Portraits 2016

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

Portraits2016PortraitsPortraitsPortraitsPortraitsPortraitsPortraitsPortraitsPortraitsPortraitsPortraitsPortraitsPortraitsPillars of Our Communities

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Friday, March 18, 2016 PORTRAITS IN STEELE COUNTY PAGE 1

WelcomePortraits in Steele 2016: Pillars of Our Communities

Inside these 92 pages, you will �nd 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 pro-vide. Some of the faces and the names will be familiar; others

may be new to you. But each per-son pro�led here has contributed something of his or her time, tal-ents 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 Peo-ple’s Press sta�, covering weeks

and months of photography, in-terviewing, writing, designing and creative advertising e�orts.

We hope you enjoy Portraits 2016 for weeks and months to come as we celebrate the pillars of our communities.

— Julie FrazierPublisher


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

Contents

Publisher Julie FrazierAdvertising Director Ginny Bergerson

Managing Editor Je� rey JacksonMedia 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-NoetContributing Writers/Photographers

Kim Hyatt, Je� rey Jackson, William Morris, Ashley Stewart

Portraits 2016A special project of

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

Owatonna.com

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

Portraits2016PortraitsPortraitsPortraitsPortraitsPortraitsPortraitsPortraitsPortraitsPortraitsPortraitsPortraitsPortraitsPillars of Our Communities


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

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

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

Advertiser Index


By KIM [email protected]

Music is the tie that binds Owatonnans Mike and Tammi Ferch.

From when the couple �rst 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 suc-cessful careers, but made an indelible mark on the music scene.

�e Ferches’ contributions to the community span countless performances with their band, �e Bad Tanger-ines, and an array of church choirs. �eir repertoire list too lengthy to name every concert or musical fundraiser put on by the two.

In fact, when they �rst 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 per-forming and sharing that love of music with others.

So when trying to �nd 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 oth-ers with something as simple, yet powerful, as sound.

Listen.

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

See FERCH on page 5

Sweet Sounds

Mike and Tammi Ferch



Music is the tie that binds Owatonnans Mike and Tammi Ferch.

From when the couple �rst 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 suc-cessful careers, but made an indelible mark on the music scene.

�e Ferches’ contributions to the community span countless performances with their band, �e Bad Tanger-ines, and an array of church choirs. �eir repertoire list too lengthy to name every concert or musical fundraiser put on by the two.

In fact, when they �rst 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 per-forming and sharing that love of music with others.

So when trying to �nd 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 oth-ers with something as simple, yet powerful, as sound.

Listen.

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

See FERCH on page 5

Sweet Sounds

Mike and Tammi Ferch


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Mike and Tammi Ferch said their vows on August 9, 1985 in Garden City, Minne-sota at Garden City Christian Church. (Submitted photo)See FERCH on page 6

FERCH from page 4�e story of Mike and Tammi’s

love for each other and music, too, produces that kind of pleasure Con-fucius describes.

�ough words fall short in that description, even musicians like Hans Christian Andersen said that’s ordinary in our brief, beautiful hu-man existence.

“When words fail,” Andersen said, “music speaks.”Love at �rst sound

�e 54-year-old musicians met through music, but their lives were already all about playing and per-forming prior to crossing paths at Mankato State University in 1983.

Mike grew up in Waseca and his �rst 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 stu� and the �rst time people laughed at it I thought, ‘Wow, this is fun,’” he said.

And he still thinks it’s fun being on stage now a�er 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 in�uence them to do things like give money. �at’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 mu-sic,” Mike said. �at 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. �e mo-ment I saw it I fell in love with the idea of drumming,” he said.

�roughout school Mike played drums and, similar to his reputation here, he was best known for his in-volvement in music.

“I didn’t do sports, but music was my �rst love,” he said.

As for Tammi, she said, “If I was in front of people, I was sing-ing.” But that experience perform-ing has carried over skills into her professional life at Federated In-surance, where she has worked for 28 years.

“I couldn’t conduct meetings and stand in front of sta�. It really has helped me in that way,” she said.


Tammi’s love of music comes from her grandmother, Irene �urston. She was a shy girl from Madelia, Minnesota with four brothers.

“Apparently I was known for hum-ming and singing,” she said. “My broth-ers would get mad for singing in my room at night.”

While her brothers were busy be-ing boys on the Blue Earth County pig farm, grandma �urston 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 Na-tional 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 com-peting 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 pro-grams 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-engineer-ing and, “in a �uke incident on a rainy day,” he said that on his was to class he cut through the performing arts

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 to-gether 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 �rst 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 Insur-ance Companies, and that’s where they’ve both been ever since.

�ey moved to Owatonna, only at the time they didn’t realize how preva-lent performing arts were within the community.

It didn’t take long for them to catch on, better yet, to �t 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 �t where he gets to help music educators teach students everyday.

�ough Tammy has a minor in mu-sic, she majored in social work to have a career “working with people,” but she still found time for music.

�e 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 full-time, 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 tal-ents to a worship team at Associated Church. At the time when the Ferches �rst 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 wor-

ship band and started doing contempo-rary services in fellowship hall [and] it grew to the point where it became its own service,” Tammi said.

Growth continued for the contem-porary-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 pro-gram for their three children — Ryan, Erin, and Libby — the Ferches eventu-ally found their home at Trinity Lu-theran Church, which also led them to one of their next “gigs.”

Get a taste of �e 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-22-year-old tradition in the community. Local musicians put on a show to ben-e�t the Steele County Food Shelf.

But that wasn’t where Mike and Tammi said “that’s good enough.” In-stead, 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.

“�e music program in Owatonna helped raise our children,” Tammi said.

“We have the most amazing pro-gram and teachers in Owatonna,” Mike echoed. “We have been so blessed. Owatonna is known as a community with strong music tradition.”

�ey organized and did most of the music the �rst year, but they wanted to have the faculty and students per-

See FERCH on page 7

FERCH from page 5

In this March 2015 �le 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 �le photo)


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FERCH from page 6

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

form, too, “because o� en 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 anniver-sary of Give Hope, which is of-� cially organized and put on by the Music Boosters of Owatonna. Throughout all those years, the music has remained the same: a mix of community, sta� , and stu-dent performers. Only now the concert raises $12,000.

It goes without saying that their children followed suit in singing.

� ey started very young in el-ementary 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 con-tinue 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. � ey 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 � nd time to direct children choirs and even venture to other concerts in the area. Sometimes even back to Manka-to — 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


Dan Deml

See DEML on page 9

Down on the FarmBy ASHLEY [email protected]

For Dan Deml, the decision to retire from the dairy business was a “no-brainer.”

“I was 63 years old, and I wasn’t get-ting 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 farmerDeml’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.

�e 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.

�roughout high school, Deml woke up each morning and returned each night to help his father with chores, like feeding the animals. �at continued to be the case in college, too.

After graduating in 1968 from Owa-tonna Marian High School, a parochial school that closed in the mid-1970s,

Deml attended the University of Min-nesota College of Agriculture on the St. Paul campus.

“I had a car, so Friday a�ernoon a�er classes most weekends, especially in the spring and fall, I’d come home and help with farm work and �eld work and every-thing,” he said. “�en, Sunday night a�er 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.

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)


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DEML from page 8

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

See DEML on page 10

“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 Pe-terson of Owatonna started as a fresh-man 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 de-cided 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.

� at spring, Deml graduated from col-lege 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 be-cause 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 Fed-erated 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.”


Dan and Vicki married a week a�er the Steele County Free Fair and moved onto Deml’s childhood farm, while his parents moved to another farm.

“�e cows were there,” he said. “�at’s what I was most interested in.”

Building a family, farmBeing the owner of a small Holstein dairy farm had

some drawbacks: no days o�, no weekends o� and no holidays o�.

“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, bed-ding 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 will-ing, able and quali�ed to do the chores, run the machinery,” he said. “�ere were not weekends o� 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. �e fact that I 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 working for someone else.”

Deml entered the dairy business a decade before an agriculture crisis hit the United States.

“A lot of young farmers my age ended up quitting farming because they weren’t able to continue with the economic times,” he said.

But Deml survived.“I put in 40 years and reached retirement as a full-time

farmer,” he said. “I’m proud of that.”Joining ‘success’Elmer Reseland, the secretary-manager of the Steele

County Free Fair between 1995 and 2011, used to say, “Everybody wants to be a part of something successful,” Deml remembers of his long-time friend and mentor who died in 2012.

And he couldn’t agree more.“Sometimes I’m overwhelmed by how successful the whole

thing can be,” said Deml, who has been the fair board president since 2013.

Deml’s involvement in the fair started when he was a 10-year-old showing a hog for his �rst 4-H project, and it continued to be a vacation of sorts for him when he became a full-time dairy farmer in the early 1970s.

“When you milk cows and have a dairy farm, you don’t pack

up and go to the lake on the weekends or a lot of other things that people in Owatonna, or non-livestock farmers, would typically do,” he said. “�is was always my big social event of the year.”

And in 1981, Deml was given the chance to play a bigger role in the county’s largest social gathering when he was appointed to an unexpired fair board term a�er the livestock director resigned.

“I still remember it quite clearly,” he said.It was January and Deml had just returned home a�er hernia

surgery when Louie Allgeyer, fair secretary-manager at the time, called.

“He said the fair board wanted to appoint me to the board, so

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 signi�cantly, and to this day, the district show remains a success at the fairgrounds.

In 1998, Deml was selected as the fair board trea-surer, 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 presi-

dent a�er James “Corky” Ebeling stepped down a�er 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.”

Recognizing a careerIt was a Tuesday of celebration for the Steele County

Fair Board of Directors on Aug. 12, 2014, as it held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Allan R. Radel Family Livestock Pavilion, a project that took years to replace a barn that was destroyed in the winter of 2010 and two others, and opened the 2014 Steele County Free Fair.

And for Deml, there was even more to celebrate.Surrounded by friends and family, he was inducted

into the Steele County Livestock Hall of Fame for his contributions to the dairy business.

