Hometown: Tartu, Estonia. My family fled Estonia in 1944 when the Russian aggressors arrived. I was seven. We spent four years in a displaced persons camp in Hanau, Germany, before moving to Portland, Oregon, and then, after a year, to Sterling, Kansas. My father taught at Sterling College.

When did you join UMRA? Around 2000.

What was your very first job? Picking strawberries, and later green beans, near Portland the summer after seventh grade, in 1950. School children had the opportunity to be bussed to the fields during harvest time.

What was your occupation when you retired from FT work? Office work in the School of Dentistry.  

What brought you to the University of Minnesota?  I earned a master’s in studio arts at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, and then taught in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, for one year before I came to the U of M to get an MFA. I taught studio art for one year at Chadron State College in Nebraska, and then I got married. We moved to Pueblo, Colorado, and then to Medford, Wisconsin, where my husband taught at a two-year college. When we returned to Minneapolis (my husband was from Minneapolis), I got a secretarial job at the U. I retired after 20 years.

If you could learn a new skill, what would you like it to be? I would like to learn Tibetan.

What is a fun fact about you we might not know? I have taken a couple of classes at Open Book, and after one of the classes was one of many artists who participated in a Minnesota Center for Book Arts exhibition. We made small booklets with words and illustrations.

What is something you currently enjoy doing with your time? Reading. All kinds of things. The book I’m currently reading is South to America by Imani Perry. It’s about the strengths and sorrows of the American South.