Twenty-five years ago, six young Future Farmers of America members from Minnesota joined together as the state officer team to lead the state’s blue corduroy wearing youth.

Tom Pierson, Mark Nelson, Terri Nintemann, Steven Olson, Clarice Horsager and Fred Troendle came together from varied backgrounds to unite as the top officers of the state’s FFA. Though the group had specific officer titles, it was echoed numerous times over that there were no egos, no power struggles, just a lot of teamwork.

“It was a good team,” said Olson, treasurer from that 1983-84 team. “There were a lot of personalities, but no big egos. ... I don’t remember a clearing-the-air session.”

Here are the stories of the six individuals who came together as a team, worked together, and left as friends and extended family.

Tom Pierson, President

World traveler and working for one of the largest agricultural companies in the world would not have been on Tom Pierson’s future to-do list if you had asked him back in Pipestone High School.

“I probably would have said that I would go to college, work in some ag business for a few years and then head back to the farm,” said the 1982 high school grad.

After graduating from the University of Minnesota with an animal science degree, Pierson went to work for Cargill in animal nutrition, and has been there ever since.

“Having the opportunity to work in business and the industry, I just developed the passion for staying in the business.”

His first 16 years with Cargill were spent in various locations in Iowa, Kansas and Illinois before moving to the headquarters in Minneapolis. The family now lives in Watertown, just west of the Twin Cities.

Pierson’s current position is a process designer for Cargill’s Tartan Project. “Cargill looked around its global business and saw 850 different systems that were being used.” Pierson is among about 400 employees and contractors with the charge of getting those 850 systems down to one or two main systems and 20 to 30 auxiliary systems. So far this group is about 1 1/2 years into the eight- to 15-year project.

“This is a huge task,” he said. “There are all sorts of legal and reporting issues. ... down to the fine detail of what an invoice would look like in other countries.”

For a guy who grew up on a farm near Woodstock, his first trip to Honduras was a real eye opener. “We walked into the hotel in San Pedro Sula, and the doorman had a pistol on,” Pierson remembers. “I knew I wasn’t in southwestern Minnesota anymore.”

The youngest of three brothers, Pierson did have the opportunity to come back to farm, but he enjoyed the passion the Cargill career provided. Mark, the oldest Pierson, farmed for a short time before heading to Colorado, at which point Steve, a diesel mechanic, came back to the farm, where he still operates the beef cattle and row-crop farm.

Though he didn’t follow his brothers into farming, he did follow them into FFA in high school. “Mark was a chapter officer and Steve was in ag mechanics,” the youngest brother said. “We all had our strong suits. ... it was just the natural thing to do to follow them into FFA.”

In addition to following his brothers, Pierson had the benefit of three FFA advisers — Marlin Berg, Dennis Parsley and Robert Baumgard — as well as supportive parents (Ray and Mavis). “They (his parents) were extremely supportive, not in the way of pushing,” he said.

That made it that much more rewarding to witness his parents receiving their honorary state FFA degree during the convention when the younger Pierson retired from office. “It was neat to see them get the award,” he said, “especially when you consider the situation.”

The winter of 1983-84 is still the snowiest on record for the Twin Cities, so it was only fitting for one more blast to come in late April 1984, during that year’s FFA convention. “I talked to them on Sunday night before they would come up on Monday and said that I’d understand if they couldn’t make it.” They made it, “I think they wanted to be there that evening” for the award ceremony.

That was during calving season back on the farm. “I think there was a calf in the basement of our house while they were in the cities.”

Tom and his wife, Sherri, are following the same pattern of encouragement, but not pushing with their own children — Laurel, 16, Tyler, 14, and Spencer, 12.

“The kids want it, they want to be in FFA,” he said. The family lives in the Watertown-Mayer School District, but the children attend school in Waconia, which has a joint FFA agreement with Chaska High School.

“Laurel has ag in her interests; I could see her doing something with equine.” The Pierson children have been getting their fill of showing horses and cattle in 4-H arenas.

Mark Nelson, Vice President

Mark Nelson’s career has soared, with a lot of credit given to FFA experiences.

Nelson was raised on the Rush City-area dairy farm of his parents, David and Janice Nelson. “I was a dairy farmer before I was a state officer, so I thought that I would be doing that.”