“�ere’s no doubt about it, it’s a tremendous honor,” Deml said. “It’s very satisfying not only to be recognized but to be appreciated by the other people in the business.”

But it meant even more to follow the footsteps of his father, George Deml, who was inducted into the hall of

fame posthumously in 2004 — the recognition’s �rst year.“If it hadn’t been for my mom and dad I probably wouldn’t have

been in the dairy business or the farming business the way I was,” he said. “I have to give my parents a world of credit.”

�roughout Deml’s dairy career, he also received the Steele County Dairy Association Lifetime Dairy Achievement Award in 2014, the Owatonna Jaycees Outstanding Young Farmer Award in 1983, the Typical Leader Award in 1997 a�er serving as a 4-H leader for 10 years, and the Progressive Breeder Registry Award as a member of Holstein USA for 41 years.

DEML from page 9

See DEML on page 11

Dan Deml with his family at the wedding of his oldest son, Matt, in 2014. Matt Deml now lives on the family homestead that Dan Deml grew up on and farmed on for years. (Submitted photo)


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DEML from page 10Deml said being inducted into the

Livestock Hall of Fame was “an ex-tremely gratifying way” to end his dairy career, while noting the timing was more coincidental.

He received the recognition just four months a�er retiring from dairy farm-ing.

“I always enjoyed working with the cows,” he said. “I also enjoyed the so-ciability of the organizations that went along with the dairy business.”

Hanging it upDeml sold the majority of his Hol-

stein herd by the fall of 2013, and the following spring, the rest were gone and his milking days were over a�er 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 neigh-borhood,” he said. “We’re happy here.”

But Deml certainly hasn’t le� farm-ing behind.

“I’m still crop farming [with my son],” Deml said. “I’m virtually out there

every day up until spring planting, har-vesting and part of all the �eld work that goes on.”

Deml’s son, Matt, and daughter-in-law moved into the family homestead in 2014 a�er they married, and with them, the Demls have a limited liability com-pany, or LLC, which will eventually be transitioned to his son and daughter-in-law in the future.

“My son was very interested [in crop farming], he wanted to do it,” Deml said. “We were crop farming anyway. We sim-ply retired from the dairy business.”

�e Demls farm nearly 900 acres of corn and beans within �ve 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 satis�ed 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

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. (Ash-ley Stewart/People’s Press)


By JEFFREY [email protected]

Even before the question was asked, Dave Albrecht was ready with the answer.

“�e 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 di-rectors for United Way of Steele County, as chairman of the board of Good Shep-herd Lutheran Church, as chair of the Riverland Community College Founda-tion 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 �nane, 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 it-self — 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 infrastruc-ture 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

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, Wis-consin, the third of four children — all boys.

“It was a great community,” he said. “I never appreciated it until I le�.”

With his mother still living there, Al-brecht 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 part-time holiday job with J.C. Penney, a job that eventually became full-time.

“All my wardrobe was from J.C. Pen-ney,” he said.

He played sports in high school, speci�cally 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 child-hood 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.”

�e idea for his major and for his �rst 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-Whitewa-ter whose accounting program, he said, was stronger. And right out of college he went into public accounting with a �rm 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 ex-tremely bene�cial to the eventual devel-opment of his career, especially since his broad and diverse clientele included a large number of businesses and organiza-tions with ties to the health care industry — hospitals, nursing homes and the like for which he was doing audits.

In this December 2008 �le photo, Dave Albrecht (left), then director of operations and �nance for the Owatonna Hospital and Brent Ogne, project manager, give a tour of the new hospital that was then under construction. (Press �le photo)

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See ALBRECHT on page 13


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ALBRECHT from page 12�e experience paid o�.“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 lad-der, 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 cam-pus. The rest of the time, he spent working on the degree at nights, his eyes glued to the computer screen.

“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, includ-ing its employed primary care medical group and an affiliated HMO.

Still, he was still trying to become a hos-pital 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 Dor-othy Erdmann, then president of Owatonna Hospital.

See ALBRECHT on page 14In this January 2016 �le 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 �le photo)

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Erdmann had worked for Bellin Health — and therefore with Albrecht — before com-ing 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 kicko� 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 o�en 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 [North-western Hospital in Minneapolis]. It’s a great building that works well, with a great infra-structure.”

Another reason that Albrecht came to Owa-tonna 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. “�e opportunity came right here.”

In July of 2009, Erdmann stepped down from her role to become the president of �edaCare 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 workWhen 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 demon-strated 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 competi-tive 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).

ALBRECHT from page 13

See ALBRECHT on page 16

In this July 2011 �le photo, Dave Al-brecht and dancing partner Susie Hoopes perform a foxtrot to raise money for Healthy Seniors of Steele County in that year’s edi-tion of “Danc-ing with Our Steele County Stars.” (Press �le photo)


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

But, dancing? �at was di�erent. 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 di�cult to learn. But doing it just the two of them, their height di�erence accentuated by the spotlight — well, that was another.

�ey 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 build-ing 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 facili-ties 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 Je�rey Jackson at 444-2371, or follow him on Twitter.com @OPPJe�rey

ALBRECHT from page 14


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See WINTER on page 19

Healthy LivingDr. Carol Winter


Dr. Carol Winter loves living in Owa-tonna, 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 pic-turesque 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 Founda-tion 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 ful�lling, busy life.

But, she said, there is one thing miss-ing 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 fro-zen and a celebratory dip for the Beaver football team every homecoming.

“Being from Bemidji, you take it for granted,” Winter said of the abundance

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 aca-demia at a very young age.

Her father, Wes Winter, was a phys-ics 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.”

Kirk Dornfeld and Carol Winter. (Submitted photo)


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WINTER from page 18

Healthy Living

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

“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 per-haps the possibility of running into her professor/father at school meant that, upon graduation from Bemidji High School in 1975, Winter went to col-lege 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.Medical memories and Grand Marais

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.�e 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 emer-gency 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 �nd most rewarding is when somebody comes in and they’re sick and I can �gure 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 pa-tients’ 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 chil-dren,” she said, “I like the old people.”

�ough the elderly pose some challenges as they are set in their ways, she said, some with ir-reversible damage done throughout the years.

“So much of what I do is address the problems they brought on themselves, like they smoked for


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 prob-lem’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, doc-tors 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 �rst AIDS pa-tients. He was a really, really nice, young man who came in with ter-rible 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 communi-cate 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,

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 des-perately.”

She noticed a trend of young

men from rural areas who moved to the Twin Cities only to wind up in the hospital a�er unknowingly contracting AIDS.

“It was just devastating for ev-erybody,” she said. “If you live in a little town like this and get a call that

your child is in the hospital and ter-ribly sick, it was really di�cult for people.”

�ough that epidemic still ex-ists, progress was made and less lives lost.

But the health care industry is

constantly �ghting the latest infec-tion 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 mod-els 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 per-fect, 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 Da-kota before going the University of Minnesota for medical school.

A�er receiving her medical doc-torate, 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 open-ing for Winter, who wasn’t sure if she “wanted to be a forester or phy-sician,” she said.


WINTER from page 19

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WINTER from page 20

Her childhood consisted of al-ways 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. Interest-ingly 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 hus-band were approaching gradu-ation, they began looking for places to practice in a smaller town outside the metro area.

Because Dornfeld spent six weeks of his residency in Owa-tonna 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 respon-sibilities and be outdoors.


Kirk and Carol. (Submitted photo)


See DEETZ on page 23

A Matter of Convenience


There’s a story that Jerry Deetz tells that illustrates how far he’s come — if not in distance, then in life ex-perience — 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 �ll 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 fold-ed 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.

�ey 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. �ere were still 30-some dairy cows to be milked twice a day, still crops to be

In this June 2008 �le photo, Jerry Deetz, then president of the Owatonna Foundation, shows the crowd of individuals who attended the founda-tion’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 �le photo)

Jerry Deetz


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DEETZ from page 22 A congratula-tory note to Jerry Deetz when he was named 1965’s St. Paul Marketing Division Salesman of the Year for Cit-ies Services. (Sub-mitted photo)

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.

�ere 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 —�rst through eighth grade at a two-room country school in Modena, then high school in nearby Gilmanton, about �ve miles from their home. Deetz still remem-bers helping to milk the cows in the morning before heading out to school.�e nation calls

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

from high school, Jerry Deetz stayed on the farm for another three years.

And he might have stayed there longer — it’s di�cult to say — had he not had another calling, this one in the mid-1950s from his Uncle Sam. Jerry Deetz had been dra�ed.

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 fol-lowing the bombing of Pearl Harbor. �ough 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 dra�ed.

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 e�ort by his mother who put her two sons to work picking the silk out of the pods of milkweed that grew on the farm. �at silk, she told him, would be used for life jackets.

Now, more than a decade later, Deetz, in his early 20s, was dra�ed into the U.S. Army.


A�er learning Morse Code at Fort Cha�ee, Arkansas, Deetz was sent to Korea. �ough the Korean War had been over for some time, the tension between the two Koreas remained.

When he �nally served his two-year tour of duty, Deetz returned to Wisconsin, though he wasn’t quite �nished with his military service.

Shortly after he returned home, Deetz, who was work-ing for a nearby lumber com-pany as its assistant manager, had his �rst foray into the fuel business. �e man who was the distributor for Cities Service fuel company, delivering fuel oil and gasoline to farmers and others in the area, died. Deetz applied for the distributor’s job and got it.

“I had to buy a truck,” Deetz recalls.

And so, with the help of his father, Deetz purchased a truck, thus allowing him to fulfill a dream he had always had.

“I wanted to be in business,” he said.

But something intervened, and once again, it was Uncle Sam.

A�er he had le� the military following his two years of service, he was required to be in the Active Reserves for three years. He signed up for the Na-tional Guard, and with a month to go, the Berlin crisis erupted and Deetz was called back into active duty, meaning that he would spend 10 months away from his new business, stationed in Fort Lewis, Washington. It could have meant the end of his business.

