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TONER, Patricia Lou Asleson 1945-2011

TONER, FAA, ASLESON, DAHL, FRANCIS, TAORMINA, PETERSON, COOK WALKER

Posted By: S. Bell
Date: 11/26/2011 at 17:35:52

[Waterloo Courier, Thursday, October 6, 2011]

Patricia Lou Asleson Toner, formerly of Waterloo, Iowa, wanted to be remembered as "wife, mother, journalist." Pat, as she was known to friends and family, died at her home in Atlanta on Sept. 29. She was 66. She began her career as a reporter for the Waterloo Courier when women were still an anomaly in the male-dominated newspaper business. She enjoyed breaking new ground and continued to do so throughout her career. She was one of the country's first environmental journalists and played an early role in the newspaper industry's pioneering foray into what was then the brave new world of electronic journalism.

She was born January 5, 1945, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the daughter of Kenneth F. Asleson and Violet F. Faa. She and her brother, Keith, were raised for a number of years by their grandparents in Fillmore County, Minnesota. "I remember my grandmother as always working – cooking at a potbellied iron stove, helping my grandfather harvest the corn crop in the fall until way after dark, sewing dresses for me from printed feeds sacks, separating the cream from the milk," she wrote in her informal autobiography. "Our bathroom was an outhouse in back , complete with a Sears catalog. Our main meal was cooked rice with butter and brown sugar and milk on it. Our recreation was listening to the Lone Ranger on the radio and records on the gramophone. Grandpa taught us both how to play checkers, Parcheesi and Chinese checkers."

After moving to the Waterloo area, her interest in the writing developed quickly. As a student at East High School in Waterloo, she was named the editor of the school newspaper, the Orange and Black. By the time she graduated in 1963, she was also working as a intern for the Courier – and over the next few years, she interspersed her higher education with summer reporting positions at the paper.

She attended Iowa State Teachers College, now the University of Northern Iowa, for a year and then moved on to the University of Iowa, where she worked for The Daily Iowan and graduated with a degree in journalism in 1968. While living in Washington, D.C., she worked briefly for ABC Television and the Communications Satellite Corporation.

Moving to South Florida, she worked as a copy editor for the Miami News and, in 1970, became the environmental reporter for the Fort Lauderdale News, one of the first newspapers in the country to create such a position. Her determination to be both a mother and newspaper reporter became a story in itself when, on the day in 1972, that she gave birth to Sharon, her second daughter, she covered a public hearing in the morning and filed her story from the hospital while she was in labor. During the 1970s, she held a number of positions for the Fort Lauderdale and Miami newspapers and worked as a writer for the Miami-Dade County tourist development department. In 1980, she became one of a handful of news media representatives who launched the country's first experiment in electronic news delivery. That effort, by the Viewdata Corporation of America pioneered the then-revolutionary notion of delivering news via a dedicated home network. The Viewtron system was eventually abandoned, but is now widely considered a forerunner of today's home electronic services.

Pat Toner's interests were by no means limited to her work. She traveled extensively in Europe, Central America, the Caribbean and Australia – writing reports on her travels that appeared in dozens of newspapers and travel magazines. As avid outdoors enthusiast, she co-authored "South Florida by Paddle and Pack," a guide to canoeing and hiking that she wrote with her then-husband, Mike Toner.

Moving to Atlanta in 1984, she continued her freelance writing career and began work on her master's degree in urban planning from Georgia State University. She was awarded her master's degree in 1995. She also became an active proponent of local historic preservation efforts. She worked tirelessly to help residents of Dunwoody, Georgia, preserve the historic Cheek-Spruell Farmhouse in the heart of that city. The century-old farmhouse, now the Dunwoody Town Hall, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.

Patricia Lou Asleson Toner was preceded in death by her father, Kenneth F. Asleson, and a brother, Gerald Dahl. She is survived by two daughters, Susan Francis of Jefferson, Georgia, and Sharon Taormina of Loveland, Ohio. Other survivors include her mother and step-father, Violet and Arnold Violet Dahl, of Evansdale, Iowa; two brothers, Keith Asleson of Waterloo and Brian Dahl of Kansas City, Kansas; and three sisters Carolyn Peterson, Barb Cook and Coleen Walker, all of Waterloo. She is also survived by five grandchildren, Marshall, Jared and Meredith Brown of Georgia and Laura and Aaron Taormina of Ohio.

Services will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 8, at the Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Evansdale. Public visitation will be held from 4 to 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 7, at Kearns, Huisman-Schumacher Chapel, and also for an hour before services Saturday, Oct. 8 at the church.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that contributions be sent to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), where she worked as a volunteer for many hours. Because of her love of reading and interest in historic preservation, donations in her memory would also be welcomed for local libraries and historic preservation efforts.


 

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