Marv Grunig is serving as a Trustee on the Governing Board. Marv currently serves on the Professional Practice, Quality and Planning Committee and is completing the first year of a three-year term that will end April 30, 2028. He previously served as the Windom City Council’s liaison to the Governing Board for two years.
After college, Marv farmed for a few years while working nights at Toro Mfg., before joining Windom’s municipal electric utility in February of 1977. Over 38 years, he worked his way up from groundman to lineman to line foreman, ultimately serving as Utility Manager for 12 years before retiring in early 2015. During that time, he also represented Windom on the Central Minnesota Municipal Power Agency Board, helping restructure and reorganize that agency into what is now the Compas Power Agency serving Windom’s electric utility today. Following his retirement from the Electric Utility, Marv ran for and was elected to the Windom City Council, where he served for eight years and held seats on numerous council commissions and committees.
“Being a city utility guy and then serving as the Council liaison, I developed an interest in the success of the new Clinic and the Hospital,” Marv says. His goals on the Board center on supporting that continued success — “providing needed services locally and maintaining a strong relationship between WAH and the City of Windom, and possibly growing the relationship with Avera.” With ongoing concerns about the future of rural healthcare, Marv hopes to see Windom Area Health thrive for the long term, so that neighboring communities can rely on local care “instead of making the long drive to larger cities to get care, requiring stays in expensive hotels.”
Marv grew up on his grandparents’ farm west of Comfrey, graduating from Comfrey High School in 1969 before attending Southwest State College in Marshall, where he focused on business administration. He married his wife on June 14, 1975, and the two have lived in Windom ever since, in a home they built in 1977. They have two grown children, Jennifer and Eric, both of whom live in Rochester, and three grown granddaughters: twins Kaylee and Grace, who both graduate from college this spring and now work in Rochester, and 16-year-old Josie, who is learning to drive and attending Crown College this year. Unusual fact: alongside his twin granddaughters, Marv also has twin sisters-in-law, twin nephews, and triplet nephews. In his spare time, Marv is an avid woodworker, crafting projects for his family and donating pieces to Windom’s Methodist Church to sell at silent auctions that raise funds for students attending camps and other church activities.
