Gratefully,
~Ann (Bittner) Schiffer

Byron, 88, of Edina, was a Word War II veteran, an Abraham Lincoln scholar, and a member of the Civil War Round Table. A private interment was held yesterday at Ft. Snelling. A celebration of Byron’s life will take place at 11 a.m. Friday, Feb. 10, at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, 50th and Wooddale, Edina.

An obituary and guest book can be viewed at legacy.com.

Knights, 77, of Owatonna, died Tuesday, Jan. 31. She was a caring, thoughtful person who loved quilting, rug hooking, visiting family and friends, and giving tours at the Village of Yesteryear.

She is survived by her husband, Neal Knights, two daughters, two sons, three sisters and two grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at a later date. An obituary can be viewed at michaelsonfuneral.com.

Harriet, 74, died Friday, Feb. 3, in Long Prairie, Minn. She was a loving wife and mother, a “Sports Mom,” a surrogate mother to many, and a woman of deep faith and devotion.

Visitation will be held from noon to 1 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 8, at St. Mary of Mt. Carmel Catholic Church in Long Prairie, with a Memorial Mass to follow at 1 p.m. In addition, a celebration of her life will be held at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 9, at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, 530 Victoria Street S., St. Paul.

An obituary and guest book can be viewed at Williams Dingmann.

Soltesz, 93, of Racine, Wis., died Saturday, Feb. 4. He graduated with honors from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in accounting and was a certified public accountant in Illinois and Wisconsin.

An Air Force veteran of World War II, he rose to the rank of 2nd Lt. and was a B-24 pilot. He later was a supply officer with the Fifth Air Force in Japan.

Funeral services will be held today in Racine. An obituary and guest book can be viewed at tribute.com.

Hayden, 81, (b. Jan. 30, 1930), died Sunday, Jan. 29, one day short of his 82nd birthday. Hayden served in the U.S. Navy and Air Force and worked as an engineer for Motorola and a researcher for IBM. After the death of his wife, Rose, he entered Holy Apostle’s Seminary and was ordained Father Johnrose Hayden on Dec. 9, 1995.

Hayden served parishes in Texas and Arizona. He is survived by his five children and their families. His funeral Mass was held Thursday, Feb. 2, at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church in Tempe, Ariz.

An obituary can be viewed at funeral.com.

Knowles, 86, died Sunday, Jan. 29. Funeral services were held yesterday in Denver. An obituary and guest book can be viewed on denverpost.com.

Albers died Sunday, Jan. 29, after battling Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.

“Robert Sheran ’36 was perhaps the best debater produced by St. Thomas in the golden era of forensics, and he went on to serve two stints on the Minnesota Supreme Court, one as chief justice,” wrote Richard Conklin ’58 in 125 Years: A Look at Interesting and Influential People in the History of St. Thomas.

Robert Sheran

Conklin’s entry on Sheran continued:

“He was on the debate team, coached by legendary public-speaking instructor Owen McElmeel, from 1932 to 1936, and the team won the national Pi Delta Kappa debate championship in his senior year. Teamed with students such as future railroad executive William Quinn (also a former trustee) and distinguished academician Abraham Kaplan, Sheran twice won the Northwest Debate tournament.

“He went on to get his law degree from the University of Minnesota and practice law privately while serving two terms in the Minnesota Legislature. Admired across political lines, he was appointed an associate justice by a Republican governor in 1963, and after resigning in 1970 to return to private practice he was reappointed, this time as chief justice, by a DFL governor in 1973. When he stepped down in 1981, a longtime colleague offered this assessment: ‘He is probably the best-qualified and most-effective chief justice I can remember.’

