McColley lived on a farm near Waseca until he was 12 and then his family moved to the New Wayne Richland area. Later the family moved three times in one year and they ended up on his grandparent's farm and he graduated from Waseca High School.

Fred Asche grew up on a farm in the Clara City area in a family of three boys and four girls. Joan lived in rural Montevideo with three siblings. Fred and Joan grew up living 17 miles apart and they met while roller skating in Montevideo.   

Christopher McKern grew up near Chesaning, MI, which is about 25 miles from Saginaw, with a brother, a sister and an adopted sister from Columbia. His father worked in a meat packing plant and their mother was a nurse. Chris attended a private Lutheran High School in Saginaw, (near Lake Huron), staying in the school dormitory and playing baseball.

This week, our community said goodbye to arguably one of the most influential and respected faith leaders in decades here in Dodge County, certainly in my lifetime. Someone my family loved dearly - Pastor Curtis Johnson. Pastor Johnson took on the call to minister at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Kasson in 1961, a church that quickly grew into the largest congregation in the county while I was growing up in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s.

This has been a year unlike any other and that’s especially true for Byron’s Amy Kyllo; but for her it’s been a unique year for an entirely different reason other than COVID-19.
            For the past 10 months she’s served as the 66th Princess Kay of the Milky Way.
            As Princess Kay, she’s gotten to travel around the state talking about dairy farming and being an ambassador for the Midwest Dairy Association.

Randolph “Randy” Scott grew up in Augusta, GA where His his father worked as a prison guard in a family of four boys. Randy said he played football and basketball while in high school and would play tennis in the city parks and was in the scout program.                  
He had a variety of jobs such as a short order cook and also cleaning up at the well-known Augusta National Golf Course, famous for the Masters tournament.