Allard Stevens

Allard Stevens passed away Thursday, August 8, 2019 at Granite Falls Health at the age of 98.

Memorial services will be held Saturday, August 17, 2019 at 10:30 AM at Yellow Medicine Lutheran Church in Hanley Falls, MN.  Vicar Myron Crawford will officiate and interment will be in East Yellow Medicine Lutheran Cemetery.

Visitation will be held on Friday, August 16, 2019 from 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM at Yellow Medicine Lutheran Church with a prayer service starting at 6:30 PM.  Visitation will continue one hour prior to services at the church on Saturday.

Memorials are preferred to Yellow Medicine Lutheran Church in Hanley Falls, MN.

Allard E. Stevens, 98, was born in 1920 to Edgar and Mabel Stevens on the farmstead in Hazel Run Township, Yellow Medicine County, where he lived until his passing. He graduated from Hanley Falls High School in 1938 and worked the farm with his father, Edgar.

Al married Judith Olson of Hazel Run in 1941. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps in Oct. 1942 training B-26 flight crews in Texas. He was discharged as Airborne Radio Operator/Mechanic when the war ended in 1945. He returned home to his wife and twin daughters, Sandra and Sharon, who were then two-and-a-half years old. A third daughter, Marilynn, joined the family in 1949. He rejoined the military in 1957 with the Air Force Reserve and was awarded Outstanding Air Force Reservist for the USA in 1970. He was discharged from MN Air Guard as Senior Master Sergeant in 1977.

Al retired from farming in 1960 and went to work for Rodgers Hydraulics. He left Rodgers in 1968 to begin a career teaching Fluid Power (Hydraulics) at the new Granite Falls Technical School. His wife Judy lost her battle with cancer in 1978, and he retired from teaching in 1980.

In 1981, Al married Ann (Norman) Hamre, adding daughter Susan and son Bob to his family. After he answered an ad for Air Force reservists to serve with FEMA, Al’s next 20 years were punctuated by 95 responses to evaluate natural disasters in locations Coast to Coast and Puerto Rico. He retired from FEMA in 2002, which allowed him to pursue genealogy research and collecting and restoring antique tractors, mainly Twin City and Minneapolis-Moline. Al and Ann’s later years were enriched with volunteer work, and they walked three days a week at the KCC, a practice he continued after Ann’s death in 2013 until his own on Aug. 8, 2019.

Al is survived by his children: Sandra (Derrald) Meyer of Granite Falls; Sharon (John) Stamson of Longville; Marilynn (Mick) Mohrlant of Oakdale; Susan Hamre (Martin Keller) of Minneapolis, and Bob Hamre of Richfield; 14 grandchildren; 21 great-grandchildren and 2 great-great-grandchildren; brother-in-law Richard Norman and sister-in law Kaye Norman, and several nieces and nephews.

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