Class of 1971 Viking Update
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ST. OLAF COLLEGE Class of 1971 – PRESENTS – The Viking Update in celebration of its 50th Reunion Autobiographies and Remembrances stolaf.edu 1520 St. Olaf Avenue, Northfield, MN 55057 Advancement Division 800-776-6523 Student Project Manager Genevieve Hoover ’22 Student Editors Teresa Fawsett ’22 Grace Klinefelter ’23 Student Designers Inna Sahakyan ’23 50th Reunion Staff Members Ellen Draeger Cattadoris ’07 Olivia Snover ’19 Cheri Floren Printing Park Printing Inc., Minneapolis, MN Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in the Viking Update are those of the individual alumni and do not reflect the official policy or position of St. Olaf College. Biographies are not fact-checked for accuracy. 4 CLASS OF 1971 REUNION COMMITTEE REUNION CO-CHAIRS Sally Olson Bracken and Ted Johnson COMMUNICATIONS GIFT COMMITTEE PROGRAM COMMITTEE COMMITTEE CO-CHAIRS CO-CHAIRS CO-CHAIRS Jane Ranzenberger Goldstein Susan Myhre Hayes Natalie Larsen Gehringer Kris Yung Walseth Gudrun Anderson Witrak Mark Hollabaugh Philip Yeagle COMMUNICATIONS GIFT COMMITTEE PROGRAM COMMITTEE COMMITTEE Jane Ranzenberger Goldstein Susan Myhre Hayes Natalie Larsen Gehringer Kris Yung Walseth Gudrun Anderson Witrak Mark Hollabaugh Philip Yeagle Mary Ellen Andersen Bonnie Ohrlund Ericson Sylvia Flo Anshus Barbara Anshus Battenberg Bob Freed Paul Burnett Beth Minear Cavert Michael Garland Robert Chamberlin Kathryn Hosmer Doutt Bob Gehringer Diane Lindgren Forsythe Ann Williams Garwick William Grimbol Dale Gasch John Hager Janice Burnham Haemig Christina Glasoe Mike Holmquist Mark Haemig Trudy Halla Carol Nelson Lang Kathryn Gronseth Hart Kent Johnson Mary Logan Lenihan Dale Hultgren Ginny Haugen Karbowski Norman Ritland Ann Heck Kaufmann Pauline Anderson Kielkucki Deborah Steed Wayne Kuykendall Maren Palmer Kleven Jean Teigland Thomas LeFevere William Koeckeritz Charlotte Peterson Renee Lier Janet Huso Puotinen James Meier Barbara Sletten Brian Murray Casey Stoudt Bob Olson Michael Varner Tom Peterson Jeff Watson Cynthia Carlson Ramseyer Paul Rood Nancy Steinke Marcia White Vandesteeg Melanie Schmitt Weymer 5 From Um! Yah! Yah! to Zoom! Yah! Yah! Dear Fellow 1971 St. Olaf Graduates, aka Old Oles: The Viking Update is published annually and catalogs the members of each 50th reunion class. It is a collaboration of the Communications Subcommittee of the Reunion Committee (organizational chart available on request) and a group of current St. Olaf students who are tasked with editing our submitted ramblings and making sure they don’t exceed the proscribed word count. We are very appreciative of their efforts. Your enthusiastic participation in the Viking Update was a welcome bright spot in reunion planning. 374 of you took up the “My Life in 350 Words” challenge, and most of your submissions were accompanied by recent photos which, by and large, appear not to have been photo-shopped beyond all reason. That represents nearly 70% of the living members of the Class of 1971…a record for the Viking Update! It also means that the book is as heavy as a small piece of furniture. Fortunately, the digital version is lighter, making back injuries less likely. There are four parts to this year’s Viking Update: Part I: Essays on a wide variety of topics written by our classmates as they reflected on our years on the Hill. These essays are also published online at go.stolaf.edu/71viking. If you’d like to add an essay to the website (free of charge), send your reflections to 71viking@stolaf. edu. (If any of these essays achieve publication in say, The New Yorker, or Vanity Fair, the Communications Committee owns the rights and royalties.) Part II: Classmate photos and biographies, many of which are suspected to be fact-based. Please note these are alphabetized by last name while enrolled at St. Olaf. Part III: Remembrances of classmates who have died. These were compiled from obituary notices and by asking family and friends to submit on behalf of their loved one. Part IV: Classmate lists. The final pages of the Viking Update include three lists (again alphabetized by last name enrolled at St. Olaf): Those who submitted a bio to the Viking Update, those who did not (no judgement), and a complete list of deceased classmates. Note: there is no index organized by grandchildren or pets’ names. Sorry. Wherever this Viking Update finds you in the world, we hope you are safe and healthy. The Class of 1971 will host a virtual 50th reunion beginning on June 5, 2021 and plans are also in the works for an in-person event in late July. To make sure you are receiving all of the latest details, send any updated contact information (especially your email address!) to 71reunion@ stolaf.edu. Fram! Fram! Um Yah Yah! Etc.! Ted Johnson and Sally Olson Bracken, 50th Reunion Co-Chairs Extraordinaire 6 My Friends From the Hill By Bill Grimbol I yearn now and then, to climb the steps up to the top of the Hill, but then I pause and reflect— I would need a crane. I have a Pillsbury Doughboy