Mahtomedi mayor Jud Marshall bows out at the age of 88

Mary Divine, Pioneer Press
·4 min read

Warren “Jud” Marshall, believed to be the oldest mayor in Minnesota, has resigned from his post, citing health concerns.

Marshall, who turns 89 on Feb. 13, has been mayor of Mahtomedi since 2004. “All good things come to an end,” he said Friday. “I’ve loved all the wonderful people that I’ve met. They’re great, and so I will miss them.”

Marshall has been known for his graciousness, always thanking people who came to city council meetings. “They go out of their way to come and visit for whatever reason that they have,” Marshall said. “I wanted them to know that I appreciated them coming down here.”

He also was known for his time-management skills: Council meetings rarely went past 10 p.m. under Marshall’s watch.

“When I first was mayor, I had a couple of people when they would come, they would talk over and over and over again about the same thing,” he said. “It got to the point where I said, ‘Don’t repeat yourself, and don’t repeat your friends. Let’s get this meeting over before 10 o’clock.’ And it worked pretty well really, actually. Anything that happened after 10 p.m. just got to be messy, and I didn’t like that.”

Among Marshall’s many accomplishments as mayor was starting the city’s National Night Out celebration, said Mahtomedi City Council member Dick Brainerd, who is serving as acting mayor until the council officially appoints someone on Tuesday.

“He attended as many neighborhood events as he could every year,” Brainerd said. “He set a high bar for those to follow.”

Prior to serving as mayor, Marshall served on the Mahtomedi School Board and the planning commission. His family’s roots in the city date back to 1933, he said.

Marshall worked at Northern States Power before starting Bemar Sales Corp., which sold electrical products. He retired about 10 years ago.

He said he decided to run for mayor in 2003 because he “didn’t approve of what the last mayor was doing.”

“I thought, ‘Well, I’ll just see if I can get his job and see how that goes,’ and it went fine,” he said. “I was only going to serve for four years and then not run again, but by the time I got to the end of four years, it was so much fun, I decided I just had to stay, so I kept re-upping. Not everybody thinks it’s as much fun as I think it is.”

Marshall married his childhood sweetheart, Beverly Hedin, in 1954; she died in 1999 at the age of 63. “I met her on the playground when we were in elementary school,” he said. “She was on the swing, and I was on the swing. She was probably 5, and I was maybe 6. I just thought she was a really attractive girl, and it just continued off and on, off and on, until we got married.”

The couple had four sons — Rodney, Bryan, Scott and Jeffrey — every two years for eight years, he said. “Five years later, a girl (Molly) came along and all was forgiven. Six years after that, another girl (Lisa) was born. That was a great time.”

He met Joyce Korlin at the Postal Credit Union in North St. Paul in 2003; they married in 2009, he said.

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The Mahtomedi City Council will meet Tuesday to declare the mayoral seat vacant and appoint someone to serve out the remainder of the term, which expires at the end of 2023, said City Clerk Jerene Rogers.

Assuming a current member of the city council is appointed to fill the vacancy, a vacancy will be created on the council. The council would then be asked to declare a vacancy on the council and pass a resolution directing staff to assist with an application process to fill that vacancy.

Mahtomedi, which has a population of about 8,000 people, was the perfect-sized city to lead, Marshall said.

“It’s still a relatively small town,” he said. “It was nice to know so many people and have so many friends in town. I’m going to miss the friendships that I developed over the years.”

An open house to honor Marshall will be 4:30-6:30 p.m. March 7 at St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church in Mahtomedi.