Outside Looking In

A few months ago I asked readers to select their choice of the four most important and prominent men or women from Minneota they could think of that would make up a "Minneota Mount Rushmore".
The idea stemmed from the many readers and writers that have selected "Mount Rushmores" for professional sports teams (Fran Tarkenton, Bud Grant, Alan Page and Adrian Peterson were one version), a particular sport (Boxing: Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey and Rocky Marciano), authors (Ernest Hemingway, William Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, Robert Louis Stevenson) or anything else.
I decided to wait until I had received over 100 selections before I revealed the top four that would be carved into the hypothetical mountain. To date, I have had 115 votes for the Minneota foursome.
The top vote getter was Bill Holm, an author, essayist, historian, teacher, musician and more. Holm's Boxelder Bug Variations books that he wrote in 1985 is the reason why Boxelder Bug Days replaced Town and Country Days as the Minneota annual celebration each September.
Holm was born in 1943 on a farm north of Minneota and was the grandson of Icelandic immigrants. Among his many awards and accomplishments, Holm authored 12 books on poems and essays and was named the McKnight Distinguished Artist of the Year ion 1985; an honor that goes to an artist who left a significant imprint on the culture of Minnesota. Holm was also a Professor Emeritus of English at SMSU.
Holm died in 2009.
The other three that were voted onto the hypothetical Minneota Mountain were Larry Tillemans, Les Josephson and Jim Meger.
You would be hard-pressed to find four people in a town this size anywhere in the country that match the impact those four made.
Tillemans was born in Minneota in 1926 and eventually became involved in one of the most historic events in world history. As a sergeant in the U.S. 3rd Army during World War II, Tillemans became a member of the Signal Corp and worked as a clerk typist at the Nuremberg Trials. In the courtroom, Tillemans was able to look into the stoic faces of famous Nazi leaders such as Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler's right-hand man. If Hitler hadn't allegedly taken his own life, he would have also been in the courtroom with Tillemans.
Later in life, Tillemans gave over 400 presentations to various community and veteran groups about what he witnessed during the trials. A PBS documentary entitled "The Typist" was made about Tillemans' war experiences and earned an Emmy Award.
Tillemans died in 2019.
Josephson was born in 1942 in Minneota and became a hometown football hero on the eight-man Vikings' team. He later attended Augustana College and started on the football team there for four years.
Although not drafted by an NFL team, Josephson was scouted by the Dallas Cowboys and impressed them enough that they signed him as an undrafted free agent. But the Cowboys were in dire need of an offensive lineman and traded Josephson to the Los Angeles Rams, where he enjoyed an illustrious 10-year career. He was named to the Pro Bowl in 1967 and scored a touchdown to help his West team win the game.
Despite playing with a myriad of injuries, including a broken jaw, Josephson finished his career with 3,407 yards which were the third most in franchise history at the time of his retirement in 1975.
Josephson went on to act in a few films and was also a football film consultant in a few movies. He died in January of 2020.
Meger, born in 1942 in Minneota, was one of the greatest wildlife artists of his generation.
His admiration for canvas-back ducks and ring-necked pheasants inspired a 30-year career in oil and acrylic paintings. Meger taught art for nine years in Louisiana and Minnesota before retiring to concentrate on painting full time. He won the Minnesota Duck Stamp contest in 1980 and the State Pheasant Stamp contest in 1986.
Six times Meger won the Pheasants Forever "Prints of the Year" and those prints raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for wildlife habitat.
In 2017, a 155-acre Minneota Wildlife Management Area was dedicated in Meger's honor north of Taunton, where he often hunted. A large and impressive monument sits at the foot of the wildlife area.
Meger passed away in 2011.
There were 10 different Minneota natives that received consideration in all, and there are likely several others that deserve consideration. Among the others receiving votes (in no particular order) were: Val Bjornson, Joe Josefson, O.G. Anderson, John B. Gislason, Daren Gislason and Chad Johnston.
Only two of those 10 are still alive; Daren Gislason and Chad Johnston.
Gislason was singled out for his devotion to the city's history and his Icelandic roots, while Johnston was cited for currently coaching two highly-successful high school sports (football and girls basketball) that are perennial state contenders and state champions.