Growing up in a town of 10,000 and a stone’s throw from one of the city’s five lakes, Bishop-elect Michael Izen learned to waterski with his older brother, Paul, behind a neighbor’s boat. He loved to play basketball and football and was eager to burst out the door to do those things — after the nightly family rosary.
That mix of everyday activity and faith put into practice was part of growing up in Fairmont for the Izen family. The bishop-elect and his siblings — Mary, Geri, Tom, Ann and Paul, children of the late John and Joanna Izen — attended St. John Vianney parish and elementary school, which offered strong academics and Mass attended by the students each day.
During the summer, their mother continued to encourage daily Mass, and strove never to miss one herself. Eldest sibling Mary Izen Book, 67 – now a member of St. Timothy in Blaine — said her mother’s devotion to the Mass was so strong, that when going into labor with her third child, Tom, she suggested she could still get to morning Mass.
“No, we better go to the hospital,” replied her husband.
“I can remember them backing out of the driveway, mom looking back at me and waving goodbye,” Mary said as the family discussed their brother’s April 11 episcopal ordination at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul.
Bishop-elect Izen, 56, a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, has been appointed to serve as an auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese, ministering alongside Archbishop Bernard Hebda and Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Williams. He will help lead the Church in a 12-county metropolitan area that encompasses the Twin Cities and is home to about 720,000 Catholics.
Ordained a priest in 2005, Bishop-elect Izen practiced being one as a child, he and his siblings said.
His sister, Ann Wehner, 59, a member of St. John Vianney in Fairmont, remembers her brother pretending to preside at Mass. “Paul and I would play Mass with him,” Ann said. “We took great pride in preparing and participating in that. Making the hosts out of regular bread slices and sometimes even doing music.”
“We would argue over who were the servers, who got to be the priest. Mike would usually win because he was the youngest,” said Tom, 62, also of St. John Vianney. “I can picture the coffee table he used as an altar,” said Geri Martin, 64, a member of Pax Christi in Eden Prairie.
Bishop-elect Izen recalled growing up in comments he made at a Jan. 5 news conference at the Archdiocesan Catholic Center in St. Paul, the day his appointment to the archdiocese and his April 11 ordination were announced. He remembers and still has books on the faith his father read, including “Life of Christ” by the late Archbishop Fulton Sheen.
The youngest in the family, Bishop-elect Izen was 21 when their father died — just a month after he had retired — in 1988 at age 61. Their mother, who had Alzheimer’s for years, died in 2000, when Bishop-elect Izen was 33.
“It was a different kind of relationship with my parents in my mid-20s,” Bishop-elect Izen said at the news conference. “But I would never, ever say that I was shortchanged when it comes to my parents. They were super examples of love. And I think, being the youngest, I got to see that in my last few years of high school, when I was the only one in the house. Just how much my dad loved my mom, and my mom loved my dad.”
Bishop-elect Izen loved and ministered to his parents, and they were proud of him, his siblings said.
“They were definitely proud of Paul and Mike, the two youngest who probably saw more of what mom was going through,” recalled Geri. “When our dad passed away unexpectedly, it was June, and Paul and Mike were both home from college. Mike was working at the Green Giant factory in Blue Earth but quit his job to care for mom. I remember thinking Mike was a pretty mature young man to care for his mom at age 21 and help her with all the activities of daily living she needed assistance with.”
The Izens were known in the community for running Izen Food Market, a grocery store founded by their dad’s father, John P. Izen, in the 1930s as Mocol’s Grocery store, to capitalize on a successful grocery store in Mankato run by his brother-in-law, Joe Mocol, Sr., Mary said.
“Our grandfather was the owner, and our dad was the manager and one of the butchers,” Mary said of the Fairmont store. “It would most likely bring to mind a grocery store in a 1940s movie.”
But by 1969, when Bishop-elect Izen was 2 years old, two large grocery store chains had moved into Fairmont and Izen Food Market couldn’t compete. The family sold it, the Izens said.
“I felt sad for my dad when the store closed,” Ann said. “I was also proud of him and touched when (he) took a job at Wolf’s (Wolf-Habein) department store and was primarily downstairs in the fabric department.”
In 1974, their father began managing a furniture store in Fairmont, where he remained until retiring, said Tom, who lives with his wife, Lisa, in the home the Izens grew up in, just off Budd Lake. The Izens have made some changes, such as converting the living room to a dining room. Tom said he sometimes opens the silverware drawer of his youth only to remember it no longer holds knives, forks and spoons.
“The beauty for us,” said Paul, 58, of St. Ambrose in Woodbury, “is when we visit Tom, it’s like going home. It evokes fond memories for our family.”