Except for Carol.Carol had grown up in Mondovi,

where her parents owned and oper-

ated a grocery store. Carol and Jerry had known each other from going to the same church — Sacred Heart in Mondovi — but with a �ve-year di�er-ence in their ages, they had not dated, perhaps not even seriously considered one another. Until, that is, he returned from Korea.

�ey dated for about a year, then married on Aug. 22, 1959. About a year later, their �rst son, Steve, was born. About a year a�er that, Tom was born. It was then that Deetz was called back up into active duty.

Deetz credits his wife for keep-ing the business going. �ey hired a man to drive the truck, but with Deetz 2,000 miles away, someone had to act as consignee for the business, which included doing the books. So with two boys under the age of 2, Carol Deetz took up the job, sometimes starting the book work at 10 p.m. when the boys were asleep.

“She kept it alive,” Jerry Deetz said of the business.�e move to Owatonna

In the immediate years that followed,

Jerry Deetz’s business career skyrock-eted. Cities Services called him from his small territory in western Wisconsin to St. Paul. And, Deetz, said, they had to ask themselves the serious question: “Do we want to go to the big city of St. Paul?” A�er all her parents still lived nearby in Mondovi, his parents still on the farm. But they decided to make the move and Deetz continued to be successful in his business career.

By 1965, he was still working for Cities Service, now rebranded Citgo, and the Deetzes were living in Duluth.

�at same year, Deetz was named the region’s Salesman of the Year for Citgo, something that earned the couple a trip to Miami and a �ve-day stay at the famous Foun-tainbleau hotel.

“�ey took us deep-sea �sh-ing,” Carol Deetz recalls. “I didn’t know I could get so sick.”

In 1968, a friend who worked for Northwest Refining told Deetz that the company was looking for someone to run one of the departments. Deetz got the job and moved the family to Still-water. Soon therea�er, however, the company’s sales manager got fired and Deetz took over, overseeing sales for �ve states — Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa.

While the family lived in Du-luth, Carol Deetz, who had been a teacher in Wisconsin, got back to teaching on a part-time basis. While they were in Stillwater, she was a substitute teacher. �en in Owatonna, she carved out a 20-year career as an elementary spe-cial education teacher, teaching the learning disabled. She worked in all the elementary schools in the district except Washington.

So what brought them to Owatonna?

Simply put, a big change in the way that oil companies did business with the everyday consumer. Gone were the days of full service at the pump, where someone working at a gas station would come to your car, �ll up the tank, check your oil and the air pressure in your tires, and even wash your windows. By 1974, when Jerry Deetz quit his job and moved the family to Owatonna, some-thing new was coming into vogue — the self-service gas station and something called a “convenience store.”


DEETZ from page 23

In this June 2008 �le photo, Jerry Deetz (second from the right), then president of the Owatonna Foundation, joins Owatonna city leaders and o�cials and leaders of Pool Together for the o�cial groundbreaking for the city’s aquatic center, what would be named River Springs Water Park. The foundation ultimately gave $1.3 million toward the building of the aquatic center. (Press �le photo)


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� at same year, Deetz was named the region’s Salesman of the Year for Citgo, something that earned the couple a trip to Miami and a � ve-day stay at the famous Foun-tainbleau hotel.

“� ey took us deep-sea � sh-ing,” Carol Deetz recalls. “I didn’t know I could get so sick.”

In 1968, a friend who worked for Northwest Refining told Deetz that the company was looking for someone to run one of the departments. Deetz got the job and moved the family to Still-water. Soon therea� er, however, the company’s sales manager got fired and Deetz took over, overseeing sales for � ve states — Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa.

While the family lived in Du-luth, Carol Deetz, who had been a teacher in Wisconsin, got back to teaching on a part-time basis. While they were in Stillwater, she was a substitute teacher. � en in Owatonna, she carved out a 20-year career as an elementary spe-cial education teacher, teaching the learning disabled. She worked in all the elementary schools in the district except Washington.

So what brought them to Owatonna?

Simply put, a big change in the way that oil companies did business with the everyday consumer. Gone were the days of full service at the pump, where someone working at a gas station would come to your car, � ll up the tank, check your oil and the air pressure in your tires, and even wash your windows. By 1974, when Jerry Deetz quit his job and moved the family to Owatonna, some-thing new was coming into vogue — the self-service gas station and something called a “convenience store.”

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 � rst o� ce his company had — in the family’s laundry room.

Whatever they did that � rst year, they did right. By the next year, they opened their second store in St. Peter. � e rest, they say, is history.

Throughout his career, there has always been a philanthropic and civic-minded side to Jerry Deetz — from his work raising funds for the Muscular Dystrophy Association to the Owaton-na 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 for-tunate,” 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.

“� is is home, and we intend to stay here,” he said. “We have a great relation-ship with Owatonna.”

Reach Managing Editor Je� rey Jackson at 444-2371, or follow him on Twitter.com @OPPJe� rey

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


See BUSHO on page 27

Masters Grounds

Bruce and BJ Busho

By ASHLEY [email protected]

�ere isn’t much sleep for Bruce and BJ Busho and the Owatonna Grounds-masters 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 work-ing 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 sched-uled hours.

“Everyone works together and we get everything done,” BJ said.

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 Owa-tonna High School had aspirations to become a mechanic.

A�er attending Albert Lea Techni-cal School to become a certi�ed 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 rac-ing, 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.

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)

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BJ and Bruce Busho began dat-ing in 1976 and were married in 1986. The two have one son, Jake, and own Owatonna Grounds-masters together. (Submitted photo)

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 Os-terwyk 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 Mari-on High School in 1975.

A� er 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 sis-ter,” Bruce said.

� e 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 a� er, BJ took a position

as a police dispatcher at the Owa-tonna 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 le� 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 mar-ried at the time, considered it.

“We talked to the people [Mel-vin] had as clients and they were willing to stay with us,” BJ said. Mel’s Equipment served 10 cus-tomers in lawn mowing and snow-plowing.

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.


“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 incorporationWhen Bruce and BJ took over the business in

1984, they changed the name to B&B Equipment.�ey started with Melvin Busho’s lawn mow-

ing 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 stu� because our clients kept wanting more and more stu�. It’s been gradual.

“�e �rst �ve 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 le� Inland in October, there were

some evenings he and his wife worked past dark and on weekends.

“To get things done,” BJ said.�en Bruce took a six-month leave from In-

land Parts to see what happened during the snow season. He decided to leave the company that year.

“�ey were a�er me for a couple months to come work for them as a transmission and rear-end mechanic,” he said.

BJ continued working for the NAPA Distribu-tion Center until 1989, a year a�er 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 le� NAPA on good terms.”

In 1989, the Bushos incorporated the business under Owatonna Groundsmasters to better re�ect their services.

“At �rst we just had B&B Equipment and peo-ple didn’t know what that was,” BJ said.

�e 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 cli-

ents, employees and services.

“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 Owa-tonna 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 �ve years.”

With Groundsmasters growing clientele and services, it has outgrown several locations throughout the years.

When the Bushos �rst took over the business in the late ‘80s, they ran it out of the garage of their Woodland Drive home. �en, they rented two Quonset huts that were behind Cenex.

“We had the o�ce 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.”

�e 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 expan-sion and everything to make it so the company had a brick-and-mortar setting,” BJ said.

�ey found the spot on State Avenue North-west in 2015,

“�is is our main o�ce 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

home, you can’t take the Bushos out of Grounds-masters.

In fact, they added another.�eir son, Jake, who graduated from Medford

High School in 2006, attended Riverland Com-munity College and earned a degree in business management before joining Groundsmasters in 2008.

But he wasn’t new to the business and its work-ings. Jake grew up in it.

“I’ve done every single job rather than just get-ting 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 li-

cense, he’d wake up before school to plow snow for three or four hours, but he wasn’t forced into the business.

“�ey’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.

“�ey 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 spray-ing, 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 “o�ce stu�.”

“Neither of them are desk people,” she said. “If they have a choice between sitting down and getting their desk cleared o� and getting their paperwork done as soon as that phone rings, they’re gone.”

But being a family-run business has its draw-backs, the Bushos said.

“We can’t vacation together because some-body has to be here to run the show,” BJ said. “When we go on vacations, they’re three days. �at’s it.”


BUSHO from page 27

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)


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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 di� erent 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.� ere 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 employ-

ees they have they’re able to provide a service that Groundsmasters’ custom-ers are satis� ed with.

“We’re thankful for our employees and the people of Owatonna who con-tinue 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.

� e � rst was the Owatonna Fire Department, which he joined in Feb-ruary 1980 as a volunteer/sleeper — something BJ said was in his blood.

“My dad was a � re� ghter, so I grew up all my life having him there on the � re 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 Owa-

tonna Jaycees Distinguished Service Award for his work on the � re depart-ment.

And he retired from the � re de-partment in 2007.

Another area Bruce is involved is the Steele County Free Fair.

It was 1995 when Bruce was ap-proached by Ted Ringhofer and James “Corky” Ebeling about joining the Steele County Fair Board.

“� ey 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 di� erent 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 qual-ity of that for the people and kids of the area,” he said.

Bruce is also involved in the Owa-tonna 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.


BUSHO from page 28


Steve Stansberry

See STANSBERRY on page 34


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 “re-

tired” 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.

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

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What awaited him was the entire stu-dent body, plus the faculty and sta� 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 o�ce 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 sur-prise.”

It was a surprise that may have nev-er been had Stansberry not changed his mind on his career choice,

Stansberry, 69, was born in Min-neapolis in 1946, where he father was a student at the University of Minne-sota Law School. His father was also an ROTC instructor, which meant that the family, including young Stansberry, traveled a bit — Chicago, Milwaukee — before �nally 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 �t.”

He enjoyed it so much, in fact, that he changed his major from music edu-cation to elementary education — an unusual major during the mid-1960s for men. In fact, as he recalls, in the

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

potential employers.“I had job o�ers even before I ap-

plied for jobs,” he said, noting that he was approached by Edina and St. An-

thony Village.He settled on a job teaching fourth,

��h 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 oppor-tunity that also allowed him to teach elementary science methods and psy-chology to undergraduates.

