Volume 3, Issue 4, November 2022

Latino VOICES

The Chaska History Center always makes itself available to Chaska citizens who have questions about their history. Recently, as a part of Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations, Grecia Lozano of Latino VOICES stopped by the Chaska History Center and asked for resources on the history of Latinos in Chaska.

In addition to information about the initial contacts with the Latino culture in Chaska in the 1930s with the sugar beet migrant workers, the history center presented Grecia with a variety of photographs, copies of the Antonio Delgado article in the Herald, information about further articles available in the Herald over time, digital copies of Latino interviews from our archives, and awareness of other resources we have on the topic.

In addition, we were excited to share our connections with Chaska Community Voices, which is a group focused on sharing the stories of recent immigrants from around the world, and to express our interest in having more information and interviews of local Latino business persons and others to showcase.

Nice to connect with you, Grecia!

Ghost Stories of Chaska

Does your—or did your—Chaska home or business have some strange happenings? Items moved around without your assistance? Inexplicable cold drafts or odd noises? A ghost, perhaps? WE WANT TO KNOW!!!

The Chaska Historical Society is working on developing a GHOST TOUR for next Halloween—we’re not talking blood and gore, here—more like unusual occurrences that might be connected to a building’s history.

If you’ve ever gone on the Anoka, Minnesota Halloween tours, you know what we mean—the tours are a way we can fulfill our mission of sharing Chaska’s deep history by showcasing Chaska’s stories of particular people over time whose presence may have lasted longer than their time above ground.

Are you willing to share your story with a volunteer ready to listen to your interesting paranormal happenings? Feel free to contact us at historical@chaskahistory.org with your name and phone number or email address and we’ll have a volunteer reach out to gather your story or stories, ask any questions needed to dig in deeper, and give you the particulars. You DON’T need to open your home or business to anyone, your privacy will be completely respected during the tours, and your home’s stories will become a memorable part of Chaska history. We look forward to hearing from you!

Going Back in Time

by Doris (Plocher) Coghill

Ever find your personal information in an unexpected place?

As you may know, the History Center has been diligently working on Chaska: A Minnesota River City, 1950-2000 for quite some time. My main job related to this project has been to gather photographs from our collection and retrieve photos, ads and articles from the Herald or other publications. A few weeks ago I was working on scanning ads in the telephone books from that era when I was caught off guard.

In the 1959 phone book was an ad from Williams Chevrolet (2 nd Street) that advertised 24-hour towing. There were two daytime numbers listed and one for nights. There, by the night number, was 8-2361: our home phone number. I probably should not have been surprised, for my father, Bill Plocher, ran the wrecker service for Williams Chevrolet, and later Dauwalter Motors.

Seeing the advertisement brought back many memories for me. I remember the phone ringing many times in the middle of the night and Dad having to go and rescue a wrecked or disabled vehicle. If the calls came on a weekend or early evening I would often ride with him, which I highly enjoyed.

It was one of those many times when my time at the history center returned me to a simpler time in Chaska, when calling someone at home for personalized service was not unusual.

Vintage desk phone / 1959 Williams Chevrolet phone book ad / Bill Plocher relaxing at home

Chaska, A Minnesota River City Book Cover

Is That Book Done Yet?

A History of, and Update on, the 1950-2000 Chaska History Book
by Lisa Oberski, Chaska Historical Society President

It’s a question we hear regularly at the Chaska History Center: Is the book done yet? And my answer is what I have been saying for some time—and has never been truer—“We’ve never been closer.”

For those of you who have no idea what I’m referring to, it’s the next Chaska history book, entitled Chaska: A Minnesota River City, 1950-2000, covering a time of incredible growth and change for a community that had been about 2,000 people for the previous 100 years.

Around the year 2000, there was an attempt to turn initial 1990s lists of topics into text; Mark Olson was a reporter for the Herald at the time and took on the task. He meticulously researched and wrote chapters covering the topics of the 1950s and 1960s until he moved into the role of editor of the Herald. Much of his work has been incorporated into the present text drafts.

As luck would have it, in 2017 we connected with Laurel Braswell Means, who was both willing and able to lead a group of volunteer writers responsible for individual chapters. Laurel assembled the group of writers, laid out an ambitious plan to complete the writing, and handed over a draft of the text of the final book through its first major edit in early 2021.

