow him on Twitter @ OPPWilliam

Matt Kottke’s father, Bill (right), Aunt, Carol, and grandparents gather around the fireplace in approximately 1950 at their Owatonna home. (Submitted photo)

Sixty-five years later, Kottke has a seat by the same fireplace in his grandfather’s home, where he lives today. (William Morris/People’s Press)

PAGE 56

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Laura Relser in her new place of employment, the Owatonna Foundation. (Kim Hyatt/People’s Press)

Laura Resler

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khyatt@owatonna.com

“It’s funny where life takes you,” said Laura Resler, as she sat in the downtown lobby of the Owatonna Foundation where she serves as executive secretary. Less than a year ago, Resler was part of a different organization in Owatonna, but that isn’t the whimsical turn of events to which she

is referring. This is: Resler went from being a Brooklyn baby with interests in becoming a veterinarian, to working for local non-profits after moving to Minnesota. “If you would have said to me in high school that this is what I would be doing today, I would’ve said you were crazy,” Resler said. Resler, 59, has lived in Owatonna for 35 years now, and in that time, she’s had her

hands in many efforts within the community. With her current work at the Foundation, she gets to help sustain the arts, recreation, and education through financially supporting individuals and ideas that aim to boost the community’s quality of life. After 13 years at the Steele County Historical Society, Resler said she wanted to “slow down a little bit and have a little more personal time,” but still be part of the non-profit scene,

See RESLER on page 60

just on a part-time basis. Interestingly enough, at that time last year when Resler was looking elsewhere, an opportunity in Owatonna became available with an organization she and many others are very familiar with, the Owatonna Foundation. “When the opportunity arose it seemed a good fit,” she said. “So far, I love it. Really, coming here was almost in a sense getting to be with some old friends.”

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PAGE 59

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PAGE 60

RESLER from page 58 Back when she was serving as the historical society’s director, she got to know many of the Foundation’s trustees who gave $500,000 to the society to fund roof repairs on the 15 buildings and other needs at the Village of Yesteryear. The Foundation has been a long–time supporter of the historical society, “so it makes sense to me,” Resler said, that she would end up working for the organization that lent so much support to her previous place of work. Resler witnessed a lot of change at the historical society, such as when the history center was built four years ago. “When I started there it was focused on the Village, and we started expanding the events and activities as time went on,” she said. “Now it’s a year-round facility with the history center. It enables them to offer lectures and other events.”

She said her favorite history exhibit in all those years was “Transfer of Memory,” a touring show consisting of portraits and stories of Minnesota’s Holocaust survivors. “That’s the one I was personally most touched by,” she said. Aside from exhibits, she served on several Owatonna Area Chamber of Commerce and Tourism committees and said “the history center kept me pretty busy.” Resler said now her time at the Foundation is mainly spent processing donations and working toward the publicity of the Foundation by building the donor base. Basically, Resler said she is there to assist the 35 trustees get the funds needed to support existing and new organizations, businesses, and buildings. What’s more, the Foundation gives out grants and scholarships to individuals within the community.

See RESLER on page 62

Laura Resler gathers with her family. (Submitted photo)

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Church Directory Our Savior’s Lutheran Church-ELCA

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SUNDAY 8:00 a.m. Traditional Service 10:30 a.m. Blended Service 9:15 a.m. Sunday School for All Ages Children to Adult SUMMER SCHEDULE Memorial Day–Labor Day 8:00 a.m. Traditional Service 9:30 a.m. Blended Service Pastor Dave Klawiter Nursery • Handicapped Accessible • Air Conditioned Communion At All Services • Worship will broadcast over AM 1390 KRFO at 10:30 every Sunday

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REDEEMER LUTHERAN CHURCH

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Rev. Kirk Griebel Worship Sundays at 9:00 a.m. Educational hour from 10:15 to 11:15 (Sunday School & Adult Bible Study) September thru May e-mail: rlcowat@smig.net www.redeemerowatonna.org

PAGE 61

ST. PAUL’S LUTHERAN CHURCH, MERIDAN

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RESLER from page 60 In 2015 alone, the Foundation raised $550,000 to support such initiatives sprawling across the community, from the Homestead Hospice House and River Springs Water Park, to the Owatonna Soccer Complex and many of the city’s parks and trails. One of the very first projects taken on by the Foundation was to acquire land along the Straight River to create a 5-mile nature trail system with a swimming beach, fishing area, and more. Thirty years later, that initial initiative is known as Kaplan’s Woods Parkway. Another first-time project and partnership with a service organization, the Steele County Food Shelf, began when a grant allowed the food shelf to purchase freezers, file cabinets, and other office equipment. Subsequent grants made it possible for the food shelf to paint the entrance with murals to welcome customers and get stainless steel sinks and other commercial equipment

to keep current with state codes. Funding from the Foundation for the last 55 years amounts to more than $11 million in support of projects across the community. And that’s a pretty cool to call the Foundation her place of employment, Resler said, and despite drawing nearer to the age of retirement, she’s looking forward to funding more initiatives. “I feel very privileged to have the opportunity I have and work with the people I work with,” she said. Asked what project supported by the Foundation that she appreciates the most, she said it’s too difficult to pick one. “I enjoy so many things and appreciate so much of what they have done throughout the community,” she said. “When you look at the community, everyone is touched by the things the Foundation has done, whether parks and rec or the library,” she said. “Anywhere you look in the community, the Foundation has touched it.”

See RESLER on page 63

Laura Resler, far left, is part of a large group in the Steele County History Center of its April 2012 ribbon-cutting. (Submitted photo)

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PAGE 63

RESLER from page 62

Chad Lange and Laura Resler ignite the last mortgage payment of the history center, only two years after the center held a ribbon-cutting ceremony. (Press file photo)

Laura Resler, far right, and friends don their versions of “Grumpy Old Men” clothes for the Steele County History Center’s Cabin Fever Reliever in January 2014. (Submitted photo)

From the farm to the Foundation

After she was born in Brooklyn, Resler’s family moved to a suburb of Manhattan where she lived until she was 16 years old before heading to southern Minnesota. “If you plunked me down in Brooklyn today, I’d find my way around,” Resler said. As a kid, she explored the American Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She loved historic homes and architecture and “there’s lots of them out there.” Resler attended Austin High School and graduated in 1975. While in school, her family raised animals and she did a lot of work with horses, dogs, and cats. Growing up she enjoyed reading James Herriot, a British vet-

erinary surgeon and author of “All Creatures Great and Small.” “It seemed like a good fit to be a vet tech, “ she said, “but its funny where life takes you.” In college she was enrolled at the University of Minnesota in Waseca to be a vet tech, but worked in fast food for a while before her first experience in the non-profit world through a farm organization. It wasn’t too long after college in 1980 when Resler married her husband, Todd, and they moved to Owatonna. They had two children, Karen, 35, and Steven, 30, who both graduated from Owatonna High School and now have their own careers and families. Just as Todd farmed dairy cattle, hogs and crops for many years, Steven has carried on the tradition while Todd went on to work for

Wenger Corporation and he’s now in his 17th year with the local music business. Now Resler is a grandmother, who has some spare time to spend on hobbies and just hanging out with family. She said she likes antiques and her favorite TV show before it ended was Downton Abbey, so now she’s watching Mercy Street, a show about the Civil War. Resler reads a lot of historical fiction and listen to anything from Gershwin and Henry Mancini to country music. But she doesn’t make it back to Brooklyn often, as all her relatives have relocated. There was a time back when she was still on the vet track that she ended up escorting 32 people on a 15-day trip around the east coast, a last-minute fluke, she said. Luckily for those Minnesotans that

a New Yorker was in the mix to escort, which doubled as a trip down memory lane for Resler. Now, most of her time is spent in Owatonna at many of the places her employer has made possible through community contributions. “When I look at my time in Owatonna, it’s the people I’ve been so blessed to meet and get to know along the way. It’s truly about the great people you get to meet,” she said. “It’s certainly something you can feel passionate about benefiting the community. It’s such a great legacy to see what the Foundation has done and to carry it out into the future.” Reach reporter Kim Hyatt at 507-4442376. Follow her on Twitter @OPPKimHyatt

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PAGE 65

Meillier in his office at Alexander Lumber Company. Though “technically retired,” he says, he’s still in the office five days a week. (William Morris/People’s Press)

Generation Generation Dennis Meillier

By WILLIAM MORRIS

wmorris@owatonna.com

Talking to Denny Meillier, it’s easy to forget his last name isn’t Alexander. After 43 years working at Alexander Lumber Company, including almost 30 years as owner, Meillier’s office still is decorated with family photos of the Alexanders who founded the company in 1883 and ran it for more than a century. Out on the retail floor, the rafters are decorated with the original wagons and sleighs used by the Alexanders when they first came to Owatonna. When asked, Meillier can discuss the Alexander family tree in greater detail than many people could describe

their own. But though he’s remained mindful of the company’s roots, Meillier, 67, hasn’t been treading water since purchasing Alexander Lumber in 1988. The business has expanded its footprint downtown while Meillier has assumed key leadership roles in the community and his industry. Although he’s not working the same hours he did in his youth, he’s still deeply engaged as he prepares to pass the business on which he’s spent his life’s work on yet again to a new generation. And if he had the chance, he’d do it all again. “I just loved what I was doing down here,” he said. “I wouldn’t trade none of it for anything.”

