Donald Lanning of Cokato, passed away on August 18, 2016.
Memorial Service will be on Saturday, September 10, 2016 at 2 PM. at Swanson-Peterson Funeral Home of Cokato
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Donald Leo Lanning was born on May 25, 1935, at Louisville, Kentucky. He lived in Texas for a short time but grew up mainly in Louisville. He graduated from St. Xavier High School, Louisville, Kentucky. He enlisted in the U.S. Army Signal Corps (in between the Korean Conflict and the U.S. involvement in Vietnam), were he received technical training in the repair and maintenance of aircraft communications systems. After being honorably discharged from the military, he earned a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Louisville. Combining those skill sets, he was both an electrician and an electrical engineer, and for a while worked at Honeywell with communications and navigation systems for the Apollo space program.
In the early 1980’s he attended the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul and earned an M.B.A.
Much of his working career was at Pillsbury (about 17 years) where he was on staff as an electrical engineer. In the late 1980’s Grand Metropolitan acquired Pillsbury and eliminated the staff engineers, he then became an electrical consultant for a variety of architectural firms, most recently EDC (Engineering Design Consultants), retiring just last year.
His prior marriage was to Carolyn Marie Lanning, which ended with her unexpected passing in July of 1990.
He lived in Minneapolis until 1973 then Hopkins until his marriage to Lucille Lorence on March 20, 1993. The couple made their home in Cokato.
Donald enjoyed everything about trains and was a model railroad enthusiast. He was an amateur historian, photographer. a student of the guitar, and until just a few years ago (once his leg no longer allowed him to stand without a cane) a home improvement do-it-yourself-er.
Donald passed away on August 18, 2016. He had reached the age of 81 years, 2 months and 23 days.
Survivors include; his wife Lucille of Cokato, son Michael Lanning of Hopkins. Step children: Vicky (Doug) Lindgren of Cokato, Randy (Susan) Vogt of Duluth. Step grandchildren: Angie, Jeremiah, Aurora, Anna, Naomi, and Adam.