Mina Isabel GULLICKSON

   Another name for Mina was Mina Isabelle GULLICKSON.

  Noted events in her life were:

• Obituary, 1955. Rushford Woman Dies From Injuries

Mrs. Robert Haslerud, who with her family, resided in South Rushford, was very seriously injured Saturday forenoon in a accident which occurred at the farm home of her father, Gilbert Gullickson, who lives near Lanesboro. Just before going to press, we learned that she had passed away on Tuesday from the injuries received. Funeral arrangements were incomplete at the time of our going to press.

Mrs. Haslerud had gone to her fathers home to help do the washing there. She had just entered the washing shed when a can of gasoline fell from a shelf onto a hot stove. The resulting explosion covered her with flaming gasoline, inflicting very severe second and third degree burns. Her father who is 70 years old and suffering from a heart ailment, rushed out and dragged her from the flaming building and managed to put out the fire on her clothes, but then in turn collapsed from the exertion and burns he himself suffered.

Neighbors rushed to the place to help put out the fire and care for the injured. The shed was destroyed but the house, which also caught fire, was saved. Mrs. Haslerud was immediately rushed to a Lanesboro doctor who in turn put her in an ambulance and rushed her to Rochester, where she was at once put on an operating table. Extremely severe burns were distributed over 50 per cent of her body, but the worst burns were on her back and one arm.

Mrs. Haslerud is the mother of four small children, ranging in age from a few months to 7 years. Her husband, Robert, is employed at Rochester. A complete obituary will appear next week.

• Obituary: Winona Daily News, 1955, Winona County, MN. SATURDAY, MAY 21, 1955
THE WINONA DAILY NEWS, WINONA, MINNESOTA
Page 3

Tragedy Strikes Struggling Family
By TOM BERGHS
Daily News Staff Writer

The final tragic chapter in a story of a young, growing family struggling for its existence was written in a dimly-lit Rochester hospital room last Tuesday, when tiny Mina Haslerud painfully slipped her earthly bonds and died.

Actually the finish was written in the suddenness of a roaring inferno three days earlier-when a thundering explosion at a Whalan, Minn., farm home irreparably seared Mrs. Robert Haslerud's fragile, innocent body.

A pretty, 26-year-old mother of four small children, Mrs. Haslerud never in her wildest dreams could have anticipated what awaited her as she stepped within a summer cook house at her father's farm home.

Nightmarish Explosion

A can of volatile gasoline suddenly tumbled from a shelf . . . a hot wood stove . . . a nightmarish explosion which utterly ripped asunder a 26-by 20-foot building . . . and brought death to the mother of four.

But death was not blessedly quick.

Death waited in the hallway at St. Mary's Hospital . . . waited for three full days while a tiny woman on an obtuse hospital bed suffered the agonies of the damned a beneath scorching second and third degree burns branded into more than half of her body.

Today, with the final blow most assuredly struck shambles are all that remain in the lives of a 34-year-old husband and a desperately poor farm family.

The Daily News wants to ask its thousands of readers to look in deep into their own hearts today and see if they cannot to find there the Christian kindness and good will to help a man who's at the end of his rope.

And perhaps even more important . . . will you in your generosity help put the ground back under the feet of four children---the oldest is 7---who will now be finding their way without the gentle firmness of a mother.

But let's go back a few short years to pick up our story . . . back to the day in 1946 when Mina Gullickson, then 18, and Robert Haslerud, then 26, were married.

World War 11 Veteran

Haslerud, a 1940 graduate of Peterson High School, had just finished a three-year stint with the U.S. Navy in World War II and was a freshly-combed graduate of the Vocational Barber School in Minneapolis.

The two had known each other or years. Bob, from his Peterson home---and Mina growing up on the Whalan farm and attending Lanesboro High School. Following their marriage the couple lived at Whalan, with Haslerud commuting daily to Rushford, where he worked in his brother George's barbershop.

But money came hard---a $15 week was considered a good I one by the young couple.

Some weeks---or even months--- there was no work at all, and Bob picked up welding or carpentry jobs wherever he could, but there just wasn't enough money to make ends meet and the children began arriving.

First came daughter Elaine, followed two years later by Gloria---now 5---then Christine, 2 1/2, and finally son Charles-born just eight months ago.

Bills Pile Up

Bills-to buy such basic needs food and clothing for the children lit ----began to mount. Several months ago, after a two-month drouth of employment, they began
get desperate.

Bob finally found a job in April of this year and a cheaper place to live in Rushford, so
they moved-more bills-and Haslerud began commuting daily to Rochester, where he barbered in the 1st National Bank building.

The young couple thought that things were finally taking a turn for the better.

That was less than four weeks ago.

One week ago today, Mrs. Robert Haslerud walked into a dingy shed and met her Maker.

A brave man tried to save her from it.

Gilbert Gullickson, Mrs. Haslerud's father, has a bad heart.

Daughter Trapped

When the explosion outside his living room Saturday morning rocked windows for miles around, Gullickson rushed outside to see is 26-year-old daughter trapped in the flaming wreckage of a demolished shack.

He waded through the flames and half lifted, half dragged his a hysterical daughter out of the inferno.

When he had pulled her away from the blaze, he collapsed in utter exhaustion on the ground, with 1st and 2nd degree burns leaving searing raw flesh all over his face and hands.

But the Gullickson farm has no electricity, no lights and no telephone and somebody had to summon help.

Gullickson picked himself up off the ground and blinded with the pain his face he stumbled a full mile across the fields to the nearest telephone at a neighbor's home.

Gilbert Gullickson is 70 years old.

No Haslerud Relative

Robert Haslerud and his four little children have nothing. He is the last surviving member of his own family and the Gullicksons are unable to help financially in any way.

Haslerud's bill for the surgical, a hospital and doctor bill in connection with his wife's death is going be monumental. He has no money to pay them.

The Rev. Dale Simons, who has been the family's pastor for the past five years at the Whelan Lutheran Church, told The Daily News, "if anyone ever needed financial help, these people are the ones.

"They have been good church-going people since I've known them," pastor Simons added, "doing the best they can with what they have."

Haslerud has yet-unpaid medical bills for his four children. He had to borrow money to move to Rushford two months ago.

Haslerud has no money to pay for his young wife's funeral.

He has no insurance of any kind ---life, health and accident or hospitalization.

Neighbors Help

And the kicker came three days go when his Whalan neighbors chipped in to buy his four children each a decent set of clothes so they would not have to go ragged to their mother's funeral-held yesterday afternoon.

You-who have responded so magnificently to other genuine appeals in the past-can help this hapless man and his four little ones.

"The Robert Haslerud Fund," with an account at a Winona bank is being set up.

We are asking you to send in donations as soon as you can to "The Robert Haslerud Fund," in care of The Winona Daily News.

All money received will be deposited in the bank for periodic payment to the family. Every cent given in this appeal your hearts will go to Bob Haslerud and his four children.

Won't you please . . . send in least $1 to this newspaper for four destitute children and a grief-burdened father? We'll run a list this family's friends as contributions arrive.

They need it-desperately.

Mina married Robert Peter HASLERUD, son of Peter George HASLERUD and Cora Syverine HILL, on 30 Dec 1946 in Whalan, Fillmore County, MN.¹ (Robert Peter HASLERUD was born on 23 Apr 1921 in Fillmore County, MN ⁴ and died on 9 Nov 1995 in Fillmore County, MN ⁵.) The cause of his death was Carcinoma Colon.

  Noted events in their marriage were:

• Alt. Marriage: re-married, 5 Mar 1951, Fillmore County, MN. ⁶

Mina had a relationship with Living