Alan Tollefson

Alan (Al) Tollefson was born in 1941 and raised near Excelsior, Minnesota on Lake Minnetonka. He finished high school and 2 years of college. Spent 2 years in Aspen, Colorado as a ski bum and then married a lovely girl from Excelsior. Together they raised four sons. Alan has had personal experience in physical activities as a National Level water skier, a Full Certified snow ski instructor and runner, and has thoroughly researched all aspects of nutrition because of so much contradictory information. All this went into his book Move More. He and his wife spent hours around a campfire at their farm telling stories to their boys and their friends which inspired the children's books. Alan's wife's family history has a great deal to do with Lake Minnetonka history beginning in the middle 1800s. That history, and Alan's interest in all the men and women who have died but did so much for the communities around Lake Minnetonka, prompted him to take his writing to another level and to research and gather stories from local residents to then write Shaping Our Community Volume I. Alan is a husband, father, grandfather, a Christian, a graphic designer and illustrator with a God given art talent his father Ray, who was also an artist, helped him develop over the years.