It’s his other job that he not sure he’d have if he hadn’t gone through FFA and achieved the leadership level that he did. After getting the “bite” to take up flying, Nelson and his wife, Carrie, took a bigger bite and started Hawk Aviation at the Rush City Airport. “A lot of my teaching experience, leadership and speaking in front of people really helped me get to where I am today, and all that credit goes to FFA,” he said.

A brother-in-law and another friend had been pestering Nelson about taking flying lessons because they were. He finally relented to at least take a ride. “Carrie and I hugged before we took off because we thought that was the last time we would see each other.”

He obviously survived, but “I was scared to death. It was a bumpy ride.” He told Carrie he’d give it another try, which he did, and then he was bit.

That first flight was in October of 1993, and by the next summer he had his license. In 1999 he started the flight school. The couple thought they’d get a student or two, but “within a year we had about 30 students.” He said they run a consistent 25 to 30 students at different stages in their training.

“We expected to see a drop in students with the downturn in the economy, but that hasn’t happened.” Nelson has five other instructors working for him, and they pull students from about a 50-mile radius.

In addition to training new pilots, Hawk Aviation also provides a charter flight service.

Nelson learned that even a flight school located in Rush City can be impacted by events on a much larger scale. “We had just started a construction project (at Hawk Aviation) on Sept. 10, 2001,” he said. “We were wondering if we should scrap the project, but we continued on.”

As most remember, most flights were grounded immediately after the hijacking attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and remained grounded for some time, including even small aircraft. “They were only allowing some airlines and pipeline inspection flights,” he said. A couple days after 9/11 a couple of men from Enron showed up needing flights to do pipeline inspections. “We got the contract to fly inspection flights of their pipeline from Mason City to Duluth.”

Nelson estimates that he averages about 20 to 30 hours in the air each week, making him a juggler of schedules to maintain both the dairy farm and Hawk Aviation.

“I still milk in the morning and at night, come up here for a few hours during the day,” he said. “If we’re planting or something else that needs to be done on the farm, that takes priority.”

With the five other instructors, Nelson has the luxury of being able to spread the Hawk workload around.

Mark’s dad, David, still works the family’s Grade Holstein dairy farm, where they milk 60 to 70 cows. Mark attended the University of Minnesota for four quarters in dairy science, with the intent of coming back to the farm.

“I’m an only child, and that was quite an investment to pass up on.”

Mark and Carrie have 12-year-old triplets — Kevin, Kyle and Kayla — who help out on the farm, and they currently show dairy animals in 4-H.

“I do tell them all that they can get out of FFA and 4-H, but it is up to them,” Mark said. “I’m not going to push them one way or the other.”

Terri Nintemann, Secretary

Twenty-five years later, Terri Nintemann looks back on her FFA state officer days as a “real intense experience ... we really learned to work together.”

That working together and her other FFA experiences have had “an impact on people, even though you may not be aware of the impact you had on them.”

Nintemann recalls a school reunion last summer at St. Charles. “The superintendent got up and told a story of how he got a call to come to the state FFA convention — because of me.” It was customary to invite school administrators to the state FFA convention when one of their former students was retiring from state office. “I think it’s good that the schools are recognized at the state level. To maybe stress the importance of agriculture programs to the administration,” she said. “Giving recognition and thanking people publicly is really important.”

Saying goodbye during her retirement address was “a little sad,” but also rather interesting.

The aforementioned snow storm forced Nintemann to give her address in the dark using a portable microphone. “I’m a big believer of having plans A, B and C. I guess it paid off.”

That planning has served Nintemann well in her professional life; not that she’s where she planned on being.

After graduating from St. Charles High School, she started at the University of Minnesota with the plan of being a veterinarian. She even graduated from the U of M with an animal science major and an ag economics minor.

“The turning point was being a state officer,” she said. “That’s when I thought that I wanted to go into public service.”

While still in college, in the spring of 1985, she was an intern for then-Sen. Rudy Boschwitz. She stayed in Washington, D.C., that summer when a receptionist position opened in the senator’s office. She came back to the U of M that fall to finish her senior year.

In June 1986, after graduating, she moved back to D.C. “I told friends I was only going for one year, now here I am still.”

When she first returned to Washington, she worked as a legislative assistant for Farm Credit Services, before rejoining the Boschwitz team, where she worked 1986-91 as legislative assistant.