�en, 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 Minneapo-lis. Unfortunately, a�er just a year with the institution, the federal funding for the school ran out, leaving Stansberry looking for a position. So with his prin-cipal’s license in hand, he landed in the Bird Island school district as princi-pal — a small town west of the Cities, something that was a bit of a shock for Stansberry.

“I was a city slicker from Bloom-ington,” he said, noting that his high school graduation class had 1,200 kids in it — about the same size as the en-tire 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 sta�,” he said, adding that he had great re-spect 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 �rst went to Detroit Lakes for nine years, followed by Staples, not far from Brainerd, also for nine years.

�en, 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 prin-cipal at Lincoln Elementary School.

STANSBERRY from page 30


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 �le photo)


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“I’m sure glad we found Owatonna,” he said.

�e ‘return’ of Steve StansberrySteve Stansberry admits he is no Bobby Fisch-

er, the American chess Grandmaster and former World Chess Champion, whom many consider to be the greatest chess player of all time. Still, Stans-berry, 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 Elemen-tary School, Stansberry started a chess club, a club that he then transferred to Willow Creek Inter-mediate 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 part-time 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 his own health issues. 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.

“�ey proved me wrong,” he said. “�e 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 o�cials 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 dis-trict.

“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 edu-cation specialist, as he likes to call it.

And save money they did — about a half-mil-lion dollars in 2 1/2 years.

In his retirement, he also returned to Lincoln once a week to work with 15 of the top math-minded ��h 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, a�er his �rst time working

with the ��h 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 ��h graders.

He should have known. After all, in 2008, Stansberry was responsible for bringing “Are You Smarter �an a Steele County Sixth Grader?” to the grandstand during the Steele County Free Fair — a game patterned a�er the TV game show “Are You Smarter �an a Fi�h Grader?”

It’s not the only participation that Stansberry has had at the fair. Shortly a�er Stansberry’s re-tirement, he was having co�ee with retired school principal and then manager of the fair, Elmer Re-seland, 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 shi� it anymore,” he said.�e return of Steve Stansberry? No, not really,

because Stansberry never le�.

Ever-growing in�uenceAnd the influence of Stans-

berry 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-motor-cycle 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 Lin-coln Elementary School’s gymna-sium in a rocking chair with book in during the �rst week of March — a cold March, as he remembers it — to show students how read-ing 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 sweet-er, he said, than marshmallows?

Then there’s Gordy the Groundhog, Stansberry’s answer to the more famous Punxsutaw-ney Phil.



In this May 2005 �le photo, Lincoln Elementary School principal Steve Stansberry smiles at a surprise retirement party put on by the students, faculty and sta�. (Press �le photo)


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He found the groundhog — stu� ed, of course — decades ago in a cabin up north that he had purchased. At � rst it star-tled him until he realized that it was stu� ed.

“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 stu-dents learn not only the tra-ditions 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 ten-ure as school principal. And in 2010, the Owatonna Education Association awarded Stans-berry 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 compila-tion 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 Owa-tonna sooner,” he said.

Reach Managing Editor Je� rey Jackson at 444-2371, or follow him on Twitter.com @OPPJe� rey


In this January 2013 � le photo, the Owatonna school district’s energy czar Steve Stansberry checks out the boiler room of the district o� ce. (File photo)


Harvey and Nancy Farr

See FARR on page 39

Hometown People


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.“�ere are di�erent people that come in all the time,”

said Harvey, who co-owns the business with his wife, Nan-cy. “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 �rst 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 o�-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.

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 communi-

ties 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.

�e Farrs contribute their business’ success to their ties to Blooming Prairie.

“We’re just two hometown people,” Harvey said.

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)


See FARR on page 40

FARR from page 38

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

‘Hometown people’The Farrs had no intention of liv-

ing 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 Ellen-dale and Blooming Prairie, so our folks decided to send us to Bloom-ing,” 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. In-stead, she worked at Jerry’s Supper Club in Owatonna for three years and then worked a few years at Fed-erated Insurance Companies while becoming a wife and a mother.

On May 13, 1989, the Farrs mar-ried.

“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“�e ‘J’ stands for John Swenson

and the ‘H’ stands for Harvey,” Nancy said. “�at’s where the name comes from,”

In 1986, Harvey and Swenson pur-chased the bar together, despite having full-time jobs at Metal Services and Arkema, respectively.

“�ey’d work their full-time shi�s and then they’d come here full time,” Nancy said.


Harvey worked Monday and Wednesday nights, and Swenson took Tuesday and �ursday nights, while the two shared weekends.

“�ere’s always something to do up here,” Harvey said.

But in 1989, Swenson le� the business, and in 1992, Nan-cy 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 in-dividually.

“Every night is di�erent,” Nancy said. “You �ll in when it’s needed.”

J & H Liquors employs about six individuals, includ-ing their two daughters who are currently attending college.

With the workload, the Farrs try to �nd time for other activities and adventures, like a two-week motorcycle trip to someplace within the U.S.

“It’s tough to get away un-less 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. �at’s what’s made it easy for us. We’ve had good help.”

Bringing people out�e Farrs have met a lot of

people over the years as bar owners and community mem-bers 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, Har-vey has combined his interest in riding motorcycles with a cause he believes in: Steele County Toys for Tots.

“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 benefac-tor of the annual B.O.B Ride. Others have included Locks of Love and the Steele County Food Shelf, but now, it solely bene�ts Toys for Tots.

“It started with a group of five guys from Blooming sitting in here one time kick-ing 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,” Har-vey 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 partici-pating.

“It just got to growing big-ger and bigger,” Harvey said.

�e same can be said about the Farrs annual Cruise for a Cause event that bene�ts the

Blooming Prairie Cancer Group.

Since 2011, the Farrs have organized the event, and in 2015, there were about 30 area cruisers that participated. �e event raised about $1,400 for the cancer group.

“It’s a way to help the di�er-ent causes,” Nancy said.

For years, Nancy has coor-dinated a wine tasting for the Boys and Girls Club of Bloom-ing Prairie, an organization she served on the board between 2011 and 2014.

“Blooming Prairie needs the Boys and Girls Club be-

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.

“�at’s one way we promote the chamber here,” Nancy said, noting the purpose for the hol-iday event.

The Farrs are also well-known for their coordination of the July 3 street dance as the kick off for the community’s annual Old-Fashioned Fourth

of July Celebration.“�at event draws the most

people we have for one night,” Harvey said, noting there are people from all over the coun-try, 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 Com-mission Board. He formerly served as a trustee at First Lutheran Church in Bloom-ing Prairie in the 1990s. �e 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 suc-cessful.”

Harvey said the average bar owner only lasts between �ve to seven years.

“I guess we’re above aver-age,” he said.

A slow-down�e 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 �nd anybody,” Harvey said.

See FARR on page 41

FARR from page 39

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)


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For the last four years, J & H Liquors has been on the market, but there has been little to no success in finding some-one 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 down-stairs 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 stop-ping in J & H Liquors will see the Farrs.

“It’s treated us well in the last 30 years,” Nancy said.

FARR from page 40

Nancy and Harvey Farr in the J & H Liquor Store, which they purchased in 2000. The couple enjoys the business for the people they meet. (Ashley Stewart/People’s Press)


Stephanie KiblerMany Hats

See KIBLER on page 44

By WILLIAM [email protected]

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 a�eld, 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 sever-al 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 di�erent 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 connec-tion to it.

“Born, baptized, confirmed, married, my kids were baptized at the First Lutheran Church here, which is probably the �rst place I started volunteering as a Sunday school teacher when I was a teenager,” she said. “I participated in Children of the Light, which

was a Christian singing group. I handled the lights. �ey 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 �rst full-time job out of high school was in 1981 at Feder-ated Insurance Companies in Owatonna.

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 �le photo)


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“I think I started there before my 18th birth-day, 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. �e two hit it o� and mar-ried in 1983. When his assignment took him to Nashville, Tennesee, she went with him. �ere the couple had their �rst 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 signi�cantly 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 stay-at-home mom. But it wouldn’t be long before she was jumping into an array of new professions.

Finding her career(s)“I got involved with the Early Childhood

Family Education program in the Roseville district,” she said. “At that time, early child-hood 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, work-ing 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 won-derful, unbelievably great staff, these girls who were trying so hard to parent and be good par-ents and not fall into the routines there par-ents and grandparents had fallen into, but it’s exhausting, and heart-wrenching,” she said. “I burned out after about four years.”

But she left with a newfound passion for health and human services, and it wasn’t long before she was working for the Minnesota So-cial 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 pro-fessional, 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 lat-ter was none other than her former employers

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 responsibil-ity, 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 al-most 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 homeIn 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.

“�e SEC showed up, escorted everyone out and locked the door, and that was the end of Drex-el 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. �at was his mentor.”

But irreconcilable di�erences were growing in the relationship, and in 2010, Tom and Stephanie divorced a�er 27 years of marriage.

“You’re more stubborn than the ones who get out a�er 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 fam-ily’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, ev-eryone 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 �anksgiving with his family. I’ve kind of been a Jujube on his shoe ever since.”


KIBLER from page 42

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)


Paulson eventually sold his busi-ness in Georgia and moved back north, managing the Ellendale mu-nicipal liquor store. And he in turn drew Kibler back to her old home-town, where she now lives with Paul-son and Davidson, Paulson’s blind rat terrier. (Paulson le� the liquor store in September and now works in out-door 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 di� erent pace of life in Ellendale.

“I’ve not regretted moving back to a small community. � ere’s some-thing really nice about the way things � ow, 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 Lakev-ille. 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. � at 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 signi� cant time into her new (old) community, win-ning 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 operat-ing, 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 happen-ing,” she said.

Trying something newA� er 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 some-thing di� erent, which leads me to about four jobs listed on my LinkedIn site right now,” she said.


