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Macalester College graduate and former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan laughs during his appearance at the Institute for Global Citizenship in Markim Hall in St. Paul on Wednesday, May 20, 2009. A life-size bronze bust of the Nobel Peace Prize winner was unveiled at Annan’s alma mater. (Pioneer Press: Richard Marshall)
As the world mourns the passing of Nobel Peace Prize winner and former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, the pain of his passing is being felt intensely in St. Paul, where Annan got his start as a young student at Macalester College.
“We are both shocked and deeply saddened. He seemed like one of those people that would go on forever,” said Brian Rosenberg, president of Macalester College, where Annan graduated in 1961.
Kofi Annan holding his state champion orator trophy in 1961. (Pioneer Press file)
Rosenberg first met Annan in 2004 and got to know the loyal alumnus and former Macalester trustee well as Annan returned several times over the years to speak at the college.
“He was the clearest and most famous embodiment of our mission,” he said. “We feel like we’ve lost a little part of ourselves.”
Annan attended Macalester from 1959 to 1961, earning a degree in economics and setting a school track record in the 60-yard dash.
“He was an outstanding orator,” Roger Mosvick, Annan’s former communications professor, told the Pioneer Press in 1998. “He was a very bright guy who had this ability to adapt to virtually any situation.”
This adeptness in speech contests, of which Annan won several, would serve him well as he went on to join the the United Nations’ World Health Organization in 1962 and later became the U.N.’s secretary-general — a post where he had to react to crisis situations, wars and controversy.
Born to a family of chiefs of the Fante tribe in Ghana, his father was a businessman and provincial governor and his mother was a homemaker. While studying at Ghana’s University of Science and Technology, Annan was offered a scholarship from the Ford Foundation’s Foreign Students Leadership Project. It was this opportunity that brought him to St. Paul. In 1959, he left Ghana to study economics at Macalester. This was his first trip out of Africa and into another culture.
Annan never forgot the warm welcome he received in the cold state of Minnesota.
In a speech in 1994, he described his feelings for Macalester: “We were not merely greeted with tolerance, we were welcomed with warmth.”
This 1960 Macalester yearbook photo shows Kofi Annan explaining his native Ghana dress to two other Macalester students at the World University Service Tea. (Pioneer Press file photo)
Annan returned to the college several times over the years to give commencement speeches. In May he was honored by the college when it renamed its Institute for Global Citizenship as the Kofi Annan Institute for Global Citizenship.
“He was obviously an enormous source of pride for us,” Rosenberg said. “I’m really glad he was able to be here and celebrate that with us.”
Kofi Annan chats with Macalester College President Brian Rosenbergat the school on Apr. 22, 2006. (Pioneer Press file)
Fellow student Jack Mason, who became a U.S. magistrate judge and passed away in 2002, was on the speech team with Annan in 1961.
Mason told the Pioneer Press in 1998 that the team would pile into a car and drive all over the state for contests, but the traveling and lack of sleep never seemed to bother Annan.
“Kofi would get out of the car … and he’d be so eloquent and give these speeches that were really something,” Mason said.
That would be another quality Annan would retain throughout his career has he jetted all over the world to give speeches representing the United Nations.
David Lanegran, a former professor of geography at Macalester and a member of the graduating class of 1963, said there was one thing Annan was not good at: American football.
“He could not catch the football to save his soul,” Lanegran told the Pioneer Press in 1998. “I think he had one of the shorter football careers at Macalester.”
In 1984, Annan married Nane Lagergren, a Swedish-born attorney and abstract painter who is the niece of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat in Hungary who saved thousands of Jews from the Nazis. Together they had three children.
Besides Annan’s abilities and accomplishments, what folks from Macalester remember most about him was his humility.
Rosenberg said the humble foreign student from Africa who grew up to become one of the most powerful men in the world never changed in character.
“The most impressive thing about Kofi Annan was that he was even more impressive in private than he was in public,” Rosenberg said. “He never acted like he was more important than you.”
When Annan and his wife visited in May, Rosenberg was reminded again of his friend’s humility when Annan asked for a member of the custodial staff who cleaned the guest house to come see him so he could thank him.
“He took a picture with him,” Rosenberg said. “It really kind of captured the kind of person that he was.”
As the college processes the passing of its most famous son, Rosenberg has found himself thinking back over their many conversations through the years and still being inspired by Annan.
