Gay Schultz

Gay Schultz was born Gaylord Hallie Carlson near Coffee Creek, Montana, in the Judith River basin.  Her parents were part of the wave of homesteaders who arrived there between 1910 and 1920 during an uncharacteristic Montana weather pattern that for a number of years kept the land green and fertile.  The family, which included older brothers Jim and Philip, farmed their spread and raised cattle and horses.

When Gay was four, the small rural school nearby was in danger of losing its mandate because it was short one student necessary to qualify as a school.  So, her mother sent the diminutive Gay to school at age four where she sat on the teacher’s lap a good part of the school year.

Her favorite color of yellow can be traced to her brother Jim, who would shoot the yellow blossoms off the cactuses to give to her.

The family made it through the Great Depression and the subsequent drought and dust, but in 1937, when the locusts came and cleared the land of anything green and alive, the family left the West behind and headed back to Dundas, MN and the house where her mother Hallie Cambell Carlson had grown up.  Gay had loved Montana but was ecstatic to finally be around more people and the trappings of civilization, such as they were in Dundas 1937.

Gay attended high school in nearby Northfield, where she remembered acting in the school’s theatrical productions.  She attended the University of MN for one year, then transferred to St. Cloud State College for the remainder when her decision to become a teacher manifested.  

She was active in the war effort working at an officer recruitment station in Chicago and a munitions factory in Denver during the summers of her college years.  She remembered sitting on a curb in downtown Denver on VE Day, eating peaches out of a can while watching the celebrants fill the streets to dance and kiss everyone is sight.

Teachers were heavily recruited post war and she secured her first teaching job in Princeton, MN  well before graduation day. There she befriended the kindergarten teacher who really wanted  Gay to meet her brother John.  John and Gay married in July of 1949. She called him Johnnie or Jack, but mostly Johnnie.  They were married 53 years.

The young couple began their family in Stillwater, MN and then began to move as Jack’s career required, eventually landing in Mankato.  After five years on Van Brunt Street, they built a home in Southview Heights, and continued the realization of the American Dream.

When her last child began to attend school Gay went back to teaching.  She taught 4th grade at Rapidan Elementary for 25 years, even teaching some of the offspring of her earliest students.  She said she preferred teaching at a small rural school because it reminded her of her own school days in Montana.

When Johnnie died in 2003 she sold the family home and moved into a townhome near the university where she remained until a few months before her passing.  She stayed active in her later years assisting the Education Department at the University and working at the food shelf well into her nineties.

Gay was a remarkably strong and intelligent soul who always looked ahead and never succumbed to regret.  She will be deeply missed and forever remembered by her children Erik (Kathy), Brad (Mary), Lynea (Dan), Steve, and Kim (Bob), as well as her many grandchildren: Isaac, Leema, Michael, Colin, Charlie, Peter, Tyler, Stephanie, Teague, and Fiona; and great-grandchildren: Asher, Ella, Peyton, Brooklyn, Erika, and Hallie.  They all loved her, and she loved them back. The family would like to extend their gratitude for the wonderful care and friendship of Cathy Atchley who was Mom’s “person” these last five years. A celebration of her life is tentatively scheduled for a day in May. In lieu of donations, Gay’s family request you give of yourself, your time, love, and energy to those you love and that in which you believe.