See MEILLIER on page 66

Friday, March 18, 2016

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PAGE 66

MEILLIER from page 65 The honorary Alexander

ters, who Meillier says were too young or not interested in becoming the fourth generation of When Meillier joined AlexAlexander lumber yard owners ander Lumber in 1973, the comin Minnesota. So Meillier raised pany already had a rich family money from a group of acquainhistory, which he’s more than tances and bought the business happy to share. from the family. Within six McIndoe Alexander, a son years he’d paid off the investors of a lumber dynasty in Wausau, and was sole owner of the busiWisconsin, founded the comness. pany in 1883. He started selling From the start, he was challumber out of a wagon, but by lenged by the nature of a downthe time he died, he had estabtown business that had grown lished the Alexander Lumber until it could grow no more. building that still stands today “We had satellite storage on North Cedar Avenue as well yards, north of here, a block to as 12 smaller lumber yards up two blocks away, we were runand down the north-south railning forklifts up and down the road line. street, and pickup trucks and McIndoe’s two sons, Mark delivery trucks to pick up wood and Donald, sold most of the at this yard, and then go to that smaller lineyards after inherityard to get some sheetrock, then ing the company, with the formaybe you had to come back tuitous outcome that Alexanhere to get some insulation, just der had plenty of cash on hand to fill an order. It was very labor when the stock market crashed intensive,” he said. in October of 1929. While DonOne option was to shift away ald started a separate business from downtown entirely. making wagon suspensions “I had an opportunity to and undercarriages, Mark ran Hanging from the rafters in the Alexander Lumber store are the wagons and sleighs used by the founders of the company in move this up on the north end. the late 1800s. (William Morris/People’s Press) the family business while also At the intersection of Cedar and purchasing the insolvent Farmhave a draftsman so he could do house So he was eager for the Alexander no, I think I can see what your abilities 26th Street, there was a parcel there of er’s National Bank for pennies on the plans. That was the next big thing,” position, but all his past experience was are. This is fine.’” about 8 acres I could have had for very dollar. He reopened the bank, which Meillier said. “I came and applied for it, in mechanical rather than architectural Meillier says he loved working at reasonable, … but we had meetings was located in what now is the Wells was offered the job and took it, moved drafting. Alexander Lumber, rising to general with our stockholders, and decided, Fargo building downtown, serving as here with my family from Faribault ... “I remember called down here, I manager and adding new and broader I was convinced we needed to stay president for both companies. I did house plans and materials and called and got the dates set up for the responsibilities over the years. downtown,” Meillier said. “They finally Mark’s son John was the third gen- take-off for him for 16 years.” interview, and Mr. Alexander said, “With John Alexander, I had lots of agreed to it, so we stayed down here eration of Alexanders in Owatonna, To hear him tell it now, Meillier bring some drawings, some samples if opportunities. Every few years, some- and did our reinvesting in the comand it was he who hired a young drafts- cheated a bit to get the job. you can,” Meillier said. “I showed him thing else would come along,” Meillier munity down here.” man out of Faribault who would one “I was working for a company my drawings after we talked, and they said. “I remember he hated collections. Instead, Meillier took the long view. day be the first in a new family tree to named Nutting Truck and Caster out were all mechanical, they weren’t archi- He was such a nice guy. … He hated At the time, Alexander took only about run the lumber company. Denny Meil- of Faribault, which was an old com- tectural, and I kind of lied a little, I said hiring people, so pretty much I did half the block on which it sits, with resilier was 24 years old when he first ar- pany, too,” he said. “I’d been there about ‘oh my God, I grabbed the wrong ones.’ all the hiring. Anything he wanted to dential property behind it. rived in town. three and a half years. It was kind of ... I wanted out so bad over there in slough off, if I offered to do it, he was “There were seven houses between “I was a draftsman over in Faribault, a dead-end job, and I didn’t have an Faribault and figured I could quick pick more than happy to let me run with it.” us and Elm Street,” he said. “I started working for a company, and I got word engineering degree, and I was getting up the architectural side of it. I kind of buying out those houses as people aged that there was a guy who owned a lum- pretty bored with it, the same old stuff bluffed and said, ‘I could make a trip Under new management John Alexander died of a heart at- out and wanted to sell. I went door to ber yard in Owatonna [and] wanted to day after day.” back and get you some,’ and John said tack at 59 in 1988. He left three daugh- door for 13 years, said, ‘If you ever want

See MEILLIER on page 67

Friday, March 18, 2016

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

MEILLIER from page 66

to sell, would you talk to us first,’ and every- investor in Community Bank Owatonna and one said they’d do that. Took me 13 years to a past board member for the United Way of Steele County. o get those seven houses bought.” “They asked me to move up in that one, Finally in 2001, the company had all and I turned them down,” he said. “We were the land it needed to build the steel storage f just going 100 miles per hour for years, and buildings that now complete the property. s I didn’t see any relief, so we begged off that While he was working on that project, d one. ” Meillier was making a mark in other areas Through all of this, he was still busy s as well. x “I was president of the Northwestern running the lumber company, until recently s Lumber Association and a two-term board working six days a week. “We worked every Saturday, and I did - member up there. That was second most active [association] in the country, aside from that for 20 years, six days a week,” he said. - eastern,” he said. “So I got to know a lot of “Then we bought the lumber company, I still - lumber yard owners over the years. It’s a good kept coming in every Saturday. I just stopped working every Saturday about a year ago, n business. They’re all good people.” He also can rattle off a list of significant after 30 years of it.” e roles in the Owatonna community, including Passing the torch o past chair of the Owatonna Area Chamber In 1968, Meillier married his wife, Jacque. - of Commerce and Tourism board; a trustee “We were kind of the old proverbial high e for the Owatonna Foundation; and member- school sweethearts,” he said, “We dated all of d ship in the Rotary and at one time Exchange senior year, then I went off to college.” d and Sertoma clubs. He also was an original t n See MEILLIER on page 68 k t r

o . d f y s , y y e -

PAGE 67

Denny and Jacque Miller, center, surrounded by their children, childrens’ spouses and grandchildren in November of 2012. (Submitted photo)

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Friday, March 18, 2016

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MEILLIER from page 67

Denny Meillier and his son, Josh, pose with Jerry Ganfield of the Steele County Historical Society in the first truck owned by Alexander Lumber. The photo was taken in 2003 for the 120th anniversary of the company. (Submitted photos)

Denny and Josh Meillier get their golf on at the 2007 Anasazi International. When Denny steps down, Josh is next in line to own and operated Alexander Lumber. (Submitted photo)

The couple have two children. Amara, their daughter, lives with her family north of Chicago. She has two sons, one in his first year of college and the other a senior year a high school. Their son, Josh, 41, works with his father at the lumber company and is next in line to take over when Denny Meillier steps away. “Technically, I guess I’m retired. I’m kind of in a consulting position, because I’m still on the payroll,” he said. “I come in late, and I leave early, have long lunches. I think it’s pretty nice.” With Josh handling more and more of the daily business of the company, his father is settling into more of an advisory role, something he wishes he could have had when he first bought the company. “When [John Alexander] passed away … we were able to buy the lumber company from the family, but my mentor was gone,” Meillier said. “I didn’t have anyone to bounce ideas off of. … Josh has that in myself now, where if he has an issue with something, I’m just a couple doors away. In the winter we’re gone for three months probably, but I think that’s kind of helpful for Josh, to have someone who has experience with some of these customers.” It’s a slow transition, but Meillier still enjoys coming into work and wants to make sure the transfer is handled right. “Two thirds of second-generation companies fail, did you know that?” he said. “They like the lifestyle, but they remember what dad or mom went through. … I think the pride is still there for family-owned businesses, but usually it’s the first generation that works it the hardest. They’re the ones who went hungry in the beginning.” Not that he’s worried about Josh, who’s been at the business now for 14 years and has his own connections to the community, including serving as chair of the city planning commission.

