Good morning,
My name is Trish (or Patricia, as my mother would say), and I am Mary Lou’s youngest daughter. On behalf of my siblings, I want to thank every one of you for being here today. Our mother would be so happy to see all of your faces. It means so much to all of us that you are here to help us celebrate her life.
Before I begin, I need to disclose that our mother gave us strict orders about her funeral service: “No eulogies!”
[bring out gavel and tap on lectern] Overruled!
The Honorable MLK
The Honorable MLK: When most people hear the initials MLK, they think of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., the brave, eloquent, and tireless civil rights leader who observed, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
When the initials MLK were used in our household, they referred to our mother, the inimitable Mary Louise Klas. Mary Lou was in good company. Like Dr. King, she devoted her life to fighting injustice here in Ramsey County.
Many of you may have read about Mary Lou’s career as a lawyer and a judge and her efforts on behalf of women and children, specifically victims of domestic violence. For everything she accomplished, she credited those who shaped her life: her working-class parents who gave her “the gift of unconditional love” while conserving resources to keep her and her sister Joan well-fed during the Depression era; and the Sisters of St. Joseph, who educated and inspired her to work for a just world. Her husband, our father, Dan, shared her love of the law and the joys of raising children; and her mother, our beloved Gram, lived with us and provided child care and home cooking so Mary Lou could offer her talents to the legal world.
Our mother attributed her success to this foundation and support, and her values shaped our world. Mary Lou embraced her role as mother in addition to her full-time career. Married in the late-50s when women were expected to be efficient housewives, she excelled not only in her work life but at home. She loved to sew and cook, making matching outfits for us daughters when we were young, then prom dresses when we grew older. She loved to try new recipes, and she clipped coupons and shopped the grocery store sales to feed our large family on a limited budget.
As testament to this long-held habit, one memorable evening in high school, my best friend Bridget and I were eating Gram’s cookies in the kitchen when Mary Lou abruptly looked at the clock and announced, “I have to get to Knowlan’s.” Bridget and I soon learned the urgency of the errand: the last day of a sale on Jell-O with the store closing shortly. After she left hurriedly for the grocery store, we looked in the cupboard that stored the Jell-O. Despite Mary Lou’s urgent action, we were not in desperate need of additional packages of Jell-O: there were at least a dozen remaining in the cupboard. At that time, the price of Jell-O was around 39 cents a box. How much further discounted could it get?
Although often humorous, Mary Lou’s saving efforts enabled us to attend Catholic schools. Mary Lou made sacrifices even if it required time, organization, and extra trips to the grocery store.
Mary Lou modeled fiscal responsibility, encouraging us to earn and save our allowance. She adopted household recycling efforts thirty years ahead of her time, separating the trash before it was in vogue, and composting food scraps to nurture her backyard rose bushes, which she carefully buried before each winter. She reused envelopes for her signature notes in black magic marker and reused copies of documents for scratch paper. To this day, at her house it is nearly impossible to find a piece of paper that doesn’t have writing on one side.
An early adopter in many areas of life, Mary Lou was able see the truth through the noise on subjects such as nutrition, healthcare, education and technology. In addition to Gram’s cookies after school, she made sure we had carrots, always carefully peeled, crinkle-cut, and set in a bowl with ice for easy snacking. Our healthcare was through a co-op, rare in the 1970’s but common today. John and I attended a preschool Montessori, a model of education widely imitated today, and Mary Lou recognized that too much TV could be detrimental to our young minds, so she limited our screen time, a practice common today. Do you remember when the microwave was introduced? We had our first one in the late-70’s like most families, but
Mary Lou was cautious, keeping it on the back porch until it was proven safe. The product’s convenience weighed against its possible harm.
Mary Lou took her role as parent as seriously as she took her role as a judge. House rules were laws. Barbara’s friends lovingly called her “The Warden” because of her strict enforcement of curfew, and Saturday work chores were mandatory before weekend fun could begin. She also set the bar high for academic achievement. If you earned a 98 on a test, she would inquire, “Why wasn’t it 100?” Investigating what you answered incorrectly presented a learning opportunity.
Mary Lou loved designer clothes. As one admirer recently remarked, she was “a fierce warrior…in a mini skirt.” And she never paid full price for anything; to do so constituted a shopping failure in her eyes. “The first markdown is not the last markdown.” She would often “stalk” a garment, visiting Dayton’s Oval Room clearance rack periodically to check if it had been further reduced. She even left the tags on Christmas gifts as testaments to her prowess in bargain hunting: a $200 pair of pants purchased for $19.97!