She then worked for one year for Michigan Rep. Dave Camp. In 1992, she became legislative director for Sen. Richard Lugar on the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry. It is here where she started to tackle food safety issues which have become one of her passions.

While with the Senate ag committee, Nintemann sees her major accomplishments as the completion of the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, the 1996 and 2002 farm bills and the 1998 Ag Research Bill.

In 2003 she joined the Food Safety and Inspection Service Office of Public Affairs, Education and Outreach as the deputy assistant administrator. Three years later she was named assistant administrator of the office which is now the Office of Public Affairs and Consumer Education.

In this role she carries out internal and external communications about FSIS policies, priorities and activities to protect public health. “I also oversee the food safety campaign” of the FSIS, which includes the “Ask Karen” website. Ask Karen is a Food Safety Education website featuring Karen, a virtual FSIS representative to whom you can pose questions about foodborne illnesses, safe food handling, preparation and handling.

(“Ask Karen” can be found online at www.fsis.usda.gov/food%5Fsafety%5FEducation/Ask%5FKaren/#Question.)

Nintemann and her husband, Vincent Kiernan, live in Alexandria, Va., with their two children: Emily, 9, and Matthew, 7.

Nintemann tries to get her family back to Minnesota a couple times a year, to visit her father, John, who is still on the St. Charles-area farm, and her sisters: Cheryl who still lives in St. Charles, and Karen Hartman who lives in Rochester. Nintemann’s mother, Jan, died in 1994.

The importance of family has taken on a greater significance recently with Nintemann. In October, Vincent was diagnosed with throat cancer and underwent a regiment of radiation and chemotherapy from November through January. “We’re on the journey ... his doctors are optimistic and we are too,” she said. “We have had huge support from my fellow state officers.”

Even with all of the policy accomplishments Nintemann can rattle off, she admits her greatest accomplishments are Emily and Matthew. “Raising them the best that we can, and passing on the responsibility of public service is a huge accomplishment as I see it.”

Steven Olson, Treasurer

The third time was a charm for Steven Olson as he ran for, and became, the Minnesota state FFA treasurer for the 1983-84 team.

“I ran for state office the same year that I was regional president,” Olson said, feeling that he was overlooked that year since he was already on the regional slate. “Then I ran the next year, and didn’t get on.”

One more try, and he accomplished what he really wanted.

Though he graduated from Moorhead High School in 1981, Olson got his FFA start as a freshman in Roseau, and he was able to attend the National FFA Convention “what an eye-opening experience.”

After that year, the family moved to Moorhead, where Steve’s dad, an adult vo-ag instructor, had a farm. The younger Olson started college at North Dakota State University in Fargo with a double major of ag education and ag economics. He transferred to the University of Minnesota the fall after he was elected to state FFA office.

“My plan was to teach high school ag, do that for four years, and see what options there were, probably go into sales,” he remembers. After a “great experience” student teaching in Fairmont, “it came time for me to graduate, and I wasn’t sure that that’s what I wanted to do.”

A job Olson held during college, supervisor of housekeepers at the University of Minnesota Hospital, taught him a valuable lesson. “I learned there were people who loved what they were doing, and some who didn’t want to go to work,” he said. “I knew that I wanted to enjoy what I did for a living.”

With that, he went to work for the AgriGrowth Council as a policy intern.

From there he spent five years in part-time and full-time positions with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture working in various aspects of policy development. Olson then went to work with the Agricultural Utilization Research Institute in an assistant business marketing position in the Marshall office.

“That was rewarding because we got more immediate feedback from the companies we were working with,” he said. He remembers pulling together ethanol groups and started looking at the co-products of the process. “We needed to look at how to better use those co-products.”

His work at the MDA, AURI and AgriGrowth familiarized him with Minnesota commodity groups, preparing him for his current position as executive director of the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association.

Olson’s duties also include working with the Broiler and Egg Association of Minnesota, the Midwest Poultry Federation and the Minnesota Turkey Research & Promotion Council.

“There was a learning curve, there still is a learning curve,” he said, since joining the poultry world eight and a half years ago. Working with about 450 MTGA members and about 300 in the BEAM, Olson represents growers and finds himself dealing with animal health issues, air emissions and research.

As of late, Olson said some of the focus has switched from promoting poultry products to promoting the poultry growers. “We need to tell the story of the great job that these growers do day in and day out,” he said.

