Voice of Zumbrota News has been Silenced

Loa Margaret Tiedemann Hovel did a lot. She danced with clown Bobby Walker on David Stone's KSTP Barn Dance. Three years in a row the show was sponsored by Hovel's Hatchery, Purina Chows at the Zumbrota High School Auditorium.

Opportunities in the '50s and '60s led her to broadcast the "News from Zumbrota" on KDHL, Monday, Wednesday and Saturday mornings, on the transmitter in the kitchen at 196 Mill St.

She was a graduate of Lake City High School, then became the secretary for superintendent D.D. Karow as everyone else was working in the California Defense Plants. She married Morris Hovel in 1946.

As secretary and partner in the Hovel Hatchery, they featured area farmers in early morning broadcasts with radios tuned in in various barns at milking time.

She co-founded the "Sisters of the Swish." During the Zumbrota Centennial Parade she played a honky-tonk piano with the women's jug band from the back of an International Harvester flat bed truck. These are just a few of the many things she loved to be a part of.

Services will be Wednesday, July 13, at 11AM at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Rochester, with Pastor Charles Ortloff officiating. Burial will be in Oakwood Cemetery, next to her late husband, Morris.