Frederic Arthur Graves

Frederic “Fritz” Graves, age 89, passed away on April 21, 2021 in Longmont, Colorado where he had recently moved from his long time residence in Ham Lake, Minnesota. He is survived by his wife of 63 years Jane Graves; children Scott and Cameron; daughters-in-law Marlene Zaleznick and Sonya Graves; grandchildren Travis, Ashley (Hudson), Justin, and Hunter; and great grandchildren Kinsley, Adeline, and Alice. He was preceded in death by his son Mitchell; siblings Spencer, Janet (Loughead), and Michael; and parents Kenneth and Bernice Graves.

Fred was born in Ladysmith, WI and grew up in Spencer, WI where he graduated from Spencer High School in 1949. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1951 six months after the start of the Korean War, and was stationed in Sault Saint Marie, Michigan and later in Fairbanks, Alaska which was then a Territory of the United States.

After his honorable discharge from the Army in 1954, Fred attended the University of Wisconsin, first at Stevens Point (where he met his future wife, Jane) and then at Madison, graduating in 1959 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Agriculture.

In 1957, Fred married Jane Bourcier of Marshfield, Wisconsin while both were students at the University of Wisconsin. Together they raised three rambunctious boys, attending their many school and sporting events. Yearly vacations were spent camping in state and national parks of northern Minnesota where daily activities included canoeing, fishing, and picking blueberries. Each trip also included a stint rockhounding along the North Shore of Lake Superior.

After graduating from the University, Fred took a job in 1959 as a food scientist with Sanna Dairies (creators of Swiss Miss instant hot cocoa) in Menomonie, WI. In 1965 Fred accepted a job offer with A&P’s Ann Page Food Processing Plant in Horseheads, NY; the plant was at that time the largest food processing plant in the world with 33 acres under a single roof. In 1968, facing a transfer within A&P to Cherry Hill, NJ, Fred decided that he was, at heart, a guy from the upper Midwest. The family packed up and moved to the Minneapolis suburb of Blaine and he began working as a food scientist at Land-O-Lakes’ Minneapolis headquarters. While at Land-O-Lakes Fred applied his acute sense of taste and smell working on a variety of new product development initiatives from ice cream to pudding to instant hot cocoa, frequently testing different products on his three growing boys (who were only too happy to support the cause). Two of his signature products, Land-O-Lakes Country Morning Blend® (for which he received a patent) and Land-O-Lakes Cocoa Classics® are still available today. Fred worked for Land-O-Lakes until 1990 when he took an early retirement buyout and then became the food scientist for a small startup company, Humanetics. While there he worked on processes for extracting fiber from various plant sources to support development of nutraceutical products, for which he was granted five patents. Fred retired from Humanetics in 1996.

Fred had a rare combination of scientific orientation and practical creativity that served him at work, and at home where he enjoyed woodworking and furniture making, puttering around the house on fixit projects, lapidary, and applying his refined sense of taste to selecting wines for his wine cellar. Following his retirement, he undertook genealogical research on his family roots. Over several years of research and making connections with unknown relatives he was able to trace his family line to Saxon England and the Holy Roman Empire.

Fred had a good heart, a gentle soul, a good sense of humor, and his family misses him deeply.