“His faith in the future gives me faith in the future,” Rosenberg said. “He and I taped one interview that we have not yet released. One of the last things he talked about was that change is hard and change takes time. It takes persistence. Sometimes that’s difficult for all of us to remember. I would want to thank him for reminding me of that. If anyone had the right to be frustrated, it would be him. But he never gave up. He just kept working.”
Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the United Nations, on May 7, 2018, speaks at a reception celebrating the 30th anniversary of Books for Africa, a St. Paul-based nonprofit that collects and ships books to that continent. (Nick Woltman / Pioneer Press)
Macalester College graduate and former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan laughs during his appearance at the Institute for Global Citizenship in Markim Hall in St. Paul on Wednesday, May 20, 2009. A life-size bronze bust of the Nobel Peace Prize winner was unveiled at Annan's alma mater. (Pioneer Press: Richard Marshall)
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, appearance at the Institute for Global Citizenship in Markim Hall in St. Paul on Wednesday, May 20, 2009 when a life-size bronze bust of the Nobel Peace Prize winner, left, was unveiled a Macalester College, Annan's alma mater. (Pioneer Press: Richard Marshall)
Macalester College graduate and former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, left, is greeted by donor Ruth Stricker Dayton at the Institute for Global Citizenship in Markim Hall in St. Paul on Wednesday, May 20, 2009. A life-size bronze bust of the Nobel Peace Prize winner was unveiled at Annan's alma mater. (Pioneer Press: Richard Marshall)
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan visited Macalester College in St. Paul on Saturday, April 22, 2006. Annan, along with student leaders raised a new United Nations flag and then spoke to a packed house in the Macalester Field House. (Scott Takushi / Pioneer Press)
In this Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2004 photo Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, left, receives the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, at Buckingham Palace, in London. Annan, one of the world's most celebrated diplomats and a charismatic symbol of the United Nations who rose through its ranks to become the first black African secretary-general, has died. He was 80. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File)
In this Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2004 photo United Nations Secretary General Kofi Anna, right, greets United States President George Bush, before the opening of the UN General Assembly at the United Nations, in New York. Annan, one of the world's most celebrated diplomats and a charismatic symbol of the United Nations who rose through its ranks to become the first black African secretary-general, has died. He was 80. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens, File)
In this photo dated Sunday, 10 Aug, 1997, Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, right, and UN General Secretary Kofi Annan, sit in a rowboat on a lake near the Swedish premiere's summer residence in Harpsund, Sweden. It is a tradition many decades old for the Swedish Prime Minister to row at Harpsund with foreign visitors. Annan, one of the world's most celebrated diplomats and a charismatic symbol of the United Nations who rose through its ranks to become the first black African secretary-general, has died aged 80, according to an announcement by his foundation Saturday Aug. 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Bertil Ericson, FILE)
In this Thursday Jan. 23, 1997 photo President Clinton looks on as United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan answers a reporters question during their joint news conference at the White House after their Oval Office meeting. Annan, one of the world's most celebrated diplomats and a charismatic symbol of the United Nations who rose through its ranks to become the first black African secretary-general, has died. He was 80. (AP Photo/Greg Gibson, File)
President Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, left, and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, right, and his wife Nane laugh at a joke during comments welcoming the Clinton's to New York at the Waldorf Astoria hotel Sunday, Sept. 21, 1997. United States Ambassador to the UN Bill Richardson, joked that he hoped all the gathered dignitaries were legally parked - a reference to an earlier diplomatic parking fracas between the UN and the city of New York. (AP Photo/UN, DPI photo by Evan Schneider)
In this Sunday, July 22, 2007 photo Nelson Mandela and former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan arrive together at the 5th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture, held at the Linder Auditorium in Johannesburg, South Africa. Annan, one of the world's most celebrated diplomats and a charismatic symbol of the United Nations who rose through its ranks to become the first black African secretary-general, has died. He was 80. (AP Photo, File)
In this photo dated Tuesday Aug. 12, 1997, the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, centre, inspects the Swedish army base SWEDINT, south of Stockholm, with Swedish defense minister, Bjoern von Sydow, left. The SWEDINT is a training camp for Swedish UN soldiers. Kofi Annan, one of the world's most celebrated diplomats and a charismatic symbol of the United Nations who rose through its ranks to become the first black African secretary-general, has died aged 80, according to an announcement by his foundation Saturday Aug. 18, 2018. (Evan P Schneider/UN via AP, FILE)
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, second left, and U.N. Force Commander in South Lebanon Gen. Sath Kofi Obeng, left, attend a ceremony in honor of the U.N. soldiers killed in South Lebanon since 1978, at the headquarters of the United Nations Interim Forces in Southern Lebanon (UNIFSL) Monday June 19, 2000 in the village of Naqoura, some 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of Beirut, near the Israeli border. Annan said Monday that the world body would take firm action against any violations of a U.N.-certified border between Lebanon and Israel. (AP Photo/Enric Marti)
