Dec. 24, 2022
James Bernard Riley, 87, a longtime Hutchinson resident, passed away peacefully Dec. 24 in Tucson, Arizona. Memorial service will be 11 a.m. Thursday Jan. 19, at St. Anastasia Church in Hutchinson. Visitation will be at 11 a.m., Mass at noon, with luncheon to follow.
He was born Aug. 9, 1935, during the Great Depression, to John and Olive (Iverson) Riley on a farm north of Kerkhoven in Swift County, the youngest of three sons.
He claimed that the same doctor who delivered him also helped deliver a calf that same August day. The little bovine, named Spotty, was his special cow for many years, until she grew old and was shipped off to the South St. Paul meat market, the usual fate of superannuated dairy cattle. Jim rode down in the big rig to the Cities when it was Spotty’s time — a hard lesson in agricultural economics.
Although today there are empty lots and vacant buildings along the main road through Kerkhoven, during the middle decades of the 20th century, it was a vibrant village that served the much larger farming community all around. Jim recalled a lively time on weekends when farm families came to town for supplies, fun and fellowship. Then, over the decades, with fewer and fewer farmers working more and more acres, using larger and more efficient farm equipment, the community shrank, with the county population falling nearly 40% between 1950 and 2020.
Back in the 1940s, along with about two dozen other neighbor kids, Jim attended a one-room schoolhouse just north of the farm. He carried his lunch in a bucket, usually a sandwich and something sweet like cookies or cake, though Jim liked brownies best. When he was in second grade, he survived polio, a terrifying scourge before the development of a vaccine in the 1950s.
After school, he and his older brothers, David and Glenn, helped with the farm chores. His first task, starting at age five, was to carry two little pails of feed to help his mom feed the chickens, which he liked doing.
He remembers vividly the day they heard on the radio that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States would enter the war. Despite shortages and rationing, Jim said they always had plenty of food on the farm: milk, butter, eggs, chicken, ducks, pigs and beef, along with his mother’s garden, which produced radishes, onions, sweet corn, cucumbers, beets, string beans, tomatoes, good pumpkins, but alas, poor melons. She made bread three times a week and they purchased sugar, coffee, salt, pepper and flour in town.
Jim recollected fun times in the country — skating on farmers’ frozen ponds, card parties, and hunting and fishing. To earn extra money, he trapped muskrat, mink and skunk. There was a fur buyer in every town back then and demand was heightened during the war.
Growing up on a farm and spending so much time outdoors, Jim always knew where he was in the woods, regardless of the weather, that is, until he moved into town later in life. Then, after getting lost once while deer hunting when a blizzard set in quickly, he realized that he would have to carry a compass.
Jim moved on from the little country school to graduate in 1954 from Kerkhoven High School, where he ran the Photography Club. He was soon supposed to report for military service, but was hit by a car just days before his induction. He suffered serious leg injuries which took years to heal, though he continued to work with his father, as he always had, on a series of rented farms — the Erickson place (where Jim was born), the Skinnis place (with the cold house his mother disliked), the Rud place (with the small house but good land), and the Larson place (the last land his father farmed).
In late October 1958, Jim attended a local dance at the Clontarf Club where he met a young woman named Patricia Holzer, a native of Minneapolis, who was visiting a friend in Benson for the weekend. The two danced and hit it off immediately. When Jim stepped away for a moment to get a beverage, a good-looking blonde guy asked Pat to dance, but Jim intervened saying, “she’s my girl.” Perhaps a bit overbearing for a meet cute, but they dated for the next three years, with Jim making the drive from the farm to Minneapolis every six weeks. It was tough to get away from the demanding, daily work of a dairy farm.
Finally, Jim and Pat married on July 8, 1961, in Minneapolis, and Pat, the city girl, started a new life on a quiet farm in west central Minnesota, living next to Jim’s parents. No more Minneapolis hubbub, just cows and chickens and hungry men and eventually four children underfoot. At least she had modern appliances, like a washer and dryer, to make it all more manageable. Later, when Pat learned that the Riley family had gotten indoor plumbing only a few years before her marriage to Jim, she was aghast.
Jim continued to farm alongside his dad through the 1960s, raising corn and soybeans, and caring for their dairy cattle, but he continued to nurture a long-standing desire to continue his education – particularly since the allergies he’d endured since childhood were getting worse and worse. So, in his early thirties, he returned to school earning an associate degree at Willmar Vocational and Technical School (now Ridgewater College) in 1969. He then secured a job as an electronic technician at the 3M plant in Hutchinson, where he worked for nearly 30 years.
The family first lived in MacDonald’s mobile home park in Hutchinson until they purchased the red house on the hill on Main Street above the Crow River. Jim continued to enjoy the outdoors, especially hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, riding his motorcycle, gardening, and taking photographs. He also spent many happy hours repairing cars, old and new.
After retiring in the late 1990s, Jim and Pat traveled extensively across the U.S., including Alaska and Hawaii. Eventually, they became snowbirds, spending summers in Minnesota and winters in Coolidge, near Phoenix, Arizona, where Jim volunteered at Casa Grande National Monument.
Pat died in Arizona on Christmas day 2011. Jim passed away, also in Arizona, on Christmas Eve 2022. Jim will be buried beside his wife in St. Anastasia’s cemetery in Hutchinson.
Jim is survived by his brother Glenn Riley of Alexandria; four children, Susan Riley (Louis) of St. Cloud, Bruce Riley of Maple Grove, Mike Riley (Michelle) of Minneapolis, and Mary Bitter of Augusta, Wisconsin; along with six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
