LaVonne Erickson

LaVonne passed away at her home in New Brighton on October 20, 2020 surrounded by her loving family.
She was born in St. Charles on April 5, 1941 and was best known by “Bonnie” to all her friends and family.
Bonnie was the middle child of three and grew up in Austin where she graduated from Austin High.
Bonnie was a secretary for the HighSchool a few years after she graduated while Ron went to serve in the Army.
When he returned they moved to the Cities where Bonnie worked in various customer service and secretarial positions.
She worked for Marquette, GrainBelt Brewery, MoundsView School District, Ecolab and then many years as a manager of customer service at Medtronic where she retired in 2015

Bonnie is preceded in death by her parents Everett and Ophal Smith, brother Kenneth and husband Ron

She is survived by her daughter-Jacki Gale and (Steve)
Grandchildren-Kelsey and Robert
Sister Sandra Monbarren and (Jim)
Sister in law-MaryAnn Smith
Sister in law-Georgia Erickson
nieces and nephews

Bonnie loved her life and was especially proud of her grand kids.  She and Ron helped with baseball and softball and as the kids grew up they both lived to go watch them in their sporting events.  Whether it was watching Robert play baseball or mountain bike up a ski hill or in a dirt track arena, or spending all weekend in a gym watching Kelsey play basketball or out in the hot sun enjoying softball or coaching in the later years.  It was always funny to hear nana make little comments about how her eyes were getting bad, but the umpires were worse because “that was clearly a strike", or “that runner was safe”. She loved all the other parents, players and coaches she met along the way.

Bonne loved traveling to places like Branson Missouri, Wisconsin Dells and Door County with family and shopping in all the little stores. She enjoyed attending plays at theaters like Chanhassen and the Guthrie-especially for musicals. She liked to read Danielle Steele novels, she enjoyed many different kinds of music from Country to popular stuff, and especially enjoyed Barbara Streisand, Celine Dion and Darrius Rucker.

She liked to cook, but she especially liked baking and could dirty almost every bowl, spoon and measuring cup in the house to make a batch of cookies or her famous nut-goodie bars.  She was great about then calling in the troops to help do the dishes afterward.  She also loved her DOVE chocolates, Hot Tamales and Sour Gummy Worms.

Bonnie was a lady that always prided her self in looking her best from her pretty pink nails to her bright lipstick colors. She was known for wearing blouses no matter where she was headed for the day.  Bonnie could put on a blouse with a pair of sweatpants, tie a sweatshirt around her shoulders and look better and more put together than most of us when we actually dress up and she could also pull off wearing any pair of sun glasses and “rock-em”!

She enjoyed staying in nicer hotels as opposed to “camping" and she loved going out to dinner to enjoy a nice meal and good glass of red wine. Her life was full of joy, and she was always charitable and generous to others. She loved her family, friends and neighbors and is greatly missed.