Patricia Helmberger

1935 - 2026

Patricia Lavonne Helmberger, age 90, died peacefully on March 12, 2026, in Tower, Minn. having suffered for several years with a series of health complications.

Patricia, who went by Pat, was born on July 22, 1935, in Lengby, Minn., the youngest of six children born to William and Eva Stave (Hilliard). Both her father and mother worked hard to provide for the family during the tough times of the Great Depression. Her parents operated a small general store in Lengby for several years and did many other things to make ends meet.

Pat left home as a teenager, lived off and on with relatives in Brainerd, before attending Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. She later moved back to Minnesota, where she worked as a secretary in the Twin Cities area before marrying Richard A. Helmberger on May 27,1960. The couple had three children, Marshall, Zachrey, and Clair and settled in Bloomington.

Pat cared deeply about people and the natural world and those concerns motivated her throughout her life. She became politically aware and active after meeting Richard and the couple became intensely involved in opposing the Vietnam war and in supporting like-minded political candidates throughout the 1960s and 70s.

While living in Bloomington, Pat earned an AA degree from Normandale Community College and eventually earned a BA in journalism from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Along the way, she also earned a 2nd degree black belt in karate. She may have been petite, but you didn't want to mess with her.

In the late 1980s, Pat became the full-time assistant to the mayor of Bloomington, a job that she loved. She also served as the chair of the Bloomington Human Rights Commission for several years during that time. She went on to serve as a legislative aide for state Rep. Phil Riveness and later to state Sen. Keith Langseth. She loved working at the Capitol in St. Paul and found her work with constituents especially rewarding.

While working at the Legislature, she gained notoriety for her greeting card business, which she ran with a friend. During the term of then-Gov. Jesse Ventura, she produced greeting cards that gently poked fun at the governor. The cards were instantly popular at the Capitol, but Ventura didn't see the fun. Despite a cease-and-desist letter from Ventura's attorney, she continued to find ways to inject political humor into her creations and her little tiff with the governor was a brief media sensation in the Twin Cities.

Pat's writing wasn't limited to greeting cards. She had three books published on topics as wide-ranging as heart transplants to the Indian mascot issue and was a community columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune for a time. She also wrote poetry and was published in several anthologies. Her best-known poem was later set to music by a Nashville producer.

Pat was also an active gardener and wherever she lived she converted most of her lawn to flower gardens, with plantings specifically for bees and other pollinators. In her retirement, she moved from Bloomington to Duluth, and later to Grand Rapids to live with her new committed partner, Jack Mooty, years after her divorce from Richard. While in Grand Rapids, she helped found a local group, called Earth Circle, that worked on various environmental causes, particularly focused on the environmental dangers of single-use plastics, a cause she continued to wage even as her health declined.

When Jack's declining health forced him into an assisted living facility, Pat's children moved her to Tower to enable them to care for her in a home they renovated to fit her unique tastes. In her final year, thanks to daily care from her son Zachrey, she was able to remain in her home until her final few weeks, which she spent at Vermilion Senior Living in Tower.

Pat was preceded in death by her parents, her five siblings, James, Darrell, Ardelle (Danks), Marilyn (Ablegaard), and Marion (Boisjolie), her ex-husband Richard, her partner Jack, and her honorary son, Jerome Renville. She is survived by her three children, her daughter-in-law Jodi Summit, grandson Maxwell Helmberger, numerous nieces and nephews, and her longtime furry companion Sylvester.

A small memorial service will be held this summer when her ashes are interred at her family's plot in Lengby.