Memorial service planned in Minnesota to honor Mondale

MINNEAPOLIS — The late Vice President Walter Mondale will be remembered in a Sunday service on the University of Minnesota campus, about a year after his death at age 93.

The memorial will honor his legacy in state and national politics. The Minnesota native rose from the state’s attorney general to a U.S. senator, vice president and Democratic nominee for president.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and U. S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith will speak at the memorial at Northrop auditorium, as well as presidential historian Jon Meacham. Other speakers have been invited but not yet confirmed, according to a release from the university.

Services were originally planned for last September in Minnesota and Washington, D.C., but were delayed. The event is invitation-only but will be livestreamed for the public to watch.

As a U. S. senator, Mondale helped create new social programs and was a champion of civil rights and environmental protections. Former President Jimmy Carter chose Mondale as his running mate in 1976, eventually forging a partnership where Mondale acted as Carter’s chief adviser.

Mondale was the Democratic nominee for president in 1984 and lost in a landslide to incumbent President Ronald Reagan. But he stayed active in politics, serving from 1993-96 as U.S. ambassador to Japan under Bill Clinton.

Mondale resisted urging from colleagues to run again for the U.S. Senate, but in 2002 he had to take the place of Sen. Paul Wellstone on the ballot after Wellstone died in a plane crash. Mondale lost to Republican Norm Coleman.

He died in Minneapolis on April 20, 2021.