The next steps involved necessities for grant applications: having the entire draft critically reviewed, determining layout staff, and selecting a single chapter to lay out and finalize. Gaining the information on timing and potential costs from that chapter, we were able to successfully apply for a MN Historical Society Land and Legacy Act grant to lay out the first five chapters of the book.

The completed book will have those five chapters plus three more, and an introduction, an epilogue, and an index. The chapters are as follows:

[Chapter 1] City Government
[Chapter 2] Historical Events
[Chapter 3] Small Business
[Chapter 4] Industry
[Chapter 5] The New Town of Jonathan
[Chapter 6] Education
[Chapter 7] High School Sports
[Chapter 8] Community Life and Leisure
[Epilogue] Beyond the Millennium

So where are we at? The present status of the process for the layout of the book is as follows:

Chapter 1: Content (with pictures and captions) is completely edited and layout is done. Ready for final proofing and indexing.

Chapter 2: Content (with pictures and captions) is completely edited and layout has begun.

Chapter 3: Content is finalized; pictures, clippings and captions are being worked on.

Chapter 4: Content needs to be finalized; pictures, clippings and captions are being worked on.

Chapter 5: Chapter is completed except for final proofing and indexing.

Sample pages: Chapter 1 and Chapter 5

We still need to write or finalize, edit, lay out, and proof the rest—the final three chapters, introduction and epilogue. We intend to apply for another grant to assist with those costs. Once all chapters have been finalized, then the entire text needs to be indexed. Final steps in the laying out process are for front matter (like table of contents, etc.), back matter, and cover. Follow that with another grant for printing, order the copies, and we’ll be done! At this time, it looks like the project will be complete in late 2023-early 2024.

Individuals playing a large part in this project include:
Writers of individual chapters or introduction/epilogue: Laurel Means, Bob Roepke, Doug Munson, Nate Bostrom, Rick Engelhardt, Mark Olson, Eric Kraushar, Mollee Francisco, and Lisa Oberski. Many others, too numerous to mention here, wrote sections of chapters.
Content editors: Tracy Swanson and Lisa Oberski (overall) and others (for individual sections or chapters).
Content additions/changes as well as image placement, size, and captions: Lisa Oberski
Potential photograph identification: Tracy Swanson and Lisa Oberski.
Digital images gathering: Daniel Scharfenberg, who was a volunteer intern, and Dorie Coghill.
Design and Layout: Deb Frymet.
Copy editing team: Chuck Pederson (copy editor), Marilyn Gahm (indexer) and Sandy Zilka (final proofreader).
Grant writing: Jeanette McGillicuddy, with the assistance of Carver County Historical Society and museum staff.

Many thanks go to the numerous community and school leaders, business owners, and former and present Chaska residents who contributed by sharing their stories of Chaska’s transitions, personalities, groups, and events!

2022 - A Year of Many Losses

The Chaska Historical Society is completely indebted to its volunteers, who put in hours upon hours of their own time and energies to ensure that today’s happenings are preserved for tomorrow’s researchers. An organization that began in 1980, the Historical Society has maintained a steady core group of individuals who take upon themselves the responsibility of this important mission. But like all organizations, we have longtime faces pass away and new faces join the crew. 2022 was no different in this regard, but we felt the heavier-than-usual loss of five familiar faces who have passed on, whose handiwork will forever make a difference to generations.

Two of the crew, Mary “Mert” Burkhart and Joan Rief, were regular helpers for years, coming in to help stuff envelopes, tape ripped pages in the bound copies of the old Herald newspaper books to preserve them as much as possible, or research in those same newspapers for answers to a variety of information requests. In the process, they’d sit with Mary Lahl for a number of those years, recalling the events of Chaska that dated back to the 1930s and 1940s. There were few people who so clearly recalled what that “old Chaska” was like—with a population of 2,000 rather than nearly 30,000. One story would spawn another’s recollections—with a little arguing about what actually happened, occasionally. Mary Lahl passed away in 2019; Mary Burkhart and Joan Rief left us in June and October of this year.