“It’s a great opportunity for Josh. He’s a hard worker. He’s going to do just fine,” Meillier said. And of course, Josh has four children of his own, ages three to nine, bring the grandchild total to six. “It’s another reason to offer him an opportunity at the lumber company, to stay close to the grandkids, so we don’t have to chase them off to Minneapolis or God knows where else,” Meillier jokes. As he’s backed away from the company, Meillier has had more time now for other pursuits. He and Jacque winter in Arizona (where they always stop and visit Leslie Alexander, one of John Alexander’s daughters, and her husband). For more than 40 years he’s been a member of the Owatonna Country Club, and his office has a substantial shelf of golf trophies. But when the time comes to retire for good, he knows he’ll leave behind a thriving company and a strong reputation for hard work and dedication to the community. “A good friend of mine was a loan officer down at Northwest Bank. He told me, ‘Denny,’ he said, ‘one good reason you were able to get that loan at the bank [to buy Alexander Lumber] is your work ethic over the past 20 years, 15 years,’” Meillier remembers. “‘Everyone saw it, you worked hard, took on new challenges all the time,’ and that sold him on the fact that he thought I could make a good run of it.” Looking back, he can say with assurance he proved his friend right. “All that stuff, people are watching,” he said. “That’s what I tell Josh: people are watching all the time, seeing what your abilities are. It’s going to help you borrow money, help you build relationships with your customers, everything.” William Morris is a reporter for the Owatonna People’s Press. He can be reached at 444-2372; follow him on Twitter @OPPWilliam

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A Man and His Music Berlyn Staska

By JEFFREY JACKSON

jjackson@owatonna.com

OWATONNA — For nearly as long as he can remember, Berlyn Staska has held a horn in his hand. And that’s a long time. Staska first picked up a horn — a silver Sears & Roebuck cornet, he remembers — when he was 6 years old. Now, more than 80 years later, Staska still practices the trumpet 30 to 45 minutes every day, still plays in the Owatonna Community Band that he helped formed, and still plays taps at local military funerals and veterans’ events. For the record, he doesn’t seem ready to slow down any time soon. “If you keep active, you live longer,” he said. It seems to be working. Staska is 87 and will turn 88 come May. And throughout those near 90 years, music has been a part of Staska’s life. There’s little wonder to that. The encouragement to play music came from his father, a creamery operator in Steele Center who played both trombone and bass in an Army band during World War I. Staska’s father also played with numerous local bands when such bands were popular — the Elks Concert Band, the Elks Kibitzer Band, the Klecker Family Band and a band called the Golden Aces, as well as other local bands. So there isn’t wonder that about the time Staska was 6, his father put that silver Sears & Roebuck cornet in his hands and a saxophone in the hands of Staska’s younger brother Norman, and they started to play together “He wanted us to keep up with music,” Staska said. And in the evenings they would play all kinds of music, from old-time music like marches, polkas and waltzes to what was then “modern” music from the big band era. Sometimes his sisters Janet and Colleen would join in on the accordion or his youngest sister, Sandra, on the piano. Though he learned a lot, especially learning to love music, during those early formative years, it wasn’t until he got into high school that his music really took off, inspired greatly by the man who Staska calls “the greatest director” that he ever had.{h3}Making music{/ h3}In 1936 — a scant two years after a young Berlyn Staska had first taken up the cornet — another cornet player and his wife, who also played the cornet, mov ed to Owatonna and eventually changed not only the face of music in the town, but also business and industry. That man’s name was Harry Wenger.

See STASKA on page 70

In this May 2015 file photo, Berlyn Staska prepares to play taps at the Memorial Day commemoration at the Four Seasons Center in Owatonna. (Press file photo)

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STASKA from page 69

The Brass Renegades delighted audiences everywhere they played, including this August 1965 performance at the Minneapolis Aquatennial Schweigert Contest. Pictured, from left to right, are Rufus Sanders, Berlyn Staska, Ken Teeters, Eddie Rypka, Werner Jenke, Ken Marker and Ladd Rypka. (Submitted photo)

But before Wenger created the company that bears his name to this day, he was a band teacher and the leader of the music department at Owatonna High School, tinkering in his basement, trying to create a better conducting baton or music stand. It was in this era — the early 1940s, when Wenger was leading the band, the choir and the orchestra to first-place titles in national competitions — that a youthful Staska came under Wenger’s tutelage.

“Harry Wenger was my music teacher — the greatest director I ever had,” Staska said. And what made Wenger so great in the eyes of this budding musician? “He was helping, always talking to you if you had problems with the music,” Staska said. It must have taken because while he was in high school, Staska and his brother Norman, who also played clarinet, got together with four other high school musicians — Phillip Johnson, Don Andersen,

Elmer Ackerman and Merle Panzer — to form a clown band under the name “The Hungry Five and One Left Over.” Staska, of course, played trumpet, his brother on clarinet, as was Johnson, Andersen played the bass, and Ackerman on trombone. As for Panzer, he was the “front man” and didn’t play an instrument. The band, decked out in outrageous costumes and wearing clown makeup, would play for various events, generally marches and

so-called “hungry five” music — a sort of German oom-pah music. “We’d play a few bars with jokes in between,” said Staska. And the jokes, that’s where front man Panzer came in. But Staska didn’t limit himself to the high school band or to the Hungry Five. He played in the high school pep band and, in his senior year, with the Owatonna Elks Band.

See STASKA on page 71

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STASKA from page 70

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In this June 2015 file photo, Berlyn and Kathleen Staska ride in the parade that was the Harry Wenger Marching Band Festival in Owatonna. Berlyn Staska was chosen to be the grand marshal of the 2015 festival. (Press file photo)

In 1945, as Staska was nearing the end of his high school days — he graduated from Owatonna High School in 1946, the same year that Harry Wenger officially formed the Wenger Corporation — he and his brother, back on saxophone, started a band playing old-time music, along with Marion Simon on the piano, Marcella Simon on the accordion and Eddie Hrdlichka on the drums. But the brothers wanted to take a different musical route. So about a year later, that initial band reformed with new personnel — except for the Staska brothers, of course — and a new style of music. Not only did they add more instruments — up to three saxophones, two trumpets, drums, piano and bass — but they also added more modern music from the Big Band Era to their repertoire. “We played both old-time and modern music,” Staska said, “and played for many high school proms and high school homecoming dances.” Their gigs were played mostly in the southern part of Minnesota — Faribault, Lonsdale, Waseca, from as far north as New Prague to as far south as Austin and Albert Lea, as far east as Rochester and as far west as Mankato. And, of course, the band — dubbed the Norm Staska Band — played in various venues in Owatonna — the American Legion and the VFW, the Eagles and the Monterey Ballroom, just to mention a few. “For about five years, we averaged about three nights a week,” Staska said. But that was by night. By day and by then out of high school, Staska had to find another job.

Life without the horn

The first job that Staska took out of high school

was a stock boy for the F.W. Woolworth store in downtown Owatonna — a job which he kept for just a short time, but which would foreshadow several of the jobs that he would have throughout the rest of his working life. But he didn’t keep that Woolworth’s job for long, choosing instead to take a different job with a company that dealt with a product closer to his real love — music. The Stephenson Music Company, based in Austin, opened a store on North Cedar in Owatonna. “They sold music and hired a guy to repair radios,” Staska said. So for about 1½ to 2 years, Staska was a clerk in the store and helped to repair radios. He left the music company when he had the opportunity to go to work for the Minnesota Highway Department in various roles, finally ending up in the stock room as a stock clerk. The job may have lasted longer except for the distant rumblings of war. The ongoing tensions between North and South Korea finally exploded in the summer of 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea. And with the outbreak of the Korean War, Staska knew it was only a matter of time before he was drafted. Staving off that eventuality, Staska, his brother Norman and a friend spoke to the draft board and were released from the draft so that they could enlist. And enlist they did. On Oct. 7, 1950, Berlyn and the friend were accepted by the United States Air Force. Norman did not meet the requirements of the Air Force and walked across the hall where he was accepted by the Navy. Norman played in a Navy band.

