Living Lyle’s legacy

By Melinda Lavine Duluth News Tribune

It’s warm in Trish Northey’s sun room, not in temperature — it’s something else.

Daylight peers in from several windows, the wood-paneled walls are stained a rich cream. There are plaques and pictures of her husband, Lyle Northey, and a sign that reads “Love, Friends, Sunshine and God welcome here.”

Trish Northey points to a clear case on the wall. “Every golf ball on there is a course we golfed. He keeps changing them,” she says, before she remembers.

“When he was here, he’d take one out and put another one in. The center one is Two Harbors.”

Lyle Northey died March 25, and in a way, the case symbolizes how he lived his life — with Two Harbors at the center, surrounded by loved ones, the sunshine and his faith.

Lyle Northey moved to Two Harbors in 1960 to coach and teach for a year. He later became the school principal and the superintendent. He was the mayor (twice), a city councilor, a school district lobbyist, a baseball coach and a lay pastor.

He reimagined the Salvation Army Red Kettle campaign, he organized park cleanups, he started the Two Harbors Area Fund, he found rides for veterans.

He was a North Shore Rotary member, and a multiple citizen of the year recipient. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

“It’s just an hour here and an hour there,” Lyle Northey said in a 2012 News Tribune story. “Someone has to deliver the meals to people who can’t get out and someone has to drive the cancer patient to treatment. To you it’s just an hour, but for that hour you are the most important person in another person’s life.”

It’s clear in the wake of his passing that his impact surpasses titles or awards.

“Lyle was a friend to anyone who needed one, always smiling, always so very kind,” Two Harbors City Clerk Patricia Nordean said by email.

On Facebook, Mary Ellen Scherzer wrote: “Mr. Northey was my all-time favorite teacher and I thank him for all he taught me about English and LIFE. Frolic with the angels, Mr. N!!”

Added Desiree Lee: “One of my favorite people!! He was so kind and caring! He always encouraged me to work hard for what I wanted.”

He was an effective mediator and team builder, Two Harbors Mayor Chris Swanson said.

“One time, we were talking about a specific project in Two Harbors and I was asking why we hadn’t achieved getting the project done. He smiled at me and said ‘time out’ and he shared one of the approaches that can really help people come together is to ask a question in a different way. It doesn’t come across so in your face.

“I still use that today and it has helped me tremendously in many situations,” Swanson said via email.

Sitting in their Two Harbors living room, his loved ones painted a full picture of the man.

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The time he served detention for his daughter, Nadine Northey, when she was late after daylight saving time and “somehow I decided it was Dad’s fault,” she recalled.

How he’d stop whatever he was doing to give his daughter, Cheryl Oling, a hug in his office before school each morning. How instead of raising money for a new church organ, he’d fundraise for its individual keys, recalled Shawn Northey.

They talked of Lyle Northey’s gifts and limitations, of which he and his loved ones were abundantly aware. (That time when frisbees and a ladder equaled a hospital visit.)

“As inept as maybe he was in his abilities to fix and do construction, it was quite the opposite when it came to a person,” John Wojciuk said.

“He could help you and, for lack of a better word, fix you and make you feel cared for in a way that you could never feel with anyone else. And, he did that not only with us, but with his baseball players, people he coached and that’s what I miss,” Wojciuk continued.

Though, before he helped others, Lyle Northey accepted help himself. He struggled with alcohol addiction in the late 1970s.

“For me, it was hard to recognize,” Nadine Northey said. “Work was always very important to him, so, that — at least for a long time — hadn’t suffered.”

When things got bad, they also got public, and he declared bankruptcy in 1980, which became front-page news, Northey recalled.

It was a time when he felt everything closing in, she said, but, through his despair, he was motivated by three words written on pieces of paper. “That was Dad’s reason for going on, for continuing at that time. It was just Shawn, and I and Lance,” she said.

After a family intervention, Lyle Northey committed to recovery. He went to in-patient treatment at Miller Dwan. He relied on support in his counselor and in his pastor. He built a relationship with a higher power.

“There was a lot of suffering and a lot of pain, and it was very public and affected a lot of people in the community, but he bore through it all. He carried it all and healed and then used that to help him make things better for so many,” Nadine Northey added.

Today, Northey sees how this helped her father uncover his true self and improve the lives of others. “The person was always there, it was just clouded,” she said.

Lyle Northey was transparent about his past and his recovery in his community work, particularly with his mayoral race, recalled his son, Shawn Northey. “It wasn’t, ‘I’m going to hide this.’ I’m going to put it out there, you make your decision,’” he said.

He had a good vision and a plan for Two Harbors, and people really needed that, said his son,

John Wojciuk.

When Trish entered his life, their strengths and limitations, interests and values, made a match. “Is it safe to say he was the only 70-, 80-year-old on an allowance?” Shawn Northey said with a laugh.

“He admits to this day, he can do investments, he can do financial things, but he can’t do the everyday stuff. It just throws him off,” Trish Northey said.

The family talked, through laughter and tears, about having enough educators and administrators in the family to start their own school. The many, many retirement parties from his jobs and volunteer commitments. His power naps, book obsession and impromptu weekends to recharge.

His death still feels surreal, said Wojciuk, who feels like he’s going to spot his father on the golf course or at the bookstore.

“He was the glue,” said Cheryl Oling, but the family is sticking close despite his absence — a fact he’d like.

“It’s day to day for me,” Trish Northey said. The grief is manageable until she comes home to an empty house or makes a meal for one. She still feels a presence of him.

“Now, I load the dishwasher any way I want to, and I say, ‘Lyle, you’re not going to say anything,’” Northey said. “That was our only issue.”

Nadine Northey feels she can connect with him more easily now.

“I feel like he’s always accessible,” she said. Asked about his legacy and how that lives on, his family had many thoughts.

His healing listening skills, his unending well of care for others, these are traits that his five children and his 13 grandchildren try to model in their own ways.

“That he was ‘almost perfect,’” Shawn Northey said, quoting a saying from his father.

“When asked, ‘Why do you do this?’” John Wojciuk recalled, “He’d say ‘Why not?’” u