Frances Velde

Frances Velde of Montevideo died on Wednesday, October 1, 2025 at Luther Haven Nursing Home at the age of 105.

Funeral services will be held at 11:00AM on Saturday, October 11, 2025 at Our Savior's Lutheran Church in Montevideo with Rev. Michelle Rowell officiating. Burial will be in the Watson Lutheran Church Cemetery.

Visitation with the family will be held from 4 to 7 PM on Friday, October 10, 2025 at Anderson-TeBeest Funeral Home in Montevideo and will continue one hour prior to the service at the church on Saturday.

Memorials are preferred to Watson Lutheran Church.

Frances Mabel Velde was born January 5, 1920, two years after the end of World War I. She would live to see the Great Depression, World War II, the fall of the Soviet Union, six moon landings, one Information Revolution, eight great-grandchildren, and two World Series victories by her beloved Minnesota Twins.

Frances grew up without central heating on a small farm where the average January low was 2 degrees Fahrenheit. Her parents, Charlie and Mabel, drove Frances and siblings Vernon, Helen and Raymond to country school on a horse-drawn wagon. Despite the hardships, it was a house filled with love. Frances was such a good dancer that when she was twelve, she and her younger brother Raymond were invited to dance onstage at area concerts with a relative's polka band.

Frances's polka-dancing skills would serve her well. She met her husband Merton on a blind date at a country dance in 1940. Their daughter Nancy (Mueller) arrived on the farm in 1949. At a time when women were expected to stay in the home, Frances helped support the family by teaching at a one-room schoolhouse heated by a wood burning stove. During the summers, she commuted over a hundred miles to St. Cloud to earn her college degree, and used this degree to teach third grade and special education in Montevideo, leaving a mark on the lives of countless students over her many years of service.

Many of France's finest qualities were forged during the Great Depression. She canned her own food, sewed her own clothes (and grandchildren's Halloween costumes), cooked dozens of Thanksgiving turkeys, hundreds of homemade apple pies, and thousands (perhaps even millions) of Christmas cookies—and learned the faith and fortitude it would take to support the Minnesota Vikings through seven decades of crushing defeats. Throughout her incredibly long life, Frances was kind, well-dressed, neat, polite and humble to the very end, and, as far as the author knows, never complained about anything, not even the lutefisk church dinners her daughter Nancy still shudders to remember.

Frances was widowed in 1983. She would spend the next 42 years dominating at cribbage, bridge, and pinochle; traveling with friends on bus tours through Alaska, the continental US, Europe, and points beyond; dedicating herself to her faith and community; and diligently attending every major and minor event in the lives of her daughter Nancy, son-in-law Rick Mueller; grandchildren: Colleen (Todd) Dehmer, Karl (Dierdre) Mueller, Kim Mueller, Kerri (Tiago) Da Silva; and great-grandchildren: Sienna, Hayden, Max, Natasha, Kai, Noa, Luca and Nina. Going before her were her parents, Charlie and Mabel (Botten) Nagel; husband, Merton; sister, Helen (Lester) Nelson; brothers: Vernon (Betty) Nagel and Raymond (Helen) Nagel; niece, Patty Nagel, and nephew, Lonnie Nagel.

As far as living a happy life connected to family and friends goes, pretty much everyone agrees that Frances nailed it.