KIBLER from page 44

An old photograph of the house, later destroyed by � re, 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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Kibler continues to run her own consultancy through Mobius — these days she focuses mostly on social media marketing for smaller nonpro� ts as well as providing continuing education and a speakers bureau for conferences and events. She’s an account manager with HelmsBriscoe, a com-pany that helps organizations arrange lodging for events. And in September, she joined the Steele County Historical Society as its Meetings and Spe-cial 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 o� ering 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.”

A� er so long working on her own projects at her own pace, there have been some transition pains, she said.

“� e History Center is the � rst ‘job’ I’ve had outside the home in 15 years,” she said. “I kind of miss being able to grab a cup of co� ee and sit in my jammies at the computer until noon and nobody the wiser.”

Still, she’s happy where she is.

“I was kind of surprised at home much I en-joyed the History Center,” she said. “� at 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-

nars, in Ellendale as well as Owatonna, on such topics as prescription drug abuse, human traf-� cking, and the importance of a� rmations; 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 o� ering services to veterans.“� ey 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. � ey 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 � rivent Financial in the Twin Cit-ies 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.

“� at’s kind of what makes the History Center fun, too, is there’s di� erent hats I can take,” she said. “I don’t have to do the same thing day in and day out.”

KIBLER from page 45

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

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Mary Kay Feltes

See FELTES on page 48

Surrounded by Stories


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.

�e family lived above Mary Kay’s father’s law o�ce, just a scant block away from the community library.

“Mom would send us over to get books,” she said, re-membering 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.”

�e 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 inde-pendent,” 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 direc-tor of technology for the city.

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


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 di� erent.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 � rst headed to Marquette University in Milwaukee, the same school where her mother had earned in bachelor’s degree in nursing. A� er 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 ma-

jor in English and sociology, and nearly a minor in philosophy.If the two seem disparate — one dealing with the world

of � ction, 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.

“� ey 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.

� e 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 reces-sion the e� ects of which would be felt throughout the Carter administration and into the early years of the Reagan White House.


FELTES from page 47

In this May 2013 � le photo, Mary Kay Feltes gives the Owatonna City Council and members of the city sta� a tour of the library. (Press � le photo)

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FELTES from page 48“�e job market was not good,” Mary

Kay said.She thought about social work, but it

didn’t appeal to her, not really.�en she heard about library school,

something she didn’t even know exist-ed. A�er 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.”

Storied path to Steele County�ere is a room in the basement of

the Owatonna Public Library that most people never see, tucked far behind the main desk in the children’s library, past the elevator and some restrooms, down at the end of a hallway. It is there in the corner of the room that the library sta� pours themselves a cup of co�ee. It is there on the shelves that line the walls that some books of the library’s collec-tion are stored, available if requested but generally out of sight.

And it is there in that room that Mary Kay Feltes got her start in the Owatonna library system.

Mary Kay came to Owatonna from Winona in 1990, hired by then director Graham Benoit to be the library’s as-sistant director with a specialty in chil-dren’s services. At the time the library was much smaller in size. And that room that now houses the extra shelves and the sta� cof-fee pot was the children’s library.

“I got to be in on the planning of the expansion,” said Mary Kay.

But there was much she had to learn, both in school and out, before she came to Owatonna more than 25 years ago.

�e �rst place she landed a�er graduating from “library school,” as she called it, was in Indepen-dence, in her home county of Trempealeau in west-ern Wisconsin, a community of about 1,200 people and a community that hasn’t grown much since. It was just about 10 miles from where she had grown up and �rst visited the library.

It was there in Independence that Mary Kay first started reading stories to children after a mother approached her shortly a�er her arrival in Independence and �oated the idea.

“�e mother asked me, ‘When are you starting

story time?’ And I said, ‘Soon,’” she said.And true to her word, she o�ered the program

during the summer.“I learned a lot there,” she said.She stayed in Independence for four years, leav-

ing a�er she was invited to apply for the children’s librarian position in Winona, a move that took some adjustment. Not only was she now in a much bigger library surrounded by a much bigger sta�, but she was no longer in Wisconsin, but in Min-nesota. Viking territory. And though she’s never been much of a football fan, she still �nds it di�cult to wear purple.

While in Winona, Mary Kay continued “story time,” her time of reading to children.

“I got to love it,” she said. “And I got to be good at it.”

She still is.And it’s of little wonder. Her mother, she said,

was a great storyteller. And she still remembers

the way her mother would tell old familiar tales like “Hansel and Gretel” and “�ree Billy Goats Gru�.” She loved it when her mother told stories and wanted to share that love of hearing stories with children who came to the library.

“I loved to see the expressions on the faces and not just of the kids,” she said.

She also loved to see the expressions on the faces of the parents, perhaps remembering and reliving a time of innocence from their childhood.

And she still loves it, especially sharing books that have poetry in them and watching as children delight in the language — the sounds, the rhythm, the rhyme.

“Kids relate to poetry,” she said.�en she lapses into a poem — “Invitation”

from Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends:If you’re a dreamer, come in,If you’re a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer,

If you’re a pretender, come sit by my �re

For we have some �ax-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 and look at it,” she said.

�e reputation of the library under Benoit’s leadership was, after all, tre-mendous.

“�ey were at the forefront of any-thing new, with a supportive commu-nity,” she said, adding that the Owatonna community still strongly supports the library.

Because of that support, the library that she came to in Owatonna was one that was unafraid to try new things and be on the cutting edge of what libraries o�er.

“We didn’t wait for someone to say it was OK,” she said.

It hasn’t always been easy.Mary Kay remembers that shortly

a�er Benoit stepped down as director and she was named to take his place, the city — indeed, the state and the na-tion as a whole — faced a most serious

crisis, an economic downturn since dubbed “�e Great Recession.” Money became tight, the state cut back on Local Government Aid, and, as a consequence the city directed its departments to tighten their belts. �at, of course, meant the library as well.

It was tough. For the library it meant cutting sta� and services. Gone was the bookmobile and delivery to daycares across the community. Gone also was delivery to the households of the home-bound. And high school students, who worked a�er school reshelving books and other odd jobs around the library, saw their positions eliminated.

“I was proud we didn’t have to cut hours,” said Mary Kay. “It was important to keep open.”

And the library bounced back as the economy, though some programs have not been re-estab-lished even as new programs — always on the forefront of anything new — have been introduce.

Rotarians Mike Jensen and Mary Kay Feltes work a booth in Owatonna’s Central Park during the Harry Wenger Marching Band Festival. (Submitted photo)


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FELTES from page 50� en 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 jobIt was back in the late 1970s, when she was still

working at the library in Independence, that Mary Kay � rst attended her � rst Bruce Springsteen con-cert, but she remembers it like it was yesterday. Her brother Jimmy had asked her to attend, and she still recalls how the auditorium was � lled 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 Co-coa with Santa Event or reciting “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” to a group of children on stage during a Little � eatre of Owatonna Christmas variety show.

� en 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 diagno-sis of cancer, that they themselves have just gone through. It’s not just the information they seek — and what better place to � nd it than the library — but it’s also the comfort they want, comfort from a sympathetic ear.

And, again, what better place to � nd it than the library?

“Everybody comes here,” she said.And when she’s challenged by those in the com-

munity 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 read-ing community,” she said. “I enjoy it and I want to see it advance.”

In this January 2015 � le photo, Owatonna Public Library director Mary Kay Feltes address a crowd in the library’s Reading Room about the retirement of fellow librarian Mary Gontarek, pictured in the far left. (Press � le photo)


See KOTTKE on page 53

Matt Kottke

Not Far from the TreeBy WILLIAM [email protected]

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 O�ce 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 o�en imagine what the town must have been like in those early years, as I’m literally walking in their footsteps.”

�e Kottkes have le� 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 oc-casions, 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-

ents were grade-school sweethearts who attended Drake University together and started their family in Iowa, but moved back for good a�er 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 grand-father established in 1933.

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


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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 Hard-ware, the start of a 31-year career. He started with the company as a customer service repre-sentative and ended as the marketing manager.

“I really met and worked alongside some very talented and dedicated people, who togeth-er 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 � gure. He served � ve years as chairman of the Win-Door North America annual trade show, served on the editorial board for an industry magazine and helped launch the Partners Promoting Win-dow and Balcony Safety program in Canada. He was the � rst 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.”

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)


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 stron-ger 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.”Welcome to Main Street

So, how does a career win-dow 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 “fa-mous Kottke girls” as he affec-tionately 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 show-room.

“ [ My f at he r ] 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 start-ed,” Kottke said.

Although not a jeweler by trade, Kottke has brought his sales knowledge from his past career to bear at the store and

says business is strong, in no small part due to the many loyal customers who remem-ber 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 grad-uation 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-grandfa-ther,” he said. “If you consider a generation as 20 years, we’re approaching five generations

that could have shopped at the store. That’s a lot of history. A lot of smiles, as my grand-father would say, that we’ve brought to Owatonna.”Making Owatonna a good place to be

Of cours e , not a l l of Kottke’s time in Owatonna has been spent at work.

He married Lisa (Fjalstad) Kottke, another OHS graduate and a onetime Indians mas-cot, 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 deco-rating and has a wonderful business sense, and I credit her with a lot of those things that helped move us in the di-rection where we’re at today.”

The couple has two chil-dren, both in town: Caleb, who farms and does construction work, and Sarah, who works at Owatonna Clinic and Buf-falo 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 in-volved in so many things as well: music, theater, volunteer-ing. They’re always around to help, and that’s something I’m very proud of.”


KOTTKE from page 53

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

We’re approaching �ve 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

“”


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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 Owa-tonna 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 Lead-ership Owatonna Program: Co-chair of Pool Together Owatonna, which helped develop River Springs Water Park, and Owatonna Forward, which supported the 2015 Owaton-na 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 sim-pler 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 neigh-boring 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.


KOTTKE from page 54

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


KOTTKE from page 55

“�at’s how Owatonna grew — the trail system, the hockey rink. �ere’s a group of people who got together and said, we need that,” he said. “�ose have become assets to the community that help at-tract 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. �is 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.”

