When Sally suggested we do our interview via Zoom, I was thrilled. That is as close to a face-to-face as I could get from a woman who has homes in Grand Marais, MN, and Dallas, TX.
Sally’s family moved to Northfield, MN (where her dad grew up and Sally’s parents had been married) when she was too young to remember the move. From there, her dad completed his degree in Architecture from the University of Minnesota. The Nystuens continued to live in Northfield where her father worked for an architectural firm. In 1967, when he was offered a teaching position in the Design and Building Construction program at UW-Stout, the family then moved to Menomonie. Sally has two brothers, Arne and Peder. Arne lives in Boston and Peder lives in Eau Claire.
Sally started her school experience at Stout’s Early Childhood Learning Program when it first opened. Even then it had a reputation for being an innovative program. Sally loved it! Because her family lived in Woodland Terrace, she attended River Heights Elementary School. Sally noted that, since her family stayed in the same house their entire time in Menomonie, she never bounced around to other elementary schools. She is still close to some of those River Heights friends. Sally went on to Menomonie Junior/Senior High School (both in the same building at that time).
Knowing that Sally’s professional life has revolved around the performing arts, I asked her when she first knew that she wanted to go into that world. “The very first experience I ever had doing a play was when I was little, probably… 9, maybe? We did a production of ‘South Pacific’ at the Mabel Tainter. Lucy Weidner played the lead—Ensign Nellie Forbush. And I played the little girl, Nanya. That was the first time I ever got to do a play, other than the little plays we did at River Heights.” Throughout her time in Menomonie Sally continued to perform at the Mabel, working with Karen and Noel Falkofske as well as Marion Lang. This is when she got the true acting bug.”
“Some high school teachers really stand out in my memory. There was Karen Peterson, the choir teacher. She was amazing. Drama teacher Terry Motschenbacher came to Menomonie my Freshman year as a first-year teacher. There had been a drama department at the high school previous to that, but Ms. Motschenbacher and Miss Peterson really got it going, embedding it permanently into the school’s curriculum with their enthusiasm and new ideas. Ms. Motschenbacher later went on to teach in Minnesota where she was honored as Teacher of the Year.”
Besides drama, Sally also participated in debate and forensics during her entire junior/senior high school career. She highlighted longtime MHS English teacher Ellwyn Hendrickson who coached Debate and Forensics as well as Bobbi Tylee who also coached forensics.
When I asked Sally about other memorable teachers in her life, she was quick to say, “We had such a great cohort of teachers throughout my time in Menomonie. Dave Maves, junior high History teacher, made a lasting impression on me, and I’ll always remember Pat Reisinger (junior high Home Economics teacher) as an excellent classroom and as a neighbor.”
But the performing arts weren’t Sally’s only interest. She was a runner who fondly remembers coaches Ed Roethke and Dale Dahlke as influential people in her high school life.
In addition, Sally loved being outdoors. Summers she would often go to Camp Widjiwagan near Ely, MN. The camp was sponsored by the Minneapolis-St. Paul YMCA. The summer between her high school graduation and her enrollment at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, Sally attended an ambitious 60-day canoe trip to the Arctic! She noted that since she was gone almost all summer, her mom and dad had to register her for her classes at UMD.
“They knew that I had to take the basic classes, of course, as a freshman. But they also knew that I loved theater, so they signed me up for a theater class, just because, you know, why not? I stuck with it when I realized how much I loved performing. During my time at UMD. I performed in lots of plays, doing a variety of kinds of shows–musicals, comedies and dramas. It was a great training program. We had many outstanding professors. And, just like my high school days in Menomonie, I was so fortunate to have had such great mentors and guides.”
“By then I really felt like I was clear in wanting to make acting my profession. I’d already had experience doing plays, along with the characterization side of it, and the emotional investment side of it, and all of that sort of stuff. What I gleaned, for whatever reason, was that I might need more training when it came to the technique side of acting. So I made the decision to go directly from earning my Bachelors of Fine Arts degree into graduate school to get a Master of Fine Arts degree.”
“That’s what brought me to Texas. I ended up getting into the theater training program at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. I had gone immediately into graduate school for two reasons: 1) I thought that I needed to be more skilled when it came to techniques, so that I could maybe be more competitive out in the world, and 2) I also had a pretty strong regional Wisconsin/northern Minnesota dialect. That still slays me because we don’t think we have an accent; we just think that everyone else does! I felt like I probably needed to learn how to be able to play roles other than roles that were regional, you know?”
“SMU’s drama program at that time was really well-known for its technique, so that is what sort of helped me narrow the field and decide to go into that program. I got my Masters of Fine Arts degree which also enabled me to teach drama in a university setting. The program was more of a conservatory kind of program. You’re really focused on building skills; it was an immersion into the arts, which I loved—getting to just eat, breathe, and sleep nothing but acting training was just…awesome. Once again, I had great professors in grad school. They were rigorous and really kicked my butt in a lot of ways. “I also was fortunate to have a wonderful cohort of twelve fellow students. Going through those 3 years together, we really had a nice synergy as a group. After graduation, four of us stayed in Dallas and in 1990 started a theater (Kitchen Dog theater, which is still going strong after all these years!). I stayed with Kitchen Dog for about five years and then decided to move on to other things. But that theater still exists. It’s been really well led all these years by folks who’ve come after us.”
