FAREWELL TO HARVEY MATTSON

07/03/2005

FAREWELL TO HARVEY MATTSON
A EULOGY BY ART JAUSS Given on July 3, 2005
Harvey Mattson’s passing was honored in a Memorial Service on July 3rd, 2005 at Bethany Lutheran Church in Cromwell. He came to be in our midst on his retirement in 1979 and he and his wife, Hazel, had a home on Eagle Lake.
Harvey was born on the Iron Range and found the love of his life, Hazel, there.  His father worked in the mines but that was not for him.  He was destined to pursue a different path but this pursuit was interrupted with his entry into the armed services in World War II.  He served in combat and was confronted with enemy fire and in one battle was hit by a thrown hand grenade and suffered a concussion that put him in a coma for weeks during which he lost his sight.  He recovered from this, but suffered the loss of the sight in one eye.  But did he ever make use of that one eye!
After his service, he got into the Driver’s License program for the State of Minnesota and eventually became director of the Division in the St. Paul Headquarters.  Upon his retirement they moved to the Cromwell area and had a home on Eagle Lake.  Hazel passed away about ten years ago.  Harvey continued a heavy round of volunteer activities.  He was vice president of both the Carlton County Council of Aging and the Arrowhead Transit Advisory Committee for the county.  For eleven years, he was president of the Cromwell Young Old Timers (YOT) Club.  But probably he enjoyed as much as any of his activities, his ten years on the board of the Lakes and Pines Community Action Program (CAP), a program that helped children and adults maintain a more productive life through programs such as Head Start, fuel assistance and weatherization assistance.
He will probably be remembered by the roles people saw him in as he lived and moved among us.  Some saw him as the quiet, serious fellow who every Sunday sat in the back pew to the right in church.  Others could have been aquainted with him in the different positions he held in organizations in Cromwell and Carlton County.
But let’s dispel the myth of just a quiet man.  Harvey often spoke with his feet.  He loved to dance.  It was known that he kept track of all the dances being held around the area from Barnum to Big Lake, and from Moose Lake to Rat Lake.  It was also known to some that he would recruit some home grown partners and take them to these dances.  And in those years he “snowbirded” in Arizona, he would search out where the dances were being held.
This man of strong principle and advocacy will be missed by many.  He has left his imprint.