Olson has also made a habit of promoting Minnesota FFA. He served for four years on the Minnesota FFA Alumni Board and now serves on the National FFA Alumni Council.

Having experienced the benefits of FFA, Olson stresses what the next generation can get from the organization. “It’s important to draw kids in,” he said. “If they go into ag or not, they can still benefit from the background.”

He’s using some of that encouragement within his own household. Steve and Cindy have two sons: Ryan, a Buffalo High School freshman, and Eric, a fifth grader.

“Ryan is interested in becoming a vet, but he’s following that on his own,” he said. “I keep encouraging him, but he’s got to make the decisions for himself.”

Clarice Horsager Esslinger, Reporter

Clarice Horsager’s parents raised her and her siblings with the ethic “that if you’re going to do something, do it to its fullest.”

That ethic took her to the state FFA officer team and around the world and back.

Even though her father, Clarence, had been an agricultural teacher, she said her family was more involved in 4-H, “though they never discouraged us in FFA.”

Clarice and her older brother Kent raised sheep together on the family’s farm near Verndale, and it was Kent who “pushed me to do things in FFA.” Since there was a revolving door of ag teachers at Verndale High School, Clarice said she was pushed by those around her. Charles Funk, the FFA adviser at Motley High School, “really took me under his wing.”

That support, and her parents’ encouragement to “take things as far as you can” found Clarice running for, and obtaining, a state FFA office in 1983, the spring of her senior year in high school.

Clarice attended the University of Minnesota, where she achieved a double major in ag education and animal science. “I thought that I wanted to work in Extension,” she said. “I knew I wanted to work with adults.”

After graduating from the U of M in 3 1/2 years, Clarice joined her husband, Dan, in California. While out West, Clarice got her masters degree in InterCultural studies. Shortly thereafter, the couple made a move that would be fulfilling, but also take them around the world.

Through a British Christian-based aid organization, the couple found themselves in a remote area of Nepal. “The community we were in was a two-day walk from the nearest road,” she said. “They had never seen a wheel before. That is how primitive these people were. We were the first white people most of these had ever seen.”

The couple spent seven years in Nepal, their oldest (Kent) and youngest (Katie) children were born while in Nepal, while Paul was born in the United States while the family was stateside for a visit.

“I was most nervous for Katie, because I knew how births, and what the facilities, were like here,” she said. Kent and Katie were delivered in a Nepal hospital, but they could have been delivered in the village where the family lived. “I had a mid-wife with me, so she could have done the delivery like all the other locals.”

The Esslingers worked with a Nepali staff of about 40 to improve the communities in which they worked. “We were trying to empower the low caste communities,” she said. “We had the resources, but we spent a lot of time helping them to identify their strengths.”

Conversely to Clarice’s current job of teaching African refugees in Mankato to learn English, while in Nepal her family learned the native tongue. “They (the locals) had no need for English, so we learned their language,” she said.

Learning the Nepali language was only one step to assimilating into the local village. Being such a remote village, Clarice and Dan had no choice but to forgo all the conveniences they left behind in the United States. “We ate every meal over fire,” she said. “If you needed to start your fire, you went to your neighbor’s fire and took flame from their fire to start your fire.”

Meal planning takes on a whole new meaning in Nepal, as a family needs to acquire an entire year’s worth of rice at harvest time. “I wouldn’t have known that you needed to get your entire rice supply at harvest if someone hadn’t told me,” she said. “Also, I had no idea how much to even ask for for my family for an entire year.”

The Esslinger family moved back to Minnesota in 1999, and she said they have maintained some contact with the results of their efforts while in Nepal.

“We’ve heard that health has improved due to us helping get a clean water supply, and women are going to school,” she said. Rather than simply putting the progress in motion, the Esslingers and the staff they worked with taught the locals how to carry out these initiatives. “If we would have just done the work for them, these things wouldn’t last.”

Clarice now teaches adult basic education with the Refugee Resettlement program in Mankato, teaching adults, mainly from African nations, who never attended school in their home country.

Clarice’s teaching goes beyond helping them learn the English language; her teaching also involves getting the students assimilated into the U.S. culture. “There are a lot of things about our culture that they just don’t understand.”

