Should old acquaintance be forgot

In a year when the world lost such luminaries as Michael Jackson, Ed McMahon, Bea Arthur, Jack Kemp, Walter Cronkite and Ted Kennedy, Minnesota said goodbye to almost a dozen former state legislators - plus two who died in late 2008 and whose funerals were held early this year.

Nine were former members of the state House: Doug Swenson, Dennis Newinski, John Biersdorf, Sidney Mason, Tony Eckstein, Marty McGowan Jr., Vernon Sommerdorf, Elton Redalen and Stanley Fudro.

The other four - Harmon Ogdahl of Minneapolis, Jerome Blatz of Bloomington, Otto Bang Jr. of Edina and Edward Gearty of Minneapolis - served in the state Senate.

• Doug Swenson, 63, an attorney, served in the state House from 1987 to 1998, representing Districts 55A and 51B. He died Feb. 1 of leukemia.

He and his wife, Sandra, had two sons, one of whom - Gregory - was killed in a 1989 car accident by an underage drunken driver. That incident spurred Swenson to lead a fight to toughen the state’s drunken-driving laws. He was instrumental in lowering Minnesota’s blood-alcohol level from .10 percent to .08 percent, and also authored the “Not a Drop” law in 2002, making it illegal for drivers younger than 21 to have any alcohol in their systems while operating motor vehicles.

Five members of Swenson’s family also served in the state Legislature. His brother Howard served in the House from 1995 to 2004; his grandfather, Oscar Swenson, was a member of the House from 1913 to 1932 and the Senate from 1937 to 1950; his great-grandfather, Swen Swenson, served in the House from 1887 to 1888; his great-uncle, Carl Swenson, was a member of the Senate from 1915 to 1918, and his great-great-uncle, Lars Swenson, served in the Senate from 1887 to 1890.

• Dennis Newinski, 64, served in the state House from 1991 to 1992, representing District 54B. He died Feb. 10 of mesothelioma, a type of cancer related to asbestos exposure.

Newinski, a lead machinist for Northern States Power Co., and his wife, Sharon, had four children. He was a member of the DFL Party until he became an Independent Republican in 1988; he ran unsuccessfully as the IR-endorsed candidate for the 4^th Congressional District seat in 1994, 1996 and 1998 before losing the party’s endorsement in 2000.

• John Biersdorf, 83, died June 1. He represented Districts 3A and 32A in the House from 1971 to 1980 and worked in the insurance industry.

He served under Gen. George S. Patton in World War II for two years and later was a member of the Steele County Soil Conservation Board and the Owatonna School Board. He and his wife, Marian, had five children.

• Stanley Fudro, 90, died Dec. 30, 2008, after representing Districts 28, 40 and 55A in the House from 1957 until 1980.

A homebuilder by trade, Fudro also owned the Marla Toy Company. He invented children’s games and toys, including an Easter egg decorator, a cribbage board and a marble game called Billionaire. He was an amateur welterweight boxing champion during his time at the University of Minnesota, and later a Golden Gloves boxing coach. He earned a Purple Heart in the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II.

Fudro was known in the Legislature for his “outlandish color coordination,” such as wearing a red shirt with an orange sport coat, according to his obituary in the Star Tribune. Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek, a former legislator, told the newspaper that Fudro was instrumental in his career in public service.

• Elton Redalen, 83, who worked as a dairy farmer, died July 10. He represented Districts 35A and 32B in the House from 1977 to 1991 and was appointed by Gov. Arne Carlson in 1991 as state agriculture commissioner, a position he held until 1995.

He served in the Navy during World War II and was a former chair of the Fountain School Board. He and his wife, Joyce, had seven children, and he was honored in 1990 by the nonprofit Center for Policy Alternatives for his work on groundwater protection legislation.

In Redalen’s Star Tribune obituary, Carlson recalled his former colleague’s “enormous hands,” which the former governor attributed to a lifetime spent milking cows. Carlson called Redalen a “genuine, bighearted person.”

• Tony Eckstein, 85, who worked as a veterinarian, died April 13. He represented Districts 17B and 26B in the state House from 1971 to 1978.

He and his wife, Harriet, had six children. Eckstein began his veterinary career in Olivia, then moved to New Ulm, where he won election as mayor in 1959 as a write-in candidate. He also served as a New Ulm city councilman.

