By A.M. Kelley
Superior Catholic Herald
Local couple finalists for volunteer of the year
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SUPERIOR -- After countless years of volunteering in the Superior Diocese--50 would not be an inaccurate estimate--one couple has never stopped giving of their time.
In fact it's just the opposite, Marilyn Christopherson said, "We've just begun."
In view of their contributions, Catholic Charities USA has chosen Marilyn and Frank Christopherson Jr. as finalists for its 2008 National Volunteer of the Year Award.
Bishop Peter F. Christensen and Brian Soland, executive director of Catholic Charities Bureau in the Superior Diocese, who nominated the couple, noted that their commitment and leadership "have inspired all who work by their side."
Although outstanding in their own right, the Christophersons are part of a legion of volunteers that help CCB maintain programs essential to the area's disadvantaged.
They are typical of the "good-hearted and talented people" that CCB attracts, Soland said.
Neither Frank nor Marilyn Christopherson started out thinking that a little volunteer project here and there would build to a lifelong involvement within the ranks of CCB and the Superior diocesan community. Volunteering started small and close to their parish, St. Francis Xavier in Superior, in the 1950s when Marilyn and three other women were asked to lead a Girl Scout troop.
"We wanted to involve the children from the St. Joseph Childrens Home (it closed in 1963) in our parish," she said. Scouting turned into a big family affair when the leaders' husbands joined in and helped out on winter camping trips.
Marilyn was born in Poplar, and Frank in Superior. The couple's meeting didn't occur until after Frank had enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1944 and served in the Army Air Corps. While studying on the GI bill after the war, Frank met his future wife in 1948 in an economics class at Superior Teachers State College (now University of Wisconsin-Superior).
They married in 1950 and he supported the family (they had five children) as a locomotive engineer and fireman (he had started on the Great Northern Railroad in 1943 before joining the Army), and as a newspaper publisher. In 1956 politics began to become prominent in his life as Christopherson joined the Douglas County board and then was elected to the state assembly in 1958. He served two terms and then one term as state senator beginning in 1962.
He chose not to run for a second term. He was not defeated, his wife made a point of saying.
As for Marilyn Christopherson, she completed her education with a bachelor of science degree, majoring in education and minoring in communication. She taught school until becoming a full-time mother for the couple's children: Michael, Ann, Frank III, Beth and John.
She also worked on her husband's newspapers and, then without calling it such, a career as a volunteer, "helping out when I could."
"I did all the normal things everyone does," she said. "The bake sales, the fundraisers."
She also stepped up to work on the centralized school board for St. Francis School and the Cathedral School, and worked on the closure of the former in 1983.
Marilyn has been a liaison with diocesan priests, attending deanery meetings and bringing their concerns to the attention of CCB. Housing and mortgage foreclosures are topping the list of current issues challenging many Superior parishes.
She served on the board of CCB and was instrumental in fashioning its code of ethics and new mission statement, and was on Catholic Charities USA (the national board of trustees) for six years.
"They are versatile and stay the course," Soland said of the Christophersons. Both have taken on responsibilities when and where needed.
As a former congressman and a CCB board member for six years, Frank Christopherson was instrumental in bringing the concerns of CCB to the state legislature on a variety of issues including welfare reform, affordable housing programs and the need for continued funding for homebuyer education and counseling, programs for the developmentally disabled, the elderly and many other CCB programs.
He also fills a role as an ambassador to the Knights of Columbus, statewide, making them aware of the needy in their areas and the CCB programs available.
Soland said that Bishops George Hammes, Raphael M. Fliss and now Christensen have told "us to concentrate on people who have the least."
The Christophersons are part of that mission.
"(They) believe in the dignity of each person as a creation of God," he said.
Marilyn Christopherson calls volunteering with CCB:" gratifying and satisfying," and said it's a job that costs "mostly energy."
There are so many ways to help out, she said. "People can start out on any level. You use whatever talents you have."
She said CCB and her work for the diocese has been "a big part of my life." It's been work without salaries attached, but still, paying off in the end.
Soland sums up the Christophersons' work and the work of many volunteers when he says: "When you deal with people that don't have anything, the pay you get is knowing that these people have a better life."
© Superior Catholic Herald, 2008