An unexpected career change in the mid-1980s led Cathy Mulder to work 35 years in Luverne Public School lunchrooms.
In May Mulder quietly exited the elementary school kitchen, where she had spent the majority of her time preparing and serving breakfasts and lunches.
She hung her apron a final time in a silent kitchen.
For the final two months of the 2019-20 school year, students were at home under distance learning instruction.
Mulder and the kitchen staff made as many as 740 sack breakfasts and lunches a day, which were taken to various distribution points.
Mulder said goodbye to students May 21 when the district hosted a farewell event.
Parents drove students through the school campus waving at teachers and staff on the sidewalks including Mulder. She held a sign that read, “Have a great summer from Lunch Lady Cathy.”
“It was fun but it was hard because I knew I won’t be seeing them in the fall,” Mulder said. “It was a nice way to end (my career).”
Mulder and her husband, Bruce, farmed near Kenneth in 1985 when the farm crisis forced the couple to make a hard choice — “leave the farm now or be forced to leave the farm next year,” Mulder said.
The couple moved to Luverne where Bruce worked for IBP and Cathy applied with the school district to work in the kitchen or the classroom.
She was hired as a substitute cafeteria worker at the old elementary school near downtown Luverne.
Five years later, Mulder moved into a permanent kitchen position at first operating the dishwasher and then waking at 5 a.m. to prepare and serve breakfasts and lunches at the middle-high school.
She transferred to the new elementary school kitchen in late 1999.
“It as so huge,” Mulder said. “You had to walk so far to get to areas … and you couldn’t find stuff at first.”
She soon developed a rapport with the kindergarten through fifth-grade students and again later when the former students’ own children came through the meal line.
“I was feeding kids of kids,” Mulder said.
Often she chatted with each student as they walked through her food line.
One day Mulder noticed a student who acted “bubbly” each time she came to lunch. The student remarked that lunch was her favorite part of the day.
Mulder said she told the student, “We make our food with love — that’s why it tastes so good.”
Her decision to retire came in March, one week before the building closures to curb the spread of COVID-19. The lack of closure with students almost made her change her mind.
“It was a hard decision because a lot of kids didn’t know I wasn’t coming back next year,” she said.
Now Mulder is slowly settling into retirement, taking a year off with no commitments, at the advice of other retirees. She’s dedicating time to her three children and seven grandchildren, and the slow completion of household projects.
“I am learning to sleep in,” she said about her Lunch Lady 5 a.m. wakeup routine.