Clothes shopping became Mary Lou’s favorite duty as grandmother. She would collect items year-round from the sales racks during lunchtime excursions to Dayton’s and save them for Christmas or birthday gifts with the recipient’s name on a Post-It note, stored in her cedar closet. Mary Lou’s gifts were distinctive; you always knew which wrapped packages were from “Grandma Clothes” as Hannah called her: they smelled like moth balls!
Mary Lou’s favorite grandparent pastime was attending Little League baseball and youth basketball games. Always a baseball fan, she hadn’t realized how much she would enjoy basketball until live games featured one of her grandsons. Unlike most fans whose enjoyment of a game increased with the level of competition and a close score at the end, Mary Lou preferred easy, stress-free victories. When a game happened to be lopsided, her grandson would apologize that the game had been rather boring as his team had won by a large margin. She would respond, “It was wonderful!”
Mary Lou loved dogs, especially her two golden retrievers—first Teddy and then Tschida–that she walked every morning in all weather with her
neighbor Mitzi. She enjoyed her signature Black and White scotch, season tickets to The Guthrie Theater, and her subscription to The New Yorker, especially its iconic cartoons which she would clip and post on the refrigerator and attach to letters to her children and grandchildren over the years.
Her letters were as functional and efficient as she was. Typed on legal- sized paper, written often late at night from her home typewriter and copied to each of us, they began arriving once we starting shipping off to college and careers. Like her annual Christmas letters, they became our family’s lived journal.
Mary Lou rarely talked about her own story in these letters, or with us; our family has been touched—and inspired—by the stories and testimonials from the many people with whom she worked for decades on her crusade against domestic violence. I want to share one story from a woman who reached out to us to describe how our mother influenced her life:
As an advocate, and survivor of domestic violence, I will never forget the Honorable Judge Mary Louise Klas. Judge Klas was the heaven sent, visiting judge that presided over my divorce hearing in Mille Lacs County Court, 17 years ago.
She was the voice of understanding and justice as she looked over the documents regarding my case…I was in the early stages of regaining my voice after a 25+ year abusive marriage…Judge Klas add[ed] measures of safety for myself and my minor children [to the divorce decree]…My advocate had never witnessed such passion and commitment from the courtroom bench before, and I was left with profound relief and gratitude…Shine brightly from on celestial high, Judge Klas. You made a difference in this world.
As our family imagines Mary Lou in heaven, we are pretty sure she’s relishing one of her favorite things: peace and quiet. Mary Lou treasured moments of silence in this hectic world. She played endless games of solitaire during her two-week vacation to Florida each March while listening to the sound of the waves. When she received a well-meaning gift of an Amazon Echo one Christmas, her grandsons enthusiastically encouraged, “You can ask Alexia to play any song you want, Grandma! What songs do you like?” She paused, then replied, “I like silence.”
For Mary Lou, silence was coveted amid a full work schedule and a busy household. Her reverence for silence reflected her vocation: silence is essential to active listening. She spent her career listening to others in order to act on their behalf. For her, silence was also sacred. Her faith was strong.
In 1986, after her swearing-in as a judge, Mary Lou delivered a short speech and used it to thank everyone who quote “had brought me to this place.” That list included her parents and teachers, her children and relatives, her friends and the governor; and then she spoke about the late Joe Summers, her long-time friend whom she replaced on the bench. “I may be wrong and more than a little crazy,” she concluded. “But I can’t help but think Joe Summers had a little conversation with God and persuaded HER to intervene in the scheme of things.”
Mary Lou prayed to God in HER wisdom often. Every Sunday for over fifty years, she sat in the second pew at St. Luke’s downstairs church guitar mass and was an integral member of this faith community. When she was no longer able to physically attend mass, she went to bed each night with the rosary between her fingers. During the minutes before she took her last breath, my sisters and I said the rosary at her bedside while holding her hands. I know God, in HER queendom in heaven, welcomed Mary Lou as a familiar friend.
Those of us who cared for Mary Lou during her last years witnessed her humble acceptance of her increasingly limited mobility while her list of accessible life pleasures diminished one by one. Her grace and faith were remarkable to witness.
Mary Lou loved her family, her friends, her Victorian house, her church, and her neighborhood. She loved St. Paul. But most of all she loved her children and grandchildren whose lives have been forever enriched by her influence.
The Honorable MLK. Synonyms for honorable: principled, fair, honest, virtuous, trustworthy, moral, ethical, just.
Exactly.
Thank you, Mom. We love you so much.