See STASKA on page 72

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PAGE 72

STASKA from page 71 Still, music was not far from his mind. Even as he went into the Air Force, Staska had hoped that he would be selected to play in the elite Air Force. And he had a shot at it. He auditioned and passed the tests for getting into the band. But he was told that getting into the band was difficult, especially since they had “plenty of trumpet players.” Case in point: While he was in basic training, Staska met two other trumpet players whose names he still remembers — Bill Hodges and Larry Taine. Taine had played with the Stan Kenton band before the war. And Hodges? Hodges had played in the big bands of the Dorseys, both of them, Tommy and Jimmy. They were in basic training, Staska said, only to get it on their records. Both men auditioned for and were selected to play with the Air Force’s dance band, the same band that Glenn Miller had while he was in the service in World War II. Instead, the Air Force took advantage of Staska’s other experience, first stationing him as a stock clerk at Westover Air Force Base in Holyoke, Massachusetts, then in procurement and supplies — and teaching the job to other airmen — at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Between those two assignments, Staska took leave in March 1951 to marry Kathleen Evans that he met — where else? — at a dance at which he was playing just south of Owatonna at the Monterey Ballroom. “There were eight dance bands in town,” Staska said, “and we were playing at a battle of the bands at the Monterey.” Staska’s tour of duty with the Air Force officially ended on Oct. 7, 1954, four years to the day that he had enlisted. By the armistice had been signed, bringing the Korean War officially to an end. But the end of the war also meant that “jobs were awfully hard to find,” Staska said. He went to Denver seeking employment, but there were no jobs to be had. “I thought of re-enlisting,” he said. But then can a phone call from Owatonna

The American Federation of Musicians Local 490 Concert Band, which included Berlyn Staska on trumpet, marches through the intersection of Cedar and Pearl in downtown Owatonna for the Memorial Day parade of 1956. (Submitted photo)

with a job offer with Owatonna Tool Company, or OTC, as everybody called it. It was a working relationship that would last for 36 years, first in the forge shop, then into chrome plating, then to shipping, then inventory control, and finally to purchasing, where he worked as a buyer for 33 years until his retirement in 1990.{h3}Picking up where he left off{/h3}If his four years away from bands during his military service impinged on Staska’s musical ability, you couldn’t tell it. No sooner had he returned to Owatonna than he picked up his trumpet and started to play with local bands — a lot of local band, almost too many to count. And it’s something he hasn’t given up to this day, even though that style of music may not be as popular as it was back then. He once again started playing with the Elks Concert Band, a band with which he had first started playing back in the mid-1940s, when he was still in high school and a band that used to

play at Owatonna’s Central Park on Saturday nights. In addition to the concert band, the Elks also mounted a clown band — similar to, but larger than The Hungry Five and One Left Over of his youth — known as the Elks Kibitzer Band. Staska played with that band until it disbanded. Shortly after he returned from the service, he played old-time music with Luverne’s Concertina Band, also doing the arrangements for the band — a relationship he maintained for 18 years. He also played music, mostly marches, with a brass group started by Ladd Rypka known as the Brass Renegades. He played with the Klecker Family Band, the Golden Aces and with the concert band of the American Federation of Musicians Local 490. In the mid-1980s, when Staska was nearing 60 years old, he and a group of local musicians got together and formed a big band, playing the

See STASKA on page 73

music of the 1940s and ‘50s. “The band was called the River City Big Band, and we played for local dances and concerts in the parks,” he said. Then there was — or rather “is” — what may be perhaps his crowning achievement, the Owatonna Community Band. In 1977, Staska, along with Rufus Sanders, Dave Leach and John Holland, formed the band, which, over the years, has played concerts around the surrounding area. The band also started concerts downtown in Central Park, concerts that have grown into the 11@7 concert series. The band, nearly 40 years old now, still boasts Staska as one of his members. Along with the Owatonna Community Band and about the same time, the Owatonna Community Orchestra, directed by Arnold Kruger, was formed. Staska also played with the orchestra. And there also is his solo work of a much more somber note. For the past 35 years, Staska has been a bugler for the Steele County Military Honor Guard playing Taps. He estimates that he has played Taps for about 2,500 military funerals. He has been honored for his musical contributions, once in 2008 when he and Armond Rezak were honorable chairpersons for the Music in Owatonna concert series, which that year featured a performance of big band music by the Glenn Miller Orchestra at the Owatonna Degner Regional Airport. Then in 2015, he was the grand marshal for the Harry Wenger Marching Band Festival in Owatonna — named for his former teacher.

More than just music

But that is not all that Berlyn Staska has done for his community, especially since his retirement in 1990. And sometimes he volunteer reaches far beyond the boundaries of Steele County. Beginning in 1992, Staska, through his church, Associated Church in Owatonna, started working with Habitat for Humanity — an association that has taken him as far as Paducah,

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PAGE 73

STASKA from page 72

Luverne’s Concertina Band plays at the Monterey Ballroom, south of Owatonna, in 1967. Pictured, front row from left to right, are Ken Teeters, Berlyn Staska, both on trumpet, and Don Teeters on clarinet and tenor saxophone; back row, Robert Krell on drums and Ken Marker on bass, and an unidentified man. Standing in Luverne Wanous on the concertina. (Submitted photo)

Kentucky to help build houses and an association that has led him to be a building supervisor on homes here in Steele County. Also through the church, he has gone on mission trips to help with flooded areas in Gulf Port, Mississippi, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Minot, South Dakota and Minneapolis. Closer to home, he’s been an active member in the Kiwanis Golden K Club here in Steele County, serving as its president in 1994-95, his work for which earned him the Distinguished President’s Award from the national office. He also served on the City of Owatonna’s Building Code Board of Appeals. And he attributes it all to his wife, Kathleen, who helped set up the local Meals on Wheels program, now in its 44th year, organized the Crisis Resource Center and served for 11 years on the Steele County Planning Commission — all of which earned her the Book of Golden Deeds recognition from the Owatonna Exchange Club in 1991. “She got me started volunteering,” he said. As for himself, Staska’s efforts have been

recognized as well. In 1998, he was named Senior Citizen of the Year by the Steele County Free Fair, going on to place second at the Minnesota State Fair. Then in 2005, he was recognized by the SCFF with the same award again. On Aug. 25, 2010, Staska was awarded the prestigious Virginia McKnight Binger Award from the McKnight Foundation along with five others — an award that with a $10,000 prize for the recipient to use as he or she wished. “I donated to my church, the Steele County-Waseca County Habitat for Humanity and other local organizations,” he said. “The two out-state winners were a woman from Duluth and myself.” As he said, “If you keep active, you live longer.” Berlyn Staska has certainly proven that to be true. Reach Managing Editor Jeffrey Jackson at 444-2371, or follow him on Twitter.com @ OPPJeffrey

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

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Blooming Prairie A Great Place to Spend the Next 100 Years

~ Since 1856 ~

Blooming Prairie Area

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

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Heather Haus Apartments

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(507) 583-6620 656 3rd St NE, Blooming Prairie

HARDWARE & RENTAL

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(507) 583-4469 Monday - Friday 7:30am - 5:30pm Saturday 8:00am - 4:00pm

STEVE & LISA VAITH, REALTORS®

Sue Zwiener

Office: (507) 583-7233 203 n. ElM • oWatonna

Office: (507) 214-7233

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507.583.6604 East Main St. Blooming Prairie tt-motorcycles.com

Terry’s BP at Bunkies Grille

& Lanes

Now Open for Breakfast & Lunch 311 East Main St., Blooming Prairie 507-583-2321

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since April,1931

Office: 507-583-6683 Fax: 507-583-7986

Box 55, 333 2nd Ave NE Blooming Prairie

R&R

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423 E. Main St. • BlooMing PrairiE

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(507) 583-2200 308 E Main St, Blooming Prairie NYLife Securities, LLC Member FINRA/SIPC

Insurance Agency Health • Auto • Home • Crop Carl R. Peterson, CIC Certified Insurance Counselor (507) 583-7971 236 Main St E, Blooming Prairie

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March 18: 9:30 AM - 5 PM March 19: 9:30 AM- 4 PM

507-583-7637 Downtown Blooming Prairie

(507) 583-7994 163 5th St NW Blooming Prairie

Locally Owned and Operated

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PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

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Cheri Krejci of Blooming Prairie has dedicated much of her time outside of working at Krejci Ford to helping others through the Blooming Prairie Cancer Group, Boys and Girls Club of Blooming Prairie and First Lutheran Church. (Ashley Stewart/People’s Press)

Passion for Service Cheri Krejci

By ASHLEY STEWART

astewart@owatonna.com

Cheri Krejci is a helper. If the countless event fliers and binders on her desk weren’t a reflection of that, then the number of visitors and phone calls she receives on a daily basis — or any given hour — at Krejci Ford would be. Yes, Krejci works at a dealership, but a large portion of those fliers, visitors and phone calls aren’t for Krejci Ford.