In this photo dated Wednesday, March 5, 1997, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, left, talks with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat during a meeting in Annan's U.N. office, as Arafat sought support for his stand against a planned Jewish settlement in east Jerusalem. Kofi Annan, one of the world's most celebrated diplomats and a charismatic symbol of the United Nations who rose through its ranks to become the first black African secretary-general, has died aged 80, according to an announcement by his foundation Saturday Aug. 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, FILE)
In this photo taken on Tuesday, July 17, 2012, Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, shakes hands with United Nations special envoy Kofi Annan in Moscow, Russia. Putin says he admired former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan whose death was announced on Saturday for his wisdom and courage. Kofi Annan, one of the world's most celebrated diplomats and a charismatic symbol of the United Nations who rose through its ranks to become the first black African secretary-general, has died aged 80, according to an announcement by his foundation Saturday Aug. 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
In this photo dated Thursday, May 8, 1997, Chinese President Jiang Zemin, left, greets visiting UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan at Zhongnanhai, the official compound of the Chinese leadership. Annan, one of the world's most celebrated diplomats and a charismatic symbol of the United Nations who rose through its ranks to become the first black African secretary-general, has died aged 80, according to an announcement by his foundation Saturday Aug. 18, 2018.(Hitone Saka/Pool via AP, FILE)
In this Monday May 2, 2005 photo U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan addresses a conference to review to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty at the United Nations headquarters in New York. Annan, one of the world's most celebrated diplomats and a charismatic symbol of the United Nations who rose through its ranks to become the first black African secretary-general, has died. He was 80. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
In this photo dated Saturday, Feb. 21, 1998, the Iraqi delegation headed by Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, left, and the U.N. delegation headed by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, right, meet in Baghdad. Annan is in the Iraqi capital in a three-day trip in a last attempt to reach a peaceful solution to the standoff over weapons inspections between the U.N. and Iraq and avoid a US-led military intervention. Annan, one of the world's most celebrated diplomats and a charismatic symbol of the United Nations who rose through its ranks to become the first black African secretary-general, has died aged 80, according to an announcement by his foundation Saturday Aug. 18, 2018.(AP Photo/John Isaac/United Nations Pool via AP, FILE)
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, left, delivers a rare speech to the Security Council at the U.N. Monday March 2, 1998, after council members reached tentative agreement on a resolution warning Iraq of ``severest consequences'' if it violates an arms inspection deal. The council began meeting in the evening to vote on the resolution. At right is this month's Security Council President Abdoulie Momodou Sallah ambassador from Gambia. (AP Photo/David Karp)
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan receives an honorary degree, Doctor of Laws, during commencement exercises on Sunday, May 17, 1998 at Macalester College. Placing the hood on his robe is Joan Mondale, a 1952 graduate of Macalester. (Joe Rossi / Pioneer Press)
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and his wife, Nane leave their New York residence for the U.N. after learning that he and the U.N. won the Nobel Peace Prize, Friday, Oct. 12, 2001. (AP Photo/Matt Moyer)
Standing in front of the United Naitons logo, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan speaks during a news conference at United Nations headquarters Friday, Oct. 12, 2001, in New York after he and the UN were awarded the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. (AP Photo/David Karp)
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, right, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, second right, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanonv, center, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, second left, and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, left, listen to questions from journalists after a meeting between Annan and the foreign ministers of the permanent members of the Security Council in Geneva, Saturday, Sept. 13, 2003. The meeting was about the situation in Iraq. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)
A journalist films the black ribbon and a bouquet of flowers adorning the portrait of former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan at U.N. headquarters, Saturday, Aug. 18, 2018. Annan, one of the world's most celebrated diplomats and a charismatic symbol of the United Nations who rose through its ranks to become the first black African secretary-general, has died. He was 80. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
The United Nations flag flies at half staff in honor of former Secretary-General Kofi Annan at U.N. headquarters, Saturday, Aug. 18, 2018. Annan, one of the world's most celebrated diplomats and a charismatic symbol of the United Nations who rose through its ranks to become the first black African secretary-general, has died. He was 80. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
