User:Mitch/My Bio for the Reunion

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This is my picture and my bio page for our 50-year class reunion

Madelia born and raised. . .that's me!

I was born just 5 days before Maynard Kelsey and 8 before Barbara Strom. We were all in the old frame Madelia hospital across from Larsons's Station at the same time. My parents were also Madelia natives. Mother was Annetta Wilde, with a huge family network embracing the Stroms, Kelseys, Lees, and many others. Dad was Eldon Mitchell, a lifelong employee at the Citizens' National Bank. Some of you may remember my sister Ruth (class of 1952), and brothers Ralph (1955) and Chuck (1964).

A reunion brings memories of classmates and teachers, among other things. Miss Davies (first grade), Melva Pedvin, Helen Jensen, Miss Glynn, Miss McCarthy, Miss Randall, Jack Fox, Arlo Abraham, come to immediately to mind. And remember the Elvis sideburns and attempts at beards for the Madelia Centennial?

Following graduation, I went off to Macalester College where I met my wife, Beverly. We were married June 9, 1962 right after college graduation, and we just celebrated our 45th anniversary with our kids and grandchildren at the beach in South Carolina.

Our daughter, Leanne was born in Clinton, Iowa in 1965; son, Kevin in Litchfield in 1967. Leanne is currently in Huntersville NC where she and her husband are very busy with 9-year-old triplets. Kevin and his wife are in the Boston area, where Kevin is doing post-doctoral study in micro-biology at Harvard.

In 1965, I was ordained a Presbyterian Minister, and served as an Assistant Pastor in Clinton, Iowa, and then as Pastor at Litchfield, Minnesota. In 1973, the Board of Directors of a halfway house for chemically dependent persons invited me to be Director of the facility, so I spent the next three years in Atwater with that program. 1976 saw another invitation to work in Chemical Dependency, so we left the ministry altogether, loaded our belongings into a U-Haul in a blizzard, and trekked off to Phoenix, Arizona where we spent the next 30 years. During those years, I "recovered" from being a clergyman.

During the Phoenix years, I was engaged in Chemical Dependency Treatment and Prevention, followed by stints in printshop ownership, customer service for a printed circuit designer and manufacturer, and Customer Satisfaction Manager for a major Chevrolet dealer. In the meantime, Bev was busy as a Director of Volunteers, first at Scottsdale Memorial Hospital, and then at Chandler Regional Hospital.

After we both retired, we decided to spend a longer time than usual in North Carolina with Leanne and her triplets at Christmas time, rented an apartment, stayed a month over December 2005 to January 2006, bought a house in Huntersville a few miles from Leanne, and moved on April 1. Kevin and Leanne give us a bad time about "impulse decisions". We are really enjoying the opportunity to have our grandchildren close to us. We agree with the person who said, "If we'd known grandchildren were so much fun, we'd have had them first!"

The years have been good to us. . .many good friends in several places in the country, a loving family, enough adversity to keep us humble and to strengthen us, and enough joy to keep us smiling and looking forward to the next adventure.

I'm really looking forward to touching base with all of my 1957 Madelia classmates. I've not been in touch with many of you since graduation. We're long overdue.

This is a link back to my Homepage.

There is a PBWiki website set up for details about our class reunion activities at Madelia Reunion.

This is our class picture,

To read the bios of your other classmates, click on one of the links in the table below:

George Arduser Harold Baker Harvey Blume Lucille Borchert Jim Breiter Don Cady Larry Davis Connie DeVoll
Engel Engelson Anita Evenson Rich Gladen Sharon Guyer Charles Helling Carol Hoeft Pat Hoeft Allen Ihrke
Ellen Jensen Beverly Kannemann Carole Kelsey Maynard Kelsey John Knutson Mary Lou Kolbe Dominic Kunz Ethel Laingen
Larry McCabe Sandra Miller Garry Mussmann Ed Mutsch Vivian Nesterud Karen Osborne Darrell Pace Waldemar Peterson
Rachel Pygman Don Quass Don Rice Russell Riley John Rusten Glenda Scharbach Barb Strom Elaine Tarrant
Sharon Thormodson Lee Tiedeken . . . . . .