A nurse, a hunter and also a host of many fine parties

Evelyn (Pedie) Schiele grew up on a farm but took to city life in the Twin Cities with ease.

Schiele, a former psychiatric nurse who later became the Minneapolis leader of the United Nations Association, learned to throw elegant dinner parties. She enjoyed high fashion and modern architecture, but on weekends she would fish and hunt with the men in her family.

As the former leader of the University of Minnesota Faculty Women's Club, she led fundraising efforts to produce cookbooks, one of which included her recipe: "How to Roast Bear."

Schiele, who grew up as one of six children on a dairy farm in Prairie Farm, Wis., died Dec. 15 in St. Paul.

The longtime Minneapolis resident was 97.

When she was 18, Evelyn Pederson moved to the Twin Cities, and in 1932 she graduated from the old Ancker Hospital nursing school in St. Paul.

There she met her husband to be, Dr. Burtrum Schiele, a medical intern who became a psychiatrist, University of Minnesota professor and a pioneer in psychopharmacology.

Her classmate and friend Julia Swab of Arcadia, Calif., recalled she was an efficient nurse.

"Pedie was a kind nurse and was always doing a great deal more than was required," said Swab.

Schiele returned to the Twin Cities in the late 1930s, and soon after she stopped working to raise her children.

By the 1960s, she played leadership roles in the United Nations Association of Minnesota, and in 1974 she became president of the organization.

"The public is more aware that we're living in a time of global interdependence. And this has kindled a new interest in foreign policy," she said in the Aug. 11, 1974, Minneapolis Tribune.

Her own cooking grew in sophistication, said her daughter Linda Schulte-Sasse of Minneapolis.

"Her dinner parties were second to none," said her daughter.

Her husband was a hunter, and she typically hunted birds with him. She bagged a deer once, and she had cooked bear meat that her husband brought home.

She took to water skiing late in life with some trepidation but "with determination," said her daughter.

Schulte-Sasse recalled the days when her mother would be on the phone with business leaders, raising funds for groups she led, such as the university's School of Nursing Foundation.

Schiele's husband died in 1999.

In addition to Linda, she is survived by her other daughter, Gretchen Maynes of Chevy Chase, Md.; son, Charles of Jupiter, Fla.; six grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.