In fact, when Krejci isn’t running errands for the dealership, she’s likely doing something for the Blooming Prairie Cancer Group, the Boys and Girls Club of Blooming Prairie, First Lutheran Church or the Blooming Prairie Area Chamber of Commerce. “There doesn’t usually get to be a lot of spare time,” Krejci said. But she likes it that way. “When you grew up on a farm, you worked and you worked and you worked and you worked,” Krejci said. “I think that’s

why I like to be involved.” That’s something she said she and her siblings have in common. “We got that work ethic from our parents,” Krejci said. Their father, Donald Sloan, was a Holstein dairy farmer and a 2015 Steele County Livestock Hall of Fame inductee, and their mother, Bonnie Sloan, was a registered nurse, farmer’s wife and a mother of four children. “From sun up to sun down, they worked,”

See KREJCI on page 77

Krejci said. “All four of us got that from them.”

Dairy to dealership

But Krejci, 58, enjoyed working on her family’s small dairy farm outside of Ellendale. “You’d never know I liked to milk cows,” she said. But she did. And Krejci and her siblings had plenty of opportunities to do so as their father was riddled with various health issues.

Friday, March 18, 2016

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

KREJCI from page 76

PAGE 77

Ellendale A Great Place to Call Home ~ Since 1901 ~

43+ Years of Smokin’ Success Locally Owned Family Business

Cheri Krejci and her friends work on barn quilts as part of a class hosted by Renee Holmes. The class was purchased during the 2014 Blooming Prairie Cancer Group live auction. (Ashley Stewart/People’s Press)

“It wasn’t like we just played on the farm. We worked on the farm,” she said. Picking corn, baling hay and milking cows were only some of the chores the Sloan children were responsible for. “We had to work like dogs,” Krejci said. But it wasn’t necessarily all chores. Krejci was also involved in 4-H and showed cows at the Steele County Fee Fair. “I loved 4-H, and I loved living on the dairy farm,” she said. But Krejci’s father’s health worsened, and when she was a junior in high school, her family sold the farm and moved into town. After graduating from Ellendale-Geneva High School, Krejci attended Vo-Tech in Faribault for a degree in office management. With her degree, she worked in Waseca for a few months and later in Rochester, where she did book work for an orthodontist’s office for 10 years. While living and working in Rochester, Krejci met Rick, from Blooming Prairie, through mutual friends at a wedding. They clicked and in 1983, married. In August, 1984, the Krejcis had their daughter, Lindsey, and in February 1986, their son, Scott, was due. At the time, Rick was working at his father’s dealership off of Highway 218 in Blooming Prairie, and Krejci was commuting between Blooming Prairie and Rochester.

“I said, ‘This doesn’t work to have two kids and have to drive an hour each way,’” she said. Krejci quit working at the orthodontist’s office in January 1986, and started working at Rick’s father’s business with him. About three years later, Rick and his brothers, Bruce and Roger, purchased the dealership from their father. Now, nearly 30 years later, the Krejcis remain owners of the Ford dealership and married. “It’s not an easy thing to do, to work together and live together, but we’ve made it work,” Cheri Krejci said. She said owning a business comes with good and bad, pluses and minuses. “That’s always an adventure,” Krejci said. The “bad” is being tied down when it comes to traveling or similar things, but the Krejcis manage to escape on weekends in the summer to Lanesboro, where they have a permanent camper, and baseball games. Krejci said when their son, Aaron, was born in 1992, she had a C-section on a Monday and by Friday, she was at the office doing payroll. “You’re tied down,” she said. “That’s just how it was. He spent a lot of hours here in this office in his baby seat.” And the “good”? “It gives me the flexibility to do other stuff that I really want to do,” Cheri Krejci said.

See KREJCI on page 78

(507) 684-2331 210 5th Ave W, Ellendale

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KREJCI from page 77 Journey to hope

It was December 2009, when Cheri Krejci found the lump. “I had just had a mammogram in September, so three months earlier, nothing was there,” she said. But a biopsy — just days before Christmas — confirmed she had breast cancer, and on New Year’s Day, Krejci had a double mastectomy, followed by four rounds of chemotherapy every other week. “You know, having to be there for my dad to go through cancer and die of it, and my mom to have cancer for nine years and die of it, for me to get it was just like, ‘Are you kidding me?’” she said. “‘Why do I have to have this, too?’ It just didn’t seem right.” Krejci’s father died in 1996, shortly after being diagnosed with leukemia and lymphoma. “He did not live one month from the time I took him to the doctor to the day he died,” she said. “There was nothing he could do.” And in the late ‘90s, Krejci’s mother was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a non-curable form of cancer that weakens the bones, and lived nine years with it. “She passed away, and about a year and a half later, I was diagnosed with breast cancer,” she said. But it was before Krejci was diagnosed with cancer that she became involved in the Blooming Prairie Cancer Group. In fact, she joined when her mother was sick. “That’s kind of what got me going,” she said. And the others she lost to cancer, like her high school friend and her best friend’s dad. “Everybody has something that they’re really passionate about. I guess this is it for me,” Krejci said. Krejci joined the cancer group in 2005 “It just seemed like the right fit for me,” she said. When Krejci was diagnosed with cancer, her son, Aaron, was a senior in high school and slated to graduate in the spring of 2011. With chemotherapy and graduation party planning in full swing,

she needed a lot of help. “I don’t really like to ask for help. I like to be the helper,’ she said. “I just kind of had to sit back and let my sisters and my very good friends help me. That was a hard time.” Krejci said the purpose of the cancer group is to help people and “to make their struggles easier,” like those who helped her. “I think everybody in our cancer group has been indirectly or directly affected by cancer, whether it was a parent, sibling, friend or spouse,” she said. “They all know the struggles of it, and that makes it even more important.” Each September, Blooming Prairie joins the cancer group’s efforts to support those journeying through cancer and raise money for research during its Paint the Town Pink activities that are capped off with a two-night live auction off Main Street under a big tent — the group’s largest fundraising event. Krejci said the event’s first year raised $1,800 for the Eagles Cancer Telethon in Rochester, and in its 15th year, the event collected enough to make its largest donation of $73,000 to the telethon as well as a $15,000 donation to the Hormel Cancer Institute. She attributed that to more events, more awareness and more community involvement. “That part of our group is very rewarding, to know that you can help somebody,” Krejci said. Research, she added, is also huge. “If I would’ve had breast cancer 30 years ago, I would’ve been dead. My mom would’ve never lived nine years without research,” Krejci said. “They’re making way to better strides.” She said community involvement and research are good things for the cancer group, the community and those with cancer. “We’re in the right direction,” Krejci said. The direction? “You just keep hoping that someday they will find a cure for it and that somebody else that you know and love won’t have to go through it,” she said. “That’s what keeps pushing you.”

See KREJCI on page 81

ABOVE: Cheri Krejci hugs Minnesota Twins mascot, T.C. Bear, on Mother’s Day in 2013. That game was the organization’s “Going to Bat Against Cancer” event and Krejci was selected as the Honorary Bat Girl. (Photos courtesy of Wayne Kryduba and Minnesota Twins baseball) LEFT: Ahead of throwing the first pitch at the “Going to Bat Against Cancer” Minnesota Twins game in 2013, Krejci threw a few practice pitches at the ball field behind Blooming Prairie High School. (Ashley Stewart/People’s Press)

Friday, March 18, 2016

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

Clubs & Organizations 202 -1/2 N. Cedar Owatonna, MN 55060 (507) 451-9401 owatonna.younglife.org

“Connecting teens with Christ through caring adults.”

