An infatuation with some very tiny creatures has spurred one of the largest donations ever made to Anoka County.
A gift of $300,000 from the estate of Edith Wargo was accepted last week by the Anoka County Board and is believed to be the largest gift ever to the Anoka County Department of Parks and Recreation.
"I was thrilled, shocked, excited when I first heard this was in the works," John VonDeLinde, director of county parks and recreation operations, said on Friday. VonDeLinde said he was made aware of the Wargo family's wishes to make a donation a few months after Edith's death in 2006.
"But I didn't know this was coming," he said.
The money will be used to set up a fund to preserve and enhance parks such as the 15-year-old Wargo Nature Center, named in honor of the late Judge Joseph E. Wargo, an avid bird-watcher who could walk away from his courtroom and find sanctuary if there were feathered creatures for him to observe and study.
"This was not an armchair activity for him," said Linda Workman, niece of the Wargos. "He was an outdoorsman who could identify from distances what a particular bird was."
The judge spoke warmly about his passion for birds and found a willing convert in his wife, whom he met when both were students at the University of Minnesota Law School, from which both graduated in 1938.
Edith's passion for nature continued to blossom long after the judge retired in 1979, after 11 years on the Anoka County bench, and his death in 1987. When Anoka County opened the nature center in his name in 1993 in Lino Lakes, Edith took part in the planning, recalled Lisa Gilliland-Herringer, the center's program supervisor.