“Sheran was a fervent supporter of private education, which he saw as existing to further faith and conviction in the face of corrosive social trends. ‘There is no more effective way of speaking for the things in which we believe than to support firmly, persistently and constantly the role of private education,’ he once stated, recalling several St. Thomas professors ‘whose influence upon the way we think has persisted through the years.’ ”

St. Thomas archivist Anne Kenne provide a glimpse of the “golden era of forensics” in this entry in the spring 2003 issue of St. Thomas magazine: “Coached by public-speaking instructor Owen McElmeel, the debate teams from St. Thomas achieved prominence in the late 1920s and early 1930s, winning the national Pi Delta Kappa debate championships in 1928 and 1936.

“To better prepare them for regional and national competitions, McElmeel often sent his debaters on extensive educational and public-speaking tours. Team members would spend a month on the road traveling by train as far as California to compete against other colleges and universities.”

Sheran served on St. Thomas Board of Trustees from 1964 to 1974, and remained a trustee emeritus until his death. He received the university’s Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1971, the first year the annual award was presented.

Visitation will be held from 3 to 6 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 29, at Washburn-McReavy, 5000 W. 50th St., Edina. The funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. Monday, Jan. 30, at Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church in Edina.

A Star Tribune article about Sheran can be seen here and an obituary notice can be seen here.

~ Maggie Culligan King and family

The party will be from 6 to 10 p.m. at the Minneapolis Photo Co-op, 2400 N. Second St., Minneapolis. A $20 donation can be made at the door.

Gane was diagnosed last October with cancer. She has chosen to pursue an alternative method in Switzerland to treat her cancer and consequently will have higher medical expenses than if she had chosen chemotherapy and radiation, which insurance would help to cover.

Event RSVPs are encouraged to kickthecancersara@gmail.com. If you cannot attend the party but want to make a donation, send it to Sara Gane Kick the Cancer Fund, First National Bank of the Lakes, 3100 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis, MN 55408.

Joseph’s Coat has served St. Paul and surrounding communities since 1989. Its free store provides clothing, household items, personal hygiene products and children’s items.

Because of the generous donations given by the UST community, several people will receive personal hygiene and care products.

Memorial services will be held Wednesday, Jan. 18, in North Carolina, and early in the spring semester at St. Thomas.

Dr. Patricia Howe

Howe joined the St. Thomas faculty in 1990. In a letter to faculty members, Dr. Terence Langan, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, explained that Howe had been battling pancreatic cancer for more than a year.

“She had to miss all of spring semester 2011 for medical treatment but courageously returned to the classroom for fall semester,” Langan said. “Pat was determined to resume the life that she loved, that of a university professor. Sadly, she was forced to return to North Carolina for further treatment with only a couple of weeks left in the fall semester.

“Her students knew her as a dedicated professor who maintained high standards and who helped them to attain those standards. Her history colleagues recognized her as an accomplished scholar of European history and, in particular, French history.”

Originally from Washington, D.C., Howe earned her undergraduate degree at The College of William and Mary, her master’s at the University of Hawaii, and her doctorate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before coming to St. Thomas, she taught at North Carolina State University and Salem College. She is the author of The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Era.

She was preceded in death by her husband, Arthur, and is survived by her daughter, Kari, and two grandchildren.

An obituary can be read here.

Marv Davidov

Davidov’s faculty website at St. Thomas notes that “he is personally acquainted with nearly every American activist and is our main source of ‘living history’ for radical movements in the United States.”

Born and raised in a working-class Detroit neighborhood, Davidov came to St. Paul to attend Macalester College in 1949. Drafted during his senior year, he spent the last of his 19 months of military service in an Army stockade. “I was given an honorable discharge for the good of the service because I was too much trouble for them,” he told an Aquin student newspaper reporter in 2003.

He returned to Macalester but soon transferred to the University of Minnesota, where he joined the Student Peace Union and began picketing local Woolworth stores in support of racial integration. “It was a pretty interesting time,” he recalled in one online interview. “The ’60s were about to happen.”