The Steele County Food Shelf exists to:

Chuck Jamison, Area Director

(507) 455-2991 • Fax (507) 455-4063 • 155A Oakdale St • Owatonna

• Education • Health & Wellness • Support Services • Volunteer Opportunities • Recreation and Trips

Senior Programming is based out of Senior Place 500 Dunnell Drive • Owatonna • 444-4280 Hours: Monday-Friday 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM http://ci.owatonna.mn.us/parksrecreation/senior-place www.facebook.com/SeniorPlace e-mail: bradley.dushaw@ci.owatonna.mn.us Like us on Facebook

April 29, 30 & May 1, 5, 6, 7

“Grease” July 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 17 Owatonna’s finest theatre group brings you a variety of performances throughout the year. Come escape with us, laugh with us, or maybe even cry with us.

To find out more information on any upcoming performances or becoming a part of Little Theatre call 451-6156 or go to www.littletheatreofowatonna.org

Established in 1966 Promoting safe, responsible use of Firearms and Archery.

• provide food to the hungry • promote client self-sufficiency • coordinate with other poverty and hunger related services If you are having difficulty meeting the basic needs for your family or yourself, your local food shelf is here to help you and your family. Monday, Wednesday 9:00 am - 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday 9:00 am - 3:30 p.m. Saturday 8:00 am - 11:30 am

Programs & services geared toward adults ages 50 & better

“Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland”

www.steelecountyfoodshelf.org

For Teens: • Young Life Club • Wyldlife Club • Small Groups • Camps • Real Life • Walk With Me For Adults: • Volunteer Leaders • Adult Committee • Adult Guest Opportunities • Family Camps Young Life is a 501(C) 3 non-profit organization. All contributions are used locally and are 100% tax deductible.

SENIOR PROGRAMMING

PAGE 79

Southern Minnesota Coin & Stamp Club Association SMCSCA

Non-profit club for the promotion of coin, stamp and currency collecting.

We invite you to our upcoming 2016 shows:

April 3, 2016 November 6, 2016

We feature: • Indoor Archery & Air Rifle Leagues • 3D Archery Shoots • Bowhunter & Advanced Bowhunter Education • 10-60 Yard Outdoor Archery Range • Fall & Winter Rendezvous • MN DNR & NRA Firearms Training programs • 50/100/200 Yard Firearms Ranges • We support & donate to local schools To become a member visit www.20riflepistolclub.org Or contact Rod Mauer 507-451-8358 Email president@20riflepistolclub.org Introduce youth to shooting sports!

OWATONNA ARTS CENTER Home of Creativity and Artistry • Monthly Gallery Shows • Music Programs • Classes For All Ages and Skills • Special Events

Our historic building is also available to rent for meetings and special events!

Location: Holiday Inn, Exit 45 - Owatonna

Open 1-5 pm. Tuesday-Sunday

Free Admission & Appraisals Southern Minnesota’s Finest Collectable Show

435 Garden View Lane (507) 451-0533

Dean: 507-456-7633 or Jerry: 507-289-5099

A005605 So Minn Coin Stamp_portraits

www.oacarts.org

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Friday, March 18, 2016

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KREJCI from page 78

Cheri Krejci, right, and Jennifer Milton present a $57,000 donation to the 60th annual Eagles Cancer Telethon in 2014 on behalf of the Blooming Prairie Cancer Group. Krejci has been a part of the cancer group since 2005. (Ashley Stewart/People’s Press)

While Krejci’s involvement in the cancer group keeps her busy, she has still managed to find time to help others in different areas, too.

Helping hands

One area is the Homestead Hospice House in Owatonna, where she’s volunteered for six years making breakfast for patients, serving as a home visitor and baking. “I have had to back away from the weekly breakfast-making but am anxious for a time when I can get back to it,’ she said. Another area is First Lutheran Church in Blooming Prairie, where she served as the financial secretary for 10 years and recently retired it, but remains on the social committee, which helps put on the church’s annual Meatball and Lutefisk Dinner. Krejci was also on the church’s mis-

sion committee that helped raise money for the Boys and Girls Club’s kitchen remodel. “I love the Boys and Girls Club,” she said. “That’s something else that’s really close to me because I love the kids and that’s what it’s all about.” Recently, Krejci helped Lianna Doocy chair the club’s annual fundraiser, too Krejci has also been the secretary of the Blooming Prairie Chamber, a 4-H leader, Girl Scout leader, an afterprom party committee member and an integral part of the Blooming Prairie High School football team’s Quarterback Club. “I have nothing against work,” she said.

‘We help each other’

And Krejci’s still able to get away some. For years, she and her sisters, Deb

Harvey and Cindy Owen, have flown to Las Vegas in January — something they used to do with their mother for her birthday. “She loved to go to Vegas,” Krejci said. It was a birthday tradition the four of them enjoyed, and it’s one the girls continue. “We go every year and think of her and laugh and have a good time,” she said. “We’re not just sisters, we’re friends. We’d do anything for one another.” The same goes for their brother, Gary Sloan. “We’re super close,” Krejci said. “Our parents are gone, so we take care of each other, look out for each other.” And if one is being recognized for a high school championship game or an award, they’ll likely all be there.

That was the case when Krejci was selected as Honorary Bat Girl for the Minnesota Twin’s “Going to Bat Against Cancer” game against the Baltimore Orioles on Mother’s Day in 2013. “My husband, all my kids, my siblings and most of their kids came,” she said. “I think there were 18 of us.” With the honor, Krejci threw the first pitch for the Twins game. “That was way cool. It was really fun,” she said. “That was a really, really special day. It was a very nice honor.” Krejci was nominated for the honor by her sister, Cindy, who wrote, “Cheri Krejci is my sister and a truly amazing person...She truly is a hero to all those that know her.” Reach reporter Ashley Stewart at 444-2378 or follow her on Twitter.com @OPPashley

Friday, March 18, 2016

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Always Performing Shelley Fitzgerald

By KIM HYATT

khyatt@owatonna.com

With script and director notes in hand, Shelley Fitzgerald glances down and removes her glasses which she uses like a wand to point out stage directions until she places the glasses back on her nose and moves on to the next note. “Shelley’s really, really passionate. She’s honestly like a mom to us. We’re all a big theater family,” said Medford High School senior Mariah Chadwick, who has been in productions directed by Fitzgerald the last four years. When Fitzgerald is not working in the Medford Elementary School office, Chadwick said, “All she’s thinking about is theater. She’s thinking of shows to do like two years from now.” Such is the case for “1955: A Rock and Roll Musical,” featuring 20-plus students and 22 songs in two acts. Sound challenging? Try incorporating choreography and working around students’ schedules 24/7 to accommodate all-day rehearsals on the weekends or even meeting for 15 minutes to go over a scene before an actor has to get on the bus for a basketball game. But for Fitzgerald, 50, there is no greater joy that working on stage with students who are more like her children than nameless, pubescent faces in a classroom. “We’re really, really excited about this one,” Fitzgerald said of the current production. “This seems to fit these kids like a glove. The songs are perfect for the voices. I’ve seen them more excited than any recent years and I’ve been hearing a lot of people talking about show.” Before she took over as theater director, music teacher Bev Cashman was doing the musical, but the fall play was brand new at Medford when Fitzgerald started directing that season’s play in 2006. Since then, Medford has created a One Act theater program as well, which offers students another opportunity to find their inner actor. Some students even act in both the spring musical and One Act, despite the fact that they are at the exact same time during the school year. “I’ve told them that they are my surrogate children because my kids are gone,” she said. “These kids, I love them. They are awesome. I always feel they are the cream of the crop of Medford. I’m beyond extremely proud of this theater program.”

A passion for performance

“First and foremost, I’m a musician,” Fitzgerald said. She grew up outside of Lakeville and was trained a classical pianist all because of her mother, who had no formal training but was rather a naturally gifted musician.

