M.G. Gullixson probably would not have described himself as a man behind the town. That would have been too much.
But there he was.
At the Minnetonka Herald office on Lake Street. At the Masons smorgasbord. Around the schools. Around the athletic fields. Around young people who needed a job, a little encouragement, or a push toward college.
Gullixson’s community life extended well beyond the Herald office. He was a member of the Wayzata Masonic Lodge and the Shrine, the Wayzata Lions Club, the Wayzata Chamber of Commerce, and the Minnesota Editorial Association.
He was woven into the life of Wayzata itself.
Before Wayzata had websites, email newsletters, city updates, Facebook groups, polished branding, or the constant hum of social media, it had the Minnetonka Herald. And for much of the Herald’s defining era, M.G. Gullixson helped give that paper life.
The Herald was where the town saw itself. City business, school news, local sports, church suppers, military service, weddings, births, dinner parties, business openings, and the names of people who mattered because they lived here — all of it found its way into print.
That kind of newspaper did more than report the news.
It held the town together.
The Town Learned About Itself There
Gullixson came from the old local newspaper tradition, when a publisher’s work reached well beyond the printed page.
The Minnetonka Herald carried the daily life of Wayzata in a way that is hard to fully appreciate now. Schools, churches, clubs, merchants, athletes, lake families, public officials, veterans, and neighbors all found their way into its columns.
The town learned about itself there.
Births, weddings, deaths, games, business openings, church suppers, council debates, school news, service members, local characters, and small victories were all preserved in print. Week by week, the Herald gave shape to community life.
Gullixson seemed to understand the value of that work. A local paper could inform people, but it could also encourage them, challenge them, recognize them, and remind them that their lives were part of something larger.
For three decades, that was the Herald’s place in Wayzata.
And Gullixson helped make it so.
From the Classroom to The Foursome to the Herald
Gullixson came to Wayzata in 1929 after teaching in Maple Lake and New York Mills and earning a degree from the University of Minnesota.
In Wayzata, he taught mathematics at the high school and later served as principal. He became part of a group of four schoolmen that included Michael Vukas, Joseph O’Connell, and Einar Ryden. They taught together, played golf together, and eventually went into business together.
In 1935, the group opened The Foursome, a men’s clothing store, after noticing that Wayzata had no proper place to buy a tie.
A year later, Gullixson, Vukas, and O’Connell bought the Minnetonka Herald from Palmer Holman. They also purchased a subscription list from Abe Brazman, publisher of the Minnetonka Pilot.
Their first issues came out of a room behind the Wayzata Theater. The paper started small, with the new owners barely clearing the subscription requirement needed to get going.
From there, Gullixson’s life in Wayzata widened. The teacher became a publisher. The classroom gave way to the newsroom. And the town he had joined in 1929 became the town he would help chronicle for the next three decades.
Week by Week, the Town in Print
The Herald carried the everyday life of Wayzata and the North Shore.
City hall was there. So were the schools, the teams, the churches, the clubs, the merchants, and the families whose names filled the social columns week after week.
The paper recorded births, weddings, deaths, military service, college students home for the holidays, dinner parties, church suppers, school programs, business openings, lake-area visitors, vacation notes, and neighborhood news from communities beyond Wayzata.
It is easy to smile at some of that now. A dinner party. A student home from college. A family returning from a trip. A church group serving lunch.
But that was the town.
The Herald treated ordinary community life as worthy of record. It gave attention to the things people actually talked about in grocery stores, school hallways, church basements, barbershops, and along Lake Street.
Over time, those small notices became something larger. They became the shared memory of the North Shore.
For Wayzata, the Herald was a kind of common table. Everyone did not sit at it every week, but everyone knew it was there. And when the town had something to say, celebrate, mourn, argue over, or remember, the Herald was often where it landed.
A Clear View of What Wayzata Ought to Be
Gullixson had a clear view of what Wayzata ought to be.
His editorials could be conservative, precise, civic-minded, and blunt. He cared about the appearance of the town, the conduct of local government, the strength of the schools, the health of the business district, and the way Wayzata presented itself along Lake Street.
He took positions.
He opposed the city getting into the liquor business, believing private licenses could help support stronger lakefront dining and a better commercial district. He criticized the “pumpkin tooth” look of Lake Street, where buildings were broken up by parking lots. He wanted storefronts facing the street and parking moved away from the front door.
Those were practical arguments, but they also showed a deeper instinct. Gullixson understood that the form of a town matters. Buildings, sidewalks, parking, restaurants, shops, schools, churches, and clubs all helped shape how people experienced Wayzata.
His paper also reflected an old-school belief in work, discipline, character, and service. He championed high school sports. He followed local students. He gave attention to service members and veterans. He supported young people with praise, jobs, responsibility, and help toward college.
Taken together, his positions formed a kind of civic worldview. Wayzata should look good. It should govern itself sensibly. It should support local enterprise. It should honor its schools, churches, volunteers, athletes, and service members. And it should remember the people who made the town work.
Long before “placemaking” became a planning term, Gullixson was already writing about the relationship between a town, its lake, its businesses, and its public life.
The Teacher Who Never Stopped Teaching
Gullixson’s roots in Wayzata began in the schools.
He taught mathematics at Wayzata High School and later served as principal. He also coached wrestling, and the habits of a schoolman stayed with him long after he moved into the newspaper business.
That showed up in the Herald.
