The educational journey of Charles Nichols took an unconventional turn one day.
A private pilot in the northern suburbs, Nichols was at a hangar in 1990 when he met Jesse Ventura campaigning for mayor of Brooklyn Park. They hit it off. When Ventura became governor of Minnesota a decade later, he appointed Nichols to head the Metropolitan Airports Commission that oversees one of the nation's busiest airports.
Nichols, 89, of Brooklyn Center, died late last month.
During his four years at the Airports Commission, Nichols sought to quash fears that tunnels being dug at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport would drain water from Lake Nokomis and other lakes.
He resisted efforts to scale back an early noise-mitigation program at the airport, warning in 2001 that doing so "will betray the public trust." He cast the deciding vote to extend a package of air conditioning, doors, windows, insulation, ventilation and roof-vent baffles to more than 3,000 homes.
Willing to take a stand, Nichols carved out a reputation for delegating work, a character trait that appealed to his boss.
"He and Jesse kind of had the same philosophy — if you surround yourself with people who are competent and allow them to do their jobs, things will work out," recalled Floyd Anderson, a neighbor and political supporter of Ventura who was a longtime friend of Nichols.
Fan of vocational training
Nichols struggled early in life. He dropped out of high school at age 15 but enrolled a few years later at Dunwoody Industrial Institute in Minneapolis. His daughter Linda Nichols Stokes tells how some college men bet Nichols a quarter that he wouldn't know how to enroll at the University of Minnesota. He did and was accepted.
