- Date Of Death: October 2, 2021
- State: Arizona
Verna was born in Bemidji, MN to Alvina (Urbach) and Benjamin Munig. (Her older brother—Robert Munig—predeceased her in 2013.) Her family later moved to Minneapolis, MN. She graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1951.
An excellent student, she had always dreamed of attending the University of Minnesota. Instead, she chose to use the money she had saved for her first year of college, to rescue her divorced mother from the back taxes she owed. So instead, Verna attended a (less expensive) business college. She started her career at Dayton’s Department Store in downtown Minneapolis. She had a dramatic flair and enjoyed performing in employee reviews, community theater, and later danced in the corps de ballet of a long-forgotten local ballet company.
Verna continued to apply her superb organizational skills and became a regional manager for a women and children’s store called, The Three Sisters. Since she was required to travel between the stores in Minneapolis, and Rochester, MN—and Marshfield, WI…she decided to buy a car. The problem was…she didn’t know how to drive. She told the salesman if he could teach her how to drive, she would buy a car. He did, and she did!
It was while Verna was working at the Minneapolis store that she met her future husband, Tom McConnell. She was allowed to join the ‶businessman’s association″ in the shopping center—if she agreed to act as secretary. All of these stores got together to hire a Santa Claus for the holidays. One November day, in 1958, they asked Verna to bring ‶Santa″ a new beard, because his was looking really shabby. Tom McConnell had gotten the job playing ‶Santa,″ and that’s how they met!
They were married at St. Stephen’s, in Minneapolis, on April 25, 1959. In 2021, they celebrated their 62nd Wedding Anniversary together, as ‶roommates″ at The Haven of Sedona, in Arizona.
