Glimpse of the Past: Mondale paid visits to Mankato

Apr. 30—The Free Press

MANKATO — Memorial services for the country's 42nd vice president, Walter Mondale, are today on the campus of the University of Minnesota.

President Joe Biden is among speakers slated at the celebration of life for the champion of civil rights and environmental protections.

Mondale died April 19, 2021. He was 93.

A 1980 Free Press photograph of Mondale and the late Herb Mocol, a former Mankato mayor, was long displayed in a hallway of the newspaper building. The two men's arms are widely outstretched as they approach each other in joyful greeting.

Mocol had been active in the state Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which is how he met Mondale in the early 1960s, shortly after Mondale became attorney general.

The Ceylon, Minnesota, native who grew up in Elmore was a U.S. senator when he came to Mankato in 1971 to speak at the opening of a prized public housing venue, Orness Plaza. He was a former U.S. vice president when he returned to view the building's extensive renovation in June 2012.

Mondale had joked with his audience: "I'm here to make a commitment to you. I'll come here every 41 years."

Orness Plaza had gotten a $10 million makeover — nearly all of which was funded by federal dollars — that included built-in sustainability measures to save money in the long run.

The city's esteemed guest reprised his role as guest speaker when the building first opened.

Mondale had talked about how decades earlier cities had no places for the elderly to live. Starting in the 1960s, the federal government started to help.

We saw firsthand, he said, "how much it meant to them to have a decent, affordable place to live and have friends.

"And it's worked," he said.