News - Local News

POSTED: Sunday, Jan. 11, 2009

Memorial service honors lawmaker with Midwest roots

In a sense, locals can thank H.A. "Barney" Goltz's asthma for his years of service representing Bellingham in the state House and Senate.

They also can thank Hubert Humphrey, who, as a college instructor, inspired a young Goltz with his energy, intelligence and his populist liberalism.

"Barney and I and thousands of others went for him right away," said Walter Mondale, a longtime friend and a college acquaintance of Goltz's.

Mondale, like Humphrey, later served as vice president of the United States and made a run for the presidency.

Goltz became a school administrator and planner. He moved to Bellingham in 1957 to work at Western Washington University, and later won people's votes, respect and love for his hard work, tempered by his easygoing nature, in the Legislature in the 1970s and '80s.

Goltz died Dec. 25 at the age of 84. His memorial service is today, Jan. 11, at Western.

Goltz grew up during the Depression on a small farm in southwest Minnesota, the second-oldest of four boys. But farming wasn't in his future. His mother, Olga, made sure of that.

"When you have asthma, baling hay is a problem," said Goltz's son, Jeff, a deputy state attorney general in Olympia. "He went to Macalester (College) because she realized that farming was not for him."

Goltz learned some lasting lessons before he attended college in St. Paul. Times were hard on the family farm. Muskrat, pheasant and rabbit augmented their meals. Entertainment consisted of card games with the neighbors, picnics with family and an occasional movie.

Formal education came in a one-room schoolhouse where the teacher was sometimes paid in produce and students cleaned the blackboard, swept the floor and hauled the water.

Goltz's father, Albert, did his best to hold to his values. He refused to burn corn instead of coal to heat their house, even when corn was dirt cheap, because corn was food, not fuel. And he was deeply troubled when a farmers' group forced other farmers to dump their milk into the ditch in an effort to boost its price. In the end, Albert killed himself was Barney not quite a teen.

"He worried so much about how he was going to feed his children and his wife," said Jane Ann Goltz Nash of Minnetonka, Minn., wife of the late Gene Goltz, Barney's youngest brother. "He was a very sensitive man."

Olga stayed strong after her husband died. She bought a farm and raised turkeys, with help from her boys and an occasional hired hand. Their farm sat on flat land, open to winter winds cold enough to freeze chamber pots in the boys' bedrooms.

After Olga died, Jane Ann Goltz retrieved her dish towels and found them held together with carefully stitched patches.

"I'm sure she taught those boys, 'Use what you have, take care of what you have,'" she said.

At Macalester, Goltz's horizons broadened. He acted in school plays, served in student government and worked on the campus newspaper.

"He was having lots of fun," Jeff Goltz said. "Lots of pictures of him laughing and smiling."

Humphrey taught political science at Macalester for a year while Goltz was a student, and spent the next year as a news commentator for a local radio station. He ran twice for mayor of Minneapolis, and won the second time, with Goltz's help.

In time, Goltz settled in the Northwest and carved his own political legacy. But he faithfully returned to Minnesota for high school reunions, where everyone still called him Harold.

"Barney regarded his life on the farm as genuinely formative of his later character," said Hugh Fleetwood, a retired Western professor and a good friend. "It was something he valued very highly."

Contact Dean Kahn at dean.kahn@bellinghamherald.com or 715-2291. Read his Now and Then blog at TheBellinghamHerald.com/blogs.