Jan Hansen Strathy, a 1973 Cook County High School graduate, recently retired from an illustrious medical career and was featured in the Luminary, a magazine featuring people working in the Twin Cities medical field.
Jan Hansen Strathy recently retired from her OB/GYN medical practice in the Twin Cities, and she was featured in the Luminary, a magazine about the Twin Cities medical field. It couldn’t have been bestowed on a nicer person.
The author of the article, Marvin S. Segal, M.D. started off with this sentence, “Could a young woman from a small town in northern Minnesota find success one day as an accomplished and honored physician? Let’s just see…”
With all due respect to Dr. Segal, had he been in high school classes with Jan he would have had no doubt that she would succeed in whatever field she chose.
As one of those kids that attended school with her, it was evident from the get-go that she was whip-smart. While the rest of us were taking notes in class—or pretending to take notes in class—Jan kept her notebook shut. She would stare at the blackboard, inquisitively puzzling over what the teacher would write and sometimes raise her hand with a question that would go something like this, “That formula doesn’t seem logical. There is something wrong on the fourth line,” of a math problem. Or a chemistry problem. Or any old problem we happened to be working on at the time. And sure enough, after the teacher stopped to ponder and think a bit, they would agree that she was right.
Chemistry class was the worst. Larry “Bear” Carlson, a top-notch teacher if one was ever born, had to change the way he graded our class because Jan blew out the bell curve. After all, he said he couldn’t give one A and flunk— or nearly fail the rest of us—could he? Hmmm. He seemed to give it some serious thought before giving us some mercy.
One day our excellent math teacher Jane Mianowski paused for a moment after Jan had asked a detailed question about a math problem she had freshly chalked— squeakily—onto the blackboard. “You’re right, Jan. There is something wrong with this problem. Have you been studying this?”
To which Jan replied, “No. But something didn’t seem right. It wasn’t logical.”
So this was the way school went for Jan. She didn’t coast; she was a straight A student taking the hardest classes offered at Cook County High School. During the winter she would take Tuesdays off so she could downhill ski at Lutsen.
Following Christmas break our junior year, she announced she was going to graduate with the class of 1973 and head to Hamline University. It would take her three years to graduate Phi Beta Kappa and then she attended Mayo Medical School where she completed her OB/GYN residency.
Jan spent the next 31 years at Park Nicollet Clinic (PN) and Methodist Hospital, focusing her career working with expectant mothers, delivering healthy babies and working to prevent teen pregnancy. Along the way she also served as a clinical professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School, was repeatedly awarded Top Doctor designations and won the prestigious Earl Young Physician of Excellence award.
In her free time, Jan served as the Minnesota chair for the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) and chaired the Clinical Board of Governors of Park Nicolette. She also acted as a health care advisor to a U.S. Congressperson and worked in the field of midwifery, maternal mortality, and adolescent health care, served as a major publication’s editorial consultant, and as a Hennepin Medical Society board member.
Through it all, Jan had a great partner, her husband, Greg. She has been married to Dr. Greg Strathy, an orthopedic surgeon and director of the Minnesota Pilots Association for years. Besides their practices, the two of them have also volunteered their time performing medical mission work overseas.
Jan and Greg have one son, Bryan, who is a pilot for Sun Country. The couple also has a cabin on Tait Lake.
Jan came from a hard working family. Her mother, Sue, and her late father, Irving, owned and operated Isak Hansen’s True Value and Home Builders in Lutsen. Irving passed away several years ago, and with his passing Lutsen lost a vibrant community member and the county a strong, smart business leader.
Sue, who has a long history of volunteering, now splits her time between Cook County and California, but still volunteers in the community when she is here. Jan has two younger sisters, Ginny and Lee, and following on the heels of their big sister, each turned out to be accomplished and fruitful in their chosen careers.
Following a serious medical scare last year, Jan, who seems to be getting back to full health, and Greg have decided to hang up their medical practices and focus on some fun. No doubt they will travel, and no doubt they will spend part of their time on the North Shore, a place it would seem, indeed, is well suited to turning out a fine human being and a great doctor like Jan Hansen Strathy.
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