WINONA, Minn. — Gerald W. Tobin, a retired Winona State University prof and innovator, known among other things for his underground house near Fountain City, died at age 82. At Winona State he taught industrial education. He was in a group of seven faculty who were let go during a misguided retrenchment campaign by an acting president and who fought the action through the faculty union and was reinstated. It was an early victory for the new union, the Inter-Faculty Organization. The acting president didn’t survive a campus-wide faculty vote of no confidence and resigned. Tobin earned two degrees n vocational education from Stout State University. In 1966 he began a 34-year teaching career at Winona State, during which he earned a doctorate from Utah State University. Besides the underground house, he designed and built an airplane. In 1994 he also built a steel house and hangar on the Arrowhead airstrip near Sandia, Texas. He had earned pilot’s license at Winona in 1985.
Details: Fawcett-Junker Funeral Home
1940-2023