Lowell Andreas had a guffaw that could fill a banquet hall.
He loved a good joke, and would roar his approval at witty turns of phrases and ironic comments.
So it was perfectly appropriate that there was more laughter than tears at his memorial service Friday in First Presbyterian Church.
“He was a renowned storyteller, and his wife Nadine was a great wit, and it was a great experience to be with them when he was on a roll,” said his grandson Andy Lee, one of several eulogists who lauded Andreas’ life.
Andreas, who died Saturday at 87 in his Mankato home, helped grow the Archer Daniels Midland crop processing company into an international giant and donated millions of dollars to a wide range of Mankato endeavors.
Those who spoke at the service remembered him as a 5-foot-9 dynamo who warmed to loud sportcoats and his other home in Naples, Fla., yet hewed to homespun values all his life.
“He hated committees and met with his employees on a personal basis. That’s how he got the information he needed,” son David Andreas said.
Said Lee, “Sure he cruised Naples in a Rolls Royce, but really, he was a simple man.”
Born in tiny Lisbon, Iowa, Andreas used that setting for many of the yarns he spun.
David Andreas told of how his father would talk of walking three miles to school in a town barely a mile long.
And the embellishment didn’t stop there.
“That three miles each day soon became three miles each way,” Andreas said, alluding to how his father’s storytelling paralleled what the crusty frontier newspaper editor advised his reporter in the movie “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”:
“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
Among the many Andreas gifts to the community were those to Minnesota State University.
“Two buildings on campus were constructed because of their gifts,” Minnesota State President Richard Davenport said.
He told of the time former MSU President Margaret Preska went to a Mankato firm’s board of directors meeting to request money to help fund a new astronomy building.
Though the board turned her down, one board member didn’t.
“Lowell followed her out into the hallway and said, ‘They won’t fund it, but I will,’” Davenport said, and soon MSU had a check in hand for $230,000.
Later, the Andreases would provide $1.4 million for the school’s theater that bears their name, then millions more for an endowment in the name of Nadine, who died in 2005.
As a student at the University of Iowa, Andreas pursued his keen interest in philosophy and theology.
“He said those studies trained his mind to solve complex problems,” David Andreas said.
His father said as much decades later when asked to speak at an MSU school of business graduation.
To his hosts’ chagrin, he told the assemblage that anyone wanting a career in business shouldn’t take a bunch of business courses.
Philosophy, history, or English is better because it keens the mind, he told them.
Andreas’ business success afforded him access and friendship with a long list of luminaries. At the Mankato wedding reception for their daughter in the late 1960s, guests included Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale.
In his later years, Andreas and his wife became world travelers, once taking an around-the-globe trip on the Concorde.
“He was successful in so many ways, yet he remained humble and down-to-earth,” Lee said. “We aspire to lead the exceptional life he led.”
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