A public servant. An optimist. A traveler. A farmer.
That's how family members and past and present elected officials remembered Arlen Erdahl, the former Republican congressman and Minnesota secretary of state who died Sept. 21. He was 92.
Born in 1931 and raised on a farm near Blue Earth, Minn., Erdahl served as Faribault County's representative in the Minnesota House between 1963 and 1970. In 1967 and 1968, he served in a congressional fellowship in the U.S. Capitol offices of Gerald Ford, then-congressman from Michigan and eventual president, and he was Minnesota's secretary of state from 1970 to 1974.
He was elected a U.S. representative for Minnesota's First Congressional District in 1979, where he served until 1983.
His policies emphasized agriculture, the environment, foreign affairs and supporting the disabled, a passion he developed after watching his twin brother, Lowell, with whom he attended a one-room school in their formative years, struggle with polio.
In a statement, Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon said Erdahl had a lasting effect on the state.
"Arlen Erdahl was a dedicated public servant of tremendous reach whose positive influence was felt for decades at the office of secretary of state," he said.
Tim Penny, a former Minnesota state senator who also served as congressman for the First Congressional District, said Erdahl was a good man who "had the heart of a public servant." Penny, who interned in the St. Paul office where Erdahl worked as secretary of state, admired him for his good judgment, for being moderate in his politics, and his reputation for getting things done.