Northwest School of Agriculture alumna checks off two bucket list items with 70th reunion and 90th birthday

I learned a lot, it was a great learning experience here at this school for me.

Back in June 2025, Bernice Jones Rosett 1955, a Northwest School of Agriculture (NWSA) alumna, said she had two recent bucket list items. One was to make it to the 2025 NWSA All-School Reunion, 70 years after she graduated high school, and the other was to make it to her 90th birthday in July. Check and check. Rosett did both.

Bernice grew up in Goodridge, Minnesota, where her family raised turkeys and chickens on the farm. Her dad wanted her to have "more exposure" to people compared to their 'small town', so off to the school in Crookston she went.

"The first year was really new for me as a farm girl living in a dorm as a new way of life," Rosett described. "I lived in Selvig Hall for the first two years and then McCall Hall after, and roomed with my friend Donna Miller all four years. On the weekends we'd go to Donna's farm and play games and cards, or I'd go back to Goodridge and travel with three boys who lived in the area."

In school, Rosett was in choir, loved her home economics classes, and remembers "us girls" signing up for mechanics where they cleaned off carburetors on tractors for a "fun" teacher. She also worked for Tilly Gebhardt in the Kiehle Building all four years helping her in the office and with test grading, jokingly mentioning they wouldn't let her grade her own, plus she helped distribute mail to the campus every Saturday as a work study.

"I enjoyed all my classes and really liked home economics," Rosett explained. "We had home management one time and we got to invite the boys up for supper one night. We stayed up there for maybe two weeks (for home management) and took care of the apartment, cooked, and made candy."

"I learned a lot, it was a great learning experience here at this school for me," she added.

Rosett met her future husband, John, while she was still in school and they were engaged during her last year of classes.

"My husband was the neighbor boy and lived within five miles of where I lived," Rosett shared. "His dad rented property next to ours. I saw him and thought he was a good-looking guy."

"My husband used to say he watched me carry lunch out to my dad (in the field) and the mosquitoes were really bad, and I was cussing up a storm," she added. "John then said 'that was the girl for me' and 'that's the one I want'."

Rosett graduated in March 1955, and she and John were married in May 1955.

They moved to the state of Michigan and, later, after four kids and one on the way, opted to move back to Minnesota where John started a parts store, building onto his brother's repair shop. When the mines in that part of the state went down, Rosett said they had to make arrangements.

"I went around town looking to see what I could do and all I saw was computers, so I decided to go back to school again and went to the Vermillion Community College in Ely, and took up basic typing and computers," she explained. "Then I worked at the Chamber of Commerce for about 19 years and the Dorothy Molter Museum for another 10 (years.)

John passed away in 2003. Bernice said the secret to their happy long marriage was "patience" and "lots of it."

"When he died, he died at home," Rosett disclosed. "(That day) he put out his left hand and asked if I was there. I was in the kitchen with somebody. I came in there and I laid my head in his hand, and that's when he died. 'Til death do us part."

Bernice and John have five children, four grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Getting past the death of her husband, one of their children and one of their grandchildren has been difficult, but Bernice keeps going and looks forward to Ely's Blueberry Arts Festival each year which falls near her birthday.

"My birthday is always during that time, so we go have blueberry pie a la mode and I have eggrolls; I love eggrolls," she offered. "That's part of my (birthday) doing every year. My daughter, Lori, said 'you have to do something special this year' and I said, not necessarily, and I like what I'm doing. Maybe we'll go to a movie."

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