See FITZGERALD on page 83

Shelley Fitzgerald rehearses with students at Medford High School for the upcoming spring musical, “1955: A Rock and Roll Musical.” (Kim Hyatt/People’s Press)

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PAGE 83

FITZGERALD from page 82 “We started in church. My sister, mom, and I were singing as a trio and she was teaching us how to sing alto parts in third grade,” she said. By fifth grade, Fitzgerald had become the church pianist only at the ripe age of 10. “I have to say, it is that experience that has taught me half of what I know musically,” she said. “Our little bitty church, people would come in and visit and be amazed at the amount of musical talent.” To no surprise, Fitzgerald continued progressing on the piano, so much that she was playing her first Easter Cantata when she was just 12 years old. “With mom being very musical, she had an untrained, wonderful ear,” she said. Fitzgerald said he mother would pull out a record and say, “oh, honey, we want to do this arrangement.” So Fitzgerald would sit and listen to it over and over again and then they would do it. But her musical education was “pretty spotty,” she said, because she lived in the country. Lessons were not only distant, but sometimes her family couldn’t afford it. The young musician was still able to get “proficient enough to compete in school competitions in the private school.” She won a

Fitzgerald’s passion for performance started in church when her mother would teach her and her siblings how to sing alto parts. By fifth grade, Fitzgerald, only 10 years old at the time, was the church pianist. (Submitted photo)

state musical competition to go to nationals in high school for her piano playing. Just like her mother, Fitzgerald doesn’t have a degree in music, though she was working on obtaining one at Pillsbury Baptist Bible College. “Money was always tight. I dropped out and moved out to Seattle to nanny for an aunt and uncle trying to make money,” she said. Fitzgerald returned to Pillsbury during the second semester of her sophomore year, which is when she met her husband, David, and didn’t complete credits. He was originally from Illinois and Fitzgerald said neither intended on staying in Owatonna. But she was working for Federated Insurance Companies at the time and he was working for Truth Hardware, both too good of jobs to leave. In June, her husband will celebrate 29 years at company, now Amesbury Truth. However, Fitzgerald didn’t stay in the insurance business long. She spent years raising kids and teaching piano lessons from home for 20 years. As Fitzgerald mentioned, all four of her children have moved away from Medford. Her oldest daughter, Bethany, lives in Ohio and recently

brought into this world Fitzgerald’s second grandchild. Her youngest son Geoffrey, graduated college in February with audio visual degree, and Brittany is away in Indiana after getting married this past summer. As for Grant, her 22-yearold son, he graduated last spring and is now acting professionally, but that’s not necessarily what he went to school for. After landing the second lead role in one of his university’s production, Fitzgerald said that her son realized, “this is what I need to be doing.” Grant ended up with a film production degree that Fitzgerald said compliments his acting career quite well. Want to talk about a theater director mother’s pride and joy, just ask how fulfilling it is to see one of her kids go on to do what she loves. “He is getting to spend the winter as a entertainer on a Norwegian cruise ship. We’re so proud of him, a small town boy and he’s doing well,” she said of her son. “We always knew he had something special, but he really hadn’t expressed interest in doing it professionally.” When Grant and Brit were in elementary school they showed interest and auditioned with me for some family musicals.

See FITZGERALD on page 84

Friday, March 18, 2016

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

FITZGERALD from page 82

Although Beth did musicals at Medford and Geoffrey was in one production, Grant and Bethany were most interested in acting, first starting in fourth grade. Fitzgerald’s first show with her two thespian offspring was “The Music Man” in 2005. But the production that’s “most nearest and dearest” to Fitzgerald is when Grant played Joseph in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” In the “Joseph” theatrical performance from 2009, Fitzgerald was the narrator and Brit was in the chorus, “so it was very special for us,” she said. That was actually the last time Fitzgerald acted on stage, because she simply doesn’t have the time to direct and act.

Director’s notes

Fitzgerald spends more time in the auditorium at Medford Public School than any other staff member, even the janitor. It would actually be easier to add up how much time she is not wearing that little director’s hat than the times she is. “I’m here every weekend working on sets, props, and costumes,” she said. “I pretty much live here. So my

husband basically said see you on the weekends because he is my set builder, so we live here Saturday and Sundays.” Starting the very first day of school, practice for the fall play starts and Fitzgerald stays by the stage everyday after school with students. By the time the spring musical rolls around when kids return from winter break, even more energy and time from Fitzgerald is required as the spring productions have extra elements of dance and music. A typical musical rehearsal runs from 3:30 to 9 p.m. for the next three month. Fitzgerald gets a month and a half break in between the school’s two major theater performances. But what about the summer? Certainly Fitzgerald could kick her feet up and relax when school isn’t in session. Instead, “I’m here,” she said sitting on the stage with a water bottle in hand after students wrapped up rehearsals for the day. In 2009 she started a theater program through community education and she’s done that every summer since — except for one year, 2014, because she was directing a play at the Paradise Center for the Arts in Faribault.

See FITZGERALD on page 85

Nowadays, Fitzgerald is too busy directing to do any acting herself, but here she is in her prime. “First and foremost, I’m a musician,” she said. (Submitted photo)

PAGE 84

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PAGE 85

FITZGERALD from page 84 Once, Fitzgerald ventured to direct two plays at once, one at Medford and the other at the Little Theatre of Owatonna. She said that after experiencing the chaos of rehearsing with students in the afternoon and then dashing over for another three hours of rehearsal, she won’t ever do that again. The last LTO play she directed was “Charlie’s Aunt,” which was overlapping a musical version of the same play at Medford School. She said it was easier on her brain to have similar scripts rather than doing two entirely different plays. She enjoys reading and writing plays when she can find the time, too, and she’s currently writing the fall play for this next school year. “Half my desire to perform from infancy to when the show was cancelled, came every Saturday night when my mom put us in front of ‘The Lawrence Welk Show,’” she

said. “It was televised nationally and it just grew and every week was a theme. One week was classic musical or Broadway with singers, dancers and instrumentalists, all genres of music.” Asked if that exposure to performing and just the variety of people and sounds was what pushed her even more musically, she said yes so excitedly, like she was that 12-yearold girl sitting in the living room yet again in front of the TV set. Rather than watch talent on television, Fitzgerald would come up with something on the piano to perform with her friends at her school’s talent show. “Even back then I was putting on the little director hat and organizing,” she said. Reach reporter Kim Hyatt at 507444-2376. Follow her on Twitter @ OPPKimHyatt

The production that’s “most nearest and dearest” to Fitzgerald is when her son Grant played Joseph in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” and her daughter Brit was in the chorus. That was actually the last time Fitzgerald acted on stage, those she spends plenty of time helping other actors shine. (Submitted photo)

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Andy Michaletz

Made in Owatonna

Andy Michaletz shows off some of the manufacturing and storage space in the former Owatonna Manufacturing Company building, which he purchased and remodeled in 2004. Clients have included Daikin Applied and Bosch Automotive Service Solutions. (William Morris/People’s Press)

By WILLIAM MORRIS wmorris@owatonna.com

Even on vacation, business is never far from Andy Michaletz’s mind. “When we’re down in Mexico, 12 weeks sounds like a long time, but I still work every day,” he said. “Modern communication is wonderful. I’ve got two cell phones, a fax machine, [I’m] normally up by 6 each morning emailing with customers.” That work ethic at his own business, Poly Plastics Inc., is the same

dedication he brings to his efforts to help the community as a whole. In fact, although he’s not one for the spotlight, Michaletz is a leading champion of the Owatonna business community, investing his time and energy into preserving the legacy of made-in-Owatonna manufacturing and in planning for its future. And the fact that he and his family have played no small part in that manufacturing tradition only makes it all the more important to him. “I like reading books about Min-

nesota entrepreneurs,” he said. “Lots of great stories across the state, and there’s been a lot of great family businesses in Owatonna, and not a lot are left. There’s not many that are still locally owned, and we live in the community, and our kids go to school here.”

An entrepreneurial family

Michaletz, now 50, is an Owatonna native with fond memories of his K-8 education at St. Mary’s School before moving on to Owatonna High School. He attended the University — then College — of St. Thomas for a business de-

See MICHALETZ on page 87

gree before returning to his hometown. “I don’t think either of my parents went to college,” he said. “I had an interest in business, I really like business, I like the mechanics of business, and St. Thomas had a good business school, well connected in the region, and that’s why I chose that.” Michaletz’s parents started several businesses in Owatonna that remain in business today. Upon returning from college, Michaletz joined one of them, Poly Plastics, which was founded in 1963, and he’s been there ever since.