While walking through the University of Minnesota campus, he bumped into a friend who was on his way to an organizing meeting for what became known as the Freedom Riders, a movement to protest segregation in the South. Davidov went to the meeting, too, and in the spring of 1961, he and six other white Minnesotans boarded a bus headed for Jackson, Miss.

When they arrived at the Jackson Greyhound station, the group defiantly violated a Jim Crow law by walking into what was called the “Negro Waiting Room.” They were arrested, convicted and spent 45 days with other Freedom Riders in a Mississippi state prison.  It was one of more than 50 arrests Davidov eventually racked up during his nearly six decades of nonviolent civil disobedience.

After the Freedom Rides, Davidov joined a 17-month, 2,700-mile Canada-to-Cuba Peace Walk in 1963 and 1964. At the end of the walk, he and six others tried to sail to Cuba but their boat was confiscated. (A decade later, he and 174 others went to Cuba to protest the U.S. travel ban and met with Fidel Castro.)

In 1964, Davidov found himself in Berkeley, Calif., helping to organize resistance to the Vietnam War and the draft. Four years later he was back in Minnesota and founded the Honeywell Project, a decades-long protest against the company’s defense contracts, especially its production of cluster bombs. During the period from 1982 to 1989, Davidov estimated that the police made 2,100 arrests at Honeywell’s headquarters in Minneapolis.

Davidov received the Noam Chomsky Award from the Justice Studies Association 1997, and in 2010 he and peace activist Carol Masters published his biography, You Can’t Do That. That year they discussed their book at a “Noon Conversation in the Library” at St. Thomas.

“When I started out as a young man, I suppose I thought I’d be a teacher,” he told MinnPost reporter Doug Grow last fall. “And now that’s what I’ve ended up doing.”

When he came to St. Thomas in 1992, he told The Aquin newspaper that “I can’t wait to come to St. Thomas every Thursday. I hope I’ll be here for many years. I love it here.”

Davidov is survived by a brother; services are pending.

Bittner, 76, of Bloomington, died peacefully at home Monday, Jan. 9. He is survived by his wife of 54 years, Evelyn, and nine children, 41 grandchildren, three great-grand children and three siblings.

Mass of Christian Burial will be held at 10:30 a.m. Friday, Jan. 13, at the Church of St. Bonaventure, 901 E. 90th St., Bloomington. Visitation will be held from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 12 (prayer service at 7 p.m.), at the church, and one hour prior to Mass at church.

An obituary and guest book can be viewed at Gill Brothers.

This watercolor of Robert Edwin Culligan was painted by Betty Sievert in the early 1980s. (Click image for a larger view.)

Culligan is survived by his wife, Nancy, and six children along with numerous family members. He is an alumus of St. Thomas Academy, the University of Notre Dame, and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He served in the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division before marrying Nancy in 1955. In 1956, he began a 33-year career with 3M. In 1989, he took early retirement to pursue his avocation as a watercolorist. A longtime member of the Old Town Artists cooperative in St. Paul’s Lowertown, he won First Honors at the Minnesota State Fair in 1995.

Visitation will be held from 4 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 12, at O’Halloran Murphy Funeral Home, 575 S. Snelling Ave., St. Paul.

Mass of Christian Burial will be held at 10 a.m. Friday, Jan. 13, at the Church of the Assumption, 51 W. Seventh St., St. Paul, with visitation one hour prior (luncheon and burial following Mass).

An obituary and guest book can be viewed at legacy.com.

An avid and proud supporter of St. Thomas sports teams, Dale enjoyed attending football, basketball, and baseball games and served as the official scorekeeper for the men’s basketball team for 35 years.

He served in the U.S. Marine Corps in WWII in the South Pacific, including the Battle of Iwo Jima.

Mass of Christian Burial will be said at 11 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 10, at St. Francis of Assisi, 16770 13th St. S., Lake St. Croix Beach, Minn., with visitation one hour prior.

An obituary and guest book can be viewed at legacy.com.