Mary Burkhart and Joan Rief

Marion Mackenthun

Marion Mackenthun passed on in September. Marion had a couple of jobs during her time here at the center. For one, she was responsible for organizing the plethora of Jonathan resources we have. Because of Marion, the newsletters, brochures, and newspaper articles are all carefully labelled and arranged chronologically in a set of about a dozen 3 inch, bright red three-ring binders. As we worked on the Jonathan section for the 1950-2000 Chaska history book, Marion’s attention to detail was gratefully noted time and time again. Another job Marion shared with Gayle Vogel, determining correct labelling and placement of artifacts into archival boxes. She and Gayle made many tough decisions on how best to categorize an item to ensure it was easily accessible to later researchers.

Laurel Braswell Means

Though she was a (relatively) short-term volunteer for the Chaska History Center, Laurel Means’s time with us was significant. An active volunteer from early 2017 until the spring of 2022, Laurel dared venture where others feared to tread. A powerfully positive but gentle force, Laurel was willing to shoulder the incredible task of organizing a group of volunteer writers and continuously encourage them to complete their drafts for the 1950-2000 Chaska history book. Laurel smoothed transitions between writers, wrote her own section of the work, and took on writing additional parts of chapters—or entire chapters—as assigned writers were unable to complete them due to a variety of reasons. Laurel took the group of writers through the first edit of the book’s draft. Unfortunately, Laurel passed away August 1, prior to the completion of the content edits, including picture choices, captions, introduction, epilogue, index, and other items. Every time we hold the upcoming 1950-2000 Chaska history book, however, we must say a little prayer of thanks for Laurel.

Sue Born

A recent loss for the history center volunteer listing was Sue Born, who left us in early November of this year. Sue provided much of the foundation of our artifact organization process. Because of Sue’s work, we had a consistent process for successfully inventorying and cataloguing items that were donated. Sue worked countless hours organizing objects and entering all pertinent information into the database, allowing visitors a means to quickly locate and appreciate their ancestors’ forethought in preserving treasured items.

We volunteers at the historical society have a shared vision of preserving Chaska’s history for future generations. While participating in working towards that shared vision, as these five individuals did, we learn each other’s stories and join each other’s stories for a while. And though our times together will eventually pass, as they must do, we can remember—with a little smile of fondness and great feelings of appreciation—those times together, when our histories have blended, creating the richer fabric of the Chaska community. Thank you, Volunteers!

A Part of Our Collection...

By Julie Wiese

For decades, Dr. Schimelpfenig was a beloved Chaska doctor. Graduating from the University of Minnesota in 1929, he soon came to Chaska to start his practice. This is the baby scale from his office. An untold number of Chaska residents rested their little bottoms on it to be weighed. When he started his practice, doctors traveled to the homes of their patients, not the other way around. Babies were delivered in their homes and accident victims were tended by him, not by a hospital or emergency room. Once a year, farmers would travel to his office to pay that year's bills. Schimelpfenig remembered that they always paid in cash.

Making Your Legacy Count

This is a photograph of Jim Glatzel, son of Edward Glatzel, both longtime Chaskans concerned with preserving Chaska’s rich history. Edward Glatzel, a shoemaker by trade, was the author of the Glatzel Papers, covering much local history and including a vast, indexed collection of early obituaries in Chaska. Many of these papers are available here on our website under “Resources;” the obituary collection is available in-house.

Ed’s son, Jim, didn’t have historical collections, but he, too, contributed much to preserving Chaska’s history. For one, Jim served as the Chaska Historical Society’s vice-president for many years. His contribution to the society has lasted much longer, however; because of Jim’s forethought and planning, the society, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, receives support annually through his bequest with the Community Foundation for Carver County. Noting the Chaska Historical Society as one of several recipients of a trust, Jim continues to make a difference by providing us with a regular income to cover many day-to-day operating expenses and assist us with long-term organizational planning.

How can you set up something similar? Or perhaps a different type of gift? Check out the website https://www.communitygiving.org/CFCC/cfcc-funds or contact Khai Tran at (877)253-4380; he knows the ins-and-outs of the foundation and can assist you with a variety of types of gifts, including cash, property, stock, bequests, life insurance, and more!