�e 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 �nd 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 �nd 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 chem-istry professor, Kottke and two friends launched Mineral Springs Brewery, cooking up beer in a variety of styles in garages and base-ments and anointing each batch with a little bit of the mineral spring water that he says �rst 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 Owaton-na, Kottke’s roots have always drawn him back to his ancestral home.

“[I] did not fall very far from the tree,” he said. “�at 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. �ere’s a lot of won-

derful people and programs and things that Owatonna has to o�er, 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 �replace in ap-proximately 1950 at their Owatonna home. (Submitted photo)

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


For 58 years, the Owatonna Foundation has awarded grants totaling over $11.5 million for projects that touch every aspect of our lives

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See RESLER on page 60

Laura Resler

Dedicated to Non-Profits By KIM [email protected]

“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 di�erent organization in Owatonna, but that isn’t the whimsical turn of events to which she

is referring. �is is: Resler went from being a Brooklyn baby with interests in becoming a veterinarian, to working for local non-pro�ts a�er moving to Minnesota.

“If you would have said to me in high school that this is what I would be doing to-day, 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 e�orts within the community. With her current work at the Foundation, she gets to help sustain the arts, recreation, and education through �nancially supporting individuals and ideas that aim to boost the community’s quality of life.

A�er 13 years at the Steele County His-torical 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-pro�t scene,

just on a part-time basis.Interestingly enough, at that time last year

when Resler was looking elsewhere, an op-portunity 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 �t,” she said. “So far, I love it. Really, coming here was almost in a sense getting to be with some old friends.”

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


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609 Lincoln Avenue Owatonna451-4520 | tlcowatonna.org

Back when she was serving as the historical soci-ety’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 Vil-lage of Yesteryear.

� e 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 so-ciety, 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 o� er 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.

“� at’s the one I was personally most touched by,” she said.

Aside from exhibits, she served on several Owa-tonna 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 scholar-ships to individuals within the community.


RESLER from page 58

Laura Resler gathers with her family. (Submitted photo)

Church DirectoryA Time to Rejoice, Celebrate & Worship


Sunday Worship 8:15 a.m. Traditional • 10:45 a.m. Contemporary

Education Hour 9:25 a.m.Summer Sunday Worship 9:15 a.m.

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Our Savior’s Lutheran Church-ELCA

P.O. Box 423, 1909 St. Paul Rd Owatonna • 451-4853www.oursaviorsowatonna.org

Pastor John Weisenburger Assoc. Pastor Karl Korbel • Assoc. Pastor Lauren Baske-Davis

St. John Lutheran Church, ELCA

1301 Lincoln Ave • Owatonna • 451-7293 • www.stjohnowatonna.org

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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507-451-4734• Traditional Service Sunday 9:00 a.m. • Contemporary Service Sunday 10:45 a.m.• Sunday School & Fellowship Sunday 10:00 a.m. • Midweek Service Wednesday 6:30 p.m. • Nursery Available During Services • Handicap Accessible • For complete schedule of youth and children’s activities visit our website.

Worship Sundays at 9:00 a.m. Educational hour from 10:15 to 11:15 (Sunday School & Adult Bible Study)

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In 2015 alone, the Foundation raised $550,000 to support such initiatives sprawl-ing across the community, from the Home-stead Hospice House and River Springs Wa-ter Park, to the Owatonna Soccer Complex and many of the city’s parks and trails.

One of the very � rst 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, � shing area, and more.

� irty years later, that initial initiative is known as Kaplan’s Woods Parkway.

Another first-time project and part-nership 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 mu-rals 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 Foun-dation 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 op-portunity 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 di� cult 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. “Any-where you look in the community, the Foun-dation has touched it.”


RESLER from page 60

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


From the farm to the Foundation

A�er 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 �nd my way around,” Resler said.

As a kid, she explored the American Museum of Natural History and the Metro-politan 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 fam-ily 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 �t to be a vet tech, “ she said, “but its funny where life takes you.”

In college she was enrolled at the Univer-sity of Minnesota in Waseca to be a vet tech, but worked in fast food for a while before her �rst experience in the non-pro�t world through a farm organization.

It wasn’t too long a�er college in 1980 when Resler married her husband, Todd, and they moved to Owatonna.

�ey had two children, Karen, 35, and Steven, 30, who both graduated from Owa-tonna 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 favor-ite 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 �ction and listen to anything from Gershwin and Henry Mancini to coun-try music.

But she doesn’t make it back to Brook-lyn often, as all her relatives have relocat-ed. There was a time back when she was still on the vet track that she ended up es-corting 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 Owa-tonna at many of the places her employer has made possible through community con-tributions.

“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 pas-sionate about bene�ting the community. It’s such a great legacy to see what the Founda-tion has done and to carry it out into the future.”


RESLER from page 62

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

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


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See MEILLIER on page 66


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 o�ce still is deco-rated with family photos of the Alexanders who founded the company in 1883 and ran it for more than a century. Out on the retail �oor, the ra�ers are decorated with the original wagons and sleighs used by the Alexanders when they first came to Owatonna. When asked, Meillier can dis-cuss 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 Al-exander Lumber in 1988. �e business has expanded its footprint downtown while Meillier has assumed key leadership roles in the community and his industry. Al-though 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.”

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

GenerationGeneration

Dennis Meillier

to


�e honorary Alexander

When Meillier joined Alex-ander Lumber in 1973, the com-pany already had a rich family history, which he’s more than happy to share.

McIndoe Alexander, a son of a lumber dynasty in Wausau, Wisconsin, founded the com-pany in 1883. He started selling lumber out of a wagon, but by the time he died, he had estab-lished the Alexander Lumber building that still stands today on North Cedar Avenue as well as 12 smaller lumber yards up and down the north-south rail-road line.

McIndoe’s two sons, Mark and Donald, sold most of the smaller lineyards a�er inherit-ing the company, with the for-tuitous outcome that Alexan-der had plenty of cash on hand when the stock market crashed in October of 1929. While Don-ald started a separate business making wagon suspensions and undercarriages, Mark ran the family business while also purchasing the insolvent Farm-er’s National Bank for pennies on the dollar. He reopened the bank, which was located in what now is the Wells Fargo building downtown, serving as president for both companies.

Mark’s son John was the third gen-eration of Alexanders in Owatonna, and it was he who hired a young dra�s-man out of Faribault who would one day be the �rst in a new family tree to run the lumber company. Denny Meil-lier was 24 years old when he �rst ar-rived in town.

“I was a dra�sman over in Faribault, working for a company, and I got word that there was a guy who owned a lum-ber yard in Owatonna [and] wanted to

have a dra�sman so he could do house plans. That was the next big thing,” Meillier said. “I came and applied for it, was o�ered the job and took it, moved here with my family from Faribault ... I did house plans and materials and take-o� for him for 16 years.”

To hear him tell it now, Meillier cheated a bit to get the job.

“I was working for a company named Nutting Truck and Caster out of Faribault, which was an old com-pany, too,” he said. “I’d been there about three and a half years. It was kind of a dead-end job, and I didn’t have an engineering degree, and I was getting pretty bored with it, the same old stu� day a�er day.”

So he was eager for the Alexander position, but all his past experience was in mechanical rather than architectural dra�ing.

“I remember called down here, I called and got the dates set up for the interview, and Mr. Alexander said, bring some drawings, some samples if you can,” Meillier said. “I showed him my drawings a�er we talked, and they were all mechanical, they weren’t archi-tectural, and I kind of lied a little, I said ‘oh my God, I grabbed the wrong ones.’ ... I wanted out so bad over there in Faribault and �gured I could quick pick up the architectural side of it. I kind of blu�ed and said, ‘I could make a trip back and get you some,’ and John said

no, I think I can see what your abilities are. �is is �ne.’”

Meillier says he loved working at Alexander Lumber, rising to general manager and adding new and broader responsibilities over the years.

“With John Alexander, I had lots of opportunities. Every few years, some-thing else would come along,” Meillier said. “I remember he hated collections. He was such a nice guy. … He hated hiring people, so pretty much I did all the hiring. Anything he wanted to slough o�, if I o�ered to do it, he was more than happy to let me run with it.”Under new management

John Alexander died of a heart at-tack at 59 in 1988. He le� three daugh-

ters, who Meillier says were too young or not interested in be-coming the fourth generation of Alexander lumber yard owners in Minnesota. So Meillier raised money from a group of acquain-tances and bought the business from the family. Within six years he’d paid o� the investors and was sole owner of the busi-ness.

From the start, he was chal-lenged by the nature of a down-town business that had grown until it could grow no more.

“We had satellite storage yards, north of here, a block to two blocks away, we were run-ning forkli�s up and down the street, and pickup trucks and delivery trucks to pick up wood at this yard, and then go to that yard to get some sheetrock, then maybe you had to come back here to get some insulation, just to �ll an order. It was very labor intensive,” he said.

One option was to shi� away from downtown entirely.

“I had an opportunity to move this up on the north end. At the intersection of Cedar and

26th Street, there was a parcel there of about 8 acres I could have had for very reasonable, … but we had meetings with our stockholders, and decided, I was convinced we needed to stay downtown,” Meillier said. “�ey �nally agreed to it, so we stayed down here and did our reinvesting in the com-munity down here.”

Instead, Meillier took the long view. At the time, Alexander took only about half the block on which it sits, with resi-dential property behind it.

“�ere were seven houses between us and Elm Street,” he said. “I started buying out those houses as people aged out and wanted to sell. I went door to door for 13 years, said, ‘If you ever want

See MEILLIER on page 67

MEILLIER from page 65

Hanging from the rafters in the Alexander Lumber store are the wagons and sleighs used by the founders of the company in the late 1800s. (William Morris/People’s Press)


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to sell, would you talk to us � rst,’ and every-one said they’d do that. Took me 13 years to get those seven houses bought.”

Finally in 2001, the company had all the land it needed to build the steel storage buildings that now complete the property.

While he was working on that project, Meillier was making a mark in other areas as well.

