In Memory of Matt Aydelott

My name is Par Ridder and I’m a friend of Matt’s from San Luis Obispo but now live in Matt’s hometown of Minneapolis.

Matt could always make me laugh. There was more to Matt than a great sense of humor but I wanted to share a few stories about Matt that make me smile.

I met Matt about 8 years ago at a mid-state fair dinner. The group was made up of all farmers and ranchers and my wife spotted Matt and his friend Lynn, that didn’t seem to be either, so we set out to sit with them. The dinner was a series of long speeches where no act was too trivial to be recognized. I thought to myself this is going to be a long evening. I looked over and Matt said “Good God this is never going to end!” It wasn’t a long evening, Matt made us laugh all the way through and after that we became friends.

Matt and I would go to the mid-state fair every year to see the big concert of the fair. One year John Cougar came to the fair. Matt said he didn’t see any scenario where he would go to a John Cougar concert. I reminded him that John Cougar, like U2, was an 80s band whose best days were behind them but… “Stop right there,” He said, “Don’t ever bad mouth the greatest band in history.” He had his passions and U2 was one of them.

Another was his dog Lucy. He spoiled that dog to such an extent that I don’t think Lucy realizes she’s a dog. I say that because he brought Lucy over to our house one day and I put Lucy in the back with our dog and Lucy kept scratching at the door and looking at Matt like there has been some sort of terrible mistake. “Why am I in the back yard with this dog?” I told him his dog was over-humanized but he disagreed. “That is not it,” he said. He said he doesn’t make a big deal about it but his dog is just cooler than every other dog. I must say that never occurred to me.

Matt would always ask me for advice but never took it. I would ask him why he didn’t take my advice and he would always have a smart aleck reason. He could be sarcastic about a lot of people. However there were some people in his life that walked on water. One of those was his mother. She was his hero.

He told me she was “just a housewife” in Minneapolis and then one day she started walking then running around the block, then the lake, then the town. He was enormously proud of how she evolved from “just” his Mother to a tri-athlete, marathoner and then CEO. Matt was not built to brag but the closest he ever came was talking about his mother. “She went to Wellesley” he would always tell me.

Matt could always make us laugh. He had a wonderful sense of humor. But he also was a good person and I’m grateful to have been his friend.