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Today's Featured Biography
Joanna Lundgren Kuehn
How happy I am to have spent my entire youth in Edina, growing up in the same house on Brookview Avenue! It will always mean home, family, and friendship to me and I’m grateful to that “village” community and its schools.
The first summer after graduating from E.H.S., I worked with Paul, a Washburn grad and Mount Olivet friend, at our church camp, Cathedral of the Pines. He agreed to sing the part of Juliet to my Romeo in a silly skit-song my parents had always sung. He made the ugliest and funniest of Juliets, and in doing so, he won my heart with his good-sport attitude and ability to make people laugh! It was no surprise that after attending Gustavus Adolphus in St. Peter, MN, for four years, we began our marriage journey together. Forty-five years later, in August of ’09, that funny wonderful guy died in his favorite chair at our Sand Lake summer home near Duluth, MN. Our marriage, like most, was not without its challenges, but, for the most part, what a joy-filled ride it was!
Our greatest joys were found in raising two (of course!) terrific children and eventually welcoming grandchildren into our lives. Paul found success in the brokerage world, while I enjoyed teaching English to high school seniors, then “retiring” to become full-time mom and volunteer.
The watershed experience of my life was at age thirty-six when a major psychotic breakdown changed my life forever. In recovery, I learned mental illness is chemical brain disease, with multiple causes and consequences, not only to the person suffering, but to families and friends. I learned that the stigma of mental illness can be more difficult than the disease. I felt a “calling” through my own experience to educate, to bring some light and hope to those most misunderstood and hurting people, the seriously and persistently mentally ill. I started my work within my home church, with a task force that grew in its ministry to educate and to bring compassionate, welcoming outreach to mentally ill people and their families. Through the years, this work has expanded into other churches and other communities throughout Minnesota, as we’ve hoped it would. Other than raising my children, it has been the most gratifying work of my life!
In my years of recovery, I looked back with gratitude to my upbringing in Edina—its teachers, its administrators, my own family and friends—all gave me a foundation that served me well! From kindergarten at Morningside with Mrs. Glover, to Mrs. Riley’s fourth grade class (best teacher ever, right?), to countless other teachers who taught not just subject matter, but values and skills for purposeful living. Ms. Costello was such an influence in my family that all four of us chose English majors in college! Music has always been one of my passions and I remember with warm appreciation Dolph Bezoier, the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, especially The Pirates of Penzance. A few of us who sang together in high school have had fun rehearsing with Ron Seaman at the piano for the memorial service at the reunion. Already, being together has made for much laughter as old stories are told!
Oh, how I look forward with anticipation to the reunion where the sharing of stories and memories will, no doubt, bring more laughter, and yes, perhaps, tears as we remember friends we knew well and now miss. Heartfelt thanks to those of you who have worked so long and hard to make this reunion happen! See you soon!
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