Service is important to the Esslinger family, “we’ve tried to teach the kids not to get too individualized in what they’re doing. We try to teach them life skills.”

Fred Troendle, Sentinel

Fred Troendle has spent most of his life in a classroom.

His involvement has provided Troendle with a unique experience in that he was in FFA in high school, served as a state officer, taught high school agriculture for 10 years and then went to work for the National FFA Foundation.

“I really enjoyed working with the presidents of ag companies, telling the success story that FFA had to offer to raise money for the Foundation,” he said. His territory in that position covered about 25 percent of the country, and he was able to increase the Foundation’s giving from $1 million to $1.8 million.

When you feel so strongly about something such as FFA as Troendle does, it’s not hard to make the sale.

“I’d still be doing that if the Foundation hadn’t moved their offices.” Troendle worked in the Foundation’s Madison, Wis., office until it was decided to move the Foundation’s office to the FFA main office in Indianapolis, Ind. “We didn’t feel like moving the family that much further away from grandparents.”

The Troendle family came back to the St. Charles area where he had taught high school agriculture and adult farm management. He had the opportunity to come back to the family’s farm or to get back to teaching.

He opted for a different career path, that of a certified financial planner for Ameriprise Financial.

“I’m still an educator, just in a classroom of two rather than a classroom of 25,” he said. “I’m using some of the same techniques of identifying critical skills to help students attain their goals. You still need to identify critical skills to help these families attain their financial goals.

“Discipline isn’t quite the problem either.”

A lot of Troendle’s clients are ag-related, but he does not help them with farm management planning, instead concentrating on his clients’ personal finances.

In helping his clients achieve personal financial stability, he helps them work at setting goals. “FFA taught me to step back and set realistic goals,” he said. The current economic situation can make financial planning difficult, but Troendle tells his clients “to step back and visualize what we can control. We can’t control the market.”

He claims that approach has been working for his business and his clients. “We have done better than the market. None of my clients are worse off.”

Troendle and his staff of three work with about 240 clients, 100 to 150 of whom pay an annual retainer for Ameriprise services. When Troendle gets a new client, he prefers to present them with a comprehensive plan to “help them identify where we can help them based on what’s important to them.”

Once again, setting their goals.

Speaking of goals, Troendle remembers as a Spring Grove youth setting the goals that by the time he was out of college for five years he wanted to own his own house, be a lawyer and make $40,000 a year.

From those goals, Troendle built up a strong FFA program in St. Charles, worked for the FFA Foundation and now manages about $100 million for his clients.

Troendle remembers listening to Zig Ziglar at a National FFA Convention when he told the youth clad in blue to set their goals, and when you do that you’ll see that you can go further.

That thought process, the work ethic he was raised with and encouragement from his high school ag teacher JoEllen Seaman all had a part in shaping Troendle as he is today. “She encouraged me to stay involved.”

“I was No. 7 of nine children, and only one of us (the youngest) got to go out for sports,” he said. “We were all working on the farm” which had dairy, beef, hogs and crops.

Fred and Sandra Troendle are raising three children on 11 acres near St. Charles. Fred’s office is at the home site. Adam is a junior business major at Winona State University, Jason is a junior at St. Charles High School and Rachel is a sophomore. Jason is following in his father’s footsteps as he is currently the chapter FFA president and is in his second year as Region 8 vice president.

Fred has experienced what FFA can do for an individual, and he’s willing to share that with his children. “I tell him (Jason) ‘this is what it did for me, but you have to decided for yourself’,” he said. “No other organization teaches leadership like FFA does.”

Closing remarks

Pierson believes getting youth involved in FFA can only benefit the individual youth themselves, as well as the world around them.

“You get freshmen, sophomores and juniors involved in FFA and they can really step forward.” he said. “The teacher is the adviser, not the leader. You get the kids involved and they become the leaders. Then the parents get comfortable to trust them with the responsibilities they are given.”

Nintemann has no idea where she’d be in life if she had not experienced FFA. “I’m glad where I am. Looking back I can see how everything fit together to get me where I am today. ... I do think being a state officer was a big key to where I am at today. The confidence and the teamwork that we learned is invaluable.”

Esslinger feels the “opportunities in FFA give you some confidence to pursue something that may not be the easy choice. If God calls you to do something, you do it.

“Security is not that important; experiences are worth it if you can help someone along the way,” she said.