ABOVE: Steve Larsen and his book, which details his life and upbringing in Fairmont.

FAIRMONT– After getting his start in Fairmont, Steve Larsen has gone on to do many things, a lot of which he’s detailed in his new autobiography, “My Heart Has Been In It From The Start.” He reflected back on some memorable experiences growing up here and how they’ve shaped him into who he is today.

Larsen shared he was born in 1950 at the Fairmont hospital, but soon after the family moved to Rainy River, Ontario, Canada as his dad took a job as a pastor there. Larsen spent his earliest years over the border but returned to Fairmont at the ripe age of five.

“Most of my growing up, my recollection is of Fairmont,” Larsen said.

The family, which included Larsen’s siblings, lived in two houses on Lucia Avenue, both of which his dad had a hand in building. Larsen often visited the George Lake Dam with a number of other boys in the neighborhood and remembered two ‘bums,’ Jay and Ray, who had built shacks there.

“They taught us how to fish and catch turtles and they had big gardens and they would make turtle soup and rabbit stew,” Larsen recalled.

He had a good time going to school, though noted he wasn’t the best student. Larsen said in third grade, he received all Ds and Fs and he didn’t pass because it was expected he didn’t know how to read. Larsen then for the next few years switched from Lincoln Public School and attended Immanuel Lutheran Grade School. Neither school is longer in existence.

“I couldn’t do school. I was horrible at it,” Larsen said. “But when I got to the high school I got into debate and I took a typing class and I got into theater and all of a sudden people were telling me I was good at something,” Larsen said.

He specifically recalled teacher Roy Dobie who recognized Larsen’s strong writing skills and mentioned he was also fond of Bill Perron who was the debate coach.

Both of his parents were the youngest in their families so Larsen had a lot of cousins. His cousin John still lives in fairmont today. In his book Larsen shared he had an aunt that kept Sentinel newspaper clipping of her sons, his cousins, sport endeavors.

“It did a great job of covering all of the games and all of the games were broadcast by KSUM Radio,” he recalled.

He wasn’t the best at, or didn’t always participate in sports and while in Fairmont a contributing factor which would end up being central to his life was determined.

“It was a doctor here, when I was going to junior high school, that discovered my heart issues that have become a big part of my life,” Larsen said.

Dr. Kramer noticed something off when Larsen was in for a physical ahead of the football season.

“He called my mother who he knew and worked with at the Fairmont hospital and said, ‘Ruth, we need to have your boy see a cardiologist,'” Larsen recalled.

A month later, Larsen was up at the University of Minnesota Heart Hospital having his first of three open heart surgeries. He was 15 at the time of the first.

“I came back to Fairmont High School with a 17 inch surgical scar. If you’re a boy in gym class and you have a scar like that, for a guy it’s a badge of honor,” Larsen said with a laugh.

He has since undergone additional open heart surgeries in 2016 and 2018 and each has been more complicated than the last.

While in Fairmont Larsen discovered something else that’s proven to be central to his life: his love of cars and motorcycles.

“When all I had was a bicycle, I remember going by seeing ‘Furrin’ cars,” Larsen said. “I used to go there and look at these foreign cars and they were what ignited my passion for cars.”

The dealership, located at 1410 E. Blue Earth Ave., where Day Pluming is now, was Charlie Nicholas Furrin Cars. Larsen was able to find an article about the dealership that Lenny Tvedten with the Martin County Historical Society wrote.

“He had a Jaguar XK120. He was a real character,” Larsen said of Charlie Nicholas.

When Larsen was 18, he found himself jumping into George Lake in an attempt to save two kids who had fallen off a pontoon. He recalled sitting outside when he heard calls for help.

“The first one I handed over and then they were yelling that there was another boy underneath the water and I kept looking until I found the second one,” Larsen said. “By the time I got to shore with the second one my mom had come down and a few minutes later the fire department showed up.”

Scenes from this event were documented by reporters at the Sentinel and the story and photos were on the front page of the June 25,1968 edition and that page is reprinted in Larsen’s book.

That was the summer before the start of Larsen’s senior year in high school and it would be his last spent in Fairmont because the family moved to Rochester, which is where he spent his senior year.

“I kept the best things that I had from Fairmont. No one knew me so I could make up any backstory so I kept the best stuff,” Larsen said.

He would have been in Fairmont’s class of 1969 and despite not actually graduating from the class, Larsen said when he’s attended class reunions no one seems to remember that he was missing for senior year.

“There were like 300 kids in the class. It wasn’t a small class,” he said.

When asked the reason behind writing this autobiography, Larsen brought up a day in 2019 when he got a call from his cousin Roger in California.

“He said ‘hey, cuz, are you sitting down?’ And I said, ‘No, do I need to be?’ And he said, ‘yeah I would sit down.’ So I sit down and asked, ‘what do you got?’ And he said, ‘you have a daughter… I just got an email from her and she sounds real nice. You should read it,'” Larsen said.

The email from Christina is reprinted in Larsen’s book. It said she had spent her life looking for her birth father. When she was young her mother had died and when she got older, she found her birth certificate that said “father unknown.”

Larsen did not know there was ever even a baby on the way, let alone born. However, in 2019, thanks to results from a DNA test and help from a team of people aiding in Christina’s search, he met a daughter.

Larsen, who had by that time long been married to wife Maggie, had another daughter, Ginger, and a Son Eric who had died when he was two years old.

“I lost my son, and then I find a daughter I didn’t know I had. What she brought with her, in addition to being my daughter, she was a sister to my other daughter, Ginger,” Larsen said.

Going back to why he started the book, Larsen said, “I started it because I wanted her to understand the life of this father that she never got a chance to know. My daughter that I knew about, she knew all my stories but she (Christina) didn’t know any of them,” Larsen said.

As he was in the year-long process of writing his book, Larsen also thought it would be interesting for people who knew him from one section of his life to discover who else he is as a person.

His career, for example, has been multi-faceted.

He attended both the University of Minnesota-Mankato and then Rochester State Junior College, now the University of Minnesota- Rochester, where he got a two year degree.

He then started a job working at an electronics store selling stereos. This led to a big career in tech as Larsen began working for Schaak Electronics and then helped open their first computer store in the Burnsville Mall, called Digital Den.

“If you wanted your Apple computer fixed in the state of Minnesota, I personally fixed it,” Larsen said.

An article about that was seen by Controlled Data Inc., which hired Larsen. From there over a number of years he went to AT&T and to IBM.

That led to him getting interested in launching start up companies. To date Larsen has founded nine companies. Some of the technologies that power the internet today and Amazon and Facebook, were developed by companies that Larsen started.

In between founding various start up companies, Larsen spent 25 years writing professionally for magazines including Rider, Motorcycle Consumer News and RoadRUNNER.

While he’s written hundreds of articles and two books in the past, this was his first autobiography. In putting it together, he broke it into sections. The six sections in the book are: health, cars, business, family, motorcycles and religion.

“Think of them as threads. I wanted to weave a tapestry,” Larsen said about the process.

His life has taken him all over. He started in Minnesota and then moved to California, to New York, back to Minnesota, to California and now for the last 12 years he’s been in Phoenix, Arizona.

Despite living in a number of big cities, he finds something real special about Fairmont.

“I had the most idyllic place to grow up that you could possibly grow up and it’s still here and still providing that to the people and the kids that are growing up here. It’s an amazing place,” Larsen said. “It’s got lakes, people that care about community and some of them care about the history.”

His book can be found online on amazon.com.