Smith, a longtime hockey coach at South St. Paul High School and the University of Notre Dame, died unexpectedly in his sleep Monday, Jan. 2, one day before his 82nd birthday.

Charles "Lefty" Smith

Smith was a 1951 graduate of St. Thomas, where he also obtained a master’s degree in guidance and counseling. While at St. Thomas, Smith excelled in both hockey and baseball and went on to play both sports at the semipro level in Minneapolis. Smith became assistant hockey coach at South St. Paul High School in 1953 and later took over as head coach until 1968.

In 1968 Smith became the head hockey coach at Notre Dame and led the Irish for 19 seasons (1968-87). He was named WCHA Coach of the year in 1973 and turned out numerous All-Americans, including Jack Brownschidle and Greg Meredith; a WCHA Most Valuable Player, Brian Walsh; and a Hobey Baker Award finalist, Dave Poulin; in addition, all 126 of Smith’s players who completed their collegiate eligibility under him earned their college degrees.

Smith served as the president of the American Hockey Coaches Association for two years. He also was the head coach of the at-large team in the inaugural National Sports Festival of 1978. Eight members of that team went on to win gold medals with the “miracle on ice” U.S. Olympic hockey team in 1980.

Smith was inducted into the Minnesota Hockey Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1992. He worked tirelessly to bring the International Special Olympics to Notre Dame in 1987, a high point in his 10-year affiliation with the program. Smith stepped away from coaching in 1987 to take over the Loftus Sports Center until his retirement at the end of 2011. Thanks to the generosity of the John Boler family of Chicago, the new Notre Dame hockey rink is named Lefty Smith rink.

Married for 58 years, Smith and his late wife, Mickey, are survived by seven children, and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

A wake will be held from 3 to 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 6, at Kaniewski Funeral Home in South Bend, Ind. The funeral will be held at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 7, at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at Notre Dame.

Gary Berggren

Survivors include his partner, Dr. Sarah Stevenson, who retired in 2010 after leading international programs at the University of St. Thomas for 27 years.

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 4, at Simonet Funeral Home, 6429 Osgood Ave. North, Stillwater. Visitation will begin an hour before the service.

An obituary can be found here.

Johnson, 94, died Tuesday, Dec. 20, following a short stay in the hospital after falling in her home. Funeral arrangements at Mattson Funeral Home in Forest Lake are pending.

Shawn Somerville

He is survived by his wife, Joanie, and two children, Parker, 8, and Carly, 7.

Somerville, 49, formerly of Carver/Chaska, and Minneapolis, served on the St. Thomas Alumni Association Board of Directors from 2001 to 2005. He was a resident of Wheaton, Ill., and was vice president of sales for the William Blair investment company.

A memorial service will be held Thursday, Dec. 22, at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Glen Ellyn, Ill. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to a fund established for the benefit of Somerville’s wife and children. Checks should be made out to The Somerville Family Memorial Trust and nailed to William Blair & Company, Attn: Merv Visser, 222 West Adams St., Chicago, IL, 60606.

An obituary and guest book can be viewed at legacy.com.

Services will be held at St. John the Baptist Church in New Brighton on Monday, Dec. 19, with visitation at 10 a.m. and Mass at 11 a.m.

An obituary will be published  in the Sunday newspaper.

James Mechler

Mechler, 93, of St. Louis Park, died Sunday, Dec. 11. Mechler piloted a B25 bomber in the Army Air Corps during WWII in Northern Africa and Italy, flying 56 missions.

Visitation will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. today, Tuesday, Dec. 13, at Gearty-Delmore Park Chapel, 3960 Wooddale Ave. S., St. Louis Park. A funeral service will be held at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Dec.14, at the Church of the Holy Family, 5900 W. Lake St., St. Louis Park.

An obituary can be viewed at Gearty-Delmore Funeral Chapels.

With gratitude,

~ The Jerabeks
   Peggy, Multicultural Student Services
   Cody, UST junior
   Zackary, UST freshman