Rudolph  'Rudge'  Zanmiller  
1996 Northfield News 

  Rudge caps long and useful life with chopper ride.

"Gun backfires, boy's eye injured" was a page one headline in the Sept. 2, 1921, Northfield News — 75 years ago.
The story began, "Rudolph Zanmiller, son of Mr. and Mrs. Jordan Zanmiller, sustained a painful injury to his right eye Saturday while shooting at targets. His gun backfired and parts of the exploding brass shell struck his nose just below the right eye.
"He was taken to the city hospital, but was sufficiently improved Wednesday to be taken home. The injury is healing rapidly and his physician holds out hope that the eyesight will not be impaired as a result of the injury."
Zanmiller, familiarly known as "Rudge," would have been 16 at that time.
We could find no reference in type as to why Rudge had an artificial eye as an adult, but it seems likely the problem stemmed from this injury. A News interview in the 1970s stated, "The flattened cartilage of-his nose traces a sinuous path ' below his forehead One eye is artificial and is said to have once fooled a medical person who claimed it had 10 percent vision! Rudge says a family joke used to run, 'The other men go roofing; Rudge goes to the hospital.'
"He laughed about the hazards of metal work. 'We used to say we'd have to see blood once a day or we'd take a pin to ourselves.'"
Rudge, slight of build and unusually witty, was actually highly skilled at his life's work as a tinsmith.
Rudge was born July 22, 1905, in Northfield, a son of
Jordan and Katharine Zanmiller. The parents were both born in Austria but met and were married in St. Paul. In 1895 Jordan Zanmiller was headed for Kenyon by train, looking for a place to locate. When the train made a water stop in Northfield, the station master remarked that a tin worker was needed in Northfield and Zanmiller decided to locate here.
The couple had four boys and four girls and all of the boys were trained to work in the family's sheet metal business while they attended Northfield schools. After their father retired, Rudge and his brother Walter became partners in Zanmiller's Sheet Metal Shop.

The 1975 story stated that "the Zanmiller men roofed and eaved as well as turned out special-order work. Tea kettles, candle molds, wash pans and bread pans were among items produced. Several sets of armor left the shop, destined for college plays.

'"If it's made of sheet metal, we can make it,' the Zanmillers advertised. "Rudge distinguished between;’sheet metalworker' and    'tinsmith.' The former refers to furnaces and large-scale work; the latter is saved for those who produce piece items. Rudge is one of the latter."
Rudge married Elsie Ann Pick, a teacher, on July 3, 1935. To his childhood loves of Cannon River fishing, skating and 
Swimming, he added with marriage a love of bird watching, flower and vegetable gardening.
The couple did not have children, but when Madonna Kucera (now Dahl), a neighbor girl, came to him with the
problem of a doll buggy wheel having come off, it started a career of host to the children of the whole neighborhood. After the Zanmillers sold their shop and retired in 1975, Rudge had time for woodworking and more time to spend with the kids.
According to Dahl, "Enforcement of his rules was as much an incentive to belong to the 'club' as was Rudge's personality and talents. It was an honor to pass muster at the shop by giving the tools due respect, keeping the shop area clean and turning out acceptable products."
She recalled that the shop was only one of his attractions. He also held backyard picnics, treated apprentices to ice cream cones and he taught her how to drive his truck.
When he was 60, the children of the neighborhood arranged for a big birthday party for him.
Tragically when he had more time to spend with kids, most kids were no longer welcome in his shop. He was quoted in The News,-'Kids these days don't mind and I don't want them here." file said that they ran unheeding through his flower beds and seemed to know less about playing than their predecessors. "Parents spoil their children with too many gifts," he maintained.
He also expressed disappointment in changes in the community. "It used to be you could walk up and down and say 'hi' to everyone. Now it's getting so you don't even know your neighbors."
A 1975 story revealed that Rudge was only 5 feet 6 inches in height and weighed less than110 pounds.
That he kept busy with a variety of things is illustrated by a clipping in his biographical file at The News, picturing him in 1978 with figures of skiers and fishermen made of horseshoe nails. He had fashioned them for sale at a bazaar at St. John's Church.But Rudge was ill in the final years of his life, requiring care at the Dilley Unit of Northfield Hospital. When he told his hospice volunteer, Mike Lemming, that he wished he could ride over Northfield in a hot air balloon before he died, a balloon couldn't be arranged. But Lemming, Chip DeMann and
Tom Ryther of KARE Channel 11 were able to line up a helicopter ride for Rudge. And the day of the ride, the hospital arranged for a reception for him with hundreds of Northfield kindergartners as guests.
"Are you excited, Rudge?" Lemming asked him, according to a 1987 story in The News. "Who wouldn't be with all these children here," he replied. "I wish they were going with me," he added as he sat in the helicopter.
He flew over Cannon Falls, Lake Byllesby and Faribault. When he landed back at the hospital, he said it had been a beautiful ride, although it was chilly in the helicopter.
According to The News story, his wife was there when he landed. "When her husband was taken from the helicopter, she brushed his forehead with a soft kiss. She said she was happy he was back on the ground."
It was a KARE 11 helicopter in which he made the ride and the story was included in Ryther's "Time to Remember" series ' . ; about senior citizens. A couple of months after Zanmiller's death :in ,, 1990, Ryther — in Northfield for other purposes — was presented with an award from Northfield Hospital for his community service to Northfield and to senior citizens. During a luncheon at the Kings' Room, Lemming testified that to the day Rudge died, the helicopter ride was one of the most important events of his life.
It was March 29, 1990, that Rudge died at the Dilley Unit.

Scanned into word document from old news paper clipping for Elizabeth H Zanmiller Knoll
    01/12/2008
MK