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Missoula Mayor John Engen Honors Montana’s Mae Nan Ellingson

Mayor Engen delivered a humerous and moving tribute to Mae Nan Ellingson on the occasion of her retirement from Dorsey & Whitney on Friday night.

We all wish Mae Nan a wonderful and satisfying retirement but, if Montana is lucky, we’ll be hearing more from her after she takes a year off to unwind and prepare for her next chapter.

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"You know what?

If you’re at all acquainted with Mae Nan Ellingson, she has asked you that question.

Depending on how long you’ve known her, she’s asked you a dozen, a hundred, a thousand times.

And if you’re at all acquainted with Mae Nan Ellingson, and she’s said "you know what?" to you, you know that you are not expected to answer, because she doesn’t expect you to know what.

And even if you know what, you also know that it doesn’t matter.

She knows what and she is about to tell you what. And the more she sounds like a Texan, the more she knows what and the more adamant she is about what she knows.

And damned if what she knows ain’t worth listening to.

I’ve had the good fortune to listen to Mae Nan under a variety of circumstances for a number of years. Whether she’s working a bond deal, crafting legislation, solving a lingering community problem, engaging in philanthropy or making guests in her home feel as if they’re the most important people on the planet, she’s always worth listening to. And, to her credit, she still has the capacity to listen, to assemble good ideas to make them great.

There is no abundance of elegance in this world, in no small part because some folks believe elegance is about how you look and what you wear and they aspire to the title under a false premise.

Elegance is really about how you carry yourself through life and about being relevant and engaged throughout the journey, despite early success or failure; it’s about mattering as much at 64 as you did at 24 and planning on being relevant and engaged until you’re a simply a memory that matters.

Mae Nan Ellingson is an elegant human being.

She mattered at 24, when she was a delegate to the "con-con," the insider term for Montana’s Constitutional Convention and she matters today, as we’ve discussed and corresponded over our baseball-stadium deal.

Let there be no misunderstanding: were it not for the work of Mae Nan Ellingson, pro bono, the dream of a municipal baseball stadium would be dead.

Mae Nan Ellingson is an elegant human being.

She mattered when she put together legislation that allows cities to invest in themselves, to make what’s old new and vibrant once again. She matters today as communities around Montana rely on her effort to ensure that small towns could buy big stuff, like fire trucks, to save lives.

Mae Nan Ellingson is an elegant human being.

She’s made government finance sexy. That, my friends, is not easy.

Mayor Dan Kemmis reminds us that we in public service stand on the shoulders of giants. Mae Nan Ellingson is one of those giants. I will not stand on her shoulders, for reasons that are obvious, but I’m certainly there in spirit.

Mae Nan Ellingson is an elegant human being.

The preamble of the Constitution of the State of Montana:
"We the people of Montana grateful to God for the quiet beauty of our state, the grandeur of
our mountains, the vastness of our rolling plains, and desiring to improve the quality of
life, equality of opportunity and to secure the blessings of liberty for this and future
generations do ordain and establish this constitution."

We the people of Montana are grateful to Mae Nan Ellingson, an elegant human being who has improved the quality of our lives beyond measure."

John Engen, February 2012

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Influential Missoula attorney Mae Nan Ellingson retires http://matr.net/article-48726.html

Pillar of Montana law, government finance \’matriarch\’ Dorsey & Whitney\’s Mae Nan Ellingson retiring http://matr.net/article-48591.html

Dorsey & Whitney’s Missoula Public Finance Group Excels and Expands http://matr.net/article-43624.html

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