GaryOsberg.com

In January of 1971, I attended a Coon Rapids City Council meeting to complain about the snowmobiles that were running up and down the streets in my neighborhood. I was not impressed with my representation at the meeting, so that fall I decided to run for the Third Ward Council seat. I had met a few folks at a caucus in 1970, so with their help, we managed to pull off an upset victory. The fellow that we beat was a lawyer and Vice President of a large insurance company. He was going for his third three-year term.

I think what cost him some votes was his decision to distribute a legal size document with all his qualifications on one side, filling up the whole sheet, and my qualifications on the other side, taking up not even half of the page.  Mine included notes like: “Attended college”.  After all, I was 27 years old when we started the campaign.  It was kind of mean spirited of him. Not “Minnesota Nice”.

I remember that when Dave Larson and his wife came to our house to congratulate me on my victory, I stood at the front door with my wife Marcia and hid my bottle of beer behind my back.  Not sure what that was all about. Maybe I thought that I should have been using a glass.  We should have invited them in. 

One of the guys that helped me get elected was Gene Merriam. We had spent a lot of hours together collecting rummage for a DFL garage sale fundraiser, so we got to know each other quite well. The next year Gene ran for Council at Large and he won that seat. Rick Reiter ran for the first ward seat, and he won.  In late 1973, the council filled a vacancy in Ward 2 by appointing Dave Therkelsen. We four served together on the council in the year 1974.

In July of 2021, the four of us met at Kendale’s Tavern & Chophouse at the Bunker Hill Golf Course in Coon Rapids. Loren and Arnie were asked to join us.  They had both worked very hard on our campaigns. Dave brought a copy of the Coon Rapids Herald dated March 22, 1974, with the headline “Ban the Can Ordinance Adopted”.  Dave and the mayor Don Erlandson had voted no, but the rest of us voted for the ordinance.  All five of the council were pictured above the headline.  It looked like a Junior Achievement class photo.  The citizens had to gather signatures for a petition to place a referendum on the ballot that fall to overturn the new law.  The referendum passed.  The young idealists were overturned.  In the month of September of that year we had 20 public hearings.  I did not even consider running for another three-year term.  We try to get together more often now that most of us are in our eighties. Just think, that was a half-century ago. 

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your wild and precious life?”  from Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day”