Kelliher returns home

House speaker relaxes in Mankato

By Mark Fischenich

MANKATO — They were yelling at Margaret Anderson Kelliher again shortly before noon on Wednesday, just like people were screaming at her as midnight approached on Monday.

The words were different, though, and so were the expressions on the faces.

On Monday, the shouters ranged from perturbed to angry and they hollered words such as: “Madame Speaker, a point of parliamentary inquiry,” and “Madame Speaker, privilege of the House,” and — at the end — “Shame on you!”

On Wednesday, the faces were smiling and the words were these: “I’m Zippy the zebra, I’m Zippy the zebra, I’m Zippy the zebra, who lives in the zoo.”

What a difference 58 hours can make.

Monday was the end of Kelliher’s first session as speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, and the rural Mankato native was desperately trying to move the final budget bills to a vote in the last couple of minutes prior to the midnight adjournment deadline.

Republicans were upset by some of the parliamentary methods that she and fellow Democrats were using to get the budget bills passed on time, including rarely used tactics for shutting down debate and forcing a final vote.

Wednesday was “Z Day” in Mrs. Romas’ kindergarten class at Roosevelt Elementary School.

A welcome homecoming

Kelliher’s tours of two of her former schools — Roosevelt and West High School — were the finale of a day-long breather she took in the Mankato area after the exhausting final weeks, the stressful final days and the rancorous final minutes of the legislative session.

She spent Tuesday afternoon and evening at her cabin on Lake Jefferson, napping a lot, eating supper at Whiskey River in St. Peter and taking delivery of the new pontoon boat she and her husband had just purchased. They took the boat out on the lake despite that it was raining.

“It beats being in the Legislature right now,” Kelliher said.

So did the nostalgic visits to her former schools.

It started at West as Rod Urtel directed the choir in a beautiful rendition of The Mankato West Hymn. Kelliher made a point to give a special greeting to the altos.

“Rod let me be in the choir. I wasn’t good in the choir. They sort of tolerated me being in the choir.”

A leader at West

Former West Principal John Barnett came back for Kelliher’s visit, saying Margaret Anderson was a memorable student from a memorable class.

“The class of 1986 — the year Margaret graduated — was a very interesting class,” said Barnett, who had doubts about the new seniors in the fall. “By the end of the year, it was one of the finest classes we’ve had.”

Barnett remembered Kelliher and other students coming to him with a plan for “Peace Week” to be held that spring. Skeptical at first, he listened and agreed. Developed completely by the students, the event included inviting a group Vietnam veterans who were in counseling together with a Mankato psychologist.

Virtually every student at West attended, listening to their stories and asking questions. The event, scheduled to last 50 minutes, stretched to two hours as the veterans spoke frankly about war and its aftermath, about drug dependency and broken marriages.

At the end, 1,000 students gave a standing ovation, Barnett said, and the veterans — tears streaming down their faces — said it was the first time anyone had shown them appreciation for their service.

Former teachers also talked about how Kelliher’s leadership and organizational skills showed clearly even as a teenager. Retired speech and theater teacher Pat Ryan said he scoffed when reading a letter to the editor of a Twin Cities newspaper that the Democrats had selected another urban liberal as speaker.

Ryan talked about Kelliher growing up as part of a large family that ran a dairy farm adjoining Minneopa State Park and served as 4-H state president.

“In The Wizard of Oz, she played Auntie Em,” Ryan said. “I mean, Come on!”

Public school education

Kelliher said she credits her years in Mankato public schools for her success and her priorities.

She spent kindergarten and the first four grades at Hoover Elementary. Bus routes were changed and she found herself headed toward Roosevelt. Not wanting to leave her friends at Hoover, she tried in vain to drum up opposition to the bus-route changes.

“I didn’t want to be a Roosevelt Raccoon,” she said. “So I organized this petition drive. ... This is when my Mom says she knew I was political.”

As it turned out, the move to Roosevelt taught her a lasting lesson about how smaller class sizes can make a huge difference in kids’ lives. There were 46 students in her 4th grade classroom at Hoover.

With class sizes like that, the best students still do fine and the struggling students often get the special attention they need, she said.

“It’s kids in the middle — I was a kid in the middle — who couldn’t get the help,” she said.

The much smaller class sizes at Roosevelt in 5th and 6th grades turned her from a mediocre student into one that excelled through junior high school and high school and earned degrees from Gustavus Adolphus College and Harvard.

“The other reason I feel passionate about public education is the people in this room,” she said with a nod to the teachers and administrators at West. “They cared about me.”

Kelliher, who represents a Minneapolis district that stretches from the Kenwood neighborhood to downtown, and her husband David Kelliher send their two children to Minneapolis public schools.

Madame Raccoon

Kelliher hadn’t been in her former schools for years, so tours conducted by a group of students at West and by Roosevelt Principal Rick Lund evoked the expected memories and stories. There were plenty of moments, however, that reminded people that this former alum wasn’t a typical one.

For instance, when Kelliher peeked into one science classroom at West she found herself being lobbied by an underclassman for special legislation barring the school administration from ending the school’s open lunch-hour policy.

And she was repeatedly told by faculty that they’d seen her on television or that they’d watched the wild finish Monday night.

The tours ended with Kelliher — the person who holds what is generally considered the second-most powerful position in Minnesota government — talking to the girl who runs the Roosevelt Student Council.

Rachel Conley, a 5th grader, thinks she might like to follow Kelliher’s lead and run for higher office someday.

“I actually really would,” said Conley, the student council president, “because I like to help people, too.”

Before Conley gaveled the student council meeting to a close, the group of student leaders sang the Roosevelt school song — which has a melody suspiciously similar to the Coca Cola jingle “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (in Perfect Harmony).”

Kelliher, after a disharmonious start to the week, found herself remembering all of the words to the first verse nearly three decades later.

“OK,” said the oldest Raccoon after they’d finished, “let’s do the first one again.”