Nancy Osborn (Brataas) was born on January 19, 1928. After high school, she enrolled at the University of Mineesota where she became a member of Alpha Phi. She married Mark Gerard “Jerry” Brataas on November 27, 1948. He had served as a Navy pilot during World War II. He spent his career working as an administrator at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. A son and daughter rounded out the Brataas family.
Star Tribune, December 5, 1948
In 1975, Brataas won a special election and became the first woman elected in her own right to the Minnesota Senate. Brataas represented Rochester and parts of Olmstead County and retired in 1992, when her husband’s health issues worsened.
1963 newspaper photo and she was not even identified by her first name. The article also noted that she was a brunette.
Her expertise was in education, employment and taxes. According to her obituary, “workers’ compensation law, Title IX opportunities for women in sports, flood control for Rochester, passage in 1983 of the Rochester local option sales tax, repurposing of the closed Rochester State Hospital into a federal facility” were among the issues she tackled. She also assisted in the establishment of the University of Minnesota Rochester.
Brataas also started and ran a management and data-processing business, Nancy Brataas Associates, Inc. Her specialty was “strategically mobilizing voters through phone-center voter ID and recruitment campaigns.”
In the late 1990s, she was diagnosed with lung cancer, but it did not stop her from living life to the fullest. She died on April 17 at the age of 86.