• Sidney Mason, 82, a native of Flint, Mich., died Jan. 29. He represented District 61B in the House from 1971 to 1972.

He moved to Duluth in 1957 and worked in the insurance industry after serving as a naval aviator in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War. He was a former member of the Duluth Airport Authority Board; he and his wife, Marguerite, had six children.

In a letter to the Duluth News Tribune in February, former Gov. Carlson wrote: “Sid would be classified as a moderate Republican, but not once did I see him put politics ahead of community interests.”

• Marty McGowan, 88, a lifelong journalist, died Aug. 13. He represented Districts 25 and 23 in the House from 1959 to 1966 and had two relatives in the Legislature: his nephew, Richard Michael Nolan, who represented District 53A in the House from 1969 to 1972, and first cousin once removed Nora Slawik, a current member of the House from District 55B (McGowan was a first cousin to Slawik’s mother).

McGowan was offered a job with the Associated Press in Chicago after graduating from the University of Missouri, but chose instead to stay home (at his father’s request) and help run the family-owned Appleton Press. He tried to enlist in both the U.S. and Canadian armies during World War II, but was rejected for both because he suffered from asthma.

During his career, McGowan bought and published newspapers in Blue Earth, Elmore and Winnebago, and also in Richmond, Wis. His son told the Star Tribune after his death that he wanted to “keep his fingers in the printer’s ink.”

• Vernon Sommerdorf, 88, represented Districts 49 and 43B in the House from 1965 to 1972. He was a physician who earned his medical degree from the University of Minnesota in 1952.

Sommerdorf served in the U.S. Navy during World War II; he and his wife, Norma, had four adopted children.

He served on the Governor’s Commission on Health and Rehabilitation and the Governor’s Commission on the Status of Women.

• Harmon Ogdahl, who died Nov. 8 at the age of 91, represented Senate District 37 from 1963 to 1972 and District 58 from 1973 to 1980. A Republican, he was first elected on a nonpartisan basis but was part of the Legislature’s so-called “conservative caucus.”

(In 1913, legislators in the state began to be elected on nonpartisan ballots because of an “historical accident” that came about when a bill to provide for no-party elections of judges and city and county officers was amended to include the Legislature in the mistaken belief that the amendment would kill the bill. Candidates ran - and legislators caucused - as “liberals” or “conservatives” until House members again ran with party designations in 1974 and Senate members in 1976.)

Ogdahl worked in real estate and insurance and later, during his legislative tenure, he was president of Union State Bank. He served in the Pacific Theater during World War II in the U.S. Army, and before being elected to the Legislature, he was a Minneapolis city alderman from the 13^th Ward. He and his wife, Beverly, had five children.

• Jerome Blatz, 86, died Aug. 20. He earned a law degree from Harvard University and was a practicing attorney for 50 years and taught at the Minnesota College of Law (later the William Mitchell College of Law). He served in the U.S. Navy Air Corps as a pilot at the end of the Korean War.

Blatz served in the state Senate from 1963 to 1976, representing Districts 32, 27 and 38. He and his wife, Mary, had nine children, including daughter Kathleen, who served in the state House from 1979 to 1994 before becoming a Hennepin County district judge and later an associate justice and chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court. Blatz’s son-in-law, Thomas Berkelman, also served in the state House from 1977 to 1983.

• Otto Bang, 77, died Dec. 29, 2008. He represented Edina during his entire legislative career, serving in the state House from 1963 to 1972 (Districts 33 and 29A) and in the Senate from 1973 to 1982, representing District 39.

Bang, who worked as an insurance salesman, and his wife, Mary, had four children. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican endorsement for the U.S. House from the 3^rd Congressional District in 1970. He died of complications from a head injury stemming from a one-car accident last December.

• Edward Gearty, 86, died Sept. 25. He represented District 39 in the state House from 1963 to 1970 and Districts 39 and 54 in the Senate from 1971 to 1980. He earned a law degree from Georgetown University and worked as a lawyer in private practice.

An aviation machinist’s mate in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Gearty was an assistant Minnesota attorney general from 1956 to 1958. He and his wife, Lorraine, had one daughter.

He was a member of the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board from 1959 to 1962, and was president of the Senate from 1977 to 1980.