Friday, March 18, 2016

“What we do here is we take in scrap plastic from industry, mostly plastic bags and that type of scrap, and we pelletize it,” he said. “We’re really a raw material supplier. We buy and trade plastic all over. A lot of our product goes into Canada, throughout the Midwest here, [and we] send a number of containers a month over to China of different products.” Poly Plastics operates in a very specific niche — it handles only industrial products and doesn’t have the facilities to wash and process curbside recycling — but there’s always a need for plastic film, shrink wrap and other products made from Poly Plastic’s pellets. Michaletz formally purchased the company from his parents in 1988. “It was a different operation then,” he said. “It was smaller even then than what we are now, and I consider it a small company. A lot of people in Owatonna probably don’t even know our story.” The company has 15 employees and runs two shifts, Monday through Thursday, with no shortage of hours by Michaletz himself. “I really spend a lot of my time here. It’s just a small manufacturing company, but I like to work, spend most every day here when we’re in town, [and] enjoy that part of it,” he said. Michaletz is far from the only member of his family to inherit the small business gene. One brother works with him at Poly Plastics. His other brother owns Michaletz Trucking across the street, which also was founded by their parents, and his sister lives in Madison, Wisconsin. As his family has grown, it has fol-

PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY

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MICHALETZ from page 86 lowed the small-business theme. Later this year, he’ll celebrate his 25th anniversary with his wife, Rhonda. “I met her right here in Owatonna. She’s actually from Meriden,” Michaletz said. “Her brother Steve owns The Retrofit Companies, and she works parttime for him.” The couple have two children: Brody, 30, and Chase, 22. Brody and his wife recently gave birth to Michaletz’s first grandchild, Decker, now 6 months old. Chase graduated from his father’s alma mater and now is studying at Mitchell Hamline School of Law.

“Brody actually is just transferring to Owatonna here, and he’s going to start working at Olympic Fire Protection, … that’s owned by my brother-inlaw,” Michaletz said. All combined, that’s an impressive web of family and small business ties surrounding Michaletz. “I really can’t speak for the others, but I really like small business,” he said. “I like the way they’re put together, I really can’t imagine anything different.”

Planning the new, restoring the old

Beyond his own plastic company, Michaletz has long kept up with larger trends affecting the local business community. “I’ve been a [Owatonna Area Chamber of Commerce and Tourism] member for quite a few years, but then six or eight years ago approached by the then-President Brad Meyer, who wanted to know if I’d be interested in serving on the public policy committee,” he said. He said yes, and served as a member and later chair of the committee, focusing on business-government relations.

Michaletz shows off filters used to sort shredded plastic at his company, Poly Plastics Inc., which melts down and recycles industrial plastic. (William Morris/People’s Press)

See MICHALETZ on page 88

“It was a natural fit for me,” he said. “I enjoy politics, kind of a political junkie, so it was great to get together with other business owners and members of the chamber and try to keep members informed about policies affecting the members.” In recent years, he’s stepped down from the committee, in part because he’s no longer in town quite as much as he used to be, although he says he has no plans to leave for good. “Owatonna is a great town. There’s a lot of great people here. I can’t imagine living anywhere else, to be sure,” he said. “Although the winters are a little long to my liking. My wife and I spend a lot of time in Mexico in the winter. We bought a home down there nine years ago.” But perhaps an even greater contribution to the Owatonna business community is Michaletz’s efforts to preserve and restore several historic properties around the city. “I’ve ... purchased a few other properties in Owatonna, the largest being the old Owatonna Manufacturing Company property, and I purchased that in 2004 [and] have spent a lot of time and effort on that in refurbishing the property and bringing it along.” Owatonna Manufacturing Company was founded by the Diedrich family and produced skid loaders and similar equipment until, after being sold several times, the company’s operations were shifted to South Dakota, where it still exists as Mustang Mfg. But Michaletz’s interest is in the days when, like Owatonna Tool and other original manufacturers, the company was locally owned.

Friday, March 18, 2016

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PAGE 88

MICHALETZ from page 87

“It’s a great story of a great company,” he said.“It was a time when Owatonna had some wonderful locallyowned manufacturing. This was probably after World War II, but up to the present day, most of our companies are not owned by local people any more. ... When they closed the doors and moved the company to South Dakota, [the building] sat vacant for a couple years, and I ended up purchasing it in 2004. I don’t know why I did it, just had an idea it could be a good project, and it’s been a good property for me.” At the former factory on State Avenue, Michaletz has rented storage, manufacturing and office space to numerous companies over the years, including some big names in Owatonna industry. “Daikin has been in the building,” he said. “Bosch has been in there, they’ve been a renter from the start of when I bought the building and repurposed it, and then I have a couple other tenants up front.” And Michaletz does far more than collect the checks. He said significant work was needed to prepare the vacant building for new occupants, and some portions remain under renovation. “I’ve got a lot of sweat equity in that project, worked with a lot of great local contractors, and really appreciate the relationships and the help I’ve had. You get that when you’ve been here 25, 30 years, you get to know the people owning businesses in town and build relationships with them.” But it’s the work itself, and how it connects back to the early days of Owatonna manufacturing, that draws him to these old properties. “I really enjoy doing that, and if I didn’t I probably wouldn’t do it, because it doesn’t always work out for dollars and cents,” he said.

See MICHALETZ on page 90

ABOVE: Michaletz shows off one of his two planes at Owatonna Degner Regional Airport. “Don’t fly as much as I’d want to. That’s always my New Year’s resolution,” he said. LEFT: Michaletz shows off “pelletized” plastic, created by shredding, melting and remolding various types of industrial plastic. (William Morris/People’s Press) (William Morris/People’s Press)

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MICHALETZ from page 88 What’s between your ears

Between work and other commitments — he serves on the boards of the Owatonna Foundation and Community Bank Owatonna and has served on church council at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Meriden — that doesn’t leave much time for other hobbies, but Michaletz doesn’t mind: he says running a small business is all the variety he needs. “I don’t golf, I don’t fish, I don’t hunt. I like working, and that’s what I do every day,” he said. “Luckily my wife understands, but I really enjoy having the different things to do.” He does have one other pursuit he enjoys, the implements of which can be found in a hanger at Owatonna Degner Regional Airport. “I caught an ad in the back

of the paper back in 1992, I think it was, and just decided to do it, jumped right in with both feet, [and] got my pilot’s license,” he said. “Don’t fly as much as I’d want to, that’s always my New Year’s resolution, but [I] fly regularly, enjoy it.” Michaletz’s younger son, Chase, also is a pilot, and attended flight school before transferring to St. Thomas. “He’s got all the ratings you could possibly have,” Michaletz said. “It’s really been a great experience to spend time with that, and my wife goes to the airshow to so we like to do that in Oshkosh as a family vacation. That’s kind of my hobby.” Michaletz has two planes, 4- and 6-seat models built by Piper Aircraft, and manages to involve even this hobby with his work at Poly Plastics.

“ We h a v e c u s t o m e r s throughout the Midwest,” he said. “It’s a valuable tool to enable me to jump in the plane, visit a customer in Green Bay in the morning and be right back in the office by noon, so I try to utilize it as much as I can.” At 50, Michaletz says he still has “a lot of years of abuse” left before he would consider retirement. He’ll be part of the business landscape in town for years to come, he says, although he’s keenly aware of how the world is transforming around him. “Right now we’re going through a period of changes,” he said. “I really feel young people right now have a very difficult time. It’s that classic question at the high school graduation party, ‘what are you going to do with the rest of your life,’ and how is some-

one without any experience going to know?” He credits at least part of his success to a liberal arts education and says he was glad to see Chase attend St. Thomas, where he said he got a strong foundation for his career. “I preach it to my kids too. It’s what’s between your ears that’s going to carry you, and

that’s why I really valued just the critical thinking skills and things like that,” he said. “I think you maybe appreciate it more the older you get.” And in all the areas he’s had success — Poly Plastics, the chamber, restoring older buildings — he continues to treasure the legacy of Owatonna industry that he and his

family have helped to create. “I like the history of Owatonna,” he said. “It’s got a lot of good history, a lot of products that were made here.” William Morris is a reporter for the Owatonna People’s Press. He can be reached at 444-2372; follow him on Twitter @OPPWilliam

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