Scoggins: The life story of Stan Nelson, nearly 103, is one you should know
Stan Nelson doesn't move as nimbly as he once did. It requires a little extra time and effort to climb aboard his riding lawn mower.
He's slower not because he is three weeks shy of his 103rd birthday but because he has a broken big toe on his right foot. The protective boot that he's wearing comes off soon. Nelson shrugs and keeps moving. He's encountered far worse circumstances in his extraordinary life.
"It takes about six weeks [to heal] altogether," he says in the living room of his home.
The former Anoka High football coach still lives by himself in a house 2 miles from the high school. He still does his own laundry. Still cooks. His specialties are beef stew and cookies.
"He calls them cowboy cookies," says his son Dave, a Hall of Fame high school football coach just like his dad.
Stan plays bingo and blackjack every two weeks at the casino. When he turned 100, he joked that if he had known he'd live this long, he would have taken better care of himself.
His family took him fishing on his 99th birthday, and, of course, Stan reeled in the biggest fish of the day.
That was the same year he figured he'd stop using a push mower to cut his large yard, so he bought himself a rider, which he calls his tractor. He has a funny story about that too, which he'll share later.
Sit with Stan Nelson for an hour, and he will regale you with tales that bring both laughter and wonderment at a man who has witnessed so much over a century-plus.
"I've seen just about everything there is to see," he says.
. . .
He grew up in Dawson, Minn., during the Great Depression. His father died when he was 2, leaving his mother Christine to raise four children by herself.
She sold the family farm and moved to town. When the bank closed, she lost everything. She took a job at the local restaurant making $1 a day on eight-hour shifts.
"I still don't know how she did it," Nelson says. "We all had enough to eat, and everybody was happy. She was an amazing woman."
After high school, Nelson enrolled at Augsburg College, where he earned 12 varsity letters as a four-sport athlete: football, basketball, baseball and golf.
"Back in those days," he says, "it wasn't very hard to make the varsity."
He had saved $100 working at a gas station to take to school as a freshman. That was gone in no time.
"The captain of the football team, Irv Nerdahl, got me in a card game, and he took all $100 away from me," he says, noting that he told Nerdahl that someday he would get even with him.
The attack on Pearl Harbor took place during his senior year. Nelson enlisted in the Navy the next day.
. . .
He joined the V-7 program at Northwestern, which enabled midshipmen to become commissioned officers through accelerated training. They were known as the "90-day wonders."
On June 6, 1944, Nelson participated in the invasion of Normandy in World War II, also known as D-Day. As deck officer on a Landing Craft Infantry, he ferried 250 soldiers to Omaha Beach on each run, making several trips total that day.
He later served as a patrol craft captain in the Pacific theater.
"I'm so glad I had the opportunity to serve my country," he says. "I would never take a million dollars for not having had that opportunity."
His older brother Edor served in Gen. George Patton's Third Army in the war. He was shot in the leg and captured by the Germans. Their mother learned that he was a prisoner of war on Christmas Day.
Edor escaped captivity after six months and managed to elude the Germans and Russians while making his way to Egypt, and then home.
"He had quite an experience," Stan says.
Edor later became Augsburg's longtime football and baseball coach. The school's athletic field is named after him. Edor died in 2014, nine days after his 100th birthday.
. . .
Stan calls it "destiny" that he got into coaching too. He coached multiple sports at Zumbrota and Farmington over seven years. Then Anoka offered him $1,000 to coach football in 1953.
"I couldn't believe it," he says.
In 26 seasons, he won seven conference championships, 154 games and the mythical state title in 1964. He coached five all-state quarterbacks, including Duane Blaska, who played for the Gophers during their Rose Bowl seasons in the early 1960s.
Nelson's athletic and coaching prowess were such that four different organizations inducted him into their Hall of Fame.
. . .
Nerdahl, the Augsburg teammate who played him out of $100 in cards? He became the longtime football coach at Robbinsdale High. Nelson scheduled Nerdahl's team in Anoka's historic Pumpkin Bowl in 1961. Anoka won the game.
"After the game, I shook hands with Irv and said, 'Remember when I said someday, somehow I'll get that $100 back?' " Nelson says. "I said, 'This is it.' "
. . .
Anoka once recorded a 33-game winning streak across four seasons. Nelson breaks into a smile when his son asks him to share his favorite story about it.
He wore the same shirt every game during the streak. His late wife, Marcie, always made sure it was clean and ready for him on gameday. When the streak finally ended against White Bear Lake, Nelson came home and told his wife that he was getting rid of the shirt.
"And she said, 'Thank heavens, I can get rid of this dress. I've been wearing the same dress for four years,' " he says, voice booming in laughter.
Marcie, his wife of 64 years, died in 2011. The family tree that sprouted from their union brings Nelson endless pride and delight.
They had three children. Steve played linebacker for the New England Patriots for 14 seasons, made three Pro Bowls and is a member of the team's Hall of Fame.
Dave won 267 games and two state championships with six Prep Bowl appearances in 36 seasons split between Blaine and Minnetonka.
Oldest child Cheryl was the best athlete of the bunch, everyone agrees. She would have been a multisport star had girls been allowed to compete in sports when she was in high school.
"We have the greatest kids that you could imagine having," Nelson says.
The family has grown to include 10 grandchildren and 23 great-grandkids. A family gathering is set for Nelson's 103rd birthday on Sept. 22. He wants to keep it low-key. The plan is to play bingo in his garage.
Nelson loves to play cards at the Running Aces casino. The concierge always greets him with a hug, and, in a nod to his age, he's been gifted on several visits $102 in chips.
. . .
The competitor inside him comes out when his son takes a playful jab. Nelson competed in golf at the National Senior Games at age 95. Dave caddied for him in the 95-and-older division.
"He took third," Dave says, "but there were only three golfers in it."
"Hey, that sounds bad, I know," Nelson says as a rebuttal. "But it was only one stroke that separated third place from first place. I was tied with a guy going to the 18th hole. They had a water puddle in front of the green. I put one in the water puddle, and that was the end of the match."
. . .
Now, about the riding mower in the garage. Apparently, the store initially was hesitant to agree to a financing plan because, well, Nelson was 99 years old, but he left as the proud owner of the John Deere. He cuts the backyard and front, and a neighborhood kid takes care of the sides with the push mower because they are sloped.
The tractor also doubles as Nelson's mode of transportation when he wants to visit friends on his street. He fires it up and backs it out of the garage, and off he goes.
The football coach and war hero says he's seen just about everything there is to see. That doesn't mean he's done looking.