“I was president of the Northwestern Lumber Association and a two-term board member up there. � at was second most ac-tive [association] in the country, aside from eastern,” he said. “So I got to know a lot of lumber yard owners over the years. It’s a good business. � ey’re all good people.”

He also can rattle o� a list of signi� cant roles in the Owatonna community, including past chair of the Owatonna Area Chamber of Commerce and Tourism board; a trustee for the Owatonna Foundation; and member-ship in the Rotary and at one time Exchange and Sertoma clubs. He also was an original

investor in Community Bank Owatonna and a past board member for the United Way of Steele County.

“� ey asked me to move up in that one, and I turned them down,” he said. “We were just going 100 miles per hour for years, and I didn’t see any relief, so we begged o� that one.”

Through all of this, he was still busy running the lumber company, until recently working six days a week.

“We worked every Saturday, and I did that for 20 years, six days a week,” he said. “� en we bought the lumber company, I still kept coming in every Saturday. I just stopped working every Saturday about a year ago, a� er 30 years of it.”Passing the torch

In 1968, Meillier married his wife, Jacque.“We were kind of the old proverbial high

school sweethearts,” he said, “We dated all of senior year, then I went o� to college.”


ters, who Meillier says were too young or not interested in be-coming the fourth generation of Alexander lumber yard owners in Minnesota. So Meillier raised money from a group of acquain-tances and bought the business from the family. Within six years he’d paid o� the investors and was sole owner of the busi-ness.

From the start, he was chal-lenged by the nature of a down-town business that had grown until it could grow no more.

“We had satellite storage yards, north of here, a block to two blocks away, we were run-ning forkli� s up and down the street, and pickup trucks and delivery trucks to pick up wood at this yard, and then go to that yard to get some sheetrock, then maybe you had to come back here to get some insulation, just to � ll an order. It was very labor intensive,” he said.

One option was to shi� away from downtown entirely.

“I had an opportunity to move this up on the north end. At the intersection of Cedar and

26th Street, there was a parcel there of about 8 acres I could have had for very reasonable, … but we had meetings with our stockholders, and decided, I was convinced we needed to stay downtown,” Meillier said. “� ey � nally agreed to it, so we stayed down here and did our reinvesting in the com-munity down here.”

Instead, Meillier took the long view. At the time, Alexander took only about half the block on which it sits, with resi-dential property behind it.

“� ere were seven houses between us and Elm Street,” he said. “I started buying out those houses as people aged out and wanted to sell. I went door to door for 13 years, said, ‘If you ever want

See MEILLIER on page 68 Denny and Jacque Miller, center, surrounded by their children, childrens’ spouses and grandchildren in November of 2012. (Submitted photo)


�e couple have two children. Amara, their daughter, lives with her family north of Chicago. She has two sons, one in his �rst 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 re-tired. 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 lunch-es. 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 any-one to bounce ideas o� 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 experi-ence with some of these custom-ers.”

It’s a slow transition, but Meil-lier still enjoys coming into work and wants to make sure the trans-fer is handled right.

“Two thirds of second-gen-eration companies fail, did you know that?” he said. “�ey 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. �ey’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 go-ing to do just �ne,” 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 lum-ber company, to stay close to the grandkids, so we don’t have to chase them o� 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 Al-exander’s daughters, and her hus-band). For more than 40 years he’s been a member of the Owatonna Country Club, and his o�ce has a substantial shelf of golf trophies.

But when the time comes to re-tire 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 o�cer 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 re-members. “‘Everyone saw it, you worked hard, took on new chal-lenges 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. “�at’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 re-lationships with your customers, everything.”

William Morris is a reporter for the Owatonna People’s Press. He can be reached at 444-2372; fol-low him on Twitter @OPPWilliam


Denny Meillier and his son, Josh, pose with Jerry Gan�eld of the Steele County Historical Society in the �rst 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)


See STASKA on page 70

A Man and His MusicBerlyn Staska


OWATONNA — For nearly as long as he can re-member, Berlyn Staska has held a horn in his hand.

And that’s a long time.Staska �rst 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 vet-erans’ 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.

�ere’s little wonder to that. �e 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.

�ough 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 o�, 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 a�er a young Berlyn Staska had �rst 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. �at man’s name was Harry Wenger.

In this May 2015 �le photo, Berlyn Staska prepares to play taps at the Memorial Day commemora-tion at the Four Seasons Center in Owatonna. (Press �le photo)


But before Wenger created the com-pany 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 �rst-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 to-gether with four other high school musi-cians — Phillip Johnson, Don Andersen,

Elmer Ackerman and Merle Panzer — to form a clown band under the name “�e Hungry Five and One Le� Over.”

Staska, of course, played trumpet, his brother on clarinet, as was Johnson, An-dersen played the bass, and Ackerman on trombone. As for Panzer, he was the “front man” and didn’t play an instrument. �e band, decked out in outrageous costumes and wearing clown makeup, would play for various events, generally marches and

so-called “hungry �ve” music — a sort of German oom-pah music.

“We’d play a few bars with jokes in be-tween,” 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.

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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)

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STASKA from page 70

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 o� cially 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 accor-dion and Eddie Hrdlichka on the drums.

But the brothers wanted to take a di� erent musi-cal route. So about a year later, that initial band re-formed 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 mu-sic,” Staska said, “and played for many high school proms and high school homecoming dances.”

� eir 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 � ve 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 � nd another job.Life without the horn

� e � rst 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 di� erent job with a com-pany that dealt with a product closer to his real love — music. � e Stephenson Music Company, based in Austin, opened a store on North Cedar in Owatonna.

“� ey sold music and hired a guy to repair ra-dios,” Staska said.

So for about 1½ to 2 years, Staska was a clerk in the store and helped to repair radios.

He le� the music company when he had the op-portunity to go to work for the Minnesota Highway Department in various roles, � nally ending up in the stock room as a stock clerk. � e job may have lasted longer except for the distant rumblings of war.

� e ongoing tensions between North and South Korea � nally 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 dra� ed.

Staving o� that eventuality, Staska, his brother Norman and a friend spoke to the dra� board and were released from the dra� so that they could enlist. And enlist they did. On Oct. 7, 1950, Ber-lyn and the friend were accepted by the United States Air Force. Norman did not meet the re-quirements of the Air Force and walked across the hall where he was accepted by the Navy. Nor-man played in a Navy band.

In this June 2015 � le 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 � le photo)


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 audi-tioned and passed the tests for getting into the band. But he was told that getting into the band was di�cult, 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 Ken-ton band before the war. And Hodges? Hodges had played in the big bands of the Dorseys, both of them, Tommy and Jimmy. �ey were in ba-sic training, Staska said, only to get it on their records. Both men auditioned for and were se-lected 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, �rst 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 Chey-enne, 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 of-�cially ended on Oct. 7, 1954, four years to the day that he had enlisted. By the armistice had been signed, bringing the Korean War o�cially to an end.

But the end of the war also meant that “jobs were awfully hard to �nd,” 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

with a job o�er with Owatonna Tool Company, or OTC, as everybody called it. It was a working relationship that would last for 36 years, �rst in the forge shop, then into chrome plating, then to shipping, then inventory control, and �nally to purchasing, where he worked as a buyer for 33 years until his retirement in 1990.{h3}Picking up where he le� o�{/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 �rst 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 �e Hungry Five and One Le� Over of his youth — known as the Elks Kibitzer Band. Staska played with that band until it disbanded.

Shortly a�er 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

music of the 1940s and ‘50s.“�e band was called the River City Big Band,

and we played for local dances and concerts in the parks,” he said.

�en there was — or rather “is” — what may be perhaps his crowning achievement, the Owa-tonna Community Band. In 1977, Staska, along with Rufus Sanders, Dave Leach and John Hol-land, formed the band, which, over the years, has played concerts around the surrounding area. �e band also started concerts downtown in Central Park, concerts that have grown into the 11@7 concert series. �e 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 Com-munity 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 con-tributions, once in 2008 when he and Armond Rezak were honorable chairpersons for the Mu-sic 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. �en in 2015, he was the grand marshal for the Harry Wenger March-ing 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 volun-teer 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 as-sociation that has taken him as far as Paducah,

STASKA from page 71


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)


For Any Questions About The City Of Owatonna And Its Services Call 507-444-4300

www.ci.owatonna.mn.us

Welcome To...

MinnesotaOWATONNAOWATONNA

Over 20 parks, hiking trails, golf, tennis, public beach, River Springs Water Park, cross country and snowmobile trails, plus...nearly 700 lodging rooms, a variety of restaurants, unique shopping area, annual festivals, sports events and activities for everyone.

Whether you are coming for a visit, thinking of moving here or already live in Owatonna–we hope your stay is a pleasant one. Owatonna is known for its quality of life, and the people who call it home.

Kentucky to help build houses and an as-sociation 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 �ooded areas in Gulf Port, Mississippi, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Minot, South Dakota and Minneapolis.

Closer to home, he’s been an active mem-ber 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 o�ce.

He also served on the City of Owatonna’s Building Code Board of Appeals.

And he attributes it all to his wife, Kath-leen, who helped set up the local Meals on Wheels program, now in its 44th year, orga-nized 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 e�orts 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. �en 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 �ve 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 Human-ity and other local organizations,” he said. “�e 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 Je�rey Jackson at 444-2371, or follow him on Twitter.com @OPPJe�rey

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 unidenti�ed man. Standing in Luverne Wanous on the concertina. (Submitted photo)


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See KREJCI on page 77

Passion for ServiceCheri Krejci


Cheri Krejci is a helper.If the countless event �iers and binders

on her desk weren’t a re�ection 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 er-rands 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 Bloom-ing Prairie Area Chamber of Commerce.

“�ere 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.”�at’s something she said she and her

siblings have in common.“We got that work ethic from our par-

ents,” Krejci said.�eir father, Donald Sloan, was a Hol-

stein 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,”

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.

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)


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KREJCI from page 76

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. (Ash-ley 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 Farib-ault for a degree in o� ce 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 o� ce for 10 years.