“While I was still working with Kitchen Dog, I also started to do some plays at the Dallas Theater Center which is kind of like the Guthrie—an American regional theater.”
“I met my husband, Tim while we were doing a play together at Shakespeare Dallas. We ended up getting married about a year and a half later and then we moved to Los Angeles for about 5 years. While there, we had our first daughter. When we were expecting our second daughter, we discussed moving back to Dallas or staying in LA. Tim was an actor at that time. He really wanted to take a shot at doing other kinds of film and television projects that sometimes don’t exist in the regions, you know? He worked a lot but then got to a point where he felt like, he didn’t know if this is what he really wanted to do anymore. He had a transition going on in his mind about what he really wanted to do with the rest of his life. His goal was to continue to engage himself in his work and his life in a way that with one child (and another one on the way) meant we needed to land someplace permanently.”
The Vahles ultimately decided to go back to Dallas, because it was a place where they felt they could reestablish themselves pretty quickly. Back in Dallas Tim continued to work as an actor. Sally was also acting but started teaching part-time as well as an adjunct professor at the University of North Texas fulfilling her desire to teach at the college level. Tim eventually decided to go back to school and become a nurse. Sally had been working as an adjunct professor at University of North Texas for a couple of years when a full-time position in acting and voice came up, so she threw her hat into the ring for that and ended up getting the job as a tenured position that she held for 23 years until retiring this past spring. Sally also auditioned for a position at the Dallas Theater Center and ended up getting into the acting company. She confessed that this had really been her dream, something she wanted, more than anything.
“So Dallas is where your dreams came true?” I asked her. “It was, it really was. It has been a wonderful place to carve out my community. A lot of wonderful philanthropists and people who really are compelled by the arts, all the arts, are in the Dallas area. And I get to see people I’ve known all the years I’ve been there, who saw me in my very first play at Dallas Theater Center. It’s been wonderful to grow up as an actor over time.”
Tim now serves as the clinical director for a company that makes a variety of medical devices. He has transitioned from being a bedside nurse to a specialist in infusion nursing. Consequently, he does a lot of training. His job is remote so that’s what allows the Vahles to have some flexibility regarding where they live.
And what about the two Vahle daughters? Kala is in Brooklyn, NY, where she works for the Alzheimer’s Foundation. Hanna is doing some seasonal work. She was a camp counselor this summer up in Bemidji and will be working at a ski lodge in Colorado this winter, so—as her mother stated, “She’s kind of exploring her life at the moment.”
Sally excitedly told me that she has just been selected as one of three attendees to the four-week Kyoto Retreat in Japan—a Creative Renewal Retreat for all artistic disciplines. It will start in mid-October. The retreat is unstructured, giving the participants the freedom to explore whatever they wish. As Sally explained, it is for “renewing your creativity, finding inspiration, just immersing yourself in the culture, and letting your mind and your art flow however it wishes.”
Sally ended our interview with the following, “You know how some people will say they don’t really remember high school and junior high, or whatever? I remember so much about high school. I had a really good experience in high school, you know? I mean…the fact that I went all the way from elementary school to high school to graduate with the same people I started with and didn’t have a bad experience with that. High school never felt small to me because I didn’t know anything else. It was all I ever knew, you know? I still have some really good friends that I went to high school with, that I’m still in touch with. My perspective is that Menomonie made my roots go deeper and established a place where I belong.”
Sally has no relatives in Menomonie. Her parents moved there not knowing anyone. But they stayed a long time, so they made lots of good connections. They lived in the same house, the same neighborhood. Her parents were still living there until about twelve years ago. Sally has always felt that whenever she went to Menomonie, there was a true sense of going home.
“I’ve been back for probably 4 or 5 high school reunions over the years. I’ve always loved going to those. It’s great to see everybody. We were laughing. The most recent one, I think, was our 40th. And we were all sitting around at the VFW the night before the day of the party having a beer, and everybody had their phones out. They were all saying things like, ‘ Oh, yeah, here’s a picture of my leg before I had my knee surgery’ Finally, somebody said, ‘Do you realize that the only thing we’re talking about is our kids and the medical miracles that all of us had experienced.’ There’s still something about knowing that you have that shared history of so many years, even if your lives have moved in different directions. It’s really great, you know? I appreciate it. I’m grateful for it.”
Sally was home about two weeks ago for her mother’s funeral. Both her parents are buried in Northfield, MN. But, as Sally, told me, “Menomonie was where my mom’s heart was. And so that’s why we made the decision to have her celebration of life at the First Congregational UCC Church here.
“One of the things we did when we were back home last weekend was pop into the Mabel Tainter Theater. I had some relatives who had never seen it before. Isn’t it gorgeous? I love that Menomonie and its people have continued to invest in the treasure that is the Mabel Tainter and support the arts in that respect, and that the theater still exists, and a group was rehearsing in there.”
“My dream would be to get to come back one day and do a play there again. That would be so great. As a graduate from Menomonie, I know that I am theirs forever in their minds and in their hearts. They’re always eager to hear what’s going on. It’s a lovely feeling.”
Judy Foust is a retired longtime 7th Grade Reading Specialist at Menomonie Middle School. To submit info to her or to request an interview she may be contacted at [email protected]
