Georgann Koelln Kilbane, longtime writer at the Pioneer Press, died Monday, April 28, 2014, at her home in Houlton, Wis. (Courtesy photo)
Georgann Koelln, former Pioneer Press fashion and features writer, died Monday at her home in Houlton, Wis., from a rare form of cancer. She was 74.
Koelln covered St. Paul fashion when retail was thriving, including Field-Schlick, Gokey's, Maud Borup, Sonnie's, Hubert W. White and Nakashian-O'Neil, as well as department stores.
An accomplished photographer, Koelln took pictures at New York fashion shows and became friends with designers such as Ralph Lauren and Bill Blass, earning a coveted place at the end of runways where photographers got the best shots. Lauren liked her so much that he introduced her to his mother. Her stories are an archive of late-20th-century fashion, from Mary McFadden to Perry Ellis, Calvin Klein, Halston and Bonnie Cashin.
"George loved working at the Pioneer Press and she loved people," said her husband, Dennis Kilbane.
Koelln's writing was colorful. She began a 1979 story from New York this way: "He was big. Good lord, he was big. I have only this fleeting impression. A big, dark body, passing from the opposite direction, leaning down, brushing my ear, softly but distinctly -- 'Cocaine, baby?' "
She was also resourceful. When she couldn't get into an A-list fashion show at a New York club, she slipped in with a rock star's entourage and got her story.
Eleanor Ostman, former Pioneer Press food writer, offered a loving tribute to her friend of five decades:
"We called her George. Dressed elegantly in neutrals while the rest of us wore pants -- a trait she gleaned from covering the New York fashion scene. Unforgettable laugh. Always cheerful. Was a waitress at the Lowell Inn (though she didn't adore the frilly costume), and decades later could recite from memory the entire lengthy list of pies and desserts. In our early 20s, Georgann and I occupied adjacent desks in the Women's Department at the newspaper. We laughed constantly, even on deadline, got married within two weeks of one another in 1965, had our only children (both sons) within months of one another and left the newspaper on the same January day in 2000. She was one of the newspaper's glories."
Koelln often worked with Pioneer Press photographers who enjoyed assignments with her.
"I didn't even know what 'fashion' was until I came to work at the Pioneer Press in 1986," recalled photo editor Richard Marshall. "The first time I was assigned to photograph fashion for the newspaper is the first time I met Georgann, a wonderful woman bursting with ideas she was eager to share. I learned that working on such projects (and really, all stories) with Georgann was a true collaboration, where we were able to mesh our ideas. We drove each other to do better and more thorough work and readers were the beneficiaries."
During her 37-year career, Koelln also wrote an etiquette column and Holiday Handicrafts, a "how to" series she didn't want to write but she did it gracefully. She wrote about the sewing explosion of the 1970s, parking downtown and how to be a widow. She wrote about women and alcohol, as well as shopping on Grand Avenue and how to manage a two-paycheck marriage.
In the late 1990s, Koelln bought the Stillwater Farm Store in Stillwater, where she thought nothing of lifting 50-pound sacks of birdseed and animal feed.
"Georgann was a nice person, very understanding," said Stillwater Farm Store manager Jason Succo. "She cared about the customers and her employees. She helped change the business from strictly animal feed and farm to cater more to homeowners with bird feeders and gift cards."
Koelln spent some of her happiest hours at her grandmother's Wisconsin farm in St. Joseph Township, which Koelln purchased from her mother. The farm, dating from 1840, is on the National Historic Register. Her husband recalled that she drove horses there when she was a child and that later, as owner, she did chores on the tractor and restored and renovated the main house and outbuildings.
Being on water was important to Koelln and her husband. They commuted for several years from their home on Big Island in Lake Minnetonka, and Koelln often piloted her own boat to shore. Later, using their home in Bayfield, Wis., as a base, they traveled the Great Lakes every summer in their various boats, including a 49-foot DeFever trawler.
"George was very competent at driving that many-ton boat," her husband said.
Koelln enjoyed the outdoors and staying active. At their home in Park City, Utah, she skied and hiked. She and her husband also made some unusual purchases. They bought an 1880 pump house between Washburn, Wis., and Bayfield and turned it into a guest house after moving out tons of old equipment. They own a nearby quarry with white pine and a waterfall that will be donated to the Bayfield Regional Conservancy.
"My mother was a strong woman who had a great curiosity about the world," said son Craig Kilbane. "She wanted to go to new places and see new things and learn about them."
One of Koelln's proudest accomplishments was helping save Emmanuel Lutheran, a one-room church between Houlton and Somerset, Wis. When the 97-year-old church was going to be moved to a Heritage Center in New Richmond, Koelln wrote a Pioneer Press story that galvanized people into voting to keep the church at its original site. She will be buried in the church's cemetery.
Koelln was preceded in death by her parents, Ted and Rita. Besides her husband and son, she is survived by daughter-in-law, Susan, and granddaughter Quinn; aunt Pat Kilbane and uncle Jim (Colleen) Kilbane.
A gathering to remember Georgann will be from 2 to 6 p.m. May 10 at her farm, Fire #132, Highway 35 and 64, St. Joseph Township, Wis.
Mary Ann Grossmann can be reached at 651-228-5574.
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