Rick Chilgren - Online Memorial Website

My memories of Rick go back to the VERY BEGINNING...right after the very first experimental SAR in Minnesota. It proved to be a Kairos time when explorations on the edges of the American Lutheran Church and the search of a curriculum committee at the University of Minnesota Medical School came together. . Both institutions worked their "magic"  and were eventually changed forever, as were the lives of those of us who joined in the enterprise .  Rick's vision  enthusiasm and courage led the way. The course of my career was redirected, for which I wll be forever grateful to Rick.  He was a true partner as we worked together and found mutual support  as we traveled over the road during  those early years with it's many bumps and celebrations . He was at the right time and the right place and his legacy will live on.

Jim Siefkes

In 1973 I began as a small group leader in the SAR and then joined the staff the following year. Those years were absolutely magical and life changing! Rick Chilgren was a master dreamer and visionary who had the charisma to bring us along with him to heights we never dreamed were possible! And because of Rick's early legacy and the dream to create a place where people could explore sexual attitudes, values, feelings and beliefs, the Program in Human Sexuality has become a world-renowned institution that is held in high esteem. Out of those early beginnings, two endowed Chairs in Sexual Health have been created! I am so proud of all the accomplishments achieved, beginning with his early leadership and by all of us who carried on the torch. Thank you, Rick for your incredible vision, sparkling personality and wonderful parties!

 I was one of the "early crowd" who worked at The Program.  Working there was like no other experience in my life as it embrased permission-to be, to explore, to push the envelop.  My first introductions to issues of death and dying, imaging, journaling and gesltalt therapy were there.  There was a thirst in Rick that permiated the staff and, I imagine, annoyed the more professional  mores of even a university setting.  I am very grateful for my exposure at the program to people and ideas that I got there and was able to apply latter.  

Years after I left the program, I would often bump into people from Mn. and was suprised at how many had attended one of the SAR seminars. Ginny Dayton and I would often talk about the program and Rick, in awe of all that happened there under his leadership.

I am so sorry that Rick had, it seems, a rather rough time of it in latter years. I wish
I had thanked him in person for being such a pioneer. 

Did anyone mention charisma?  Rick BELIEVED and inspired us all to believe along with him. I met Rick (and Karin and Mary and Tom....) at my first SAR, in the Faculty Club of Coffman Union. Shock and awe!  Rick brought me along on his mission to turn America into a sex-positive land.  I can't imagine my life without him and PHS.

In 1969, I met Rick and Karin Chilgren, and stepped onto Rick's Magic Carpet Ride that took me through the next nine years of my life and then catapulted me into another dimension that became the rest of my life. He was a huge influence in what I have done and who I have become. The most important gifts I took from those years were a few cherished friendships that have lasted me a lifetime. Sadly, Rick was not counted among those lasting friendships. Still, he remained in my heart always. 

It grieves me that he had such a rough exit from this life. Having recently helped escort my dear sister, Nancy, through the nightmare of metastatic cancer to her death, I have a sense of the probable nature of his final days. Though we all die alone, it's a comfort to have loved ones nearby. I hope he had some company, and some comfort in knowing that he had done good things and had great influence in his life. And I hope that his spirit will rest in peace. Mahalo. Aloha ...