By DEB BENTLY
Staff Writer
If Mike Coy’s life were a river, he might describe it as “narrow, but deep.” Mike, 71, has lived in Waseca County his entire life and has already arranged to be buried in a county-managed cemetery located on land once owned by his extended family.
A farm and tractor man to the core, he tells of his grandfather having placed him in the driver seat of a bulldozer at the age of 6 to push silage.
“It’s something you’ve got to have an eye for,” says Mike playfully of driving big equipment.
Mike and his wife Cindy have been together since 1983. They raised three children, now adults: Sierra, Clifford and Erin. Of their nine grandchildren, the majority live within a two-hour drive.
The couple’s rural home is two miles west of New Richland along state highway 30. They acquired the homesite, the former Harvey Peterson property, in 1991 and spent years upgrading and improving it while also raising their family.
Last September, Mike and Cindy were informed Mike has an incurable form of liver cancer; doctors predicted that, without treatment, he had less than a year to live. With treatment, the time might be extended, but the final outcome remained inevitable.
The news was particularly surprising because Mike had not felt any pain or discomfort. The cancer was discovered by coincidence when doctors were looking into a different medical issue.
“It was a shock,” he observes. “From that moment, I’ve spent a lot of time just trying to stay on an even keel.” The couple’s finances have been decimated by medical costs coupled with the loss of income from part-time jobs.
Friends and family have been generous, donating to a “Go Fund Me” site and to an account at the State Bank of New Richland. Their children are helping arrange a fundraiser scheduled from 2 to 6 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 17, at the Waseca American Legion Hall. The afternoon will feature a silent auction, music, entertainment, and food served for a free-will donation. For Mike, it will be especially poignant to see friends, family and former coworkers, many of whom have contacted him in advance and told him they are coming. He says he currently anticipates being well enough to take part.
As he reflects on where life has taken him, he has to admit it’s not all that far–in terms of distance. A recent trip to the Grand Canyon–a gift from his children–is about the farthest he’s ever been from home.
But he wouldn’t have it any other way. “I feel really connected to this area,” he says.
Born in 1953 to Clifford and Sue Coy, who had a 160-acre farm two miles south and one mile east of Waldorf, Mike was the oldest of six children–three girls and three boys–born within a seven-year timespan. He recalls being put to work on some very demanding tasks, including grinding feed and delivering it to the calves. Perhaps most impressively, at age 7 he was put behind the wheel of a John Deere 730 tractor and sent out to work fields using a three-bottom plow.
Since his father was one of seven children, and since his aunts and uncles all had families with five and six children each, family gatherings were major events. “Grandma Coy had a big old house,” he remembers. “At Christmas, us kids would get our plates and go sit on the stairs or anywhere we could find room.” When the weather allowed, at least some of the 43 cousins would find their way outdoors and “play in the brook, or play in the barn.” He remembers an old trolley mounted in the hay mow which would allow them to swing from one side of the building to the other.
After graduating with a class of 50 from Waldorf High School in 1972, he went straight into employment. His aptitude with machines and mechanical repairs served him well as he moved between jobs at various vehicle service stations. Among those employers were Goldstein’s Department Store and Year-Round Cab, both in Mankato.
“I’ve always been good with motors and engines,” he observes. “But it took me years to go get any official training.” He served stints as a Brown Printing pressman, a mechanic and delivery driver for Amoco fertilizer in Otisco, and with Bird’s Eye as a field mechanic before signing up for the diesel mechanic training program at the Albert Lea “Vo-Tech” school.
By the time he got to the classroom, he says, he pretty well knew nearly everything that was being taught. But he came away with a degree that helped him get better jobs.
One of the longest-standing was with the Kenworth dealership in Albert Lea.
Scattered across his career were jobs with Borneke and Loken construction companies. His “eye” for big equipment served him well, since the seats of excavators and bulldozers were among the ones he filled. “They found out I could operate a dozer,” he remembers of one company which hired him as a mechanic, “and there my ass sat.” Among the projects he worked on were Hennepin County highway 2, county road 60 near Worthington, an airplane landing strip near St. Clair and two golf courses. “There was a lot of earth moved there,” he recalls of shaping the sand traps, water hazards and other features of the golf courses.
Looking back on his life’s journey, Mike remembers many of these projects with pleasure. He says the best parts were when he was able to work directly with customers–and so were some of the worst. He also recalls being approached by a much-younger coworker named Jacob at Kenworth. “He told me he was grateful to have known me, and that I had helped him understand things about diesel mechanics that no one else had been able to,” he remembers. “It made me feel like I had been of real help to him, and it filled me with pride.
“I hope most people remember me as a good man who treated people fairly,” Mike speculates.
While he observes that “we start dying on the day we’re born,” he admits there are elements of his life he hates to let go of–especially his relationship with Cindy and their adult children. “Saying good-bye is a really complicated thing,” he comments.
Still, he goes on, “God has a plan. We can trust that it’s good, even if we don’t understand it.
“All we can do is take life one day at a time, do our best, and keep moving forward.”
He offers two pieces of advice:
“Being courteous and doing right by people shows its own rewards,” and “Don’t follow the crowd.”