Eunice Lindberg Milbrath's classrooms were full of color, creativity and hands-on experiences. As a kindergarten teacher in the Minneapolis Public Schools, she spent nearly three decades taking children on nature walks, teaching them to write poetry and helping them put on plays and puppet shows. One class even corresponded with "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood."
"She had this energy that flowed from her," said her youngest child, Laurie Sugiarto of Minneapolis. "That's what made her such a fantastic kindergarten teacher. She believed children learned by using all of their five senses."
Lindberg Milbrath died July 1 of complications from pneumonia. She was 94.
Born Nov. 9, 1924, at the onset of the Great Depression, she grew up roller skating and picking mulberries in the rural town of Lincolnville, Kan. Her father owned the mercantile store, and she often scooped ice cream on Wednesdays after free movie nights. She had three younger siblings — all of whom she outlived — and discovered a love of reading and the outdoors at an early age.
She moved to Minneapolis in 1947 when she married Elwood Lindberg, a fellow Kansan and Bethany College graduate who had landed a job as a social studies teacher at Minnehaha Academy. The couple settled in the neighborhood nearby and raised two daughters and a son.
After Lindberg died in 1996, she married a man she met through a community garden, Bill Milbrath, whose wife had recently died. The two divorced in 2011, after about 15 years.
Lindberg Milbrath earned a degree in music education at Bethany and spent a year teaching music to high school and elementary students in Kansas.
But it was 14 years later, at the age of 37 and with two school-age children, that she earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota and found her true calling in nursery schools, kindergarten and primary education.
