Member Profile

Erma Lechko

Erma was born on a farm in Carson North Dakota on December 27, 1925. Her parents emigrated to ND from Southern Russia. They were part of a German community living in Russia, so German was spoken in the household. Erma’s family moved to Minneapolis when she was still in grade school. Her father worked in the hotel business and later was a manager of the old Nile Theater, which some of you may remember.

She is a graduate of the old South High School in Minneapolis. After high school she worked at Walgreen’s and later in the shipping department of Sears. She then married her husband, Bill. She is the mother of 4 children and a proud grandma.

Erma was familiar with one species of wild mushroom before joining MMS. Erma’s mother knew how to recognize Honey Caps, and passed this knowledge to Erma. Her family loved those mushrooms and collected “bushels of honey caps”. She learned that the best way to preserve the excess for future pleasure is to “blanch and freeze.”

Erma found out about MMS when her husband, Bill, read about the club in a newspaper article and talked her into going to a meeting with him. This was in the early 1970’s. Roger Preuss, who is a well-known wildlife artist, was president at the time she joined MMS. There were about 40 members at that time. Roger Pruess was often featured in magazine and newspaper articles, and he always put in a plug for MMS. By the end of his seven-year presidency in 19—the club had grown to over a hundred members. MMS was meeting in the downtown Minneapolis Walker library when Erma joined.

It wasn’t long before Erma learned her second wild mushroom, the morel. “I got hooked,” she says. Her passion for collecting morels is extraordinary! She reminisced at length about the many forays in which she found huge numbers of morels. She describes whole hillsides covered with morels and the trunk of her car packed full with them. This was in the legendary period when Dutch Elm disease first struck the area, causing massive numbers of morels to fruit.

“Your Honor, the jury finds the defendant guilty.”

Erma and Bill Lechko circa 1980

Erma has been a very important person in our organization. She and Roger Preuss are the most senior members of our society. Erma served on the MMS board for many years, and in addition, she was a key figure on the ID Committee. Early on she found that she had a special talent for mushroom identification. She became one of our most authoritative experts and passed on her skills to other members. She had good company on the ID committee: Dick O’Conner, Lee Mugli, and Pat Leacock, all of whom were past presidents of MMS.

Erma had the good fortune to receive encouragement and instruction in mushroom identification from Dr. Alexander H. Smith, who was one of the great mycologists of the 20th century. She accompanied Dr. Smith on a number of forays in Minnesota and Wisconsin. His identification skills were indeed legendary. Erma recalls... “He could walk into a room with tables full of mushrooms, and just by looking at them, could start rattling off names of the species faster than anyone could write them on the labels.” She recalls further, “With all his learning, he never made you feel like you didn’t know anything. He made you feel like you were just as good as he was.”

Erma is a storehouse of mushroom knowledge. She built a huge library of mushroom books over the years—field guides, recipe books, photography books, and more. But that is only the frosting. Erma saved every magazine and newspaper article bearing any relation to mushrooms or fungi as well as recipes, calendars, cartoons and posters. Friends and relatives who knew of her obsession with mushrooms sent many of these to her. More importantly, Erma archived a sizable collection of out society’s historical documents. Among them are some wonderful vintage photos, including photos of the founder of MMS, Dr. Mary S. Whetstone. This material awaits the attention of one of our members with a penchant for history, who might write the history of our society.

For the past two years Erma has made generous donations of many books and posters from her collection, which MMS has offered for sale at our Holliday Meeting to raise funds. But she did keep some very special books—autographed copies of mushroom books by Alexander Smith, Roger Phillips, Orson Miller, David Aurora, and Gary Lincolf!

Thank you Erma for your years of dedicated service to Minnesota Mycological Society.

From an interview by Ron Spinosa

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