High school sports mattered to Gullixson. Games, teams, athletes, coaches, and school activities were part of the public life of the town, and he gave them space. In a smaller Wayzata, a student’s name in the paper meant something. A photo, a box score, a short item about a school program or athletic achievement — those were not minor things to the families who clipped them out and saved them.
His support for young people went beyond coverage.
Long before formal teen job programs became common, Gullixson gave students work in the Herald backshop after school and on Sundays. It was practical help. They learned responsibility, earned money, and in many cases used those jobs to help pay their way toward college.
That may be one of the clearest windows into who Gullixson was. He believed in young people enough to put them to work. He gave them a place in the paper, a place in the town, and sometimes a path to something larger.
The same impulse carried on after his death through scholarships, youth projects, and the local places that continued to bear his name. The teacher had become a publisher, but he never really stopped being a teacher.
The Publisher Who Kept Giving
Gullixson’s influence did not end with the newspaper.
The Wayzata Masons remembered him in a homespun way, with a memorial smorgasbord at Wayzata Junior High. It was fitting. Gullixson had organized the first Masons smorgasbord years earlier and helped turn it into a community event.
That seems to have been his way.
He did much for Wayzata without making much noise about it. Those who remembered him described a man who cared deeply about the town and the people in it. He was quiet, precise, conservative in his convictions, and deeply involved in the ordinary work of community life.
His help for young people may have been the clearest example. Gullixson gave students jobs in the Herald backshop after school and on Sundays, helping them earn money for college. Over the years, that practical help reached dozens of students from Wayzata and Orono.
He also made sure that work would continue after his death. His will established an annual scholarship fund as part of the M.G. Gullixson Trust. The trust later supported local projects, including a major gift to Wayzata ice hockey.
Advertisement courtesy Vintage Minnesota Hockey.
His name remained visible in town as well. The baseball field near the school administration building also carries the M.G. Gullixson name.
For a man who spent so much of his life putting other people’s names in print, there is something fitting about that. His own name stayed attached to the places where young people gathered, played, learned, and began making their way.
From Back Room to Lake Street Institution
The Herald grew with the town.
When Gullixson, Vukas and O’Connell took over, the paper was operating from a single room behind the Wayzata Theater. That room served as both office and shop. The subscription list barely met the legal minimum needed to publish.
Three years later, the partners needed more space. In 1939, they built a new Herald building on Lake Street, across from what later became Olson’s Bakery. By 1951, business had grown enough that an addition more than doubled the size of the building.
The paper was no longer just a small weekly trying to survive the Depression. It had become part of the machinery of the lake area. The Herald made money from the newspaper and from publication printing. It added space for offices, shop work, paper stock, and even a street-side area for school and office supplies.
The reach widened, too. The Deephaven Argus had been started in 1939 to serve Deephaven, Groveland, Tonkawood, Croft and Cottagewood. In 1950, the Minnetonka Pilot was purchased from Abe Brazman, bringing the number of papers to three. A few years later, a new building was constructed in Mound to serve the expanding Pilot.
By 1965, the three papers had a combined circulation of about 10,000.
That year, Herald Publications — the Minnetonka Herald, the Minnetonka Pilot and the Deephaven Argus — was sold to Northland Communications, Inc., headed by Carroll E. Crawford. Gullixson remained with the Herald in an advisory role as editor emeritus. Vukas also continued his community work, taking a position with Wayzata State Bank.
The Herald had started as a teacher-led, owner-operated newspaper rooted in downtown Wayzata. After the sale, it became part of a larger newspaper operation that would eventually move toward the Sun name. The local paper that Gullixson helped build had grown strong enough to be absorbed into something bigger.
What the Herald Remembered
Some of that world is gone now.
The old Herald era was personal. It was intensely local. It was rooted in downtown Wayzata, in a building on Lake Street, with people walking in and out, bringing news, buying ads, asking questions, dropping off notices, or checking to see what made the paper that week.
The staff knew the town because they lived in it. They knew the families, the coaches, the merchants, the church ladies, the students, the council members, the veterans, the characters, and the people who quietly did the work.
That kind of newspaper is hard to recreate.
But the values behind it still matter.
Names matter. Accuracy matters. Showing up matters. Remembering matters. Small items matter. A student’s achievement, a local business opening, a church dinner, a council vote, a team photo, a neighbor’s service, a familiar face lost — those are the things that become a town’s memory.
Gullixson’s Herald understood that.
It treated Wayzata as a place worthy of careful attention. That may be the lesson that remains. A community does not remember itself automatically. Someone has to keep the record.
Wayzata Did
Walk down Lake Street today and the old newspaper world is not easy to see.
The presses are gone. The backshop is gone. The boys who came in after school to work for college money are grown old now, if they are still with us. The town has changed, as towns do.
But the places still carry echoes.
There was the Herald office on Lake Street, where Wayzata passed through in notices, advertisements, arguments, photographs, and names. There was the Masons smorgasbord, where Gullixson’s quiet community work was remembered over a meal. There was the ballfield near the school administration building that carried his name, a fitting marker for a man who believed young people deserved attention, discipline, opportunity, and encouragement.
Gullixson spent much of his life helping Wayzata see itself in print.
He recorded the town, prodded it, praised it, corrected it, and gave ordinary lives a place in the public record. He was a teacher, merchant, publisher, Mason, benefactor, and, in his own plain way, a builder of community.
Not every town gets someone like that.
Wayzata did.
Editor’s note: Many thanks to the Minnetonka Herald and the Lake Minnetonka Historical Society for the information on M.G. Gullixson.
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