On these pages, we celebrate Minnesotans who have led exemplary lives and left our community better than they found it.  They made significant contributions towards mutual understanding between our community and the Minnesota community at large.  We express our deep appreciation for their quiet generosity and inner convictions for lives well lived.

Walter N. Graff, 1939-2023
Walter came from a family deeply rooted in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. His great grandfather came over from Norway and his grandfather served as mayor of Sioux Falls for many years. Commitment to community and public service came naturally to Walter. Pro bono work went hand in hand with his brilliant legal career at Best & Flanagan where he drafted the original condominium laws for the State of Minnesota...
Weiming Lu, 盧偉民, 1930-2022
Weiming Lu was born in 1930 in Shanghai, China. It was a tumultuous period throughout China then, full of political turmoil and civil wars, with the Japanese Invasion and Occupation in between and more civil war afterwards. For part of his childhood, Weiming, his sister and their mother were...
Robert D. Jacobsen, 卓儒博,1944-2021
Robert Jacobsen grew up in Roseville, MN, and developed an early interest in art, woodworking, architecture, and photography. He pursued several degrees at the University of Minnesota, first concentrating on art history and architecture. Returning from an interim study at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, he stopped off in Japan and promptly fell in love with its art and architecture.