Mildred Ann Lessl (née Eagan) entered our world August 30, 1930 and passed into the next April 27, 2024.  She was born in a farm house in Marcellon WI, in the same front bedroom where her father Harry Eagan was born twenty-nine years before.  Her mother, Elizabeth Joyce Eagan (née Wing), also a farmer’s daughter, grew up just outside Pardeeville on Highway P. 

During Mildred’s high school years, she played the French horn for the school band, did some acting, cheerleading, and also helped her dad Harry grow and ship truckloads of tomatoes to Antigo.  After attending the Madison Business College, she worked in the main office of the Rennebohm Drug Stores as a comptometer. Then at a YAK club dance in 1951 she met Robert (Bob) Lessl, a UW student from Milwaukee. She married Bob the following August, just before he entered the Army, and gave birth to their daughter Joyce a year later (1952) and Rob (1953) after they returned to Madison so Bob could earn a master’s degree. Their second son Tom (1954) was born in Milwaukee during the first of Bob’s thirty years teaching high school.  The two youngest, Mary (1957) and Ruth (1960), arrived after the family had settled in Brookfield.  During the civil rights movement of that time, she went door to door petitioning for open housing and marched in support of Cesar Chavez’ grape boycotts. She also helped organize the first recycling campaign in Brookfield during the  inauguration of Earth Day in 1970. 

Mildred lived out her final decades in a house Bob built for them back on the farm where this all started.  They were married for seventy-two years. Mildred loved all creatures great and small. She loved every child as she loved the five she reared, and every neighbor as she loved God.  Gentle, feeling, and in all ways kind and good, she lived each day with hands outstretched and heart bent toward heaven—forever a faithful daughter of the Church. 

She was preceded in death by her husband Bob (1928 – 2023) and is survived by her five children, Joyce Paige of Nashotah, Wi., Robert (Bob) Lessl of Waukesha, WI, Tom Lessl of Athens, GA, Mary Gorman of Pardeeville, WI, and Ruth Shively of Madison, WI  She leaves behind ten grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. 

Mass of Christian Burial will be held Saturday, May 4, 2024 at 11  AM at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Pardeeville with Father Joji Reddy officiating. Visitation will be held from 9:30 AM until the time of service at the church Saturday. Interment  will take place at the Pardeeville Cemetery.