While living and working in Rochester, Kre-jci 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 broth-ers, Bruce and Roger, purchased the dealership from their father.

Now, nearly 30 years later, the Krejcis re-main owners of the Ford dealership and mar-ried.

“It’s not an easy thing to do, to work togeth-er 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.


Journey to hopeIt was December 2009, when Cheri

Krejci found the lump.“I had just had a mammogram in Sep-

tember, so three months earlier, nothing was there,” she said.

But a biopsy — just days before Christ-mas — con�rmed she had breast cancer, and on New Year’s Day, Krejci had a dou-ble 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 a�er 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. “�ere 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 diag-nosed with cancer that she became in-volved in the Blooming Prairie Cancer Group. In fact, she joined when her mother was sick.

“�at’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 �t 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. �at was a hard time.”

Krejci said the purpose of the can-cer 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 af-fected by cancer, whether it was a par-ent, sibling, friend or spouse,” she said. “�ey all know the struggles of it, and that makes it even more important.”

Each September, Blooming Prairie joins the cancer group’s e�orts to sup-port those journeying through cancer and raise money for research during its Paint the Town Pink activities that are capped o� with a two-night live auction o� Main Street under a big tent — the group’s largest fundraising event.

Krejci said the event’s �rst year raised $1,800 for the Eagles Cancer Telethon in Rochester, and in its 15th year, the event collected enough to make its larg-est 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.

“�at part of our group is very re-warding, 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. “�ey’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.

�e direction?“You just keep hoping that someday

they will �nd a cure for it and that some-body else that you know and love won’t have to go through it,” she said. “�at’s what keeps pushing you.”


KREJCI from page 77

ABOVE: Cheri Kre-jci hugs Minnesota Twins mascot, T.C. Bear, on Mother’s Day in 2013. That game was the orga-nization’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 �rst pitch at the “Going to Bat Against Cancer” Minnesota Twins game in 2013, Krejci threw a few practice pitches at the ball �eld behind Blooming Prairie High School. (Ashley Stewart/People’s Press)


Owatonna’s �nest theatre group bringsyou a variety of performances throughout

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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

“Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland”April 29, 30 & May 1, 5, 6, 7

“Grease”July 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 17

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While Krejci’s involvement in the cancer group keeps her busy, she has still managed to �nd time to help others in di�erent areas, too.Helping hands

One area is the Homestead Hospice House in Owatonna, where she’s vol-unteered 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 anx-ious 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 �nancial secretary for 10 years and recently retired it, but remains on the social committee, which helps put on the church’s annual Meatball and Lute�sk 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. “�at’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 Doo-cy 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 a�er-prom party committee member and an integral part of the Blooming Prairie High School football team’s Quarter-back 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 �own 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 an-other.”

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.

�at 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 sib-lings and most of their kids came,” she said. “I think there were 18 of us.”

With the honor, Krejci threw the �rst pitch for the Twins game.

“That was way cool. It was really fun,” she said. “�at 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.”


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)


See FITZGERALD on page 83

Always PerformingShelley Fitzgerald


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 produc-tions directed by Fitzgerald the last four years.

When Fitzgerald is not working in the Medford Elemen-tary School o�ce, 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. “�is seems to �t these kids like a glove. �e 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 pro-gram as well, which o�ers students another opportunity to �nd 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 be-cause my kids are gone,” she said. “�ese kids, I love them. �ey 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 clas-

sical pianist all because of her mother, who had no formal training but was rather a naturally gi�ed musician.

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)



FITZGERALD from page 82Always Performing

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

“We started in church. My sister, mom, and I were sing-ing as a trio and she was teach-ing 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 expe-rience 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 mu-sical, 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 coun-try. Lessons were not only dis-tant, but sometimes her family couldn’t afford it.

�e young musician was still able to get “pro�cient enough to compete in school competitions in the private school.” She won a

state musical competition to go to nationals in high school for her piano playing.

Just like her mother, Fitzger-ald doesn’t have a degree in mu-sic, though she was working on obtaining one at Pillsbury Bap-tist 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.

Fitzgera ld 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 Illi-nois and Fitzgerald said neither intended on staying in Owa-tonna. But she was working for Federated Insurance Com-panies 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. How-ever, 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, Beth-any, lives in Ohio and recently

brought into this world Fitzger-ald’s second grandchild. Her youngest son Geoffrey, gradu-ated college in February with audio visual degree, and Britta-ny is away in Indiana after get-ting married this past summer.

As for Grant, her 22-year-old son, he graduated last spring and is now acting profes-sionally, but that’s not necessar-ily what he went to school for.

After landing the second lead role in one of his univer-sity’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 Fitzger-ald 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 mu-sicals.


Although Beth did musicals at Medford and Geoffrey was in one production, Grant and Bethany were most interested in acting, �rst starting in fourth grade.

Fitzgerald’s �rst show with her two thespian offspring was “The Music Man” in 2005. But the production that’s “most nearest and dearest” to Fitzger-ald is when Grant played Joseph in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”

In the “Joseph” theatrical perfor-mance 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 work-ing 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 �rst day of school, practice for the fall play starts and Fitzgerald stays by the stage everyday a�er 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 pro-ductions 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 ma-jor theater performances.

But what about the summer? Cer-tainly 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 a�er students wrapped up rehearsals for the day.

In 2009 she started a theater pro-gram 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.


FITZGERALD from page 82

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)


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FITZGERALD from page 84Once, Fitzgerald ventured to di-

rect two plays at once, one at Med-ford and the other at the Little �e-atre of Owatonna. She said that a�er experiencing the chaos of rehearsing with students in the a�ernoon and then dashing over for another three hours of rehearsal, she won’t ever do that again.

�e 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 di�erent plays.

She enjoys reading and writing plays when she can �nd 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 can-celled, 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 per-forming and just the variety of peo-ple and sounds was what pushed her even more musically, she said yes so excitedly, like she was that 12-year-old girl sitting in the living room yet again in front of the TV set.

Rather than watch talent on tele-vision, Fitzgerald would come up with something on the piano to per-form with her friends at her school’s talent show.

“Even back then I was putting on the little director hat and organiz-ing,” she said.


The production that’s “most nearest and dearest” to Fitzgerald is when her son Grant played Jo-seph 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)


See MICHALETZ on page 87

Made in OwatonnaAndy Michaletz


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 email-ing with customers.”

That work ethic at his own busi-ness, 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, invest-ing his time and energy into preserv-ing the legacy of made-in-Owatonna manufacturing and in planning for its future.

And the fact that he and his fam-ily 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 Col-lege — of St. Thomas for a business de-

gree before returning to his hometown.“I don’t think either of my parents

went to college,” he said. “I had an in-terest 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.

Andy Michaletz shows o� 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)



MICHALETZ from page 86

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

“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 prod-uct goes into Canada, throughout the Midwest here, [and we] send a number of containers a month over to China of di�erent products.”

Poly Plastics operates in a very spe-ci�c 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 �lm, shrink wrap and other products made from Poly Plastic’s pellets. Mi-chaletz formally purchased the com-pany from his parents in 1988.

“It was a di�erent 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 Owa-tonna probably don’t even know our story.”

The company has 15 employees and runs two shi�s, Monday through �ursday, with no shortage of hours by Michaletz himself.

“I really spend a lot of my time here. It’s just a small manufacturing com-pany, but I like to work, spend most ev-ery day here when we’re in town, [and] enjoy that part of it,” he said.

Michaletz is far from the only mem-ber 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-

lowed the small-business theme. Later this year, he’ll celebrate his 25th anni-versary with his wife, Rhonda.

“I met her right here in Owatonna. She’s actually from Meriden,” Michaletz said. “Her brother Steve owns �e Ret-ro�t Companies, and she works part-time for him.”

�e couple have two children: Bro-dy, 30, and Chase, 22. Brody and his wife recently gave birth to Michaletz’s �rst 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 Protec-tion, … that’s owned by my brother-in-law,” 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 di�erent.”Planning the new, restoring the old

Beyond his own plastic company, Michaletz has long kept up with larger trends a�ecting the local business com-munity.

“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 commit-tee,” he said.

He said yes, and served as a member and later chair of the committee, focus-ing on business-government relations.

“It was a natural �t for me,” he said. “I enjoy politics, kind of a political junkie, so it was great to get together with other business owners and mem-bers of the chamber and try to keep members informed about policies af-fecting 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. �ere’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 contri-bution to the Owatonna business com-munity is Michaletz’s e�orts 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 Manufactur-ing Company property, and I pur-chased that in 2004 [and] have spent a lot of time and effort on that in re-furbishing the property and bringing it along.”

Owatonna Manufacturing Com-pany was founded by the Diedrich family and produced skid loaders and similar equipment until, after being sold several times, the company’s op-erations were shi�ed 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.


“It’s a great story of a great company,” he said.“It was a time when Owatonna had some wonderful locally-owned manufacturing. �is was probably a�er 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 Da-kota, [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 o�ce 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 appreci-ate 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 relation-ships 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.



ABOVE: Michaletz shows o� one of his two planes at Owatonna De-gner Regional Airport. “Don’t �y as much as I’d want to. That’s always my New Year’s resolution,” he said. LEFT: Michaletz shows o� “pellet-ized” 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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What’s between your ears

Between work and other commitments — he serves on the boards of the Owatonna Foundation and Commu-nity 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 under-stands, but I really enjoy hav-ing the different things to do.”

He does have one other pursuit he enjoys, the imple-ments of which can be found in a hanger at Owatonna De-gner 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 resolu-tion, but [I] fly regularly, enjoy it.”

Michaletz’s younger son, Chase, also is a pilot, and at-tended flight school before transferring to St. Thomas.

“He’s got all the ratings you could possibly have,” Mi-chaletz 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 en-able 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 ed-ucation 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 Owa-tonna industry that he and his

family have helped to create.“I like the history of Owa-

tonna,” he said. “It’s got a lot of good history, a lot of products that were made here.”

William Morris is a report-er for the Owatonna People’s Press. He can be reached at 444-2372; follow him on Twit-ter @OPPWilliam

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