#1155 – Governor Wendell R. Anderson

This afternoon, Monday Aug. 15, at 2 p.m., is the Memorial Service for “Wendy” Anderson at Mt. Olivet Lutheran Church, 5025 Knox Ave S. (50th and Knox) in south Minneapolis. His obituary can be read here.

I only met Gov. Anderson twice, both in 2008-09, the second at the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Festival at Augsburg College (below).
(click to enlarge photos)

Among all of his accomplishments, I consider the greatest to have been not only declaring the State of Minnesota to be a World Citizenship state in 1971, signed by a who’s who of Minnesota civic and political leaders, but to put the simple resolution into action, including a movie featuring singer John Denver and featuring many of those same leaders in 1972.
(There is not a word in the obituary about this accomplishment. It is as if it has been officially disappeared from the collective consciousness.)
You can view the Minnesota Declaration of World Citizenship below, and the 30 minute movie, Man’s Next Giant Leap (which includes Wendy Anderson, here.

Coincidentally, later this week is an event. Diplomacy Begins Here, which directly relates to the Governor’s actions in the early 1970s. You can read about it here.
One can only wonder what might have happened had the 1971 Minnesota (and 1968 Minneapolis and Hennepin County) initiative for World Citizenship been kept alive, rather than relegated to the dust bin of Minnesota history….


Richard Alley(see above photo), of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, one of the co-recipients of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, speaks to students at the Peace Prize Festival here.

Here is another Minnesota Governor, Elmer L. Andersen, speaking about the raising of the United Nations flag as a companion to Minnesota and U.S. flags at to-be Hennepin County Plaza on May 1, 1968. Elmer Andersen I Trust..001 Gov. Andersen considered this to be one of the most important speeches he ever delivered.
POSTNOTE:
Directly related, here: The UN Flag, 1968-2012, at Hennepin County Govt Center Plaza. This also links to another extensive post at March 27, 2013.