Marion Cederberg Lotti

Fred Rogers had this thing where he would ask people to think of someone "who had loved them into being.” You can see the effect it had on people at the 1997 Emmy Awards. Today, I am reminded of the reason why I carry around two four-leaf clovers in my wallet. It’s not because I’m Irish, and not because I believe they grant good luck; rather, it's because they remind of the person who gave them to me.

Marion Cederberg was born in 1912 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as the second of six children. Her father was a first-generation Swedish immigrant; her mother was second generation Swedish-American. She finished two years of high school, then got married in 1935, and -- while raising two girls -- continued to work as a "Floor Lady" at a wholesale nut supplier.

It is said that her first husband, Charles Fay, had run around on her, so she divorced him, which was a relatively uncommon thing at the time. The story goes that on the day her divorce was final, she brought in a fifth of whiskey to her workplace and invited everyone to have a drink with her. She married her second husband, Charles Lotti, in 1944, but had no more children. Her grandson Steven Steve Kottke was born to her elder daughter Carol in 1952.

I remember my Granda Marion from the trips my family took to Minnestoa in the 1980s. It was during one or two of those visits that she gave me these four-leaf clovers, and I've managed to keep track of them ever since. I'd like to think she'd be happy about that.


Grandma Marion is the reason I know what lutefisk is. She tended to use the phrase “and that there” in the same way as others would say "yadda yadda yadda" or "and so on." She had a distinctly Minnesota accent, a tendency to be very direct, and no compunction being silly in pictures.

In 1996, she came down to visit for my sister's high school graduation, and this is the only picture that I've ever taken of her.

She passed away in 2006, two days shy of her 93rd birthday.