Robert E. Neslund

Robert Eugene NESLUND was an historian, a community activist, but chiefly a devoted teacher of Latin . Born in Mt. Vernon, Washington, on 2 November 1940, he was educated in Stanwood, Washington and received his B.A. from Wheaton (Ill.) College in 1963. He did graduate work for a year at the University of Chicago, but took a teaching position in English at Shattuck-St. Mary’s, an Episcopal private school in Faribault, Minnesota, but soon took over the Latin classes. Though he was able to cobble together enough spare time to earn an M.A. at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and occasionally to take summer courses at the University of Washington, he maintained his service and loyalty to Shattuck for 43 years, serving as chapel organist and master of a residence hall. He was known as a rigorous, fair teacher who led students on tours of Italy in the 1990s, advised the students art magazine and curated the sesquicentennial collection in the school museum. He wrote columns on local history for the Faribault newspaper and combined his love of history and his school in his deeply researched account of his school’s first century and a half: For a Life of Learning and Service: How Shattuck-St. Mary’s Came To Be. He was also active in his church, the Cathedral of Our Merciful Saviour and wrote it history, The First Cathedral. Bob was also instrumental in establishing a community service component for graduation from the school and embodied its ideal as he worked for Meals on Wheels, Habitat for Humanity, and the Cannon Valley Elder Collegium. He was unmarried. Bob Neslund died at home in Faribault, 9 October 2011.

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