Funeral services for 90-year-old Ervin I. Fast of Mountain Lake, Minnesota, will be held at 11 a.m. on Wednesday morning, April 27, 2016, at Bethel Mennonite Church in Mountain Lake. Pastor Galen Kauffman will officiate. The church is located at 301 9th Street North.
A private burial will be held at Voth Cemetery in rural Delft, Minnesota prior to the funeral services. The cemetery is located on the north side of 360th Street, between 500th and 510th Avenues (West of Cottonwood County Road 2 and southeast of Rat Lake.
Visitation will be at Sturm Funeral Home-Mountain Lake Chapel, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, April 26. The funeral home is located at 420 10th Street North.
Condolences to the family may be sent online at www.sturmfh.com.
Ervin passed away at home on April, 20th, 2016, after a long battle with cancer.
Ervin I. Fast was born on November 26, 1925, on the family farm in Carson Township, Minnesota. Ervin lived within two miles of his birthplace his entire life. He attended country school, where he would drive the horse and wagon and collect all the neighbor kids on their way to school. After the school day, the horse would head non-stop straight for the barn, leaving the kids to bail out of the wagon at the corner or end up in the barn with the horses. He later graduated from Bingham Lake High School in Bingham Lake, Minnesota.
Ervin married Marilyn Fuller at the Bethel Mennonite church in Mountain Lake on June 5, 1956, and they resided on the family farm in Carson Township, where they raised four children. On the farm they engaged in raising corn, beans, alfalfa, pigs, chickens and milking cows. The kids swear that some years the best crop was the rocks they picked.
In 1960, Ervin received a Young Farmers Award and he served on the Delft Cooperative Elevator Board. Ervin served on the Mountain Lake Public School Board from 1962 to 1979, and the Good Samaritan Board from 1984 to 2006.
Ervin was a lifelong member of Bethel Mennonite Church and helped as Sunday School Superintendent and teacher. In his spare time, he enjoyed tinkering around the farm and welding. Always on a new project, Ervin enjoyed seeing his own designs built. He didn’t like to travel much and stayed pretty close to his cows, but, in the last few years he was a regular at McDonald’s, and occasionally Hardee’s, both in Windom, Minnesota, where he enjoyed meeting old and new friends.
Ervin is survived by his wife, Marilyn of Mountain Lake; children, Ruth (Brent) Weckwerth of Richland Center, Wisconsin, Thomas (Marilyn) Fast of Bingham Lake, Charles (Suzanne) Fast of Bingham Lake and Rodney (Sheryl) Fast of Mountain Lake; grandchildren, Katie (Daniel) Vick of Idabel, Oklahoma, Karina Fast of Sioux City, Iowa , Josh Fast, Andrew Fast, Aaron Fast and Anika Fast all of Bingham Lake, Christopher Fast of Young America, Minnesota, Chelsey (Patrick) Janzen and family of Mankato, Minnesota, Jeremy Fast of Weihei, China, Mitchell Fast of New Brighton, Minnesota and Katelyn Fast of Mountain Lake; one sister, Mary Schmidt of Buhler, Kansas and one brother, Marlyn of Elkhart, Indiana.
Ervin was preceded in death by his parents, Isaac and Tina Fast; brothers, Peter Fast and Albert Fast; sisters, Ardella Fast and Rosella Fast and Luella Penner; several brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law and a niece.