body these days, complete with a lack of good knees or hips, as well as swollen chubby feet. Still, I remember the climb, especially the satisfaction of the last step. My memory, however, can fly, and will wing my cobwebbed soul back up to Higher Ground; which is how I still think of the Hill. My mind will stroll about locating favorite spots and faces, and revel in the magic that once was home for a quartet of years. I ponder these times and friendships and believe them to be carved out of a huge chunk of Grace. It all feels so blessedly free of conditions, judgements, or even vile mocking, and the mercy there is monumental. Those volatile sixties were draped in great love and hope and a generous seeking after something good and genuine. I was being called to my best Self, and I did get an impression of just what that might look like. Higher Ground is where you locate your care, concern, compassion, and courage, those attributes which are the hallmark of the real good life. Four years spent walking this good soil gave me my spiritual footing— my very first scent of the Spirit. I experienced Heaven come down to earth on the Hill. I did! I am wiser now and know the difference between nostalgia and Truth. (So much cynicism.) My friends from there remain steadfast and loyal and know me inside and out and seem to refuse to let me down. It is unforgettable, and thus eternal. I consider myself most fortunate indeed. 7 The Finest Moment by Gary Smaby In the fall of 1969, the dawning Aquarian Age seemed only to shed harsher light on the deeply divisive issues confronting our nation. The prior spring I had been elected as student body president on a platform of disruptive change. Upon returning to the Hill, I was apprehensive about how to marshal a cadre of talented classmates to translate our collective existential angst into action. I settled on the St. Olaf Campus, 1970 Tom Sawyer approach. And it worked. Ole historian, Dr. Joseph Shaw would later call our approach an “oligarchic style of leadership”. My role was not so much to lead but rather to gather like-minded classmates with the requisite skills to swiftly tackle whatever issue surfaced. With my co-disruptors recruited, I kicked off my inaugural chapel talk by attacking many treasured but antiquated traditions, arguing that “it was time for the faculty to give up many powers that it had unjustifiably assumed. recognizing that their role is to teach not to preach”. I had thrown down the gauntlet but I knew I had a passionate coalition behind me. We first declared the Parliament obsolete; setting in motion a plan to create of a student/ faculty community assembly that reported directly to the Board of Regents. By mid-April, President Rand had approved an early draft. The faculty gave its thumbs up on May 4. In a cruel twist of fate, the Kent State massacre occurred on that very day. Taken together with the secret war in Cambodia revealed the week earlier, the events spontaneously ignited campus protests nationwide. Our campus was no exception. On the evening of May 6th, in the first ad-hoc test of the concept, more than 2,000 students and faculty crammed into Women’s Gym. After two hours of respectful debate, the assembled community voted 1,172 to 762, by secret ballot, to call a campus-wide strike. Shaw later characterized that gathering as “a new and memorable phenomenon . the major symbol of the rare spirit of unity generated during that period . .”, quoting a campus leader as calling it, “St. Olaf’s finest moment”. 8 Remembering St. Olaf’s First Global Semester by Michael Garland One of the paradoxical glories of an education on the Hill has always been the emphasis on studying abroad. In truth, this wasn’t much on my radar when I started off as a freshman in September of 1967. But a little less than a year later, I boarded a plane headed for Italy (and ten other countries) with Professor Oliver Olson and 29 fellow students on the college’s very first Global Semester. The world was literally before my eyes and I plunged in, ready to have my life changed. And it was. Oh, yes! What a gift. As one of the six sophomores of the group and someone who had never traveled out of my own country before, this was a remarkable awakening. Everything was new. Different languages, cultures, art, food and sights. And fifty years later these memories still burn bright! The Colosseum at night, just the cats and us; swimming in an azure Aegean Sea in the shadow of the temple to Poseidon at Cape Sounion; men in black praying at Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall on a Friday night; haggling for a Coptic hand cross in an Addis Ababa open air market in Ethiopia; running around the Taj Mahal barefoot with Mary Heen under a full moon in Agra; funeral pyres on the Ganges followed shortly thereafter by the entire group laid low by dysentery (not recommended); my first exposure to cilantro in Chiangmai, Thailand (thumbs up!); Japanese rock gardens and ikebana flower arranging classes in Kyoto; and a searing walk through the streets of Hiroshima.